Charlotte's Web

I can't explain how much the girls loved this book.  I would read it until I was hoarse and then they would beg to keep going.  We did very well at stopping to look up words and writing them down to review.  Kendi got in to the habit of asking questions when she didn't understand.  We wrote down all the characters names and adjectives about them including the words Charlotte put in her web.  There were some really good discussions, especially about the difference between Charlotte and Templeton.  My personal feelings about this book is that it is about a little girl tragically outgrowing her imagination, but I'm sure the book could mean something different to everybody.

The girls have seen cartoon versions of this story so they knew that Charlotte would die in the end, but after we finished the book, we rented the latest movie of Charlotte's Web.  The one with Dakota Fanning in it.  In that movie they really dramatize Charlotte's death and how sad Wilbur was.  Kendi could not stop sobbing.  I have never seen her so emotional.  I think she really came to love Charlotte from reading the book and then felt extra emotional about it from the movie.  She says she loved the movie, but I did not let her watch it again before we sent it back.

They want to read the book again this summer.  It makes me so happy to see my kids so excited about books to read.  I hope we find many more just as great.  It's so fun to be a homeschooler.

A Day in the Life

It's hard to think that I just finished planning our last week of Kendi's Kindergarten.  This last year has been so great.  We have learned so much, not just academically, but about homeschooling, patience, work and how to inspire my kids to love learning.  We have come a long way and I don't think I would have learned a lot of the lessons  that I did if it wasn't for homeschooling.  My kids can be very enthusiastic which makes homeschool fun, but they can also be very intense which can make some days difficult.  I'm so glad that I am able to teach my kids, one on one, in an environment that can be tailored to them and their personalities.  

I wanted to write a post about how a typical day goes for us.  I'm sure things are going to continue to change and evolve over the years.  I want to be able to come back and remember how we did things at this stage of our lives.

Our schedule is pretty laid back.  I've tried to make homeschool feel like we are doing things that we would normally be doing at home together anyway.  Dad doesn't even have to be at work at any particular time so we don't stick to any time constraints.  I do like to get going as soon as possible so that lunch isn't too late in the day.  I only have energy in the mornings so the sooner the better for me.  We usually get started some time between 8:30 and 9:30 am.  

We start with Scriptures.  This year we've been studying the Book of Mormon.  We've been using materials from bookofmormondiscovery.com.  Instead of reading the chapters from Book of Mormon Stories we watch the videos on lds.org found HERE.  We watch the video and talk about the story one day, then do a page out of the manual and talk about the story more on another day.  We illustrate the story the next day and make a journal entry on the last day and then start over again with the next chapter.  We also go over the memory verses everyday.  Kendi amazes me with memorizing.  It only takes her about two days to memorize a verse.  I have really liked these materials.  They have been a good gathering activity to transition into doing school time.

After Scripture Time we do a reading lesson.  We've been using reading lessons out of How to Tutor by Samuel L. Blumenfeld.  Kendi learns a new "word family" or two everyday.  We talk about the new consonant blend and sound them out as I write them all on the white board.  After they are all on the board, Kendi erases them one by one as she reads them back to me and I make a flash card for each word.  After we've learned about four word families we play games with the flash cards.  Our flash card games include, but are not limited to:

Bang:  We start with our stack of new cards with a bunch of old ones mixed in too.  I take about eight cards with the word BANG! written on it and mix them in too.  I hold of the stack of cards and Kendi reads the one on top and we keep going through them until we get to a card that says BANG! (about eight or ten cards)  I hide the next word and Kendi has to spell it for me.  If she gets it right then she gets to keep the stack of cards we made since the last BANG card came up.  If she gets any of the words wrong or struggles with it enough that I feel like she needs to practice it more then I put in back in the stack of unread words.  When Aydri wants to join in then we put some letter flash cards in the mix and she gets to read those when they come up.

