Homeschool mothers journal- 10

In my homeschool week...
When every one else seems to be starting school this week my oldest is getting a week off! We school year round 6 weeks on 1 week off, this week is his off week. My littles ones don't take a week off because most of their school is just play and they ask to do it. I finished up our pond/ duck unit. The kids really liked feeding the ducks and fish at the pond. We did get to see a cicada killer wasp fly right next to us holding a cicada underneath him then crawl into his newly built nest just inches away from where we were sitting!

In my life this week....
Do you remember that big beetle I posted about on my daughters nose when doing our letter b unit? Well it was dead but we were saving it because it was cool to look at. Well the 2 year old got it down from the shelf and was playing with it and lost it! Now I know I am going to find it when I have forgotten that I lost it and I m sure it will be some where least expected and yes I'm sure I will jump and have an adrenaline rush. So for it is still MIA.

My youngest just moved to a big boy bed because his siblings taught him how to climb out of it. I love the teamwork and collaboration it took but not happy about knowing my baby is all grown up and the fact that getting him to stay in his bed is going to be a fun battle of wills.

My neighbor just started her homeschool journey this year so it was nice talking with her and reassuring her. We have all been that first time homeschooler at one point before.

My favorite thing this week was...
Taking the kids to the pond, enjoying having nothing to do and nowhere to go this week it was so blissful. Usually on our weeks off I set up
lots of field trips that are fun. This time we just stayed home and had fun we had a great time getting wet on a 90 degree day and having a water balloon fight.

I am inspired by...
My children this week. I just love to see when homeschooling really works my younger kids and I are doing a monarch study. But they wanted to know so much more so they spent the week researching and studying caterpillars and butterflies and can now name and recognize least 4 types of butterflies and what they look like as caterpillars. I just love when learning = fun!

a photo to share...

The eastern tiger swallowtail in the larva stage (one of my littles favorite Things to learn about this week)

Watermelon counting

Watermelon fun!!

We went out to Great Grandpas farm and picked all sorts of foods the 2 yr old wanted a watermelon so bad, he pulled and he pulled until it was free. Then he rolled and rolled .....and rolled some more with the help of his sister to get it to the wagon.


We went home at enjoyed the juicy sweet treat then saved all the seeds, washed them and set them in the sun to dry. Then we could sort them on our watermelon cards.

My 5 year old helped me make these watermelon cutouts outs.




We also used these cards to talk about fractions and odd and even numbers. We would sort the cards out then decide if there was enough for everyone to get and equal share or not!

Homeschool mothers journal-9

In my life this week…
My husband has finally decided to make some lifestyle changes to his diet so I am very very excited about this!

In our homeschool this week…
Very busy week working on lots of new things hoping to get some of our stuff posted that we are working on next week.

My favorite thing this week was…
Heading to a historical war site with the kids we all really had a good time.

What’s working/not working for us…
Whats working for us right now is headsprout for my 5 yr old paired with any video game she wants to play as soon as she complete an entire lesson. Now everyday she wakes up first thing asking for headsprout.

Our new system to keep track of school work.(pictures will be posted tomorrow with a new blog post about it)

Questions/thoughts I have…
I recall having a thought that I wanted to post here at the beginning of the week but just cannot remember it at all now!

A photo to share…

This was a fun lunch my 3 younger ones enjoyed ...steak, olives and watermelon in community bowls enjoying the beautiful weather outside with cocktail swords. My oldest was at the office with his dad that day using a sludge hammer to take down the last walls for the remodel.

A new idea for daily school work

My new idea this week

Work box systems will not work for us due to space and my little ones wanting to take things off the shelves. So I came up with this idea. Each kid has their own clothes line in which their cards are hung. Each day when they are done with it they flip them over. I have lots of cards with different school tasks on them I have switched them around each day so every day there are new and different things to do. Core subjects usually stay on though. I came up with this to help keep me on tasks with messy projects or art things that may get pushed aside each day. If I put them on the wall in the kitchen I see them all day to help keep me on task and the kids are eager to see them all get flipped over each day.
My 10 yr old's line is red
5 year old is pink/ purple
3 year old blue
2 yr old green
The 2 and 3 year old just have circle time and a few cards with numbers. I didn't want them to feel left out so they can flip cards over during the day if they want as well.

