A Day of Remembrance

We started our day off with a visit to our local fire station for a ceremony to remember the fallen fire fighters and police and thousands of people who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.

 

 

Afterwards, we came home and discussed what 9-11 is and why we remember it. Every September 11th we talk about it but with this being the first year that we are homeschooling during it I wanted to teach the girls more. We watched a short video about the planes crashing into the twin towers. We talked about the plane that crashed into the Pentagon and the brave men who fought the terrorists and helped save the White House or Capitol from having a plane crash into. We also read stories online. One explained what 9/11 is and the other told about the morning first hand. (click on the links to view the video or stories)

 

We made candle holders and ended our time praying for the families and people that were so devastatingly affected eleven years ago. In fact we all were affected on this day. Our country will never be the same but we stand stronger together. May God bless America.

School Is In Session

Yesterday was our first day of school for this year. We are so excited about this school year. We spent many months reading and investigating learning and teaching styles and curriculum and which would be the best fit for my girls. This is our first full year homeschooling. Last year my youngest daughter started out in a Christian school but was having so many health problems that we started homeschooling her. This has been the best decision ever. At first my oldest daughter asked if she had to homeschool as well. I told her no that she didn't have to. We wanted her to be wherever was best for her. After a few months she started asking if she could homeschool as well. I asked her what changed her mind. She replied that when I teach her she gets it. She started struggling due to adhd. She is a very intelligent young lady. We prayed about what would be best for her and knew that homeschooling was the answer. So here we are.

One of the changes that I have noticed in my girls since we started homeschooling is the excited in learning. They want to learn and take every moment to learn something new. They are kinesthetic learners who love to move and learn by doing. Yesterday during lunch they asked "Can we play a math game, please?" My response? "Of coarse, I'm never going to tell you no.

We went for a mile walk for PE yesterday. We took our dog, who loves that we are home all day! We have a park in our neighborhood so the girls played at it for a few minutes. Since no one else was there, our dog was able to go on the slide with them, which he actually love to do. He's a silly boy!

Today, our second day, was a great day as well. The girls worked really hard today and really enjoyed it and told me that I am their favorite teacher.  Our English was a bit of review and  involved some Dictionary work. I absolutely love our English curriculum. I found out about this curriculum from the Christian school that the girls went to last year. This is the only curriculum that we kept the same from last year.

 We started our school day with a devotion about Eve and ended our school day with reading from Genesis 1. We then drew in our journals how we "saw" what was read. This is Sweetpea's Bible journal.

 

 

Nines Multiplication Tool

Peanut is working on memorizing the multiplication table. My daughters, just like me, struggle with pure memorization so we've been using different stories and techniques to help her memorize them.There are some facts that are easy and some that are really tough. Many of you may know the fingers trick for the nines. I showed this trick to Peanut but being very visual she needed to see the numbers so I came up with this tool for her. It worked!

So here's how it works. You ask the child what 9 times any number from 1 to 10 is. For example, what is 9 x 7? You flip up 7 and the answer is revealed! 9 x 7 = 63. This works for 9 x (1 through 10) because the first number of the product (answer) is the number before the non-nine factor (in this case the factor is 7 so the first number in the product is 6)

I color - coded the numbers in the product so that it would pop-out. I used a sheet of 8 1/2" by 11" card stock and folded it in half length-wise. Then I measured out 10 equal parts for the numbers and cut the flaps. After, I numbered each flap 1 through 10 and the bottom layer (under the flaps) 9 through 0. I glued the top half where I wrote "9 x __ = __". Once I finished I showed it to Peanut and she loves it. She has memorized her 9s and enjoys practicing with this tool.

Thanks for reading! Let's make math fun!

We Made Baby Dolls

We thought that it would be fun to make tiny baby dolls after seeing some cute handmade ones on the internet. The timing was perfect with reading "Little House In The Big Woods". We had just read about Laura and Mary's baby dolls. Here is a picture of Sweetpea's, Peanut's and my baby dolls.

Sweetpea's (purple), Mama's (floral) and Peanut's (pink)

Here is a brief and rough tutorial on how we made them:
To make the head, we drew a circle onto flesh colored knit fabric. We used one of our glasses with a diameter of about 3-4". Cut out the circle. Sew closely inside of the circle with a long running stitch. When you get around to where you started, pull the thread to draw up the fabric. Stuff with fluff and pull the opening closed. We used a thin nylon fabric and covered the head. We wrapped the thread around the "neck" a few times and then tied it.

