Memorial Weekend Canoe and Hike

We visited Umstead State Park over Memorial weekend. It was truly a lovely day. It did rain for about 15 minutes and then it was blue skies and gorgeous scenery.

We canoed around BIg Lake for a bit. I have to tell you that after years of kayaking, the canoe really felt unstable! It was still fun looking at fish and listening to the tree frogs. I couldn't get over how calm and peaceful it was, especially since it was a holiday weekend.

We also did a bit of hiking and exploring. One of the coolest things we found was a brown snake that was hiding in the rocks by the creek.

Unfortunately, the snake was musking and left Daddy smelling very stinky.

Weekly Report 5/22/09

This was such a gorgeous week. We had some minor rain here and there but overall just gorgeous. Without any major field trips and outside projects, we got a lot done!!

Literature: We finished Wind and the Willows and started Shakespeare Stealer as our audio book. We read Merchant of Venice from Tales of Shakespeare. We continued Sisters Grimm and The Princess and the Goblin. We also watched the corresponding part of the movie, Princess and the Goblin, to and compared it to the book so far. We also rented Tales of Despereaux and compared it to the book (which we read a few months ago but never got around to movie).

Poetry: We read several poems about birds

Reading: Melissa is continuing Baby Island, and reading Daring Book for Girls. Harrison is reading The Two Towers again. I think that break with easy reads did the trick. He read one Beast Quest book, reread Swords, more Calvin and Hobbes, and Dangerous Book for Boys.

Writing: We managed to do copywork eveyrday!!! We also got in a couple rounds of Legends of Druidawn and they each did a lapbooking/notebooking page on a bird of their choice. Melissa did a blog entry and made an anacrostic poem/card for a friend. Harrison wrote a book report on one of the Beast Quest books.

Language Arts: They did the usual Spanish, Word Roots, and Typing. However they switched to Dance Mat Typing for some variety. We reviewed some spelling rules (strong man e, every syllable needs a vowel, dropping the e before adding suffixes that begin with an i or e, vowels are long at end of syllable). We went over lie/lay and they played Gorilla Grammar and some leapster language arts games. They did some alphabetizing activities also.

Math: Melissa and I went over adding, subtracting, and multiplying fractions, mixed numbers and improper fractions. She did the exercises in 4A and we did some fraction games oneline. Despite covering this in in school, in Singapore, and in Life of Fred, she still doesn't have a good grasp of what to do. I have got to dig deeper into my bag of tricks to figure out why she is having a hard time remembering what to do. If anyone has good suggestions let me know!!! She also made a Roman numeral chart to help her remember those (I suspect that is just lack of interest lol). Harrison continued working on decimals and reviewed fractions and place value and reviewed his multiplication facts playing Timez Attack. They both did subtracting fractions chapter in Life of Fred. We all reviewed symmetry this week when they made mandalas. They both wrote out word problems and solved them and played math games on the leapster.

Logic: Melissa worked on sequencing activities in Logic Countdown

History: We read about Sir Walter Raleigh, Humphrey Gilbert, the Lost Colony and Virigina Dare. They acted out a voyage across the ocean in the backyard!! We also read more about the Spanish Inquistion and the Protestant Reformation.

Geography: We did some mapwork, concentrating on Asia. We read more about Marco Polo. We learned about Mt. Everest and the region of Tibet. We read about the current Dalai Lama and made mandalas.

Nature Studies: We read more Tales of Jasper Jay and they each did a lapbook/Notebook page on a bird of their choice. We spent some time bird watching in the backyard and looking up new birds. We went on a nature walk and drew in our journals. They really enjoyed playing with the goats, sheep, and donkeys at the horse stables. Melissa also got to visit chickens at a friend's house. They had them out of the cages and they flew to the top of the swing set. They had to put them up as a hawk flew over. Harrison watched an episode of Dino Lab.

Science: We spent the week learning about magnets, magnetic fields and the Earth's magnetic field. We had lots of hands on experiments! Harrison also made paper airplanes and conducted some experiments.

PE: Melissa had her first horseback riding lesson. She really enjoyed it and is so excited that she's talked about little else all week. She also had tumbling class. Harrison had football and Melissa joined him in baseball practice this week. They had gymnastics, went on hikes, rode the scooter, and jumped on the trampoline.

Art: We started a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci and talked about his nature journal. We will be watching an episode of Doing DaVinci tonight.

Music: Harrison practiced his guitar and went to his lesson.

Social: Melissa had a playdate and they both played with some friends at the horse stables. She also got to chat online with her buddy from Boston. We had the usual stream of neighborhood kids over every evening.

