Winding down and gearing up... (part 1)

Our school year is winding down. This year we completed Heart of Dakota's Bigger Hearts for His Glory with 3rd, 4th and 5th graders! It was great to have all three of them using the same guide. I know I've said before how much I love Heart of Dakota... but I do. My plan at this point, having used 3 guides in 4 years is to keep going with it.

As we finish up our year, we're continuing with math (Singapore Primary Mathematics) and grammar (Rod & Staff's Building Christian English series) through the summer. We are also big fans of xtramath.org for getting those math facts memorized.

This year we added in more Drawn into the Heart of Reading or DiTHOR for short. We actually call it THOR because it just flows off the tongue better. lol The kids did a great job with the realistic fiction genre ending project. They each created a triorama... similar to a diorama, but this one had you creating four triangles to glue together similar to a pyramid.

Here are some photos of that project:

As you can see, they were very proud of the work they did. The reading selections in HOD are awesome, but what's really great about DiTHOR is that it will work with any book... so you don't have to buy the book packs that HOD recommends, you can use any book for the studied genre, and still have a great time learning!

Next time, I'll chat more about what we're doing to gear up for this fall!

*Ü* Blessings,

Happy Valentine's Day - Happy 100th Day!

I looked and looked, I was sure I blogged about last year's 100th day...but alas, I did not. I created a layout for it, but never did blog about it...bummer.
In case you are the teeniest bit interested, here are the layouts:


So this year, here we are again, we've barely finished the party itself, and I've downloaded the photos, fixed the red-eye and am ready to blog!

Several years ago, friends of mine had given me an ice cream sandwich mold kit. It has a cowboy theme. I finally got around to using it! Because I had it, and really wanted to use it, I decided to go with a rodeo theme for our 100th Day/Valentine's Day party...we called it our 100th Day Valentine Rodeo, kinda catchy, eh?

We had several families come over, kids ranging from age 3 into 5th grade. The invitation asked the kids to wear western gear, bring 100 of a specific snack item (to make the "ultimate trail mix") and to bring valentines to share. (One thing I've always felt homeschoolers miss out on is sharing valentines! lol)

The kids were met at the door with a couple activities...color a bag to receive your valentines and an Estimation Station which consisted of four glass milk bottles filled with different items. The kids were to estimate the number of items in each milk bottle and then determine whether that number was less than, more than or exactly 100; putting their answer in a pocket chart.

Once inside, the kids were divided into older and younger groups...

The younger group participated in a "Buckaroo Glyph":


Then did a valentine m&m sort:


After that they did some numberline jumping while counting by 10s to 100, and making "10" trains with unifix cubes to put them together and create a long "100" train:


Lastly, they read a story about 100 m&ms.

The bigger kids first created a picture by working some math equations, then coloring the answer on a one-hundred chart:


They then played "I Have...Who Has?" This was the first time I was able to play this game with my kiddos, and once they got the hang of it, they really liked it, and wanted to play again!


The big kids then made their "Buckaroo Glyphs"


By then the kids were ready for some wiggling... that meant it was time for the Rodeo to begin! Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures, but I'm sure the other moms will share those they were able to get. I had two spinners, one spinner told the rodeo volunteers which action to perform, the other spinner told the audience how to count those actions (by 5s or 10s to 100!) It was alot of fun, and I had alot of volunteers! It seems everyone wanted to be a prancing pony or a bucking bronco...or even a horse that was jumping or galloping!

Whew! By then we were really tired and ready for some refreshments! Out came the ice cream sandwiches...shaped like a cowboy boot, cowboy hat and sheriff's badge. They were a big hit with the kids, and with the moms once they knew the Sneaky ingredients each held (the brownie sandwich part was made with spinach, blueberries, wheat germ and whole wheat flour.)


We made the Ultimate Trail mix by dumping each child's 100 item ingredient into a big bowl while we counted by 100s to 1000 and beyond! The trail mix was put in baggies for the cowpokes to take on the trail with them! lol

To finish our day, the kids delivered their valentines, then explored their overflowing bags of treats while the moms chit-chatted! It was a fantastic day!


*Ü* Blessings,

Our First Book Project

Good day, my friends!

