Weekly Review

A great week overall. We did 4 days of History and Science. We had a "movie day" at a friends house on Tues. The kids all played together indoors and out, while the moms watched chic flicks (does X-Men count as a chic flick?)

History: we learned about the Crusades and the kids made Pilgrim Badges, which mysteriously transformed into fairy badges and a game that they made up (that has nothing to do with Crusades!). We also learned about Richard the Lionhearted, his brother John Lackland, and the stories of Robin Hood which take place during this time in history. Science: we learned about atoms, and did an experiment about observing and describing things.

Math: the 8yo is learning about weird forms of measurement not typically used in the US (celcius, grams, kilograms, & centimeters). The 6yo is finishing up the section on counting to 1000 which was HARD, very very hard...but she's slowly catching on.

Reading: the 6yo read a story called Nobody Listens to Andrew, which she liked a lot. The 8yo read a few stories and had a skill station day, which focused on oi/oy, ou/ow type sounds. English: the 6yo learned about synonyms, the 8yo finished her chapter on linking verbs and double negatives. Handwriting: the 6yo's handwriting is improving. The 8yo's handwriting exercises are getting longer (having to copy a paragraph), which gets lots of complaints - we divided it up into 2 days' worth of work instead of 1. Spelling: we spread out last week's list over into this week and finished them up. The 8yo amazed me by knowing the difference between "their" and "there".

Extras: the kids wrote another letter to Great Grandma in Florida because our last letter returned home shredded:( The post office machine got caught on the jolly ranchers we had put inside.

Chemistry

I had my doubts about teaching chemistry to young kids, but we've all been really interested in it (so far). I'll share some of my Chemistry resources...

Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry PreLevel 1 - as reviewed previously. The Periodic Table, Elements with Style! by Adrian Dingle and Simon Basher (see photo above). My kids love this book! They really like seeing the personified elements. We just started reading through this book, along with our Real Science 4 Kids book.

Tom Lehrer's Elements Song:
http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html
The 6yo laughed when she saw Mendeleeve's mouth open and close, and then when his head went bouncing over the words.

It is only our 1st week on Chemistry, but so far it's been fun! Who knew???

The Rewards of Discipline

...So, my 8yo joins the 6yo's playing, but it immediately develops into a tempest of angry disagreement. The 6yo is unable to get a word in edge-wise, while the 8yo starts yelling, stomping, and dictating. Finally, the 8yo kicks the toy over and says "fine, I'm not playing". I banish the 8yo to her bedroom for 10 minutes for her hot temper (this has been a common occurance lately). While the 8yo is gone, the 6yo is busy. She grabs a plastic bag and starts stuffing things into it. I'm not really paying attention at this point, being occupied in the kitchen. The 8yo comes down the stairs at the end of 10 minutes, and the 6yo hands her the plastic bag happily. Well, it was a surprise for her, and was meant to make her feel better. The 8yo is overjoyed to see a rather large stash of her little sister's candy: several small chocolate bars and a pack of bubble gum. I wasn't exactly sure what happened here, but I'm pretty sure a different lesson was learned, LOL. But it was kind of sweet, I suppose, that the 6yo would sacrifice so much of her candy to cheer up her big sister.

Two weeks away...

We're two weeks away from knowing a gender for this little creature. The ultrasound is Feb 9th, and we're dying to know. Will we love a boy? Yes! Will we love a girl? Yes! But somehow the little "it" is missing something when "it" is just an "it". I'm into the 17th week, feeling good, overeating, but trying to stop myself:) It's a pretty normal pregnancy. I think I'm feeling movement, specifically when I put pressure on "it" and "it" squirms away, making a hard lump elsewhere. Funny, my kids all had their own quirks in-utero. Little Z couldn't stand a full bladder - she'd go spastic unless I went to the bathroom regularly. Little A liked to dance around to singing at church, and we'd watch in amazement as my stomach did some pretty alien tricks during the songs.