Dodge:  This one is Kendi's favorite games and is very good for her hyperactive energy level.  The girls have to stay on a rug.  They take turns reading either a word card for Kendi or a letter card for Aydri.  If they get it right then I throw the card at them and try to get them with it.  If they get it wrong it goes back into the stack of cards to be read again.  If I get them when I throw it then I get to keep the card.  If they dodge it then they get to keep it and we just leave it on the floor until we're done.  The person with the most cards at the end wins.  I limit the amount of cards we go through so we don't get burned out.  I always try to stop while it's still fun.

Relay:  I lay out five cards on the piano bench.  The girls have to stand behind a designated line in the living room.  We start a timer for one minute and I yell out a word (or letter for Aydri) from the cards on the bench.  They have to run and find the right card and run back to the line and I yell out another word.  They see how many they can get in one minute and then we try to beat their scores.  When it is Aydri's turn I have Kendi be in charge.  It's fun to see her helping and teaching Aydri.

Sentences:  Kendi and I take turns drawing two flash cards out of the stack and reading them.  Then we have to come up with a sentence with both of the words in it.  This is another favorite game of Kendi's and it can get pretty silly.

Those are the games that we play the most.  If we get tired of them, then we'll come up with new ones.  Once Kendi can read a word with automaticity I will remove it from the stack.  I've lost count, but we have made around a thousand flash cards this year.  Kendi also loves to read from some little reader books too.  We use books from The Family Literacy Center that Grandma gave us a few years ago.  Kendi also will pick up any random book and try to read it.

After the reading lessons we do read aloud time.  We read from the list of classics that Thomas Jefferson Education suggests for young children.  We are currently reading Charlotte's Web and the girls are loving it.  We stop and talk about morals that come up in the story, the types of characters in the story and how they impact what happens, and we look up words we don't know.  Kendi has learned to stop me when she doesn't understand something.  I love that.  When I would read a book as a child I would just get confused and not know what to do and the story would become vague and uninteresting.  I would just pass the words in front of my eyes because it was required.  Reading a book is not just about entertainment its about stopping to learn the lessons along the way.  After we've finished a book we will do a project about what we learned.  I will have the girls create or write something that shows what they learned from the stories.  I try to get them to share and talk about it with other people too.

When we are doing read aloud time I will let the kids so something quietly.  I'll print off coloring pages from the stories we read or let them play with a small toy.  Lately, they have been bringing in the kittens to play with on the floor.  These kittens are so much fun.  It will be hard to see them go to new homes in a couple of weeks.

 After reading from the classics we take a break.  I use this time to teach about nutrition and we have a healthy snack.  After they are settled with their snack I turn on a timer for thirty minutes just so we don't loose track of time.  The kids will go play outside and I fold laundry.  I have been able to keep up with laundry like never before in my entire married life because I stick to this.

After break time we usually do Math Time.  We are very slowly working our way through Math U See: Alpha.  Kendi doesn't sit and do worksheets very well so we mix it up by doing problems on the board and playing games and doing The Great Math Adventure activities.  This is a little advanced for Kindergarten so I'm not pushing it at all.  I hope that I never have to push anything.

About once a week instead of doing a Math Lesson we will do a History Lesson instead.  We've been using I Love America: part 1.  This material started out super fun, but we lost interest about half way through the year.  I just picked it up and found out that this month's lessons were about Pocahontas so we've been using it again. The lessons on the Preamble were just a bit over my girls' heads.  Maybe I should have waited a few years.  I really love them learning about America with the religious history included.

The last thing that we do everyday is always something different.  And it's usually more activity based and fun.  We try to end on a fun note.  Some of the things we have done lately are: put on a play of Goldilocks and the three bears, learned about feelings, learned about the five senses, physical fitness and nutrition.  We study all those things you typically learn in Kindergarten.  I plan these lesson myself.  I do a bit of research and decide what will be fun for our girls.  Planning these lessons is one of my favorite things about homeschool.  I love finding new ideas and the best ways of teaching my girls.  I'm a research junkie.  I guess that is a good thing for a homeschooler.

Here is Aydri as baby bear.

