Back to Home School Fun

We officially started our 2013-2014 school year yesterday.  What a big girl!  She's been so excited to finally start kindergarten.  There's not a huge difference in our routine from over the summer, except that we've added history, science, art/music, and PE, but we won't necessarily be doing all those every single day.  So far, it's been going well.  We're following the Easy Peasy curriculum still, which we both enjoy.  Ms Z is doing the "Getting Ready 2" program for language arts/reading (their version of Kindergarten following the McGuffey Primer), 1st grade math, and the Year 1 elementary level program of study. Click the link above to get most of your questions answered.  We'll be learning about the Egyptians for History and making connections in the Bible.  Today we read about Joseph and Mary escaping Herod with Jesus to Egypt and made a pyramid and learned what they were for. We also talked about why the Egyptians would set up a civilization on the Nile River.  We're building a lapbook as we learn more.  For Science we're studying many things.  Today we learned about what organisms need to live and learned to distinguish between living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) things.  We did a little observation game where we gathered several objects, both living and non-living (and previously living) and picked them from the bag.  About halfway through the game, we really got the idea of what was living (or had been living) and what was non-living.  For the purpose of our discussion, we considered something made from wood as non-living, even though it was previously a tree.  Here are our results. The non-living objects were a screw, a nail, some crayons, a clothespin, a block, and some rocks.  The living objects were some grapes, a carrot, some leaves, some flowers, and an avocado.  I considered putting a bug in the bag, but I wouldn't want to pick that up blind, so decided against it. ;)

  

 Some of the words in the online text are a little advanced for kindergarten, but I explain them on her level.  Even if the kids don't understand everything, frequent exposure to new words and vocabulary and an inviting conversation and relationship helps them learn a lot.  In math, she's been learning even/odd, skip counting by 2s, learning to write number words, and ordinal words (like first, second, third).  We were doing some school work through the summer and she's really been enjoying math, so we're a bit ahead in that area.  The music and art subjects are nice.  Yesterday, we explored some of the "first music"--nature-- and got to use a program to make our own music compositions from animal sounds, nature sounds, instruments, and everyday sounds.  We've done a bit of ballet each day, too.  It's been fun and instructive and is good exercise, so we'll see how it continues for us.  The girls usually stick around through the stretches and plies, then come back for some of the jumps.  It's cute and I get a nice exercise. ;)

Calendar Time

Since we're starting up our new year next month, I decided it would be a good idea to start having calendar time.  Or at least preparing for it.  I searched for the perfect printable, but just couldn't find exactly what I wanted.  Of course that means I had to make my own! ;)  Feel free to use mine and edit it or share it around but please don't post my work on your blog.  Make a link to my page, please.  And sorry.  I'd planned to upload the documents to google drive, but it changed my formatting.  I'll work on that and see if I can upload it later.

The plan with the calendar is to color in or trace name of the month and year on the first class day of the month and color or trace the date number each day.  I also want to talk about exciting things happening that week or month and put some sort of marker or sticker on the date we're looking forward to.  For example, when the kids get to visit grandparents we'll put a special mark.  When we're planning a field trip, we'll have a different mark.  I'm hoping this will help develop an understanding of time passing.

The plan with the weather graph is to check the weather each day.  We'll keep track of the weather patterns for each month and begin an understanding of making graphs.  Look there!  That's math AND science.  I'll let you know in a few weeks how it's going!

I love homeschooling!

What are you doing to prepare for "Back to School" time?

Pioneer Day Celebration

Our co-op got together today to celebrate the pioneers.  For those who don't know, July 24th is Pioneer Day.  It celebrates the day the first group of Latter-Day Saint pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley in Utah in 1847.  In Utah, it is a HUGE celebration, perhaps rivaling Independence Day celebrations.  But around here in Missouri, it's only observed by the few LDS who make a point to celebrate it.  

The kids posed for a picture at our Pioneer Day picnic.

We didn't do anything huge, but we wanted to introduce the children to some of our history.  Mostly we sang pioneer songs, like "Pioneer Children" and played some pioneer-style games, like "tug of war" and "jumping rope."  We also enjoyed some really tasty foods the pioneers had eaten.  We had potato cakes with ketchup and Swiss Apple-Cherry pie.  Yum!  You can find the recipes for them here, if you want to try for yourself.  Another friend made up a recipe she found in Nauvoo for Haymaker's Switchel, a pioneer version of Gatorade.  Apparently, when the pioneers would go work in the field they would take some of this drink to stay hydrated.  I agree it would do the job!  It was a sort of ginger root tea flavored with molasses, lemon juice, and vinegar.  Two out of my three girls slurped it down.  And I thought it was pretty good, too.  A bit like a "real" ginger ale. 