I hope you are all well...we've been busy getting back to the business of school. We're using Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory now, and enjoying it quite well. Along with it, we're using Drawn Into the Heart of Reading by the same author/publisher: Heart of Dakota.

We've finished our first genre, folktale, and started on the next one, historical fiction. For our end of the genre project, we decided to do a project from the book: "Book Projects to Send Home - Grade 2". This is a great introduction to "book report" type projects. B loved this activity:



She had to come up with four words to describe the main character, three more action words for the character and then write out a diamante poem using those words. Then she had to create what the book called a mobile (I'd say a paper character). As you can see from the photo, it came out really cute, and she was so excited to do this project!

In other parts of school, I've gone round and round with spelling...she is a fantastic speller, so this has been hard...I finally decided to just use the words in the back of the Beyond manual and give a new list (there are 2 for each week) daily until we come to some words she has trouble with...and go from there. I'm also considering a series called Sequential Spelling...has anyone out there tried this? Please let me know how you felt about it!

Both kiddos are chugging right along in Math-U-See. Ben is learning the +1 addition facts...he loves using the wrap-ups I bought for this...he will practice 10 or 12 times in a row! B is working on her subtraction facts and working in both Alpha and Beta concurrently.

We're also enjoying the history/science parts of Beyond...B and I take turns reading the history portion, and the activities that follow for science, history or geography are quick, easy and fun to do!

My little guy's readying is also puttering along...we've been working on some sight words, before attempting to tackle long vowel words. He will read, but it is not his favorite thing to do right now.

Well...that's my update for now!

*Ü* Blessings,

Gearing Up for Another Year

Yep, it's that time again...I'm looking forward to this year and Beyond...well, that's a play on words if I ever heard one. I meant "and beyond this year" however, I am also looking forward to using "Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory" (from Heart of Dakota) this year! Too funny!

We haven't quite finished with Little Hearts, so we'll start with that, then turn to Beyond when we are done. In addition to Beyond, we'll use the program (by the same publisher) called Drawn Into the Heart of Reading (DITHR). I was able to get my book brand new but used...so at a wonderfully reduced price! Yay! The teacher's book is so much bigger than I thought it would be! It is about the same size as the Beyond manual. In DITHR, the parent guides the child through nine different genres: biography, adventure, historical fiction, fantasy, folk tales, non-fiction, humor and realistic fiction. The manual is good for grades 2-8, so you do get alot of use from it. The student books are full of worksheets, graphic organizers and reading planners.

I gathered all the books I've collected so far, and took photos! This is the set of books that I will read aloud to my kiddos, as part of the story-time aspect of Beyond. These books do also coincide with the genres in DITHR, but if I chose not to use DITHR, I would still be reading these great books:



I've collected some books from more than one category choice. (Heart of Dakota has choices for boys, girls and classic - sometimes I just couldn't resist getting them all! lol)

I have: Helen Keller (this was my book when I was a child!) Squanto: Friend of the Pilgrims, Sword in the Tree, Little House in the Big Woods, (not pictured, but on it's way is The Cabin Faced West from Paperback Swap). Also I have The Cricket in Times Square (brown book) Charlotte's Web (isn't it a great size? Goodwill for 99 cents!), Ginger Pye, The Key to the Treasure (on it's way from Paperback Swap), The Railway Children (a gift from my good friend to my daughter for her 1/2 birthday - see this post for that story.) Oh, let's see...we also have In Grandma's Attic, A Bear Called Paddington, Mr. Popper's Penguins, The House at Pooh Corner (big blue book - yard sale 50 cents!) and All-of-a-kind Family - I couldn't resist reading the first two chapters of this one! I also have Phoebe and the General, which has since been renamed to Phoebe the Spy and was removed from the book list because it is out of print...but I have it! I also have Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle...this one is not on the list at all, but I think it will be fun to read.

