Talking to Myself

My Little Guy

2012-01-31T22:15:00.001-05:00

I don't seem to get many pictures with my little guy. Hmmm...my little guy's not so little anymore.

He just finished putting together one of his Christmas Erector sets.

Native American Homes

2011-12-05T10:20:00.001-05:00

The Teepee

On our final week of studying the Native Americans of North America we divided the kids into three teams and assigned each team with the task of building a miniature Indian home. Each team had to make a different type of structure so we put some options in a hat and let them pick.

We gave the kids scraps of fabric, modeling clay, toilet paper rolls and a bucket with scissors and glue sticks and left them alone to build. They were allowed to go outside to find any other supplies they might need to complete their homes but nothing else from inside could be used.

The Longhouse

This turned out to be a lesson on our current unit of attentiveness and so much more. I was really pleased to see how resourceful the kids were which reinforced a unit we worked on last year. Cooperation was the very first unit we ever studied as a co-op more than two years ago and I could still see how much they remembered from that unit. They worked so well together with absolutely no arguments and their joy was evident in all they did. Not one child tried to "get away" from the activity and all focused diligently on their projects.

The Adobe

This could have been due to the fact that the moms left the work area and went into the kitchen to do our own lesson planning as soon as the initial instructions were given. There is just something so beneficial about kids being able to work on an interesting project without having a teacher looking over their shoulder every few minutes to see if they are doing it "right."

There was a mess to be sure. But the clean up time is SO worth the investment! And to top it off the kids were very good about cleaning up after themselves. WOW! This day was a picture for me that showed how much our kids have matured and learned in the last couple years. It will go down in history as one of my favorite co-op days.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-11-16T06:30:00.000-05:00

November 2011 Edition of The Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival

2011-11-14T00:36:00.000-05:00

Welcome everybody! We're going to start this carnival off with a couple of posts that go quite nicely together and will give you great inspiration if you are studying the Middle Ages. And since this is a study we just completed in our homeschool and I haven't blogged about very much, I'm going to intersperse today's carnival with photos from our unit. I know you will gain a plethora of fabulous ideas this month so grab a cup of coffee and a pen and notepad because you are going to want to jot these ideas down!

Tiger's Mum presents Medieval Stained Glass posted at The Tiger Chronicle.

Susannah presents Paper Mache Motte and Bailey posted at The Five of Us.

Field trip to Higgin's Armory

Transitioning from history to science we have a delightful post about Egyptology which I think is sort of history but then it's kind of a science too isn't it?

Sarah presents Egyptology Leads To a Dig posted at All That's Goood.

Emily presents Introducing Solar Science Week, Day One posted at Homeschooling While Living the Life of Easier.

Cindy shares Candy Math and Science posted at Our Journey Westward.

I love these next two posts which are also science related but they include videos too.

Amanda (Victoria is article author) presents DenSchool: Squishy Ice Cream: A Science Experiment posted at DenSchool. Mmmmm.... making ice cream and learning the science behind it, that's my kind of homeschool.

Shannon presents Hands On Science-Squishy Electrical Circuits posted at Mountaineer Country. I think squishy was the science theme for vlogging this month. But really, this is totally neat and even I could handle this science lesson.

Higgin's Armory in Worcester, MA

Jennifer shares Nutrition for Healthy Kids: You Are What You Eat!: Lesson 1: Organic Taste Test posted at Nutrition for Healthy Kids: You Are What You Eat!.

Amy presents 10 Children's Books About Food posted at Delightful Children's Books. Amy says, "Here are 10 food-themed picture books to entertain as well as teach kids about fruits and veggies, food groups, and where food comes from. These picture books inspired us to cook vegetable soup, homemade pizza, and try some new fruits and vegetables."

Last but certainly not least, Heather shares some very fitting Thanksgiving Learning Fun for the month of November posted at Cultivated Lives.

I hope you had lots of fun here today. For those of you here in the U.S. have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family and friends.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of hands on homeschool blog carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Early Roman Road Building

2011-11-12T22:28:00.000-05:00

I've heard the Roman roads are amazingly straight. They achieved this through an early surveying system where they used a tool called a groma. It's pretty simple to make really. In fact we had the supplies to make a rough one in our garage. To better understand the method the Romans used to build their roads and survey their land, my daughter and her friend built a groma and used it to lay out a right angle in our yard.

There are a couple of excellent youtube videos of how to make a groma as well as how to use one. The one we had the girls watch before attempting to build or use their own groma is here. This just explains the use of one. My hubby led them in the assembling of the groma.

Fall Photos

2011-11-11T22:18:00.001-05:00

DH is repairing a problem with our back deck. Over the years it has been lifting up on one corner so that this summer is was quite out of whack and my hubby felt the need to fix it this fall. He pulled the stairs off and dug this huge hole around one of the legs. I was so happy to see my son out there helping him dig.

Then just as soon as he had the hole dug, the next day it rained and the hole filled with water. We didn't worry about it at first figuring we'd have dry days and he'd get it finished when it emptied back out. It seemed to only dry up on days when he was working and couldn't get out to work on it. Then we had a snow storm (in OCTOBER!) and one thing led to another and now here it is November.

A friend was kind enough to lend his sump pump and a chain so hubby didn't have to wait for weather to cooperate anymore. he was able to pump the water out and he now has the cement pillar out of the ground! Now he just has to put it back together again.

Castle Building

2011-10-25T22:57:00.000-04:00

Continuing the obedience unit we moved on to kings and queens specifically of the Middle Ages. During our first week we focused on how castles were built, why they were used and what the many different aspects of the castle were created for. Although the children read quite a few books on the subject, my favorite was Castle by David Macaulay along with the DVD by the same name.

At co-op we built a play castle out of cardboard boxes. We used a refrigerator box, a stove box and a dresser box for the main rooms, two cylindrical rollers from a nearby factory that produces huge rolls of sticky paper and a smaller box for the turret details.

Once the boxes were assembled with cone roofs on the towers and doorways cut out we moved the entire castle into my garage just in time for the rain to start. This is where we had the kids paint the castle gray. Since the gray paint would not be dry before the kids had to leave I promised to paint the black block lines onto it during the week so they could play inside at the next co-op. And thank goodness hubby was around later in the week to help with that because I never would have had it done otherwise.

Their completed castle has three rooms, two towers, a working drawbridge affixed with chains and a moat which is thankfully free of alligators. The best part is that the kids can play inside of this creation of their own each week before and after co-op.

Boot Camp Co-op

2011-09-28T12:56:00.000-04:00

We culminate each week's study with a day of co-op on Friday. To complete our week on the military we let the kids dress up in some sort of uniform. DD chose navy blue and white to honor her uncle who is retired Air Force and DS chose to honor his Dad who was in the army years ago. We even made some little "medals" during the week out of ribbon, a bedazzler and and some hot glue. So they each had three of these pinned to their uniforms along with their rank pinned to their sleeve. All the co-op kids came dressed for boot camp with assorted canteens and weapons.

My wonderful husband led co-op this week so we had an especially fun time. He started in the house with a power point and some instruction on what happens during basic training. He went over all the insignia worn and the various ranks. He showed them how to salute, who to salute and when to salute, when they should wear their head cover and when not to, how to stand at attention and more. This lasted about an hour and the kids stayed engaged from start to finish. I was amazed!

We then moved outside for some practice marching. This was really fun because all the moms got to play too. We were taught how to turn and pivot and march together. Fortunately we live on a little dirt road so we could march up and down the length of it without interruption. We also got to shout a marching ditty of my husband's making because the ones he used to sing in the army had profanity. You know the kind..."I don't know but I've been told!" and then dh's words, "New England weather is mighty cold!" He ended it with something about our toes falling off in the night, quite silly so we loved it all the more.

One of the moms brought MRE's for lunch and all the kids had to try each item. That was an adventure of it's own. Some of the courses were better than they expected and the one part DH and I remember liking best turned out to be disgusting!

Finally to complete the day we all went back outside to run through an obstacle course. This time DH was supposed to yell in their faces like a drill sergeant but he just couldn't do it. He yelled but it all sounded more like shouts of encouragement to me. :)

Military Week

2011-09-14T15:36:00.002-04:00

Learning about the U.S. Armed Forces

Today my youngest colored a picture of the Union soldiers raising a balloon into the air in order to see where to best direct their cannon fire during the Civil War. My son colored a picture of an American fighter plane during the time of WWII held almost 100 years later. While coloring I asked them to discuss the advancement of military equipment our country, and the world had seen during the 80 years between the Civil War and World War II. Even I was amazed at how much had changed in so little time. I knew the information but never really thought about it before.

We followed this up by learning the various ranks and insignia of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. We "took" the Oath of Enlistment then I assigned all of us rank and we made patches for our sleeves. We colored them onto cardstock, laminated each one, cut it out and pinned to our shirts. For the remainder of the afternoon we addressed each other according to rank and title.

Once our badges were made I drew a clock labeled with military time and we talked about that for a while while I quizzed them on it.

The afternoon was made complete when I "let" them play a mock battle with their little green army men.

Obedience - Authority and Bible

2011-09-09T17:20:00.000-04:00

This was our first week back to KONOS co-op. All the kids were thrilled to be back together and I was too! We are studying the unit on obedience in Volume I this fall beginning with identification of our authority figures. Here's what we did at co-op today:

Begin with prayer and pledge of allegiance.
Discuss the obedience of Abraham compared to the disobedience of Adam and Eve. Who was wiser? Why? (Page 82 Activity E) Color pictures of Adam and Eve and Abraham and Isaac while discussing. Also use this time to discuss proper obedience, who we should obey and how they did practicing obedience this week at home.
Students present reports on obedience (page 83 Activity H) including why they should obey, how and what they need to improve on. Reports should express a personal testimony.
Discuss community leaders such as policemen, firemen, librarians and pastors that must be obeyed and make badges of authority. (Page 83 Activity G)
Discuss authorities through history. Explain the differences and similarities between various types of government: monarchy, totalitarian state, socialist state, communist state, republic and democracy. (Page 83 Activity F)
Write the names of government leaders on slips of paper and have group prayer each child praying in turn for the name on their slip of paper. Children should take home their slip so they can continue to pray for their government leader on a daily basis. (Page 83 Activity N)
Bible sword drills. Say a verse and have kids compete to see how fast they can find it in the Bible. (Page 86 Activity D) We gave each child a pen with the books of the Bible written inside when they had found a verse just for fun and to give them encouragement to learn the books of the Bible in order.

We have co-op earlier in the day now so we broke for lunch in the middle which worked perfectly today since there was so much discussion. Next week we are moving on to the military portion of the unit before we do kings and queens the following weeks.

Announcing a New Home For The Hands On Carnival

2011-08-21T17:00:00.000-04:00

Hi Everyone!
As you can see, I haven't been blogging much lately. I felt that my lack of attention to the blog world was doing the carnival a disservice. Because the carnival has had regular entries each month, even without my attention, it seemed to be a waste to just shut it down. Fortunately there's another blogger out there who loves hands on school as much as I do and wants to keep the carnival going!!!

Soooo, without further ado, I'd like to invite you to visit the new home of The Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival!

Please join me in giving Shannon a hearty welcome. She is going to do an awesome job getting the best hands on activities out to you lovely bloggers. In fact she has hosted the carnival in the past so she is already familiar with it. The Hands On carnival was hosted at Mountaineer Country most recently in March. It would be great if this next issue of the carnival were packed with your great ideas! So please hop on over to the blog carnival to submit your entry! I know Shannon will be encouraged and of course it is that time of year to get going on school again!

The Carnival is Up

2011-07-15T09:56:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, there is a wonderful new edition of the Hands On Blog Carnival up at Harmony Art Mom!

Enjoy!

Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival ~ June 2011

2011-06-21T23:26:00.000-04:00

Yes, I know, I'm super late with this edition. I'm so sorry. But given the size of this edition, I'm thinking I'm not the only one who is tired of school and happy to be enjoying summer vacation. For those of you who are still plugging away and perhaps need a bit of inspiration, here are a few welcome blog articles to keep you going.

Z-Dad presentsWhere the Mountain Meets the Moon posted at Bookie Woogie.

I'm going to go away from the norm for a bit here and include this lovely article from Kerry at Creek and Mesa Web Journal. This is not an article about a hands on "project" that Kerry has done with her kids, rather it is an article about living and I thought it seemed very "hands-on" so I'm including it here for your enjoyment and encouragement: Growing Wild.

Ann presents Outdoor Hour Challenge Spring Series #4: Wildflowers-Dandelions and Playing the Harp and Piano as Part of Homeschooling posted at Harvest Moon by Hand.

Zoie looks like she's having fun in her post Kid-Dyed Silk Scarves posted at TouchstoneZ.

Susannah presentsa much easier way to make paper in her post Making Paper the Quick and Easy Way posted at The Five of Us.

Barb at Harmony Art Mom will be hosting our next carnival on July 11th. Hope to see you there!

Last Days

2011-05-24T21:28:00.000-04:00

We have been enjoying these last days of school. Our school year officially ends Friday although I do sneak a few weeks in during the summer when my kids aren't looking.

In fact we are already looking forward to one more week of school when we go camping in Maine. It doesn't seem like school but it is our opportunity to finish up our weather unit with a big finale and focus on survival skills a little, nature journaling, hiking, some life skills and cooperation as we work together to set up, keep and then break down camp. We are praying the WEATHER will cooperate with us this year. LOL Last year when we used this trip to finalize our ocean unit we had rain all morning while we broke down camp. It was a sad state of affairs to say the least.

So very soon we'll be preparing for our trip. We'll be looking at the weather maps and forecasts. We'll be deciding what kind of weather gear we should bring. We'll be making lists, grocery shopping, checking the camping gear, baking and packing.

The Greenhouse Effect

2011-05-10T01:04:00.002-04:00

My daughter describes the greenhouse effect to me as follows: "Water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane surround the earth and trap the sun's heat which keeps the earth warm and keeps us alive. Without these, the earth would be a very cold place." She just finished up module 10 in Apologia Biology and conducted a cool no, hot experiment to help us visualize the greenhouse effect which incidentally, lined up perfectly with the weather subunit I am doing with the younger two this week.

First she took the temperature outside in the sun then she placed that thermometer inside of a gallon sized zip lock bag and left it in the sun for about fifteen minutes. When you try this at home you will see a difference in temperature. The plastic bag is our acting greenhouse. Now to amplify this and show the way carbon dioxide retains heat she took it one step further by filling the bag with carbon dioxide, sealing it withthe thermometer insde and then leaving it in the sun for another fifteen minutes. Wow! Big rise in temperature!

Here are the steps to getting the carbon dioxide in the bag as per Apologia. (And it is much easier than some of the web recommended methods.) You'll need:

empty 2 liter bottle
vinegar - enough to fill it about a third of the way up
3 tsp. baking soda

Pour vinegar into your bottle about a third of the way. Next pour 1 tsp of the baking soda into the vinegar in the bottle. Wait until the bubbles stop fizzing and then pour the second tsp of baking soda in. Before you pour the third tsp of baking soda into the bottle get your bag ready. Get all of the air out of your bag by flattening it out and leave it unsealed just enough to fit over the top of the 2 liter bottle. You'll have to do the final step very quickly so be ready! OK, ready? Pour the third tsp of baking soda into the bottle and very quickly get the bag over the opening of the bottle "sealing" it with your fingers to keep any air from getting in or carbon dioxide from getting out. Hold the bag there until the fizzing stops and tadah, you have a bag full of carbon dioxide. Now quickly get your thermometer back into the bag and seal it completely.

