Dec. 7, 2007 - Pearl Harbor Day

The wonderful people at Preston Speed have put out yet another great e-book!

This one deals with the aspects of Pearl Harbor.  I love Beverly's guides!!  They are so wonderful.  You can click here to read about it:

Pearl Harbor Day

If you do not already recieve their newsletter you can sign-up here:

Preston Speed Publications

Nov. 6, 2007 - Because he's soooooooo CUTE!!!

Nov. 6, 2007 - Bucket Head

Nov. 6, 2007 - Ethan's Pyramid

Ethan built this GREAT pyramid the other day.  He said it was "blog worthy"!!

Nov. 6, 2007 - Matthew turns TWO!!!

Sunday, November 4th Matthew turned 2 years old!!  Last year he had no idea what was going on.  This year he understands the concept of "birthday" much better!!  Sunday night we had some brownies and let him open his gift from us.  We will have our family celebration later this week.

He was very interested in the candles...and even tried to BLOW them out!!

Here he was *singing* Happy Birthday to You!

Opening a present...

Getting on the floor and playing with Dad was a lot of fun!!

Nov. 6, 2007 - Christian's Birthday

Friday, November 2nd was Christian's 9th birthday.  We had a small celebration at home on Friday night before Don, Lyndsay and Andrew left for the fall youth retreat.  We ate brownies and Christian opened his gift.  He's very excited about his magic set!!  He is looking forward to showing the rest of the family some magic tricks on Thursday when they all come to celebrate.

Nov. 6, 2007 - Trick or Treating

Here's the gang ready to go Trick or Treating!

James, Matthew, Grandma, Christian, Ethan, Justin.

Here's another of that little TIGER!

Nov. 6, 2007 - Carving Pumpkins

We didn't carve pumpkins the last couple of years, but this year the kids made a point of making sure we did it!   

Their biggest comments:

THEY STINK!!!!!

EWWWWWWWW....GROSS!!!!!!!!!!

Guess they forgot what carving pumpkins was all about!!  LOL

Here are a few pictures I took of the event!

Matthew was not enjoying his pumpkin carving at all!

Justin wasn't sure about this whole pumpkin carving thing.  I don't think he is big enough to remember doing it before.

Later he got in on the FUN!!

Ethan... 

Christian...

James... 

Lyndsay and Andrew, being the hard workers that they are, were not home for pumpkin carving.  They decided that WORK was more important. 

Oct. 23, 2007 - A Visit to Mars!

Last week we finished our lesson on Mars in Apologia's Elementary Science book on Astronomy.  The kids are LOVING Astronomy!!  Especially the experiments and activities. 

Here are some pictures of the boys making their models of Mars.  These were made out of salt dough, formed into a ball and then we used marbles and pencil ends to create the craters that are found all over Mars' surface.  Messy and FUN!!

Oct. 6, 2007 - Cubbies!

AWANA began a couple of weeks ago at our church.  We love AWANA.  Our family has been involved in it since Lyndsay was 2.5.  :)  I am once again the Cubbies Director.  Cubbies is the pre-school part of the program.  Lyndsay and Andrew are helping in Cubbies with me.  This is Lyndsay's 2nd year to help.  She really enjoys the kids.  Andrew is a new recruit and is taking on the task of games.  Game time with 20 pre-schoolers is pretty interesting!!

Last week we took pictures of each clubber and put them in their books.  The picture shows through the front cover so you can "see" who's book is who's.  The kids think this is GREAT!  Here is Justin's picture for his book...he's such a ham!

Sep. 29, 2007 - Some things to look forward to!

Next week we will be completing our astronomy unit on The Sun.  We have two activities to do and I hope to have pictures of them.  I forgot to take a picture of our balloon solar system.  It's still up, but Saturn deflated.    I'll have to see if I have another large balloon to put in its place. 

We also started our last unit of TOG Y1!!  Which is exciting!!  Currently we are studying Ancient Rome.  My daughter is so funny.  She said we needed to skip Rome, b/c we already know all about it.  I asked why was that?  She said, "Because they stole everything they did from other civilizations.  The only thing they did themselves was crucify Christ, and we already know all about that."    Smart girl, but she's studying Rome anyway. 

Andrew is putting together a display board as his unit project about the Daily Life in Rome.  His story map is looking interesting, so it should be a good display with lots of info!!

Lyndsay and James have not picked projects yet.  Can't wait to see what they choose!

Christian and Ethan are making TWO lapbooks this unit.  One on Rome and one on the Life of Christ.

We also started the Learning Co-Op that our local homeschool group has.  Last week was our first week.  Three of the kids are taking some form of an art class.  I hope to be able to post some of their projects that they complete.    Lyndsay is taking a banking class, in which she is the only student.    They want her to open a checking account this week so they can teach her something she doesn't already know.  Hmmm....  James is taking Karate.  I can hear them saying "Hiya" from across the hall!  I am teaching a class on beginning lapbooking.  The basic how-to's.  I hope the kids learn a lot!

Some exciting things coming up over the next few weeks, so keep watching! 