I tried to make some ice cream by following this recipe, but the bag started to leak and we just poured the cold and sweetened half and half over our pie. :)  That'll teach me to try things out BEFORE showing them to the kids!  They were so excited about my promised ice cream that we had to have a cone when we got back from the park.  We spent the rest of our morning chatting and playing in the park.  It was such a gorgeous day we couldn't let it go to waste!

Coming soon: NOT Back to School Party!  What would you do to celebrate homeschooling?

My girls playing while waiting for our friends.

Digging at the Dinosaur Museum!

We visited the Missouri Institute of Natural Science Tuesday and got to dig for fossils!  Real ones! We started out in the museum and looked at our favorite exhibits again.  Then moved to the ice block table.  Dinosaurs were frozen in a big chunk of ice and the children learned how researchers have to slowly removing rock or ice or dirt from fossils so they can be removed in one piece.  They showed this by allowing the children to put warm water one drop at a time on the dinosaur toys until they FINALLY came out.  Some kids didn't even get one out in their time.  Sometimes researchers have to pass on the responsibility, too.  Good lesson here.

Next, the researchers showed us some real fossils that are found in Missouri.  These are called crinoids.  They told us that crinoids are underwater animals that look like plants, much like coral.  The segments we find are the stalk of the plant-like animal.  Click here to learn more about the crinoid.  Then we went for a short walk up the hill to find our own crinoids.  Can you see them here?  The black arrows are pointing at the donut shaped crinoid fossils in the rock.  This is evidence that Missouri used to be underwater!

Next, we set to work.  Here's my little paleontologist on the hunt for her own crinoid fossils.  We got quite a good collection.  We even found a rock that looks a lot like a seashell.

Kids on the fossil rock at the "Dino Museum."

Wandering around after our "dig."

 After we found our fossils we took a look around at what activities the library had for us.  Ms K really enjoyed the Alphabet dig.  She found quite a few letters!

Ms Z made a rubbing of a leaf that looked a lot like how fossil would look.  All the kids enjoyed reading some dinosaur and ice age related books, making their own stegosaurus with a model and clothespins, and playing with clay and models to make foot prints and impressions just like fossils.  We had a great time and learned so much!  What fun things are you up to lately?

Field Trip Shirts and ID cards

Thursday is our co-op day.  Since it's summer time, we expect to do even more field trips. One day on a field trip this year, it occurred to me I couldn't remember exactly what my children were wearing.  What if they got lost?!  It was a pretty busy day at the zoo that day and completely possible, but a lot of the children there were in large school groups with matching shirts.  So I've been thinking on this idea for some time.  If we had matching shirts, I could easily see my kids from a distance and could describe what they were wearing if we still managed to be separated.  My sister-in-law has a cutting machine so we designed our school shirts, cut out the stencils, and painted the shirts.  The kids had a nice time finger painting, too.  Ms A wasn't in to it and I was, frankly, afraid to let Ms K have a try.  But Ms Z enjoyed exploring paint possibilities.  We just used the craft paint since we had quite a stash to explore with.  And it washed off their hands easily.

 I think the shirts turned out nicely.  Each kid has the same front.  The back has their initial pretty large on the back and their hand prints, for those who didn't mind touching the paint. I look forward to calling to the kids "Put on your field trip shirts!" and seeing the look of wonder at what adventures we would go on today. :)  Bonus:  I bought 5 shirts for about $8 and only used 3.  I already had the paint and my sister-in-law already had her cutter and paper.  That means this craft cost me about $2 per shirt and I have 2 extras!  Whoot!

Said sister-in-law also has Adobe Photoshop, so we designed some pretty swanky ID cards.  The QR code goes straight to our website, in case there's ever question about the validity of our school, and it lends a certain professionalism to them, I think. We'll update cards and photos each year, probably in the summer so there's little rush and excellent opportunities. Feel free to copy our design.  The black bars are for privacy of our information.  We had such a tough time finding a free download for a Photoshop compatible template that we designed our own.  We had to leave her house before we could finish making a generic template, but once we can, I'll post it here for anyone else who wants one with all the layers editable. We plan to order these cards as photo prints and laminate them for protection.   In case you don't know, ID cards are great for getting discounts at museums, movie theaters, and more.  If you bring in your report cards, many companies offer free or discounted items for As each semester/term.  The cards serve as identification for obtaining your own library card.  There are probably other advantages to making your own identification cards for your homeschool, but these are a few that come to mind. Bonus:  I ordered these from Walgreens for about 21 cents each!  Extra whoot! What do you think? Do you have "official" t-shirts or ID cards?

Happy Father's Day!

