I ♥ Faces: Contemplative

This week's theme at I ♥ Faces is "Contemplative". This is my daughter Ellie, deep in thought. :) Head over to I ♥ Faces to join in the fun!

Week 6 Done

We've made it through yet another week. Whew!

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 :)

Butterfly Release

We let the butterflies go free today. They were happy to finally spread their wings and fly away!

Review: WriteShop

This is our first year using WriteShop and 5 weeks into it, I'm very pleased and impressed.

Last year, our writing program left something to be desired. That's because we had no writing program. I foolishly thought that I had the time to make up my own assignments and figure out how to grade them. I didn't. Our end result was that there wasn't much writing done last year - except for some fun poems and some wonderful journal writing assignments at Small World (Thank you by the way!!)

So, this year I decided that I had to have a writing program for me to follow - for my own sanity and the sake of Ellie's education. :) I ordered WriteShop in hopes that it would be the answer. I think it has been!

What I like:
1. It is very structured with a checklist for Ellie to check off for the first revision of her assignment. She now knows to skip lines, where to add her name and date, how to leave space in the margins, etc. Little things that I was not thinking about last year. The first few lessons, she was having a hard time remembering all of this little things and thought it quite tedious having to go through the checklist. Now that she has finished lesson 5, I have noticed that the correct format of her paper is becoming a habit and she is able to whiz through the checklist. Yeah!

2. Not only is there a checklist for her, but I have 2 checklists!! One is for me to give her specific feedback on her first revision. The other is a grading checklist with points for mechanics, style, and content. This has made it a breeze for me to grade her papers!!!

3. I like the content and assignments. For WriteShop 1, the assignments are as follows:
* Describing an Object
* Describing a Pet
* Describing a Person
* Describing a Circus Performer
*Describing a Food
* Describing a Season
* Describing a Place
* Explaining a Process
* Writing a Factual Paragraph (Focus on Informative Reports and Avoiding Plagiarism)
* Writing a Concise Biography
* Introducing Journalism (Focus on Writing a News Article)
* Writing a Narrative of an Emotional Event
* Writing a Narrative of Another Person's Experience (Focus on Conducting an Interview)
* First-Person Point of View (Focus on Point of View/Personification)
* First-Person Point of View (Focus on Limited Ominiscience/Tenses)
* Third Person Point of View


The program says it is made for grades 6-10 (for the first level.) Ellie is technically in the 5th grade, but I really feel like she is going to be able to finish both Writeshop 1 and 2 this year school year. Her strengths are definitely in reading and writing. It's what she enjoys and what she excels at.

Here is an example from her last writing assignments:

Lesson 5: Describing a Food

Precious Ruby

A ripe, ruby pomegranate, its luscious skin hard but smooth to the touch, seems to glow. As I cut it open, thick pulp dyes my fingers blood red. Its small juicy morsels melt in my mouth. I scoop out some more, my hands dripping with sweet, sticky juice. I grab a spoon, its enchanting bubbles of juice robbing my train of thought. I look sadly down, seeing that my bowl of goodness is gone.

Lesson 3: Describing a Person

Video Game

My little sister Lexie squints her chocolate colored eyes in concentration as she plays a video game. She brushes muddy brown high-cut bangs out of her face and moves the nunchuck expertly with her small, clean hands. Chipped green nail polish covers her nails and shines in the dim light. Lexie's red t-shirt makes her look happier. Her tight jeans stretch over her skinny legs. Her usually talkative face is hardened with thought. "New high score!" she yells at the top of her lungs. Squealing with triumph, she finishes her game.

I am so happy to have found this program! I think it is going to both challenge Ellie and keep me sane. :)

Click here to try a sample lesson.

Yes, More Pictures of Tori

I know that I have posted way too many pics of Tori lately, but I have even more from today. We put some fairy wings and a cute skirt on her and I tried my hardest to get some good pictures. She was moving CONSTANTLY. Ellie did her best to try to keep her in one spot, but it was impossible. Still, I got a few that I really liked. And now I'm really, really, really wanting to get a big girl camera. :) A D-SLR. My point and shoot is great, but I would love some more control.