Then, for dd to read-aloud to me, we have these books:



Amelia Earhart: Young Air Pioneer (this was gifted to me by a lovely lady on the Heart of Dakota forum who had finished with it! So Sweet!), Stone Fox, Dolphin Adventure, Hannah, Pioneer Cat, The Littles, The Storm, Treasure of Pelican Cove (on it's way from Paperback Swap) and The Secret School. Books I still need are Capyboppy, Who's That Stepping on Plymouth Rock? (will borrow this one from my good friend) and One Small Square: Backyard (may substitute this one as it is hard to find free! lol) The two books that are recommended for the folk tale genre I decided not to use...I have a large workbook that is all folk/tall tales and I think we will just finish that, even though the stories are shorter...we could do one each day, I think.

Now here is a question for all you HOD users out there...when you have two kiddos the same age who are supposed to be doing the read-alouds...do you have them take turns? read separately? OR since my granddaughter can read at home to her parents, should I send the book home and have her read there? I'm curious what your answer would be...please leave a comment.

*Ü* Blessings,

Rabbit Lapbook (Fox too!)

Hello Friends!
We finished our rabbit lapbook today to go along with the Thornton Burgess book "The Adventure of Peter Cottontail." In looking back, I realized I never posted photos of our fox lapbook for the "Reddy Fox" book...so I'll add those here too! Next we'll be doing a mouse lapbook to go with the book "Danny Meadow Mouse."

I was surprise at how much I actually fit into this rabbit book! We did some vocabulary work, though it isn't in the lapbook...we learned that a buck in an adult male, a doe an adult female and a kit is a baby bunny...a whole litter is referred to as kittens! Rabbits live in a warren and are herbivores. The latter two words are in our lapbook...the first three were just interested things we thought quite funny.

In our lapbook is a bit of poetry copywork and some math - addition and tangrams (I'll do tangrams in each of the animal lapbooks.) We made a little puppet and poem, a lifecycle wheel, and what rabbits eat as well as who eats them! Rabbits are found on every continent except Antarctica, so I didn't feel the need to do any mapping of their location. We did a fact layer book as well as a pre-made fact shape book. Most of the things were found on homeschoolshare.com and some things I made myself. Because I used Jan Brett's mask of a fox face for that lapbook cover, I decided to do the same with this lapbook for a rabbit...I know she also has a mouse mask as well as a bear mask...not sure what I'll do for a frog or squirrel yet...we'll see.

Here is dgd with her lapbook:


the inside:


And dd with hers:


and her interior:


You can see they are both a little different in layout and colors...they picked their own, and they helped with layout as well. In the very middle are mini match books with a number on the top...inside are images or rabbits, and the girls had to decide upon a number sentence for each group of rabbits...here is a close up of one of the books:


We had alot of fun with this lapbook, and actually I have already begun sketching out and planning the mouse lapbook...I'm hoping to be a little faster with the other lapbooks! I was anticipating them only taking a week or at most 2 to finish...but they've taken a bit longer...though we did have some holidays and vacations to deal with in between this one and the fox one...still I wish to be faster!

Here is a quick picture of our fox lapbook:


*Ü* Blessings,

They Did It!

The girls have both mastered their poems and allowed me to video tape them. woo-hoo!
I'm so proud of them both. G chose "The Swing" and B chose "Bed in Summer" both poems by Robert Louis Stevenson. They really enjoyed this exercise, and are already scouring the "Child's Garden of Verses" for the next piece. Wow!
Here is "The Swing":


And here is "Bed in Summer":


The girls were so proud of themselves!

*Ü* Blessings,

This Week at Our House

This picture was actually taken last week, but I wanted to include it here. This is our Thanksgiving Tree all finished. The whole family participated to some degree, but dd6 was the most faithful...she really enjoyed watching the tree "grow"!



This week we started up again slowly after having the week of Thanksgivng off...I hope we are a bit faster getting back into the groove in January after Christmas break! My printer is out of ink - again! So for our calendar pieces, I suggested the kids make one each day...they loved this idea! Here's a picture of ds4 holding the flag for the pledge, and another of the kiddos making the calendar cards...





We've started reading the New Testament in history (Heart of Dakota, Little Hearts for His Glory) - I thought "perfect, just in time for Christmas" but no, it moves very quickly, and we are already on the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. This week's art expression was to "paint" with water then add one drop of food coloring and watch the picture emerge. This tied into the story of Jesus turning the water into wine, and I asked the kids if I had just turned water into wine...no. Why could Jesus do it? Because He is the Son of God. I know I've said this before, but I really like the way Carrie (author of Little Hearts) ties everything back into scripture.



