I've been wanting to post what has been going on in school, life, cooking......unfortunately I have been having a month of migraines. In the last month I've had 20 days of migraines, 11 in the last 12 days. So even thought my intentions for this school year was to keep up on my blog, I guess it won't be happening like I planned. I will be going to a specialist the beginning of November......however, I'm sure it will be a loooong process.

So what have I been doing the last few weeks?

• Co-op Classes: So far we have had 2, 4 more to go. I'm teaching Jr/Sr High, "English from the Roots Up". Going very well so far. We are working on 10 words for each week. I give them a pretest on the words we will be working on, we review the previous words (last week we did a crossword puzzle together), put together our flash cards (I type out the words/definitions, then they glue them onto their 3x5 cards), and then we play "Rummy Roots" if we have time. When we correct the pretest, I explain more about each root.
• Homeschool Support Meeting: While the parents have their meeting, another teacher and I are teaching the K-2nd grade children. We are doing a science theme this year. So far we have done Simple Machines and Water Cycle. I'm hoping later to have separate post of these classes outlining what we did. It has been so much fun. The next class will be about The 5 Senses.
• ECC: Week 3&4 United States: We did get through these weeks. I actually had posted a long post but somehow lost it. We are now in Weeks 5 & 6: Mexico. I'm already a week behind with these migraines, but we work though it. For days I'm not doing well, I always have lots of books for the book basket that violet can read to me. Also I make sure we get several movies from the library about what we are doing. We also have a DVD interactive game, "Planet Earth". This is a great game for geography. We were fortunate enough to receive it as a gift last Christmas from some friends. 

I've been doing alot of canning, mostly salsa lately, but that will hopfully be another post with recipes to share.

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If you interested in finding others who are using MFW like I am, then click on the button above and add your blog to the list. This is open for ALL of MFW curriculum, which is great because I will be able to see what we will be doing next year and remember what we have done in the past......

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This is our second week of school, alot of outside activities and freezing corn this week. But still, we did get some a little schooling in. Again, we are doing MFW: ECC, were actually doing the first edition. We're barely into week 2.

Bible: We finished some color sheets on Jn. 3:16, worked some on personal Bible study

Language Arts: practice handwriting f-j; finished the Explode the Code from last year; finished spelling book from last year.

Math: finished Singapore Math 1B from last year. We will begin a new workbook next week.

Geography: read some more of "Maps and Globes", worked on latitude-longitude; tried to find places on the map using lat/long coordinates; equator/ prime meridan. Played "Geography Songs" during down times; "Wee Sing" Hello to the Children of the world.

Science: In our "Living World Encylopedia" we looked at Long-term Changes. After she is done reading a section outload, she writes a sentence of what she read. Right now I am helping her with these sentences, but she is coming up with some of her own.

Book Basket: Some books she liked reading this week were:

• Mapping Penny's World, Lorren Leedy
• Me on the Map, Joan Sweeney
• Celebrations, Kindersley
• What a Wonderful World, Weiss and Thiele (she thought this was fun because there was a song that went with this)

Outside Activities:

• Houdini Museum- we were at an appointment an hour away from home, so I figured we might as well make a day of it and go somewhere educational. She learned that magic was all about tricking others into believing something was true.
• Mongolian Grill for lunch on same day as museum.
• Homeschool support meeting- the kids are divided into different grades for activities.
• K-5th Social: just time for this age group to develope friendships. I realize that for some families, this is not important, but Violet is basically an only child. Yes, she has sibblings, but they are already out of the house and she really needs this time once in a while.

I'm planning on a full week of uninterupted school next week. So we should get lots done. However the week after will be more half days, then we should be back to a normal schedule again.

It feels so good to be back to homeschooling again. How was your week?

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Last week was our first week of school. I figured we would start right away, even though I just worked my last day that Sunday morning. We are doing My Father's World: Exploring Countries and Cultures. We are using the 1st Eddition, they came out with the 2nd this year. This is our 4th year with MFW, I'm so glad that we found it. When I first started homeschooling Violet, I needed something planned and that had a great phonics base. I never had to teach my older two to read as they started out in PS. Also, this week and next will be mostly 1/2 days at home, we have alot of stuff going on outside of home these two weeks.

Bible: We are memorizing Jn. 3:16; Window on the World- read p. 8-9; colored some pages with Jn.3:16 in their language: Greek, Korean, and Spanish. Also, since Violet was recently baptized, we are going over again what baptism is for , why we are baptized and example in the Bible of others and their conversions, and briefly what our responsibilities are as a Christian. We go into more detail later on.

