My First Blog Award!

I received my first blog award yesterday from Jana at Homeschooling a Texas Tornado and a Preschool Tag-along.  Thank you Jana!!  I'm so excited.  Now I'm supposed to come up with seven random things about myself and pass it on to three other bloggers.  I actually slept on this since it was harder than I thought to come up with 7 random facts.  I ended up looking at old Facebook notes to see what I usually write about myself. :-D



1.  I LOVE to read.
2.  I'm currently getting book suggestions from Steph so I'm reading lots of teenage vampire stories.
3.  I very rarely cook.  DH cooks dinner 99% of the time. 
4.  I am not a morning person and I have one kid who is up by 7am every day.  (it's not the teenager who actually has to get up for school).
5.  I love musicals.   Another fun thing I get to share with Steph.
6.  My favorite ice cream is Double Dark Chocolate Fudge Crunch.
7.  I love homeschooling - it satisfies both the teacher and the obsessive planner in me.

Now, I'm going to pass this award along to three other bloggers:

The Homeschool Den
Satori Smiles
Ramblings of a Dysfunctional Homeschooler

Prehistory – Part 1

We started our Prehistory unit today by learning about the formation of the Earth.  First we watched the National Geographic movie, Earth: Making of a Planet.   The movie was very good (and appears to be available online) but at two hours long, the kids did not sit and watch the whole thing straight through.  They would wander off for a while and then return for more.

After the movie, we read in our Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History about how when it was first formed, the earth’s surface was covered with volcanoes.   We then made our own volcano.  I have never done this with the kids before so it was a new experience for them.

I have been collecting all our old, mixed up play-doh for the day we would use it to make a volcano.  We covered an old jelly jar completely to make our form.   Georgie didn’t want to touch the old play-doh because he said it was icky.  He usually likes play-doh and, other than the colors, this was no different so I’m not sure what that was all about but Vicki didn’t mind doing all the play-doh work herself.

Then we poured a mixture of vinegar, dishsoap and red food coloring into our volcano – our molten lava.

Last, we added some baking soda.   The kids loved watching the volcano erupt and wanted to do it again right away.  At first, it came out very pale pink but then it became a darker red.

You can see how big of a step back Vicki took once it started “erupting”.

Very cool….and very messy.

After our volcano settled down, we did a worksheet on the different Eras of time from the Junior Paleontologists Activity Book available from the National Park Service.   This is a resource I forgot to list in my Prehistory Plan.  We will be using different pieces of it throughout our study.

We read about Pangea in our UILEWH and did an activity showing how the continents would separate and how mountains are formed.  Ideas that I found at The Homeschool Den blog.

Next we will be learning about how fossils are formed and found.

Our Upcoming Prehistory Plans Are Now Available!

Anyone who is interested in seeing details of our upcoming Prehistory study it has been posted under its own page right here.  The plan covers from the formation of the Earth to the Death of the Dinosaurs.

Weekly Wrap-Up: 3/28 to 4/1

We had a light but okay week.   I’m still patiently awaiting my Math Mammoth so we can get started.  We didn’t do any special subjects this week because I’m preparing a Dinosaur study to go along with activities at our local museum.  I’ve been gathering our resources, ordering a few extra books from the library (even though we already own 16 books on dinosaurs and prehistoric life, not counting our Usborne IL Encyclopedia of World History) and setting up our plans. 

Language Arts

Georgie continued with Explode the Code and Scholastic Grammar.  So far there hasn’t been anything in either one that causes him even a moment’s hesitation.

Georgie was very happy to see the All About Spelling tiles come out again this week.  We covered the /z/ sound at the end of a word and the /kw/ sound.    He easily spelled all the Word List words for this lesson.

While we worked on spelling, Vicki worked on our other whiteboard with her Fridge Phonics letters.  Georgie pointed out to her that the red letters were vowels.

She also worked on an upper/lower case letter matching activity I made up months ago.  These two are pretty much all the school Vicki did this week.

I rearranged things so the many, many printable games and activities I have are easier to access so hopefully we will get back to using them more.

Georgie continued with Frog Jump capitals in Handwriting Without Tears.  We will be moving on to Corner Starting Capitals next week and will probably start moving through the capitals faster.

