We've been plugging away at our Solar System Lapbook. I love it, every time we finish reading a book about space, planets etc... ds runs to his lapbook to see if there is any information to put in it or an excercise to do. This folder is massive and I think will take us until the holiday break or beyond, lol. But he is learning and retaining alot!
Nana- Expect a science lesson when you come to visit. lol
We have also made progress on our States Notebook. Taking each state by itself to learn a little about it has been fun.
One of the things that has kept us most busy has been our Saturdays! Awhile back we discovered Home Depot Kid's Workshops (1st Saturday of the month). It's the first saturday of the month and the boys just love it. Then of course someone mentioned Lowe's Build and Grow Clinics (2nd & 4th Saturdays) and the boys insisted on going to these as well! lol The boys have had a blast and our wood projects collection has grown by leaps and bounds.
The last Home Depot project was a fire truck for Fire Prevention month. On top of building this ultra cool fire truck they had a real life fire truck & police car out front for the kids to see and explore as well as talk with the guys who operate them!
Their aprons are filling up with accomplished pins and patches from both places! Mom is waiting for the leaf press project next month at Home Depot. :)
DS 1 is working on 2nd grade work. I thought this might be the year we halt but he's been going full throttle with out any problems. The subject he most fought last year was English. I think because of all the writing. He wanted nothing to do with it.
We changed to Rod & Staff this year and have been taking our time and he's been doing really well.
He took the first unlit test on Friday and got a 93%!!
He did the whole thing w/o complaining or comment, I just helped him understand some of the directions and he went to work on his own.
I've been doing a happy dance all weekend long. Last year English gave me migraines. This year he says "time for english?" Woohoo!!
All books are worth looking at & reading but few (non curriculum) are worth dishing out the $$ for us. We are very careful & selective as to what we actually purchase vs. borrow umpteen times from the library. This one is for mom.
Are you not sure if you're covering everything you should? Want a guide with great links, suggestions & resources?
Read grade by grade and subject by subject. Take what you want and leave the rest.
Home Learning Year by Year is a comprehensive book from preschool through high school. After each subject are great websites and books with brief descriptions of each to help you along your journey.
I of course bought mine on Alibris.com along with several other books and got each one well under mrsp in new and almost new condition.
It's taken a bit to get our science together and I was a little behind. The Space lapbook I picked looked really cool and engaging for Jordan. Boy was I right. What I didn't anticipate was almost 2 weeks of cutting & pasting, lol. This thing is HUGE!!! There are even mini books on the backside of the folders. Normally Jordan gets to do 90% with me just helping cut things out. I finally got everything printed & sorted and just started on my own. Something this big would take him a long time & just get him fustrated. This is definitely not what we want for him and science.
Jordan likes to do his thing with the little books cut out but not in the folder. There's no choice this time but I don't think he minds. There is so much to this he is finding new angles & information to add every time we read.
I got this from Homeschool Share and we love it. We will be adding other things like building a rocket, solar system mobile etc.. as well. We'll have to see how long this takes to complete. I'm thinking November sometime. :)
oh yeah, I wanted black background so I made this from black posterboard. It took 5 - 17x11 folders!
Just as we were getting ready for breakfast, Riley looked out back and said 'dog'. I looked and corrected him 'Turkey!" How wonderful to have such unique & rarely seen creatures, by most people, in our backyard! A whole little family skirted our property before completely disappearing into the field.
This is our week to tie up any loose ends from past projects & assignments before we dive into new stuff. I think the only thing we really have left is the Storm section of our Weather unit.
Wohoo!
Next monday Aug 4th we'll be starting on our full curriculum schedule. Ri will be starting on his letters, numbers, colors & shapes with crafts also. The kid has been begging to color & glue "offical" school stuff, so we're bringing him on board early.
I have our Science (Solar System) almost all worked out, everything else is good to go and it feels good. The kids are excited and I'm happy to get our regular schedule going again. We all do much better with a regular routine.
Once I have everything in place I'll be posting our Solar System/Space unit to share so check back!