Language Arts: practice printing letters A-E (we will start on cursive after we go over printing in another week or two); writing strands lesson #1 day one and two; 4 pages of explode the code (has about 10 pages left from last year); a lesson of spelling (again, 2 lessons left from last year)

Math: we are reviewing addition and subtraction, 4 pages of singapore math

Geography: this week we read through "Maps and Globes", put world map on wall, filled out world map with a compass, labled continents, equator, hemispheres, poles; made a map of her room; distance and scales. Geography vocabulary: continent, continental shelf. We also found pictures of people from different countries that we cut out of national geographic magazines and pasted onto 8x11 sheet piece of paper. The instructions were to put onto a poster board, but this way when were done, it can go into her notebook and I don't have to figure out what to do with it. She really enjoyed this.

Science: we are using as our main text this year "Living World Encyclopedia". For each two page spread she will write out 3 sentences of what she learned. This week we read about "Environments". We also went on a field trip to the State Fish Hatchery only 5 miles from us, this is only the 2nd time in almost 9 years going. They just built an educational building and did major expanding, so we were actually checking it out for a field trip for our homeschool group. But anyways, she drew a picture and wrote down 3 sentences of what she learned.

Art: Last year we started using "I Can Do All Things", we only got through the first part, I think it was called ABC's of drawing (I know I'm wrong with this name, but too lazy to look). Then we went to a class that Barry Stebbings was holding here locally and I went ahead and bought the DVD's for this book. The plan was to finish thru the summer, but I'm sure you all know how plans go. So we started with painting this week using the dvd's, lesson 101.

I know we have more subjects to add and we really didn't get everything done for "week 1", but like I said before, these were mostly half days. 

Hope that whenever your starting that it is a good week........Happy Schooling!!

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Thought some of you might be looking for ideas for classes to teach at a co-op, so I thoght I would post what is being made available at ours. Sign-ups are in another week or so for the fall session, were pretty excited. Violet is in the 3rd-5th grade group. I'll let you figure out which classes she wants to take, you may be surprised....

1st Hour:

PreK-K: Animal Life Cycles

1st-2nd: Fun with Physics

3rd-5th: Celebrate America through Crafts & Activities ......or.....Electronics

6th-8th: Mid-Lit

6th-12th: Cooking

9th-12th: Foundations in Personal Finance

2nd Hour

PreK-K: Animal Life Cycle Cont.

1st-2nd: Fall & Winter Crafts

3rd-5th: Christmas Make & Take......or........C.S.I.

6th-8th: Founding of America

6th-12th: More Basic Electronics

9th-12th: Foundations in Personal Finance Cont.

3rd Hour

PreK-K: Music & Movement

1st-2nd: Book & Project

3rd-5th: Cookies & Bars.....or......Ocean Life

6th-12th: English From the Roots Up.....or

                Explore the Stock Market.......or

                Wisconsin Prairie Wildflowers

So, which one's do Violet want to take?

Electronics, C.S.I., and Ocean Life.

Makes me wonder if I'm not giving her enough science. Won't she be surprised when she finds out that in the electronics that she will be putting together a metal detector. She asked for one for this next Christmas!!

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Thought I would try and get my dissection labs posted. We are starting another session in our co-op, so it's a good time to get this done.

Crayfish:

www.smithlifescience.com/Crayfishdissection.htm

This is the site I used. To be honest with you, I didn't like the worksheets I used. I probably didn't like them when I taught the class last during the fall session and forgot to make note of it. I think in the future I will just have a drawing of the crayfish that we can lable on one worksheet, and then on another worksheet describe the function of each of the parts we labled. Somehow make it so they are filling in some of the answer while going through each part. Then we can rip into the crayfish.

Also, this time I had student who were in middle school, in the fall session they were all highschoolers. There is a difference. I had to move at slower pace. However the middle schoolers do like to take things apart doing "free time" before cleaning up.

Other sites:

www.middleschoolscience.com/crayfish.htm

www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/crayfishexternal.html  www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/crayfishinternal.html  these last two sites would be better to use also. I used this format for another dissection lab, it went rather well.

Realize that when dissecting, since these are not fresh specimens, it may be difficult finding things in them. But don't be discouraged, it's the experience that matters.

Other Dissection Labs:

• earthworm

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When a few of us decided we were going to start a homeschool co-op this year, I knew exactly what I would teach. I wanted something that would help draw in families, so I thought about dissections. So many families hate doing dissections labs. I have always loved doing hands-on science, didn't always do well on the textbook part, but I loved the labs.

