Ellie is 10 and in the 5th/6th grade this year. She loves dancing, doing art projects, traveling, and of course reading. She reads all day long, leaving a trail of books behind her :)
Kate is 7 and does 2nd and 3rd grade work this year. She likes to move!! She loves anything hands-on and doesn't want to sit for too long :)
Lexie is 5 and is in the 1st grade. She is becoming quite a good reader and is enjoying math. Lexie LOVES to talk, just ask her :)
Nick is 3. He loves trains, trucks, planes, and anything that moves. Keeping him occupied during the school day is a constant challenge :) He knows his letters and can count. He likes to work on puzzles and to play with math manipulatives. I am hoping that I can keep him busy and out of trouble while we're working this year!
Tori Rose is 1 and a half and such a joy!! She loves to play with her baby dolls, listen to music, and talk.
It's weeks like this one that I really miss living in Monterey. It's hard to study something like cnidaria when we are landlocked in the middle of the largest state in the U.S. I really miss having an aquarium just down the road - and tidepools to explore.
In lieu of a trip to the aquarium, I surfed the internet to find some information and videos on cnidaria. Not quite the same, but it will have to do until this spring, when I'm hoping to stop in Atlanta and visit the Georgia Aquarium.
Aren't Jellyfish cool?? I could spend an hour alone in the jellies exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. There is just something so soothing about watching them.
HISTORY: This week, we talked about some of the early kings of England: Alfred the Great, Edward the Confessor, Ethelred the Unready, Canute the Great, Sven Forkbeard, and William the Conqueror.
We learned about pomanders. The wealthy owned beautiful ones which they wore as a necklace, or hung from a belt. They believed that they would protect them from infection in times of plague. I'm sure that it was nice to have something pleasant to smell when the stench of medieval life was getting a bit too bad.
We made "poor man's" pomanders -the typical oranges covered in cloves. By the way - did you know how expensive whole cloves are??? I'm glad I had enough on hand at home. They were over $14 for a normal-sized jar of them at Wal-Mart. Yikes!
Lexie decided that hers should have a smiley face. SCIENCE: We pulled out our microscope (which I bought last year and we had never used!!!!). It is a stereoscope and in addition to regular prepared slides, you can put objects under it. The kids had fun magnifying their hair, leaves etc. I put in an order for some slides and we can't wait for them to come!!! LANGUAGE ARTS: Ellie wrote a paragraph about fall. It is quite appropriate since fall has arrived here in Alaska. The oranges and yellows are gorgeous and our yard is beginning to fill with leaves.Here is her rough draft(it still needs to be revised and edited which we will finish this weekend):
Red and yellow, leaves gracefully flutter off the half-bare trees in a cheerful evening greeting. The warm, inviting smell of freshly baked pumpkin pie wafts through the cool air. Little chipmunks scurry past my warm feet, gathering the last acorns they can find before winter comes. The horizon in front of me shows a beautiful sunset - pink, yellow, orange, red, blended together beautifully, making it a masterpiece. I look down on the heavily trodden path, and see leaves of every shape and color, artistically littering the ground. I look up and see red, fat cardinals singing to one another. I turn a sharp corner and see it: my wonderful home, full of my happy family.
We start in on studying the Vikings next week. My Scandinavian genes are getting excited :)
Ok, so I decided that I didn't like delaying my post by a week. It bugged me. :) We have now finished weeks 4 and 5!! Can we really have made it this far already?
HISTORY We spent Week 4 studying various rulers of the early Medieval World - Charles Martel, Charlesmagne, Otto I. We listened to Story of the World and Mystery of History CDs (Did you know that Mystery of History is on CD also??).
Anything on CD is much easier for me than reading aloud. Not that I don't like reading aloud, but if we are listening to the CD, then I can be attending to the younger kids at the same time. We often get interrupted (and I get frustrated) when I'm trying to read aloud and there are lots of "little" distractions. :)
We spent Week 5 learning about Knights and listening to the story of King Arthur. We also read a short picture book on Beowulf.