Other: We took a trip to the dump and Harrison in particular was thrilled at seeing the trash being compacted. Melissa watched It's Me or the Dog and Leader of the Pack. She worked on training our dog to "shake." He's not yet consistant. Harrison watched two episodes of The Deadliest Warrior and wrote out his comparison charts and made predictions. He did a lot of building with K'Nex, Magnetix, and Bionicles. He also helped DH find the hole in a tire, repair it and put it back on. He was extremely thrilled with that!

Wordless Wednesday: Nature Walk Discoveries

Field Day

Our homeschool group had it's field day last week. What fun it was. The kids participated in the following events: 100 m run, jump rope, broad jump, softball throw, potato sack, obstacle course and shoe kick.


Our group finished the 100 m race in time to do an extra race of running backwards.

Melissa won her only blue ribbon in the jump rope competition. 182 jumps

Melissa won the first heat in the potato sack race and then tied the winner of the second heat twice!!! However on the last attempt, Melissa fell and her friend won.

Weekly Report 5/15

Spring came back this week! After a very hot and humid weekend, we had a wonderful week of great weather. So our slack schedule this week is due to ME. Yes, Mom had spring fever!!!

Literature: Continued Wind and the Willows and Princess and the Goblin.

Reading: Melissa read two Spiderwick Chronicles reference books, part of a horse reference book, and part of Baby Island. Harrison read two Calvin and Hobbes books, two Beast Quest books, 1 Ready Freddy book (which he pulled out the "to donate" pile as he read it years ago) and is on book two in the Lone Wolf series.

Writing: I dropped the bomb here. We did just a little copywork and M did a blog entry.

Language Arts: We did a lot of work on library skills -using card catalog, shelving, Dewey decimals, etc. We did our usual ad hoc spelling and grammar, plus our normal Spanish, Word Roots, and Typing and Boggle games. We rounded out with some word finds and scrambled word games.

Math: Melissa reviewed long division and multiple digit multiplication and adding and subtracting fractions in Singapore 4A. Harrison is working on dividing decimals in 4B. We did some graph work this week with Fitday and e-bird. They helped with shopping this week and practiced counting back change.

Logic: Melissa finished up the analogy portion of Logic Countdown.


Nature Studies: We read more of Tales of Jasper Jay. We did some bird watching at home and we went to Harris Lake County Park to monitor bluebird boxes. We got some experience collecting data and doing charts. We learned a lot about blue birds and nests in general. We continued entering data in e-bird also. Also at home, Melissa is learning about dog training. She is watching It's Me or the Dog and has ordered a couple books on obedience training from the library. She is also doing a lot of experiments with all our pets using a book called Pet Science. Harrison watched a documentary on ants and aphids and got to see some on a nature walk.

Science: They learned about arches and how they work. We also played some Elementeo.

Health: We have been learning about fitness and nutrition and how it relates to overall health and well being.. We've explored a website on the world's healthiest foods and are looking at ways to incorporate healthier choices in our menu. We are working on establishing regular exercise routines.

Geography: We did some map reading and map work. They continue to work on their Chinese opera based on the story of Mulan. They both independently read a Mongolian folk tale picture book called The Khan's Daughter.

History: This week we mostly focused on the earliest settlements in Florida (both French and English). We also discussed more on the Protestant Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition.


PE: They participated in our co-op's field day. They both went on hikes, jumped on trampoline, went to gymnastics class and played at the park three times this week. Harrison had football and baseball. Melissa had tumbling.

Music: Harrison is working on a song called Tom Dooley for guitar.

Religion: Melissa had Awanas this week. We had several discussions on different ways people interpret the scriptures and how to respect those beliefs whether we feel they are important or not.

Social: They both had playdates this week plus usual neighbors, classes, etc.

Junior Bluebird Monitors

Wednesday, we went to Harris Lake for their Junior Bluebird Monitoring program. What fun. I can't believe we were the only family to do it. The ranger was fun and had a lot of interesting activities for them to do.


One of the activities she did was throw multi-colored pasta all around the ground and the kids had to fill each egg carton mouth so many pieces of pasta in a short period of time to see what it is like to feed baby birds.

We hiked around the park and monitored the bluebird boxes. Some were empty and some had old nests. The kids learned that you approach from the side and knock first so birds can fly out. We had a nuthatch fly out of our first box! Then we looked in the boxes and determined what bird had a nest there. Just because it's a bluebird box doesn't mean a bluebird will be the bird to choose it. Our boxes had bluebirds, nuthatches and wrens! The ranger said she found a snake in a box once.
We had to learn a lot about nests. Some birds make shallow nests and some deep nests. Some use mud and some don't. Because different birds have the same color and size eggs and you don't always see the parent bird, you have to know your nests.

