Shadows

We recently did a science experiment from the Big Book of Play and Find Out.  We talked about the sun and what shadows are and why they move throughout the day.  We did flashlight experiments in the closet and had a shadow puppet show.  We always do these experiments last so that the kids can play for as long as they want to.  This was a hit for sure.  They played for hours afterward making shadow puppets.  Sometimes after I put them to bed at night in the room that they share I can hear them making shadows until they fall asleep.

It's so fun to be a home-schooler.

Dinotopia by James Gurney

I was so excited for this book.  It really is one of the best children's books out there and it has been very successful and it's hard to find a good deal on these books.  When we started this book we had just finished The Wizard of Oz, which the kids absolutely loved.  I thought these were extremely similar books.  They both had great artwork and an adventure to a land unknown.  For some reason my kids were bored with Dinotopia.  They couldn't wait to finish it and groaned every time we read from it.  I would catch Kendi wanting to look at the pictures though.  I'm thinking that I should have waited until the kids could read this book to themselves.  It is written like a journal without dialog so it isn't very fun when read aloud. There are about 20 other Dinotopia books and I think we'll wait until the kids are old enough to read them on their own.

7 Habits of Happy Kids

This has recently become one of our favorite things to do.  It takes 21 days to form a new habit so every 21 days we read a story from this book.  We talk about the story and answer the questions at the end of each story.  Then we talk about the good habit associated with the story and make a sign to hang up somewhere to remind us to work on that habit every day.

I've had this book for a few years and never realized how great it was.  The kids love to read the stories, but there is a section for parents to read and I never actually read until recently.

This book follows the same habits from the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective Marriage that I recently wrote about.  It has been fun to work on these good habits with the kids.  I think we will do this every year until we can move on to the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.

Longman Young Children's Picture Dictionary

We got these books from a very kind relative along with some other great books soon to come.  I'm not just writing a review because they came from someone we know.  These really are great books.  I really wish I had these when we were doing co-op preschool.  The kids look forward to this the most out of everything we do every time we do it.  We do it about twice a week.  It is something that both the girls are 100% involved in.  It is helping Aydri learn her letters and helping Kendi learn to write them and practice writing the ones she already knows.  They both love the stories, games, songs and activities that each lesson provides.  There are different topics with each lesson that we use to help Aydri with her enunciation and vocabulary.  If only there were more books on every subject laid out like these books.  Homeschooling would be a breeze.  You can find them at this website.

Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving

     I'm not even half way through this book, but I'm not sure I'm going to finish it.  That says a lot about it already, right?  It actually isn't a bad book and I may finish it still.  It is really long and it's not going to be useful in homeschool so it's not getting my priority right now.

     How it came about goes like this:  I really wanted to read a book from Spain that was written in Spanish.  I started Don Quixote in English so that if I read it in Spanish it would be easier to follow.  Oh yeah, I don't speak a lick of Spanish so this was an experiment.  I couldn't stand Don Quixote.  His delusions were more than I could handle.  I decided to read Harry Potter in Spanish instead.  While looking for other books I became very interested in Spain and then I came across Tales of the Alhambra.  There are a few other books by Washington Irving on my list of books to read so I thought this would be just what I was looking for.  I had heard of the Alhambra, but I did not know it was in Spain.  From reading this book, I have learned so much about Spain and Granada.  I remember hearing about Granada when we studied Christopher Columbus, but I had no idea where Granada was.  This book clarified everything.  I love historical fiction and this book has a lot of fascinating information about Spain in it.  I wish there was a way to read a book like this about every country in the world.

The only negative things I can say about this book are that there is absolutely no dialog.  For me, dialog makes or breaks a book.  If I was reading this purely for entertainment I may not have gotten as far as I did, but I'm glad I kept going.  Another thing is that I still don't know the name of the main character.  I must have missed it in the beginning and it hasn't repeated it since.

Field Trip to the Dinosaur Museum

We have been reading Dinotopia with the Girls and thought it would be fun to take Kendi to the Dinosaur Museum in St. George.  I've always wanted to stop by there, but wanted to be able to spend some time.  I think they say they have the largest collection of dinosaur tracks at this museum and they find new discoveries every week right at the sight of the museum.

Kendi was super excited.  She especially loved seeing the few bones they had. She said she wants to be an archaeologist.

We spent over an hour in the museum and it was well worth the little trip.

Can you see the track? They actually stick out of the mud.  After the dinosaurs ran through it, their tracks were filled in with the mud that hardened and left a "cast" of their feet.  Cool, huh?

Real Life Math Adventures

Lately, Kendi has been learning about skip counting in math.  Kendi has had a piggy bank for as long as she can remember and always wants to count her money.  What a great way to learn skip counting.  With nickels you skip count by 5s and with dimes you skip count by 10s and so on.  I have explained money and counting it to Kendi so many times, but it never clicked until I related them to her number bars.  The green units represented pennies and five of those is the same as her blue number five bar which is also the same as a nickel.  Ahhh, it finally makes sense to her.

Another thing we skip count with is her bean jar.  She earns five or ten beans for every book she reads.  I have her put the beans into piles of whatever number we decide to use and then we count them.  She earns beans for other things too so sometimes the number is random like 27 so I'll have her count them out into 3 piles of 9 so that she sees that the concept goes further than just five and ten.