I originally thought to cut out little card stock dresses or princess dresses to put my daughters work on and t shirts shorts or socks for the boys but I ran out of time I needed to get the idea up there and working so I could tweak it. I also thought of changing the theme on the cards each month too.

Our wall mural we hung them on was started in March, it is still a work in progress but it was totally kid made and I love it.

Homeschool mothers journal-8

In my life this week…
Had to have a series of medical tests done on my female organs and it really got me thinking about having more children. I am still pretty young (33) but had a scare and am wondering if I should still wait until I'm 35 to have baby #5, or 5 and 6 (my mom was a twin. My husband has been in Bulgaria for almost 2 weeks so feeling a little tired and missing him.

In our homeschool this week…
Just when I think I know what I plan to teach for the next year I change my mind and have to adapt my plan. We did get a good amount of work done though.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
We went to the apple orchard to pick apples, we started reading How to Make an Apple Pie and see the World. My daughter finally made it to yoga with her friend. We went to a relative on my husbands side who has Alpacas for the kids to see. They were so cool, the kids were amazed.

My favorite thing this week was…


My son getting Alpaca kisses!


This is all this girls the mom is the big black one her 10 day old baby is next to her and her other daughter is the white one and she is 19 months old.


19 month old baby "Divine"


Big mama "Delight"

Exciting letter E, Elephant, Eggs and more

Letter E

This was a book from story time at the mall a few weeks ago that my daughter really enjoyed, so we read it again this week. Then we read ALL the Elmer books the library had.
Elmer
Elmer Again
Elmer and the Lost Teddy
Elmer and the Stranger
Elmer in the Snow
Elmer and Wilbur
Elmer and the Wind
Elmer and Rose
Elmer and the Kangaroo
Elmers Special Day (this one was my favorite!)



Our parade across the top of the white board in the school/dining room.


You can see here that under the decorate elephant they are gray.


We made our own Elmer Parade. I stapled what the elephant really looks like under each elephant. Elmer looks Gray because he wants to dress up and look like a REAL elephant and the other gray elephants want to look like Elmer. WE had fun making these.


This is my 3 yr old wanting to only cut paper instead of decorating an elephant


My 2 year old coloring



My 5 year old making Elmer

Our felt Elephants!



I started the first sewing project with the kids. My 10 year old did it mostly on his own, except the ears ( I did those!) My 5 yr old did really well also. I plan to have them sew more felt toys over the school year. I was even very proud of mine I just free hand cut the elephants and we stuffed them with felt scraps left from cutting them out. Maybe new week we will make a fish since we will be doing the letter F.

Another fun E book




WE ate lots of eggs and are planning on going to a organic chicken farm on Thursday.

Letter D, earth science, 1st state, trees and more...

Letter D

our D bag


Geography
We started our stated studies.
Up first Delaware, tied in nicely with our letter theme
younger kids located state on the map then colored state bird. My older son did a words search and some history on the state.

We also started our Greek studies for our World Traveler club that meets once a month.

My 10 yr old has been watching these disks all week so far he has watched 3/5 disks.

Science
We started our earth Science unit that we will be working on for the next 18 weeks.
this book has some awesome hands on activities.
We also did some nature study on trees and identified a few with our tree books. My 5yr old then drew pictures of the parts of a tree and we discussed the difference in living and non living things.

We tried to make a Foucault Pendulum without success, I didn't read the fine print. we needed to hang our weighted 2 liter bottle from a 15 foot cord, we only used 5 feet. So we watched how it works on youtube and discussed why ours didn't work.





ART
The kids drew pictures to help remember that we live on a round planet. Here are the pictures.



Writing
Worked through some activities to write research reports. My 10 yr old will need to write a short research paper each week on that weeks science lessons.

World Cultures
We may be taking in an exchange student from Pakistan for the entire school year, still waiting for the official approval from my husband. My friend is hosting a girl from Thailand and I just fell in love with her we wanted to host her but we cannot due to paperwork and the fact that she is already enrolled at a different school district than us so for whatever reason we cannot take her.