Let's talk about pregnancy food cravings! My cravings are pretty hum-drum. I have a total aversion to vegetables (I used to love a good stir fry, but now I can't stand it). I like fruit, which isn't typically something I enjoy all that much outside of pregnancy. I craved roast beef sandwiches and steak with my 2nd pregnancy. Just like when you get the stomach flu and you blame it on the last food you ate, I tend to blame preeclampsia on roast beef. I can tolerate it this time around, but its definitely not my favorite. I'd rather play it safe and avoid it. This time around I'm not real fond of meat. Eggs are good, and I can tolerate meat, but not too keen on most of it. Right now I'm enjoying honey turkey lunchmeat sandwiches with tomatoes and lettuce and mayonnaise. I had a big time aversion to coffee (the love of my life, coffee...) at first, but I am happily over it, and drinking coffee again (although opting for a friendlier decaf variety).

The Weekend

We had a nice weekend.
Friday was homeschool co-op classes all day. After that, my 8yo went home with another family, and we took their 7yo home with us, LOL. So my 6yo had a sleepover at my house with a 7yo girl, and my 8yo had a sleepover at their house with their 8.5yo girl. They each had fun, although my 8yo tells me she didn't sleep at all. (She has been terribly cranky this weekend).

Saturday we did some clean up around the basement, hopefully getting ready for the next stage in our home movie theatre construction. After kids went to bed, my husband & I watched the movie "Wanted", which was graphically stunning on our new TV in the unfinished movie theatre. I do have to add, although the movie was graphically stunning, it was also visually grotesque. Overall, I liked the movie plot, but wished the graphics had been less revolting.

Sunday we went to church, and then went a-visiting family members. We had lunch at my husband's grandma and aunt's house. He shoveled their drive and filled up their water softener with salt. Then we went to visit my dad and brother for awhile. Last, we shopped at the store before coming home and having dinner.

Tomorrow I hope to get back on the early morning, exercise routine.

Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry Pre-Level 1

I received my science book order from Amazon today! I'm excited about starting Chemistry Pre-Level 1 (Real Science 4 Kids, Gravitas Publications). You can see a sample chapter here:

http://www.gravitaspublications.com/sample-chapter/chapter-1.pdf (takes a little while to download, so if you have dial-up, beware!)

I like the simple pictures that *I* can understand. Each atom is personified with an arm that can link arms with other atoms to form molecules. I think the simplified presentation will make a nice resource in years to come. If we forget something, or Chemistry 1 doesn't make sense, we can always pull out the prechemistry book as a reference. The text is easy enough that the kids may be able to do some of the reading on their own. The book is divided into 10 units. Each unit has an experiment that goes along with it to cement the concept.

The full program requires the Student Textbook (a nice hardcover book), a teacher's manual that explains the experiments conducted for each unit, and a student workbook, where the student writes down answers and observations to the experiments.

Weekly Review

...We visited a new library and got a new library card. This did a lot to boost my spirits, as I'd felt like my old library resources were wrung dry. We have a ton more books we can bring home now, and this has brought new excitement into my day. Funny how much a library means in the life of this mom!

The kids will have homeschool co-op classes all day tomorrow, and then a sleepover afterwards. Full, full day!

Here's our week in review:

History: Read about Knights and Samurai. Looked at photos of knight armor, samurai armor, and samurai gardens. Science: Ordered our PreChemistry science books and awaiting their arrival with high hopes! Math: The 8yo finished up Shapes and took a test today. She can now calculate perimeter, and count vertices, edges, and faces. The 6yo is studying big numbers. We reviewed numbers like 29, 30; 129, 130; 299, 300 - since this was tripping her up a bit. Reading: the 8yo read a neat story about bird songs, the 6yo is half way thru a story about President Lincoln and the Civil War. Spelling: we had a 3 day work week, so we are spreading our spelling out over 2 weeks. Handwriting: the 8yo continues cursive, the 6yo continues precursive. English: the 8yo learned about contractions, the 6yo worked on glossary skills and dividing up syllables. Extras: the 8yo practiced piano. I had the kids write a letter to their great-grandma who is spending the winter in Florida. Great-g'ma can't hear very well, so hopefully she will enjoy reading our letters.