The kids made their own Coats of Arms.
SCIENCE
Our butterflies came out of their cocoons this week. I am so happy that they survived! Nick had moved the butterfly house and the cocoons fell from the top of the house. I was worried that they weren't going to come out, but they did!!
Kate and Lexie then moved on to study the circulatory system. Here is a model of blood we made, using oil, red hots, and beans to stand for plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets.
LANGUAGE ARTS Ellie and Kate have finished the first 25 lessons of Sequential Spelling (4 and 1 respectively). I am really enjoying this program. I like that they don't have a set of words that they study for the week. The kids didn't like the "busy work" of the MCP Workout workbooks. I can really tell that Kate's spelling has improved over the past few weeks with this program.
Ellie's gift is definitely in reading and writing. She is very descriptive in her writing assignments - the words she uses amazes me sometimes. Writeshop has been a great fit for us, because it has very clear guidelines for the assignments, and it has a grading checklist for me (which I absolutely need!!)
Kate struggles with writing a bit more. She is only 7 though - I'm sure that she will improve with time and practice. She also doesn't enjoy reading like Ellie does. Reading is work to Kate, not something she does for pleasure. Instead of assigning her specific reading assignments, I have decided that I need to just make sure that she has 30 minutes of reading to herself (and she needs to be in a quiet place where she won't be distracted).
RUSSIAN Ellie has finished the first unit of Rosetta Stone Russian. I like this program, but I think that I need to sit down with her and teach her the alphabet, so that she can get the full benefit of the program and be able to read the Cyrillic letters on the screen. I think that I will pull out my old books from when I was studying Russian in the Air Force and go through the sounds of the letters with her. (Russian has 32 letters!!)
ART The kids are loving Artistic Pursuits and they are enjoying the variations in their lessons. I feel much better about art this year!! This is coming from someone that draws stick people. This makes the lessons so easy!!
MATH I am loving Teaching Textbooks so far. It has made my day much easier. The lectures are given on the computer. Their answers are automatically graded for me. What more could I ask for??
Kate is zipping through grade 4 math without any problems whatsoever. I don't think she's gotten lower than a 91 - and she's enjoying it.
I wish that I could say the same for Ellie. Math just isn't her thing. I think part of it is a mental block - deciding that she just doesn't like math and then she tells herself she isn't good at it. I can't blame her, because I never cared for math much either.
I have to keep telling her that she is doing fine and not to compare herself to her sister. Ellie is doing grade 6 math and with the speed her sister is going through hers, her fear is that Kate will catch up to her - or worse yet pass her up.
I have to remind Ellie that math is just Kate's thing - and that Ellie excels in reading and writing (which Kate struggles with more).
It is interesting to see how the kids can be so different in their interests and talents.
I should mention that Lexie is working her way through Horizons 1. She isn't having any problems at all - she just needs to work on her handwriting skills. She is making her 5s and 3s backwards quite often. I'm sure that's pretty normal though.
We went for a nature "hike" if you could call it - in our own yard. The younger girls were making a list of living and non-living things. They were also fighting over the nice magnifying glass. I guess maybe we need a couple of those....We have a lot of trees in our yard - both coniferous and deciduous. I am very aware of this in the fall when all of the leaves need to be raked. :)We also have a couple of trees that have died and need to be chopped down:
We have many plants that I can't identify. Shame on me! Whatever these are, they are EVERYWHERE!!
The kids were being goofy as usual:
Grass that has grown, because I don't weedeat:
We have many bracket fungi on the trees in the backyard. I always call them "conks". My mom used to pick these off of trees when I was a kid and she would draw pictures on the white part with a woodburner. I have no such talent, but I remember searching for them as a kid and learning to be very careful not to bruise the white part - they are very delicate. We couldn't decide what these were either. Ellie insisted they were a berry, but I thought they were a flower. Maybe we need a field guide to Alaskan wildlife... And some more fungi. I just like that word. Fungi. These were very tough-skinned. One thing I did learn: the kids haven't been throwing away their popsicle sticks. They are absolutely everywhere!! It looks like an afternoon of yard clean-up is in store. :)
Mail to and from Alaska is truly snail mail and it's one of the things that I definitely won't miss when we move.
