Down on the Farm...

After cleaning today, I ran out (drove , actually) to pick up Lillie at her Aunt Shanna's house. Shanna and her husband have a deer farm and there are animals a plenty. I love going out there and taking the kids. Shanna always lets us run all the gas out of their gators and four-wheelers, she's nice like that. Snapped some really nice pictures but, again, ran out of batteries before we took the kids down to see Babe. She's a deer that has been bottle fed and she'll come right up and eat out of your hand. The last two times we've been there, I've missed primo photo ops and kicked myself later. Did manage to get some pictures, so not all was lost!

Shanna has nerves of steel...she doesn't look a bit nervous that Jack's behind the wheel.The kids fell in love with Shanna's little puppy Sadie. She is tiny and so cute and cuddly.Here are two pictures of the cavies which are from South America and are actually rodents. They are extremely fast and hop around the pin at lightning speed!Want to thank Shanna for letting us come out and eat all her Oreos! She's gracious like that...

Just a Picnic Sort of Day...

Went to Mom and Dad's today for an impromptu picnic with the kids. I love impromptu picnics...where you tear through the kitchen trying to round up ANYTHING for the kiddos to eat and start slingin' em in Walmart bags...the eats, not the children, mind you! We ended up with some sweet tea, hotdogs, loaf bread, cheese and crackers and some cookies. My Dad, master of the campfire, finally got a little fire started and it was pitiful, us trying to roast our hotdogs over it. By the time we got done eating said hotdogs, however, it was a blazing inferno... ain't that just a kick in the head? Any way, took a few pictures in between trying to keep children from becoming human torches and dying of smoke inhalation.

All Spaced Out!

Our planet Unit study is mainly focused on learning the names and characteristics of the planets and their order from the sun. Yesterday, we learned that the closest planet to the sun is Mercury. It is also the fastest orbiting planet. It gets very hot during the day (for obvious reasons) but gets extremely cold during it's night (More than -200 degrees...brrrrrrrr.) We read a book we got from the library that was part of the same series of books by Picture Window Books and it was called simply "Closest to the Sun". I did a vocal review of what we've learned so far in our study and then I let the kids watch a video of the Messenger (the spacecraft that will explore Mercury around 2011) being launched for test runs. Jack was totally jazzed about all the noise and smoke and action. Probably reminds him of dinnertime at our house :) Click here and watch for yourself. I also found a neat little site that compares the size of the planets to one another. Mercury is nearly half the size that earth is. Oh, and for those of us who always want to lose weight...move to Mercury, trust me on this one. I know it's really hot and their is no atmosphere, but if you can at all figure it out, go and go before the holiday feeding frenzy! Click here to calculate your weight on different planets. I'm going to hang myself out there for you. I weigh 168 lbs on earth...on Mercury? I would only weigh 64 lbs! So, if I've figured correctly, I could be 300 pounds here and when I move to Mercury I'd only be 113 with room to grow! That settles it! I've already picked out my spot on the planet. I'm going to open a coffee shop and gouge myself on pastries!

However, not sure Lillie would make it. She'd only weigh 15 lbs! After we got done with the foolishness, we set down to make our own constellations. Get some black construction paper and some of those cheapy foil star stickers at the Wal-Mart or wherever and let the kiddos stick them on and then draw lines connecting the stars to make a new constellation. Here's the kids with theirs. I had to somehow make a dinosaur out of Jackson's mess, I mean, work. And Lillie had so many stars on her page there was no room to draw lines, but they learned and it was fun. Here they are with their finished products...

I even got in on the action and made a constellation too...guess what it is!!!!

Ahhh... to live on a planet where the coffee flows abundant and you don't have to be a senior citizen to get a cup for free. Where latte's fall from the sky and the desserts are fat free without sacrificing flavor! I know it probably sounds like I suck down coffee all day, or I have an IV bag attached with a double chocolate mocha in it. I only drink one cup a day and if I'm in town, I might spring for a Frappacino or a huge Iced Coffee from McDonald's. I am NOT an addict...

Have a great day!

The Fever Continues...

Okay, so I worked like a yeller dog last night, burned the midnight oil to finish Jack's lapbook. He loves it and has played with it all morning. Lillie's been playing with her addition lapbook as well. Okay, so here's the pictures of THE LAPBOOK THAT NEVER ENDS!!!!!! (Dramatic, huh?)