Sep. 29, 2007 - Final Entry for Greek Lapbooks

Over the past several weeks, Christian and Ethan have had a ball learning about Greece.  So many interesting things to read about!!  We put together their lapbooks last week and they've been so excited to share with everyone.  I am teaching lapbooking in our co-op this fall and they wanted to be sure I brought them to show everyone.  They are very proud!!  Their lapbooks are very similar, just minor details that are different, but they said I had to post them both, so to be fair, forgive me for the deluge of photos!!

Tapestry lists mosaics as an art project for this unit, we opted to do them as our covers of our lapbooks instead of a separate project.  This is Christian's front cover, he wanted to do a pattern mosaic:

This is Ethan's cover with his version of the sea...red sand, purple water and green seaweed:

Inside on the left you will see where we made a vocab book similar to the worksheet given in TOG for Aesop's Fables.  On the outside is the title of the fable.  The inside tells the moral of the story.  The boys really enjoyed these stories. The center flap is all about Greek Architecture...very interesting. The right hand side is matchbooks about famous people from Greece.

Christian:

Ethan:

If you flip up the extension, you will find a map of the Conquests of Alexander the Great, with a Who, What, Where, When book about him.
Opening the flap to the right you will see a book about the Inside of a Greek Home, some Greek pottery, a book about the Olympics and a library pocket that contains cards that spell each of their names in Greek letters.

Christian:

Ethan:

On the top of the extension you will see two masks we did for the Greek theater. I had the pictures I took printed of their paper plate masks and we included them in their lapbooks. The other was a coloring page. Ethan thought his needed teeth.

As part of our literature, we read about King Midas.  We cut apart the worksheet to include in our lapbook.  When the right flap opens you can see some items that turned to gold when King Midas touched them. This was another fun book for the kids to read. They learned a lot about really thinking about what you may wish for!!

Christian:

Ethan:

This has been a great unit of study!!  If you are interested in learning more about the curriculum we use you can find it at www.tapestryofgrace.com  They also have a 3 week sample of Ancient Egypt!! 

Sep. 28, 2007 - Greek Scratch Art

This was James' art project during our study of Greece.  He had never done scratch art before and thought this was pretty neat.  It's very similar to what the Greeks did with their pottery.  He tried to find designs similar to what they made.  I believe he did a piece of pottery, a belt, a headband, and a column.

Sep. 26, 2007 - The Greek Theater

Christian and Ethan enjoyed learning about the Greek Theater.  They thought it was really funny that there were only male actors.  The guys dressing up like women was hilarious to them!!

They learned about the types of masks the actors wore to show their expressions and characters.  Much different than our traditional theater of today where they typically only wear make-up.  We created masks out of paper plates for them to "pretend" to play in their Greek Theater. 

Christian chose tragedy.  He picked the guy who pulled his eyes out.  He was very sad. 

Ethan chose a comedy mask.  He wanted to be silly. 

Sep. 25, 2007 - Ancient Greece Lapbooks part 2

Here is Andrew's lapbook on Greek Architecture.  I really think he should have done something on the wars.  He is very into Sparta since watching the movie 300!

Sep. 25, 2007 - Ancient Greece Lapbooks

This will begin a series of entries to include the lapbooks the kids did during our study of Ancient Greece.  Tapestry of Grace really does a good job of presenting projects and ideas and "threads" of study.  It is so easy to work from!! 

A few weeks ago, Lyndsay and Andrew were asked to do a project and they had a list of topics to choose from.  They both picked different topics to begin with and then switched to the final topic.  What is funny is they both really thought they would have done better with the original topic!  I thought they did well regardless.

Here is Lyndsay's lapbook on The Peloponnisian War:

Sep. 24, 2007 - Astronomy Lesson

Last week in our Astronomy lesson we talked about Rotation and Revolution.
We discussed how the Earth revolves around the Sun, while the Moon revolves around the Earth, while the Earth rotates.  To show how this happens, we all went outside and pretended to be the Sun, Moon and Earth.

Here is our rendition of Rotation and Revolution:

They had paper plates that represented *who* they were. 

It didn't matter how slow the Earth moved, the Moon just could not keep up!!

We had several "near-misses"!  And a dizzy Earth!

Sep. 24, 2007 - A New Year - 2007

Welcome to our homeschool!

I hope to be able to share a little bit about what we do and why we do it.

We are a homeschooling family of 9.  Mom, Dad, one beautiful daughter and 6 handsome sons!  We live in a very homeschool friendly state and enjoy the many benefits of such. 

Our current curriculum is:

Tapestry of Grace Year 1 Redesign is our core curriculum...we are nearly done with it!  Then we will move onto Year 2.
Math-U-See, in various levels to meet the need of each child.
Easy Grammar and Daily Grams round out our Language Arts.
Apologia Physical Science, soon to be followed by Biology for the big kids.
Apologia Astronomy for the younger group.

We also use various other things including:
How To Tutor for phonics and reading
Spelling Power for spelling
Writing Aids (from TOG) for writing
The Fallacy Detective for logic

We are also very into lapbooking and notebooking.  The former being our favorite!  I'm still learning the latter!  I hope to be able to show you lots of things the kids accomplish over the year!

Here are some pictures I took on our first day of school this fall....

The whole crew!
First day of school and first day of high school for these two!