Homeschool mothers journal-7

In my life this week…
After a lasts weeks bad news things have turned around. The puppy came home after a 5day stay at the vet, they are pretty sure she will make it and they did all they could for her. It is now up to her to survive. She has lost more than 1/2 her body weight and looks like a skeleton you can see every rib and bone on her body its so sad BUT she is slowly eating if I hand feed her meat and eggs so we have our fingers crossed. More good news is that we have worked out some of our financial,problems so things won't be as tight as they would have been. My dad started Radiation this week and my husband left for Bulgaria so I will be single moming it for the next 10 days.

In our homeschool this week…
WE had a good week. The weather has been cooler so I have been able to get more school work done with the kids. We are trying to get in a good school routine again. We do school all summer but much lighter so this was our first week of a heavier school load. I love sitting at the table outside with the kids doing school work.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
We were lucky enough to see 2 kids in their 20's at the park practice juggling. They were doing some really cool tricks. They would juggle 4 balls while swinging in sync and toss them back and forth to each other, it was really neat. The jugglers made me think of last years 5 in a row story Clown of God
We are trying to get back to the routine of daily walks and waked down to the bridge over the highway that they tore down to expand the road. The city tore it down over a year ago and then haven't touched it since. Went to my kids favorite park to meat up with some other boys to start a homeschool tweem club, then after that we went to the orchard to pick more peaches and some apples.

I’m cooking…
Pumpkin pie, Yes in the middle of summer. I love pumpkin pie!

I’m grateful for…
The better news I had this week, and the cooler weather.


A photo to share…



We took a bike ride down to the bridge the city ripped out last year to make the highway bigger but all they did was rip it down and leave it like this. Hoping someday they may actually finish it.My kids used to love standing on the bridge and looking down at all the cars speeding past them. Now I dont let the kids get anywhere near it because they could fall straight down into the highway.

Letter C

C book list
Count on Calico Cat by by Donald Charles
C Book by Stan and Jan Berenstain
My C Sound Box by Jane Belk Monclure
Clumsy Crab by Ruth Galloway
Tally Cat Keeps Track by Tudy Harris
The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson

I went a little overboard with the C books this week!

C is for Caterpillar


We found this on Monday on the street lamp in front of the house then we placed it on our milkweed and noticed there was another already there! We keep waiting and hoping for monarchs to visit and lay eggs but no such luck yet.

C is for Crab

There were made with red peppers for claws, olives for eyes, radish mouth, and carrot feet. I drew a letter C on each plate with honey mustard to dip veggies in.

We used Deep Space Sparkles blog (my favorite art blog) to make these castles

my 10 yr old's is on the left 5 yr old on the right.


Our focus drifted away a bit from the letter C but we did get a lot of learning in.

Goal list
1. Organize and clean unfinished side of basement
2.learn how to become a day trader
3, Exercise more I worked out 5 out of 7 days this week
4. Do more research on colloidal silver and learn how to make my own colloidal silver solution
5. Do more work on either of my books I am writing
6. Work on science curriculum for next year
7. Work on my list of events I am organizing for my homeschool group next year
8. Organize school supplies still working on it but halfway through
9. Organize my kids dressers one kid down 3 more to go
10.Research student loan consolidation help
I was able to cross off number 9 off my list

Homeschool mothers Journal-6

In my life this week…
This week had a lot of bad news and I really really had to try to look at the positive side of things. We found out our puppy who is 2 months old has parvo and has a 50/50 chance of surviving and we just put our last puppy down who was 5 months old 1 month ago to do a genetic problem that would cost us $400 a month for the rest of her life! So we have had BAD luck with puppies and the kids are quite traumatized. On the up side our older dog got Parvo to but beat it! My Dad was in a 5 vehicle car accident and now his car is smashed up but he is okay and was the only one who didn't have to go to the ER. We came across a big financial problem that is going to cost us an extra $1200 a month and we already were on a very very tight budget, so we will have to make some serious cut backs.On the up side we are are still healthy with a roof over our head. Other bad stuff happened this week but those hit me the hardest.

In our homeschool this week…
I was lucky enough to meet up with a friend and her children and take my dad to go see the Columbus ships, then go to the Science Museum. My Little ones and I studied all things the letter C this week. My older son and I went to our 2nd knitting class. Speaking of my older son, he had had some difficulties on his focus this week he did finish his book The dark is Rising and here is book report.:

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper is an action and adventure book that is about a ten year old boy named Will Santon. Who encounters strange people in strange places.

