Weekly Wrap Up-13!

 This week we celebrated  Sweet Girl's(my oldest)13th birthday.  I can't believe she is 13!!  How time does fly!! I remember when we brought her home from the hospital I couldn't put her down.  Holding her in my arms felt so right.  I literally held her for the first two weeks of her life.  In every picture we have I am just gazing at this little baby girl with amazement.   I am so thankful God has leant her to me and made me her Mommy.    She brings such joy to our lives!! 

 

  My week has been busy with lesson planning.  We are about 1/3 through our school year.  I made some new timelines for the kids and notebooking pages.  The other timelines we were using worked but I wanted a timeline that had boxes.  The timelines I made have boxes with lines for writing and some empty boxes for drawing.  I will be putting them on my page at HSLaunch.com .  I also finished Silly Guy's Science notebooking pages for Christian Kids Explore Biology.   I worked on record keeping a bit but have some more to do.  I also started thinking of next year already.  I am trying to decide what to do with Sweet Girl for high school. 

This week we made(and ate)Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies.  I used to have a good recipe but couldn't find it anywhere.  So I searched through some online recipes and  one at  http://www.pickycook.com/.  I will post the recipe in a later post:) 

Some of our school week highlights:
Well, much of this week we seemed to be in auto drive:(  I think it was the fact Thanksgiving is coming.  The kids (and I)are looking forward to having a break to recharge the old battery. 
Little Man learned the letter B.  One thing he did was made this baby.  I just think it is so cute. 

For Science we went back yard bird watching.  Silly Guy has started the bird unit in Christian Kids Explore Biology.  Can you believe we didn't see one bird!!  It was kind of a bummer.  Then later in the day they heard a bird twittering around in the juniper in front of the house. 

 Silly Guy also made a birdhouse to put in the back yard.  We realized during the bird watch we had to make our back yard more bird friendly.  In writing he wrote a friendly letter to his friend in Hawaii. He is really hoping to get a letter back in return.   
 

Silly Guy's birdhouse

We started reading aloud Mocassin Trail by: Eloise Jarvis McGraw this week.  It's about a boy who ran away from home when he was 11.  After a grizzly bear attack he was adopted by an Indian tribe.  After living with the tribe for 7 years(now 19), has been contacted by his family who needs him.  It's an interesting story so far. 
Silly Guy also has been reading Freedom Train:  The Story of Harriet Tubman(History).
In Math he continues to work on fractions. 
Sweet Girl worked on study guide question's and reading in Apologia.  She finished Streams to River, River to Sea which she said is a great book.  She continues to read Tom Sawyer in Lit.  Her writing assignment this week was to take Aunt Polly's soliloquy(in chapter 1)and then translate it into modern day language. This was fun and a little challenge. 
I bought a new devotional for the family, The One Year Bible for Kids.  Until now the kids have been working on their Bible assignments in Alpha Omega's Bible Lifepacs.  These are great, but in addition I wanted something we could study together.
In History we are still reading History of US book 4.
   
Art-The kids finished painting the Turkey bowls. 

This week I signed the kids up for the 4H Sking and Snowboarding Club.  They meet twice a month through March and go Lake Tahoe.  They are thrilled to join!! 
Friday morning my husband called to give us the upcoming weather report-snow. We made a Walmart trip to buy snow boots, salt, and a shovel.  By Sunday, we are supposed to get around 6-8 inches of snow.  Little Man was born in HI so he's never seen snow before.  He's so excited to see snow, make a snowman, and thow a snowball. 
So that was some of our highlights.  Hop on over to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers !

Lately...

I haven't blogged in a while.  We finished our 2009/2010 school year the first week of June when the public school year ended.   Many of the kid's friends were off of school.  Since we'll be moving in a couple of months I felt it was important for them to soak up the time they have left with them.  Anyway, we took the first couple of weeks to relax a bit.  We went to the movies a few times, bowling, the pool, the mall, etc. Pretty much just chillin.  It has been great! 

In between chill time, I have been gearing up for our next school year.  I hit a couple of the used curriculum fairs. Which I am happy to say I made out.  I saved our homeschool budget about $500.00 by sorting and picking through many many tables and boxes.  It took quite a bit of organization and planning on my part but with that kind of savings I have to say it was well worth it.

I have decided to have the kids study American History this year.  Since both children would be studying the same thing I thought it would be best and probably more fun if we did it together.  We'll be using the Joy Hakim series A History of US  as our main text.  Adding in various literature selections, poetry, and music to co-ordinawith the study. Sweet girl will have three current event assignmets per week.  I am hoping she will post them on her blog but we'll have to see.  She doesn't like when I tell her what to post on her blog;). 
Science- Silly Guy Christian Kids Explore Biology , How Nature Works   and library books. 
Sweet Girl -Apologia's General Science.  I decided to go with General Science because after looking through the table of contents she covered a lot of Physical Science last year.  She is excited about Apologia. 
Math-  Both kiddos will be using Saxon (Silly guy- Saxon 6/5 and Sweet girl Saxon Algebra 1)
Bible-Both kiddos AOP Lifepac Bible
Language Arts- Silly guy-BJU English 5, Wordly Wise, and Spelling Power.
Sweet girl- Sonlight Core 100 writing, Spelling Power, Wordly Wise, , and
Easy Grammar 180 Daily Teaching Lessons
I plan on doing some nature studies once we reach our new home. We can't wait to explore!
Art- I am going to be pulling lessons/activities from various websites.  I am trying to stick to an "American" theme.  Deep Space Sparkle , Art for Homeschool, Artyfactory, Captain Watercolor, and Sketch Tuesday all have great ideas and lesson plans. 
So, needless to say we are most definitley eclectic homeschoolers. 