Weekly Report 5/8/09

Wet! That sums up this week! We had rain every day with thunderstorms and tornado watches all week. When we had a break in the weather, we went to Waterfest and got wet again! This week was a tiring week too. We had a lot of field trips. On the homefront, my husband came home extremely sick on Monday. It turned out that he has Rocky Mounted Spotted Fever. I have to tell you that it's not easy homeschooling at home with a sick husband who is trying to work from home (aka we had to be very, very quiet).

Literature: We finished reading Lamb's version of Midsummer Night's Dream and watched the BBC animated version. We read some more of the Princess and the Goblin. We listened to more of Wind and the Willows.

Reading: Melissa finally finished Spy for the Night Riders. She ended up liking it even though I had to assign it to get her to read it. This week, I gave her one of my childhood books, Mandy by Julia Edwards (aka Mary Poppins). It still had my name in it from when I was a child. I had her write her name under mine and told her that she could give it to her daughter one day. She read the book in one day! She also read Nixie's Song (Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles). Harrison was in a reading funk this week. He didn't want to read The Two Towers and just wanted to reread Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare. We finally found him a new book. It was a Choose Your Own Adventure type book with a Roleplaying/Fantasy slant.

Writing: We did copywork this week and played a round of Legends of Druidawn. Melissa sent off a few emails to some friends and Harrison did a comparison chart for Deadliest Warrior.

Language Arts: They did Word Roots, Rosetta Stone Spanish, and Typing on the computer. They played some Boggle. We went over some spelling and grammar rules.

Math: Melissa worked on Area and Perimeter and finished up Singapore 3B. Harrison was busy multiplying decimals this week. He did some Challenge Word Problems too. He had a lot of practicing adding and subtracting in his roleplaying book.

Logic: Melissa did some analogies from Logic Countdown. Harrison played strategy games.

Nature Studies: We learned a lot about nature this week! We read some more of Tales of Jasper Jay. We went out and observed the clouds and weather patterns and animal behavior to predict the weather. We took a class on worms and composting. We took a class on Woodpeckers and went bird watching at a county park. We saw four red-headed woodpeckers and two flickers and found evidence of a yellow-bellied sapsucker. We also saw cowbirds, robins, wrens, a bluebird and a chickadee. Great day for our E-bird account. The kids made suet for the birds too.

Science: We went to Waterfest this week. Waterfest is a yearly festival about water and it's uses held by the the local water treatment plant. We didn't get to do all the activities but we enjoyed the ones we did. The kids rode a open air bus through a bus wash and got soaking wet. That was the most favorite activity lol. They did learn things though. They split a water molecule, looked at ecoli under ultra violet light, learned how filters work, climbed all over a fire truck, pet a police dog and police horse, climbed through tunnels and dug for fossils. We also watched Before the Dinosaurs and another Dinosaur documentary that was on the History channel about how the dinosaurs may have been killed off by insects and not the meteor.

Geography: We read more in our Marco Polo book. We also learned about the Chinese New Year and Chinese Operas. We watched Mulan and ate Chinese food with chopsticks. The kids wrote their own Opera based on the legend of Mulan (lots of fighting and acrobatics). We also read about the Netherlands in regards to our Renaissance studies, including the Little Dutch boy, dikes and canals, windmills, tulips, dutch linen and herrings. We did quite a bit of mapwork this week because our studies of Balboa led us on a rabbit trail of the Panama Canal and Melissa wondered if there was a bridge that allowed you to cross over it. This led to a discussion of the Pan American Highway so we traced it's route from Alaska to Argentina. (We also brought in math skills to calculate how long it would take to drive the entire length at speed of 60 MPH and driving 10 hours a day).

History: We continue learning about various explorers. We into more depth with John Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci and learned about Balboa.

Art: We looked at St. Peter's Cathedral designed by Michelangelo. We also made stained glass suncatchers. Melissa practiced photography too.

Music: We listened to Bach this week. Harrison continued practicing guitar and we listened to several versions of Worried Man Blues this week since he had just learned that song.

Religion: Harrison and I co-read Pilgrim's Progress. We all had a big discussion on evolution and creation and why it's not a conflict for me as it for many of our friends. We didn't make it to church or Awanas this week due to the thunderstorms and sickness

PE: Well, my kids ended up doing quite a bit of pushups this week. Both had some honesty issues that they needed to "work out". They also did gymanstics, trampoline play and several hikes. Melissa had tumbling and Harrison had football and baseball.

Social: I don't usually include social but since it's one that non-homeschoolers worry about....