This week at co-op we will be discussing temperature and the effect it has on weather, the Earth and everything on it. We'll also be putting together terrariums so we can have mini greenhouses in our homes.

Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival May 2011

2011-05-09T00:48:00.002-04:00

Welcome to this Spring edition of the Hands On Blog Carnival. I hope you all had a wonderful and heartfelt Mother's day yesterday! I'm so excited that spring is finally here. Not just here on the calendar but the weather is actually beginning to act springlike. We've been taking advantage of the beautiful weather to go outside with our homeschooling. Our favorite thing to do every spring is to take a good book outside and read on a blanket spread out on the lawn. My little kiddos all sprawl out alongside Mom and we get totally absorbed in the likes of Little House on the Prairie, Homer Price or Swiss Family Robinson.

Hopefully you too are getting outside for some relaxed schooling. I picked up nature journals for my two younger kids last weekend at our local homechool convention. This is a great tool for getting hands on with nature and practicing observation. Today's carnival is full of examples of other ways to do some hands on homeschooling. Enjoy!

Wendy presents The work of our hands posted at loving learning.

Shelly presents KONOS Unit #2: Stewardship - Africa posted at Count It All Joy.

"Dramatizing a play makes History come alive! (And it's a sneaky way for me to get the girls to memorize some facts!)" I totally agree Nadene!!! Here is how she does it: Playing the Mayflower Girls posted at Practical Pages.

Heather, a fellow KONOS mom, presents Becoming Butterflies... and Knights-in-the-Making posted at Cultivated Lives.

Denise says, "I need your help to finish my books of homeschool math games." Here she presents Working on My "Let's Play Math!" Books posted at Let's Play Math!.

Margot shares two posts with us today including Terrariums and Explore the Universe and Contribute to Astronomy posted at Learning Beyond The Book.

I love field trips because they are the ultimate in hands on learning. They really put you in the midst of your subject of study. Pamela has spent some time in Arizona and shares her trip with us in her article Saguaro and a Shoot Em Up posted at Blah, Blah, Blog.

Jane plays a sweet game of Magnetic Fishing for All Ages, a game I used to play with my kids except it was a letter version, posted at Mama Pea Pod.

Ritsumei has a fun way to Play With Your Food and she's also sharing a giveaway in her post about Owl Puke Pellets posted at Baby Steps.

Thanks for visiting the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival. Submit your blog article to the next edition of hands on homeschool blog carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

If you haven't already, put the Blog Carnival Sidebar Widget for this carnival onto your blog. It provides current links for this carnival, and other recent carnivals on the web. Or you can just grab the button off of my sidebar.

Loyalty - Citizenship Wrap Up

2011-04-20T19:49:00.000-04:00

Our loyalty unit lasted about 3 weeks beginning with loyalty to God then moving on to family and friends and then wrapping up with citizenship. It was a short unit! To cap off the end of our unit we used the KONOS skit entitled Birth of America from the loyalty unit in Volume II.

They started by singing America the Beautiful all together and then each student made a short monologue in character. A couple of the kids had to play more than one part but they handled it well. The line up included Leif Erikson, Columbus, Capt. John Smith, Billington child from the Mayflower, a drummer boy, Paul Revere, Jefferson, Washington and Madison. Then they joined together again to sing God Bless America.

This made for a great review of the founding of our nation after just finishing the unit on wisdom prior to this. If you remember correctly, the wisdom unit contained a subunit on government. We plan to practice it some more and then use it for our upcoming talent show. Making this play not only a great way to review but also a practical way of ensuring that each of the kids perform something for our groupwide talent show coming up very soon!

Just after the play we piled the kids onto a blanket on the lawn and Lucy talked about what it means to be a citizen and how you go about becoming a citizen if you were born somewhere outside of the U.S. She then asked the kids questions from the list that immigrants use to study about our country. We started with the idea that we would only ask a few but the kids were doing so well and enjoyed it so much that she managed to get all the way through the list.

We ended our celebration with desserts and a red and white pinata. (I know, not American but we had this pinata and my son wanted to use it so I told him if he decorated it in some patriotic fashion than we could use it.) Along with the usual candy, we filled the pinata with some fabulous American tatoos from Kim. At the end of the day, the kids were covered in red, white and blue tattoos, all sugared up from cupcakes, strawberries and cookies and playing in the sandbox. Doesn't that sound like a good old American kids party?

Our Postcrossing Journey

2011-03-29T22:32:00.002-04:00

Ten months ago my family and I embarked on a postcard journey when we signed up at Postcrossing. I thought this would be a fun summer geography project for the family. And honestly, I expected it would be the most fun for my two younger children, but it has turned out to be quite the opposite. Yes, they enjoy getting a new postcard in the mail and reading it but my 14yo daughter has proven to be the most interested. And since it has been ten months, it has obviously become more than just a summer project.

Postcrossing is a random exchange generator that is easy to use. Once you sign up you must start the exchange by sending cards out. You can send up to five at a time. After your first postcard is received at its destination, your address goes into the loop to be given out to another postcrosser so you can start getting them too. This basically becomes a pattern with you sending cards and then receiving them so that as long as you are regularly sending cards, you are also regularly getting new ones in your mailbox. You are not required to send cards any more often than you wish so you can easily take a break from it if you get busy or want to go on vacation without having to update your postcrossing account.

The website also keeps track of all the people you have sent to and received from so that you can easily go back and look over the places your cards have come from, how far they've traveled or the number of days it took them to reach their destinations. I've noticed that most cards travel at about the same speed but there are a few countries whose mail systems run a bit slower on average.

The simplest way to turn postcrossing into a geography tool is by marking the world map with a dry erase marker whenever you get a new card in the mail and also marking where your cards are heading to with a different color marker. The postcrossing site places a little flag beside the name of the countries listed which I personally love because the repeated use of the website causes our brains to register the flag images over and over, making them familiar to us. To expand on the educational value of the program you can, with a little more planning, tie in a study of the area by picking up books about the country you are receiving the card from, trying recipes from the area, practicing handicrafts, creating lapbooks and/or going on a field trip to the zoo to check out animals from that part of the world or to the local art museum to see art from the region. We just keep it simple around here for now. :)

My daughter especially enjoys writng out the cards that we are sending. She tries to write a little something about whatever the picture is on the front of the card, something about our family and a note of encouragement from the Bible as well. Each card is chosen carefully to match the recipient as closely as possible. Often people have special interests that we can accommodate. A baseball fan might receive a card with a picture of Fenway Park, for someone who loves animals we can usually find a card featuring our region's wildlife or farm animals or for the person who enjoys cooking we have even found some neat recipe postcards from our locale. My daughter and I have made it a habit to pick up postcards whenever we can because they are not that easy to find in our town so we watch for them, especially while on field trips.

We love the ease of use postcrossing offers, the fabulous cards we receive from all over the world and the flexibility we have in sending out cards at our own pace. Now we have found other homeschooling families in the blogosphere that want to exchange postcards. We are excited to add this exchange to our postcard journeys! If you'd like to link your blog post about postcarding to this meme or you just want to read how others are using postcards in their homeschooling click on the link below.

Student of the Week

2011-03-22T19:24:00.001-04:00

Okay so this is partially to show off that my dear son made student of the week at our co-op and partly to share a little about something that seems to be working. About a month ago, one of our Moms suggested we start giving a "Student of the Week" certificate. Since this has been in place, our kids have been participating more, quieter when someone is speaking and helping out with clean up a lot more too. I have been so impressed with the results. It wasn't even our intention when we started it, that the award would encourage better behavior. At least I hadn't thought of that, maybe the mom who suggested it did, but I didn't. So I'm excited.
I'm excited to see my son paying more attention in class and offering more to our discussions. I was excited a few weeks ago when one of our youngest little girls stepped out and recited her memory verse without being anywhere near her mom, a great feat for this child. I get excited every time I see one of the kids wash the table without being told.

It doesn't take much to incorporate either. We have certificates and a bag of candy. Each week the winner gets one package of candy of the mom's choosing and the certificate. There are a few signs around the house that remind the kids of what we are watching for (cooperation, homework completed, obeying house rules, obedience, listening, humility etc.) and that's it. Simple and so rewarding!

It's A Girl!!!!

2011-03-21T10:51:00.000-04:00

Our pastor and his wife had their first baby last night! The baby weighs 6 lbs. 8 oz. and measures 18 inches long. We are so thrilled and excited over here that we can hardly concentrate on our school work. So what's a mom to do if she can't go immediately to the hospital to see the new babe?

Do baby math!

I got out the food scale and a tape measure and let the kids use the baby stats for a short math project. A sack of flour or a bag of potatoes would have been real handy but I have neither. The kitchen is quite bare right now so we had to be creative. We piled up things from the fridge and the food cabinets into a bag. The best part of the project was when we couldn't find something to make the last 2 ounces, the kids had to fine tune their weight estimation and try different things, much smaller things. My daughter tried a stick of butter (in its dish) and found it to be too heavy. My son went to looking high and low all over the house for odd things, usually coming out too high as well. Finally my daughter found the tea bags and she added one at a time until she reached exactly 6 lbs 8 oz. Then they carried the grocery bag in their arms like a baby and measured out 18 inches so they'd have an idea how long she is.

Our Latest U.S. History Reports

2011-03-19T22:00:00.001-04:00

Celebrating James Madison's birthday - March 16, 2011

I've really enjoyed our Wisdom unit, particularly the portion on the founding of our country. My goodness, our founding fathers must have been pretty wise to have accomplished all that they did with so many differing opinions of how the country should be governed!

Over the past few weeks we have studied George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson as well as many of the signers of the constitution. Since it would be nearly impossible to study them all individually, the children at our KONOS co-op were assigned to study and report on one signer each.

My 8yo son and my 6yo daughter wrote reports on James Madison and William Paterson. They also prepared posters so that they would have visual aids when giving their oral presentations at co-op which I am very happy to have finished so that they can use them at our homeschool group's upcoming academic fair.

There are loads of biographies available for James Madison. DS used one of the generic ones from the library as a reference and he read completely Jean Fritz' The Great Little Madison as his main source. This was probably the longest book he has read as yet and at times I admit, he really felt overwhelmed by it. I had to push him quite a bit to get his reading done. At one point I told him that if he finished his chapter for the day by a certain time, then I would read the next chapter to him before bed. This worked as a pretty good incentive and when we snuggled up to read he was listening intently and even asked for another chapter. Now this could have been because it would have allowed him to stay up a bit later but I can't deny the interest he was truly and honestly showing as well as the retention he later showed.

As for William Paterson, we didn't have great luck finding any biographies in our library system so we opted for online bios. I chose 3 different bios of varying lengths, avoiding Wikipedia. I had my daughter read the mid-length one and the shortest one and I used the longest in-depth bio for myself as a teaching tool. It was quite a struggle for the 6yo to understand but I went ahead with it anyway for 2 reasons. 1. This is good stuff! She'll remember bits and pieces, terminology will become more familiar to her and over time she will have a better understanding of her country's history. 2. She insists on doing these reports! Even when I tell her that only her brother needs to do a report because after all she is just six, she just can't accept it. She likes giving reports. It cracks me up!

Spelling Counts

2011-03-14T18:27:00.001-04:00

There has never been a question in my mind as to whether spelling is important nowadays...

Hands On Carnival is Up

2011-03-14T15:41:00.000-04:00

Happy Pi Day!
The latest edition of the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival is up over at Mountaineer Country. Lots of submissions this month so you are sure to find some inspiration. Enjoy!

Wisdom and Government - Weeks 1 and 2 of 4

2011-03-12T19:43:00.001-05:00

Last week we started the government portion of our wisdom unit, actually early government. There are four weeks in this subunit and we have divided it up as follows:
Wk 1 - The state of the country after the war and just before the Constitution, George Washington
Wk 2 - The making of the Constitution, Parliamentary Procedure, Ben Franklin
Wk 3 - 3 Branches of the government, men who were present for the writing of the constitution
Wk 4 - Thomas Jefferson and Monticello

Here's the rundown of what we did at KONOS co-op last week:

prayer and pledge of allegiance
Each family reports on a portion of George Washington's life in a short drama. (Pg 29 Act # 2)
Discuss Shay's Rebellion and Whiskey Rebellion using Bible to answer questions. (Pg 30 Act # 4)
Make book from George Washington's Rules of Civility and discuss. (Pg 29 Act # 3a)
Discuss Federalist Papers and read the first couple entries. (Pg 30-31 Act # 8)

And here's the rundown of what we did this week:

prayer and pledge
Each child shares either an epitaph or an acrostic that they have written previously this week. (Pgs 32 & 34 Act #'s 16 and 21)
Have the kids tell what they know about Benjamin Franklin and discuss his printing business. Make block stamps using wax. This one was pretty difficult. It was especially hard getting the wax smooth and even. I would maybe try sanding the wax down to an even surface and then somehow heating it to make it smooth but I haven't experimented enough to tell you for sure if that would work. This was a great activity and I would do it again but I would do some experimenting myself before having the kids attempt it. For us it was definitely a discovery project and it took a great deal of our 3 hour co-op time. (Pg 34 Act # 19)
Learn about Parliamentary Procedure and hold a mock meeting. (Pg 36 Act #'s 28-30)

All of our activities came from KONOS Volume II. Let me know if you need help finding anything!

DD and Friends

2011-03-11T18:18:00.001-05:00

Along with the rest of the girl's group, last week our oldest daughter played guitar and sang Light the Fire as a special at our church. Here they are altogether afterward and I'm sure much relieved that it was all over with for that day. They'll be doing it again for a talent show tonight! Please say a prayer for our girls.

Living for the Moment

2011-02-23T13:36:00.000-05:00

A conversation came up at our most recent Sanity Session - that's a night out for the ladies to break from the insanity that is sometimes our daily lives and take a moment to destress and gain some more sanity although sometimes I admit the conversations we have are INsane. We always have a great time. Usually the evening starts with food and stimulating conversation in the kitchen whether we're passionately debating something political or just reviewing this hilarious thing we call life. You know, the every day stuff like menstruation, having babies, potty training or the boy factor in our homes. I don't think I will ever understand boys (or men) but I will continue to love them anyway.

As I was saying, a conversation came up. This was in the latter part of our evening when some of the early to bedders have gone for the evening and the late nighters have moved to the living room to be more comfortable (and sometimes one or two will invariably doze for a few minutes). The conversation tends more toward the serious, sentimental or philisophical during this phase of Sanity Session. So it was during this time that my dear friend Paula announced that too many people are living for the future so much that they are missing the life. She's right. This is life. We are in it, now. It's time to enjoy the life we're living in and stop waiting for it to begin. You know, you have a list of things you want or goals you'd like to reach and when that time comes, you'll be happy. Not that having goals is a bad thing but when do we start focusing so much on our goals that we forget to notice the NOW? We've heard it before but because of our discussion at sanity session I've been a little more observant of my own daily moments.

