Homeschool Means...

Homeschool means spending a day telling stories to a baby camel as it rests in your lap...

and sharing a special bond with one of God's wobbly-legged wonders .

Blood

We made BLOOD! OK, not really blood...but we used some stuff from the kitchen to represent the different components of our blood.

*Yellow liquid=plasma

*Cheerios & red food color drops=red blood cells

*White marshmallows=white blood cells

*Purple pompom balls=platelets

*Salt=salt and other minerals in blood

We talked about the job of each part of our blood & the Reese helped me put each item in our jar. It ended up looking pretty gross at the end :) but he had a great time putting it together!

Science: Mixture vs. Solution

In Science we have been working with water & reading about all the things it can do. Today, we read about solutions & mixtures and set out to make our own!

We gathered our materials. Reese chose what we would mix into the water...

oil, flour, sugar, blue food coloring drops, sand, & red powdered paint.

We made our predictions on which would become a solution & which would remain a mixture...
Reese was in charge of the mixing & observing...

And tasting...

he wanted to see what the blue food colored water tasted like...

gross....

and I had to stop him after a few sips because I just couldn't stomach feeding my child a cup full of food coloring!

We used a filter to see if we could separate the particles...

Reese watched to see if our predictions were correct...
Mixing our red powdered paint...

Mixing oil & water...

Once we were finished, we recorded our observations...

I'm still not sure about the flour though. When we stirred it, it looked like it had completely dissolved and was gone. But after it sat and I was cleaning up our things, I noticed a big lump of flour at the bottom of the glass, so I guess it remained a mixture?

Valentine's Day Homeschool Ideas

This year, we're taking the day off from our regular curriculum for a day in February to have some fun with Valentine's Day themed activities! Here's a bit of what I have planned so far....I would love to hear any ideas you have to add to our list!

*Of course, the obligatory Valentine Candy Heart Math activities.

Predicting how many hearts are in the box

Identify how many tens & ones in the estimation number & actual number

Sorting by color & phrase

Graphing the results for number of each color

Creating word problems & algebraic equations using the numbers of colors of hearts (How many green and orange hearts do you have? If you have 3 green hearts and you need a total of 7, how many more do you need...3 + x = 7)

Identify greater than/less than using colors

Use an internet site to create a pie graph showing different colors & discuss different types of graphs

*Using a large version of graphing paper, Mom will draw hearts & we will use RedHot candies to find the area & perimeter of different hearts.

*Play a matching game using "broken hearts" and addition facts

*Play Heart Bingo

*Play Hershey Kisses Battleship.

Using a 10 x 10 grid, we will label the x-axis with letters and the y-axis with numbers. We'll place a few Kisses on our grid and will play Battleship. This will help teach map reading skills, along with graphing skills and how to read the x-axis and y-axis of a graph or map. If you find the Kiss, you get to take it & eat it!

*Using a Hundreds Chart and clues, solve the Valentine's Day Hundred Chart Puzzle

Reese will have to follow my clues (Place a heart shape on the number that is equal to two tens. Place a heart shape on the number that is 10 more than 36. etc) in order to solve the puzzle, which ends with a picture.

*Place Value Chocolates activity

By reading the clues (I have a two in the thousands place. I have a five in the ones place, etc) we'll find the chocolate with the correct number and glue it into place. As an extension, all even numbered chocolates will be colored dark brown and all odd numbered chocolates will be colored light brown.

*Make Sparkling Valentine's Hearts with borax

We'll shape pipe cleaners into heart shapes & suspend the shape into a large jar by a pencil. The Borax solution will crystallize on the pipe cleaner. We'll talk about the science behind our work. The Borax dissolves in warm water but when the water cools, the molecules of Borax crystallize 0ut of the solution and stick to the pipe cleaner. We'll use our hand-held microscope to view the crystals.

