Homeschool Wrap Up Week 19

Week 19 in our Homeschool

P.E.:  We did 3 days of Family Time Fitness.

Bible: In Windows on the World we read about the Kal-Tamashaq.  In Hero Tales we read about Samuel Morris.  Our Bible memory verse for the week is Matthew 6:24 and our Bible reading was Matthew 13:58-14:36.

Read Aloud: For our morning read aloud we read 5 chapters of David Livingstone.  In the afternoon we read The 21 Balloons, which we all have really been enjoying. In the evening we have been reading The Green Ember.  I am having a hard time getting into this story. 

Poetry: We memorized The Swan and the Goose by William Ellery Leonard.

E.C.C: We continued our study on Africa.  The only reading this week was a few pages in Children's Atlas of God's World on Kenya.  We reviewed the locations of the countries in Africa that we are learning and reviewed Europe and South America. 

We made salt dough animals.  Lily made an elephant.  Anthony made a hippo.  Emmie made a big fat snake that had just eaten a man, and Christian made a bird, a crocodile head and an ostrich.

For the science portion we read about grassland plants, grassland meat eaters, and survival on the grasslands.

Apologia Astronomy:  We finished the chapter on Neptune.  The project was to make ice cream in a bag.  I forgot to look ahead and did not have any rock salt so we did not so this.  We have made this many time before.

History:  We completed 3 stops in Passport Ancient Greece.

Art: We made African Silhouettes.

Language Arts:  Lily's language arts was on the past tense of verbs.  In Language Lessons for Today Christian and Anthony completed a lesson on oral narration and sentences discussing different professions.  They also completed lesson 12 in Fix it! Book 2. 

Spelling/Reading: In AAS Level 3 the boys completed step 20.  In AAR Level 4 they completed lessons 48,49,50, and 51.  In AAR Level 3 Lily completed lesson 14.

Math: Nick completed lesson 18 in MUS Geometry.  Alex completed 4 lessons in Teaching Textbooks 7.  Lily, Christian, and Anthony completed 4 lessons in Math Lessons for a Living Education.  Christian and Anthony are also working on a review of Times Alive and worked on that 3 days this week.

MFW Creation from A to Z: Emmie finished up the unit on "c" for cow.  I discovered when we were working on sounding out "c" words that Emmie cannot say the "c" sound clearly.  It comes out more like a "t."   It made it hard for her to try and sound the words out on the blend ladder page and she gets frustrated easily.  We will be working on that.  We made this cute cow and put it on a copywork page that I found on Mama Jenn's website.  She has a lot of free printables to go along with MFW.

Nature Study: Our nature study was on ponds this week.

All American History and God's Design in Nature: Nick has completed through Chapter 7 worksheet 10 in Discovery by Design.  In AAH Vol II he completed lessons 5-7.

Other Activities this Week:

Monday: The children got a half day of school because I had to take Chelsea to the doctor.  She had an ultrasound that clearly showed the baby is a boy.  He is due June 15th. 

Tuesday: The girls had gymnastics.

We went to the park and did our nature study.  Some friends came by and the children played while the moms talked :) Then we dropped Nick off at youth.

Wednesday: We had Kid's Club.

Thursday: We had our Nature Seeker's 4 H meeting.  We also did our grocery shopping.

I was so excited to get to stay home on Friday and Saturday!  We did some much needed cleaning (of course it doesn't stay clean long!) and I worked on a sewing project (that I have pulled out as many stitches as I put in!)

I hope you had a great week!

Happy Homeschooling!

Nature Study Week 4: Pond

One of my goals for 2017 was to be more intentional about Nature Study for the four youngest children (5,7,9, and 11).  I want to do Nature Study once a week around a specific theme.  I remembered a friend mentioning a resource she bought at the beginning of the school year and after taking a look at it decided this might be what I needed to help make sure I actually get it done.  I bought Exploring Nature With Children , an ebook with 48 nature study ideas, a poem to go along with your theme, the name of a piece of art work to look up, books, and extension activities.  She also lists coordinating pages from Handbook of Nature Study if you have that book and are interested in looking up more information.



Our week 1 study was on the winter sky.

Week 2 was on the moon.


Week 3 was on trees.

This week's suggested nature study was on a pond.  If you had started using the book in the fall, you were supposed to go back to the same pond you visited then and take note of some of the differences.  We did not start the book until January.  We do not have a pond on our property.  There is one on the edge of our property but it is our neighbor's.  But there is a pond at the park.  We have been going to the park on Tuesday afternoons to kill time between gymnastics and dropping Nick off at youth, so instead of going straight to the play equipment we went to the pond first.

