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I am sooo excited about this! I just scheduled our trip to it today, and can not wait until we go. We aren't scheduled to go until July 30th, which is my birthday, I didn't have a choice in our date so I will have to deal with it. The great thing about the trip is that it is going to be FREE! You just can't beat that! The museum is graciously offering free admission to school and homeschool groups. I think it is so awesome that they are including homeschoolers in this promotion, as we are so often overlooked. We do have to have a group of twenty so we are going to be taking friends from our homeschool group with us. Skateboarder and Bubbles both started the history cycle again this year, and are working on the Ancients. It just so happens that in two weeks they will be starting the Egyptians, and we plan on studying them for several weeks. Which means our trip to the King Tut Exhibit will fall smack dab in the middle of our Egyptian study. I have requested some elementary age read along books from the library on the Egyptians as well, so I am thinking we might take Sunshine and Taylor along for the ride on our Egyptian study.
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This is a picture I took last week on our camping trip to Spring Mill State Park. The creek ran behind our campsite and the kids had a blast playing in it. I thought it was absolutely beautiful.
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For this week's Wordless Wednesday I thought I would take the opportunity to share some pictures I took on our most recent trip to the zoo.
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Last week was Little Man's sixth birthday. I can not believe how big he is getting! We had a small party for him here at the house, and he asked for a deer cake.
The cake is made out of a sheet cake for the body, two small round cakes for the head, a cake baked in a bread pan for the ears, and another cake baked in a bread pan for the nose. We just cut everything to the right shape. The antlers are made out of aluminum foil that is covered in icing. We were going to make the antlers out of rice krispie treats but discovered at the last minute that someone had ate the marshmallows!
And here is my birthday boy. We let him cut his hair into a mohawk for his birthday, which of course he wanted to dye green. We did end up using food coloring to dye it green, which worked better than I thought and washed out quite easily.
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Sunshine is sitting here, just a few minutes after getting out of the bath, eating chili leftover from last night, of course she is wearing more than she is eating. Me: Didn't you just get out of the bath? Sunshine: Yeah but my shirt didn't. What more can you say? |
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I was taking a look at my blog today, and noticed I have not posted the entire month of March! I couldn't believe it had been that long. We have been busy around here, we have new chickens, a baby goat that is bottlefed, and we have been doing a lot of work outside. I have also been planting my starter plants for my garden, and helping the kids get their 4-H projects started for the fair. Only about two more months until the county fair! I have also been busy with another homeschool mom and we are in the planning process for a homeschool support group here in Southern Indiana. There are several across the river in Louisville, KY and several in Northern Indiana but none around here. We have been talking to moms we know and there seems to be a lot of excitement over it so it looks like we are a go. I am sure getting it off the ground and running is going to require a lot of time on my part as well. I have also signed us up for the April In the Hands of a Child Titanic co-op. I'm really looking forward to this. It's the first time we have participated in a HOAC co-op and I love the idea of studying the Titanic.
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As I said last week, I am sooo tired of cold weather and I am ready for Spring to be here. Keeping with the warmer weather theme I thought I would post a couple of pictures I took when we lived in Florida. The pictures were taken in Naples, Florida.
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As a mom of four I have an ever growing mound of laundry that needs to be done, unfortunately I never seem to catch up with it. I homeschool, I work from home part-time, I garden, I sew, and do all the other mommy stuff that needs to be done. A few weeks ago I was at my wit's end and was expressing my concerns about laundry to a group of friends when one of them, who has five kids gave me a piece of advice that has saved my sanity. I have time to get the laundry washed and dryed it's the folding it and putting it away that gets me. Upon her advice I have been putting my kids to work helping me fold and put away. When I get a load of clothes out of the dryer I dump it on the table, once I have done this all of us work together to fold it and put it away. With the five of us working together it takes less time to fold it and I don't feel so overwhelmed. If you have little kids they can do simple stuff like hand you hangers or fold wash rags. Another tip is to invest in a bunch of safety pins, when anyone takes off their socks safety pin them together before putting them in the dirty clothes basket. This way when you are done washing and drying them there is no sorting to be done, just simply remove the safety pin, fold, and put away.