The great thing about dissecting is that you can see just how wonderful Gods hand is in everything. Once you see how everything works together, how there had to be a plan, there is no way you can still believe that things just happened to collide into each other and formed life. There had to be a plan, Gods plan.

Basically, I'm just going to tell you where my resources are from for each lab we do. There really is alot online.

You can get your supplies: specimens, tools, tray, etc.. at HomeTrainingTools or Nebraska Scienctic .

One book I use often is "How to Dissect" by William Berman. It has 11 specimens, including a fetal pig, which I won't be doing.  

For Earthworm:

http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/earthwormdissection.htm

This was the worksheets I copied off for us to follow along with.  I made sure I knew what each of the bold words were, and I also made a volcabulary crossword puzzle out of these bold words. You can do this online for free at http://www.puzzle-maker.com/ . Then I printed off the one copy and made more copies somewhere for my students.

Other sites you can go to are:

http://www.middleschoolscience.com/earthworm2.htm

http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/earthworm.htm

http://sciencespot.net/Media/yuckywormwkst.pdf

http://www.hometrainingtools.com/articles/worm-dissection-project.html

http://kentsimmons.uwinnipeg.ca/16cm05/16labman05/lb6pg2.htm

http://www.gonzaga.org/teachers/dfreedbe/newweb/labEarthwrm.htm

Virtual Labs:

http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/genbio/virtual_labs/BL_14/BL_14.html

http://biog-101-104.bio.cornell.edu/BIOG101_104/tutorials/animals/earthworm.html

I told the kids that I wasn't an expert on dissections, which I'm sure I proved quite quickly, but that we were learning together. Have fun with it. Just explore and see what you can find. Also remember that this is not the time to necesarily (I know, bad spelling) understand each and every organ, but to find them and see where they lie, follow the digestive system, etc.... They can go into  more detail at home in their own biology studies.

Next.....Crayfish

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Today was the first day back to school, didn't follow the schedule exactly, but that was o.k. I did get up at 6am, started the coffee, did some computer and then did some weights. Started the dishes and woke dd up at 8am, she had a late night so wanted her to get a few more minutes. By the time we got chores done, breakfast, dh wanting me to play cards with him, we didn't get school started till 10am, but that was o.k.. Reading is still going along well, I can see that math isn't going to be her favorite subject. We played a math game and did some addition flash cards. I'm going to be ordering Singapore Math next week sometime, well start at the beginning, see how it goes. We also did some piano, we really haven't been doing much since the end of March when we stopped taking lessons. Right now I'm just reviewing with her what she had all ready done with the teacher.

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Last year I made up schedules according to what was going on in our days, I've taken and updated them. We basically have our home days, h.s meeting days (1 X/mo), and co-op days (2 X/mo).

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.....went really well. I wasn't sure if dd-7 was going to make it or not, she hadn't been feeling well most of the week. Annnnnndddddd, I didn't get any pictures. Got there and realized that the battery was dead. A friend of mine did take a picture of our project, but probably won't get anytime soon if she is like me.

We did: "What do roots, stems and leaves do?" . We drew out a plant on the board and she traced and colored it in. Then she wrote what each one does, and we put the explanation next to each part. We also found a verse to copy for our board. We had seeds in a glass that were starting to sprout, a jar full of blue water with celery in it to show how water gets up the stem. We also had a plant that we took out of the soil to show the roots. Then we had carrots and celery to snack on. I know, I used a lot of we, but she is only 7, so I did help alot.

Another project that someone else did that I think alot of you might appreciate: Diaper Comparison.  One of the girls took diapers from different companies and compared how much liquid they would hold. Pampers, Huggies, Roundys (store brand from Copps or Pick n' Save), and Aldi's brand.

Guess which one held the most?

                                                             Aldi's Brand

And which one held the least?

                                                             Pampers

Anyways, all the kids got participation certificates, with jugdes comments, and a bag full of goodies from surrounding companies and resturants. We also had lunch at the end. Lots of fun.

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We have 6 weeks till our science fair. So I'm trying to plan each week what we need to do to be prepared. Our topic is: What do roots, stems, and leaves do? This week we have to:

• order and pick up books from library
• gather any books that we have at home
• make a collection of internet sites
• Come up with our Hypothesis
• skim through books, writing down pages for each area: roots, stem, leaves.