Jordan has apparently taken quite well to lapbooks. He just finished his subtraction lapbook this week and is already ready to get going on another one. He's getting better with the layouts each time. I let him figure it out, then make suggestions but he always has the final say where everything goes. Someone tell him mom needs to catch up! lol
This is our Weather unit we are completing this next week. Different aspects have been found in many many places. I formatted this after a couple that I had found and squished rearranged a little and made it our own. We didn't get to all the experiments we wanted but I'm sure we'll revisit this one time and again.
Usbourne Internet Linked Science Encyclopedia pg 192-193
Weather (Eyewitness Books) by Brian Cosgrove
Activities:
Weather Tracking –For the younger crowd - use or make a daily calendar with weather pieces they can put on each day. So if it’s sunny on Monday, they pick out the sun and place it on Monday etc…
For the older ones they can keep notebook pages with the temperature high, low, and average, humidity, air pressure, wind, sunrise, sunset, clouds, and any precipitation.
Use a local news channel, website or weather.com to obtain your information.
We also took the temperatures and charted them in a bar graph fashion to see any trends.
Experiment 1 – This is a pretty simple experiment the only things you need are an outdoor thermometer and a sunny day with no clouds. Place the thermometer in a sunny area and record the temperature every hour. You will need to start this early in the morning and stop after the sun has been down for a few hours. What did you notice about the temperature throughout the day? What reason do you think this occurred? What have we learned? Why?
Using pictures of the different types of clouds have the children paint pictures of the different types of clouds. Then have them record the information about each type of cloud and what it predicts the weather will be. Or you could do this second variation. Cirrus clouds are a feathery type white cloud that appears in streaks across the sky. The child could glue white feathers in the fashion of this type of cloud and record the info. For cumulus clouds which look like puffy, white, low clouds they could use cotton balls. For Stratus clouds which look wide, often gray, low clouds they could use dryer lint or gray felt and then record the information.
Humidity/Precipitation
I plan on doing the water cycle lap book at this point because it does a fair job of explaining where rain comes from. I will then add the following activities to make it weather related.
Learn about humidity here. There is also an exercise to measure dew point.
We just finished our Creation Lapbook and he really enjoyed this one. We gathered things from our Rod & Staff Workbook as well as Christian Preschool Printables. It took us about 1½ weeks but we only did a little bit here & there each day.
We've been rearranging & organizing our School stuff. We are starting our Subtraction book and will post pictures of that when its' finished. I came across Jordan's addition book (his first full lapbook ) and had to get pictures. We got this from one of our favorite sites for lapbooks Home School Share.
Mother Nature always has lessons for us. Being where we live they are in abundance and we always try to take the opportunity to learn about them. Over this past year has been one of our record years. We try not to interfere with nature's way of things but with cat's... well you can guess.
DH caught this one last friday coming home very late. It was on our front window at 3 a.m.
Cercropia Moth (3½-4")
Office Depot offers Teachers Rewards program that is easy to join. Click here and scroll down to the blue banner. Fill in the info and you get your number. They also have a Teacher's Breakfast, this years has not been announced as of yet.
We made this a couple of weeks ago and it came out great. Not only is it good on bread/toast. Warm some up in a bowl then top it with vanilla ice cream. DH calls it apple pie ice cream. yum!
Here's the recipe I used.
6 cups of apples
4 cups of sugar (i used 3, it just seemed like alot)
¼ tsp cloves
3 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
Peel apples. Put everything in a crock pot. Mine is a 4qt? or so. Cook on high for an hour then turn on low for 9-11 hrs. Remove lid and cook last hour or so if needed. Use a whisk to mix.
Easy huh?!
This is the beginning. It only took about 3 of those large fuji apples.
After the first hour I mixed it a little to get the sugar & spices throughout. This is about 4 hours cooking.
and done! The small crock pot made 2 pints. We gave one to MIL/FIL and they love it. :)
There are many "teacher" programs out there that as a private/homeschool you can take advantage of it you just sign up. One place is Staples. Read about the benefits here . We all know how school supplies can add up, especially ink from printing/copying for multiple students. I think my favorite part is the free shipping no matter what your total is. :)
So go click on that link and hit the enroll button and get your rewards to help you save & get more supplies for your school!
near Chicago or Indianapolis? Here's some free places to take the kids.. Most the time they won't realize they're learning! :)
Illinois
Chicago Children's Museum - Target Free First Mondays
Free admission for kids 15 and under. First Monday of every month, 10 a.m.–8 p.m.