On Fridays we do Project Day.  Kendi and I take turns deciding what we'll do for Project Day.  On Kendi's week she will pick something that she really wants to learn more about.  In the beginning of the year she always wanted to do baking.  Last week she wanted to learn about clothing and make up design.  We happened to be learning their parts for Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  We put together their costumes and make up and had a dress rehearsal.  When I decide what to do for project day we work on something for the family or household.  We have painted door-jams, purged (dejunked) the house, planted the garden, organized food storage and put together 72 hour kits all the while learning why we need to do those things.

This last year has been full of abundance for us.  I really struggle with my health and am not able to be as active as I wish I could, but homeschool gives me a great sense of fulfillment.  We are already making plans for next year.  Kendi says she is excited for summertime and wants break from school, but I know that she will be begging to do something after one day.  We are going to make a simple summer school plan for her.

Parts of a Whole

I wanted to teach the girls about Parts of a Whole for a Great Math Adventure.  I started by showing them an orange and talking about what made it a "whole" orange.  Then I broke it in half.  At this point I realized that the kids thought that anything broken was considered "in half."  I had to explain that we were talking about two equal parts.  We went a little further by breaking it into fourths.  After they understood that and we went back and forth a few times, I was prepared to go further, but felt like I might loose them.  I quickly pulled out some measuring cups and two bowls of water and went over everything again.  They measured out water and predicted how many halves and fourths would equal a whole.  We talked about recipes and why we need to be able to measure the exact amount that the recipe calls for.

 Yes, that is a tamale on my plate.  We were eating lunch while we talked about Parts of a Whole.  You would be surprised at how much their listening skills improve if they can be doing something quiet while I talk.  I know that I'm the same way.

After discussing measuring cups and Parts of a Whole, we finished up our lunch and used our newly gained knowledge to bake an Angel Food Cake from scratch.  This was a fun recipe to do with kids because it doesn't involve a whole lot of ingredients or steps and they get to watch egg whites fluff up.

 This is my favorite kind of cake and I have never baked it for my family until now because it calls for about 10 egg whites and Aydri has been deathly allergic to eggs in the past.  She got to eat a couple of bites and so far she is fine.  HERE is the recipe.

Math really can be one of the funnest subjects to learn.

Baby Animals

Last year, the girls and I went on a little trip with Grandma to visit some relatives that are a few hours from where we live.  We ended up coming home with the cutest little kitty we had ever seen.  Kendi was thrilled!!  She seems to have a special way with animals and having one of her very own just made her day.  Fortunately for us, we have a neighbor and dear friend that knows a lot about animals and has experience working with vets.  She helped us with everything our little kitty needed and eventually let us know that she would like some kittens from us.  We weren't planning on having kittens.  We were going to get the kitty fixed asap.  In the back of my mind I knew that having baby animals could be one of the most educational things we could do in Kindergarten.  We kept putting off taking her to the vet and eventually we realized we were getting kittens whether we wanted to or not.  We were all pretty excited.  On Aydri's birthday, four little kittens were born.

We also had a very nice neighbor bring a couple of baby lambs over for the girls to feed.  They were only a week old.

Two Impromptu Field Trips

Without even meaning to, we've been learning a lot about reptiles lately.  We've been reading about them in Aydri's current Chirp Magazine and doing some impromptu activities from there also.

One morning, my parents showed up at our house as we were just starting school and told us about a den of Gopher Snakes they found.  We immediately decided to go show the kids.  The snakes were just coming out for spring.  

As we looked down in their hole we could see dozens of snakes curled around each other.  It was a mixture of creepy and exciting.  You can see three heads peeking out in this picture.

There must have been a cavity under the sidewalk where the snakes holed up for the winter.

We made crocodile puppets after reading about them in Chirp.  On another day, we read about how reptiles shed their skin and the magazine suggested spreading Elmer's Glue on their hands and letting it dry so that when they pulled it off it would look like reptile sheds.  The girls didn't really like having wet glue on them and then it itched as it dried and hurt when we pulled it off.  hehe.