Speaking of scripture, this week is a review week of the last 5 verses we've studied, and the kids are doing great remembering them all!

Yesterday we read the story of how Jesus met Andrew and Peter while they were fishing and told them to throw their nets to the other side of the boat, and how the net was so full others had to help them pull in their catch...to which Jesus responded "Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men." Little Hearts then had us on a "rabbit trail" regarding fish and how they breathe and move...we created these fish with gills and fins:



So far, we've had a good week. The kids have done well doing all I ask of them. We skipped spelling this week (no ink in printer, remember?) But our math, phonics (Explode the Code) and handwriting has been accomplished lickety-split! They have been enjoying playing out in the yard even though it's averaged 35 degrees here daily (brrr). We finished the second "story-time" book and I am preparing a lapbook on rabbits for them to do...but again I'll need ink to print those things. The next animal storybook is about Danny Meadow Mouse...I think I should start gathering things now for that one! The idea was for me to have the lapbook ready when we finished the book...but that hasn't happened yet...maybe next time.

If you didn't catch it at the beginning of my post, dd turned 6 this week! She lost her first tooth on Saturday, and turned 6 on Wednesday...I can't believe she is growing up so fast! I did a scrapbook page for her tooth:



For Christmas, I am still knitting the sweaters...the big pieces are all done on the last one, so it's just the ribbing that goes up the front for the buttons, and then put it together and add the neck ribbing and buttons on both...if I took the time, I could finish this weekend...we'll see. I have a special day planned for tomorrow, so I am not sure how much time I'll devote to knitting. Tomorrow will be my family's "second annual ladies shopping trip". Last year my two oldest daughters, and my mom and sister all went, it was great fun. This year, sadly, my daughters can't make it. :o( I'm sure I'll have fun with my mom and sister...but we'll all miss the "family" time.

I've got to run and get school started! Have a wonderful day!

*Ü* Blessings,

Teddy Bear Tea Party

Hello again,

We woke up to a great surprise this morning...a MOOSE in our yard! The two little ones came running into the bedroom shouting "you are not gonna believe this...you gotta come see!" so of course dh and I jumped out of bed and tore out into the other room...by then the moose had moved to the other side of the yard, so we had to scamper over to the sliding glass door, we were just in time to see him canter down the middle of the road! He was pretty good size, and had a nice rack. Earlier this evening, dd5 explained it like this..."we saw a enormous moose and we yelled to you and daddy, and it was so funny how you jumped out of bed! and he was really big and it scared the heck out of me, and he went running down the street." She said the "scared the heck" part several times today...I think she was having fun just saying it! lol

After that, things settled into a more normal rountine...

We had a wonderful day with some of our dear friends today!
As it happens, dh did end up taking ds out just before our friends arrived, and didn't return until after they had gone home...ds didn't seem upset, so I am guessing he and daddy had a grand time of it!
I didn't tell my kiddos what exactly I had planned because I wasn't sure 100% that our friends would be able to make it, but just before they were due to arrive I began to set up the table...they became very excited to see the table cloth go onto the table, and the tea set come out. I had them put chairs around the table for our "bear friends" which was exactly the number of our real friends...so they never guessed.
Then I took out the dress-up box and they all put on their best finery. Even my little daycare 2yo found a fancy dress to wear (well, actually I found it for her...she looked so cute!)
Not too long after that, my "surprise" arrived! Everyone was happy to be together. We started with tea and teddy grahams.


You can see all our bear friends in the photo, and here are a couple close ups of my best-dressed girls...G is wearing a dress from my late grandmother. I believe she made it herself as there is alot of hand stitching, and no tag. It's really quite a pretty dress:


B is wearing a dress her Auntie Kathy bought for her one year for Christmas. She has been very reserved around the camera lately...but honestly she did smile today!


