Crater of Diamonds Field Trip

Not far from where we live is the world's only public diamond mine.  It is a 37 acre plowed field that and anything you find you can keep.  Around 600 diamonds are found every year in varying sizes and colors.  The mine is inside the Crater of Diamonds State Park which contains a campground and also a water park  When you plan a group outing of 15 people or more to the diamond mine, it is half price to get in and spend the day.  If you are interested in finding out more information you can check out their website here.

Last time we went to dig for diamonds, was 2010.  Blogging can be so great because all I have to do to find out when we did something, is look it up on the blog.

Here are a few pictures of my children the last time we were there.

Yesterday, our homeschool group took a trip to Crater of Diamonds.  We had a pretty good size group gathered for the field trip.

The weather was beautiful.  I was afraid it would be chilly because it has been in the mornings, so I made everyone bring a coat, but by 10:30, they could take them off.

Inside the visitors center

First we did a program all about how the Crater of Diamonds was formed and about the different types of stones that you can find there.  I really appreciated that while doing the program they left out the "millions of years" terminology that they usually use (we asked ahead of time) and just said a long time ago instead.  

Then we went out and started digging.  There was quite a few people out there digging.  I cannot imagine people out there in the middle of summer when it is over 100 degrees!  2 hours worth of digging in the sun in the 70's was enough for us.  The children had a great time and brought home lots of rocks, mostly jasper and sandstone.  Chelsea does not have class on Friday so she came with us too.

I took advantage of the props and having the children together and snapped a group picture.

After we left the park, Chelsea bought the children Sonic for lunch.  It's nice to have a big sister who spoils you from time to time.  We had a great day!

Happy Homeschooling!

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October Nature Seekers 4 H Meeting

I had a parent ask me if they could do a program for the October meeting.  Not only that, she also offered to do the snack!  Yay!  Of course I said yes!!  I am very willing for any parent to take over and do a program for a meeting :)

Since the weather has been nice and the topic was going to be fall, we decided to have the meeting at the park.  The children took a nature walk looking for birds and pine cones.  We did not see any birds but they found lots of pine cones and enjoyed the nature walk.

Then we came back and talked about what kind of things are different in the fall than in the summer.  Then they talked about the different types of birds that fly south for the winter.

Then they did a craft.  The plan was to make pine cone bird feeders, but oops the peanut butter was left behind.  So instead, they drew birds with glue and glued bird seed on it.

For our community service project, we did Operation Christmas Child boxes.  Our club brought items and packed 5 boxes.  Those will be sent to the local collection center in a few weeks and shipped out. I think OCC is a great service project for young children.

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The Many Advantages of Homeschooling

Many people just don't understand why a person would even want to homeschool.  Why would you want to take on such a task when there are people being paid to do that job.  There are many, many reasons people decide to homeschool, and often those reasons may end up changing over time.  A few years ago I took less than 10 minutes and quickly jotted off a list of 20 advantages homeschooling offers, and since that list is still true, I decided to repost it today.

1. We can teach a creation based curriculum.

2. We are allowed to pray and study the Bible.

3. We believe we are walking in obedience to God. ( You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk about them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down , and when you rise up. Deuteronomy 6:7)

4. We have control over our children's education and everything they are learning.

5. We can individualize our children's education (no assembly line theory, children all learn differently and should be allowed to learn differently)

6. Delight directed learning. We can allow our children to learn through things that they are interested in.

7. Real life learning. We can teach through real, living books, and real life, hands on experiences.

8. Self directed learning. We can teach our kids to go and discover on their own, not just spit out what is told to them.

9. We have the opportunity to get to know our children.

10. We have more time to do things all as a family learning together side by side.

11. We don't have to worry about WHO is teaching our children every day and what kind of personal values they may have.

12. No peer pressure, bullying, or ridicule at home.

13. No school violence. (okay, the children do fight occassionally but I don't have to worry about guns, knives, or bombs.)

14. No drug pressure at home.(unless you count having to encourage a child who doesn't want to take medicine)

15. We have control over who our children spend time with.

16. Our children are able to associate and relate to people of all ages not just members of their own peer group. 

17. I do not have to rush my children out the door every morning.

18. We have freedom to decide our own schedules. (how many hours of school a day, week, when to take vacations, sick days, etc.)

19. We are able to provide better food choices.

20.While eating healthier food choices our children have the opportunity to eat not just to get ushered through the line to find out it is time to go to recess before they even eat one bite.


Just a few of the many reasons I am glad that we homeschool and I could add many more.  I thank God every day that I am able to continue homeschooling my children.  But I was reminded recently about all of the things that are going on in the public schools today and while I am being thankful my children are not part of all of that, I do pray for those students and teachers every day.

Happy Homeschooling!

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Homeschool Wrap Up Week 9

This week was a bot more normal in our homeschool.  Most of us had a full week of school, but Nick and Alex each had headaches on different days that excused them from part of their school work.  The day Nick had a headache, he fell asleep on the couch and slept almost 3 hours!  When he woke up he felt much better though, so he definitely needed that sleep.

