Homeschool Weeks 11 and 12--Mosquitoes and Crickets

The last two weeks we've wrapped up our insect studies with more on mosquitoes and a little about crickets.  Joe completed his lapbook, read some new and old books, made some cool crafts and pretended to be a mosquito.  He made a mosquito mask from a paper plate.  I attached a straw to it and he drank blood (Crystal Light) just like a mosquito.  OK, he LOVED this, and it was so much fun to watch!



He made a really fun cricket using a comb, green craft wire (legs), pipe cleaners (antennae), googly eyes, and green craft foam (wings).  He thought this was "so cute" as he put it--I do too.



We went to the bait store and got some live crickets to observe.  This was another highlight of our insect studies.  We watched them eat, burrow, and listened to them chirp.  I didn't realize that they actually nibble their food.  They are pretty strong too.  From our Science Experiments in a Bag we conducted an experiment on how temperature affects a crickets chirping.  Joe asked to do this several times over the course of the week.



Here are some of the books we've been reading the last two weeks (you can see all of our reads in my Shelfari):


Joe completed Book 1 from Explode the Code and did super on the post test!  He is doing so well with his reading and writing.  We are still using Progressive Phonics and games from Happy Phonics too.  I like having this variety so neither of us gets bored and we cover things from different angles.  He had fun using our blend ladders and was pretty quick to come up with words on his own.



We read a the Value Tale on Sacagawea in our History studies.  This was perfect to follow up with after Thomas Jefferson.  I loved this particular Value Tale.  The story of Sacagawea was so interesting and so emotional for me as we read.

In Math we moved right along with Abeka daily lessons.  We are covering multiple lessons each day and moving through the book pretty fast.  I am very impressed with what Joe can do so far in Math:

• simple addition on paper and mentally
• count by fives and tens
• knows the value of all coins
• can make change with the least amount of coins up to one dollar (and beyond if asked)
• tell time to the hour

Joe loves Math and asks to do it first each morning.  I am proud of him, and enjoy teaching him and watching him learn new Math skills.

I kept art simple for the kids.  We used oil pastels and watercolors again.  I am going to make sure we move on to something different next:-).  Jack painted his first real picture!!  I was so, so excited to see him actually paint purposefully on the paper trying to make a picture.  He didn't sling the paint into the air or try to fingerpaint with the watercolors this time!!





Hanna painted a butterfly.  This butterfly to me is how I think of Hanna--bright, happy and colorful.



Jack played more with his rocks and construction trucks--surprise, surprise:-).



And, he decided to branch out and use pom poms in his trucks too.



Jesse discovered the pots and pans cabinet.  I love it when my kids get to this stage and start exploring and discovering like this!  My bottom cabinets, by the way, are completely unorganized because all the little ones have free play in them while I cook.  Mom, I know you are cringing as you read this:-).



Hanna moved right along with her lessons in all subjects.  No problems with any areas.  Do you know what a relief it is to finally have curriculums for all subjects that she is enjoying and excelling in?!  She has been studying about vikings in history which has required her to read articles and watch videos online at BBC.



In Science she has been studying leaves.  She had Joe help her with leaf classification one afternoon.  As you can see, Joe is still having a problem keeping his shorts on.  He says his legs "get sweaty" in them.  I've bought him boxer shorts, but he still insists on wearing his briefs saying even the boxers "make his legs sweaty"--cracks me up.





Teaching Textbooks is a dream for any homeschooler!  We LOVE this Math!  Grammar is still going well.   Hanna is learning to diagram sentences with ease and is doing great with labeling parts of speech.

We will be on break from school for the month of August.  We'll start our next quarter Sept. 2nd--the day after Hanna's birthday, per Hanna's request to have her birthday off:-).  I plan to spend our time off record keeping, relaxing, working on my 365 album, baking, playing, and crafting lots and lots with the kids.

School is going so well this year!  This time of year especially I am so, so thankful for homeschool.  For so many years at the end of Summer I would be sad because I knew Hanna would be going off to school, and be faced with who knows what each day.  It was also like a countdown of sorts for me as to how much time I had left with Joe before he wasn't mine anymore.  Now, each day is exciting.  School is a highlight of our time together at home.  I cannot put into words how much I thoroughly love teaching my children, planning their lessons, choosing their curriculums, watching them grasp new concepts.  Being able to homeschool my children is a task I thought I would never be able to handle with confidence.  I thank my Heavenly Father for blessing me with the ability to be able to do this, Jamie for supporting and encouraging me every step of the way, and my children for just being so sweet and full of love.