After the tea party, we read a pop-up story about a polar bear who writes to his bear friends in other countries...it's very cute. Then we sorted our bears by size, color, clothing, etc. and compared them for more/less. Then we gave our bears awards for best dressed, softest, fuzziest, oldest, etc. The girls had to decided which bear got which award...I think they really enjoyed that part. Lastly we played dvd candyland...except that instead of candy or characters on the game squares, I had attached photos of the different kinds of bears...I did this once with the rainforest, and the kids seem to like this game just as much as the real game.

Afterwards, my friend and I had a chance to chit-chat while the girls played for a short time.

*Ü* Blessings,

Memorization of Poetry & Math Concepts

Hello again,
I mentioned yesterday (was it yesterday?) how I had been inspired by another blogger to have my children memorize some poetry...well, I think I also mentioned taking some video of B reciting our morning prayer poem...before I show it to you, I thought I should probably credit the sources; however, when I went to gather them, I found them to be anonymous prayers for children. So, ours is a blend of 4-5 simple children's morning prayers:



My darling son wanted to sing a song for me...so he made this one up on the fly:


And I have to tell you, yesterday after I finished checking email, and before school began, I found dd5 spontaneously doing this:


If there is anyone out there who doesn't know the significance of this, read on. This is called "cumulative property" - the concept that numbers in addition (and multiplication) can be turned around and still mean the same thing. This is an easy concept for adults, but not so much for children. Most kids see 5+1=6 as a different addition problem than 1+5=6. I was so thrilled to see B doing this without any prodding from me (except the Math Minute white board being ready with the sentence...she filled in the number.)

She was a little shy about getting her picture taken, hence the reason she is hiding behind the board. In order to even get her to let me take the photo, I had to first let her and ds4 play with my camera...so they took some pictures, and had me take some of them...and this is a really nice one of them:


Yesterday was Veteran's Day, and I had a hard time finding any activities online to do on this day. We ended up just discussing it, and doing a word search. If you have an idea for an activity for elementary aged students, please share it with me.

Did you know Friday is National Teddy Bear Day? We're planning something very special, so you'll have to check back to see just what we do! I can't wait. I'll have to scrapbook those pages...or maybe smile box it...we'll see.

Have a wonderful day!

*Ü* Blessings,

Happy Veteran's Day!

Hi Friends!

I've been inspired by another blogger: Trivium Academy. Her daughter is 8, and she has a video of her reciting a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson...well, our morning prayer poem is about the same length, and B can recite that from memory...so I took a video of her to post here...but the camera batteries are recharging. I'll post it later. Anyway, I have a couple of children's poetry books, and gave one to each of the girls and had them choose a poem they really liked. They will memorize it and recite it, hopefully I will get a video of that sometime next week or so...I'm not sure how long it will take to memorize. B is a bit faster than G...we'll see how it goes.

I have extra kids for school today, we're getting a late start as we are still waiting for them to arrive. I wish I had some really special Veteran's Day activity planned...but they are hard to find!

On Friday, it is National American Teddy Bear Day. We're having friends over to do special activities with our bears...sorting, counting, games, etc...then we'll have a teddy bear tea party or picnic...probably too cold for a picnic, most likely we'll do a tea party, as they love getting all dressed up and fancy...plus Ben will be the only boy...hmmm, Daddy is on vacation, maybe he'll take Ben away for the morning? That's an idea!

Gotta run for now...
*Ü* Blessings,

Guided or Leveled Reading

Hi Friends,
I don't know how many of you homeschoolers use ordinary books for reading rather than a basal reader...but I'm sure some of you are familiar with Reading A-Z and their leveled books.

In a public school, children are tested to find their specific reading level, so that during independent reading time, they can be directed to books that are not too hard to read alone; but also, the testing allows the teachers to teach specifically to the child's level.

Anyway...I saw someone ask once about their child's reading level, so I thought I'd share this Reading-Level Comparison Chart which shows grade levels with approximate reading levels for different leveling indicators such as Lexile, DRA and Guided Reading (Fountas & Pinnell.)

I use the Reading A-Z benchmark books to get a level for each child, then use the Reading A-Z Comparison Chart to find the correlating "professional" levels.