This is the clothesline file folder game I made the other night. It helps him with his patterns and sorting skills. I made a similar game for Lillie a couple years back, but we actually pinned the shirts on a clothesline with real clothes pins. It was very fun and very effective.

This is a page of matchbooks with the numbers written on the outside and objects to count inside. Click here to get the printables.Jack loves trains. I couldn't find what I was looking for, so I just made what I was looking for. I found train clip art and altered it in my photoshop program. On the green engine part, I put the Upper case Letter, then on the little red freight car, I put the lower case letter. I printed them on cardstock and cut each letter's train in half. It made a great train themed matching game to help with letter recognition. By the way, I know that C and B are not the same letters, I just threw two cars together to illustrate how the game works.Okey Dokey! Here's another number game I got here.This is a matching game for color and shape recognition. Get it here.A memory game with Jackson's favorite thing...modes of transportation. He's fascinated with anything with wheels or anything that will get you somewhere. Finally, a collection of flashcards I got on this nifty site , ZiggityZoom!Okay, onto other things. Jody decided that we were all gettin' too flabby around here and so he forced the whole family to do sit ups last night. Obviously he has overlooked that we are all perfect physical specimens who need no nightly workouts. I burned calories just laughing at the kids trying to do sit-ups. Here's some pics and some video...

This is daddy teaching proper technique to the kiddos.

Here's Lillie wondering why she has to be the one to hold Jack's stinky little feet.Jack finally did one...I think because Chloe was praying for him in the background.

This video of Lillie echoes just exactly how I feel about doing sit-ups!

Here's Chloe doing her thang. She's a cutie when she sweats! Daddy's a bit of a slavedriver, isn't he? 10 SITUPS???!!!!

We'll all have abs of steel instead of abs of Jell-O in no time!

Anyone Know How to Cure Lapbook Fever?

Been lapbooking this week like a madwoman...got scissor calluses to prove it! Thought I'd share some with you. Been workin' on a humdinger for Jack, but am not going to reveal it until I am all finished. I have made him several file folder games , card games, and flashcards, so decided to make one big lapbook out of them all to cut down on space and to help keep up with them. When it's done it'll house file folder games, flash cards, memory games etc... covering patterns, letters, numbers, colors and shapes. This will allow me to sit down with him and he can have a choice of fun, brightly colored activities to learn with. I am excited to almost have it finished.

Well, it's all about addition for Lillie in math right now, so I've made her a couple of addition file folder games and will tape them together in a fashion similar to Jackson's and for the same purpose. Here's some pictures of the addition lapbook...

I got this one totally off Homeschool Share (check my link in the sidebar) which was nice cause I didn't have to hunt around, it was all there . This particular lapbook will teach her addition facts.

Hey! Like my flip flops? You can be honest! Just be thankful you can't see my toes!Oh, well, so much for not seeing my toes...sorry.This one is a dandy little file folder game where Lillie can work the problems using her counters and then check her answers by lifting the window. I got this off of Enchanted Learning and this is only one of two that they had for free!

Okay, this one is homemade and very simple. Just printed off a plus and equals sign and glued them onto a manilla file folder. Then found some number flash cards here and printed off several copies so that Lillie can invent and solve her own problem. Alrighty, now to school for today. Lillie did her reading off of the Starfall website, she sucessfully read three little books and I was so tickled. For writing, I made a worksheet of the Robert Frost poem "Gathering Leaves" She will trace the words over a three day period. I thought the poem was fitting as fall is falling all around us now. Math, we played the above game using counters and Lillie did very well. Today was our day to do History so we continued on with our Native American unit. Read from "Red Feather" today about some foods the Native Americans ate, how they secured their food and how they cooked it. Added a fan book to our lapbook, as well as some shutterfold books outlining the different tribes by region. Inside the book was listed the principle tribes and then I printed a little tiny US map and colored in the region.

We discussed in detail the Three Sisters. Corn, Beans, and Squash. These were three very important crops to the Native Americans and they planted them in a mound together. We call it companion planting. Here's a diagram:

One thing I have tried to bring out to Lillie in this study, is how the Indians took care of each other and they all pitched in and helped out. The women cooked the meals together, planted and harvested together, and the men hunted together. There was none of this "You go to your wigwam and I'll go to mine." They ate together and worked together. You just don't see that in our country anymore. Seems like everyone is out for just them. "My four and no more." you could say. The Three Sisters method of planting went right along with that mentality that everyone needed to work together to survive. The corn provided a sturdy place for the beans to grow. The beans provided necessary minerals and nutrients to help the squash and corn grow and the squash helped protect the plants. They all worked together to ensure survival. We could sure glean some lessons from the Native Americans, couldn't we?