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Sadly, I received an email today informing me that there were a handful of units being pulled off the Homeschool Share website. I am a big fan of Homeschool Share, and use their units quite frequently. The good news is that the units are currently still available, and all you have to do is go save the ones that you want. Unfortunately, a few of the units being pulled are some of my favorite books. You can view the list of units being pulled from Homeschool Share here. The units are suppose to remain on the site until Monday the 23rd. |
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I am sick of winter, and I am ready for some warm weather. I don't think summer will ever get here. Since I can't enjoy the warm weather now I thought it would be a good time to remember last summer so here are some pictures from last summer.
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Like I have said before although we follow a classical curriculum I am really an unschooler at heart. There are days when our learning experiences fall more under the category of unschooling than anything else, and today was one of those days. We spent the day putting up fence posts for our horse fence, and boy was the day full of practical mathmatical experiences for the kids. We practiced reading a tape measure, learned how many feet were in an inch, multiplied the number of fence posts by ten to figure out how many feet we had done and how many more posts we needed, we practiced counting by ten, and even Little Man practiced counting. Today proved to be a day full of learning as well as a great day full of family fun.
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I got this idea from Cathy whose blog is At Home On Basket Flat. I realize that I don't praise my husband often enough, and thought this would be a great opportunity to share what I truly love about him. So here goes.... 14 Things I Love About My Husband 1. He loves me through my mood swings, no matter how crazy I get. 2. He listens to me, even when he really has no interest in what I am saying. 3. When it comes to make decisions he always tells me to do what I think is best. 4. He is a great daddy. 5. He supports all of my crazy ideas. 6. He tries his hardest to make sure I have everything I want. 7. He makes me laugh. 8. He knows what I am thinking without having to ask me. 9. He can finish my sentences. 10. He does laundry! 11. He makes sure I get the help I need around the house. 12. He cooks. 13. He cares about others, and has never met a stranger. 14. He will tell me that what I cooked is good, even if it is horrible.
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For this weeks Wordless Wednesday I thought I would share some pictures from the recent winter storm we had here. I don't normally like to post this many pictures in one post but there were several I wanted to share.
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I love Fridays around here. For us it's a "clean up" day when it comes to school. I try to tie up all loose ends on Fridays, and make sure everything is finished up. If we have neglected a subject during the week we work hard on Friday to finish up what we have missed but if we are on track Friday generally consists of a spelling test, a test on whatever science or history chapter we have studied that week, writing book report's on the week's books, and putting the finishing touches on any lapbooks we have been working on during the week. Today is going to be one of those easy days. We will be taking our test on Venus from Apologia Astronomy and assembling our Venus lapbooks. Skateboarder is reading the last chapter of Journey to the Bottomless Pit, which has been an exceptional book. We have completed a few of the activities from the Homeschool Share unit of the book, and he really enjoyed the fact that the book is about Mammoth Cave, a place we have visited before. Bubbles finished Sarah Plain and Tall yesterday and will be writing her book report on it today. She will be starting the book The Courage of Sarah Noble next week, it looks like it should be an interesting book. Sunshine spent the week reading Fritz and the Beautiful Horses, and will continue the horse theme next week with Mrs. Mack and The Wild Little Pony. She will also be starting a horse lapbook next week. And Little Man, oh my dear sweet Little Man has just not been in the school mood this week. At 5 he is not always in the mood to sit still and learn. Here he is still too young to start Kindergarten in public school so I don't push him too much, I figure we have time. He has already learned the basic phonics sounds for all of his letters, I must admit the credit is due mostly to the DVD Leapfrog Letter Factory, and he is working on addition already. We have finished the first half of Math Mammoth's addition workbook so I figure we are doing pretty good. Like Sunshine Little Man seems to have quite a knack for math.
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It was bitter cold here last week, although today we reached the fifties. I swear Kentucky and Indiana are the only states where one day the temperature can be 4 and four days later it is 54. Anyways, last week when it was so cold Sunshine, Little Man, and I decided to put two eggs outside. We brought the first one in after about an hour and it was still pretty runny so we waited a little while on the second one. After several hours we brought it in and cut it in half. The second one was frozen solid, and you could plainly see the yellow and white of the egg. The kids thought it was one of the neatest things they had ever seen.