Am I enjoying this moment? Do my kids think I'm enjoying this moment? Do they know that I enjoy every moment with them? What kind of message are they receiving from me right now?

They weren't cleaning up the lunch dishes like I had asked. When I came up from switching the wash my 14yo was running around the house with a bird puppet on her hand, making crazy noises while her 8yo brother chased her with an alligator puppet. So what do you do? Do you chastise or cherish? I decided to cherish and redirect. There is just something wonderful about seeing your kids having a great time TOGETHER, no matter the age difference. (Hey, now that I think of it, we talked about that too at sanity session...) It's a fine line we mothers walk.

I'm going to try a little experiment with this. Whenever I can, I will post with a cherish moment. Maybe I can do some kind of linky thing so we can all get together on this. We'll see. For now, I'm just living for the moment.

Wisdom Week 3 of 4

2011-02-19T22:28:00.000-05:00

Very few men are wise by their own counsel, or learned by their own teaching; for he that was only taught by himself had a fool for his master.

~ Ben Johnson

Here's a rundown of what we did at co-op this week:

Prayer and pledge of allegiance, share praise reports
Children recite the Bible verses they memorized this week
Homework - I talked to the kids about the verses their moms have chosen for them to memorize each week and how as individuals we are each responsible for our own behavior and choices but that their parents are responsible to God for what is taught to them. After discussing this a little I asked the kids to each bring a verse back next week that they thought the parents should work to remember. The other moms and I plan to hang them on our doorposts.
Essays on famous quotes read for group (Pg. 10-11 Act. # 34)
Have kids bake a cake without using any instructions and then make another with instructions. (Pg. 10 Act. # 32) While I expected the lesson learned to be that we all need to pay attention to instruction - the Bible is our instruction book for life, (that lesson was conveyed) I was surprised to find the children working together and listening to each other to gain wisdom in how to go about making this first cake. A perfect reflection of one of the quotes chosen for an earlier essay shown above.
Discuss what is meant by "gray area." Kids sort paint chips from darkest to lightest. (Pg, 11 Act. # 38) This was interesting. Again, I was surprised. What I expected to be a very short, rather boring project turned out to take a bit of time. There are so many shades within the spectrum that it was often hard to decide if something was darker or lighter. Sometimes a color didn't seem like it belonged at all. And the kids did make some keen comparisons from this activity to true wisdom.
Plan an art contest. Develop criteria for judging artwork. Work out potential problems ahead of time. Although the assignment in the book suggests having contestants, we chose to use several pieces of established artwork from the Picturing America packet of paintings. (Pg. 12 Act. # 39) We then went further with this idea and had the students come up with a list of criteria for a Student of the Week contest that we'll be using in future weeks.

All KONOS activities listed for our co-op are from Volume II - Wisdom. Please feel free to contact me if you have trouble finding one of the activities.

Hands On Carnival is Up

2011-02-14T15:47:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day Everybody!

The February edition of the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival is up and running. Head on over to check it out at Cultivated Lives and be sure to leave Heather a comment while you're there.

Wisdom Week 2 of 4

2011-02-12T22:49:00.000-05:00

We are halfway through our general unit on Wisdom now and we have moved from focusing on what wisdom is to what wisdom looks like and how it translates into everyday life for all of us at any age. A portion of the discussion that I was particularly fond of was the time we spent on developing wisdom - it doesn't come all at once but little by little with age - and the reason we show respect to our elders, something not done nearly enough in our country. We also read some old fables and let the kids make a mosaic of a "wise" animal out of construction paper.

Here's the rundown of our day:

Open with prayer and pledge of allegiance.
Have kids recite their scripture verses for the week.
Discussion - Knowing what behavior to use when and in what situation. List certain behaviors such as running, yelling, jumping and climbing. Then discuss whether they are inappropriate or appropriate and when. Sometimes discussing things that are never appropriate like getting drunk. (pg 9 act # 25)
Discussion - Explain "Wisdom comes with age." Do some countries demonstrate more respect for their elders than others? Have kids show ways to demonstrate respect for an elder. (pg 9-10 act # 26)
Prayer challenge - Put kids' names in a hat and have each child pull out one name of a person they will pray for every day. Encourage the children to seek out their prayer partner if they need prayer in a certain area. All children praying for wisdom for themselves and their special person. (pg 10 act #30)
Using card stock and a simply drawn "wise" animal, create a mosaic using bits of construction paper and glue. (pg 9 act # 22)
During the week each child was supposed to be writing down wise instruction received from a parent along with the reason or consequence of that instruction. At the end of the week we asked them to make two discs with one bit of parental instruction on each and the reason on the bottom. At co-op photocopy all the discs so that every child has his own discs as well as the discs of the other children. After the kids share what they wrote and why, have them cut the discs out, hole punch one hole in the top and string them on yarn around their necks. This is reflective of Proverbs 6:20-23 which was also studied at home during the week. (pg 10 act # 27 and 31 combined)

All KONOS activities listed for our co-op are from Volume II - Wisdom. Please feel free to contact me if you have trouble finding one of the activities.

Baking Day Beauty

2011-02-12T22:18:00.000-05:00

Lego and Photo Challenges

2011-02-10T22:52:00.000-05:00

Homeschool On Display, a new website created by a fellow homeschooling mom is the latest exciting webstop I want to share with you and your kids. Here you will find a weekly photo challenge and a seperate weekly Lego challenge. The photo challenge is arranged by Allison who is in 5th grade. Her topic for this week is "colored pencils." Her 7 year old brother Carson created the Lego challenge. This week's challenge is "building, house or apartment."

So basically kids can get creative and have a place on the web to display their work. And best of all, other kids (and parents) who are interested in the same thing will be looking at their creations as well and they will all have this really neat place to share and learn from each other about something they are all interested in. I can't wait to tell my little guy about the Lego challenge and although I originally hoped my 14yo would be interested in the photo challenge, I think my 6yo dd will better appreciate. In fact, I know she'll dive right into the photo thing because she is always stealing my camera and taking pictures of all kinds of things for me to find later when I download the pics.

I know it wouldn't be right for me to wake them up and tell them about it now though.

HOW I Co-op Hebrews Week 7 of 11 and Wisdom Week 1 of 4

2011-02-08T21:26:00.000-05:00

Because I have been sick for the last several days, I have decided to combine my post about the HOW co-op and the regular KONOS co-op. I'll be brief on the high school co-op and just share a picture.

The girls are still working on Hebrews in their History of the World I curriculum. For this week's co-op their focus was on the Phoenicians. Among their activities they made beads and other creations out of modeling clay (Sculpey) to mimic the glass beads made by the Phoenicians. Next week they'll paint them to make them look more realistic. For now they are just little white balls so I included a photo of some of their more interesting pieces. I think only the little pumpkin belongs to my own DD. Her friend loves artsy stuff and so spent a bit more time crafting flowers bugs and food.

In the younger co-op group we started Wisdom last week. The general portion of this unit is laid out for a two week span but we have stretched it to four weeks. I like the general portion of most units because you can really dig into the character trait being studied. Here is the rundown of our co-op time last week:

Prayer and Pledge of Allegiance
Recite memorized Bible verses for the week
Discuss Solomon and make a poster of his decisions and the consequences of those decisions (Pg 7 Act. # 10)
Label two boxes "Wise Man" and "Foolish Man." Have kids write adjectives on slips of paper and decide which box to place the words in. (Pg. 8 Act. # 14)
Brainstorm stories with wise and foolish characters in them. Choose one to dramatize. Kids plan this out on their own and perform for moms. (Pg. 8 Act. # 16 & 17)
Give the kids a pitcher only half filled with water and ask them how they would drink from it without pouring or picking up the container. Follow up with reading of Aesop's The Pitcher and the Crow (Pg. 8 Act. # 20)
Build a house on a "rock" using quick drying cement and another house on sand. Sprinkle water over the structures from a watering can and sing "A Wise man Built His House Upon a Rock" (Pg. 6 Act. # 2 & 3) We were running a bit late starting so we are hoping to squeeze this in next week. But I left it in these plans for you because it should fit into the 3 hour time slot we normally allow for co-op.

All KONOS activities listed for our co-op are from Volume II - Wisdom. Please feel free to contact me if you have trouble finding one of the activities.

Sick with a Silver Lining

2011-02-07T13:43:00.000-05:00

This has not been one of my better weekends. The weather reports were rather erratic on Friday so a baby shower I was planning to attend was postponed until March. And then two of my kids and I got sick with some kind of flu bug which also prevented our attending a friend's birthday party. By Saturday night I thought I was going to die or cry. How could my son with 100 degree fever be bouncing around the house like nothing was wrong while I groaned miserably with no energy on the couch at only 99.6?
Sunday was even worse with my fever up to 102 and my kids needing constant fever and medicine checks throughout the night. By 3am I was totally confused as to who I gave what and when. DS mostly stayed on Children's Tylenol to keep the fever down although occassionally I gave him something for cough and fever. Fortunately DD's fever never rose above 99 in the night so I just gave her something for her cough which seemed to never give her any rest until she finally managed to fall asleep. Alka Selzer Plus with a constant bag of cough drops by my side was my preferred combo and still is today, although thank the good Lord, my fever is gone and now I can at least make sense of things. It all would have been easier if we had just taken our meds at the same time then we'd all have been on the same 4 hour rotation. But somehow I got us on a schedule that required me to set my alarm to go off every two hours through the night. OY!
But there is always a silver lining. Snowed in and sick with the flu, my family finally agreed to a game of Australian Rails Saturday.

Dreaming of Summer - Living in Winter

2011-02-07T13:18:00.000-05:00

Music Lessons

2011-02-02T13:54:00.000-05:00

Our newest musician takes a lesson from her sister...

Starting a New Unit

2011-02-02T00:31:00.000-05:00

This week we begin a new unit - Wisdom. We've been doing inquisitiveness for so long it is a thrill to start something new. I kind of felt we weren't getting enough Bible study in with inquisitiveness so this is a perfect next unit as most of our study material will come directly from the Bible. This week we have been reading about David and Saul and Solomon. Normally we start each morning with Bible and prayer but this week our afternoon KONOS time has also been filled with reading from the Word and I have enjoyed seeing my younger kids really think about the lives of these men in a deeper way than I have ever seen them before.

Somehow our studies have also fallen into line with my eldest dd's studies of the Hebrews in HOW I and she is reading about this same time period in history. She's been interested in our readings because they are so familiar to her right now and she can't help adding in little bits of information and background stories now and then. Actually it has been rather illuminating having her input!

I look forward to sharing with you on this excitng new unit. Although I'm not sure how many resources I will have to share, I'll be updating the sidebar with anything I come across as a useful resource for Wisdom.

Africa Week 3 of 3

2011-02-01T14:43:00.000-05:00

This week the kids were supposed to read something about Africa and put together a diorama. Whether it was factual, historical or a folk tale was up to the individual families. One family read about David Livingstone and presented dioramas based on his travels in Africa.

My two kids used African folk tales. DD read and illustrated "Traveling to Tondo" and DS chose "Unanana and the Elephant."

The Rundown of our co-op this week:

Map David Livingstone's travels through Africa (Pg 110 Act. # 388)
Discussion and Mapping - The Great Rift Valley, Oldavai Gorge, Soda Lakes (Pg 100 Act.# 311, 312 & 314)
Perform acid/base experiments using vinegar, baking soda, orange juice, grapes, milk, hydrogen peroxide and tea. First we discussed what the difference is between an acid and a base and then we polled the kids to see what they thought each would be. Once all the tests were complete they were able to compare the results to their original guesses. We found they had very few items that were bases and asked them to make suggestions for new items to test that they thought show neutral to base results on the ph scale. (Mom's note: Can I say how cool it is to see your kids get excited over school stuff? They were really excited at this point and wanted to check everything in the kitchen almost!) They settled on testing flour, and raw egg (divided - one child tested the white, another the yolk and yet another tested a mixture of both). (Pg 100 Act. # 313)
Sing "Marching to Prestoria" while marching around the house and then find Prestoria on the map of Africa (Pg 108 Act. # 371)
Discovery learning - figure out how to store water in an egg and test it. (Pg 110 Act. # 382)

All references are from KONOS Volume II Inquisitiveness. This is planned from an older edition so my page and activity #'s may not match up with yours but you should be able to find them based on the descriptions. Please leave me a comment if you have trouble finding them and I will be happy to help out.

At This Moment in Time

2011-01-31T19:39:00.000-05:00

My 8yo son and my 6yo daughter are currently reading I Samuel 18 - 31. A hefty reading given their age but I've asked them to take turns reading the chapters. They started during school today and got to chapter 22 before they had had enough reading. So I let them do other things, have dinner, go to karate etc. and now are back to reading for about an hour before bed. They have just finished chapter 24 and are debating what this reading is all about.

Totally unprompted Biblical debate between an 8yo and a 6yo. You can't get much better than that. Happy Mommy heart moment. :)

Africa Week 2 of 3

2011-01-23T19:19:00.000-05:00

Chin Chin

We thought this week's lessons would be a little shorter due to the snow on Friday but we still managed to have a 3 hour co-op and squeeze in 4 weeks of planning afterward. Which the kids loved because it meant they were allowed to go sledding outside while the moms poured over our KONOS volumes.

Now that I think of it, we did not get to everything we had planned for the day but probably we planned too much. LOL Here's a rundown of our day:

Open with Pledge of Allegience and prayer
Watch a 3 minute Youtube video about salt mining in Africa and have discussion about why this trade is vital to the region.
Mapping - Mauritania, Mali and Niger Discuss Timbuktu and its location in relation to the salt mines in this art of Africa (pg 84 Activity # 205) Also discuss exports from Mauritania (pg 94 # 263)
Mapping - Nigeria, Liberia, Dem. Rep. of the Congo and discuss rubber tree plantations, share pictures of latex harvesting and discuss Firestone lease in Liberia. Hand out city maps of all of our represented cities/towns and figure up the acreage in each of our towns. Combine and then decide how many more of these towns we would need to have to cover one million acres. More than eleven of each of our represented towns would make up 1,000,000 acres!!! (pg 94 # 264, 265)
Mapping - Sierra Leone and discuss how this country and Liberia had its beginnings (pg 4 # 262)
Map Senegal and show peanut butter with the oil seperated.
Make ground nut soup (pg 92 #244)
Make chin chin (pg 91 # 243)
There was also a reading done about Africa but unfortunately, I do not know which book it was so that I can share it with you. Generally if one of the moms finds a particularly good book about our unit of study, she will bring it to co-op and if we have a bit of time when the moms need to do some quick behind the scenes work, one of the moms will read the book to the kids in the other room. We have found this to be a wonderful way of using downtime for unexpected glitches and it keeps the kids from disappearing in different directions between activities.

Since we were supposed to be doing the coastal bulge and the Congo this week we obviously missed quite a few countries but we ran out of time so we agreed to finish our mapping at home this week. Really we bit off more than we could chew for one co-op session.

All references are from KONOS Volume II Inquisitiveness. This is planned from an older edition so my page and activity #'s may not match up with yours but you should be able to find them based on the descriptions. Please leave me a comment if you have trouble finding them and I will be happy to help out.

