Glimpses

Science - We've been getting boxes from TinkerCrate this year, and they have been fun. The kids look forward to them each month. This month's box was making circuits to light up paper lanterns.

History - I always feel like History and Langue Arts overlap a ton at out house. For MLK day we had a poetry tea time where we watched the youtube video of Dr. King's entire "I have a dream" speech. Then we made hand print wreaths and pasted a quote on them to hang up in the school room.

Art - Ivan's art class doesn't start up again until February, so he's been working independently for the last several weeks. One of the things he made was this, which he calls "A Tree in Three" it is a tree, and he split it into three sections where he used acrylic paints on top, colored pencils in the middle, and oil pastels on bottom.

Math - My wonderful friend Wynter is working on writing a math curriculum. As she's been putting her webiste etc together she's come out with some really fun activities. One of those activities are these fun clocks that help you tell time, learn to count by fives, AND work on your five times tables.

Friday Fun - We've been meeting our homeschool group at the Springville Library on Friday afternoon to play games. It's been a good option for winter time. The kids can still see their friends, we moms can still see our friends, and no one has to be outside freezing to death.

Heading out on a Friday to play games with our home school buds at the library.

Language Arts - We're a little heavy on the langue arts at our house. Sometimes I think we could list just about everything we do under that category. :) We finished listening to Johnny Tremain. We've been doing copy work exercises from it all month, and having some awesome discussions. This middle grade reader is a bit slow at first, but by the end your heart is swelling with pride and love of country. James Otis's speech about "A man can stand up" tied in nicely with our study of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, and we talked about how what the colonists started clear back in 1776 is something we are still trying to fully realize and bring about today.

We also listened to The Red Pencil, but haven't started any work from it yet. Lincoln and Ivan have both read Finn Family Moonmintol, which is where our copy work will come from next.

Lincoln read the biography of Leland Melvin and completed a biography box style book report. As part of the report he made and flew a straw rocket. Ivan has been reading Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart.

Scripture Study - We begin our school days by singing a hymn, having a prayer, and reading a few verses from the Book of Mormon. This year we are attempting to scripture journal also, by using the "Box-A-Day" method. 

We take a piece of paper and fold it into 16 boxes. Each day, after we read, we draw a picture in one of the boxes about what we read, or something we learned, or thought was interesting. At the end of 16 days, when our paper is full, we get out a lined paper and write on it more in-depth about what we learned/thought was interesting/our testimony....basically anything that encompasses putting thoughts to paper about what we've been reading. Then we stick the lined paper, and the box paper back to back and laminate them together. Hopefully by the time we're done reading the Book of Mormon we'll have a fun little picture journal, and our thoughts about what we read, to go with. 

The first 3 pages of my scripture journal

Up close. I require that we write the verses we read for the day at the top of each box. Then I encourage the kid to either copy a portion of a verse  or to in some way write an explanation to go along with their picture. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

A box from Ivan's journal. I love  how well he conveys expressions, even in stick figures. 

This is the back side of one of Ivan's journals. I have them do this part "free-write style" which means I don't correct grammar or spelling. What I'm concerned with here is content, and narrative voice. I want them to feel safe expressing their deepest thoughts without fear that they will get all marked up with red pen. 

CO-OP Classes - Co-op is about to start up here again next week. I am signed up to teach two classes this semester, Animal Science to Ollie's age group, and Poetry (which is titled Wacky Words, so it sounds more fun and less intimidating) for the older kids class. I'm actually really excited for both these classes, but they will be a TON of work. Their are eight weeks of class. These are my class description write-ups. I did them by hand because my computer was being stupid. But, sometimes doesn't it just feel really good to put pencil to paper? It was a really enjoyable exercise for me. 

Oh ya, and School

Oh ya, and we've been doing school too. :) The kids finished up their animal books, which was our writing project for September. Lincoln's book was on dogs, Ivan's was on several poisonous animals, and Adelia's was on bugs. All three of them did a great job. I was proud of their work.

Our writing project for October has been to make lists. The first list we made was a list of possible lists we wanted to make. It included things like:

Favorite Books
Place we want to visit
Star Wars Characters
Birds we've seen fly over our house
Words that start with the letter G
Planets
Nicknames for Ruby
Potential Halloween Costumes

We've also been talking about Simple Machines this month in Science. Our first project was one on friction. We made a ramp using a couple of my Norton Anthologies and a cookie sheet. Then we put different things (carpet square, dish towel, piece of cardboard, etc.) into the cookie sheet to make surfaces with varying amounts of friction. Then we rolled matchbox cars from one end to the other and timed them with my iphone stopwatch (probably not the most accurate, but suited our purpose) to see which surfaces allowed the cars to move more quickly down the ramp. The kids had fun, and played with the ramp long after our "official school time" was up. :)

Another day we learned about levers. Here are Lincoln and Ivan demonstrating Class One, Class Two, and Class Three levers.