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With the holiday season behind us we are now officially back to school this week. It was nice to have a break for a while, but unfortunately the holidays also brought with them a visit from the flu bug. I have revamped our schedule a little, and we are going to try a few new things this semester. This semester we will be continuing to use Apologia Astronomy, and using the Astronomy lapbook that can be gotten for free on the yahoo group Notebooking2Learn. I am sort of putting Mystery of History aside, we are going to still read through the lessons, and they will continue to do activities with this at co-op but for the little kids it seems to be just too much. I am adding in geography and Spanish. We have also just ordered a the blue set of workbooks from Math Mammoth, and Little Man will be working on Addition while the older kids are working on Multiplication. We are also starting the Los Banos American History program, but won't be adding it in until next week, I just got the History Pockets in today. We have gone back to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and it seems to be sticking this time around with Little Man. He is already reading a few words now. Plus we bought Leap Frog Letter Factory, which I believe could quite possibly be the BEST children's movie ever. So we will see how this new schedule goes, we may be fine tuning and making adjustments on it in no time as well!
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I know Veteran's Day was last week but I was sick so we didn't get our study on Veteran's Day finished until yesterday. I had such a hard time finding a unit study for Veteran's Day that I ended up writing our own study and designing our lapbook myself. Here is the front of Sunshine's lapbook:
And here is what the inside looks like:
In the very top corner in the flap marked poppies we wrote about how poppies are the official VFW Memorial flower. Under Did You Know? You will find little known facts about The Old Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns. The circle book marked Old Guard Procedures lays out the procedures The Old Guard follows when they guard The Tomb of the Unknowns. The square flap at the very bottom left corner opens to tell how Veteran's Day is celebrated at the tomb. In the very top middle you will find the envelope we made for our vocabulary words which were written down on flash cards. Next is a book that tells how Veteran's Day is celebrated in other countries, and next to that is are three flaps marked P.O.W, M.I.A, and K.I.A. when you left the flaps you find what each stands for. At the very bottom of the middle section is a book that opens up to tell more about The Tomb of the Unknowns, the architect, the sculptor, how much it cost to build, and the marble that was used. In the top right corner is a book where we wrote about Raymond Weeks, who fought to change Armistice Day to Veteran's Day. The right middle book opens up to tell the history of Veteran's Day, and the right bottom flaps open up to tell the differences between Memorial Day and Veteran's Day.
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This weeks question: Give me five staples on your grocery list besides milk, bread, and eggs.
1. Cereal - We go through more cereal than anything. The kids eat cereal in the morning, for a mid-day snack, and then again as a bedtime snack. 2. Rice - We use rice in a LOT of our meals. 3. Corn - This is our main side dish. 4. Pineapples, Pears, and Mandarin Oranges - Fruit is another big snack around here. 5. Olive Oil - I'm addicted to using this now. |
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I just wanted to share with you two really cool Thanksgiving downloads I found for free on Currclick. Lines of Time for 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving is Currclick's weekly freebie this week so it will only be free through Monday, and then another new freebie will replace it, I'm kind of hoping it will be another holiday freebie. This goes along with the book 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving. It is normally $2.99. Thanksgiving Notebooking Pages from Homeschool Notebooking features twenty pages of notebooking pages. They are really cute and perfect for copywork. As part of our Thanksgiving study we are memorizing both The Doxology and Psalm 100, the Psalm of Thanksgiving so I plan on using these notebooking pages for copywork. I have no idea how long these will be free, there is no regular price listed on them so hopefully they will continue to be free. Enjoy!!!
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Thirteen Recipes I Keep Meaning to Try... 1. Cottage Pumpkin Walnut Bread 3. Chocolate Zucchini Cake Recipe 4. Zuchini Chocolate Chip Muffins 5. Garlicky Pasta with Fresh Tomatoes and Basil 6. Key Lime Pie 7. Elegant Pumpkin Walnut Layered Pie 11. Chinese Paper Wrapped Chicken 12. Olivia Walton's Applesauce Cake with Whiskey Frosting
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