And here are a couple of Ellie.

I ♥ Faces: Back to School Collage

This week's theme at I ♥ Faces is Back to School! Here is just a small slice of our homeschool, Island Academy. :) To join in the fun, visit I Heart Faces.

Still Waiting

The gates to post are absolutely covered in "Welcome Home" signs.

About half of the soldiers are back from Iraq. I was in town the other day and could easily pick out the happily reunited couples, walking hand in hand, pushing strollers as they went shopping.

I'm still waiting for that to be me. For us to be that happy family, walking around town in the happy glow of reunion.

Andy is going to be among the last to come back. I'm okay with that. After a year, what is another week or two, right?

We are starting to get excited though. We're down to a number of days that the kids can actually understand. They are already talking about how much fun they are going to have when he gets here.

Kate is looking forward to having a chess partner again. I DO NOT play chess. Too much thinking ahead and strategy for me. :)

Nick wants Daddy to take him to the hardware store to look at tools. And to play trains and Legos with him. He really needs some guy time. Being the only boy in a house full of girls for a year has been rough.

Poor Tori really doesn't know Andy. That makes me so sad. She was only a few months old when he left. They have a lot of catching up to do!!

We all have a lot of catching up to do. He will have a bunch of time off in October, and we'll be able to just hang out and make up for lost time. Doesn't that sound wonderful?? Now if only the weather will cooperate with us a bit and stave off the snow - then maybe we could do a bit of traveling too!

More Pics from Another Beautiful Day

Weeks 4 and 5 Update

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.

A Day at Home

The weather was gorgeous out today and I was tempted to head to the lake or Creamer's Field again, but I decided against it. It is Labor Day Weekend and I thought that we would find both crowded this time around.

So, I decided to just stay at home and enjoy our nice, big yard. I mowed it yesterday, so it was perfect for Tori to run around in. She enjoyed running free and throwing the ball around.

I am sad for winter to come and for us to be cooped up in the house for 6 months. I need to take full advantage of the sunshine and good weather while it's here. We'll probably have our first snow in a month or so.

So, we will stay home this weekend and avoid the crowds. I am looking forward to sitting on the swing in the backyard and finishing Wives and Daughters while I watch the kids play.

Here are some pictures I took this afternoon. :)

Ravioli Head

I was feeling lazy today and gave Tori a Gerber toddler meal instead of making something for her. I had never bought ravioli before, but it looked easy enough for her to eat, so we gave it a try.

What on earth was I thinking???? Really?

I scrubbed her down in the bathtub, but she still has orange-stained eyebrows. :)

My Little Couch Potatoes

I don't want my kids to be couch potatoes. I don't wish them to be planted in front of the TV all day long.

We have gone years without cable and it doesn't bug me a bit.

But I like to put in a DVD now and then. And there are times (especially while I'm single parenting) that I would love for the kids to sit down and be quiet in front of the TV for a little while.

The DVD player in our living room died a couple of months ago. It won't play, or even eject what's in it. So, I had been sending the kids downstairs to the school room to watch a movie every once in a while. The thing is, there isn't a comfy couch down there. It's a dining room table and chairs - not exactly very relaxing.

A couple of weeks ago, that DVD/VHS player decided to die also. That meant NO TV. At all.

I had thought that maybe they would just magically work one day. No little elf showed up at night and fixed them though.

Last night, I hit my frustration level. I was really tired after a day of cleaning up throw-up (Lexie had the stomach flu) and trying to chase around a very rambunctious Nick. I just wanted them to go and watch a movie so that I could have a minute or two to myself. Then I remembered that neither of them worked. How annoying.

So, I admitted defeat and went out and bought a new one. It is even set up for Netflix, so that I can play movies from my computer through my TV. How cool is that? I didn't think I was going to be able to get it all set up and working (I'm mechanically challenged at times), but I surprised myself and figured it out. I even got the DVD remote to actually work for the TV too. I don't think we've ever had that. :)

And now I'm laying here in bed for a minute, enjoying some peace and quiet. I'm letting the kids veg out since it's the first night of TV in quite some time. Hopefully, I'll have a relaxing night. :)