Here are some sites I found, I still need to go through them and see what applies to our needs:

http://www.libsci.sc.edu/miller/plants.htm

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentoring/project_ideas/PlantBio_p015.shtml?from=Home

http://www.lessonplanspage.com/SciencePlantPartsFunctionDiagramAndMobileK2.htm

http://www.quacked.net/freestuff/plants/

http://www.ed.uri.edu/smartprojects/plants.html

http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=1659

http://www.lessonplanspage.com/ScienceExCanWaterTravelThroughPlantStemsMO68.htm

http://www.lessonplanspage.com/ScienceExDoPlantsLoseWaterThroughLeavesMO68.htm

If anyone has any other suggested sites, I would really appriciate them.

Is anyone else doing science fair projects this year?

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It's that time of year when our homeschool group does a science fair. This is our groups 4th year and each year there is so much learning, even for those who are not doing a project. My older daughter participated the 1st year, I can't remember the exact title, but it had to do with our eyes seeing color. She even made a model of an eye with a basketball, really cool. This year is our youngest first year. We are doing: What do roots, stems and leaves do? This works out great because its something we would be covering in our studies this year anyways. This is my one big tip: always pick a project that you will be working on that year anyways, you may have to do it earlier than planned, but at least your not giving yourself extra work for the year.

So here are some sites that have to do with science fairs. Maybe some of you will be doing one this year, or maybe you might like to put together a science fair for your group, even if its just a few families getting together.

If you have any questions on how our group goes about it, just ask me.

http://web.mac.com/terrellshaw/iWeb/ScienceFair/

http://www.hometrainingtools.com/misc/science-fair-guide.pdf

 http://www.eduplace.com/science/profdev/science_fair/

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/sciencefaircentral/scifairstudio/teachers.html

http://www.wright.edu/cosm/sciencefair/SFweb1.htm

http://eho.org/homeschool_prep/article.asp?articleid=50&resourceid=107

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I havent' given an update on homeschooling lately, probably time. For those who don't know, we are using My Fathers World First Grade this year.

• For Bible: we are learning Prov. 12:22 "The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful. " She was able to sound it all out and read it with very little help. We discussed the meaning of the verse, and read other verses on this subject. Then when daddy got home she explained it all to him.
• Reading: We are just now getting into the Bible Reader. She was so excited about it that during quiet time she took it to her room and looked through it for about an hour. I could hear her trying to sound out words, working ahead. She wants me to let her color the pictures in it, haven't decided yes or no yet. We also have been using Bob Books(level 2) and Abeka Reader(1:2). The Abeka Readers go along real well with MFW, and they only cost me $5 at a book sale last year.    I was alittle worried with the phonics for a moment, mainly just how confusing our language is. Can you believe how many ways you can use one letter for so many sounds? No wonder kids are so confused at times. But she seems to be catching on, thank God.
• Science: we have kind of put this off for the moment.. I LOST MISPLACED THE BOOK!!  I'm sure I will find it, just need some time.
• History: were starting in the beginning. We did a map of the Bible Lands using a story about a man fishing. I love this story. I've used it in my Wednesday Night Bible class with 2/3 graders. If I want them to remember where the Nile River is, I just tell them where the fishermans tangled lines are. We also talked about how the Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew and she copied the Greek Alphabet. We still need to put together our timeline, maybe tomorrow.
• Art: We are using Drawing with Children. I really do love this book. I know there are some who have not enjoyed it as much, but so far we like it. I'm not always able to get to it according to plan, but when we do, it's real fun. We did a few exercises, the one where everyone follows the same instruction and comes out with completely different picture. This last week we did our FIRST REAL DRAWING. Here is the bird that my 6 year old daughter did. Note: Had to take the picture out because it was interferring with the look of my blog. I will try and resize it and put it back later.
• Math: we are just using an inexpensive workbook from Walmart this year. The past week or two she has been working on one's and ten's. They teach this by using money. So now she knows how to add up dimes and pennies. And she can write her numbers to 100. Next she will be working on Time-Hours.
• Crafts: she is working on those potholders that you weave with loops. They are to be Christmas gifts for the grandmas and aunts. We will start working on winter crafts this week.
• Piano: I think she is doing really well. We added piano practice to her chore chart, she just loves to put on stickers, so this works out really well. We were having some problems with her fiddling around at lessons, I had to ask the teacher to be alittle more firm with her. One week I had to cut her lessons short because she was being disrepectful. She has done much better the last two weeks. We love our teacher, my older daughter has been going to her for 6 years.

I think thats everything. I'm sure I forgot something though. Last time I forgot about our verse study, but this time I didn't. That's just the way life is for me, always forgetting something.

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It's snowing!!! I think we have 3 or 4 inches so far and should be getting another 3 or 4 inches. Here is a song I found at this site. This is what I think of snow.