Winter doldrums

It hits me every year about this time. I'm fed up with being cold all the time. I'm tired of feeling trapped inside, surrounded by endless snow. I'm tired of having the same winter morning, and same winter afternoon every. single. day. I'm tired of our schoolbooks, and I'm tired of turning to the next page in our workbooks every day. Our schoolbooks are working very well for us this year, but even so - I'm just tired of them. I'm tired of our library's limited books, and bringing the same 15 books home from the library every week (because the kids never grab something new).

I want a clean house, and warm weather, and something different.

It's always this time of year that I want a complete make over in our day. If we relax-schooled, I want textbooks. If we textbooked, then I want to relax-school. So now I'm wanting to ditch our textbooks and dive head long into pleasure reading, exploring nature centers, and getting together for playdates. I feel such a sense of dread at picking up our schoolbooks this morning (ok, so there's nothing new, but really...it's worse today!)

Perhaps this is the time I really need to go back on our schedule (which lasted for 1 beautiful week and then fell to pieces). Exercise would probably help. And free afternoons to go out and explore. A clean house would probably lift my spirits, too. But it all seems like so much work. Just the thought makes me want to crawl into a cave and hibernate. Wake me up for spring!

Monthly Checkup

We are now at the 16 week mark of this pregnancy.
The baby's heart rate was in the 160s again. The kids came with me to the appt. The 6yo squirted the jelly onto my stomach and the 8yo got to move the doppler around with the dr's help to pick up the heartrate.

After the appt, we went to that town's local library, which has replicas of human body parts, a skeleton, and development of the human fetus. The human fetus replicas were really neat; you can take the larger ones out of the womb and hold it in your hands. It was amazing to see just how small the 6yo was at birth. She was born at 29 weeks gestation and weighed 2.5 lbs. I knew she was small, but I had forgotten exactly how small that looks in real life.

Then the kids were able to play at the library while I sat and talked with a friend for 2 hours. We had a nice time, although I was suffering from Library-Envy. This library had every Level 1 Easy Reader known to man and an extensive homeschool section. Sigh. But other than the lack of selection our library offers, I really do like our small town and am glad we moved here. I just miss being able to pick up anything I wanted immediately from the mega-Library.

Weekly Review

Math: the 8yo learned about vertices, edges, and curves on 3D shapes. She also learned about Horizontal, Vertical lines, Parallel and Intersecting lines. Of course, I'm seeing these things and thinking about High School Geometry (groan). The 6yo took a test on shapes and has moved on to large numbers. She is counting by 100s to get to 1000, learning how to read a number in its hundreds, and learning how to count one more, one less (354 - 1 less is 353, and 1 more is 355).

Reading: the kids have been reading a lot independently (which makes my heart swell with pride). This is exactly what I have wanted and have been working toward! Now I just have to keep them adequately supplied with books that interest them. The 8yo has finished all the Rainbow Magic Fairy books that our library system has to offer (39 total), and now we wait for the new release of Daisy Meadows' Petal Fairies series. We'll probably pick up Cam Jansen books in the meantime. The 6yo is grabbing any book available and wanting to read it to me. She's read a wide range of Level 1's with short chapters and various picture books. In "School Reading", the 8yo is doing well with her new 3rd gr level textbook, although she isn't real inspired by the stories. The 6yo likes her 1st gr school stories, but mostly because she just likes reading.

Language Arts: we're plugging along with Handwriting: the 8yo learning cursive handwriting (which I doubt the usefulness of, and wonder if we'd be better off learning typing...but oh well). Spelling is going famously well - the kids help each other out, and I've seen the 8yo's own personal spelling "sense" grow by leaps and bounds. In English Grammar, the 8yo learned about Helping Verbs, which is a tricky thing to learn, but she's catching on to it!

History - learned about Old English language and early castles. Science - attempted the beginnings of Chemistry using library books. I hate teaching science. I wish I liked it more.

Extras - we watched the movie Miss Potter and the 6yo was highly inspired by it. She now practices drawing Peter Rabbits, and was thrilled to see Beatrix Potter's name on her books at home, and also the name of the publisher who was also in the movie.

