Science Fun!

Harrison has been eyeing this kit by the Wild Goose Company in the homeschool store for quite some time. I finally relented and got it for the kids to do this week. We've made silly putty before without buying a kit but I think there is something about having ingredients labeled in a manner that looks like "real" chemicals that makes it seem more serious.

Here is a recipe for making your own silly putty without a kit:

1 parts Elmer's White Glue (not school glue)

1 parts of liquid starch.

** If you use school glue, it won't bounce or pick up images but it's still fun to play with.

I think we will try the homemade one later this week and compare it to the kit's results. We might as well buy the real deal too and see which one bounces highest and which one picks up the best.

Watch Out Robin Hood

My son loves Legolas, William Tell, and Robin Hood. Therefore, it's no great surprise that he clamored to learn archery. Here he is having his first archery lesson with Dad.

Of course, big sister got a chance too!

Science on a Rainy Afternoon

Melissa and her friend enjoyed a rainy afternoon by putting on their pajamas, spreading out blankets on the porch, and mixing different concoctions with her spa science kit.

Saturday at the Pond, an Impromptu Adventure

My husband had softball at a park that we've never visited in the nine years that we've lived in this city. We were not sure what adventures would wait us.........

The park did not have a playground but it had a frisbee golf course. None of us had ever actually seen frisbee golf before so we watched a few rounds. Harrison was able to play a few rounds. (Yes, we walked up to total strangers and asked what to do LOL)

We found a pond and the kids gathered sticks to make a shelter in case the rain came again. Harrison was testing the depth of the pond with one of the sticks. It had a deep drop off a few feet in.

They spent a good portion of the afternoon hunting for tadpoles. Melissa's friend caught one but dropped in.

We topped the afternoon off with a trip to get ice cream and ate it outside under the umbrella table in the pouring rain.

Weekly Report 3/27

Oh this was one of those weeks! I feel we got nothing done. We had an all day field trip on Tuesday and we had the Iowa testing for three days. Harrison was so drained from just the act of sitting still that long so we dropped a lot of our normal stuff!

On the good side, Friday marked Melissa's last day in government school. I will have to change my profile to homeschooling two kids next week!!

Literature: Harrison and I read our Chapter of Pilgrim's Progress Book Two this week. We got a little reading done in Queen of Sorcery. Boy that title really sounds evil doesn't it. It's the second book in the Belgariad series by David Eddings. For those that know me as AuntPol on the WTM boards, my user name is from a character in that series.

Both kids listened to Wind and the Willows and listened to Sisters Grimm.

Reading: Harrison read quite a bit of Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare. I think he only got a little Two Towers in.

Melissa read some more about horses and just started The Lightening Thief.

Writing: Harrison didn't have any writing assignments this week. Since writing is his least favorite subject and most likely to cause anxiety, I decided to skip due to testing. However, He did make a list of military ranks for the Army and Marine Corps.

Langauage Arts: We played some Boggle to work on word patterns. He did one round of Word Roots and he played some vocabulary games at Word Central. He had grammar, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, etc on the test.

Math: We did manage to get all our scheduled Singaporemath lessons. We are still doing decimals and Harrison is flying through them. We didn't get to the challenge math or Life of Fred this week.

Nature Studies: We went to Museum of Natural Science and looked at arthopod exhibit, butterfly room and a tropics exhibit. We did some bird watching from our window. We weren't able to add any new birds to our list but we enjoyed the ones we saw. Both kids found a four leaf clover this week. Both kids continue to observe the chickens. It looks like Melissa's prediction that one of the chicks was a male (based on his beak) is true. We see the beginnings of a comb.

Melissa and I went to tour the place where she is going to horse camp this summer. We took my mom and sister and had a picnic by the stables. We hiked and she planted some flowers there.

Science: We discussed the properties of water. For those with a sense of humor, you should check out this video, We Will Rock You. It's quite hilarious.

History: We continued reading about Portuguese explorers. Vasco de Gama, Affonso d"Albequerque, and Columbus. He also played related sections of Age of Empires. We had a big discussion on trade monopolies. We also read about Henry VIII and watched a documentary on William the Conqueror.

Melissa went to Old Salem this week as a school field trip. She really enjoyed it and told me many things that she learned.

Civics: We had a field trip to the State Legislature. We met with several representatives and one of the state senators. We looked in on some committee meetings and looked at some of the lobbyists displays.

H is learning about military ranks and how the military is structured. He's also recreated several famous battles with his army men.

Music: H practiced guitar and had his lesson. He's working on timing and was introduced to the metronome this week.