Everything takes longer to get here. Much longer. And costs more. Much more.
There are many places that won't even ship here.
I sold some stuff on ebay last month (heavy books) and sent it via media mail. I feel so bad for the poor people I sent it to. They'll probably be getting their books in time for NEXT school year It is seriously that slow. Only priority from now on - that's for sure.
We ordered painted lady caterpillars from Insect Lore back in mid July. They were great and shipped them right out within a couple of days. I just received 5 BUTTERFLIES in the mail today. The poor things were in a box for 3 weeks. Sitting in their own waste. The box was clearly marked "LIVE SPECIMENS" or something of the sort. I don't know what took them so long to get here, but we missed the metamorphosis - the whole entire point of ordering them. All three of the girls were supposed to observe it for science experiments in their studies this year. I have to say, that Insect Lore was great and graciously sent me out another one - free of charge - even though it was not their fault that the post office decided to take it's time with the caterpillars. I greatly appreciated that and I highly recommend them!! Hopefully our next set has a nice quick journey to Alaska. :)
Yesterday, Ellie attended an all-day science workshop called Supercharged Science. She came home excited about science!!
She wanted to know more about electronics and insisted I order more "pieces" that she can work with. Here is a clip of her putting some of her stuff together. They built a mini "robot" which moved by the vibrations of a propeller. What fun!
She is also interested in learning more about astronomy - which we studied earlier this year. I didn't delve too far into supernovas and other galaxies though and that is what she would like to find out about.
I am glad that she was exposed to some subjects which we have yet to cover and that she had the opportunity to do some great experiments.
I am considering buying some of the science programs they offer for next school year. Here is a video about their Science Mastery Program which includes DVDs. I like the fact that *I* don't have to be the one doing the experiments. It is stuff that Ellie can work on by herself.
She came home from the workshop with a CD containing more experiments to do on her own. At the very least, I am going to have her work on some of those :)
We have owned a couple of different rock sample collections over the past few years, but we LOVE the new one we purchased this year.
The other collections were mounted onto the cardboard back and labeled right under them. Of course, little toddler hands ripped them off of the backing, because the rocks needed to be held!
This time around we bought a much larger collection (I believe there are about 70 different rock samples) and they are numbered with stickers. There is a key, which lists what each rock is. In this way, the kids can pick the rocks up and guess what they are. Then they can check the key to see if they are right! This one was worth the investment!
Here is a link to the above notebooking page which I created for our studies. You are free to use it if you like!
We have spent the past few weeks studying rocks, minerals, fossils, and soil. The girls enjoyed these studies - especially learning about gems. :) We broke open geodes, grew crystals, and "mined" for "gold" and "gems".
The mining for gems was harder than we thought it would be! It was kind of messy too (lots of dust). I would suggest doing it outside if at all possible.
Here are some of the resources which we used during our studies:
Helpful Websites: Virtual Volcanoes. You get to create and erupt your own volcano! This one is so cool! Volcanoes on Video. The Discovery Channel has a nice variety of different volcano-related videos. Virtual Supervolcano See what lies beneath Yellowstone National Park. Here are directions on how to make your own Baking Soda Volcano. These are the instructions we used in making our volcano today.
Here is the video of our eruption. I think she poured in a bit too much vinegar! I only had cake icing dye and not food coloring. Maybe that is why our lava turned out pink instead of red?? The kids still had a BLAST doing it!!
Here are some of the resources we are using during our studies:
I just wanted to share a cool website we found while we were studying caves. The Virtual Cave: "From the comfort of your keyboard, browse the wonders of the underground! As a caver and photographer for over 35 years, I've collected images from caves all over the world. This site tells the story of caves in words and pictures: what's in them and how it got there. Because caves are so diverse, I've split them into four underground realms. Grab three sources of light, a helmet, some sturdy boots, and your mouse, and have fun exploring - there's LOTS to see! Please treat all caves with respect as these fragile formations are easily damaged. Our motto is: "cave softly and leave no trace of your visit."