700 East Grand Avenue, Navy Pier
Chicago Children's Museum at Navy Pier
Chicago IL, 60611
312-527-1000
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago - Target Free Tuesdays
Free every Tuesday
220 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago IL, 60611
312-280-2660
Congo Square Theatre, Chicago - Target Saturday Matinees
2-for-1 Tickets, Saturdays at 2 p.m.
Various locations
Chicago, IL 60657
312-587-2292
Lookingglass Theatre Company, Chicago - Target Saturday Matinees
Buy One, Get One Free, Saturday performances at 3 p.m.
821 North Michigan Avenue
Water Tower Water Works
Chicago IL, 60611
312-337-0665
Art Institute of Chicago - Target Free Evenings
Free General Admission every Thursday, 5–9 p.m.
Free General Admission every Friday from Memorial Day until Labor Day, 5–9 p.m.
111 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago IL, 60603-6110
312-443-3600
The Field Museum - Target Free Second Mondays
Free admission every second Monday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
1400 South Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, IL 60605-2496
312-922-9410
National Museum of Mexican Art - Target Free Admission at the NMMA
Free admission every day during museum hours, 10 a.m–5 p.m. Tuesday–Sunday
1852 W. 19th Street
Chicago, IL 60608
312-738-1503
Millennium Park Family Fun Festival Presented by Target
June 3–September 1, 2008 Daily, 10 a.m.–2 p.m.
Summer-long free festival of music, performances and family activities for all ages, seven days a week in the Millennium Park Family Fun Activity Tent and on the Jay Pritzker Pavillion Performance Stage.
Chicago Children's Choir - Target Free Family Concert in Millennium Park
Thursday, June 12, 6:30 p.m. Indiana
Children's Museum of Indianapolis - Target Family Nights
Free First Thursdays, 4–8 p.m.
3000 North Meridian Street
Indianapolis, IN 46208
317-334-3322
We've started canning already this year and the garden is blooming! DH brought home 2 large boxes of apples from his last auction trip. A total of 120 apples... yes you read that right 120 softball size apples. I thought great the kids love apples, then I thought oh no there's no way we can consume/save this many in the fridge before they go bad. So off to can I went. This is only the first set as we've only gotten through about 1/2 of the apples.
Last year we canned tones of tomatoes & green beans from our garden. Those did not last us through the winter so my goal this year is to can every little bean, squash, tomato, piece of corn etc... I can get my hands on. It really cuts down our grocery bill as well as ensures we always have good quality veggies & fruit on hand.
I'm going to prep some apples today so I can try apple butter tomorrow. Will let you know how it turns out :)
We just celebrated ds's 6th birthday. Wow has time flown. We went to Six Flags on Saturday and had a blast inspite of the storm.
As some know ds is gluten/wheat free so our cakes have been challenging to say the least. Most everyday foods we have down pat but cakes..hmm. For Riley's birthday we had cake from Kinnicknik which as pretty good. This time we tried a mix from the Gluten Free Pantry. Now, I didn't think to read the box, it turned out to be Chocolate chip cookie & cake mix. I paired it with a white fluffy frosting from my Betty Crocker book and it was ok, not great but the kids loved it. That's the important thing right? :)
I think I'm going to get a couple of the Kinnicknik cake mixes to keep on hand. That was by far the best we've had but definitely a change from Betty Crocker. Here's a picture of the GFP Cake ....
I thought I'd start out by introducing us. There's me & daddy, Jordan (almost 6 yrs old), Riley (almost 2½ yrs) and Robin (just about 3 months). I've been homeschooling Jordan for almost 3 years now. He is really a self motivated and has a seemingly almost unquenchable thirst or knowledge.
We just started our 2nd grade curriculum with him except spelling and health. We school year-round and almost 24 hrs a day with his constant inquiring about everything. :)
We've recently started notebooking and lapbooking, which we really enjoy. I'll be posting some of our experiences, unit studies and general stuff I find here.
Here's a look at what we've used and are using for Jordan. Riley, well, we are a little free with 'curriculum' until about 1st grade so lots of reading, crafts and maybe some lapbooks!
