Weekly Wrap-Up (4 States, the Ocean, the Desert and Grandparents' house!)

Weekly Link-Up. Click above to visit other bloggers.

Last weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to go on a women's retreat with my church. Unfortunately that means another double-wrap-up week this week, but it was completely worth it! On top of an outstanding spiritual experience and bonding with so many wonderful women I now call my friends, I also got to try my hand at rifle shooting, archery and horseback riding. This, my friends, is how girls should get away!

As for our homeschool weeks: 

Week one (Sep 30-Oct 4) consisted of our US Geography studies of New York and New Jersey and our Magic School Bus lesson on coral reefs. Now, just to clarify, we covered much more than that, but I didn't think ya'll would be too excited to see photos of my kiddos filling out their math textbooks or writing a paper. So, here are the highlights. For our State Food/Movie night, we ate Subway subs in honor of New York and Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies in honor of New Jersey.

For science, we got to make a wave in a bottle out of three simple ingredients: water, oil and food coloring. It's so simple! Just pour oil (We just used Canola oil) into a clear container and fill about 1/2 full. Mix the blue food coloring into the water and then fill the container with the water. Then the oh-so-important final step: screw the lid on - VERY tightly! When you slosh it back and forth, it almost looks like slow motion giving that calm effect of rocking waves. My little guy is keeping it in his room, and so far, there's no 'ocean' in my carpet. I'm thinking I may need to sneak that little number out of there before we have a crisis, though. LOL!

Week 2, Oct.7-11, took us to the great states of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Now we couldn't sample goodies from Pennsylvania without chowing down on some yummy Hershey chocolate and a delectable Philly Steak and Cheese sandwich. 

Since Delaware hosts an annual Pumpkin Festival, we ate pumpkin cupcakes from that Pinterest recipe using only 2 ingredients. Ok, sorry to burst the bubble, but I thought they came out really thick. I would have to add an egg or two to make it fluffier. Just my opinion! My sweets-deprived kids however, devour anything that sounds like it has sugar! So we slathered on some cream cheese frosting and they gobbled those babies right up!

Our Magic School Bus study of the desert included a fun activity making sand dunes. We poured a bag of sand (a souvenir from our recent vacation) into a shallow container and used a 'bendy' straw to blow the sand into heaps. Voila! Sand dune!  If you try this, you may want a slightly deeper container. When I tested it, no issues. In the hands of a 7-yr-old boy, however. Let's just say there was a lot of clean up on aisle one!

Our weather has been so beautiful, we decided to do our reading outside. We put the picnic blanket under a shade tree and snuggled in with our books only to find ourselves, moments later, swarmed with gnats! They were crawling on our books, our clothes, and I don't even want to think about how many were hosting a party in my hair! Yuck! My girls lasted about three minutes and went back inside. My son gave me those puppy eyes and really wanted to stay so I begrudgingly stayed out of guilt hung out there with him for as long as I could stand it (maybe 5 more minutes) Oh well, we tried!

October means 'school photos' around here so while the kids were playing outside, I snapped some practice shots. Not sure we're ready for the real thing, but we had fun anyway!

hammin' it up!

Beautiful!

At that age where she hates her picture taken, but she was being such a good sport!

Mr. Man feeling crafty on Wed night. He made his own robot buddy! We just had to put this pic in!

Friday, we packed our remaining schoolwork and headed to Grandma and Grandpa's cabin on the lake for a short visit. The kids got to go for a paddle boat ride, go fishing, lay in the hammock and just relax for an afternoon. That is until they got back to the car and their mean-ole-teacher made them get some more work done. Ah, the hardships of traveling with your teacher!

So how is your year going so far? What fun things have you experienced together? Leave me a comment below and share!

Homeschool Tips & Tricks

I am so blessed to be part of a mom's group that is wonderfully supportive and encouraging. Each month, we have a Mom's Night where we share what we have learned on this homeschooling journey. Well, last night's theme was Tips and Tools for Homeschooling so it just wouldn't be right if I didn't share them here with all my readers for my Tuesday Tipster post, right?

Girls, there were so many ideas flying around that I could barely squeeze them in on my whiteboard! So go grab a cup of coffee or leave this page up and come back when you have some time to yourself cause you're going to have a blister on your clicking finger before you get through them all! So exciting! Are you ready?

First we'll start with our favorite homeschool tools:

1. A Laminator  I have the Purple Cows Laminator and it works great for me! Another popular model is the Scotch Laminator
2. Proclick Binding System I got mine 1/2 off on eBay, so shop around! This thing is amazing! It's a "spiral" type binding that can be opened and closed. WHAT????
3. Paper Cutter I highly recommend the rotary style cutter vs. the little blades. You can get these at Michaels or JoAnn's with your 40% off coupon.
4. Colored Pens  My kids came from the classroom environment and in that short time, developed the red-pen-aversion! So I got colored pens and grade their papers in their favorite color - crazy that this little psychology somehow eases the pressure of mistakes :)

Apps

1. IEW
2. Spelling City
3. Spelling Bee  I use this with my son to practice his All About Spelling words.
4. Spellosaur I have used this in the past and love it. We only switched to keep things fresh. We will use this again though.
5. Playful Minds Math  My 2nd grade son absolutely loves this one.
6. TeachMe   Individual apps from Toddler to 3rd Grade
7. Bible Memory Verses  NIV
8. ToonTastic   This is an unbelievably great FREE app for reluctant writers to create picture stories along the story arc in an unusual way and record them instead of handwriting. They can even add mood music and upload them to share. This is a must see!