The natural history museum brought in a few reptiles for Earth Day.  We only made it for the Bearded Dragon.

 They are native to Australia and the girls loved watching it eat cockroaches.

 There were a few other things to look at in the museum.  We joined their facebook page so that we are notified when they have special events for kids going on.

Fireball Meteorite

We joined NASA's facebook page and found out about the Lyrids Meteor shower last Saturday night.  We didn't know if we would see anything, but the weather was nice so we stayed out with the kids.  We live a little ways from the city and it was very dark.  We knew the kids would get tired and Aydri did eventually fall asleep outside.

At first, the meteors were so small and short that we weren't sure if we were really seeing them.  Kendi was getting frustrated because she always missed them.  As it got later and the the sky got darker and our eyes adjusted to the darkness we started seeing bigger and bigger meteors.  Finally one was long enough that Kendi was able to catch it.  We thought it was huge.  Then all of a sudden we saw one blaze clear across the sky with a long exploding tail.  I had never seen anything like it before and it felt like it was really close.  A few minutes later we saw another that traveled just as far, but without the fiery tail.  That made me want to go research the big one that we saw.

What I think we saw may have been a fireball meteorite.  The websites that I read made it sound like these things are very rare, but I couldn't find any news reports about the one we saw.  I wish I had gotten a picture of it, but I couldn't figure out how to take pictures of the night sky.  I know, I'm lame.  The pictures online of other fireballs don't do them any justice anyway.  Apparently, on the same night, there was a minivan-sized fireball that landed over California.  Yikes!

Solar System

We spent about a week and a half learning about the Solar System.  We didn't get too deep because it will be so much more fun to explore space when the kids are a little older.  We went over the basics. . . moon, sun, stars, earth, planets.  We made our first lapbook.  I printed off a packet about space from THIS link.  It was simple enough for Kindergartners, but I even learned a thing or two.  I had to watch a couple of youtube videos on how to make a lapbook and then again on how to fold the papers.  It wasn't as obvious to me as the creator of the packet assumed it would be. haha.

I thought Kendi would love making the lapbook.  She loves to color, cut and paste, but this didn't go over that well.  I think next time we'll do lapbooks more like THIS LADY. 

 If that doesn't work we'll give them up altogether.  What Kendi really enjoyed was painting a model of the Solar System.  I had to order one online and the moment it came she was excited about it.  She set up and painted the entire thing.  Kendi and Aydri spent hours in the closet looking at the planets glow in the dark.

Just as we were finishing up studying about space we took a trip to the local university's observatory.  The kids were so excited.  The students and professor there were able to answer all kinds of questions while we waited for it to get dark enough.  Aydri got a little bored and wanted to do her favorite thing, take pictures.

They warned us that it would get loud when they opened the ceiling and spun it around.  I thought the kids were going to freak out, but Aydri started yelling, "Yippee!"

 The sky was perfect for star gazing.  We got to see Jupiter and it's four moons.

 Mars.

 And Venus.

They told us to come back in a month or two to see Saturn.  And if you call ahead and ask them to bring an attachment for the telescope you can take pictures with a DSLR.  They also told me how to take pictures of Jupiter and it's moons with a 300 mm lens.  I'm going to try it one of these nights when the sky clears up.

There is also the Annual Solar Eclipse coming up on May 20. A lot of museums and parks are hosting events and providing solar viewing glasses to watch the eclipse with.

I also joined NASA's facebook page so that I can keep up on what's going on with Space Exploration and so that the kids can watch their upcoming events.

Solve For Unknown

This week Kendi learned about solving for unknown in Math.  You know how the equations go: ? + 3 = 5.  We did the entire lesson and worksheets one day and did the math adventure on the next day.

We applied this to real life by getting out her piggy bank.  She had just got some birthday money so we spent a little time taking out tithing, adding some to her savings and then some to her spending as well.  After we were done counting and adding out how much money she had in spending we talked about some things she could save her money for.  She had a total of five dollars in spending and wanted to figure out how much more money she needed to earn to be able to buy a $30 item that she had decided on.  I wrote out the equation for her.  5 + ? = 30.