To make the body I drew a template and then traced it onto the fabric, cut it out and then cut it into 2 equal pieces (see photo below). 

Stitch along the sides and rounded bottom leaving the top open. Turn right side out and stuff with fluff. Insert the "neck" part of the head into the body and stitch closed. We added eyes and cheeks.

Mama's baby doll

Peanut's baby doll with eyes and cheeks

We used squares of flannel and wrapped them up all snuggly.

We sewed all of the edges down to hold the blankets on the babies. And here are Peanut's and Sweetpea's Babies.

Thanks for reading!

Churning Butter

We have been reading "Little House In The Big Woods" and comparing that era with ours. We have been discussing how we would have liked to live back then and also some of the hardships of then and what we would miss from now. We definately like the simplicity back then.
In Chapter two Laura, Mary and Ma made butter from the cream from their cows. We've made butter many times by shaking cream in a small jar. We have a butter churn that has been in my family since it was made. We hadn't used it but thought that we would give it a try today.

Lucy pouring in the cream

We thought that we would start small. We used a half gallon of cream and began churning.

My girlies started churning but only lasted a few minutes each. Then it was my turn. I churned for 20 minutes and check out what our cream turned into. 

We scraped down the sides, strained the contents and got...

two containers of butter and about a quart of buttermilk. We all tried the buttermilk and it actually tastes pretty good. We also enjoyed our freshly made butter on crackers and bread. Too bad we didn't make our own bread today to put the butter on. For any of you who are I Love Lucy fans, like I am, "homemade bread with home-churned butter".

thanks for reading.

Our Presidents

We have had the pleasure of celebrating Presidents' Day today and remembering two of our countries amazing presidents. George Washington was our Founding Father and Abraham Lincoln, who was our 16th president, abolished slavery.
So, in preparation of our vacation day we learned about and did some fun activities about these two great men.

 Washington and Lincoln Books We Read

These are great biographies written for the 3-4 grade level.

Washington and Lincoln Portrait 

When you were a kid did you put crayon shavings between two layers of wax paper and then melt them with an iron? I thought of this the other day and had an idea. I found an image of Lincoln and Washington online and printed them. We put one of the images under wax paper and drew the outline of the facial features.
Then, we made shavings of crayons that were face color, black and greys. You can use a pencil sharpener. Just don't push too hard.

You will want to put a paper towel onto an iron safe surface and place your wax paper on top of the towel. Now, fill in the areas with crayon shavings. Just as Lucy is doing here.

This one is ready to be ironed. (On the first one, we put too much crayon so you may have to play with the amount of shavings.)

When you are done, place a piece of blank waxed paper on top and then another paper towel and iron with your iron on a low setting.

We did Lincoln and Washington. We ran out of white crayons from our Crayon Valentine Hearts so Washington has grey and black hair.

They didn't turn out exactly like I envisioned them but we had fun. Let me know if you make these and how they turn out.

Lincoln's House

We also made a small replica of Lincoln's first house out of "Wooden Skill Sticks". They are popsicle sticks that have notches on them. So you can build like you do with Lincoln Logs.

Lucy's House on left and Mommy's on right

I decided to paint my house brown. So, after we constructed our houses Lucy wrote words on the sides of hers that described Lincoln.

Front: "Lincoln"

Back

Side: "ended slavery!!!!!"

 Happy Presidents' Day! and Thanks for reading and please leave a comment.

Valentine Crayon Hearts

 

As a child, I loved making hand-made Valentine cards for my classmates. I still love making Valentine's cards but now they're for my favorite people, my hubby and two amazing daughters. My daughters are carrying on the tradition of hand made Valentine cards.

Lucy and I went to our homeschooling PSP's Valentine party today. The children had a card exchange. So, of coarse, we wanted to make fun Valentine's cards. Last week, I saw a great idea for cards. Lucy decided that it would be fun to make them. We found out that she needed to bring 40 cards so we knew that it was going to take a little while but it would be fun.

Do you have a bunch of broken up crayons? If you are a mom, I'm sure that you do.

So how about making Valentine Crayon Hearts?