Well here's what we added to our lapbooks which we are almost done with!

These are mini file folder books that I set up like a Jeporady question. On the inside is a picture of a famous Native American in history (in this case Sacagewea, Squanto, Sequoyah , and Pocahontas) and on the outside is a description of what they are famous for.

Gosh, this is a bad picture. Flash ruined it! But, hopefully you can see the little map of the US inside the shutterfold books.Fan book describing the food the Native Americans ate and some facts about how they were such good stewards of the resources they were given. Something else we could learn...but maybe another post...I got all these templates off the Homeschool Share site under free lapbook resources. There is a link in my sidebar. Okay, so that's it. I'm off to make up cookie dough to put in the fridge so I don't have to keep mixing up dough everytime somebody wants a treat! Have a great day.

What We've Been Into...

This post will be scattered and random, so I'll apologize in advance. We started a unit study on the solar system focusing mainly on learning the order of the planets from the sun and the basic characteristics of each planet so they could be recognized from a picture. I used a little planet unit study I got off Currclick as my jumping off point. I did not feel the approach it did would be the best for my kids, so I gleaned an idea here and there and then did what I always do....tweak it til it screams! We have a black posterboard that I sprayed with space dust (watered down white paint flicked on with a paintbrush) We pasted the sun on yesterday, since it was our first object studied. Everytime we study a planet, it will get pasted in it's order from the sun. We also will be filling in a Solar System Book. I made a page using Microsoft Word that has the name of the planet in the color of the planet, there is a blank circle for them to color as the planet, a writing strip where they will trace the name of the planet and then we'll add a lapbook embellishment of some kind with a few facts about each planet. I will post pictures of this book further into the study. There will be lots of projects coming up... I'm so excited!

Yesterday, we studied the sun. We read a book called "Hot and Bright" which has great illustrations and is short , concise, and to the point without losing any intrigue. We made sunprints which are so neat. Simple and no clean-up... my kind of project!

You'll have to really look as the camera didn't capture it very good...And Goober aggravated Tucker to no end...We had a science experiment geared up, but it was so cold it didn't work, so we'll have to try it again on a warmer day. We're still doing our Native American unit, and added another feature to our lapbook. I printed off some pockets and found some neat illustrations of different clothing from different tribes and made little card for each region's tribes to stick in the pockets.

Did a really neat activity the other day during Devotion time. We read about Abraham and Issac on Mount Moriah and talked about trusting God even when you don't understand and can't see things clearly. It started as that and ended up being a nice little talk about God's leading us through this life. I put chairs and stools and tables all over the living room , (these were the dangers and obstacles that faced us each day that we don't see) The plan was that the kids would be blindfolded and I would get them safely through the maze by either telling them "left" or "right" or touching the shoulder of the direction they should go to avoid the obstacle. However, the kids freaked out and I ended up being the one blindfolded and let them lead me through the maze. It actually worked out better. If I came close to an obstacle, they'd scream "Stop!" or "Watch Out!" Then, they'd take my hand and gently pull me the direction I needed to go. They worked together and got me through the maze without a broken leg. I know, you're probably saying "You let your children blindfold you! You have to be crazy." No, I'm not. I have a confession, I made sure I could sneak a peek when needed...Hey! I didn't exactly have the Lord leading me, now did I? I had a five year old who giggled the whole time and a three year old who doesn't know left from right! But, it served to illustrate the point. For your viewing pleasure, here's the little goobers leading a blindfolded Chloe through the maze. By the way, at the end, it looks like they throw her down. They don't... she tripped over the couch . And don't worry, her little nose was poking through, she could breathe fine...

I love file folder games and so do the kids. I made a game for Jack last night that will help him practice his patterning skills. Here's a pic and I believe it will be self explanatory how the game is played.

Okay, so here's the latest pictures of Chloe doing what she does best...bucking the line to the bathtub.

So, that's about it for the highlights....pretty exciting time, eh?