Kendi completely understood the concept and followed where I was going with this.  It became more than just a story problem when we applied Solving for Unknown to her life.  She was so excited she went out and earned another five dollars and then asked if we could figure out how much more she needed to earn now.  I love it when math is this much fun.

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.

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.

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.

Kindergarten Curriculum Review

I can't believe we're half way through the year. I still feel like we just got started. I wanted to go over the curriculum plans we made back in August because so many things have changed since then. We've learned what works and what doesn't. I've realized that I want school to feel like it is something we would do together anyway. I don't want it to feel like we separate school life from regular life.

We start our day with scripture reading. We've been using Discover the Book of Mormon from bookofmormondiscovery.com. So far Kendi likes it. We have started with their Book of Mormon ebook that I've printed off and instead of buying the church's Book of Mormon Stories to go with it we just watch the movie clips on lds.org. Kendi loves watching the movie clips and it gives us some variety in our day. My favorite part about Book of Mormon Discovery is the scriptures they pick for young kids to memorize. We go over all her memorized scriptures twice a week and her current verse everyday. Sometimes we play games with them too. I was very willing to pay their price of the book just for the scripture verses alone. It would have taken me a lot of work to read through and find those perfect scriptures. We adapt their lessons plans a little bit and only do about one page a day. If Kendi were reading and doing them on her own she would probably go through more. I like to slow down and talk about it and answer questions with her too. We also add a journal entry at the end of every unit study. We take the memory verse and insert Kendi's name wherever applicable and she writes it in her journal and draws a picture of how that scripture applies to her. The only thing I wish were different is having projects similar to the Faith in God program, but Kendi will be doing that soon enough so I guess I can wait.

Next, we usually do some reading aloud from the classics or The Friend. I used to do this last, but then Kendi knew that home school time was almost over and would keep asking if we were done yet and wouldn't want to read very far. Now, since we do it earlier in the day, the kids have come to love it. Right now, we are reading Dinotopia and just finished The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I let the kids draw, color and keep their hands quietly busy while I read. They will stop to look at the pictures, but they pay much better attention and they keep quiet longer when there hands are busy. I enjoy this time too.

Next, I try to get a reading lesson in before we take a little break. Something I came across since the plans we made in August is the book How to Tutor. Kendi was hating Explode the Code. How to Tutor has a great reading program outlined in it. I can't even explain the difference it has made with our reading lessons. I read through the short lesson plan and then we talk and write on the white board together. Kendi helps me make flash cards of all the new words and we play games with them. It teaches a little bit of grammar along the way. She is learning so much faster now that when I pull out the Family Literacy Readers, she enjoys reading from them. She loves to show us how fast she can read. No more phonetically sounding things out. How to Tutor has taught her that letter combinations make sound combinations and she learns words in chunks. It has really sped things up. Kendi knows about 400 sight words. Just yesterday Kendi mentioned to me that she tries to read every word she sees.

After our daily break is when we switch things up from day to day. Some of Kendi's favorite things to do are Big Book of Play and Find out science projects, I Love America, Part One history lessons, National Geographic magazine (we look at pictures and find the countries on the globe or map), Safety Kids and Standin Tall. For Christmas Kendi got Imagination Station art books by Mark Kistler and some art supplies. We will be spending a lot of time on art and she is soooo excited about it.

We are not using Early Bird Kindergarten Mathematics at all anymore. Kendi did not like it. I have ordered MathUSee - Alpha, but in the past have mostly done math in real life situations. You can check out our Great Math Adventures. I'm planning on using the math books more starting January and incorporating the real life situations to coordinate with what she learning in the books.

Kendi wasn't loving A Reason for Handwriting so we have slowed it down to doing lots of activities and a video clip with every letter. After she learns a new letter, then anytime we do a writing assignment like journal entries or writing letters to friends, she earns a bean for the bean jar if she writes each one correctly. Right now I feel like we don't even need the handwriting book. Her handwriting has improved a lot and it isn't because of the book, but it's nice to talk about each letter.

