Tomorrow I am going to actually try and do some formal art with my kids.  While hardly blog-worthy to some, this is a big deal considering it is our 4th year of homeschooling!

 My 3 dear sons think painting is putting lots of every color on your pallet, paint 5 pictures in three minutes with one color (maybe two,) quickly making mud of the rinse water, and moaning about having to clean up.

Besides, I haven't a clue how to teach art.  I am very blessed that my mom is an artist and teaching classes with ds#1 in it at the co-op.  Still, I probably should do art.  I have lots of supplies, and even some books.  I just need the will I guess.

I pulled out one of the Williamson Kids Can! books on art and we're starting at the beginning with primary colors.  We'll see how this goes...

The unseasonable autumn warmth made for a wonderful afternoon and evening in Boston last week when Grandpa was in town for a day.  We ate at the Union Oyster House, the oldest continuously running business establishment in the country, and the origin of the toothpick.

Last week we went to see the Spirit of America production with two other families and it was fabulous!  We left early, so we got great "ring side" seats, and I was glad we went during the day along with all the school groups.  The kids did the wave, did a lot of hooting and hollering in appreciation--they even waved their open cell phones during the slow songs, LOL (I remember the Bic lighters.)

The first half dramatically presented the history of the Army while the second half showcased the drilling and musical talents of our soldiers.  The kids really liked the whole production but I think they were particularly impressed by the drill team.

Hey, boys--don't leave the sticks in the yard!

Today begins the 40 Days For Life.  Pray, fast, or participate in a community activity to bring an end to abortion.  We pray for women that are suffering, and for the 45,000,000 + children and still counting...

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Our co-op is having a US geography bee in November, so I decided to spend this term doing a state study.  I've tried to keep it pretty simple.

Here is a copy of my state sheet in Word.  Uploading it means it is not formatted right--you have to move the state abbreviation to the end of the line.

The Netstate.com website has all the state information you could want as well as outline maps for each state.  Download the outline and replace it in my state sheet to make sheets for all 50 states.

We are learning just the bird, flower and tree for each state, and I found a fun and easy way to do this.  First, you need a wonderful little bit of freeware called MWsnap that allows you to take a snapshot of a browser window and save it as a jpg file.

Next I make the cutout sheet by doing the following:

1. Download the images of the bird, flower, and tree from Netstate.com for the states in one area of the country all into their own folder on the computer.  Rename the file as the name of the bird or flower or tree.
2. Display the directory using thumbnails, so it shows all the pictures in the directory.  I even line them up so the top row has birds, middle row has flowers, and bottom row has trees.
3. Use MWsnap to convert the folder display to a jpg image.
4. Print it out and you have a 8.5x11 sheet with the little pictures of each state bird, flower, and tree like the picture at the top of this page (click on it to see a larger version.)

Cut them out and paste into the space between the map and the first line of the state sheet after filling in the rest of the information.

"And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live."   Numbers 21:8

"'And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.'

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."  John 3:14-16

We look upon the crucifix, and when we see Him with our believing eyes we too shall live.

We have finished 2 weeks of school and it is time for our first adjustment.  No bad, I think!

Ds#1 is going to move from M.E.P. year 4 to year 3.

Math has been taking him a long time to complete.   Math-U-See taught him well how to do multiplication and division algorithms but not much about why, or number patterns.  I can see he does mental math far better than he did last year, yet he is still getting used to the new and varied ways M.E.P. presents materials. 

The moderators at the MEP-homeschoolers Yahoo group posted an interesting fact; a child that has mastered the material through year 6 is prepared for U.S. high school math!

Looking through the year 3 material, I see fractions are introduced during week 3--right where we will start on Monday.

I work in an emergency department, about 20 hours a month.  This morning ds#2, while sitting on the couch waiting for me to come up and start school (or at least that is what I asked him to do,) fell and hit the back of his head on the base of the banister railing.  He came down and told me he was bleeding.

The wound was not very big, but it was gaping.  I could not seal it with a bandage or glue it because of his hair.  I knew it needed no more than 2 staples.  Off to the ED went the four of us.

Trying to keep 3 highly-active boys entertained in a small ED room for 2 hours is a challenge, especially when people keep stopping in to talk to me (mom's distracted, let's touch everything we can in the room!)

Afterward we had lunch and made it home just in time to head back out to the library for me to teach biology, and then off to our homeschool catechism class afterward. Whew!

Two other families have joined us for God's Country Club, our world geography studies.

We meet each week to learn about the geography and culture of a country. 

We spend several weeks on a country, depending how much material needs to be covered. Our kids sample food, do activities, and create their own projects for each country studied.

Our first country is Poland. We created a blog so all three moms can post information and so our kids can look back at their progress. It's a fun way to study world geography!

We were driving by the Dunkin' Donuts Center (the former Providence Civic Center) and ds#2 says, "Wow, that's the biggest Dunkins I've ever seen!!!"

After rearranging the playroom, rearranging all the upstairs bookcases, gathering up all our resources (I still need to do a bit more of that) and writing up the schedules, we finally had our first day back to school yesterday.  Overall, it went well!

I always find the first day of homeschooling difficult.  I just never seem to have things organized right until I actually start doing what I need to do. This year went fairly well.

Math took up a lot of time, mostly because I was not as prepared as I should have been.  I am still getting used to MEP and getting a better feel for how it is organized.  I also decided to use the laptop for the lesson plans instead of printing them all out.  I need more play dollars, dimes, and pennies to demonstrate regrouping...

So far the boys all worked well.  With computer programs and "toys" restricted to certain options during school time, they found many educational ways to fill their time while I was busy working with one or another of them.

Ds#3 was the most excited of the three, always eager to be doing things.

Off to another day!