Will is a ten year old boy who lives with a family of seven and he soon discovers that he is an old one, a group of warriors dedicated to the light and against the forces of the dark. So, Will embarks on an incredible journey along with a mysterious old one called Merriman to find all the signs of power (wood, water, fire, stone, bronze, and iron) to use them to defeat the dark!
The story takes place in a farm in present day England near Thames River. The problem in the story that Will had to face was. He had to find the six signs of power before the Dark got too powerful. He solved this by defeating the dark just in time and joining the signs into a gold chain necklace.

I personally think this is a good book and would recommend it for other readers. I would give this book an 8 out of 10 if I had to rate it. I really enjoyed this book and I am planning to read the rest of the series soon! So, please think about reading this awesome book!

…
Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
We went to a homeschool resource fair I did sell some stuff but bought even more, but they were all great finds.

My favorite thing this week was…
Taking my dad with me to see the Columbus ships.

I’m cooking…
Peach Cobbler from peaches we picked last Sunday.

I’m grateful for…
My dad not being injured in that really bad car crash.


A photo, video, link, or quote to share…



If this is what the bottom of your tub looks like after your kids get out you know you did somthing right as a parent, kids do not get this dirty without really playing and exploring nature. I love how dirt ended up all over Barbie's face too!

Aluminum foil play stream

I used an entire roll of heavy duty aluminum foil to create a stream, and used milk caps as boats floating down stream. I put it down the driveway so that it would go down hill.

I then encouraged the kids to play with it and experiment with the way the water moves and how tall they could make the side before the water busted through.
They also put rocks in it for the boats to go around, They put rocks underneath to make small hills for the water to go up and over (that didn't work at all.) We used nature items to see if they would sink or float (grass, leaves, rocks, twigs etc..) We also raced different objects to see what would be faster.
We tried oil to see it separate, we added soap to see if it would bubble and my favorite was adding drops of food coloring at the top and watch is disperse and travel down the stream, that was really NEAT!

Music: the mood enhancing motivator

I woke up this morning in my usually semi cranky mood, I am just not a morning person despite how hard I try. I might actually be a morning person if I could pull myself out of bed before the kids bombard me. (note to self; try to get up before the kids)I was out of all foods for the kids so I threw on some clothes and headed to the grocery store before my husband could tell me NO he couldn't not watch the kids.

I turn on the car and I cannot even remember what song was playing, but it totally changed my mood! Now I am in a pretty good mood driving down the sunny tree lined road I live on.Then the second song comes on. Here is a little clip I found on youtube of the song .....

So my brain started churning out ideas about how awesome music is and that it's such a mood enhancer. I love music I can hear a song from my childhood or even a few years ago and I can remember exactly what I was doing at that period in my life or a very specific event tied to that song! So I decided I want to bring more music into my children's life and our homeschooling.

I was wondering through the grocery store enjoying the quite kid free morning. There are only about 1 dozen people in the store right now workers stocking produce and stacking fresh meat into nice piles while joking with one another. A single male in his late 20's with flip flops on and plaid shorts browsing the fresh greens. It makes me happy when I see people making healthy choices. I am always saddened by grocery carts full of possessed foods and junk! I smile at people as I pass by but only receiving a few smiles in return.

While checking out I was chatting with Lynn, our regular cashier and we started on the subject of how people just are not nice anymore and that old and young people she sees are just rude and feel that life just owes them. I myself know many people this way. What happened to society that everyone is out to get what they want and just screw everyone else in the process. It seems that there are so many peope wanting to sit and complain about how life screwed them over and that life sucks. You are where you are in life because you choose to be there. Madonna was homeless and lived in her car for a long time before she made it, but she kept trying because she believed in herself and had the drive and will to succeed. There are very few fairy tale stories in life so if you want something you have to fight for it and be expected to get knocked down 100 or more times before you will get to where you want to be and when you do make it there the amount of satisfaction you will have with be beyond words.

Just as I was almost home Man in the Mirror by Michael Jackson comes on and has a timely end at the exact moment I pull in the drive. I love that song too the only person that can change you life is you!



one last thought:
If you wear a sports Jersey and watch sports and complain about how much they get paid stop and think about this.....are you living life or watching some one else live their life? So how do you want to live watching others or living your own?