There are a few things that I mentioned back in August that we are not using at all right now. The science book Our Father's World has been put on the book shelf with other pictures books. It's fun to flip through and read with the kids, but I don't plan lessons around it. We've also taken a break from singing primary songs in Spanish. It was fun, but we just don't have time for everything. I hope we get back into it next year.

Now that the holidays are over and life is not so hectic I hope we can do more field trips and service projects. I also hope Kendi can start her Kids Club too, but we'll ease into that one.

Happy New Year. We're excited for it. Make it a good one.

Math with Christmas Lights

Lately, Kendi has been focusing on mastering number writing and understanding how double digits are written. This is the first Christmas we have spent in our house and we weren't sure we had enough working Christmas lights to put up outside. I didn't want to repair lights unless I knew I needed them so we decided to measure how much we would need. I know there is a lot more math involved in putting up Christmas lights than this, but having her practice writing double digits is just what she needed right now so that is all I had her do. As I measured she wrote down the numbers. It really helped her learn how a number like forty five is translated into 45.

I feel like I'm becoming one of those crazy homeschool moms that make everything into a learning lesson. There is definitely a balance to how many questions to ask and how many things to point out to a child throughout the day. I learned that when an opportunity arises, instead of jumping all over it, it is better to give just enough information to make her curious and start asking the questions. Sometimes I still can't help myself. A couple of days ago it was snowing so bad that we were running to get in the car to go home. As we were running I shouted to Kendi, "Look at these snowflakes, they really look like crystals!" No one else seemed to care as much as I did at the moment.

The Wizard of Oz

I was really excited when I found this large picture book version of The Wizard of Oz at a used bookstore. The large artwork made it especially interesting. On the front of the book is has the original authors name, L. Frank Baum. I was very disappointed to open it up at home and find that it was really a condensed version. I always try to stick to originals as much as possible. In the end, the kids loved this book. It was perfect for young children. This story is very different from the movie we've all seen. The kids were riveted the whole time. Whenever we do long read alouds, I let the kids color or draw or do something quiet because they listen better and for a longer period of time. Kendi had just gotten a new Christmas coloring book that she was ecstatic about, but it didn't keep her from coming over and looking at the pictures and hanging on to every word. I really like the message of this book, "There's no place like home."

A Few Homeschool Days

Last year, on Veteran's Day, I took Kendi to our local Veteran's Day Assembly. I highly recommend taking your kids there. It was the first time Kendi asked questions about soldiers and war and we had some really good discussions. We heard local Veteran's stories and the high school band did a few numbers and we watched videos.

This year both of our kids were really sick on Veteran's Day so we stayed home and I felt bad that it was just going to pass us by. So, a week later, when we were in town to see the dentist I took them over to the Veteran's Memorial. We were lucky it was a beautiful day. The kids are pointing to the section of Bulloch's that served in WWII. My Grandpa's name is listed, but I don't think he actually made it into combat before the war ended. I had no idea that many soldiers served from our tiny little county. We estimated about 1400 names were listed.

My mom called while we were in town to see if we'd pick up some garden veggies before we went home. When we got there they were finishing up butchering one of the four animals (this one was an elk) they harvested this year. I let the girls stay longer to watch. Someone once laughed at me when I said I was a homeschooler. They thought I would hate to have to dissect a frog on my kitchen table. After all that my kids have seen of the anatomy of animals this year, dissecting a frog would seem silly.

The Great Math Adventure

Math is the subject, to date, that I have spent the most time researching and pouring over other blogs trying to figure out how to do it in our homeschool. Reading the math classics and learning about how formulas came about is something that I'm actually looking forward to, but I already know that reading Euclid to my five year old is not going to work right now.

I felt like it was an answer to prayer when I came across THIS LINK. It is a mathematicians lament on why math in public schools is so far from what it should be. Unfortunately, this essay doesn't go into great depth on how a person really should be learning math. At least, not specifically. My conveyor-belt-brain still needs step by step instructions to things like teaching math. But I know I want to do it the best way possible so I've been thinking and praying about what to do.