We sure love our Daddy!  The Boy Scout is quite a man.  He works so hard at work then comes home and takes care of things around here, too.  He is so supportive of my work in midwifery. It's my passion and he has so much patience for the strange hours required.  He loves to play with the girls.  They are his biggest fans.  Many times he has commented how he feels like a rock star when he comes home.  "Daddy!" is the battle cry while the mobs charge forth to hug him. He is one fantastic cook!  There are a few things he makes extremely well.  We call him the "Master of Leftover Masterpieces."  I like to cook so that we have leftovers and he makes them over into something completely different and wonderful.  For these and many more reasons we wanted to do something special for him, so we went to the park on a gorgeous day with a good friend and my sister-in-law, a very talented amateur photographer.  The kids had a lovely time and we caught some great photos.  And these were just taken on a camera phone!  Can you believe it?!  Anyway, she did great.  Then we asked the girls questions about "Daddy" and added them to the collage.  Round it out with chocolate candies and breakfast in bed and he thought this was quite a wonderful morning. :)  

Bonus: Walgreens was running a free 8x10 collage print! I should have shared that with you all, but I blanked out, so apologies!  But I totally took advantage of that and also made a smaller collage of all of us that he could keep in his wallet.

Kids and cameras

Ever wonder what happens if you hand your kids a camera and let them have a great time? Well, I'll tell you. You end up with 128 pictures.  Of those, 68 were either completely black or so out of focus you couldn't tell what you were supposed to see.  Bu the others came out something like this.

You can probably tell who took most of the pictures since you can see who's in most of the pictures. ;)  But I think they turned out nicely.  Except it makes parts of my house look like an episode of hoarders. Eeek! I have very little excuse, except that at this time, my bathroom is under renovation so the rest of the house is messier to compensate for everything being torn out of there. Anyway, they had a wonderful time and I now have documentation of it! :D 

But now I'm intrigued about a new-to-me photo editing site, my friend and sister-in-law from Ozark Mama Reviews  told me about.  Maybe I can make these even better!  Let's see.

I'm new at this, so I'm sure with practice it will get better, but I think this is an improvement.  How fun for us!   I need to print this and save it for the future.  I think they'll cherish it as much as I do now. And boy, I really need to learn how to make a fuzzy picture look less fuzzy.  Or maybe teach my kids to stand still when they click a picture.  Either one. ;)

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the editing you can do with this website.  Many tools are free and some require an upgrade at a reasonable fee. Can't beat that, right?

Be sure to enter my rafflecopter giveaway going on right now!

Zoo day!

Usually we go to the zoo with at least 5 other families.  While that is fun, there's usually an agenda to follow and we always feel rushed.  Today we got to do and see exactly what we wanted.  Of course for my little loves that meant we had to start at the park. :)  And for little Ms K, this was her first time walking around a public place, so that was to be celebrated.  We soon made a beeline all the way to the back of the zoo where the elephants live.  How fun! She was plucking bits of grass from the ground with her trunk and eating it.  It was fascinating to watch.  Then the big girls saw the elephant statue around the corner and made a run for it.  We're busy around here.  Can you tell?

 Next we strolled around the zoo, completely at random and met some new and old friends.  We are major flamingo fans around here, so they were a requirement.  We found this strange reptile called the Mali Uromastyx.  That's one strange looking lizard.  It's got what looks like armor plating on its tail. The black bears (they look brown to me, but whatever) were taking a break from their semi-hibernation to enjoy the sunshine and they came right up to the glass/fence.  It was great.  This little guy seemed to be chomping on grass, too.  To each his own.  Almost at the last moment we went to see the giant tortoises.  And they're huge.  The tortoise in this picture was one of the "babies" and it must've weighed over 100 lbs.  The older two are about 100 years old.  I'd have to check my facts on that, but it's what I remember from previous visits.  It was such a nice day to be at the zoo.  A little cooler and windy, but so bright and sunny and just a perfect zoo walk day.

Last, but most certainly not least, were the SKUNK MONKIES!!!  And, yes, that exactly how it is said and spelled.  They're actually black and white Colobus monkeys, but my nephew dubbed them "skunk monkies" at our last visit and that is what they will always be called.  You can see why they would say that, I'm sure.  These guys are usually quite expressive and playful.  In fact, my niece played a game of "Monkey See, Monkey Do" with them a year or so ago.  Today, they looked a bit sad. Maybe they weren't happy about being separated.  Two were in the yard and the one my girls call the "Mama Skunk Monkey" was in the inside playhouse, apparently locked in.

Of course there were other animals.  These were just our favorites and what I managed to remember to snap a photo of.  I'm kicking myself over the hippopotamus.  Nearly every time we go to the zoo, he is sleeping in his water hole or inside with the staff.  Today, he was having a nap in the mud early in our visit.  When we made our loop around, he was swimming laps, making snorting sounds when he came up for air, and even gave us a sort of roar.  It was so fun.  Ms. K tried to jump the fence to get to him because she was so excited about him.  Each time he would come to the surface, he would wiggle his ears.  I think I enjoyed that more than the kids.  And enjoying life like a child is important.