                                         I Love Snow
(Tune: Three Blind Mice)

I love snow.
I love snow.
Soft, white snow;
Soft, white snow.
It falls on the ground so soft and white.
Sometime it falls all through the night.
Did you ever see such a beautiful sight
As soft white snow?

That site has all kinds of stuff for snow. You could make yourself a unit study out of it if you wanted to.

Happy Snow Day!

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.......can you guess what they all have in common?

PLAYS!!!! They were all plays that we have been to in the last few weeks.

pig and spiders??? Charlottes Web of course. This was so fun. The characters really interacted with the kids. Wilbur was my favorite, he had such curly hair and great expressions.

merchants??? Merchant of Venice. My dd-18 loves shakespear and every year this really known and expensive group (they charge $50 or more for an outdoor show) comes and gives a performance for the schools in the area. We took my dd-6 also, she just loved all the costumes.

hyper bunny??? Max and Ruby. This was about a pair of bunnies, sister and brother. The brother is younger and is always getting into trouble. It really reminds me of a couple of sibblings, in a comical way that kids understand. Its a lot of work taking care of a younger sibbling. I think this is a show on cable, but we don't have cable.

tradition??? The Fiddler on the Roof. Our local highschool put this on last week, they did a great job. It really was like watching the movie. The fiddler was our piano teachers daughter, the tailor and innkeeper are from our congregation. The tailor was homeschooled till 9th grade. It was so funny watching the Papa do the "If I were a rich man...", my dd-18 and her friend and I were laughing so hard (quitely of course). We kept picturing my dh doing this, which he does quite often. So funny.....

The first three plays we saw at a city 45 minutes away(we live in the boonies) at the cities performing art center. Every year they send out a guide of what they are offering in the educational department, for schools only and they include homeschoolers. There prices are really nice, usually $5 a ticket, $7 for the shakespears. If you haven't looked into one in your area, check it out. Sometimes its only been one family going, so they don't have a minimum required, it's real easy to fit a handful in somewhere.

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I am involved in a support group, I'm actually the coordinator since spring of 2006. At that time our group was smaller, we had an average of somewhere around 50, adults and kids that attend. Now we are averaging 110 adults and kids. Anyways, it was brought up that maybe we should have a statement of faith, due to a problem with an outside class that our group hired a teacher for. I'm not sure at this time if the group is want ing all families to sign, or just those outside the group teaching.

My questions are:

• could someone please send me some examples of a statement of faith?
• has anyone ever had a problem with signing one? why?
• did it prevent problems?
• anything else you would like to tell me concerning a statement of faith?

Thanks for your help....

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We have been using My Fathers World First Grade for school this year. We are really enjoying it, very easy to follow. We were able to finish up to Day 26, plus or minus an activity that we may do later.

• Bible -  we worked on Proverbs 16:24. Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. One of the things we did to emphasize this, she had to choose if she wanted to eat a spoonful of honey or garbage. Hmm, which did she choose? Well honey of course. Then she let me know the rest of the week if her much older sister was using honey words or garbage words. Hee Hee. She also wrote this out on her nice paper for handwriting.
• Reading/Phonics- we worked on long vowel u spelled ue and u_e, long vowel a spelled ay, long vowels spelled a, e, i, o, u (these vowels don't follow the rules, bad vowels). She also started keeping track of her reading out loud. We are doing the Book It Program, where if she reads so much (we decided 15 minutes 5 days/week) , then she will get a free pizza from Pizza Hut.
• Math- we worked on addition and subtraction up to the number 10. We also read books from the library: Count on Pablo and Lights Out.
• Science- we are working on Rain. We read books from the library: Rain, Sun Up, Red Rubber Boot Day, Rain and Hail, Down Comes the Rain. We still need to work on some experiments, today would have been a great day to do that, IT"S RAINING!!
• Art- we use Drawing with Children. We did some warm-up pages, I drew some wierd shapes and she had to copy them 5 times each. Then we pick which one is the closest to the original.
• Charlotte's Web- we went to see this performance with some other homeschoolers this week. The performers did an excellent job. Some of the bigger cities have performance centers where big ticket plays come and will perform for school at a discounted price. Most plays we pay $5 each, that includes parents. I think our next one is going to be a Shakespere play, when performing for the public, they want up to $70 per person, we will pay only $7. If you have a performing center near you, check this out for your family....
• Piano- she is doing very well, going ahead of what the teacher has assigned her. While her aunt and uncle were in town, she gave them a performance, they were quite impressed.

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