Both kids had lots of time playing with neighborhood friends in the afternoons and over the weekend (including a sleepover). We didn't have a playdate over this week due to Daddy being sick and didn't go out to one due to the numerous field trips. However, we met several of our friends at Waterfest and did activities with them there. Melissa made a new friend at the Worm class and chatted away with the girls in her tumbling class. She was glad to find that she wasn't only girl whose mother wouldn't allow her to do the cheer program there due to the midriff revealing uniforms. Harrison didn't make a new friend but interact well with his peers in the class. I am working on him with to recognize his annoying behaviors and trying to replace them with less annoying ones. We've made a lot of progress with his table manners and we've finally gotten the use of the fork down pat!! They went to the kids night out program that our church has for families with special needs and played with quite a few of their friends there.

Other: Melissa played vet and detective games with her sleepover friends. She also volunteered at the dog park, filling water dishes, pools, and gathering toys as well as playing with the dogs while she was there. Harrison built several things with K'Nex.

Composting with worms

The kids took a class on composting with worms through the Centennial Campus for Wildlife Education. What a wonderful class. The instructers were energetic and engaging. The class moved quickly and kept the attention span of all the kids. Best of all, it was free! We all learned a lot.


The kids dissected a worm in pairs. After doing the shark, my kids are "pros" at dissection and they did not get grossed out by the smell or the cutting. Each one did the actual dissecting in their pairing.

After opening up the worm and pinning, they learned about the different parts of the worm and their functions.

After dissecting worms, they went out and dug for worms in the woods. They found lots and lots of worms and a few other creepy crawlies too.

They also made their own mini compost bins. First you make a bin by drilling holes in a container. Then you tear some paper and wet it and fill the bin with it. Then you add some worms.

You then feed the worms with veggie and fruit cuttings and egg shells. Harrison insisted on carrots at dinner so he could feed his worms the shavings. They made a small bin at the class but we plan to make a bigger one for our family. Here are directions for anyone interested: http://www.stopwaste.org/home/index.asp?page=445#plastic

Weekly Report 5/1

This week went by really quick!

Literature: We continued listening to Wind and the Willows, picked by back up our evening read aloud (Sisters Grimm) and started The Princess and the Goblin. We watched the Animated Shakespeare Tales version of The Tempest and started reading Lamb's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Harrison and I co-read his weekly chapter of Pilgrim's Progress.

Reading: Melissa read books four and five in the Spiderwick Chronicles. We did a lot of work of compare and contrast of the characters, the books, and the book against the movie and video game. She read a bit more in Spy for the Night Riders and started reading the Royal Diaries book for Elizabeth. Harrison continued The Two Towers. He started Under Drake's Flag but wasn't interested in it, He also found my stash of Calvin and Hobbes books so now I am doomed. LOL

Writing: We did copywork in our commonplace journals. We played several rounds of Legends of Druidawn with accompanying writing. Melissa worked on her Megalodon report and put up her first blog post. She also wrote her birthday list. Harrison did a compare and contrast sheet on this week's episode of The Deadliest Warrior

Language Arts: They did typing, Spanish, Word Roots. They played a few games of Boggle. We did our normal ad-hoc grammar, spelling, and vocabulary. We also played around with alliteration and abbreviations.

Math: Melissa did review work on angles, area, and perimeter. H is working on multiplying decimals. He also did challenge word problems for money. They both played Timez Attack this week to keep up their times table speed. They did a lot of hands on math with Druidawn.

Logic: Harrison worked on inferences and Melissa worked on analogies.

Nature Studies: Melissa's 4-H group went to visit a beekeeper. We learned a lot about bees and got to do some taste tests on different types of honey! We went to Prairie Ridge ecostation and did some bird banding and a tree study. We read some more of Tales of Jasper Jay and observed the birds around our yard. We saw mockingbirds fight, a Red-tail hawk soar above us and a gorgeous house finch.

Science: We read about Copernicus and reviewed our knowledge of the earth's rotation. We watched a documentary on Megalodons. We learned had some health lessons on body alignment and posture and skin care in the sun.

Geography: We practiced map reading skills with our Legends of Druidawn game. We did our weekly mapwork on the globe for a change of pace. We read more of our Marco Polo book and studied Chinese Architecture and the practice of Feng Shui. We learned about Chinese inventions and the importance of tea in Chinese Culture.

History: We read about early explorers: John Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci. H also watched several Time Commander episodes and this week's episode of Deadliest Warrior on Knights vs. Pirates.

Music: Harrison is working on Worried Man Blues by Woody Guthrie. We also listened to Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky.

Art: We finished our Michelangelo Biography and used the Moses statue for our narration. Harrison worked on drawing circles.

Other Fine Arts: We went to see the Carolina Ballet perform Swan Lake. The kids wrote and performed a skit as part of their tree study. Their tree was the American Holly so they used that as Hollywood and did the tree Oscars. It very funny.

PE: Melissa had tumbling and Harrison had football and baseball. They both went to gymnastics class. At home, we went on evening hike, jumped on trampoline, and did Wii Fit.