Music Appreciation: We didn't get to Bach this week but we did enjoy hearing Ode to Joy and The Nutcracker in the movie Angels in the Infield.

PE: H had one baseball practice and one football practice. Everything else was rained out. He went to gymnastics and jumped on trampoline at home. He also went shooting (bb and pellet guns) with Dad and Grandpa.

M had tumbling and jumped on trampoline at home. We all managed to get one good walk in before the rain came.

Other: We had a clothing, toy and book swap in our homeschool group and then organized, boxed and bagged up the non-swapped things for charity. H was a good gentlemen and helped a younger friend take her heavy box to the car. My favorite moment was watching Harrison and three girls carrying this HUGE box of stuff.

Renaissance Faire

Since we are testing this week, not much is happening. Therefore, I thought I would show some pictures of things we did pre-blog. We attended the Renaissance Faire in October. It's a yearly family tradition and we've only missed one year in the twelve years that my DH and I have been together. This year, it was especially fun because we were studying the Middle Ages and early Renaissance times. My husband helped Harrison make his Viking costume. There is a ring mail shirt under that "bearskin" vest. I will have to get a picture of the armor when we go to the spring Faire. Melissa and I put together a last minute costume too.

Harrison loves medieval weapons. At the Faire, he was able to use a bow and arrow, shoot a crossbow, throw an axe and "joust" with a lance.

Wordless Wednesday: A Chick on the Hand is Worth Two on the Box

The Mixed Up Files of a Harried Homeschool Mom

I just have to tell you about the hilarious incident that happened to me. Yesterday was CapitalFest, an event where homeschoolers come and meet with members of the state senate and legislature. I was supposed to meet my group at the NCHE sign in desk but I didn't realize until I looked at our message board right before leaving that I had no idea of where that would be since CapitalFest was going on in legislative buildings, history museum, science museum, state capitol, etc. To top it off, I was not sure what the only lady who was definitely coming looked like. My son and I arrived in the general area and I flagged down some homeschoolers and they pointed and said "we checked in over there". I thought they pointed to history museum. I went in and sure enough there was a check in desk. I went over and they didn't have my registration information but they made me up a packet of important bills to watch and a name tag. I chatted with the table voluntters and one of the gentlemen told me that he didn't like my representative at all. He really didn't like her. Then I called the other mom because it was way past meeting time and I hadn't seen anyone. There was no answer. I decided to walk over to the legislative building to see if we had just missed her since I knew we had an appointment there in ten minutes. I got there, sat through the meeting with this representative. The whole time I was wondering what that guy didn't like about her. She really seemed to be homeschool friendly, etc. Later, we walked to next appointment and while I was waiting, I looked at the bills - the first one was about school bullying and adding sexual orientation to the list of bullying. I thought to myself what do homeschoolers care and then decided well maybe, they are interested in all education problems and many do homeschool because of bully issues though the bill looked quite the waste of time to me. I didn't have time to loook at rest of bills because we were meeting with our state senator. However, after that meeting, I did look -it was bills like gay marriage rights, transgender stuff, etc. My mind flipped. What does this have to do with homeschooling? I thought most homeschoolers were rather conservative anyway and it just seemed like I was in the twilight zone. Then I happened to look at the logo. I had gone to the NCE check in desk and not the NCHE check in desk!!!! NCE is North Carolina for Equality and is a gay rights organization.

Imagine my burst of giggles when I realized the conversation I had earlier in the morning at the table: "Oh I've been doing this about a year and really enjoy it. I can' t believe more people are not doing it."

Llamas and Chickens and Goats, Oh My!

In anticipation to starting homeschooling next week, my daughter joined the 4-H group within our support group. For her first meeting, we went to a local farm. They fed the animals (goats, llamas, pony, chickens) and explored the farm. One of the highlights was getting to hold a baby goat that had been born the night before! The other highlight is that we came home with three baby chickens. We will keep the chickens a week or two and then return them to the farm.

Weekly Report 3/20/09

Mom, please don’t talk to me for awhile. I am going to be deep in thought.

That sums up this week! We had a lot of thinking going on. This was a week of never-ending rain. It finally cleared up enough for us to meet some friends at the park on Friday. DS took his Nerf gun and had a blast! I think the entire line of mothers spit out their lemonade when he ran across the park picking up Nerf bullets and screaming, “A bullet, a bullet, my kingdom for a bullet!”