Then a few days ago, I found this Book Wizard at Scholastic. You can put in the title of a book or the author, and it will tell you the different levels of the book. Then you can search for more in that level or above or below that level. I've been busy leveling the books from my bookshelves so that the kiddos will know at a glance the books that will be "just right" for them. I send my dgd home with a bag of books to read with her mom and dad every few days, so this wizard has been a huge help in sending the right books home! No more guessing and hoping the books won't be too hard or too easy...now I can just pull level "H" books off the shelf and into the bag they go! So easy.

I thought even though you may not have a grandchild or extra child that leaves your homeschool each day...this may still help you pull the right books out for taking in the car, or for making a list of books to get from the library, or maybe just for quiet time reading... so hopefully I am helping someone out with this post.

Blessings,
*Ü*
Karen

My "Schoolroom"

Hello Friends,
Someone in a yahoo group I belong to was asking for photos of our homeschool setup for a website she was making to help other homeschoolers. Of course now I can't find her post, so I thought I'd just put my pics here...maybe she'll find me, maybe not...but maybe someone truly is interested in my setup...then again maybe not.
But I'll post anyway. *Ü*

We are set up in my formal dining room...which we don't ever use as a dining room.
The pellet stove is in this room, so it's nice and warm.
This is a picture of the full "calendar wall". The next pictures are close ups of the different components:

You can see there are some "song sheets" and a white board which has days of the week, a clock, piggy bank and tally spot. Below that is a rolled up pocket chart, another white board (which is gray) used for morning messages, and a "weather station". To the left of the "weather station" is our calendar and thermometer.


The above close up shows the days of the week. We turn one card over each day, and will eventually use this to spring board into math computations...7-4=3, 7-3=4, 4+3=7, 3+4=7 etc. On the blue square we write the date in numerals. We do the "time" each day...right now we are doing strictly by the hour and so far have used word problems for this..."if it is 10 o'clock now, what time was in one hour ago" to get a time for the new day. We also tally the days of school each month and record that as well as count the days we've been in school (not for the month, but total) and then count that in coins.


The next photo is of our "white" board, that is actually gray...we use it for a morning message. Right now we are concentrating on punctuation, capitalization and spelling of sight words. The weather graph is done daily by ds4, the girls do it in their calendar notebook...well, most of these components are also done in their notebooks. Under that is our new Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow chart. Our old one just had the days of the week...I made this one yesterday to include days as well as numbers. I'll manipulate it for a couple weeks, then let the kids do it. Underneath, you can't see the clocks we use during the "time" part of calendar. Every child has his/her own clock. You can see them in the first picture I posted.

This next picture shows the coin songs we use, the Book-It chart and the pledge. Below that is a strip of seasons, the orange arrow points to our current season.


Last photo...it's our calendar, place value/school day counter pockets (we use popsicle sticks instead of straws for this), our thermometer {we practice counting by 5s daily, and this is graphed in our calendar notebook daily, and a hundreds board (we add then new number daily, we're counting our days of school...to 100, then we'll have a party!) Every day of school that ends in a zero (10th, 20th, 30th, etc.) we have a special celebration with "Zero the Hero" and do an art activity and a graphing activity.}


Well, that's not the entire room...I didn't post a picture of our table, so I'll have to do that on another post...but that is our calendar wall, and it takes about a half hour to do all of that. It sets a nice routine to our day.

The kids know we do calendar, spelling, Explode the Code or handwriting and math...then we have snack. Then we finish our school day with History and Science. Break for lunch and recess, then storytime and naps for the little ones. Lastly we have reading for the girls and some independent activities to reinforce math and language arts skills.

I've gotta run and make lunch...my tummy is growling!

