Job Security

This time of year there are stunning splashes of reds, oranges and yellows as the leaves in Virginia start to turn.   Simply gorgeous, it truly is.   What is NOT so great is removing all those leaves from the yard.

Thankfully, we have a $25 leaf blower and kids who still think working with Mom and Dad is fun.   Child labor is alive and well at my house!

 So what does this have to do with job security you ask?   Well, take a look up the hill, BEHIND them….

 
There are SIX of those huge maple trees along our property line.   Not on our property (about 1 foot off the property line).  However, all those leaves typically find themselves right up against our 6 foot privacy fence.  Yep, the kids will be back out there again this week, and next week at least.   Job security at its finest.

All About Homophones - FREE

The folks at All About Spelling (AAS) are located in the upper Midwest, and severe storms on Tuesday morning left them without power. Due to the power outage, orders that were placed this week were delayed for a few days.

To thank everyone for their patience this week, AAS wants to give you a free gift that you can use right away, without having to wait for shipment. When you place any order, no matter how small, AAS will give you the All About Homophones book for free, and you can download it immediately. This popular e-book sells for $27.95 on our website, but today it won't cost you a cent!  THIS OFFER ENDS MONDAY NOVEMBER 1, 2010.

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Weekly Wrap Up – Billy Graham Comes to School

 

I’m simply flabbergasted at how fast the time is going.  I mean, seriously folks it’s almost November!  Didn’t we just have Christmas??  Please tell me I’m not the only one that feels like the world is stuck on fast forward…please???

Geography/history:  We began our study of North Carolina this week.  We studied Billy Graham and Orville and Wilbur Wright.  We also completed our state report form, state map and our biography reports on Reverend Graham and the Wright Brothers.

Books and videos we used:

Billy Graham Biography; by Sandy Donovan
Billy Graham – A Life in Word and Deed; by Jay Walker
Billy Graham, God’s Ambassador; by Russ Busby
Crusade – The Life of Billy Graham; PBS Home Video
North Carolina Facts and Symbols; by Shelley Swanson Sateren
First to Fly; by Peter Busby
Airborne; by Mary Collins

I was pleased to hear Olivia and Lindsey chatting about what a great preacher Reverend Graham was.  They were both very impressed with the size of the crowds he preached to, but the altar calls had them both cheering!  Then, to find out that one of his children is Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse just further endeared the Graham family!  (We finished packing our shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child this week.)

Science:  We learned about tree types this week.  So we headed off to one of our city parks to go on a hike and to be Tree Detectives.  We identified lots of varieties of trees, and saw deer as well.

Latin:  Lesson 10 focused on commands (stand, sit, write, repeat), and word endings based on if you’re talking to one person or a group of people.   We had fun playing Simon Says with this weeks vocabulary!

Language arts:  We finished up pronouns and moved on to action verbs, and even a little diagramming.  We’ve continued reciting all of our memorized poems as well.   The kids are really enjoying the memory work.

Spelling:  Lesson 14 completed without any issue.

Math:  Olivia did fine this week.  We had a slight brain cramp early on concerning time, but it didn’t last long.   Lindsey has moved on to memorizing addition facts as well.

Reading:   Olivia is plowing through the Felicity (American Girl).  She simply adores these books!   Although, last night I found her up 2 hours past bedtime reading “King Arthur”.   So I guess her interests are varied?    Lindsey is doing well with her reading.   She is a lot farther along that her phonics program, but I dare not slow her down!

Awana:  Success!  Lindsey has her Hang Glider rank patch and Olivia has her wings and red jewel #1.   Lindsey will get her wings and jewel next week.  Both girls recited 3 new verses this week.  So we’ll be cutting back to 2 this week.

Ballet/tap:  Nutcracker fever is permeating the ballet studio.  Even the little girls are getting excited, and they aren’t even in it!  Regular classes are going well.  Lindsey is learning new steps in tap and she’s enjoying practicing them…a lot.  Me, not so much.

Piano:  Today I heard a lovely little song being played on the piano with out any nudging from me.  So I popped my head in to encourage Olivia for taking the initiative.   Much to my surprise, there sat Lindsey grinning from ear to ear.   “Did you like my song?”     Why yes, I did dear.   This whole auditory learner thing is really quite fascinating.   Olivia is doing great as well, but I knew SHE was learning to play.  

That’s about it for the week.  I hope your week went well.  Be sure to stop by the Weekly Wrap Up and read about everyone else’s week.

Tree Detectives

Our city has a couple of really nice parks.  One is right in the middle of town and offers playgrounds, ball parks and lots to do. My favorite park is a little further across town, but has lovely walking trails and lots of wildlife.   We headed over this morning to go on a hike and to learn more about tree identification.   The leaves are lovely and it was a great day for a hike.  We saw several deer and lots of squirrels.

We were successfully able to identify oak,maple, hickory, cherry, ash, walnut, locust, persimmon, sumac, pine and cedar trees.

We identified the leaves, nuts, cones and seed pods and examined the different types of bark.

As an added bonus, we found lots of mosses and fungi to study as well.

The last of the wildflowers, put to good use!

Weekly Wrap Up – Still Moving Ahead

This was a pretty standard week.  No major issues, no grandiose educational moments.  Just lots of family fun and learning.  Although we did finish up our 2nd grading period already!

Math:  Both girls moved along at a good pace.  No serious issues, and they both scored well on their math tests this week.

Language:  We’ve moved on to pronouns.   I added copy work to both girls this week as we makes lists of the pronouns we’re learning.

Geography/history:  We finished up our study of New York this week.  We finished our state flag and state coin sheet for the girls’ notebooks.  We also read about Niagra Falls, the Erie Canal and Ellis Island.