In a perfect setting, I would have math be an adventure and discovery process. I feel like if a child could be put in a situation where they were compelled to figure out math problems in order to accomplish something important then they would see the value of math and never forget what they learned. Coming up with these situations is not going to be easy, but I'm sure going to try.

I ordered the Math-U-See Alpha set, but have only done one lesson with Kendi. We are going to spend more time on learning how to write numbers really well and fine tune how to count to 100. The first lesson in Math-U-See Alpha is about Place Value. I wanted to follow a math curriculum to make sure we covered everything, but then include some adventure activities to make math become real and memorable. So how do you put a child in a situation that makes Place Value sink in? I couldn't think of anything and I wasn't sure it was even possible. Then I came across a math game on YouTube. Place Value Hopscotch. This was more of a game than a real life situation, but Kendi loves hopscotch and was willing to do it over and over until the information really sunk in. So while the math principals are simple I will include games as long as they work really well.

At this point I'm hoping we'll have math adventures two or three times a month. If anyone out there has ideas please, please, please let me know what you think. We will be calling this The Great Math Adventure.

Kendi's Love

Today was Kendi's Day to pick what we did for Homeschool. I love doing this because it lets me know what she is really interested in and wants to learn more about. She wanted to do cooking. We made pizza. I know that sounds like an overwhelming thing to make, but this recipe is so simple and fast. We even did this with a whole bunch of neighborhood kids one day. It's an easy bake oven recipe that I found online when Kendi started showing interest in baking a few years ago.

Each person gets a bowl and mixes together 2 Tbsp flour, 1/8 tsp baking powder, 1 dash of salt and 1 tsp margarine, until crumbly.

Then slowly stir in 2 1/4 tsp milk. Roll dough into a ball and then smash into a greased pan.

Top with pizza sauce and cheese. I baked ours in a regular oven at 350 for 10 minutes. Next time I will bake them another 5 minutes, but these turned out fine.

I would show Kendi what to do as I measured out my ingredients and then she would measure out her own. I showed her the difference between Tablespoons and teaspoons and how to recognize them on the recipe. It was fun to have her make her own pizza 100% by herself.

Aydri's pizza was much smaller than Kendi's because most of her flour ended up on the floor.

Sewing and Projects

TJed suggests teaching your kids about your own passions. One of the projects we've been working on lately is sewing Halloween Costumes. Kendi wanted to be a musketeer. She had never seen the Barbie Musketeer movie, but we thought we hit the jackpot when we found THIS link to an online tutorial on how to make this costume. I love October and the sewing projects we get to do. So fun!

We started out our days by doing about 45 minutes of sewing. That was enough time to make good progress, but short enough to stop while it was still fun. You know how sewing can get if it's too big of a project. In fact, by the end of this one, Kendi's excitement to work on it wasn't as enthusiastic as it was in the beginning. It became a good diligence learning project as well.

We've been trying to fine tune our daily and weekly schedules. I feel like we've figured out most of our curriculum and now we're figuring out how we spend our time. It's almost comical to think back on the curriculum I posted about and how much we've learned and changed things since then.

I've made Friday our project day. On Fridays we use our time exploring what Kendi loves and working on ongoing projects. We spend a lot of time on art and painting. We set up this outdoor oven that I found on ucreatewithkids.com. We baked s'mores while Kendi and Aydri worked on a few paintings in the garage. Our ongoing project we've been working on lately is organizing and accumulating food storage. Kendi has some great ideas and has been fun to include in this project that I would have felt overwhelmed to do all alone.

HERE is the link to the outdoor oven project.

Columbus Day

Mickey Mouse as Columbus. Barbie and Ken as Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. Kendi looks sad, but she was just being very serious and respectful to the King and Queen.

Aydri sailing a ship. The kids really enjoyed acting out the events of how Columbus discovered America. You can tell she was really into it too by the look on her face.