HOW I Co-op Hebrews Week 4 of 11

2011-01-22T19:23:00.000-05:00

Week 4 is all about the time beginning with the judges and ending with Saul. I am not going to write about everything they studied but DD took some pictures so I figured I would share about those things that she had the most fun with.

She and her friend built floor plan of a Hebrew home out of blocks. The cooking fire is represented by the red block in the center. The door to the home is across the courtyard represented by a blue arch block. On either side of the courtyard are areas set aside for the animals on one side and the storage on the other side.

A large part of this week's lessons involved the Seder meal and what is symbolized by the various foods and materials used for this dinner.

At co-op the girls made a chopped apple and nut dish that I think was a definite favorite along with matzos, non-alcoholic wine and roasted eggs. They followed this up by drawing out the entire seder meal on a paper plate.

The KONOS book suggests having this dinner with the family including all of the prayers and father explaining the symbolism as we go along. It even gives the words to say! But we were kind of short on time. Since I really wanted her to go through this process in some fashion I suggested she make up a slide show with pictures of the different items and then just sit together in the living going through the motions and reading the script. This worked well for us and it didn't require us to take the time to make the food. Not quite the same but it served the purpose. My kids now have an idea of why the Jewish people eat this very special dinner.

Fruit Salad Ghana Style

2011-01-22T13:21:00.000-05:00

During the yam festivals held all over West Africa, the people eat and celebrate and generally have a great time similar to our own festivals here in the States. They even make fruit salad very much like Americans do for our summer celebrations.

This week while learning about the people of Ghana we made a delicious fruit salad.

It was loaded with juicy pineapple and mango. The kids also cut up chunks of banana to put in and sprinkled on coconut flakes. The ingredient we found the most interesting was the tomato. I didn't even know they had tomatoes in Ghana nor would I have thought to put them in a salad with other fruit. The entire salad was tossed with a sweetened lime dressing. You can find the recipe along with several others in A Flavour of West Africa by Alison Brownlie. This was an excellent resource for young children (and their moms) with clear but brief explanations of the many people in the region. It is not very in-depth but it will provide a nice overview. I highly recommend it!

Africa Week 1 of 3

2011-01-19T13:26:00.001-05:00

I am so glad to be back to our regular school schedule and back to KONOS co-op! We started the new year with our final three weeks of Inquisitiveness focusing on Africa. There is SO much to learn about Africa that I'm afraid three weeks really is not enough but my kids are young so I'm not going to fret about it. As long as they can get some basic information about the continent, its people and animals, I'll be happy. One of my favorite ways to learn about a people group is to try to make and eat their food so of course we included a couple recipes in our co-op day. This is my very good friend making her delicious rice with lentils. I'm not a big lentil fan but she makes them good enough to eat. Actually the kids had a big hand in the cooking by chopping the onions and pressing the garlic and measuring out the ingredients. We also made baked bananas which turned out scrumptious with peanuts, cream, brown sugar and lemon juice sprinkled on them. (See Pg 92 #244)

Here is a rundown of our co-op day:

Begin with Pledge of Allegiance and prayer
Oral presentation about pharaohs given by HOW I students (they leave immediately after to do their own co-op)
Discuss what the kids have been studying for the week. - Northern Africa
One student shares what she knows about Augustine. Locate Constantine, Algeria on the map of Africa (Page 79 activity #178)
Mapping the countries that were invaded by Arab Moslems in the seventh century A.D. (pg 79 # 181) Each child receives an enlarged outline map of Africa that he or she will be using for the entire unit. We have the kids label the map during discussion at co-op. They shade in the countries later at home.
Ramadan: Read about this month long celebration and then try to dance the dance of the gargoulette. Use Sounds of Africa cd for the music and since we are inside we put rice and beans in our pitchers instead of water. (Pg 81 # 190)
Compare Ramadan to Mardi Gras and discuss if huge indulgences before fasting are scripturally sound. (Pg 81 # 191)
Egypt: Make a hieroglyphics mural (Pg 77 # 161)
Begin to prepare snack, moms finish while kids make paper

A Little Snow Fell Last Week

2011-01-18T22:09:00.000-05:00

New Resources

2011-01-17T22:56:00.001-05:00

This week I have added two new features to my sidebar that I wanted to point out to you as I think they will be of some use to other KONOS users as well as many others in the homeschooling blogosphere. Both are resources to help with individual study topics.

To start, I will be listing my current unit of study in the sidebar with a brief listing of useful resources I find as our units develop. So this will be an everchanging space. Right now I just have a couple links for our Africa study.

Just below this, you will see a link to a squidoo lens page which is not mine at all but belongs to a fellow KONOS mom. I am really excited about this new resource. Shannon has created quite a variety of lenses for the units she has already completed. In her lenses you will find lesson plans with tons of links and book lists and projects to do with the kids, all revolving around a particular unit of study. She has lenses on everything from American history to science to Scripture memory music. To be honest, I don't think there is enough time in the world to go through everything she has put into this project of hers but if you take it slow, you'll be all right. Start by looking for a subject you are about to study and just focus on that lens. And then be sure to leave Shannon a comment so she knows her lenses were useful to you.

Carnival is Up

2011-01-13T09:07:00.000-05:00

Hey Everybody,
The carnival is up over at Dandelion House Homeschool. Head on over and see how you can make your homeschool more hands on!

Junior Bible Quiz Meet Today

2011-01-08T21:40:00.000-05:00

Our team came in second place in their league today at our district meet. This is our first year and only their second competition. Three members of our team scored in the top ten and my son quizzed out for his first time. This is all very exciting for us since we are SO new to JBQ. To learn more about Junior Bible Quiz you can visit the National JBQ website.

Back From Christmas Break

2011-01-03T21:36:00.000-05:00

Today was our first day back to school after our extended Christmas vacation. It's always hard for the kids to start back up. Actually, they just say they don't want to start school again, but come morning they are up and ready and we had a great day with little or no complaining. I was well pleased!

Since our Konos group won't start back up until next week I thought this would be a nice opportunity to use one of our supplements for Social Studies or Science. I had recieved a free copy of NASA's Journey to the Stars and it is just the right fit. In December we had a guided visit to the observatory at Pomfret Academy. (In the fall we had studied stars with our unit on explorers and the field trip was set up but had to be postponed because of cloudy skies. We finally got to go!) So this was perfect time to use the NASA curriculum!

Aside from our usual lesson work, we also had time for a half hour of crafts. Another thing I wish we had more time for on a regular basis. DS got to make this cute little frog thing he got for Christmas. (I picked it up at Michael's for a dollar. One of those no brainer projects with the peel and stick foamy bits placed strategically around a half egg shape so that when it's all done it looks like a frog. DD got a mouse one too but she did it yesterday.) DD made a jewelry craft she had gotten a while back. It's the kind with the melty bits of plastic that you bake. She made a necklace and a bracelet and there were a lot of plastic bits leftover so Mommy made suncatchers too.

I let them choose their own reading this week since we don't have a KONOS focus. They did have a certain criteria they had to meet in their choices - had to be a chapter book, something they could finish in a week or less and something they haven't read before. DS chose Martin's Mice by Dick King Smith and DD chose The American Girl - Kit series. She may not get to all of the books this week but I am hoping she will get hooked and want to read them during her free time at night. These young ones don't pick up books as often as my older DD has always done. They like to read but it has had to be suggested up to this point.

So no pics today, just a brief update. I hope all is well as you begin your new year of homeschooling.

Merry Christmas 2010

2010-12-24T00:01:00.001-05:00

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

Luke 2:11

Merry Christmas

from our family to yours.

More Gingerbread

2010-12-23T09:52:00.001-05:00

My kids love to decorate gingerbread houses. What kid doesn't? The last time they did one I bought a kit and gave it to their grandparents (DH's mom and dad) to do with them. This time I bought a kit again but those same grandparents are in West Virginia. So I gave it to my mom and dad (their more local grandparents) to do with the kids.

It was so hilarious watching my mother panic. She really isn't crafty at all and the more I laughed, the more she said, "this isn't funny." She even told my son that she flunked out of arts and crafts when she was in school. Do they even have an arts and crafts class? She did give it her very best effort and no help from my dad I might add. Although he did suggest propping the roof panels up with some popsicle sticks because they were sliding off. But he was definitely keeping his hands out of it. I suggested watching a movie while we waited for it to harden some before adding more candy. It was getting a bit heavy and the roof just wanted to slide right off. I am SO helpful.

And look it came out beautifully when all was said and done. And now the kids have a very strange yet funny memory made with Memere.

Snow Has Hit New England!

2010-12-22T15:10:00.001-05:00

All of one half inch fell Monday night and the kids went right out to play in it Tuesday morning. Because of previous rain and flooding and subsequent freezing in our back yard the kids uncovered a nice strip of ice to slide on.

Cooking Up Some Business Education

2010-12-21T14:46:00.001-05:00

Dear Daughter is deep into her Christmas cookie baking for the baking business she's been operating since she was 9 or 10 years old. Since our first year homeschooling we had decided to take the month of December off from official school. We wanted to focus on the joy of Christ's birth and really celebrate by doing things together as a family and just relax. We had extra time on our hands and the business seemed a good way to begin a real life lesson doing something she enjoyed. And it has proven worth while.

Some years have been more successful (and chaotic) than others with orders coming from every direction. And other years she waited too long to get started and felt the consequences. Last year she decided not to sell Christmas cookies but to knit hand warmers instead. They were beautiful handwarmers but she found she wasn't disciplined enough to be knitting every spare moment. As a result she couldn't knit up as many pairs as she would have liked in order to make the profit she was looking for. But she was also wise in not taking more orders than she could handle. It was definitely a good learning experience and I'm glad she tried it.

The Baker in 2007

So this year she is back to the cookies. She's 14 now and the cuteness of the 9yo business woman has worn off. She is at an age where her cookies MUST speak for her. Certainly there are still family and friends that order just to support her I'm sure. Thank you! Though, fortunately for her she has had a few years to build up a name for herself within certain circles and she does bake quality homemade cookies from scratch. They are YUMMY and they speak well for her! Which is good because it takes a great deal of effort for her to get up the courage to just hand out her order forms. She is not a born salesperson but I believe this can be learned.

Over the years she has gone from needing lots of help and guidance from Mom to being able to handle a large portion of the biz with no help from me. She's not afraid to call me home when she gets in a pinch though, as she did yesterday. It all worked out fine and I think she just needed me there to encourage her and get behind her and make her some lunch while she continued her work. I only needed to fold and fill some boxes and she was cool as a cucumber again.

It amazes me now that I think back to where she was when she started. Operating a business is an excellent hands-on way to learn from real life experiences. Aside from the science and math of baking, DD has learned how to choose a good recipe, how to analyze her past sales to see what her customers like and what questions to ask to learn more about what they would like to see from her. She has gotten free marketing tips from relatives with ideas for bringing out new recipes midyear. In addition she now knows how to plan for large orders and shop for the best ingredients at low prices. When DD started in her first year we made up an order form on Excel together. Her computer skills have improved since then and she is now creating worksheets to keep track of all her orders, income and expenses as well as tithes. I hope she continues some type of business endeavor going so I can show her how to polish up those worksheets to look like professional reports and get her using more of the formulas that Excel has to offer. A math program we are looking into for next year is Your Business Math. Although it's geared for 8-12 year olds and she can do everything involved, I like that it incorporates all of the business aspects together to make math more meaningful for her. I'd prefer and will be looking for something similar that is written for 9th-10th grade level but if I can't find anything I am going to use this program and possibly incorporate her own business into it and add some additional elements to make a full year credit-worthy program.

2010

Lastly, for this season of baking, I told her I would be happy to volunteer to help as an employee but that I would not be telling her what I would do. She has to give me direction as if I were a real employee. That's a harder transition than I realized. For both of us! DD has a hard time telling mom what to do and mom has a hard time NOT telling DD what to do. We'll have to keep working on that, during business hours of course!

So although she will bake for her customers any time of year, people generally look to her for their Christmas cookie baking. Today is the last day of baking for the season. Her last delivery will go out tonight. And DD is looking forward to tomorrow...and rest.

The Carnival is Up

2010-12-14T22:54:00.000-05:00

The December 2010 edition of The Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival is up and fully loaded over at Bugs, Knights and Turkey's In the Yard.

Gingerbread Day

2010-12-14T21:12:00.001-05:00

It was one of those days that starts off as any other day and then somehow turns into a very cool day. It was a happy kid, happy mommy day and we now call it "Gingerbread Day."

We baked lots of gingerbread cookies in the morning and finished up just in time for lunch. One thing I normally don't like about gingerbread cookies is that they tend to be hard but these were perfectly soft and chewy and we ALL loved them, and we are a hard crowd to please.

After lunch dd asked me to do something with her so I suggested we read a book. I really wanted to choose the story but she did too so I offered to read two stories and then ds joined us and we ended up reading three. Am I the only adult who wants to choose the story just as badly as the kids? Honestly, if they choose all the time there would be MANY books we would never even get to read because they don't appeal to them at first glance.

So anyway, th ebook my daughter chose turned out to be none other than...

Hello? I see a theme devolping here and I'm thinking of some coloring pages I printed out from the Jan Brett website a couple years ago that I never threw away because I knew I would use them someday... I know I'm not the only homeschooling mom that would have jumped on this opportunity to continue the developing trend.

As soon as storytime was over I ran to see if I still had the printouts. Low and behold I did. It was a perfect set of two blank gingerbread houses with all the trimmings to color, cut and glue onto the paper gingerbread house.

Jan Brett has a wonderful website. If you have never been, you've got to go right away! Here are some cool spots on her site if you are going to have a Gingerbread Day of your own:
Video - Make gingerbread baby cookies with Jan Brett
Online Interactive Craft - Trim a Gingerbread Baby House
Video - How to Draw a Gingerbread Baby (Caution: Spoiler if you haven't read the book yet!)
Printable - Animal Masks
Printable - Coloring Pages
Game - Gingerbread Baby Board Game

Merry Christmas!!!

Our First JBQ Meet

2010-12-13T19:31:00.001-05:00

For the very first time, our church has put together a Junior Bible Quiz team and last week we had our first competition. It was exciting and scary and encouraging all at once if you can imagine such a thing.

Junior Bible Quiz (JBQ) is a national organization that helps kids learn Bible truths through healthy competition. Each team is made up of 2-4 kids with up to 4 substitutes. Children who want to compete in JBQ must be in 1st through 6th grade. Each child is assigned a variety of questions and answers to study from the Bible Fact Pack. The Bible Fact Pack is filled with 576 questions and answers about the Bible and Bible doctrine and this is where the competition questions come from. (Although this is put out by the Assmeblies of God, there are several other denominations who use it and go to competitions as well.) All the teams have several meets per year and then best teams move on to regionals and so on.

Within Junior Bible Quiz there are two leagues: "A" League which is made up of kids who have been in JBQ for a while and "B" League for kids in their first year. Age doesn't matter and I have seen this to be true as my 6yo daughter (one of the youngest kids there) made 8th place in overall score her very first meet!

Fortunately we had plenty of support with us including the other mom of our team and my oldest daughter who is too old for JBQ. (They do have a Bible Quiz version where they have to memorize books of the Bible if you are interested for older kids.)