Math

We are continuing along with MEP and Addition/Subtraction worksheets until our Math Mammoth comes, which should be TODAY!  I can’t wait print it off and get started. 

Stephanie

Yes, I have a brief brag on Steph this week.  Last weekend was our last regional dance competition for the year.  Steph has been having an amazing year but last weekend she really did well.   Her tap trio (The Remedy) won Extreme Platinum (the highest award) and 4th place overall teen duet/trio, her tap small group (5 Guys Named Moe) won Extreme Platinum and 9th place overall teen small group  (out of about 100 groups) and her solo (As Fast As You Can) won Extreme Platinum and 10th place overall senior solo (out of about 75 soloists).   I’m very proud of her and all the girls, and Robert, at WTDA! 

Weekly Wrap-up: 3/21 – 3/25

This was my first week attempting to do “real” work with two kids.   Vicki has played around with some stuff in the past but it was usually completely independent “play” or done without Georgie around.  Even though Vicki’s is still completely optional, she now has some actual curriculum to work with. 

My first hurdle was to find each of them a work area that would keep them from bothering each other.  Vicki loves to grab Georgie’s stuff and Georgie loves giving the answers for Vicki’s.  I went with setting up our two tables so they would be sitting back-to-back.  Someone suggested this to me on one of my forums and I think it will work well.  This way they aren’t too focused on each other and I can sit on the couch in between to help whoever needs it.  Vicki’s table is not ideal since it has a (slightly ripped) padded top which is difficult to write or color on but it should do for now.  Eventually we will get her a table like George's which is height adjustable.

When Vicki didn’t feel like “doing school” she played with the Tag map or on the computer.

Language Arts

Georgie is continuing along in Explode the Code.  I think we are actually somewhere in Book 2 but I’m not sure since I separated all the pages in order to file them at the beginning of our year and match them up to AAS.  He likes the silly pictures and continues to have absolutely no problem finding the correct answers.

For Grammer, we have moved on to simple sentences in our Scholastic GUM program.   We’ve never covered this type of thing before but Georgie had no problem telling what was a sentence and what wasn’t.

We started our Handwriting without Tears.  Georgie is working in the First Grade book since his primary problem is lowercase letters.  It does start with a review of uppercase, which we will go through a little slowly to get him used to their method and to make sure he’s making the letters correctly.   We started with Frog Jump Capitals – those that start with a straight line and then return to the top.   I had printed off some gray block paper with starting dots for him to practice on.

Georgie also enjoyed reading his new issue of Highlights High Five and doing the puzzles.  He used to get Your Big Backyard and when he’s a little older I hope to get him National Geographic Kids or Zoobooks.  I think magazine subscription are a great way to encourage reading and an interest in new topics.

Vicki has expressed interest in learning to read (thanks to Georgie’s book worm) so I pulled out our Get Ready for the Code book again.  She did really well the first day.  I didn’t have her do any of the letter tracing pages but she liked circling the pictures that started with the correct letter sound.  She knows her letter sounds from watching Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD.

I have the Pre-K level of Handwriting without Tears for Vicki.   I bought the Teacher’s Manual but none of the other manipulatives.  I made my own set of Capital Letter pieces out of thick black foam.  The hardest part of preparing them was getting the price and brand stickers off.   Next time I buy foam I’m going to try and get pieces that attach the UPC with a little staple because no matter what I tried (vinegar, alcohol) I couldn’t get the residue completely off.  Vicki did enjoy playing with the pieces.   I made my own set of Letter cards but have not introduced them yet.    She also did a pre-writing page where she traced and then copied horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines, and circles.

Math

We are continuing along with MEP and Addition/Subtraction worksheets until the end of the month when the Co-op sale ends and we can get our Math Mammoth.    We do still need to work on sitting without correct posture while doing written work.

Vicki did some counting cards I downloaded from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  She doesn’t like using clothespins but was able to use a dry-erase marker on the laminated cards.

She also did a counting worksheet from tlsbooks.  In the past she would point to the correct number and I would circle it for her.  This time she wanted to do it herself.

One unexpected effect of having Vicki join us for school was Georgie asked why he didn’t get to do “fun school” anymore.  It made me realize that I had been very lax in adding games into our school day.  So, we pulled out one of our word building games – Tri Words.   It gave Georgie practice in reading, spelling and writing since he wanted to keep track of the words we came up with.