What you'll need:

1. crayons

2. silicone heart baking mold

3. oven

4. x-acto knife (optional)

Step 1:  Remove the wrappers. Some wrappers slip off easily while others don't. For those stubborn ones, use an x-acto knife and slice the wrapper and it can be removed easily.

Step 2: Break or cut the crayons into small pieces

or you can put the crayons in a bag and smash them with a hammer.... my girlies chose this route.

Step 3: Put the broken crayons into the heart mold. You need enough to completely cover the bottom.

Step 4: Bake in a 230 degree oven for about 15 minutes or until all of the crayons are melted. (The smaller you make the pieces of crayon, the faster they melt.)

Step 5: Cool until completely hardened. (We put ours into the freezer to speed up the process.)

Step 6: Once hardened, remove from the molds.

Here are a few of the Valentine Crayon Hearts we made.

And a few more.

We loved making these! And yes, we made 40 of them. Well, actually a few more than 40. All of the children in Lucy's class (and the moms) thought that they were a great idea.

My girlies (and I) have decided that they (we) want to make more this weekend. They definately are a fun craft to make. We thought about getting different shape silicon molds and making different shaped colorful crayons.They are pretty plus they do color. Let me know if you make these.

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Our Gumbie Cats

Last weekend I had the privledge of attending an amazing performance of Cats with my brother. My Sis-in-law was sick and not able to attend with him. I didn't know much about Cats other than people dress like cats and the music is by Andrew Lloyd Webber. I decided to research Cats. Well, as much as I could in the few hours I had before going (which included eating and getting ready to go). What did I find out? Cat's is a musical that was adapted from T.S. Eliot's book "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats", which was written in 1939. It is a collection of whimsical poems about feline psychology and sociology. Well, I love cats so that sounded good to me.

I thouroughly enjoyed the musical. The performers did a fantastic job. In fact, I couldn't imagine that the Broadway performance was much better. Being an owner of two cats, one who is almost 18 years old and one who is almost 14, I was moved to tears and laughter while watching and listening to the poetry.

If you are reading this, at this point you may be wondering how this pertains to our homeschool. Thanks for being patient through this long introduction but I felt that it necessary to explain what we are doing.

The day after watching Cats, I went to the bookstore and purchased T.S. Eliot's book "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats". Initially I purchased it with the interest of reading it myself. My daughter loves music and cats so I showed her one of the songs on you tube. She was hooked.

Today, I introduced the book to her. We read "The Naming of Cats", "The Old Gumbie Cat" and  "The Rum Tum Tugger". We analyzed each poem and compared our cats to the cats in the poems. Lucy decided that she wanted to write her own poem about our Gumbie Cats. My plan was to read one or two poems and talk about them. So when Lucy said that she wanted to write her own poem I was thrilled. I wanted to share her poem with whoever is sharing in our story.

Our Gumbie Cats

   by Lucy Waterbury

            inspired by T.S. Eliot’s “The Old Gumbie Cat”

We have two gumbie cats.
They sit and sit and sit and sit.
And that’s what makes a gumbie cat.

Jakey sleeps in the little house
And he drinks water and meows really loudly for food.
He sits and sits and sits all day.
That’s what makes a Gumbie Cat.

But when it’s night time,
He sneaks out
And teaches the guinea pigs to behave.
He teachers Bear to be the boss.
That’s what makes a gumbie cat.

Eddie sleeps in the computer room and
sewing room on top of the desk.
He sits upon the windowsill
and sits and sits and sits and sits
And that’s what makes a gumbie cat.

When we’re asleep
Eddie will creep out into the living room
He chases bugs and teacher the baby bugs to fly.
That’s what makes a gumbie cat.

In the morning he creeps back into the computer room and
That’s what makes a gumbie cat.

------------

If you haven't read this book, we highly recommend it. We will read more poems tomorrow. When we are done we plan on watching a production of Cats on dvd. We'll see what more inspiration comes to us.

Getting the hang of things

It's been almost 2 months since we started homeschooling. This past two weeks we have really felt like we are successful. it takes awhile to "get into the swing of things". I still have a ways to go but definitely getting there. My daughter and I are really enjoying the experience of homeschooling.
I just installed the blogger app on my iPhone so this post is short just to make sure it works correctly.