I have decided to start our school year next week since we will be moving in September.  I would love to take a couple more weeks off, but with moving the kids will be taking off quite a bit.  I want to get in a solid six weeks before getting on that big bird back to the mainland.  I am planning on having them continue Math, Language Arts, Literature, and possibly History while we are in transition.  Our household goods could take up to 45 days to get to our new home. 
Along with all of this planning comes organization.  But I will have to post about how I've been tackling that later(maybe tomorrow).  I just peeked at the clock and well I have to go to bed!!

Mountain Countries Notebook

I created a Mountain Notebook for Silly guy's History/Geography study "Mountain Countries."  The notebook has 24 pages covering countries such as;  Peru(The Andes), Nepal(The Himalayas), and Switzerland(The Alps).  I have uploaded the file to my page at HSlaunch.  Feel free to grab a copy of The Mountain Countries Notebook .

 Our maps were included in our study but you can find some great maps by googling. 

I did want to share this neat video clip I found on Watch Know .  It was like a little virtual field trip:)

A summary from the Watch Know video:  "National Geographic presents a short video on the physical geography, the ancient capital city of Cusco, and the Inca Trail. There is a visit to Machu Pichu and its amazing stonework is shown with explanation of some of its special characteristics. The mystery of drawings carved into the flat, dry plains visible only from the air is mentioned. Headwaters of the Amazon and the rain forest are also shown."  

Also, some great ficitional reading we enjoyed with our study:

Secret of the Andes by: Ann Nolan Clark

 and

Heidi by: Johanna Spyri

Here are a couple of the notebook pages(below).  Have fun!

 

The Polar Regions Lapbook

Not only have I enjoyed making these lapbooks for Silly guy we also love to complete them together.  So I made another lapbook to go along with his study of the Polar Regions.  He has enjoyed this unit so much.  I think it is the mystery and the fact these two regions were the last places to be discovered and explored.  It has facinated him.  So, here is the Polar Region Lapbook(click here) over at HSLaunch to download. In the lapbook I have included different explorers, animal and plant life, vocabulary, people of the Arctic region, map pages, exploration of both regions, etc.  When we finish the lapbook I will come back and post a picture.  I hope you enjoy learning about this part of our world as much as we have:)

Grasslands Lapbook

I have designed a lapbook for my son's unit study " The Grasslands of the World." I think it will be fun to change things up a bit and lapbook. I have found it keeps him interested and more engaged if I keep things fresh, especially in History. I will post pictures soon of the completed lapbook but for now please enjoy the free download. Click here!

If you would like to check out my other free downloads check out my page. Other downloads include: State History/Geography Notebook, Desert Notebook, and a couple Nature Scavenger Hunt activities. Click here to view my page over at HSLaunch.
Happy Homeschooling!!

Desert Notebook Download

My son is currently studying The Desert. He prefers notebooking to worksheets. I made this notebook to go along with his study and I wanted to share.

HSLaunch is a great place for homeschoolers to share all kinds of goodies! Click here if you would like to download the Desert Notebook.

Here is the link to my page at HSLaunch if you have trouble getting the file.

http://www.hslaunch.com/mypage/profile

State History & Geography Notebooking pages

My Sweet girl is getting ready to start a State history/Geography study. I designed these notebooking pages to go along with her study. If your homeschool is planning on a state history/geography study feel free to download the notebooking pages. I hope you enjoy!!
Just click on :
State History & Geography Notebook

Nature Scavenger Hunt at the botanical gardens

We went on a field trip to the botanical gardens in Honolulu with our homeschool group. It was a fun little trip to get the kids into nature and to observe it. I made up a list of about twenty things to find. For my daughter I created an assignment that was a little more challenging. She is learning about classifying in science so I thought why not. I had her find five flowering, five non-flowering, and five trees. She had to either sketch or take a picture of the plant and write any information she could find(common name, scientific name, purpose, where it originated). Then I had her classify them. I think everyone enjoyed the day!!

Here is the link for our Nature Scavenger Hunt list I created. There are two activities: one is for younger children and the other for older children(my daughter's assignment).
http://savefile.com/projects/808788277

Inside the trunk of this huge tree.

Silly Guy sketching something camoflauged. A little lizard on a branch.

Horse Notebooking/Journal Pages

I have created some notebooking pages to go with a Horse unit study Mikaela wanted to do. I thought I would share. There are about 14 pages of different designs to choose from. Help yourself to this free download. You just have to click off the sponsor on the pdf file(free).
Happy Homeschooling!

http://savefile.com/projects/808733353