I was a little nervous before the meet but once we got there it was easy sailing and I had no problems. The organizers do a great job of keeping everything simple and flowing right along. The kids were also nervous but I didn't notice it in them until they were actually IN their first round. Prior to that they were playing and happy and only concerned about when they would eat next. LOL So once in the first round there was some "stagefright" going on but since they had to compete in four rounds, they were able to work through it by day's end.

DH came to support the team too.

Highlights in Pictures

2010-12-12T23:06:00.002-05:00

When we made our salt dough maps of Australia, I accidentally left my camera cord at co-op. And thanks to my dear friend I have finally gotten it back - she is so wonderful, she brought it to me last week after several attempts to see each other fell through. It was a busy month and fortunately I still had my camera so here is a briefing on what we've been up to...

Poppaw came to visit by himself for the first time ever! Dear Mommaw stayed at home which was a first timer too and we missed her.

We took him to Old Sturbridge Village where he got to play with the kids.

DD has started up her seasonal Christmas cookie biz. Here she is holding one of our family fav's, her famous butter cookies. She's been making these longer than any of her other cookies and they are so yummy and buttery...there are certain people in our house who will not let her stop making them. I won't mention any names but it's not this one...

...if you get my drift.

We decided to take Poppaw home to see his lovely wife in time for Thanksgiving. There we visited with friends and relatives...

...got silly...

...and just laid around...

I have no idea whose dog that is but he did make us all laugh.

Salt Dough Australia

2010-12-11T23:06:00.000-05:00

I've been dying for a chance to have the kids make a salt dough relief map and finally our recent study of Australia presented an opportunity. Before starting on this journey I visited Jimmie's lens to get some tips and a quick how to. Her recipe works great and provides a lot of dough. I doubled this recipe for 8 kids and had a bunch left over. (We rolled out the leftovers and gave the kids cookie cutters to make ornaments and Thanksgiving decorations to paint later.)

Really, I followed Jimmie's instructions step by step so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel, rather I will just share our pics and note anything we did differently.

We used address labels instead of drawing the labels onto sticky paper. Not as cute but quicker and less frustrating for the kids.

INteresting how two maps of the same place can come out looking so different...

Egypt Night

2010-12-09T21:50:00.000-05:00

As part of their study of ancient Egypt, my daughter and her co-op partner chose to host an Egypt Night. Here they are wrapped in the traditional muslin (sheets) garb of the ancient Egyptians with faces done up and everything. Being teen girls, I think they liked this part best and they spent oodles of time figuring and refiguring their robes, accesorizing and reapplying gobs of eye makeup.

To start out the evening, they served traditional Egyptian food such as lentils with rice with a red sauce, boiled eggs topped with beans and parsley, lentil soup, bread, beef in a brown sauce (kind of like beef stew), cucumbers in a dill sauce and delicious honey bread for dessert which probably has another name but I don't remember what it was. Basically it was stale bread drenched with honey. I was pleased with the younger kids who tried these not unusual foods prepared in very unusual ways. But there were no rude sounds coming from their table so I was very happy. Most everything was good albeit not my kind of food and I probably won't make these dishes again. It was interesting to taste what they would have tasted all the time and considered common. They ate a lot of lentils!

After dinner the girls entertained us with a short skit. In this portion of the skit, the girl on the right is ripping her heart out to have it weighed. If she does not have a "good enough heart" it will be thrown to the crocodile to be eaten and she will not be allowed to go to the underworld. She will die forever. Jake the dog played the part of the crocodile. He did very well too and gobbled her heart right up.

During the weeks leading up to the event they each studied the region, wrote reports on pharoahs, mummies and pyramids and they also put together some great items to display for the crowd attending Egypt Night. There were short blurbs about Egypt posted on the walls here and there and items such as this hook and flail dd made out of aluminum foil, beads and electrical tape. She gave it sturdiness using a wooden dowel and a coat hanger. The fan folded item in the center is a "beard" made of paper to resemble the type the pharoahs would have worn. Interesting to learn, much of what they wore was not their own.

They also had a couple games to entertain us with. One we all played together was actually an ancient Sumerian game but we found it to be a good choice for Egypt Night too. It was played with a game board dd made up a few weeks prior and tokens which had to moved from one oend of the board to the other. You could play as individuals or as teams. Although the board looked nothing like it, the play of the game was similar to that of modern day Sorry.

And the other game was pin the pyramid on Egypt. The kids had fun trying to get the pyramids in the right places.

All of the game ideas, reports, recipes and crafts were from our latest KONOS adventure, History of the World I their high school curriculum in which my oldest daughter is working from this year.

The First Thanksgiving « Videos « The Skit Guys

2010-11-16T23:38:00.000-05:00

My daughter's youth group is going through a series of lessons from The Skit Guys. She likes them and we find their videos to be moving or hilarious. Sometimes both. Have you seen these guys? Here's a little Thanksgiving treat for you:

The First Thanksgiving « Videos « The Skit Guys

It's kind of addictive. Once you watch one video, you can't help but watch another, and another, and well, you know what I mean. So we got kind of carried away and when dd told her youth group leader that she loves the videos and she's been watching them online, he said we couldn't watch them anymore. They still have a bunch in the series to do and he doesn't want her to be bored in class because she might see one ahead of time.

That's very thoughtful of him. But I'm not sure he knows us well enough. We can laugh at these guys over and over and over! But we'll behave. We haven't gone back to their site but we did agree that we could watch each week's episode at home after they have already seen it at youth group. It's hard though. Self-control isn't one of the easier fruits of the spirit to come by.

Haiku

2010-11-14T23:53:00.000-05:00

Family

by DS 8yo

Respectful children

Delightful love for others

Regularly love

Autumn

by DD 6yo

Lots of leaves fall down

I like to jump in the leaves.

I get to rake leaves.

Waltzing Matilda

2010-11-10T15:16:00.001-05:00

I fell in love with this Rolf Harris YouTube video of Waltzing Matilda. The video itself is a slide show of Australian animals which my children were very excited about after studying Australia for two weeks. We had to watch the video several times because the firs couple times they were so focused on the animals that they hardly listened to the vocals.

The audio behind the slide show is of Rolf Harris giving a description of the terminology used in Waltzing Matilda and then a rousing rendition of the famous song that many think should be Australia's national anthem.

Sadly, I have not been able to get a YouTube video embedded in a blog post since I switched to Blogger so I'm going to just have to settle on giving you a link.

Waltzing Matilda - Rolf Harris

Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival #26

2010-11-07T22:38:00.003-05:00

Welcome to this November edition of the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival.

First we're going to stop over at All Things Beautiful. Phyllis and the family have been busy this month. She is sharing three posts with us including The Plague Spreads in which the kids get an excellent visual in a hands on activity, In Circles filled with fabulous fun math and I enjoy watching how the kids really get to think things through in her post Separating a Mixture.

Next Amy shares a science experiment in her post Fun Science Experiment With Bubbles at Begin Homeschooling.

Eddie presents Science - Brains and Eyeballs! posted at The Usual Mayhem. She says, "This is a summary of a couple of weeks of human body science lessons I've been teaching my daughter and her cousins. We've been having so much fun!"

NerdMom presents Cosmic Mysteries in Your Kitchen posted at Nerd Family.

Too much left over candy? Go see how you can put it to good use with Pamela who presents Sweet Science posted at Blah, Blah, Blog.

"After observing a tarantula and drawing in our nature journals, we made our own spiders!" Marcia presents SPIDERS ARE COOL posted at child in harmony.

Jimmie joins in with some history too: "This is my post over at Heart of the Matter where I show our Egyptian Cartouche Potato Stamp craft."

Melissa will be hosting the Hands On Carnival next month. Be sure to visit and bookmark her blog now. This month she says, "While there are lots of versions of a shaduf out there for making history come alive...here's our go at it!" I loved this post and the video makes it all so wonderfully clear for those of us who might not know exactly what a shaduf is. Been Shadufin' Lately? posted at Bugs, Knights, and Turkeys In the Yard.

"This is a fun way to teach cups, pints, quarts, and gallons using a fun little "gallon man" to use as a visual aid. My kids loved this!" exclaims Elle. She shares her Weekly Tip: The Gallon Guy posted at Homeschool Rescue.

Debbie presents Day to Day, a Hands on Homeschooling day-to- day. Here's what happens when you let your hands decide how to homeschool posted at DANDELION HOUSE HOMESCHOOL.

Allison presents The Child Friendly Kitchen Cabinet (Video) posted at Modern Montessori Mama. I love videos late at night when I want to peruse he blogs but my eyes are tired. This is a great one, and I'm also a Montessori fan so I thought you'd all enjoy this little clip.

Thanks for hanging out with us this month!

Submit your blog article to the next edition of hands on homeschool blog carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Clip art copyrighted by Bobbie Peachey

Australia Begins

2010-11-01T23:57:00.000-04:00

Today is the first day of our study of Australia in our KONOS Inquisitiveness unit. (It's actually a sub-sub-unit: Inquisitiveness - Earth - Australia.) I have put together a collection of resources that I thought might be useful to other KONOS users or anyone planning to study this fascinating part of our world. This is what I'll be using besides our KONOS Volume II. I did not include your basic general info books you can find at any library. These are a given.

One of my favorite resources are the Top Secret Adventures from Highlights. They offer a free first kit if you think you'd like to join the club. Not a bad collection for a geography class. I happened to find a box full of them at our annual used curriculum sale a couple years ago and I snatched every one of the kits up for a fabulous price and have been saving them to use whenever I can. Highlights also has a collection of similar puzzle kits for the U.S. States called Which Way USA? Oh, I bet you can get them used online for cheap too. But be careful. These are consumable so make sure you are not getting copies that have already been written in.

Something else I picked up at our last used curriculum sale was Australia: An Interdisciplinary Unit. I generally like to keep these kinds of books around for a resource but never use everything in it. This one is filled with an assortment of maps and info including a sky chart, a brief timeline with more detailed historical info on the following pages, an Aboriginal folktale, directions for making a boomerang, a recipe for Mulligatoni soup, animal classificaion charts with extras about Australian animals and the ecosystems found there. So all in all, a nice assortment of subjects. Upon searching for this online, I had a little trouble. It is put out by TS Denison in their Instructional Fair Living Geography line. Perhaps they're not printing them anymore? A similar line of books is put out by Teacher Created Materials called Thematic Units but I'm not sure if they have an Australia themed book. They do have a very small section devoted to Australia in their Trip Around the World Extended Thematic Unit which I used a few years ago with my older daughter.

Both of my younger kids will be giving an oral report on one Australian animal at next week's co-op. DS will be reporting on the Tasmanian Devil and I didn't have any trouble finding resources for this animal at the local library. I did however, have trouble finding a book on bandicoots, the subject of dd's report so I did a google search and found this great site with all kinds of Aussie info including an entire page on bandicoots among other interesting Australian fauna. Another spot for fabulous photos of Australian wildlife you can check out OzAnimals.com (More online resources are listed below.)

Given my love for games, I can't help but pull out anything I can on the land down under and I just happen to have the Mayfair game of Australian Rails. It's a long drawn out game reminiscent of Monopoly but I do believe I'll be able to convince my 8yo to play with me! He always wanted to play when we first got it but it was too intense I thought, for he was so young then. I would just let him be our banker and he was sort of happy but never quite satisfied. Australian Rails is designed for the 10 + crowd but I think ds will be able to handle it if he can handle the length of time it takes to play it. I reviewed this game over at Games for Homeschoolers once upon a time and it's still available for you to read if you're interested in finding out more about it.

Lastly, just for fun and to get my kiddos in the Aussie mood, I popped in a video of Five Mile Creek tonight. If you've never seen the series, it's kind of like Little House on the Prairie only with less kids, more shooting (no bloody scenes) and lots of Aussie accents.

Additional Online Resources:

Scroll down About a third of the way to find a section on Time Zones. Studying Australia is an excellent time to address or re-address time zones and seasons.
A time zone brain booster for you from Discovery Education.
Sheppard Software is a veritable geography goldmine loaded with games and tutorials for the kids. Click here for a brief Australia info page and here for games focusing on Oceania and here for info on marsupials. On the top left of this page you'll find a quiz to do after reading al about marsupials.
Another trivia quiz game site that I love because it has everything, no matter what we're studying it seems - Purpose Games.
Listen to the sounds of the Kookaburra then sing the song Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree.
We'll also be making a salt dough map of Australia during our co-op sessions. Here's Jimmie's Squidoo lens to show how you can too.
If you get to spend time on Australia's natural resources you'll more than likely discuss bauxite. Here is a Five minute video on how aluminum is made by Fish Chris. Who knew that our everyday aluminum foil started out as a red rock in Australia?

The French Flag and More

2010-10-23T23:11:00.000-04:00

We had a little extra time yesterday so I thought I'd have the kids make a French flag out of construction paper and then we could print out pictures of the French explorers we've studied this week and glue them to the flag. Sort of a way to help them associate the explorers to their home country.
Well we got carried away and they ended up making flags or coloring in printouts for England, Spain and Portugal too. Portugal was a toughy. My youngest made the green and red field out of construction paper but the coat of arms proved to be more complicated. At first neither of them wanted to try and draw it out but ds quickly changed his mind and I'm proud of him for trying it. He did a great job. We finished them out today by adding the flag of Norway for Leif Ericsson and the Italian flag for Columbus.
Next week we'll be reviewing all the explorers we've studied so I will print out labeled photos (or a name alone in the case of explorers with no pics) and have the kids play a game of it, matching the explorer to his home country. Once they've pinned the explorer on the flag, they'll have to tell me what he "discovered."

Egyptian Cake?

2010-10-20T11:21:00.001-04:00

DD and her co-op mate started on Egypt last week. For snack they didn't have any appropriate foods so they decided to make a cake. Yum - has nothing to do with their unit but who cares. Snack does not always have to tie in with the unit. I'm ok with that. Besides, they did frost a blue sripe down the middle to represent the Nile River. :)

Our Mexican Co-op

2010-10-19T11:43:00.002-04:00

Now that the new world has been "discovered" we need move on to exploration of this new land. Er, I mean the conquering of it because that is in fact what Los Conquisadores did while they explored and went searching for gold. We started by studying the Spanish explorers and how the two cultures came together to create the Mexican food we know and love. Our table was adorned with Spanish rice, fried plantains, Mexican bean and cheese dip with tortilla chips and bread with salmorejo. Here are all the kids smiling still because they haven't tried any of the jalepeno peppers yet.

Everything was yummy and it was fun to try a few new things. Some we were familiar with and were delighted to eat them again but the salmorejo was a new recipe for us and I had never tried the fried plantains.

OK - we love food at co-op but it isn't ALL about food. We did have lots of discussion and mapwork before heading into the kitchen to eat.

I think at this point they were mapping the route of de Soto. Or perhaps they were looking for the Mississippi River.

Point is, we do more than eat at co-op and I have pictures to prove it.

Even the cat is learning something. Actually he kept trying to get on the map to show the kids where the route was but they just scooted him off as if he didn't know anything.

Oh well, the day was finished out with a pinata brought by one of our families and perfect for today.