We have been studying body systems in Science already, so I don't think we'll focus too much on the heart & it's job. If I can find an appropriate picture book about Milton Hershey I'd like to read that as well...or maybe there's a good website about him. Need to check that out...

So, we'll be doing a day full of math & science activities for our Valentine's fun :) What are your plans?

Week 17

We are finishing up Week 17 of our Sonlight Core 1 curriculum. In Science, we are talking about our water system & the water cycle...how water gets from outside to your sink faucet. Very interesting stuff! We currently have saucers of water in various locations to see which evaporates faster, and we also have 4 petri dishes growing germy swabs from places on our bodies to see what will grow.

In Math, we are continuing to work on adding 3 numbers, double-digit addition, memorizing facts, fractions, skip counting, greater than/less than, equal/not equal, counting money, telling time, graphing, patterns,...whew! At the beginning of the year, I did not like our curriculum much (Horizon 1) but I have come to really like the spiral learning technique & the constant review Reese gets daily. I didn't' think we would do Horizon 2 next year, but I am starting to think I may stick with it. Reese has been doing really well with it, and it seems foolish to change if it's working.

Our History & Geography talks have gone from Egypt to ancient Greece. We started reading Greek Myths this week & Reese is fascinated by the stories! Yesterday, we read about Odysseus, the Trojan Horse and the Cyclops. Some of the stories are pretty gory (sticking a stick into Cyclop's eye to escape the his cave? Heck yes, Reese loved that story! ) We are reading a cute book called Usborne Greek Myths and I like how the stories are compacted down in to two-page versions. I have reserved a big stack of Greek myth books from the library & will pick them up today so we can read a little more in-depth about the different myths. Another favorite is King Midas & The Golden Touch.

We are using Handwriting Without Tears to work on our letter formations & I have been so very happy with this program. I like that it has given Mommy the "language" to help make letters properly. For example, for the number 8, I had been having Reese just make two circles because I could NOT figure out how to explain the figure-8 shape. Well, HWT explains it like this: "Make an S and go back home". Duh. Seems so common sense, but I couldn't think to explain it that way! We are almost finished with the Yellow book (I think that's book 1?) and we are going to move onto the Blue book (Book 2?) in a few weeks.

We do daily reading & comprehension, grammar work, & creative writing activities. We also have a Bible study from our book Leading Little Ones To God that we do about 4xs a week.

We are also going to begin Explode The Code 3 because Reese has caught onto pretty much everything phonetic very easily, but the silent -e at the end of the words is not sinking in. So I'm going to pick that up next week along with the Blue HWT & start incorporating that into our mornings.

On Fridays, Reese has AGAPE homeschool PE classes. He has done gymnastics, bounce houses, & played group games, and this month he begins karate followed by a month of ice skating. I have also been happy with this program, & he seems to have fun for the hour of PE.

Let's see...what else...I think that about covers it. We work for about 2.5 to 4 hours a day, depending on what we have that needs to be covered...

That about sums up our year so far. We start Week 18 on Monday and will keep plugging along! We have 36 weeks total, and I have us finishing the first week of June as of now.

Fun at the Sci Tech Discovery Center

We're always up for a good Children's Museum, and the SciTech Discovery Center fit the bill recently! On display was the travelling exhibit "Grossology". Pretty much anything you never knew you wanted to know about your body.

How 'bout a pinball game where you get points when you hit the foods that cause gas?

Potatoes anyone?

The rectum & a pile of poo? Funny stuff!
Take my picture Mom!

Yes, you could even *smell* the anus at a smelling station...

but I passed on that one.

*har har...pun...har har*

This is the smelling station, and this little number is what almost made me throw up...


The smell? It was "FEET". GROSS.

Here, my dear boy is climbing the wall of skin with all its imperfections...
warts, hairs, zits, moles...
Reach for the scabies honey!

Reese, posing as a booger, in the huge nose...

We learned the difference between a booger & snot.

Wanna know?