I love the freedom of homeschooling.  We didn't make a plan for this field trip.  We didn't have to send permission slips to parents.  We didn't have to re-schedule for weather.  We just completed our morning school work and chores and left.  And we had a great time!  I hope we can enjoy more of this during the summer.

Progress and a Lesson On Being an Example

I'm really not going to blog every day about homeschooling.  Keeping track of it on my free tracker program is enough for me, but I like to preserve my pictures when I remember to take them.  I know the lighting is awful and the pictures were taken on my camera phone, so the quality is not great. But I have documented my work, so there!

Ms A is learning about the letter C, the sound it makes, and so on, so today, we made this paper bag cat craft. I already had white paper bags and the girls insisted on their cats being white. OK.  No problem. Print off the templates, let the girls color, and away we go. Ms. A named her cat "Abby" and insisted he was a boy.  Great job, kiddo.  Ms. Z named her cat "Belle."  That's what she names nearly every female animal right now.  That's cool.  She likes the name.  And may I take a moment to brag?  Yeah, she's totally reading her McGuffey Primer stories so well!  She needs a little encouragement at times, but she's doing great.  And I don't mean that in the "my kid is SO above average and I'm going to rub it in your face" sort of way. She's having a good time and she's excited to learn.  She definitely has problems with certain letter combinations and sight words are not really her thing, especially when they try and change things up like "cat" and "cap." But a month ago, she couldn't read for real.  She would memorize stories, which is still a great step in learning, and she would pretend to read scriptures (like she's doing right now), but she wasn't actually reading words.  Please excuse the spilled over laundry basket in the background.  My kids were making memories before I invited them to start school. ;)

Obviously she has a couple good examples to follow of people who like to read.  I read as often as I can and I tend to let other important things fall to the wayside while I'm reading.  If you're an avid reader (or love one), you know what I mean.  My husband has also been wrapped up in books lately.  So they girls have been really seeing people reading and loving it and talking about what we read.  This is SO important: if you want to have a child who loves to read, let them see you enjoy reading.  It's true in many areas of life.  If you want a child who loves to help, always (or nearly so) happily accept their help and don't criticize their work (at least not while they're small and learning).  If you want a child who is kind and respectful, use respectful words and actions, be a courteous driver, and generally serve people. On the other hand, if you can't figure out why your kids yell, tell people to "get out of the way," or refuse to share, consider how you treat them. Then consider how you treat other people.  It's not a cure-all, but if we want to make our world a better place, we need to start with ourselves and our children.  Courtesy and kindness really are contagious.  Give it a try. :)

We finally found a curriculum we like

We are so blessed to live in Missouri, where the homeschool laws are pretty easy to deal with, the 2nd amendment rights are basically free, the people are nice, the country is beautiful, and midwifery is no longer a felony.  Our big girl is not quite 5 yet, but she REALLY is excited about starting school.  So about a year ago we started "doing school," but I could never keep anything consistent.  She learned her letters and the sounds and she learned her numbers and shapes.  She learned about various animals and we got to explore things she found interesting. But I just couldn't keep up with things consistently.  Then, about 2 months ago, I re-found EasyPeasy.  It's awesome! This mom wanted to make a curriculum up for all her kids and not have to re-invent it when the littles grew and needed to take the same lessons again.  So she made this completely free blog with lessons from preK through high school. Full curriculum using free resources all around the web.  We're working through Get Ready 1 which teaches letters and sounds and eventually some sight words.  My middle daughter A started on day 1 and my oldest daughter Z started with the McGuffey Primer.  Really, truly, it's great.  Z can read little stories.  She picked up the cereal box a couple of days ago and was intent on reading it.  And she DID!!!  This is huge!  And she actually has decent comprehension, too.  I'm so proud of her.  A is having a great time with the letter animals and the sounds they make.  (Seriously, check it out.  You won't regret it.)  Plus there are the crafts and songs and games to play.  It's been perfect for us.  I'm excited for the future, too, because it includes bible study (but tells the kids to ask Mom and Dad what it means instead of causing rifts between different religions) with science, social studies, math, etc all on one organized place with links to free resources all over.  I can't say enough how much I love and am excited about this curriculum

.

Then....I also found a free homeschool tracker that keeps track of attendance, resources, assignments, grades, report cards, field trips, and so much more.  I haven't found any limitations on the free version yet, so I'm becoming more curious what could be wonderful enough to need to pay for it!  I hope you'll check it out. It's made it possible for me to keep up with hours and assignments without having to continuously make lesson plans.