Lincoln and Ivan had to do animal reports this year for their class at Harmony. Ivan chose crocodile. He wanted to make a life-sized one to show his class just how big these guys can get. It was quite the undertaking. On a roll of butcher paper Aaron help Ivan measure out the length. Then Aaron drew the body lightly in pencil and Ivan traced over in magic marker. Ivan wanted to color his croc, but since it was over 20 feet long, I told him he really didn't, and that he'd get sick of coloring it part way through and stop, and then he'd have a croc that was only a little colored and it would look silly. Ivan came up with the idea to paint it instead. So we did. And that didn't take very long at all, and the paint gave the croc a really cool texture that made it look more life-like. When the croc was done drying Ivan wrote 10 facts about crocodiles in boxes around the outside of the body. It turned out really cool.

Lincoln picked to do his report of frogs. I was mean and made him type his 10 facts into a report format with paragraphs and such, because I figured he's a third grader, he can be held to a little bit of a higher standard. He decided to make a frog habitat in a box and did that part all by himself. He also had some party blowers with velcro that he was going to let his class you to pick up little black pieces of paper on the table to demonstrate frog tongues, but somewhere over the course of the week we lost the party blowers and cannot find them anywhere. So he had to do without. Linc also chose to display his Dog Book writing project on the table with his frog report.

We spent one afternoon talking about basketball. I drew a basketball court on the whiteboard and we labeled all the positions and all the lines on the court and talked about what they mean. And I explained the rules a bit. There are just some things that little boys need to know. We'll call it PE. ;)

One night we had tickets to go on campus and see the BYU Chemistry Magic Show. It was pretty fun. The kids really enjoyed it. I didn't take many pictures because I had to leave half way through to go to my volleyball game. I missed the best parts, apparently, where they lit things on fire and made a bunch of loud bangs. Ivan drew a picture of it after in his journal. 

 Our homeschool group had a talent show this month. It was awesome. Except for the part where Ruby decided to puke all over everything and we had to leave early. :( But luckily my kids went near the beginning, so they got to do their talents before Ruby's puking episode. Adelia's talent was making up interesting characters to go in the stories she tell. She made a poster of her characters and told the audience all about them. It was sort of hilarious, and soooooo totally Adelia. Ivan told riddles, but I didn't get a picture of him because I was helping him and holding a wiggly Rue. Lincoln played three of his favorite piano pieces. They sounded way better on the baby grand than they do in our living-room. :)

And then there was art. My kids had been whining about our very obvious lack of Halloween decorations. And I saw a really cool blog post by my friend Arianne about painting with corn syrup and food coloring. I decided that was going to be our vehicle to decorate for Halloween. The kids loved it!

 
Our city has proposed a bond to build a new Rec Center just a block away from our house. I took the kids with me when I went to vote. They got to see the process and ask a million and one questions. We're just going to chalk it up to Political Science and move on.

Springville Art Museum Field Trip

Today went went on a field trip to the Springville Art Museum. It was SO COOL! I can't believe we've never gone until now. Admission is free, and our tour guide was awesome! She had the kids really interested in the art work by telling them things that would appeal to them about it, and by giving them breaks to look around on their own in between her explanations paintings.

The museum also had an exhibit up called Portraits of Childhood, and some fun hands-on activities for kids to go along with it.

Our favorite exhibit was Beyond Memory: The Daydreams of Corinne Geertsen

A sometimes humorous, always insightful collection of pictures assembled digitally from photos of ancestors creating surreal and quirky visual narratives about psychological predicaments. Watch for odd juxtapositions, non sequiturs, and the possible element of surprise. 

The kids got to take copies of the original photograph and walk around the room and try to find the matching finished product by Corinne. It was cool. My kids had a ball.

Art Studio Fieldtrip

Sarah in our homeschool group got her degree in art and has an amazing art studio in her house. She invited our group to come and have a painting lesson. She was so cute with the kids. She taught them about the color wheel and how to mix paint, then showed them a simple nut cool way to paint the sunset. All the projects turned out wonderful and so different. I love to see kids' personalities come out in their art.

Ivan's sunset with the silhouette of a corn stalk.