The moon is full and absolutely amazing tonight. I wish that I could have gotten a good picture of it, but I have not yet mastered the art of night time photography. The picture I took was through the trees outside of my house.
Here is what the NASA site has to say about tonight's moon: It's no illusion. Some full Moons are genuinely larger than others and this Friday's is a whopper. Why? The Moon's orbit is an ellipse with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other: diagram. In the language of astronomy, the two extremes are called "apogee" (far away) and "perigee" (nearby). On Dec. 12th, the Moon becomes full a scant 4 hours after reaching perigee, making it 14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser full Moons we've seen earlier in 2008. This is both the brightest and (in the northern hemisphere) the highest-riding full Moon of the year. If you go outside around midnight it will be close to overhead and act like a cosmic floodlamp making the landscape absolutely brilliant, especially if there's snow. Full moons are always high during winter and, indeed, the solstice is right around the corner on Dec. 21st.
As part of our space studies, I let the girls try freeze-dried ice cream. It sounds better than it tasted. I think I'd just wait to get back to earth for the real stuff. :)
We have been studying constellations this week. It's just too cold to go outside at night and look at the sky (at least for my taste - I prefer watching a good meteor shower on a warm summer night!), so we have been looking at pictures in books instead. The girls tried their hand at writing down some of the different constellations on a worksheet that I made for them. It was interesting reading the stories behind them. I can see how people imagined some of the patterns to be certain things, but there are others that just seem like such a stretch to me. :)
Here are some of the books that we have used in our studies this week:
We have finished up talking about Uranus and Neptune and we are moving on to the Kuiper Belt and Dwarf Planets. It is hard for me to teach these things that I know absolutely nothing about. Growing up, I (along with everyone else) was taught that Pluto was a planet :) Apparently it isn't anymore!
New things are constantly being found out about space and many of the space-related books that I own are now out-of-date. I have ordered a new book and we are looking at various websites for more updated information on this subject.
Here is some stuff that might be helpful:
New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission Did you know that there is currently an unmanned mission on its way to Pluto and beyond? It has already passed Jupiter earlier this year. It should be passing Pluto in 2015. I can't wait to see what they find out! This website had beautiful pictures and videos pertaining to this mission.
The girls decided on their own that they wanted to write papers about space. I did not guide or help them at all. I was surprised when they handed me their papers for approval. I am so proud of what they wrote! I hope you can read Kate's - she definitely needs some spelling practice :) You may need to click on the image to enlarge, since the writing is kind of small to read.
It just makes me so happy that they are interested enough in their science studies to want to work on projects on their own.
Today we talked about Uranus and Neptune and we will be learning about dwarf planets next.
To have some fun during our solar system studies, I purchased a home planetarium. We're not quite to the lesson on constellations (still moving our way through the planets first). The kids enjoyed playing with this tonight - of course they have come up with a whole string of neat games to play with it (none of which involve constellations).
I just love that I am getting an education right along with the kids. There is a lot that I apparently never learned or just don't remember from grade school.
I had no idea what the differences were between a meteor, meteoroid, meteorite, asteroid, and a comet. Do you know the difference? If not, I will enlighten you:
A meteor is a meteoroid that has entered the earth's atmosphere.
A meteoroid is any of the small bodies, often remnants of comets, traveling through space.
A meteorite is a fallen meteoroid (that has landed on earth).
An asteroid is a large meteroid from 480 miles to less than one mile in diameter. Most of them are in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, orbiting the sun.
A comet is a celestial body moving around the sun, consisting of a central mass, surrounded by an envelope of dust and gas that may form a tail that streams away from the sun.
We are using a very eclectic mixture of curriculum and living books in our homeschooling journey. It is always changing, depending on each child and what works best for them. We are using a mostly classical method with a Charlotte Mason influence.
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