It was raining out so we had to do it inside. There's one of the pinata builders right there getting ready to swing. It's hanging kind of high because a previous hitter knocked it down and the string came out but it didn't break open so it had to be rehung by wrapping the string around it. Made the string a little shorter but the kids were still able to reach it because it did eventually get beaten down and candy went flying everywhere.

Papel Picado

2010-10-18T22:38:00.000-04:00

Last week we focused on Los Conquistadores and for our art class we made a papel picado banner to hang across the kitchen for our KONOS fiesta. It came out beautifully and the entire family got to take part.

Papel picado literally means perforated paper or punched paper. Some form of this paper cutting has taken place in Mexico since the Aztec empire. It has changed over the years as different influences and materials have come into the land. Originally it was called amatl by the Aztecs who made the paper cuttings of their gods out of a heavy paper made from the bark of mulberry and fig trees. Once Cortes conquered the Aztecs this practice began to change due to Christian beliefs and when China began trading in the region they brought with them fine paper that came into use for the cuttings. Now papel picado is still in use on holidays and as an art form with each color representing something specific.

Traditional papel picado is made with many layers of thin paper such as tissue paper, stacked on top of a sheet of lead. A design is laid out and stenciled onto the paper and then cut out using special tools that are hammered down into the paper. Similar to punching a hole into something with an awl. Care must be taken to punch out just the right spots and the design itself can not be one that would cause the paper to become seperated from itself so that when all the design is cut out, the paper will still hold its full rectangular shape. Each sheet is about the size of regular copy paper, 8 1/2 by 11. Although we do not possess the array of tools needed for this art we could make our own variation using scissors.

For our purposes we didn't worry about what each color represented we just chose bright colors that were available to us on short notice. We cut the tissue paper down to 8 1/2 by 11 pieces and then began folding the sheets in a fan fold fashion along the short side of the paper. Each piece was then individually snipped with scissors to create a design down each side of the folded paper, leaving about an inch or so at one end for folding over the string later. Once unfolded you have a unique design on your tissue paper and you are ready to move on to he next. We just kept doing a few sheets every day so the kids wouldn't get exhausted from it before we had enough for a banner. I wanted this to be a fun project and it remained that way. My son especially enjoyed this craft because he loves making snowflakes.

After all the sheets were made (or we ran out of time just before co-op was about to begin) my daughter glued them all onto a sring to be hung. We just used regular Elmer's glue. It held the sheets well and with the tissue paper being so light we didn't have to wait for it to dry before hanging it. We managed to get the final end of the sring taped to the ceiling about five minutes before the first family arrived for co-op!

Day to Day

2010-10-16T23:33:00.000-04:00

I love a good article about someone's daily goings on don't you? Any time I chance upon one in a magazine I stop to read it. Doesn't matter who it is. I do the same thing online when I'm cruising my favorite homeschool blogs. I mean we all do don't we? Why else would so many people be blogging, twittering and myspacing if we weren't curious about what other people do with their time?

Sometimes it's all uplifting and I see things that inspire me to be a better homeschooler or a better mom or a better Christian. And sometimes it's just funny to be able to laugh with another person halfway around the world over the silly things that happen in ordinary life. But quite often I see things that remind me that we are all human, nobody's perfect and science experiments sometimes go wrong.

That's why today, I am bringing you a link to a day-to-day blog article from Deb. Take a look inside the daily life of a homeschooling family at Dandelion House Homeschool. You might find it even better than Facebook.

My T Button is Messed Up!

2010-10-11T22:23:00.000-04:00

For the last few weeks, maybe a month now, my letter T key on my laptop has not been working properly. I thought I had been doing pretty good about going back and checking to make sure it typed in (and that has been a royal pain!) but given the look of some of my blog posts, I'm not doing so well after all.

So there. Now you all know why I have so many typos. Boy they are a nuisance. And no, I don't think this topic is blogworthy but that has never stopped me from babbling before.

The Carnival is Up!

2010-10-11T08:19:00.000-04:00

Check out the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival over at Jimmie's Collage! It looks like it is loaded up this month! I'm going now to read through it myself...

Don't Say No...

2010-10-06T00:46:00.001-04:00

...when they want to make a mess. Because really it is not their intention to make a mess. But sometimes creativity can be messy business.

I had been holding aside an egg carton for my friend that I buy eggs from and my 6yodd found it and asked if she could use it to make a craft. I almost said, "No, I'm saving that for Mrs. ..." but then I caught my words before they came. Nex I was going to say, "No, I don't want you making a big mess. I'm tired this afternoon." Don't give me a hard time folks, I know I'm not the only one who has said these things. But I caught those words before they came out too. (Isn't this shaping up to be a good mommy moment?) What I did say was, "Sure!" And then I promptly laid myself down on the couch for a nap. Now, you may be thinking this was lazy of me BUT it is the best thing I could have done for my kids.

When my son saw that his sister was doing something crafty he found an empty ketchup bottle and asked if he could make something too. So here they are, the two of them in the play/school room/office creaing their little hearts out with whatever they can find. When I ask what they will make, they answer "ships!" Dare I ask? Yes, I do...:"Are they Columbus' ships?" (We had just read about him that day!) "Yes," they answer. (Oh it is too good to be true.) They even named them the Santa Maria and the Nina.

Who knew ordinary paper table napkins could become the great sails of a magnificent ship of long ago?

DS never used the kethup bottle but he filled it with water and it made a nice table decoration for him while he worked. hey were so proud of what they came up with and Mom didn't mess with them a bit. I know the moment would never have come out so wonderful if I had been in there putting my two cents in.

Just the Highlights - Leif the Lucky

2010-10-06T00:30:00.000-04:00

I think the kids enjoyed our week on Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky. We asked them to come to KONOS co-op dressed as vikings and be prepared to say one or two things about themselves as if they were Leif Ericson.

One of our moms came with a little something extra. Her mom had found a pantemime skit for the kids to do. It was a grat last minute add-on to our day and although sometimes we have nary a spare moment at co-op, God's plans always work out because on this day we had the time to squeeze in an extra activity.

So off the kids went in their fabulous Viking costumes to their Viking ship to sail across the icy northern seas. Leif's wife was kind enough to sit outside the boat and narrate. This was vitally important since the actors couldn't speak.
As I said, the waters were icy on that voyage and a storm blew up tossing the massive ship like a cork. It was all the men could do to just hang on.

When they finally made it to land two judges were waiting for them. They had been waiting to hear their case but I'm not sure what the crime was. Something dire I suppose given the evidence. I think it had something to do with the Natives of Vinland.

The judges settled the matter fairly and everyone became friends before heading off for snack, Marco Polo style.

Well actually we combined the spices of Asia with the squash of America. It was a feast to be remembered. Crunchy bok choy with veggies stir fried with lots of fresh ginger and garlic, hot pumpkin soup with warm sweet potato bread and honey butter, gingerbread made from scratch and baked in a cast iron dutch oven, homemade pumpkin pie with whipped heavy cream sweetened just a touch and sugary sweet apple crisp.

Random Photos

2010-10-03T00:42:00.000-04:00

I just downloaded the pics off my camera. There were quite a few since I have neglected doing it for about two weeks. So here are the highlights. (a.k.a. "my favs")

I told the kids I would pay them to rake the leaves.

DH took DD out for the day. I think they had fun. The pics I find on the camera when someone else has been behind it are such nice surprises.

Why is it that the best photos are always blurry? I love this one of my husband. I'd like to know what he and my dd were talking about that got him giggling so.

This is my Mom and Dad. We were trying to get some good picures of them together but they wouldn't behave. I don't think they were the only ones laughing given the lack of clarity in this shot. So what if I don't take fabulous, clear, gorgeous photos? I'm keeping them anyway. This is real life and I want my kids to remember it this way.

Advice of the Day

2010-09-27T23:29:00.000-04:00

I went to Maine for a bit, my sister flew into town for the week and I neglected my poor blog. But I do have one bit of advice for the day that I think you will all find very useful.

Plan ahead for projects and experiments. Not just a couple days ahead. At least two weeks ahead and longer if you are on a tight budget. LOL If you do not, you will surely end up going completely insane hunting down bar magnets and the like.

Wordless Wednesday

2010-09-22T07:00:00.001-04:00

Studying Constellations

2010-09-21T10:13:00.001-04:00

During the navigation portion of our unit, my little ones are spending time learning about constellations. My favorite book so far has been H. A. Rey's book entitled "Find the Constellations." This is the perfect book for kids and parents to learn about the constellations and the names of the 1st magnitude stars as well as lots of other tidbits about the sky but without getting too technical or boring. (Not that it would be boring for me of course but you know, for the sake of the kids.)

For our projects this week we needed this book, some tracing paper, a Pringles can for each child, pencils, ERACERS (patience), a hammer, an awl and a flashlight. We also pulled out the star charts my older two made at a nature preserve field trip we went on a few years ago. This is where I got the idea for our constellation can project that I'm going to share with you in a minute.

We started the week just reading about navigation and using the night sky to find your way. Once I started showing ds and dd specific constellations I pulled out the tracing paper and using the book I mentioned earlier, I traced the dots for the stars in a few different constellations. The kids were then able to "connect the dots" to see how the group of stars could look like it's namesake. I then had them label the constellation and the 1st mag. stars.

On a seperate day we made the constellations in a can project. It's good to space these things out. I'm learning, don't pack too much into one day or I might just go crazy. So they traced the stars onto a circle of tracing paper the size of the Pringles can lid. Then they used scotch tape to stick this circle of tracing paper onto the bottom of the Pringles can. Note: The clear lid was very handy! Because I did not use premeasured drawings, the kids used the lids to go through the book and find a constellation that would fit within it's boundaries.

Can I just say how awesome it is to see my cherubs working together and helping each other with a project?! I am just giddy with the thrill of it all!

Once the holes were finished we took off the tracing paper, grabbed a flashlight and headed for our very dark garage to try them out. We found that if you place the flashlight just at the very edge of the Pringles can you get a clearer image. If you put the flashlight down in the can, too much light will shine through and reflect onto your wall so you can't make out the stars.

Can you name the constellations they chose?

Rebuilding Stonehenge

2010-09-20T09:25:00.002-04:00

My oldest dd has never been very fond of hands-on projects no matter how many different ways I presented them to her. (It only took me 2 years of homeschooling to figure that out.) So when she began high school level KONOS and started to do her own lesson planning, I questioned whether she would choose a "well balanced diet" so to speak. Would she choose all reading activities? Would she choose all history and not do enough art to earn an art credit for high school? Would I have to force her to write reports? Her preferred method of learning is to read, read, read. But she does not always retain, retain, retain. So I like learning through various methods.

Well we're only four weeks in so I can't say how the rest of the year will pan out but so far it has been going superbly. She has been scheduling a good solid amount of work to keep herself busy and learning and she even seems to be enjoying it. I think she likes having the control. DD is the kind of kid who likes everything organized and planned out where she can see it and understand it. She likes knowing what is expected of her and what she should be doing when and all that sort of thing. KWIM? So this is really working out.

Last week she was studying Stonehenge and in addition to writing a short biography on John Aubrey she also chose to build a small model of Stonehenge as it is believed to have been in it's glory days. I had never heard of Aubrey but as DD has explained to me, John Aubrey was a 17th century scholar who discovered 56 pits encircling Stonehenge just within the surrounding ditch. They are now called Aubrey Holes in his honor. He was a cautious observer, looking for clues rather than treasure and his work influenced the research of others after him.

DD created her replica using simple wooden blocks. It was a valuable hands-on experience that further cemented her study of Stonehenge. Here is an "aerial view" of her model. She included the station stones and the slaughter stones but this photo just shows her ring of sarcen stones and everything built inside of the ring. Due to limited space in our living room she was not able to put in the Aubrey Holes or the outer ditch and bank but she was careful to explain where they would have been during her demonstration of the model. I suppose she would have had to have dug holes in my carpet and I wouldn't have been too keen on that anyway.

Lessons in Navigation

2010-09-18T12:41:00.017-04:00

This week was our first week studying Inquisitiveness. We are jumping right into navigation and the explorers unit.

At home we have discussed different types of navigation and are mainly focusing on the means they would have used before electronic navigation came into practice such as stars and compass, piloting and sounding.

Instead of meeting at my house for co-op this week we chose to meet at a local park that also has a small lake. One of the families brought along their canoe so the kids could actually try sounding and piloting on water. This was definitely the highlight of the day as each child eagerly awaited their turn in the boat. Two adults took the kids out two at a time for safety reasons and it also made it a much better lesson for them because there were fewer distractions with the one on one interaction. They each had a turn using a marked rope to sound many points on the lake and found out that our chosen lake is actually quite shallow, never getting more than 2 1/2 fathoms deep and less than 2 fathoms in most places. Fortunately it did get to 2 fathoms in some places so the kids could have a chance hollering the warning, "Mark Twain!"

While this was happening on water, the rest of us did some compass work on land.  We started with a bit of magnet review from last year and then proceeded to make our own compass using a pin and a magnet.  Sadly, either our pin was not magnetizing or there was too much motion...Our compass did not work. The ball end of the pin kept sinking and the other end of the pin wouldn't consistently point north. (And this is why I strongly dislike science, because the experiments rarely go as planned!) On a side note, my son who was home sick that day made a compass of his own using the exact same supplies inside the house and it did in fact work. I was so happy for him. (Maybe HE will like science.)

Fortunately one of the kids brought a compass from home and we were able to use that. Each child had an opportunity to carry the compass and lead the group to a given location. All this while sort of reviewing the navigational method of piloting.  Piloting comes under the unit of inquisitiveness because the explorers were inquisitive, although it could easily have been an exercise in attentiveness. The children needed to pay attention to their surroundings including any noticable rocks, trees and other things in nature as well as the position of the sun and the direction of their compass.

For extra fun we sang a couple good theme songs including "A Sailor Went to Sea" complete with partner hand clapping and then "Fire Down Below." We discussed how sailors needed to use their listening skills to navigate as well, especially in fog.   When foghorns were used, a sailor could listen for the horn and steer away from land. This led to a rousing game of foghorn where the person who is "it" gets to be the foghorn and all the other kids have to close their eyes and use only their ears to find the hornblower.

With the help of the kids, a grapefruit, a flashlight and a golf ball we finished up our lessons with a quick demonstration of the earth's rotation around the sun and subsequently the moon's rotation around the earth.

All in all it was a perfect KONOS day that exhausted us all. Or maybe that was just me who was exhausted.

Cool Apple Trick

2010-09-17T17:11:00.000-04:00

Oh! I found this neat site today while cruising blogland and a really neat way to make a sliced apple travelable (I'm pretty sure that's a word) without it turning brown.
Check out this Aussie Apple!

Cave Art

2010-09-17T12:05:00.001-04:00

My daughter and her co-op partner just finished their third week of History Of the World I from KONOS. For their art project this week they decided to create some cave art of their own. Here are their final results.

Horton Gets Dramatized

2010-09-16T20:05:00.000-04:00

To kick off our new school year we decided to start with a week of general responsibility from KONOS Volume II. At our co-op there was much discussion on responsibility with a variety of examples of responsible people. One of our students wrote three short stories and the younger students had to tell if the main character was careless or if what happened in the story was an accident. We also sang "No Man is an Island" but this particular meeting was heavy on discussion.