Books we used:

The Amazing Impossible Erie Canal; by Cheryl Harness
Niagra Falls Nature’s Wonder; by Leonard Everett Fisher
Ellis Island Gateway to the New World; by Leonard Everett Fisher

Science:  This week our focus was on flower anatomy.  The girls really enjoyed this unit.  On Tuesday we moved classes outside to study some of the remaining flowers in my gardens.  You can read more about that here.

Latin: This was a built in review week.  We spent the week working on our vocabulary and fluency as well.  Lindsey’s picking up a bit quicker now.

Reading:  Olivia finished up books 5 and 6 in the Kaya series. Now I’m waiting for the Felicity books to arrive from the library.  Lindsey is charging ahead in her reading…who am I to argue?  I made up some word cards for her and let her work on making her own sentences.  She really enjoyed this activity!

She looks rather smug, eh?

Awana:  Both girls are zipping right along.   Olivia recited three verses this week, and Lindsey did two.  So Olivia should get her wings and first jewel next week and Lindsey should get her rank patch.

Activity Day was this week.  Olivia’s class made a fun, craft pumpkin.  Our Dr. Seuss class was creative with pumpkins in a different way.  Read all about it by going here.

4-H: Yep, this always falls on the same day as Activity Day.   This month the Cloverbuds focused on learning about horses.  Of course, Olivia was in heaven!

Ballet/Tap:   Olivia had her first Nutcracker practice on Saturday.  She’s really getting excited.  We’re also ordering costumes for the spring recital already…..it’s a blur of activity year round!

Piano:  This continues to be a good fit for Olivia.  She’s picking up on it a lot faster than I’d thought she would.  Although, the novelty of practicing every day has started to wear off…so she has to be reminded…a lot.

Kris from Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers is away this week, so Jamie at See Jamie Blog is hosting the Weekly Wrap Up.  Be sure to check it out!

The Cat in the Hat – Activity Day

This week our Dr. Seuss class read The Cat in the Hat. I initially was going to work on stranger danger since the kids let the cat in the house when they were home alone, but I know some kids get freaked out easily over that topic.  So I touched on it briefly with “Do we let cats or people in the house without Mom and Dad’s permission?” and kept moving.  We also worked on not keeping secrets from our parents at the end of the story when it asked if they should tell their mom about the Cat in the Hat.

What I decided to do with the class, was to focus on things that you CAN do inside on a rainy day.    We played a fun (although time consuming) Fun In A Box Dr. Seuss game.  It is an elongated version of memory matching games.


We worked on “at” family words with a printable book from Hubbard’s Cupboard.    And we played the “popcorn” game and popped up when we heard rhyming words.   Then we worked on some floor sized puzzles.

The grand finale was our pumpkin craft.   I had to be creative to come up with a fall project, using a pumpkin that didn't involve carving. Thankfully the folks at Creatology (available at Michael’s) have a lovely “Harvest” collection of foam glitter stickers that are awesome! The shapes are leaves, squirrels, owls, sunflowers and pumpkins.  
Did you notice on the pumpkin to the right, the little “face”?  Yeah, well, where there is a will there is a way.  One of the kids used the eye punch outs from the owl to make a face.   Gotta hand it to her, it was creative.

Olivia’s class made this cool pumpkin craft.  It’s a roll of toilet paper, wrapped in a lovely autumn print fabric with a brown paper bag stem, tied with some raffia.  VERY cute!

  

Flower Detectives

I love being able to combine several different “subjects” into one activity.  In science, we’ve been studying the anatomy of the flower.  So today we went outside to look at real flowers, identify various components and then draw samples.  So we covered science, art and nature study into one fun activity.

Here they are studying one of the few remaining gladiolas in the yard!.  This particular specimen was WONDERFUL for helping them to identify the stamen and pistil…not to mention it’s just lovely!

The orange cosmos gave a good view of how the seeds develop.  There were flowers in various stages of seeding.

The mums were a lot easier to draw.

We also have a few 4 O’clocks blooming as well.  I have one plant that has white, yellow and fuchsia flowers on it.  However, only the yellow was open during class time!

We finished up with a drawing of one of my indoor African violets.

 Finally, here are a few other random photos from our trek outside today.  I find it interesting that I have gladiolas still blooming after the first frost!

    

The Redemption of the Silly Bands

I find it truly amazing that my kids own hundreds (literally) of silly bands.  The amazing thing is that I DON’T BUY THEM.  The collection started during baseball season.  Lindsey started to amass the blasted silly bands from friends.   Then the coach bought them some, and so on and so on…

However, today they were redeemed.   Olivia tied the majority of her silly bands together to form a long rope.   Then she (of her own doing) started experimenting.   Initially she had the bands tied to the door knob and her baby carrier.  She pulled it to the opposite end of the room and then let go.  It slid for a bit, but not too impressive.  THEN in a moment of thinking outside the box, she announced “We need something with wheels!”

She went with this lovely Cinderella coach.  Her poor stuffed dog Lilly was the pilot of the contraption.

Lindsey got to be the “control tower”…although her “count down” went “READY, AIM, FIRE!!!”

They had that poor contraption booking along at a pretty good clip.  Olivia soon realized that if she made the “rope” shorter and pulled it to the same length, she gained speed.

Once the novelty of the forward projectile with wheels wore off, poor Lilly was used in a makeshift sling shot.  One end of the “rope” was attached to the door chain, the other end to the dining room table.  If you look in the first photo below…to the FAR right you can just barely see Lilly’s head as the sling shot is loaded (with HER).   In the second photo you see her in midflight. 

 

So, we’ve determined that silly bands are good for sorting, counting, shape identification and catapulting.  Who knew?

PLEASE NOTE!  LILLY IS A TOY DOG….DON’T SEND ME UGLY MESSAGES!  (I’m quite certain she was having fun.)