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.

Anne of Avonlea

I know it took me way to long to get through this book.  I have been way to busy to really enjoy it.  I must say that this book is not as good as the first, but the first one is hard to beat.  It was still great and worth reading and has all the charm of Anne of Green Gables, but it felt like it was just a bridge to get over to move on to the next book, which I can't wait to read.

7 Habits of Highly Effective Marriage

Jared and I listened to this book together on a short road trip in December.  It follows the same Habits that are described in other books by Stephen R. Covey.  The book is entertaining to listen to and we often found ourselves pausing it to write down notes or to talk about something mentioned.  I think I took over two pages of notes.  It has really inspired me to work on each habit for 21 days  as they suggest.  This book is inspiring and fun to listen to with your spouse.  I think there is definitely something new in it for everyone.

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.

Grebe Rescue

Today was a day that made me especially glad we homeschool. We woke up to a little bit of snow this morning. Snow was not the only thing that fell out of the sky. A very large flock of Grebe were migrating and ran into the storm and it literally knocked them down. They were all over town this morning. Apparently, they need water to take off again so they were stuck here. The DWR had been up all night gathering birds. My parents woke up to one on their deck and another on their roof and when they looked across the street to the horse corral there were dozens more. My dad called us to come help and we got there just after the DWR showed up. They let us help gather them up.

This lady was so nice to the kids. She told us all about the birds and how she'd been working all night. I was glad to see a female DWR officer out in the field because all through high school I thought I wanted to go into Wildlife and Natural Resources. In college I found out that the field was full of environmentalists and females usually end up behind the desks which was the opposite of what I wanted to do. Props to her. I think if I ever wanted to pursue that field again I would want to go more into Search and Rescue.
They are taking five truck loads down to Quail Creek to let them go. It would be fun to look more into this type of bird that I think is called a Grebe since we had a great experience with them.

We are taking a break next week until January, but I'm sure the kids will be begging to do school stuff. I've got Kendi making beanies for her friends so that will hopefully keep her busy.