Week 9 in Our Homeschool:

Bible: We are still working on Purposeful Design during our Bible time.  We read one section per day and answer the questions from the study guide orally.  We have one more section to finish up next week.  We are also almost finished with New Testament iWitness and should finish that up this week.  After we finish these two things we will go back to What On Earth Can I Do?  and I am thinking we will start a new read aloud on a missionary.

History:  We completed lessons 16-18 in Mystery of History Vol III on Niccolo Machiavelli and The Prince, Raphael, and Martin Luther and his 95 Theses.  We also did the corresponding mapping assignments, memory cards, and timeline figures.

Science:  We did the notebooking journal assignments for lesson 5 in Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics and also two experiments that we did not get to last week.  One of them was an experiment learning about solvents that you needed to make chocolate milk for has been repeated several times this week in our house :)  We also completed another lesson of Fascinating Chemistry.

Spelling: Alex completed Step 18 in AAS Level 4.  Anthony and Christian finished Step 6 in AAS Level 2.  I have never really done spelling with Nick.  He did use a free computer spelling program one year and I tried A Reason For Spelling with him one year, but he has always been a good natural speller so it was just not something I thought was necessary.

Language: Nick was working on Lesson 34 of Visual Latin but did not get it completed because of the afternoon he missed.  Alex is working on lesson 3 of chinese.

Literature/Writing/Grammar-Christian finished up his assignments for Lightning Lit The Hello Goodbye Window.  He wrote a composition on his favorite room in the house.  Anthony finished reading Rickshaw Girl and wrote a composition on how to play a LEGO video game.  Nick and Alex completed Lesson 8 of Fix It! Grammar and for their IEW writing assignment they had to go back to the paragraphs they wrote last week and turn it into a composition adding a topic sentence and a closing clincher.

Math: Alex finished lesson 9 of Delta.  Nick is working on Lesson 9 of Pre-Algebra.  Christian finished Lesson 8 of Beta and Anthony finished Lesson 8 of Gamma.  When Anthony was rearranging the MUS blocks the other day, he noticed something that I had never even noticed before.  He noticed that the colors of the blocks coordinate with the colors of the covers of the books in order.  For example the one block is green and so is the 1st grade book, Alpha.  The 2 block is orange and so is the 2nd book, Beta.  The 3 block is pink and so is the 3rd book, Gamma, and so on up to the 10 block which is dark blue just like the Algebra 2 book.  See how much kids notice!

My Father's World Creation From A to Z

We are working on the apple unit.  This week we have been reading a Johnny Appleseed poem, continuing to work on counting to 100 and our calender page, and completed  worksheets on the Letter A and number 4, finding words that begin with a, matching color and number on a grid, drawing pictures that start with a, and gluing the correct beginning letter to the corresponding picture.  She also made a letter a out of scraps of paper, made an apple graph, apple decoration, applesauce, an apple tree, and apple pie.  Our book this week was How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.

When I bought My Father's World, I did not buy the literature pack that went along with it.  I was hoping i could find most of what I needed at the library, but our library is very small and the first week I was very frustrated that not only could I not find what I needed, I couldn't even find anything close.  So I took a look at the list of 26 recommended books that are sold in the literature pack (Which is around $120) and checked off the ones I already had.  Then I went to amazon and put the others in my shopping cart which added up to around $70.  I sold some curriculum I no longer needed, and then bought the rest of the books.  I am so glad I did too!  Now I do not have to worry about trying to find them or substitute them and they are great books.  Plus I will have them all to hopefully use with Emelia in a few years.

Other Activities this Week:

Soccer was cancelled on Monday because of rain, but that actually made it easier for me to attend a homeschool meeting.  Tuesday we had gymnastics and soccer.  Thursday we had soccer.  Friday we had shop class.

Our baby rabbits are doing very well.  They opened their eyes on Monday so the children finally got a chance to hold them.  Today they jumped out of their nesting box for the first time and we got them all out of the cage to explore for awhile.

The children have really wanted new fish for their fish tank for awhile, so we grabbed a few of those this week too.  They picked catfish, angel fish, and sword tail fish.

I hope you had a great week in your homeschool!

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October Homeschool Shop Class

One of the homeschool families in the area has started teaching a once a month shop class for children ages 5 and up.  Each month they learn about a different topic and then make a project to go along with the topic.  The cost is $5 per child and the class lasts 1-2 hours.

Last month, the topic was plumbing and they got to make slingshots out of PVC pipes.

This month, the topic was electricity.  After going over some of the things they learned last month, the children learned about amp, volts, and watts.  The also learned about ground and why it is not safe to be outside when there is lightning.  They also learned about series and parallel circuits.

Then each child got to make a lemon powered clock.

They worked!  But we could not get them to keep the correct time.

After we were finished there was time to play outside a bit.

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