There was not any animals around at all.  We did see a couple of insects in the water but that was it!  The children tried to measure the depth of the water at the edge with a stick.  We could not walk all the way around the pond because there were other people there that were taking photographs of their children and I did not want to intrude..  But we did walk halfway around and back.  We did not remember to bring the sketch books so I took some photographs and they did some drawings the next day.  I wish that we had a microscope so we could take a look at the water on a microscope.  Maybe some day we will add one to our homeschool supplies.

I need to remember to bring my camera when we go places instead of just my phone.  Then the children can take some pictures of their own.

Happy Homeschooling!

January Nature Seekers 4 H Meeting

Sometimes it can be hard to come up with 4 H meeting ideas.  I try to do things that will appeal to boys and girls of a wide age range.  I also don't want to keep doing the same things over and over again. Sometimes the children have an idea for something they want to do and I look for ideas to go along with it.  Sometimes I find something interesting on Pinterest or other blogs and keep those pinned to my 4 H meeting ideas board.  The other day I needed an idea for our January meeting and came across a cute homemade bird feeder craft as I was scrolling through Pinterest and decided to build our meeting around that.

Our theme was homemade bird feeders.  I had Anthony do a talk about some of the different kinds of bird feeders you can make with common materials you can find around your house.  I put together I slide show with pictures of: milk jug feeders, milk carton feeders, water bottle feeder, toilet paper bird feeder, feeders made from bread or bagels, a LEGO bird feeder, and a paper plate bird feeder.

Then we made our paper plate feeder.

We used:

Paper Plates
Wicker Paper Plate Holders (I found these at Walmart.com for $2.88 for a four pack)
Nature Raffia ($1 for three bundles at Dollar Tree)
Cheerios


I cut the raffia into even lengths the day before the meeting and punches 4 holes in each of the paper plates.  Each child got a plate, plate holder, 4 lengths of raffia, and a handful of cheerios.  The hardest part of the craft was threading the raffia through the hole and a slit in the plate and tying a knot. After they got all 4 finished they threaded the cheerios onto the raffia (we did 15-20 on each piece.)  Then gather all four together at the top and tie a knot.

I sent a bag of bird seed home with each child.  It was recommended that you should spread peanut butter on the plate before sprinkling with bird seed.

Arkansas Game and Fish has Backyard Bird Guide and Coloring Books that I thought would go good with this meeting.  So I emailed the Little Rock office and requested coloring books and bird guides for 12 children.  They sent me a big box of stuff!  Not only did they send the two things I asked for, they also sent calendars, magnets, stickers, Wings Over Arkansas (bird watching program in Arkansas) checklist, booklet, and paperwork and an envelope to mail your info back in, and plans for building your own Eastern Bluebird Houses.  I was so thankful!  I gave each child a stack of goodies to take home with them.

We also elected officers.  We have had officers in the past, but have not re-elected any in quite awhile. It is my hope that now that the children are getting older they will take more of a leadership role in planning the meetings.

My children were inspired by the LEGO bird feeder idea. Christian and Lily made their own and hung them up outside.  Then they grabbed their check lists and bird guides and sat down to do some bird watching.  We had robins, chickadees, and cardinals stop by.

Virtual Fridge: African Silhouette

This week in geography we are continuing in our study on Africa.  I was looking for a fun art project to go along with our study and saw some beautiful pictures of an African savannah at sunset.  Of course the pins I found had no instructions, just the image, but I thought it looked easy enough to recreate.

I try to keep a variety of art supplies in the house and knew I had watercolors and water color paper.   I thought I had a large stack of construction paper only to find out as I was setting out supplies that the children had used it all!  Next time I will be sure to double check.  I did find one piece of  black cardstock that we were able to use.

First the children painted in their sunset on the paper using orange and yellows and black for the ground.  Then those that wanted a tree painted in a black tree.  They chose different African animals: zebra, elephant, giraffe, and lion and traced those shapes onto the black cardstock.  Once the paint was dry they glued the animals on to the picture.

Christian (9) is top left, Lily (7) top right, Emmie (5) bottom left and Anthony (11) bottom right.


Linking up here.

Happy Homeschooling!