Homeschool Shopping & Resources

1. Rainbow Resource  Request their catalog. It's like 4" thick and free!
2. Christian Book   Prices are often lower than the publishers.
3. Teachers Pay Teachers  check out your curriculum's table of contents to search for products (many, many for free) to boost your learning.
4. Teachers Notebook   Very similar to TPT above.
5. Currclick   Your one-stop shop for homeschool downloads, ebooks, lapbooks, live online classes for homeschoolers, unit studies, affordable curriculum, novel studies.
6. Pinterest   If you haven't found pinterest yet, be prepared to lose yourself in idea overload! This is the best thing ever!
7. DealOz  Book finder that lists multiple sellers.
8. Book Sale Finder  Includes library book sales
9. Educents.com  A flash sale website for great teaching and homeschooling materials.
10. Free Homeschool Deals
11. Homeschool Classifieds
12. Home Science Tools
13. Homeschool Buyers Co-Op
14. Lakeshore Learning
15. 2nd & Charles  We just got one of these stores in our area!
16. Scholastic's Teacher Express  Throughout the year, they have $1 sales where you can buy many of their 100's of e-books for only one dollar. Be sure to sign up with them!

Learning Websites

1. Click-N-Read & Click-N-Spell Award-Winning Phonics and Spelling program
2. BrainPop Jr
   Animated Science, Health, Technology, Math, Social Studies, Arts & Music and English movies, quizzes, activity pages and school homework help  Grades K-4
3. BrainPop  Animated Science, Health, Technology, Math, Social Studies, Arts & Music and English movies, quizzes, activity pages and school homework help Grades 5+
4. Khan Academy
   Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more.
5. Shepperd Software 
   Hundreds of fun educational games and activities for kids to play online. Topics include math, geography, animals, and more.
6. Math Magician Games  Practice math facts online
7. Quizlet Vocabulary lists, science terms, history dates, etc. created by people like you. It also has games and activities to practice those terms. You can also print tests! Search for the book you're using (like Apologia Biology, Module 1) and get started right away!
8. Stossel in the Classroom  offers a new, free DVD per school year for educators to use in their classroom. Great for critical thinking!
9. Make your own handwriting sheets from Zaner-Bloser or Handwriting Without Tears or the ESL Writing Wizard. This is a great way to practice handwriting and spelling words at the same time.

Helpful Tips

1. Make daily lists or checklists so the kids know exactly what is expected of them. Here is one example.
2. Workboxes are a great way to keep kids moving along. Find out more about Workboxes HERE. There are many variations on this so dig around and find one that fits your family.
3. Develop a reward system! One brilliant mom listed the behaviors she expected of her children and uses these scripture coins and another uses "Big Bucks" from the dollar store to reward their children's good behaviors. Then your children can purchase treats, later bed times, screen time, etc. by cashing in their coins or bills! I'm so doing this!!! Get the Attitude Checklist free from my friend, Dee!
4. Check out Landry Academy. On of our moms went to their Mom's Retreat and was absolutely raving about it!
5. Our resident expert who has homeschooled from kindergarten and her oldest is now in 9th grade uses Homeschool Skedtrack for planning and record keeping. It even makes report cards and transcripts; and best of all, it's FREE!
6. Check out yahoo groups for your favorite curricula and you're local area homeschoolers. Here is an example of a search for apologia.
7. One mom works a little over the weekend and has dad help out with his favorite subject. It becomes a special family time and helps dad relate to mom's homeschool experiences.
8. One mom recommended these Edge CD's that focus on leadership.
9. Be sure to check out Book It Program from Pizza Hut.

Thanks to all my gals for their great ideas! I hope you found some great tips here and if you have one you'd like to share, please leave me a comment below!

Weekly Wrap Ups 9/20/13 and 9/27/13

Well, this is a two-week wrap up. I caught a nasty cold last weekend and spent most of my time in bed so blogging just had to wait. So here's a recap of our last two weeks.

For art this year, we are using See The Light Art Class DVDs. While my second grader isn't quite at this level, he usually participates as best he can. This week, there was a bonus lesson using chalk pastels. Here are my 5th and 7th graders' masterpieces. Beautiful!

Miss 5th Grade is doing Apologia's Human Anatomy course this year and we had an experiment relating to Ancient Egypt to compare an apple that was left out for a week untouched and one covered in baking soda and salt.