This Saturday, the kids had their AWANA car races. The 8yo competed in a group of 3 girls for 3rd/4th gr level. Her car was extremely slow (something on the bottom was dragging it down). Even so, she won 3rd place since there were only 3 girls competing in that age level. The 6yo had a matchbox car which didn't perform well on the track (seemed to do great in practice) and she was last place. She got a candy bar for her efforts, but cried about loosing.

I'm approaching 16 weeks pregnant. I have an appt early next week and will post my monthly update after that!

A bit about Baby Names...

I was a teenage novelist.
I was seen around school carrying a babyname book.
Teachers and students gave me odd looks and asked if it meant something.
Like any writer, I suppose, I was obsessed with names, name meanings, name histories, and word etymologies. Even today, when someone calls out a name, my head instantly calls up a baby name book entry for it.

In my teen years, I loved Victorian era names. I thought it great fun to invite families of 8 children, and give them all names, complete with family histories. Some of my favorite inventions include - Beatrice Abigail, Allegra Ernestine, Ava Claire. Sometimes I'd add in family surnames as middle names in keeping with the times and trends.

My firstborn was named long before she was conceived (long before her parents even married). It comes from the Greek New Testament word for "truth". Our second born daughter did not have a name and I had nightmares every night of my pregnancy, fearing that this kid didn't have a name. She was named 10 minutes before birth, with a sudden inspiration that popped into my head and hadn't even been on our list of names to consider.

I'm keeping faith that this baby, too, has a name, but we don't know what it is yet. I'm only hoping and praying that the name is revealed not a day later than after her (his) birth. The hospital threatened last time with not releasing me until a name was chosen. They weren't very nice considering she was born early and we should've had another 2-3 months to find a name!

Ah, well. Lately I'm combing the baby name sites and message boards, but not finding the right "fit". Nothing feels right on this babe yet.

Here are some fun baby name resources:

Baby Name Wizard (www.babynamewizard.com) and Nymbler (www.nymbler.com) - from the same genius creator, has some really fun tools on both sites.

Baby name blog - You Can't Call It "It" http://youcantcallitit.com/

SSA.gov which tells you the popularity of a name given different decades, from 1880s to 2000s. http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/

Alfabette Zoope - http://www.zoope.com/about/about_names.html (fun and zany names)

Weekly Review

Math: the 8yo finished up Fractions and has moved on to Shapes (sides, corners/vertices, curves). The 6yo is still working on shapes - on Thurs, she had to look at a picture and figure out how many shapes it took to create the picture.

Reading: the 8yo has started 3rd gr reading and completed 4 lessons. The 6yo's stories suddenly became paragraphs rather than the shortened one line sentences. She is doing really well with the sudden increase!

Spelling: the 8yo had her first full week of 3rd grade spelling. The words were easy for her (all short vowel words), and she already knew her memory words, too. I always wonder how advantageous spelling programs are, anyway, since she has been picking up a lot on her own. She did great with her dictation sentences. The 6yo also did well with her spelling words, which included some tricky ones (hop, hopped, light, flight, fright - for example).

Handwriting: the 8yo started 3rd gr cursive, and so far, is happy with the easy assignments (review of a, c, g, q, e). The 6yo complains about handwriting and wonders why she needs to write so much, but she is progressing in her book (a little sloppily, but I'm really bad at enforcing good handwriting with correct letter formation).

English/Grammar: The 8yo wrote a few thank you notes for Christmas gifts, which I counted toward her Grammar/Writing assignment. She took a test on writing letters and did very well. Then she started the unit on Helping Verbs. The 6yo had to write a poem about a kite, and then about something else.

History: Learned about the Vikings in England, and William the Conqueror. Also read about Alfred the Great.

Science: I'm really just looking to tide us over until we get the PreChemistry books. We began Cosmos4Kids.com web site for science, but I'm not altogether feeling that it is a good fit for us.