In order to break it up a bit and have some fun, we asked the kids to dramatize "Horton Hatches the Egg" by Dr. Seuss. It was hilarious. DH didn't know this was going to be part of our co-op day but he knew exactly which story we were doing when he saw the pictures.

I don't see how they can be called "friends" when they pick on poor Horton this way.

I love a good dramatization to lighten things up. Way to go Horton!

It's Raining It's Pouring

2010-09-13T21:13:00.000-04:00

But we aren't snoring! This summer when dh's parents first arrived we had a particularly hot day with a downpour in the afternoon. My kids immediately ran into the house and donned their swimsuits so they could run in the rain. (I don't mind if they get their clothes wet but for some reason my kids prefer not to.)

After a bit of wild running around I suggested they get their toy boats out of the sandbox and float them down the stream in our side yard. It is not a real stream. It's only there during heavy rain but it does run quite rapidly down the hill.

This is where it really got fun. They ran up and down the hill trying to get to the bottom of the stream before the boat did. Sometimes they were so excited they didn't even go all the way to the top of the stream, they just started it somewhere along the way. And most times because they were so caught up in the excitement they didn't even chance a glance to see their boat heading down river they just ran on.

Poppaw decided the stream wasn't deep enough and he helped it along a bit with a shovel. Next thing you know HE was going back and forth to the stream. Up and down the hill, fixing it here or there and saving boats that went too far and ran under the bramble at the bottom of the hill where the kids could no longer reach it.

Yeah, he was drenched too. But he didn't mind, in fact he loved every minute of playing with his grandkids.

Here's a perfect picture to prove my point. Their feet barely touched the ground during this terribly exciting event. My neighbor's boy is out there with us and as you can see he's in midair. Forgive the blurriness, they wouldn't hold their positions long enough to get clear pics.

September Edition of the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival

2010-09-13T01:45:00.002-04:00

This month I am excited about the start of the new school year and it has me thinking about field trips. I hope you don't mind that I've included photos of my recent visit to Boston, a perfect field trip location and so inspiring to those of us who love history. Welcome to the latest edition of the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival!

Melissa presents a Math Giveaway - Bragging about our math curriculum! posted at Bugs, Knights, and Turkeys In the Yard.

The USS Constitution at rest in the harbor at Charlestown. Behind her is the Bunker Hill Monument.

Lynn has some lapbooking resources to share with you in her post Lapbooks for Autumn posted at Eclectic Education.

Paul Revere's home

Angie presents Making Changes!! for our Charlotte Mason enthusiasts posted at Live, Love, Learn.

The Old North Church, still being used today and now surrounded by townhouses

Pamela presents Bricks and Brains posted at Blah, Blah, Blog. My son enjoyed this post as much as I!

Above the entrance inside the Old North Church

Dawn presents The Art of Drawing Things Apart? posted at my4sweetums. I think you'll enjoy the fun twists and turns this lesson took when the kids got hold of it.

The Robert Shaw Memorial sitting across the street from our state house. This is beautiful to look at up close with the attention to detail the artist paid. If you received the posters of artwork from Picturing America almost two years ago, this is included.

Our next contributor was kind enough to give us two submissions that are perfect for our Hands On Carnival. Melissa presents Fresco Painting and Carolina Sphinx Moth posted at In The Sparrows Nest.

I wish I had gotten a better picture but a bus got in my way. The first time the Declaration of Independence was read in Massachusetts it was on the balcony of this building you see behind the trees. It is also the site of the Boston Massacre which apparently wasn't much of a massacre at all.

Finally I am going to share my camping trip which makes a great hands on field trip!

Thanks for visiting me here at Talking to Myself. I hope you enjoyed the carnival. Next month we'll be over at Jimmie's Collage so be sure to stop on by or better yet, submit your blog post describing your latest hands-on adventure.

Submit your blog article to the next edition of Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Camping, Homeschool Style

2010-09-12T16:56:00.001-04:00

Our family recently went on a camping trip to Lake Dennison in Massachusetts with dh's parents. I planned for this trip to be loaded with nature hikes and plant and bug identifcation. I brought lots of nature identification books and our "bug bag." No, it is not a bag of bugs like the name would suggest but it is what we have termed the bag that keeps all our nature hike stuff like our bug vacuum, little clear boxes with magnifier lids, a handheld microscope and other magnifying glasses and binoculars. We did get these out and use some of the items from our bag but I was disappointed that we didn't use our nature supplies as much as I hoped, at least three times a day with children showing awe and amazement at every natural thing they could find. No, it never quite works out the way I plan. And while I usually worry that I'm not teaching my children anything on these camping trips, it only takes one neighboring camper with a passel of boys who ran and chased each other from the moment their vehicle pulled in to remind me of what our kids did learn and experience. Setting up camp in itself was a learning experience for my kids who helped from beginning to end. (Uh, not without a little grumbling of course but we're working on that.) This is not the first time we've camped, nor the first time they've had to help set up but every opportunity provides review and new lessons in the great outdoors.

They also got to ride on Poppaw's new boat which ds helped to assemble a few days earlier as a practice assembly. DMIL purchased this boat and trolling motor for DFIL as a retirement gift. They can easily pack it away in their camper and bring it on long excursions when he wouldn't want to haul the large boat behind the camper on a trailer. I think he was just delighted with the gift and Mommaw is happy for him to be able to fish whenever he wants. It's really a one person boat but it has a large weight capacity and just enough room in front for an extra small person. DD enjoyed being shuttled back from the beach in it too on our last swimming day. Here she is shoving off.

Every spare moment when an adult was available to go along or at least keep watch, the kids were swimming like fish. And this was the chance dh needed to get our youngest dd riding her two wheeler on her own. Hurray! She came home an expert.

We almost always saw my oldest with a book in her hand. It was a good opportunity to get some of her school reading done. The book she is holding is called Dear and Glorious Physician, a semi biography of Luke by Taylor Caldwell and an excellent read so says DD.

The stars were beautiful each night lending conversations about constellations and the upcoming meteor shower we were excited about. In the sky on the last night of our trip we should have been able to see 3 planets near the moon and that was to be followed by a meteor shower. Unfortunately, it was cloudy all day and night so we didn't get to see what God had aligned for us. But we did stay dry in the rain with my dh's awesome tarping.

Oh yes, and nature, we did observe lots of that too although we did not identify everything. This moth, a hemlock looper was spotted on my van door one morning. It was pretty in its own way but I was most excited for this flower identification:

The pickerelweed grows along the side of lakes and ponds and is quite beautiful in August. We had just seen a great mass of these a few days earlier in a shallow river bed (that really seemed more like a pond) when we were at the Civil War reenactment in Brimfield, MA. By the time we saw them at the campground they were almost completely out of bloom with only a few flowers remaining. Ducks love to eat the seeds from the pickerelweed which explains why we saw a duck family visit this spot quite often during our stay.

There was plenty to do while camping and although it wasn't the science field trip I had hoped it to be, it was a fine educational event for our family, full of God's surprising lessons. Now, September is the best time to camp. The weather is cool, the kids are in school so homeschoolers often get the pick of the campsites with our flexible schedules and often times the rates are cheaper because it is considered off-season. I wish we could get another trip in!

The Carnival is Coming!

2010-09-08T06:23:00.000-04:00

The blog carnival is coming, the blog carnival is coming! Can you imagine Paul Revere running through the streets shouting that? Ok well we all kow he didn't really run through the streets shouting anything. We all know that but our trolley tour guide we had in Boston a couple weeks ago, he still tells people that. And that wasn't the only thing he got wrong either and I never would have known it if I wasn't a homeschool mom, digging for the truth hidden inside every dusty book.

But so, the blog carnival reminder popped up at me today to remind me that I am supposed to be getting this thing together and I got a little excited. I know, I've been MIA all summer. Even Jimmie had to send me an email to wake me up when she was getting entries a month early. (She'll be hosting next month and I hadn't updated the upcoming carnival hosts to show who would be hosting September so everything automatically went to her.) So yes. I let things go over the summer. I can't be the ONLY person who has ever done that! BUT it's September now, I'm all into school again and I can't wait to see what everybody is up to.

See you all real soon!

Time for a Haircut

2010-09-07T23:41:00.000-04:00

My dd has been growing her hair forever. Nothing more than a trim from mom once a year or maybe twice was all she's had since she was about 4 or 5. So it's long but it grows SO slowly that she never wants to do anything major to it. She loves the length of it and I do too so I understand.

You probably want to tell me that trimming the ends will help the hair grow faster. I know. In fact that is exactly what I would tell my daughter whenever I wanted to trim her hair. I told her so much in fact that the day she decided to let her bangs grow out (second grade) she came home with the shortest bangs I ever saw. So yeah, I guess I told her too much how well your hair grows when you cut it.

Anyway, she finally decided to get it cut by a professional. And it came out beautifully. We were both afraid and didn't want her to cut too much off. But yet she was hoping for some dramatic change. I'm not sure how you can have a dramatic change without cutting a whole lot off, or dying it or perming it or something crazy. Dramatic or not though, it did come out very nice.

She had a little bit more a bang cut into it, the back rounded off, some LONG layers put in and about six inches cut off the longest parts. The hairdresser said she couldn't bring the layers up too much or the bottom would look too thin. It is much healthier now and rounds out so nicely whereas before the bottom had gotton uneven and she had a lot of dry ends.

Thinking Over the First Day Back to School

2010-09-07T07:00:00.002-04:00

Monday was our first day back to school. It went pretty well. A few adjustments could be made but all in all I was very happy. These year I scheduled in a half hour recess for my young ones. It's so public schooly! But I thought, what the heck. That's one of the things kids love about public school so why not let them have it? And I admit it did make for a nice break at 11:30 when they were already getting ancy.

My eldest dd was the only one who thought today did not go so well. The funny thing is, she has been doing school work for a couple weeks now in a loose sort of way and has been managing fine. But because I scheduled the day or perhaps didn't schedule enough of her day, I'm not sure which, I fouled her all up. Really what I did was I left her morning open for her own design and I inserted myself in at 11am to help her with math and anything else she might need direction with. She didn't have enough time and she used all her morning hours for reading when she should have kept much of that for after school homework type stuff.

She is looking forward to a bright new start Tuesday and we have added some definition to her schedule to give her a bit of direction. She will do her Bible, French and science in the morning followed by math (as much as she can) before I join her at 11am to help with trouble areas in whatever subject she wishes. She'll do her KONOS subjects in the afternoon. I hope it works better for her so she has a better schoolday.

My little baby is all grown up doing her own thing in high school now. She even moved out of her school bucket and had to set up a full shelf of her own this year.

Everything does look all neat and tidy in our little room though. New beginnings are so refreshing.

Our Summer VBS

2010-09-06T22:30:00.001-04:00

I know, we're all getting started with the new school year and here I am posting about Vacation Bible School. I'm sure we're all VBS'ed out but if you are a VBS coordinator you are probably looking into your curriculum for next year. Or at least you should be!! Yikes I had no idea we should have started so early! We didn't start planning this until MAY!

This was our church's first full-out Vacation Bible School and I was excited to put it together with a couple of other ladies. At the time I was going to post an in-depth blog post on the ins and outs of planning a VBS but time got away and here I am in September. So I think I'm just going to give an abbreviated version of what I had in mind and share lots of pics.

This lovely lady seated to your left was our indispensable, extremely talented artist who painted her heart out to get the decorations just right and create a rockin' atmosphere. And a rockin' atmosphere is just what you need when you are going Backstage with the Bible, we chose curriculum put out by The Go Fish Guys.

With the concert theme in mind we set up our check in station to make the kids feel like they were waiting in line at a concert. They needed their tickets and backstage passes ready before being escorted to their seats. While waiting they could have their pictures taken. Kentucky Fried Chicken was kind enough to donate the buckets that we used to make colored "lights." And our artist did up the portraits for the kids to stand behind. (I know, it's weird me mentioning the Kentucky Fried chicken buckets when so many people donated to help us out but it's just that I think they came out so cool!)

We opened with a concert each night complete with strobe lights and music and dancing. Three kids from our youth group volunteered ahead of time to lead the kids and be our dancers and they really helped to get the kids involved and having fun. Each night after the concert they also put on a humorous skit that introduced the night's lesson focus. Something that has been lacking in VBS's lately has been the use of the Bible. I think it may be that churches are trying to make VBS more easily accessible to the unchurched and I credit them for that however we need to find a way to keep the Bible in Vacation Bible School while making it a welcoming environment to those who don't have one. This VBS program was big on that aspect of it and I think that's what drew me to it in the frst place. Each child needed to have a Bible to get backstage and into the classes. The way we made this possible for guests and those kids who didn't have a Bible was by giving Bibles away. I believe each night we gave away at least one Bible and a couple nights three. It was a small group so that's pretty good. But even though it was small we had one to four guests each night. It was such an awesome feeling to put a Bible into those kids' hands.

And we didn't waste any time befoer the everyone was leafing through the pages, hunting for a requested verse. In the classes every night they worked on a new memory verse and were often asked to look things up. I had the pleasure of showing several new visitors how to find things in their new Bible. And yes, I admit, they had the pleasure of receiving candy and prizes all along the way.

Their evenings were filled with crafts, snacks, Bible lessons and games.

As I look at this picture of our pastor's wife (the blond on your right, facing us) I am reminded that we had VBS in July. Early July. And she was PREGNANT! But she didn't know it yet. And neither did we. But we know it now. Yippie yay!!!! Yippie yay!!!!! She's actually three months pregnant now and they only just made the announcement in church this Sunday. I cannot believe how well they kept this secret because you KNOW every Momma in the congregation wouldn't leave them alone about when they were going to have a baby. We've been gently nagging them for at least the two years they have been with us. And now here they are pregnant and we are all so very happy! But I digress...

For adults and kids, Backstage with the Bible was a very fun VBS. Go Fish is putting out a new package with new songs er should I say old songs for next summer... It's called Kickin' It Old School. Watch the trailer here.

Oh and here's the other lady who put this thing together with me. She's on the left, also very talented and very fun. And the gal on the right is my good friend and supporter and fellow KONOS homeschooler.

So, even if you're not in the mood to think about VBS right now, you should at least consider which curriculum you are going to be using next summer and have it purchased this fall. Then you can start planning it out in January and not be rushed to get it all together like we did.

Stuff to Say

2010-08-15T23:23:00.000-04:00

I've been talking to myself quite regularly lately. Unfortunately it hasn't been publicly. But really I do have stuff to say, just not enough time to say it in. Here's what's coming up at Talking to Myself:

camping trip to Lake Dennison
remodel - our family comverts an office to a bedroom
Civil War reenactment
DH gets stitches and has a birthday
VBS - maybe...
more school prep stuff
nature

Yeah, hopefully I'll get to all those things. Most of them require picture downloads and that takes time. Right now I'm either climbing Mt. Washmore and getting the house back in order from our camping trip or spending my time with DH's parents who are here visiting for an extended stay. Perhaps if I list the things I've been meaning to blog about here, I won't forget all the things I've been thinking about blogging about.

See you soon!

New Hands On Carnival is Up!

2010-08-09T09:47:00.003-04:00

The latest edition of the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival has been hosted and posted by Kris over at Science of Relations. You have got to see Kris's introductory video clip. It's so cool.