According to the museum man, a booger is what you can flick, & a snot is the goopy stuff.

Now you know.


They even had a life-sized Operation Game.

Luckily, my friend Holly knows about organs, because I told Reese the lungs were the liver.

Thanks for setting me straight Holly...

Of Turtles & Geese....

Two funny comments, made my Reese, this week during our science studies....

When talking about migration, we were reading about loggerhead sea turtles. There was a cute picture of a turtle laying eggs in the sand, and Reese turns to me and says:

"Why do turtles lay eggs but you lay babies?"

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As we continued our discussion & reading about migration, we found a picture of geese in our science book. Reese & I love to watch the geese fly over our house, and since he's been little I've pointed out the "V" shape.

Our science book had a great picture of geese flying, and explained with drawings about how the air from the front goose's wings spiraled up and gave the geese behind him a lift, and the 2nd geese's wings made the air spiral up to the goose behind him, and so on.

It was a great illustration & I thought it made a great point.

So in our Question & Answer section, when I asked Reese why geese fly in a "V" shape, he replied:

"To make words for people who look at them."

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Of course, we went back over the real reasons, but Reese just cracks me up every day with some silly thing that comes out of his mouth.

We are now on week #4 of our 1st grade year. I keep meaning to detail our curriculum here but have yet to get that done. It has been a very productive 4 weeks, with a few bumps along the way. But it's exciting to work together, as a family, to get over our little bumps and move forward. I feel so blessed to have our family at home working together!!

Overwhelmed. What? Me?

Exciting stuff happened last weekend...the FedEx man delivered two important boxes!

Reese's 1st Grade curriculum arrived and we couldn't wait to dig in and see what Mommy had ordered!

Lots of exciting books, instructor guides, manipulatives, experiments...

And more....

Overwhelmed with all of the items? Me? *cough cough* Nah!

I have to keep reminding myself that these are the supplies for our entire year and that if I laid out the supplies from my 1st Grade Teacher Days it would have looked just as massive an undertaking.

Luckily, Hubby always reminds me to eat the elephant one bite at a time & it does help me to remember that this isn't all for Day 1! :)

I've sorted through all the Instructor Guides and placed everything in the notebooks for Mama. We will begin our school year on August 17th & I can't wait...this curriculum from Sonlight is heavily literature based which makes me so excited!

And...it is a little less intimidating once everything is put on the bookshelves, in the cabinets, organized in the binders, etc.

But don't even get me started on the fact that my baby boy is a 1st grader...I remember when I taught 1st grade that the students seemed so independent and "big" by the end of the year. Don't even get me started I tell 'ya....

Reese got this idea that he wanted to be a scientist one night, & wanted to do some experiments. He first asked for nails and a hammer so he could build something in his room, but I had to nix that idea...no nails and hammers in the bedrooms.

I offered a few ideas which he thought were all "lame"...

Until I remembered a post my friend Kim put up about her son Nicholas & his "science experiment". Luckily, it worked perfectly and he was happy to be working on something important!

A pie tin with just a little vegetable oil in the bottom,

Small cups of colored water,

and some pipettes....

Reese said the red water was "blood"....

The colored water droplets made circles in the oil...

Reese was content squirting and mixing for about a half hour! We found it worked just as well with a tiny layer of oil, and once there were too many droplets in the oil, I would pour it out and he would start over.

Thank you Kim for helping me come up with something that passed for a science experiment!!!

Paper Wings

Our garage seems to be Butterfly Heaven, because I keep finding dead butterflies in there. Perfectly shaped, just lying on the ground dead. Humph.

I finally picked one up on my way inside and put it on the table (on a plate!) with a magnifying glass for Reese to check out if he wanted to.


It didn't take long, though, for Daddy to show Reese the magic that the sun & a magnifying glass can do...
The butterfly's wings lit almost instantly...just like tissue paper to a flame...

I made Reese promise me he would only do this magic when Mommy or Daddy were around :)