To see what others are doing visit Homeschool Creations, and Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Homeschool Weeks 9 and 10 [fireflies and mosquitoes]

The last two weeks we’ve continued to study insects.  We were going to move on to crickets, but I wanted to have some live ones for part of our study.  I haven’t made it to the bait store yet—hopefully this weekend I’ll get there so we can end our insect unit with crickets.



We’ve been reading some fun books in addition to the ones we read the last two weeks.



We went outside one evening and caught fireflies.  I’ve never done this and it was really fun!  We put them in a mason jar and brought them inside, went into a dark room and watched them flash.  It was so neat!  Hanna was the best at catching them and getting them into the jar.  She is soooo good at doing anything with critters.  If you look closely you can see the little firefly light in her hand below. 

Joe made a couple really cute firefly crafts.  This one is out of construction paper, but for the light on the tail I had him use some of his Crayola Glow Explosion paper so it would really glow.  We made one more with a small mag lite flash light. He LOVES this one!  He cut the wings out of craft foam.  I attached everything though because I wanted to use E6000 glue (like I used *here*, which he couldn’t use) so it would hold up and the pieces wouldn’t fall off.



He made a lapbook with a little bit about fireflies, crickets and mosquitoes.  This was the first lapbook he actually cut out the pieces for and glued together almost all by himself.  I was surprised too that he actually enjoyed doing it.  Joe enjoys lapbooks, so I’m thinking we may try to do more of them now that he is ready to make them on his own.  We still have a bit to complete on the actual work in the lapbook as we read more about crickets and mosquitoes this upcoming week.  I copied the front cover from one of our library books on my printer. Here are the inside and back cover. The mosquito survival guide pictured above is a great mini book to complete as a sort of quiz after reading a book about mosquitoes.

We went outside and saw some real mosquito larvae because we are yucky and had standing water that needed to be dumped out that was a disgusting breeding ground.  But it did make for some great Science:-).  Don’t worry Mom, I dumped the water out immediately following this video, and Mom, this video is just for you:-)!



Joe and I continued with Progressive Phonics and he is enjoying it.  All of a sudden he is liking writing again—glad the displeasure with it did not last long.  Abeka Math is such a good fit for him.  We finished up reading our books on Thomas Jefferson in History and are moving on to someone new.

Still not much school stuff with Jack.  Mostly play.  I am on the lookout for some new things for him though and hope to have something figured out by September.  (We’ll break in August.)  Jack did have fun with his Color Wonder fingerpaints.





He also enjoyed building with his lego duplos.  Jack doesn’t usually try to build “something”, he just builds.  He actually set out of his own desire and imagination to build a train.  He was so proud and he did a GREAT job!  He built with his blocks alot this week.  Joe enjoyed building alongside him.



Jack’s favorite thing by far right now involves anything to do with construction vehicles.  He talks about them all day, looks for them any time we’re out and about, asks to read books about them all day—he LOVES them!  I got him some little rocks from Dollar Tree and he has a blast playing with them with his various trucks, trains and cars.



Hanna had a good two weeks with all of her school work too.  She moved right along with daily math, grammar, wordly wise, science and history lessons.  She’s been studying Shakespeare and then Vikings in history.  We’re still doing lots of diagramming in ELA.  She really enjoys her math.  She had no complaints with Life of Fred, but she likes Teaching Textbooks even more.  The fact that she enjoys it and that it’s totally hands-off for me is wonderful!  She wanted to do something in black and white for art.  She came up with this painting of a cat.  She did a good job!  It’s hanging in her room.  I hope to frame it along with several more of the kids’ pictures next month.



We went to our children’s museum to see the butterfly exhibit.  It’s fun to visit and went perfectly with our insect study.  We looked for and found lots of pretty butterflies with the scavenger hunt sheets they had, plus saw caterpillars, caterpillar eggs, a chrysalis and a butterfly just hatched drying it’s wings.



  After the exhibit we explored the museum.  We all had a good time.  The kids love this museum, we all do actually.

Jack and Joe’s fave spot was the fire truck for sure this time.  We spent alot of time here in the truck, crawling through the tunnel to escape “smoke”, and…  sliding down the fireman’s pole.   Jesse hung out having his naptime bottle while the kids above played. Next up was the farm.  Jesse enjoyed eating a little more while Daddy, Jack, Hanna and Joe played more.   Next up was Timbuktu.  Jamie and Jack put on a show for us.