Homeschool Wrap Up Week 18

This was a busy week!  4 H record books were due this week by Friday and I had 4 children that needed to submit them (Lily and Emmie will do cloverbud journals and they are much easier!)  A lot of time goes into doing record books.  The children can do some of it on their own but I have to help with a lot of it.  I thought I had gotten a pretty good head start by doing most of the picture pages over Christmas break, but while I was working on those, I lost my thumb drive.  So I had to locate more pictures ( I took them off of my blog) and retype all of the 4 h stories.  I also had an article I had to write for a blog I contribute to.  I try to get those done at least a week early but did not have a chance because of record books.  We had to work around school work and other activities this week, but record books were printed out and turned in on Thursday morning and my article completed 9:00 Thursday night.

We had school on Monday (local public schools were off) but we ended up needing to take a half day on Thursday.  Since Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. day, we started out our week talking about him and watched the I Have a Dream speech on YouTube.

P.E.: We did 2 days of Family Time Fitness and one day of yoga.

Bible: In Windows on the World we read about the Riffi Berbers.  In Hero Tales we read about Mary Slessor.  Our memory verse was Matthew 6:20-21.  We read Matthew 12:31-52.

Read Aloud: For our morning read aloud we read 5 chapters of David Livingstone.  In the afternoon we read 3 chapters of The 21 Balloons.  In the evening we have been reading The Green Ember.

Poetry: We started working on memorizing The Swan and the Goose by William Ellery Leonard.

E.C.C:  This week we started our study of Africa, focusing on the country of Kenya.  We reviewed the countries we have covered so far and labeled 12 countries on our map of Africa.  We read some facts about Africa in Children's Atlas of God's World, Classroom Atlas, and A Trip Around the World.  They completed their Jon 3:16 page and flag page and wrote some facts about the flag of Kenya.  I was proud of the children for writing facts on their own in the flag sheet instead of waiting for me to tell them exactly what to say.  In the science portion we read about grasslands and colored grasslands in on the world map.

History: We are reviewing Project Passport Ancient Greece from Home School in the Woods.  We did the Ancient Egypt study in 2015 and really enjoyed it.  This week we completed two stops in Ancient Greece. 

Art: For art this week they drew and colored The Kitenge Tree from Tanzania.

Apologia Astronomy: We completed the chapter on Uranus.  We also made a cloud in a jar.

Language Arts:  In Language Lessons for Today the boys did a picture study on a painting called Feeding Her Birds and wrote a paragraph on the painting.  We talked about the proper usage of these, those, that, and this, and read and discussed a poem called Who Made the Stars?  Lily's language arts is on verbs past and present tense.

Spelling/Reading:  In AAS Level 3 the boys completed step 19.  In AAR Level 4 they completed lessons 46 and 47.  In AAR Level 3 Lily completed lessons 12 and 13.

Math:  Nick finished lesson 17 in MUS Geometry.  Alex finished 3 lessons in Teaching Textbooks 7.  Christian, Lily, and Anthony completed 3 lessons in Math Lessons for a Living Education

MFW Creation from A to Z: Emmie is working on "c" for cow.  She completed her handwriting page, math page, and cut and paste page.  We read the poem The Purple Cow.

In the mornings when we are working on our school work, Emmie has been working in the Rod and Staff Inside and Outside workbook.  She really likes workbooks.

Nature Study:  Our nature study was on trees.

All American History and God's Design in Nature: Nick started All American History Vol II this week and completed lessons 1-3.  In God's Design in Nature he has completed through Chapter 7 worksheet 6. 

Lily has been doing a lot of art work this week.  She made this fish one day.

And worked on these drawings another day this week.

Other Activities this Week:

Tuesday the girls had gymnastics.

After that we killed time at the park waiting until it was time to drop off Nick.  It was supposed to be sunny and in the 60's.  It was NOT!  It was cloudy and cold!

Wednesday we had Kid's Club.  Part of our activities were things that required team work.

Thursday we had to get ready for our 4 H STEM Club Book Sale.  The library had a ton of books that they wanted to get rid of.  We wanted to raise some money to help us buy supplies and be able to compete in another robotics competition.  So we planned a book sale.  Thursday after lunch we went over to the library to pick up the books.  Some were already boxed and some we had to box up.

Then we had to unload them at the EH House.

And arrange them by type.  It took around three hours.

We worked the sale Friday from 12-4 and Saturday from 10-12 and then had to clean up.  We did not have half as many people as the last time we had a sale.  There were so many books left over and we had no place to store them.  Many ended up going to the recycling center.  The hardbacks we held on to and hope to sell in a yard sale.  We are happy that people that did come and buy books left generous donations. Every little bit helps!

I hope you had a great week!

Happy Homeschooling!