Literature: We finished our lunchtime audio book of Frindle this week. What a great book for discussing protagonists and antagonists! We continued listening to The Wind and the Willows in the car. That story is such a delight. We did our weekly chapter of Pilgrim’s Progress Book Two. We also read several chapters in Robin Hood, Queen of Sorcery, and Grimm Sisters. The latter is supposed to be the book that I read to his sister while he bathes but he’s been listening in.

** My afterschooler listened in on Wind and the Willows and Grimm Sisters.

Reading: He’s still reading Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. He’s been playing a LOTR game on the computer which led to pick up his copy of Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare.

**DD is reading several non-fiction books on horses, Warriors series, and just finished Penderwicks and Inkheart. We went to the movies to see Inkheart this week. She discussed how it compared to the book and DS discussed how it had elements from LOTR.

Writing: He wrote a letter to his pen pal (and I promise I will mail it this weekend) and he created an ad for a video game contest, complete with rules and prizes.

**My afterschooler wrote a letter to one of her friends at school. Unfortunately, another child rifled through her bookbag, stole the letter and turned it into the teacher. DD ended up with silent lunch even though the letter was written at home, not out during school time, and contained nothing mean or malicious.

Language Arts: DS went through his list of trouble words and used them in his commonplace journal this week. We also had a blast playing around with alliteration this week. H played a few games of Text Twist/Word Challenge and learned about word patterns. We played a game of Scrabble too. He also played Word Roots, Rosetta Stone Spanish, and typing games on the computer.

Math: DS continues working with decimals in his Singapore workbook and did a page in his CWP book. We played a few rounds of Monopoly and he played a little bit of Lure of the Labyrinth. We did some mental math in the car.

** Both kids did one chapter of Life of Fred Fractions this week.

Logic/Critical Thinking: The game of the week on the computer has been one of the Lord of the Rings games. We also played some Lord of the Rings Risk. I forgot to pack his logic book in our Tuesday bag and he got mad at me LOL! He did manage to squeeze in an inference exercise from it later in the week

**DH kept them both entertained with numerous riddles throughout the week.

Nature Studies: He and I continued reading The Tale of Reddy Woodpecker this week. We have been studying the birds that we can see through the window and trying to identify bird calls that we can hear. We did learn the difference between a bluebird and blue jay.

**DD continued working on her horse lapbook and writing her own non-fiction horse book. She went on two small nature hikes and found a 4-leaf clover on each!

Other Science: Due to his irrational fear of vampires and zombies that have caused problems in our daily life (he is afraid to go upstairs alone –no problem walking all over the neighborhood or going downstairs alone to play video games LOL), DS and DH have been studying the science behind vampire legends: diseases that have “vampire like” symptoms and the effects of dehydration and decomposition on corpses leading to “vampire traits”.

Health: We watched a parody of Star Wars called Grocery Store Wars on Youtube. It was about eating organics. We enjoyed that and discussed food engineering and pesticides, etc.

History/Geography: Our Marco Polo book has been temporarily (I hope) misplaced. We did do some mapwork on Africa and India as we studied Prince Henry the Navigator, Bartholomew Diaz, and Vasco de Gama. We also studied Gutenberg and King Henry VII, the first of the Tudor line of Kings.

**We watched the Court Jester as a family.

Religion: DS and I had some good talks from our Pilgrim’s Progress reading. He also had a lot of thoughts about evolution and creation.

Both kids worked on memory work and went to church and Awanas.

Art History: (Both) We continue studying and reading about Michelangelo.

Art: Use of lines to draw different perspectives.

Music Appreciation: (Both) Continuing to listen to Bach.

Music: DS is practicing a duet to play with his instructor.

PE: He worked on the rings and the climbing rope in Gymnastics. At home, he continues working in on his flips on the trampoline. Both football and baseball were rained out this week but he managed to get some skills practice in with DH.

**DD also had her tumbling class and practiced on the trampoline. She is working on her back tuck right now. She and I went to the track and did a few laps.

Child's Book Review: Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings

This is DS's (8) Book Review:

Fellowship of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien is an interesting book of a hobbit and his friends on a journey to destroy a powerful yet dangerous ring. There is a wide variety of characters, from the brave hobbit, Frodo to the daring and honorable Aragorn and the gruff but funny dwarf, Gimli. Mr. Tolkien gives great descriptions, yet keeps the story flowing for the most part. Occasionally though, he gets long-winded. The dialogue is witty at times but sometimes it's over-long. I really enjoyed reading this book and recommend to anyone who likes a good adventure.

The Court Jester

The pistol with the poison is in the flagon with the dragon, the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true...