Hanna and Joe went on a bike ride.  Joe was revving the bike and really acting like he knew what he was doing.  He was serious too, it was so funny.I think that actually wraps up our last two weeks of school fun.  Wow, this is a long entry!  We have had lots of fun.  Just moving along and trying to enjoy all that we learn and do in the process.

Homeschool Week 8

This past week we continued to study insects.  I had planned to start an experiment on crickets, but we wrapped up our fly experiment instead and will begin the one on crickets now.  We have been observing the life cycle of a fly for the last three weeks.  This was super simple.  All we did was put a banana in a mason jar.

We watched it over the next week or so until it had about 10 fruit flies in it.  At this point we covered it with a knee high pantyhose and secured that with a rubber band.  We watched it for another five days.  The fruit flies multiplied like wildfire and it got lots of maggots in it too--so gross!  Joe thought it was really cool:-).

We took it outside and set all of the fruit flies free.  So now we had lots of maggots.  They went into "cocoons" after a couple days and then finally hatched out into fruit flies completing the life cycle.  The jar was once again full of flies.

You don't know how happy I was to throw this jar in the trash.  This experiment was very fun and it was interesting to watch from start to finish for all of us, but it was gross.  So, now we are moving on to crickets.



An earwig just happened to turn up in our workshop so of course I immediately ran upstairs and grabbed the bug viewer I found at Target's Dollar Spot so we could check him out for a while:-).  I also found some pages about earwigs in some of the books we were reading.

Hanna is studying dispersal and pollination in Botany right now.  No big projects on her end at the moment, lots of notebooking pages and diagrams/drawings.



Here are some the books we are reading currently to go along with our insect studies.  There are more in my Shelfari.  These are our favorites.













We also had fun with Geodesic Designs in the form of marshmallow sculptures.  This was our first time doing these and it was lots of fun.  Hanna, Joe and I built sculptures.  **All of our Science experiments this week were taken from Activities in a Bag's General Science 1--worth EVERY penny!**

Joe's masterpiece

Joe and I are continuing to study Thomas Jefferson in History.  We are mainly reading books and doing our History lesson on him from our I Love America History curriculum.  My mom had a Value Tale on Thomas Jefferson that we are enjoying right now.



Hanna finished up reading and writing her report on The Trumpeter of Krakow, she read Beowulfd wrote a paper on what makes it an epic.  She also completed dates on her timeline and mapping activities in her history lessons.



Grammar is continuing to go well for Hanna.  She is catching on to labeling parts of speech finally, and doing well with diagramming too.  Personally, I am not fond of diagramming and find it pointless, but I do know it is on standardized tests, so for this reason I have chosen a Grammar curriculum that includes diagramming.  This is our third grammar and in this case, "third time's the charm".  Finally one we will stick with. 



Joe is doing well with Reading.  After being reminded about Progressive Phonics on my friend Jenny's blog, I decided to give it another shot.  It was successful this time around.  Perfect too for a little more handwriting practice each day to compliment our ETC pages.  Again, I am not rushing Joe at all with reading, with anything actually.  That said, he catches on to things so quickly and is doing so well in general.



Going back to Abeka Math with Joe was the right choice.  It moves a bit faster and covers a little more than Singapore did and this is what he needs.  Last week we worked on money and time.  He caught on fast and really surprised me!  I'd figured this might be where we would spend a little more time in the beginning.



Teaching textbooks is still keeping Hanna happy which keeps me happy.



Jack did do a few trays, but I got no pictures.  He really needs me right beside him when he does his school work.



As far as art, we did a few things.  I had each of the kids do something with watercolors.  Joe and Jack painted watercolor houses on paper plates.  This was quick, fun and they liked it.

 Joe and I used liquid dish detergent, food coloring, small shallow dishes, and straws to create bubble art.  This was FUN!  It looks pretty too.

Joe's

mine

Hanna's watercolor project was drawing, and then painting an O'keefe style flower.  She did a great job!

She also made a fireworks picture using oil pastels and watercolors.  I LOVE this!!

We had a SUPER FUN week of school!  I didn't realize how much we actually accomplished until I typed up this post.  We are continuing our insect study for a few more weeks, moving along with daily curriculum lessons, and doing a few more simple art projects.



I am proud of the work Hanna and Joe have done this school year.  They are both working hard and putting forth so much effort.  Our school year is off to such a great start and I am having so much fun with what we are studying, what we are using and just teaching them in general.



To see what others have done for their learning fun visit Homeschool Creations.



**OK, I turned comments back on because a few of you mentioned you'd missed being able to leave them, so feel free to comment away when you get the notion:-), and thank you!**