 

Her hypothesis was that the apple in the soda and salt would be preserved and the other would rot. However at the end of the week, here's what they looked like! The 'preserved' apple actually shrank to about half its original size!

 

This week, we made an edible cell out of Jello and Candy! Our most delicious science experiment yet!

 Completely unrelated, but had to put in this Lil' Bitty Snake we found on our back patio :) My little vet-to-be was cooing like it was a newborn baby! Mom, however, drew the line on bringing this little 'sweetheart' into the house!!!

For our state studies, we covered Vermont and New Hampshire and on our pizza state food/movie Friday night we dined on pancakes with real maple syrup and splurged on delicious Ben & Jerry's ice cream. So yummy.

 

Week two included Connecticut and Rhode Island. After our books and notebooking pages, we took a video tour of the Newport Mansions and all the "Whoa!" and "Oh yeah! I want to live there!" from my kids was hilarious. Since Connecticut is the home of the first hamburger, we had a yummy meal of hamburgers and Coffee Milkshakes in honor of Rhode Island. Then we had to wind down some very hyper children!

Last week's Magic School Bus science topic was backyard habitats and we got to make this cool bird feeder that we hung from our porch. Little man was excited to see birds swooping down to our porch to check it out!

This week's science topic was the Rainforest. We read A Rainforest Habitat, watched the Travel With Kids episode on Costa Rica (If you are studying Geography with younger children, you HAVE to check out this series!), saw the video and did the quiz on BrainPop Jr, and made a Rainforest in a Bowl to see the water cycle in action! Unfortunately my "all-boy" 7-yr-old wiped out on his bike and slid across our gravel drive in between building it and getting to see the water droplets so it was a little less awe-inspiring than I'd hoped.

Adding some rainforest animals

A slight damper on our week! 

Best buddies that make it all better. Teddy and our newest family member: Bamboo the panda

Well, I hope you all had a safe and healthy couple of weeks!

How to Never Fall Behind in your Homeschool Schedule!

As we dive into a new school year, it doesn't take long before our perfect plans begin to get a little muddled and messed up. I've heard mom after mom stress about 'staying on schedule' and how 'behind' they get throughout the year. I can be crazy type A one who needs organization and structure so I have to admit, I am sometimes one of those moms! So what's the solution? How do we make everything run like a well-oiled machine so we can keep on schedule? Well... we don't! And here's why:

Whether you have ever had your children in a classroom or you've homeschooled from the beginning, I invite you to revisit why you chose to homeschool. I'd like be clear that I believe clasroom teachers have both a daunting task and my utmost respect. That being said, the fact remains that 25 students cannot be held up for the one student who is struggling to understand; teachers are not permitted to just toss a week's lesson plans to dive into a topic that a student is fascinated by; and that last day of school can't just wiggle down the calendar! But great news, fellow homeschoolers - we can!

Schedules are great, but they HAVE to be flexible or we risk sacrificing those amazing opportunities to build our children's confidence by giving them time to really master their academics or to draw our children into the enchantment of exploring their unknown world. 

In our first year of homeschooling, my second grade daughter became completely enamored by bats! So, we put our studies on hold and jumped in with both feet. We watched bat videos, read bat books, made bat crafts, and watched bats in our backyard at night! My daughter will never forget that study because she loved the subject matter!

I encourage you to keep making those great plans (I know I couldn't stop if I tried, ha!) but when your child needs an extra week to really understand that math chapter or you're presented with that rare occurrance where your child actually asks to learn more about something they love, I encourage you to embrace the delays and bump those lessons a little down the planbook knowing that your 'schedule' is right where it should be - right where your child is! After all, isn't that why we make the sacrifices that we do in order to homeschool our precious kids?

 

Weekly Wrap-Up 9/13 (Vacation)

Crazy title? What, vacation already??? Yes! Since we started homeschooling, our tradition has been to sneak away early every September for a little family vacation once the kids are all back in school and the 'tourist' places are all deserted. It's one of our favorite perks of homeschooling! Just before we left, we saw this little leaf-bug. Crazy how much it looks like a real leaf, right! I just had to include this little guy in this week's post. He even flies! Those little 'leaves' are actually two sets of wings. My kiddos were totally enamored with this awesome dude!

We headed off to a little cottage on the beach where we had the whole lake to ourselves. We had 5 kayaks which we used until we blistered our hands - so much fun! This beach-side firepit is where we roasted marshmallows and hot dogs and we had such a great time getting away from it all that I totally zonked out at 7:30 the first night, in my clothes and all! Aaah, the sea air!

My little man came up with sand tic-tac-toe. How fun is that?

 A scenic pic with me and my kiddos.

And oh so timely as we are studying the New England States - We climbed the 82 stairs to the top of this lighthouse. I also had to carry my little guy the whole way up these 125 year-old, open metal circular stairs because he is afraid of heights. Well, this lady isn't too fond of them either, but what's a mama to do? Dad, however, carried him down those 82 stairs. I confess, my thighs were sore for two days.

So how did you spend your week? I hope everyone is settling into their groove and things are working well!