Nobody does tongue twisters better than Danny Kaye. This movie is a true delight. It's got action without gore, romance without sex and nudity, and humor without crudeness and four letter words! The movie starts off a bit slow while the plot develops but once it gets going, the laughter rarely stops.

The movie takes place in the middle ages. Danny Kaye plays a hapless carnival worker who desires to be a hero like the Black Fox (character similar in vein to Robin Hood) who is trying to deposes the king. King Roderick seized the throne by killing all the royal family. However, a heir survived and he has the royal birthmark on his royal backside to prove it! In order to infiltrate the castle, Danny Kaye impersonates a court jester and runs into trouble when he attracts the attention of the princess (a very young Angela Langsbury).

The Court Jester is not a historically accurate movie nor is based on any incident in history. However, it does show the court intrigue that has always exhisted from ancient times to today's political climate. The comedy is slapstick, full of physical humor and wordplay. It spoofs The Adventures of Robin Hood several times and even has Basil Rathbone in a role very similar to one he played in Robin Hood.

I highly recommend this movie as a family movie. Adults will enjoy seeing Angela Langsbury before she wrote murder mysteries in Cabot Cove, Basil Rathbone being himself, and Glynis Johnson before she became Mrs. Banks in Mary Poppins and Alan Napier, who later played Alfred in the Batman series. The songs are entertaining. We particularly liked "You Can't Outfox a Fox" and "The Unemployed Jester." The humor is slapstick, filled with physical humor and word play and very witty. The only thing that I can think of that someone might find objection is the character of the princess's nanny. She has a witch persona though she does no real magic -just a hypnotist trick and some poison. The hypnotism scene results in one of the funniest scenes of the movie. The movie is a classic that I am sure you will enjoy. Get it? Got it! Good!

Weekly Summary 3/13/09

This week was such a light week -we had three gorgous days earlier in the week and took full advantage of them. The latter half of the week, it was rainy and dreary. I had to work those days anyway and he was in the office. I can't believe how fast this week went!


Literature: We continued Pilgrim's Progress Book Two. We also read two chapters in Robin Hood We continute listening to Wind and the Willows in the car and 2 chapters of Frindle at lunch. We're through chapter 8 in Queen of Sorcery.

Reading: He continues reading Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Composition: This week, he wrote a synopsis for several Cyberchase shows and let his sister pick one to watch based on the synopsis.

Penmanship: Continued copywork journal

Typing: Same old practice....

Vocabulary: Two rounds of Word Roots.

Spanish: Worked on Rosetta Stone.

Math: We started Singapore 4B and thus decimals.. We watched some Cyberchase. He also did one page in his Challenge Word Problems (CWP) book. However, the highlight of the week was playing Lure of the Labyrinth.

Logic: He did 11 pages in his Logic Countdown book. Most of these were the section on deduction. This led to him doing some level 1 logic problems from my logic problem books.

Nature Studies: We diverted from Burgess Bird Book to start The Tale of Reddy Woodpecker by Arthur Scott Bailey. We watched some youtube videos on woodpeckers and continued our nature walks -observing some birds at play.

Science: I don't think we did any science this week but play with catapults and build a lego ship....

History: Our history readings this week revolved around the War of the Roses. He also played some Crusader Stronghold.

Geography: We continue our reading about Marco Polo, concentrating on his coming into China and learning about Buddhism and I pulled out a jade buddha statue that I was given when I worked in China Town many moons ago. We also looked at a map of Italy in the Renaissance times.

Art History: We continue our unit on Michelangelo with a study of The Creation of Adam. We discussed the technique of fresco. We also began Diane Stanley's biography on Michelangelo.

Art: We used our line drawing skills to learn how to draw grass and flowers.

Music Appreciation: We continue our study on Bach. This week we focused on Air on the G-String

Music: Guitar practice and lesson. He's working on Surf Rock. He had some transcription homework.

Religious Studies: He continued his memory work and worked on several Awana lessons during the week.

PE: Gymnastics class-worked on jumping and catching. He also started football over the weekend and baseball this week!! He and his father played catch several times.

Home-Ec: He was a house cleaning slave this week -just ask him!

Lure of the Labyrinth

A friend of mine sent me a link to Lure of the Labyrinth for my son. He loved the game Timez Attack and has been pestering me to buy the upgrade. Well, I really wasn't ready to drop $40 on an upgrade when he knows his times tables well. We checked Lure of the Labyrinth out last night and he's been playing it all morning. He loves it.