We continued to use the Wii Fit for some physical education.  Georgie’s favorite is still the Basic Run where he gets to follow the kitten around. 

We also got some fresh air and exercise enjoying the first week of Spring.

We finished up our study of Japan, which can be seen here.

I am going to be deviating from our scheduled program for the next month.  We are scheduled to continue along in our study of the countries of Asia, followed by Desert habitats.   But, our local museum is having a month of hands-on activities and science experiments to celebrate the opening of the newly expanded Dinosaur Den.   In order to best incorporate all this fun into our schooling, we are going to play paleontologists for the next month.

Yay, Spring!! Wait….What???

Sunday was the First Day of Spring!  Last week we had a couple of absolutely beautiful 60 degree days.  The crocuses were starting to show up, the trees were starting to bud, birds could be heard singing (mourning doves are pretty much the only birds I can recognize by sound and they’re back!).  It was perfect!  I began planning a small unit on Spring, including lots of nature walks.  We would listen for birds, look at flower buds, learn about how plants grow….

I had it all ready to go.  You want to know what we ended up doing this week?  Here it is…..

 

It was actually kind of pretty. Just definitely not Spring-like.   So, I got to explain to Georgie that just because the calendar says it’s Spring, doesn’t mean the weather is going to cooperate.  Poor kid, I think this disappointed him more than not getting snow on December 1st.

Japan

The next country we learned as part of our Asia studies was Japan.

We began by finding Japan on our giant wall map.  Georgie noticed the longitude/latitude lines on the map and wanted me to tell him how to find it using those lines.  We did spend a very brief amount of time learning about longitude and latitude when we first began our Geography lesson but it looks like it may be a good idea to spend some more time on it soon.   He was able to trace the longitude line at 150 degrees east down and look slightly to the west to find Japan.


We discussed how Japan was an archipelago, made up of a string of islands, some large, some very small.  We looked at what bodies of water surrounded Japan – the Sea of Japan, the Pacific Ocean, the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea.

We went to National Geographic Kids and viewed a video about Mt. Fuji and a local celebration, looked at pictures of Tokyo, Mt. Fuji, rice paddies and Himeji Castle.  We also read about the Geography, Nature, History, People and Culture, and Government of Japan.  

We briefly discussed the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  I did not want to go into a lot of detail since I felt it would scare Georgie to see too much of the devastation.   We did view some age appropriate information on earthquakes here . 

We have a simple reader and a set of flashcards on World Landmarks, both from Target’s Dollar Spot.  Both included information on the Itsukushima Torii, the Floating Shinto Shrine Gate.  After learning about the Gate, we learned more about the Shinto religion in our new Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedia of World Religions.  I think this book is going to be a great resource and I suspect that I am going to learn as much as the kids.

We read from Children Just Like Me, and learned about Hina Matsuri, or Doll’s Day, and Kodomono-hi, or Children’s Day, in Children Just Like Me: Celebrations.  We read more about Children’s Day in the story A Carp for Kamiko and made our own carp kites.


We learned about the Japanese flag, a red “rising sun” on a white background, which stands for warmth, brightness and sincerity, while the white stands for purity and integrity.  

We looked at samples of Japanese alphabet and then learned how to speak some Japanese at Time for Kids.  We heard how to say hello (konnichi wa), good-bye (sayonara) and thank you (arigato) which I already knew how to say – thank you very much Mr. Roboto.  Georgie really liked saying konnichi wa for some reason.

We listened to some traditional Japanese Shamisen music through a link in our Intellego unit.  Georgie did not like it at all so we ended up not listening to the whole thing and instead looked up some information on the shamisen.

We learned about the Japanese Art of Paper Folding, origami, and looked at some very elaborate samples through Google Images.  Using a design I remember from elementary school, we made some jumping frogs that the kids then had fun racing.


We finished up by learning about some of the animals of Japan.  We watched an episode of Be the Creature about the Japanese Macaques, the only monkeys found that far north.

Georgie did his notebook quiz on Japan.  His favorite thing to learn about Japan was making the fish kites and the folding paper frogs.

We added stickers to our passports.  Our next country will be Saudi Arabia.