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. 

Native American Cultures: The Southeast: Birch-bark Canoes and Clay Beads

So I backed up in our Native American Culture studies. I hadn't covered them as thoroughly as I wanted to, or done as many of the projects as I wanted to.  I went all the way back to the Southeast region. We reread the chapter, and I created a vocabulary activity to go with it and had the boys do that and glue it into our notebooks.

Then for a fun activity we made birch-bark canoes. We cut them out of paper and "sewed" up the sides using yarn, but talked about how the Native Americans used animal sinew. Then we melted wax and smeared it to the bottom. I was supposed to use paraffin wax, but I didn't have any on hand, and the thought of dragging five children to Wal-mart for wax made me want to rip my eyeballs out. So instead I just burned a candle during quiet time, and used the pooled wax to smear on the bottom of the boats. It worked, except that we didn't have enough wax to go around, so the entirety of the boats didn't get covered, which means they didn't float as well as the might have otherwise.

BUT, this didn't end up being a bad thing, because we talked about it. Why the boats sank when the water touched the paper, but not the wax. What else might have been done to keep the boats level and floating, etc. So all in all it turned out to be a nice stroll into the scientific method. Sort of. :) The kids were happy, that's all that really matters.

A few days later, we made beads out of clay like the Seminoles. We read about how Seminole women wear so many beaded necklaces that you can't see their necks at all. When the beads dry, we will paint them and string them into bracelets, or maybe necklaces if there are enough beads.

Lincoln is also reading the book Soft Rain by Cornelia Cornelissen, which is about a Cherokee girl who has to walk the Trail of Tears with her family. He's not super thrilled about it, because it isn't "his kind of book", but oh well. :) It's not along, and it goes with our unit.

Other Stuff

 I feel like I'm so far behind on blogging. May is about the craziest month that ever was, and we're not slowing down at all as we head into summer. But there are a few things I wanted to document, so sorry they are random and in no real order.

We've still been managing to squeeze some school into the cracks of our days. We did an awesome peacock art project. I thought Adelia's turned out especially cool.

Lincoln has been going to swim clinic every Saturday all through spring in preparation for summer swim team. He made the team and I am proud of him! He's been working hard and learning a lot, and hopefully having some fun along the way. We are all excited to be his biggest fans at the swim meets this summer.

 I finally figured out how to wear a hat with short hair and not look like a boy! Yay! Just in time for our up-coming vacation to South Dakota too. I've had this hat forever, and I love it, but I never wear it because of my short hair. But I tried it out again, and just cocked it back a little so it doesn't come so far down over my forehead, and I think it totally works!

Ollie has been keeping me on my toes. He's figured out how to open doors, which means all bathrooms are now a magical toddler play land. Ugg! I don't have time for these kinds of shenanigans. Seriously! I'm behind enough as it is. 

We've been experimenting with starting Rue on solids. I'm not a big fan of solids, to be honest. It's just more mess and more work, and it's not very portable. But she did well. She didn't puke on me, at least. Although, I'm not so sure she was a big fan of the rice cereal either. Maybe we'll just wait it out some more. No rush, right?

The boys are starting baseball in June, they'll be playing coach pitch this year. I may or may not have mussed Ivan's grade level so that he and Lincoln could be on the same team. Adelia is playing kickball too, and I really don't want to be going to six games a week for all of June. Ain't no one got time for that! Besides, if Ivan plays up with the big kids, he'll just get better. Win win. Anyways, I coerced Ivan and a neighbor kid to play baseball with me the other day. The neighbor kid was all for it, Ivan had to be talked into it. Lincoln wanted nothing to do with it, and went inside. Someday my love of baseball will rub off on my children. Ollie was into it though. Maybe he'll be my ballplayer. 

Now that May is half over, here are Rue's five month old shots that I took of her at the beginning of the month. She's cute.

Did I mention we still do school sometimes? Only sometimes...haha! But here is our lesson on The Pacific Northwest Native Americans. We built candy totem poles. Actually, I feel like I've really let the last few lessons slide. I'm not happy with my lack of effort that I've put in, we haven't done nearly the amount of reading that I want, nor the vocab. And I wouldn't even mind doing a few more projects. So maybe I'll be doing a redo on Native American Cultures with my kids over the summer. We'll see how it goes.

This one is Adelia's. We never quite got it to stand up.

 They've been doing a bunch of construction in our neighborhood because they are building a new elementary school. One Sunday we took a walk over to the construction site to check it out.

Baby Rue asleep in her bouncer. Funny girl.

And Ivan wanted to document that he build this super awesome Trio castle. Good job Ivan.