Bye for now!
Blessings,
*Ü*
merchi

Lapbooking and Zero the Hero

Well, after helping someone on LapbookLessons.ning.com come up with some ideas for a bear lapbook, I decided to go ahead and do one lapbook on each animal in the Thornton Burgess stories...(rather than one mini book and culminating in one lapbook at the end of the year.) God gave me some inspirational ideas in the middle of the night, I should have gotten up and jotted them down! I did remember a few however and so will incorporate those into our lapbook.
The first book was called The Adventures of Reddy Fox. So we did a library pocket with some tangrams and a picture of a tangram fox - I really like making my lapbooks interactive and able to be used again and again. We also put some folds along one small side, and used those to write some words that end in sh/ch/tch or x to add -es to to make plural (such as foxes - I tried to find words somehow related to the fox world...but we did stretch a few! lol)
We also did a little flip book with vocabulary words such as nocturnal and omnivorous and an accordian fold which tells the size of each type of 3 foxes, and compares to find the largest and smallest.
I think in the big center space we'll add a peek-a-boo lift-the-flap of four different types of foxes, and on a fold-out we'll put in a wheel that does something similar, and finally we'll have some lift-the-flap greeting card type folds for where each fox lives in the world.
We found a lovely Jan Brett illustration for our cover, and I will certainly share our creations when we are done.
I'm just glad to have finally made the decision and be moving forward!

On another topic, today was our 30th day of school - I can't believe it! I don't know if any of you have ever heard of Zero the Hero? Well, we have a "visit" from him every tenth day...days of school that end in a zero. Today he brought Reese's Pieces for us (notice the zero shape) 30 for each child, and we sorted and graphed them. I had hoped to have one graphing activity each month besides our weather graphing...but this is our first. The kids loved it - we did a few last year so they are old pros now. Another zero day activity I'm planning is some sort of art project that will end in a ten page book which counts by 10s to 100. On day 10 we did 10 red apples in a tree, day 20 was 20 fall leaves and today was 30 pumpkin seeds...of course I made a mad dash to Wally-World last night in hopes that they would still have seed packages - nope - I was dreading having to cut open a pumpkin and dry the seeds overnight when it dawned on me that we could paint the seeds...so we did. We cut orange construction paper ovals, and then smaller, lighter ones and layered them to look like we were looking at the inside of a pumpkin...then using our finger we made the seeds! They look so cute!

Just in case anyone is interested...these were the apple trees:

and these were the fall leaves:

I'm excited about the final book. My plans are for 40 - candy, 50 stars (it's on or near Veteran's Day, so we'll do a flag) 60 turkey feathers, 70 Christmas tree ornaments, 80 snowflakes, 90 - not sure yet and 100 hearts (very near Valentine's Day.) If you have any ideas/suggestions for this, help me out! I appreciate all the help I can get!

Watch for our Fox lapbooks coming soon!

Blessings,
*Ü*
merchi

Heart of Dakota's Little Hearts for His Glory - Week 6

Last week I attended our local homeschool group's monthly meeting. One lady lead us all in song, and afterwards said that is how she and her children begin each homeschool day...with a worship song. I thought, oh how nice...I should do that, too! The next morning, we did. We sang two songs, our day went wonderfully. That was Friday.
My dgd made a wonderful drawing of Moses coming down the mountain to find the Israelites worshiping the golden calf...

(I think I wrote previously of the edible playdoh adventure we had!)

Well, on Monday of this week, we started the same way...it was awful! No one wanted to sing or be quiet and enjoy the music...it was dreadful. We tried again on Tuesday...it wasn't much better! We tried again today (Wednesday) and it was much better...the sense of peace and calm was back. School was very smooth, attitudes were mostly cooperative, and we finished school in record time!
This week we've been reading about Moses and the promised land. Moses has died. Joshua is to lead the people into Jericho. Today we read about Rahab and the spies she protected. The Little Hearts program suggested a very creative art project...re-create the walls with construction paper and hand drawn stones and have the children fill in the "mortar" (ie. shaving cream) by squeezing it from a baggie onto the paper - sort of like frosting a cake! It was so much fun. Then we added a red "rope" that was the rope the spies escaped Jericho on. Here are some pictures:

You can see they all enjoyed this...and you can see dgd6 is quite proficient with a bag of "frosting" I may have to do some cakes with her!
Here they are with their finished products:

Rather than just throw away the extra shaving cream, I let the kids have fun with it in the tub! They thought that was just a grand adventure...

dgd made a face with it.

ds was just a giggly little guy!

and dd got it on herself...oops!

Well, this was a really long post...and I haven't blogged at all about our horse riding adventures! I'll save that for another blog.
Blessings,
*Ü*
merchi