Art: We made snowflakes. The Kinderart web site has some printable snowflakes that you print off, fold up, and cut out. Very pretty!

Co-op: Our twice a month homeschool co-op classes started back up today. The 6yo came home with 4 crickets: 2 boys & 2 girls. I'm sure they had an eventful day, but I haven't really talked to them a whole lot yet. I'm sure they'll share their projects with me later.

New Year's Resolution...Checking in...

Just wanted to check in (and waste a little time) by sharing how our first day of our New Year's Resolutions went.

I woke up at 7:30. Hard, but not impossible. I even exercised. Yay, me!

The kids complained when their alarm went off at 8 and wanted to go back to bed. But they dressed themselves like champions and came down ready for breakfast. Another yay!

We did all the basic subjects from 9:30 - 12:00. This included the 6yo languishing away on the couch, saying how tired/cold/whatever she was. This also included the 6yo doing a detailed coloring on her spelling pretest page. And this also included AWANA verse practice, and the 8yo's piano practice. Not bad!

Next, I need to get the house cleaned for our local homeschool support group at my house tonight (gasp!) I also have a ton of errands to run, but methinks it will get put off until tomorrow.

I can't believe we got school done and lunch finished by 1pm!! Amazing!! (Of course, we also skipped Science, History, and Art...but even so...I think we're doing great!)

Weekly Review

Yes, we did school this week...but it was minimal.
Each day, the kids picked 2 subjects from their regular school week. They could pick from Math, Handwriting, Spelling, English, Phonics, or Reading. Then, we worked on Art, and one other fun subject (Science or History). We finished our Artbook (see the 2 posts below this one). We learned about Eric the Red and Leif Ericson in History. We did one last reading on Rocks and Minerals to bring this study to an end. Next, I think we're going to study Chemistry, but I still need to order our books (Real Science 4 Kids PreChemistry).

The kids were also given a few domestic projects:) A few times this week, the girls were each given their own room to clean (livingroom, dining room, bedroom, bathroom). The 8yo also helped me bake cookies. We found an awesome (easy!) sugar cookie recipe from Alton Brown. (note: we didn't make shapes, as I'm a lazy baker - but we did frost and put candy sprinkles on them).

We've also been working on our Home Movie Theatre project. Hopefully I can get photos up soon.

KinderArt: Art Book, 8yo's

Here is the 8yo's artbook, or you can see a larger slideshow here: http://picasaweb.google.com/weepip/AlaithiaSArtbook#slideshow

Her art pages are in this order: ArtBook Cover, Primary Color Hands, Blotter Bugs (color mixing), Patterns, Warm/Cool Colors, Neutral Colors, Texture Bugs, Imagination Painting, About the Artist.

You can find out more about KinderArt at their web site (www.kinderart.com) We will probably continue art using some of their other projects. It also works well in a Homeschool Co-op setting. I am co-teaching it to 3-5 year olds. I think this would also work well with older kids, who can appreciate it more. You do have to change the About the Artist page, since it was designed to be used with Kindergarteners in an Elementary School setting.

Kinder Art

Today we finished our Kinder Art: Art Book (http://www.kinderart.com/) This has been a great (FREE!) art program for the preschool-elementary range. Here is the 6yo's art book (album shown below, or click here to see the larger version: http://picasaweb.google.com/weepip/ZoiyaSArtBook#slideshow


The last few pictures reflect my daughter's sudden interest in drawing guinea pigs. The blueish guinea pig is actually a Sea Guinea (like a Sea Horse or Mermaid, only a Guinea Pig). She choose to make a Sea Guinea and a land guinea pig for her Imagination Paintings. The pictures in order:
Art Book Cover, Primary Color Hands, Blotter Bugs (color mixing), Warm/Cool Colors, Neutral Colors, Texture Bugs, Imagination Paintings, and About the Artist.

Why does my blog look weird?

I've been playing around with the template features, but ran out of time to really get it right. So for now you'll just have to look at this funky, oddly aligned blog. I doubt I'll have any time to straighten this out later, as Blog Design really isn't on my To Do list. Oh well. Laugh. Enjoy!