Lure of the Labyrinth is a free, online immersive game that takes place in an underground, monster-inhabited world. Students disguise themselves as a monster and then maneuver through various math missions to save their beloved pet who has gone missing. These math missions entail middle school level pre-algebra skills such as proportions, fractions, ratios, variables, equations, and numbers and operations. The math portions are cleverly done and thus doesn't feel like a "math game" that happens to be online but more like an online game that "happens" to have math. Trust me, this is important with a child who can smell anything that has a hint of schooling in it.

Weekly Report 3/6/09

What an interesting week. Monday, my daughter was home from school because of snow and now today we were in shorts!!! Our schedule was disrupted with her snow day on Monday, a 2 hour delay (ice) on Tuesday. Thursday was a half day. She has an Odyssey of the Mind competition this weekend and so we've had all kinds of extra practices to fit in.

So this week:

Literature: We started Pilgrim's Progress Book Two. We did a lot of work with predictions and discussed how it amazingly follows our own spiritual journey. My son (who's still thinking of what he wants to be called online) said that we should name our scaredy cat "Timorance". This cat is scared of everthing and hides under the bed all day long.
We also read a chapter in Robin Hood
We continute listening to Wind and the Willows in the car and 6 chapters of Frindle at lunch.
We're through chapter 5 in Queen of Sorcery.
Boy it looks like we read a lot when you put it down on "paper"

Reading: He continues reading Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Composition: This week, he wrote advice columns to work on paragraph structure. He and his sister took turns writing letters with a problem and then answering the other's letter with advice.

Penmanship: He did a little bit in his copywork book but composition, copywork, and a lapbook ended up being "too much" writing so we lightened up here.

Typing: Same old practice....

Vocabulary: Two rounds of Word Roots. He FINALLY had his "aha" moment that he's learning something from this during the week.

Spanish: Worked on Rosetta Stone.

Math: We finished up Singapore 4A and played some fun review games. We watched Cyberchase episode on decimals to prepare us for 4B next week. He also did one page in his Challenge Word Problem (CWP) book. Played a few rounds of Timez Attack and is pestering me to get the upgrade.

Nature Studies: Three chapters of Burgess Bird Book -learned about tree swallows, swifts, purple martins, barn swallowsm crows, and meadowlarks. We watched some video clips on identifying these birds and observed birds in our neighborhood. We had a real fun nature walk and watched a squirrel hop from tree to tree. We also found a broken bird egg to take home and examine.

Science: The bulk of our science was the physics of archery. We did several experiments to learn about motion, force, speed, and gravity.
Both kids built a bridge between two trees that fallen across the creek.
He continued working with legos and built the Dwarf Mine kit and a catapult.

History:Learned about John Wycliffe, John Huss, Joan of Arc, and Prince Henry the Navigator.
Played a multi-player game of Age of Empires 2. He also added several components on archery to his lapbook on Medieval Weaponry.

Geography: We continue our reading about Marco Polo and learning about Afghanistan. We also mapped some of the areas that Prince Henry's ships navigated and learned that he never actually sailed on any of the voyages.

Art History: We begin our unit on Michelangelo with a study on "David". This was a great introduction on perspective because from the traditional side view, David looks rather like he is dreaming. However, from the front, you can see that he looks focused on where he is going to sling the rock that is in his right hand. We also discussed how he was model on the Greek ideal of man and he was not circumsized like a Jewish man would have been.

Art: We worked on the technique of line drawing.

Music Appreciation: We continue our study on Baroque composers with a unit on Bach. This week we focused on Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

Music: Guitar practice and lesson. He's working on Rockin Robin.

Religious Studies: He continued his memory work and worked on several Awana lessons during the week.

PE: Gymnastics class-worked on balance beam and high jumping. (Plus the usual playing at home, trampoline, hiking, biking, etc)

Home-Ec: We made Raisin Bran muffins. I taught him how to make your own buttermilk and what it means to beat eggs.

Fun with Angles

We just wrapped up Singapore 4A and have spent last week learning about angles, perpendicular lines, etc. Yesterday, I really felt that my son needed some fun and some practice with angles. He is a typical boy and loves to shoot nerf guns. I told him that in battles, your fellow fighters will often yell out things like "watch out at 2 O'clock" and how that doesn't mean the enemy will be here at 2 PM. I set up targets at different angles and let him practice shooting at each "time". We discussed that if you are facing noon then 3 and 9 o'clock are right angles and I had him figure out that each hour is 30 degrees. Then we took turns being blindfolded and trying to shoot as the other person callled out locations.

He had such a blast doing this and wants to do this afternoon for free time!