Resource of the Day

2010-08-03T15:13:00.000-04:00

I found this website while searching for recipes from the 1500's Spain. Can you imagine? A food timeline! How wonderful!

http://www.foodtimeline.org/

Teaching Methods Do Make a Difference

2010-08-03T15:06:00.002-04:00

Today I wanted to spotlight an article that Wade Hulcy forwarded to the KONOS Yahoo group written by his dear wife, Jessica. I've also included a button to take you over to the KONOS website in case you want to check out the curriculum. Enjoy!

Units: Teaching Methods DO Make a Difference

By Jessica Hulcy

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the brain at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Home schooling moms not only qualify for "first rate intelligence," but they could probably run IBM on the backstroke. In the morning, moms juggle a myriad of subjects and age levels as math, reading, and language arts are taught. However, in the afternoon, unit studies allow moms to stop juggling as the entire family gets together on the same page, on the same topic.

Units Integrate Subjects for Understanding

My mouth begins to salivate at the smell of chocolate, the sight of gorgeous wallpaper, and the thought of a tightly- woven unit. Studying a unit on attentiveness means studying a people whose very lives depended on being attentive: American Indians. Using a United States map, children draw in the varying regions where the differing groups of Indians lived. This forces the children to actually practice the main topic of the unit, attentiveness, as they are attentive to the distinctives of the different Indian groups.

Children build a fire without matches, cook and eat pemmican balls, read "Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and The Trail of Tears by John Ross, construct a travois for their dog to pull, learn sign language, dance Indian dances, sand paint, throw a clay pot, carve a totem pole, research Geronimo and Chief Joseph, and finally, write a paper comparing how the Plains Indians depended entirely on the buffalo while the Northwest Indians depended entirely on the cedar tree for their existence. Geography, poetry, literature, art, dance, cooking, construction, research, and writing are all used to study one topic.

By using all subjects to point back to a topic, the topic is reinforced over and over. By using all senses to experience a topic, the topic is reinforced again and again. Repetition builds retention. It also creates the big picture memory file for topics, thus giving students fuller understanding of the topic they studied.

Units Challenge Students at Their Own Level

A great Bible teacher, Henrietta Mears, once said, "God put the wiggle in children. Don't you dare try to take it out." As mother of four boys, that statement was a great relief to me. I could use the wiggle for my boys to learn instead of tying them to the chair. We could all sit round the kitchen table and talk about the seasons while we are studying a unit on orderliness.

However, talk is cheap. Much more memorable is to ask one child to dress for winter, another to dress for summer, and others to dress for fall and spring. The winter dresser wears snow suit, muffler, cap and mittens, ice skates and holds a cup of hot chocolate, while the summer dresser dons bathing suit, flip flops, sun glasses, beach towel and ball, and holds a glass of iced lemonade. Getting children up and out of their chairs capitalizes on, rather than fights against the springs in young children's bottoms.

Most parents see the clear benefits of doing activities. They realize no one learns computer skills without using the computer. However, parents are concerned that each child be challenged to his level. A single activity serves as the starting point, the vehicle for challenging each child to his personal level. The activity is like a bus ride, with each child getting off at a different stop.

In an attentiveness unit, ears and eyes, Helen Keller and Louis Braille, sound and music, and many more subjects are studied. A great activity is to dissect a cow's eyeball. The younger child simply dissects the eyeball and names the parts. The middle child dissects, names the parts, draws the parts and takes apart a discarded camera with his older brother. The oldest does everything the younger children did, but goes one step further by writing a paper comparing how the eye and the camera work. The starting point for each child is a single activity, yet each child is challenged to his own level, getting off the bus at his own stop.

Units allow families to study the same topics, doing many activities together, but each child is challenged at his own level.

Discovery Learning Creates Thinkers

Discovery learning is more than activities. It is activities plus kids thinking and kids testing what they think.

When classifying rocks in the orderliness unit, traditional teachers hold up a piece of feldspar, ask the child to repeat the name, then test to see if the child remembered. Much better is to give the child a canvas bag, hammer, chisel and goggles, and then turn him loose to collect, test, and identify his own rocks.

Discovery allows children to figure things out for themselves, practicing the process of thinking. Teaching children the way God designed them, full of motion, while urging them to think and test what they think yields wiggly thinkers.

Units Build Relationships and Families

Having birthed four wiggly thinkers, I teach units in self-defense. It is necessary for me to teach all that I can to as many as I can at the same time to keep from being institutionalized.

Besides preserving my sanity, units allow our whole family to learn together. Textbook-based education separates us, even when more innovative resources such as videos and computer software are used. Picture three children using traditional curricula. While one child is watching a biology video in the living room, another is writing a "weather" paper in the kitchen, and still another is reading about rocks in his room. Talk about a fragmented family - different rooms and different subjects!

Bible, science, history, literature, art, and music can be rolled together in multi-level units allowing families to actually come back to the same room and study the same topic. Units allow older children to read to younger children, to set up activities for younger children, and to teach younger children. This is great parental training for the older child and builds togetherness in the family.

There is a real temptation in the homeschooling movement to adopt classroom teaching methods using only workbook and textbook, tell-and-regurgitate teaching methods. Certainly, parents can point to stacks of filled-in workbook pages, but the real question is, "Did the child understand what he wrote, does he know in his mind what he studied, and can he apply it to real life?"

Units offer retention of material covered, challenge to individual potential and room to think for oneself. Not only can a mother stay sane, but she can also enjoy her afternoons with her family all on the same subject, all in the same room.
Do units make a difference in the long run?

Two years ago on my way to speak in North Carolina, I was stalled out due to bad weather for 7 hours at Chicago O'Hare airport. A young 22-year-old girl next to me was talking on her cell phone apparently having some family issues. I thought, "This is why God has me here. I will need to minister to this young girl." And, after she got off the phone, that is exactly what happened for the next hour. But then came a surprise; the conversation turned to me. "Why are you going to North Carolina?" she asked. I told her I had written a homeschool curriculum and I spoke on hands-on methods. "Really! I homeschooled. What is your curriculum?" When I answered, "KONOS," she screamed, "I did KONOS and loved it!" For several hours I listened to everything she had done in elementary school, how her mom had tweaked and personalized the KONOS activities making them their own experiences. As we finally boarded the plane and I said good-bye to the young girl, I was affirmed in what I already knew...it does make a difference not only in WHAT you teach your children, but also in HOW you teach your children.

Sanity Sessions

2010-08-02T14:55:00.000-04:00

When I first started homeschooling the support group that I joined was holding regular sanity sessions. These were basically moms only events held in the evening once or twice a month. At the time they were being held at a local restaurant but then they began rotating at people's houses and eventually I held one in my own home.

I loved these events and gradually they were at my house more and more. It became known that sanities (as we called them) were here once a month and usually on a particular day each month so it would be easy for everyone to remember. We had a regular crowd and then a few new people would come now and again. It was a fun way for moms new to homeschooling to meet other moms and glean wisdom from those with experience. Our conversations ran from the hilarious to the uncomprehendably sad, from curriculum to potty training, from breast feeding to childbirth, from silly stories from our childhood to heartbreaking miscarriages.

When our homeschool group split, I continued to host sanity sessions to all who needed a night out. They became open to any homeschooler or friend regardless of support group affiliation. But families moved, moms got jobs and lifestyles changed due to graduating homeschoolers. Our numbers were sometimes small but we still had fun and meaningful conversations. Sometimes when there were only a few of us we'd sit to watch an episode of Glenn Beck or we'd play a board game.

Now because of the various directions everyone has gone I have a hard time keeping everyone informed of the dates and times of upcoming sanity sessions (it seemed like there was no longer a good day of the week for the majority) and I stopped having them several months ago. But I miss them. I miss the conversation. I miss meeting new homeschoolers. I miss seeing the ladies that used to be around me all the time either on field trips, at sanity or doing co-ops together.

I write this for two reasons.
1. No matter where you live, if you are part of a homeschool group that has opportunites to get together with other moms (without the kids) I want to encourage you to join in. You will meet wonderful friends, some will become lifelong friends and you will gain encouragement in difficult times. And if you think you don't need encouragement, maybe you're thinking everything's going fine for you and you don't have time for such frivolity, you might consider how someone else needs you. I entreat you to put the date on your calendar, make it a priority and GO.
2. I have added a section in the sidebar where I will post upcoming sanity sessions for homeschoolers in the area. Sanity sessions are like open houses. You don't need an invitation you just need to know it's here.

Preparing Your Hands-On Classroom

2010-08-01T15:33:00.000-04:00

Are you excited? Are you ready? Only one month left! For many of us school will begin in September and we use this month of August to prepare ourselves by lesson planning, organizing and purchasing supplies. Due to some renovations we are making, I had the pleasure of getting started a bit early. Our playroom/schoolroom has been changed into an office/schoolroom. All the toys have been moved to the basement and my entire office has been squeezed into a corner of the now schoolroom. I've organized most of our school supplies so I thought it would be a great time to share with you what we use and how I've managed to store it all in a small space.

Our math bucket now has a proper shelf alongside a few smaller hands-on buckets. Here we keep our pattern blocks, peg board and pegs and soft math puzzles. This will probably be our last year with the soft math puzzles. I think my youngest is done with them but I didn't have the heart to get rid of them yet. I might find a few more ways to incorporate them at the next level.

In our large math bucket I keep a few living math books, wrap-ups, flashcards, big dice, small dice, math games, base ten blocks, a stopwatch, compass and protractor, and assorted math manipulatives like play money, fraction circles and measurement rings put out by Learning Resources. Each year I've tried to add new items to this bucket. I don't have anything new this year but I do have a couple games in the basement that I think I'll move up to this shelf. One in particular, Money Money will be helpful to my youngest daughter.

Although the contents of the bucket are used pretty regularly during lessons, I try to make sure the kids have a once a week time slot to just go digging through that bucket for free exploration. Last year my 7yo son almost always chose the pattern blocks or the pizza fraction game while my daughter pulled out the cash register.

The remaining hands-on supplies are stored in or on top of our craft cabinet. These kind of supplies can be messy so I like to keep them in a cabinet with doors! You would not believe how much stuff you can fit into one of these cabinets from Wal-Mart. This isn't the little one that you see at the store. Although I did buy this a the store many years ago, it's harder to find now and can more often be found online. It measures 72"H x 30"W x 15"D. On top of the cabinet, which you can't see here in this picture, I keep our microscope and our science bucket filled with beakers, test tubes, magnets, disection kit, small science experiment kits, PH test kits, slides, owl pellets, thermometers and more.

I'm not sure I can list everything that's inside the cabinet nor do I think you want to read an exhaustive list but I can tell you some of the more interesting or important items I like to keep on hand or at least the things you can't see as clearly in the photo.

On the top shelf I usually store recycled items from my kitchen like bottles, small paper bags, styrofoam and tubes from the plastic wrap. The tube inside the Stretch Tite box is awesome for crafts and much firmer than the paper towel tube or the tin foil tube. (And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that it is by far THE best plastic wrap on the market.) Before I throw away or give away any decorating item I always consider whether my kids could use it in a project first. Artificial flowers and greenery come in very handy in dioramas and bringing to life an academic fair project, wall paper samples make nice book covers on home made books and old candles can be melted down and recreated.

Going down the shelves on the right side I keep old tablecloths, smocks and protective materials. I use those $1 pencil boxes to keep small items like crayons, markers, small kits and OH pencils of course. Klutz kits, drawing pads and craft and artist books are kept on the next shelf while the bottom shelf holds buckets and cookie cans of buttons, tissue paper, spools of thread and feathers. Doesn't everyone need a bucket of feathers in case of emergencies?

The top two shelves on the left are comprised of paint supplies including sponges, fabric paint, stencils and an assortment of different types of paint of course. Nothing exciting there but we couldn't do school without it. Now the second shelf up on the left is an interesting one to me. It seems like everything on this shelf has an odd name. Here we have Plox, chenille stems in assorted colors and levels of fuzziness, Floam, and Wikki Stix. On the bottom left shelf I keep beads, tongue depressors and shredded paper and tinsel type stuff which was very useful in last year's dioramas too.

I love buckets with lids for storage. You can put all different odds and ends inside them and stack them up. Whenever I get rid of something from a bucket it almost immediately finds a new use in my home. If you came for a visit you would surely find more buckets and kits and games either in the school room or down in the basement but I think this has been a good start. And if you are hands-on challenged, I hope you have collected a few ideas here. Or perhaps if nothing else, I've just reminded you that you need to hurry and buy some glue and crayons now while the stores are practically giving it away.

Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival Guidelines

2010-08-01T00:10:00.000-04:00

I have really enjoyed the entries to the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival thus far. I have received a plethora of ideas and inspiration for my own homeschooling and I hope you have as well. The reason Kris and I started this carnival was simple. We found many resources in Blogland for the other areas of our homeschooling… book lists, nature studies, worksheets, lapbooking ideas… but very few resources and not a single carnival dedicated to actual hands-on activities.

This carnival is all about homeschoolers. All entries must be made by homeschoolers sharing their experiences with hands-on activities in their own "classrooms." It is an opportunity to step away from the books, flashcards and worksheets and dive into the unusual. We’d like to keep this carnival very specific to hands-on projects and not take away from the other wonderful carnivals that are already available.

Please consider your entry. Are you blogging about something that you have already done with your children? Does your entry reflect an activity that requires kinesthetic learning? If you answered "yes" to these questions then we want your article! I appreciate all the blogs out there that are full of valuable wisdom and advice for homeschoolers, parents and kids, I visit them often, however this is not the carnival for you if your entry comes from an advice-giving viewpoint.
A note on lapbooking. I love lapbooks! And I am so thankful that I can find lots of lapbooking examples online. If you have a lapbook you’d like to share with the Hands On Community, please make sure that it requires your children to do some hands-on work aside from the usual reading, writing, coloring or cutting in the process of making it or using it. Entries that focus on that one hands-on part of the lapbook are especially appreciated!

If you have a blog entry that you would like to submit to the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival click here to go to our carnival submissions page.

This page may be updated from time to time as needed.
Last updated: July 31, 2010

Boycott Home Depot

2010-07-23T19:19:00.000-04:00

There are times you just have to stand on principle and boycotting is a fairly easy way to do it. Well sometimes. I'm about to do some renovations in my home so this one will be uncomfortable for me. I am joining the American Family Association in their boycott of Home Depot.

Please visit http://www.boycottthehomedepot.com/ to find out how you can make a stand that will make a difference. Home Depot has been a part of these events for years. My only regret is that I didn't know about this sooner.

In the Garden

2010-07-17T22:17:00.000-04:00

DH loves to take photos of the flowers when they are in bloom. Here is a recent picture of my Japanese Iris which is no longer in bloom:

And an orange day lily, I have only one of these left blooming in the side yard.

Slip Slidin' Away!

2010-07-13T15:59:00.001-04:00

We took the Slip 'n Slide out last week and it provided hours of fun! Here are a few shots of the kids sliding away.

They especially loved the pool of water wating for them at the bottom of the slide.

The Latest Hands On Carnival

2010-07-12T19:31:00.004-04:00

The newest edition of the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival is up over at the Holistic Homeschooler. Go enjoy some ideas for getting your new school year going.