Weather unit and the rest of March

Beware: Lots of gratuitous photos in this blog posting.
For the month of March, Graham and I did a mini-weather unit.  And by "mini" I mean I started the month out well and did like three things and then fizzled.  And because I currently have a $5000 fine at the library, I was avoiding going and checking out some weather books.  Yeah, we homeschool.
Anyway, here is our cool tornado in the jar (via pinterest).  I was skeptical, but it actually really works.  We have left it sitting in the widow of our kitchen all month because it is so fun to play with!

We did a couple of fun weather crafts.

My favorite activity was the weather bath!  Add some blue food coloring and shaving cream clouds to a regular old bath, and it becomes super special and super fun!  Graham and Grayson had a ball playing!

Graham did an experiment in the tub with shaving cream and blue food coloring to demonstrate how rain drops through the clouds.

Last month, I started the "All about Reading" Level 1 with Graham.  He zoomed through the pre-reader level, so I figured he was raring to go for the next step.  Ummmm, not so much.  I had to pull my hair out to get him to sit still enough to do the lessons every day, and when he did sit still enough, he was getting frustrated with the material.  He was just not ready for it.  Totally Okay.  And totally why we homeschool.  So, I am putting it away for a few months to re-visit it next fall.  Anyway, I have decided to work on some other skills for awhile.  We have been doing alot more math lately, and Graham has really enjoyed it.  I think SO much of it at his age is him developing a positive view of math and building some math confidence.  This is something I sorely lacked from the moment I walked through the doors of the public school until the day I walked out.  I think this has much to do with why, even now, I am very reluctant to teach math.  But my boys both LOVE math and so far both of them feel pretty competent and I don't want to do anything to hinder that!
So, one of the things we did this month was to set up a "numbers station."  I pulled out a ton of stuff I had on hand: number stickers, number magnets, number dry erase boards, manipulatives, bingo markers, etc. and just let him play.

One day we got out our scale and he weighed all kinds of things.  He had big fun with this, and I couldn't believe how long he played with it.  We talked alot about why things weighed more, how to get the scale even, and why sometimes one side of the scale was heavier even though there were less objects on it. 

Little Bubba also got in on the action.  He seriously had a ton of fun putting stuff on the scale and playing with the smooth river rocks.

I gave him an egg carton and he played with it forever ("forever" in toddler time is around five minutes or so).  He put rocks in it and then I gave him all sizes of colored pom poms.

Graham is into Star Wars right now.  We did a Star Wars preschool pack.  One day I had Isaac read Graham a Star Wars book.  This doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it warms this mama's heart! Notice diligent/organized/project-oriented child fully dressed and ready for the day while creative/messy/somewhat lazy child is still in his pajamas.  Not that we put anyone in boxes around here or anything.

For Geography studies, Isaac is learning about South America.  We did a diorama of the rainforest.

Here is Graham looking SUPER cute next to the diorama.  Isaac is noticeably missing because when I attempt to take a normal photo with him in it....

....this is what happens.  Part of having a nine year old boy I guess.

I was starting to second guess our geography curriculum, and was about ready to think the whole year had been a massive waste of time from an academic point of view, until I started really working with Isaac and quizzing him on some geographical things.  He can tell you on what continent, what country and often what city many major geographical landmarks are located (El Castillo, Eiffel Tower, Stonehenge, Itsukushima Tori, Grand Canyon, The Parthenon, etc.).  He can identify where most major countries of the world are, he knows about many of the important eco systems of the world, and can tell you at length what the differences are between a temperate/tropical/arctic climate.  I am so proud of him!  And, the best part is...I am learning right along with him!

Mid-year update

I cannot believe we are more than halfway through this school year.  It is amazing to me how the months fly by (even though some days seem to drag on and on).  Before I know it, I will be schooling a fourth grader and a kindergartner.
I am feeling pretty good about the progress we have made this year.  I am going to take this opportunity to record some of the things that are going well and what needs improvement.
I will start with my Graham:

Graham has far exceeded my expectations this year.  As both he and Isaac have summer birthdays, I like to give them an extra year of preschool before doing kindergarten work.  However, with how well Graham has been progressing, I think it is safe to say that we will be doing two years of kindergarten as he is definitely doing kindergarten-level work (and some first grade level work).  At the beginning of the year, one of my goals for Graham was to know letter names and sounds.  After just a couple of months using the "All About Reading" program, he has fully mastered uppercase and lowercase letters and their sounds.  At this moment, we have worked through the entire program and I am going to be purchasing the next level soon.  This will move him onto the next phase of learning to read.  I am SO excited to think Graham will be reading on his own soon!  I am so proud of him. If I were to be sending him to public school kindergarten next year, I would be sending him knowing how to already read, and that would be a great feeling!
Graham also knows all of his numbers, can write them and we are currently working on counting to 100.  He can count to 100 by tens, and can count by ones with help.
Graham is able to write his first name without help and we are currently working on his last name.
The areas I need to work further with Graham on are behavioral areas (such as getting along with his brother and being able to handle a "no" answer from mom or dad), stopping some bad-language habits that have recently developed,and furthering his spiritual development.  I need to be more disciplined about doing daily devotionals with Graham and helping him to understand the reason why we expect certain behaviors from him (because of what the Bible tells us) versus us just trying to make his life miserable! :)

Graham is having fun with some extra-curricular activities right now.  He is in Basketball (through a local church), and is taking swimming lessons.  Graham has recently also learned how to swim, so that is a huge milestone as well!

For Isaac, his progress has been less visible this year, but I know he has definitely progressed academically.

His handwriting has been a big area of improvement for him, as well as his ability to do independent work.

Isaac's biblical literacy has dramatically increased.  We have finished 3rd grade Bible already, as well as his TNT book for AWANA.  I really feel as though Isaac has a great understanding of how the Bible is laid out, and some of the main precepts within the Bible.  I think this is truly impressive for a third grader!  Isaac is just beginning Bible quizzing and I am anxious to see how he does.

Isaac needs to work on refining language arts skills, particularly proper punctuation and capitalization abilities.  Some days I feel I will surely never make it through this phase of teaching him, but I recall feeling this way about his handwriting, and now it looks so much better.  I really would like to see Isaac be able to write a short, descriptive report by the end of the year with proper punctuation and capitalization.  I may need to look for a more targeted curriculum to help him in this regard.

Isaac seems to be doing well in Math (this is through Teaching Textbooks) and according to his gradebook, is getting all "A's" in daily lessons and quizzes.  I am very thankful that this is a portion of his schooling I do not have much to do with.  Thank you, Lord for technology!

We have recently started Apologia Science, and I am really enjoying this so far (and so are the boys).

We learned about principles of flight including "Lift," "Thrust," and "Drag." We made our own gliders, flew them and recorded and averaged the length both of them went. Isaac wrote out his hypothesis for what he thought would happen beforehand.
Here is Graham working on his glider.  This experiment was timed really well for us because he recently read a book about the Wright Brothers with his dad and so some of the ideas of flight were fresh in his mind.  LOVE it when things work out like this...it is Serendipity!

Isaac modified his design halfway into the race to make the nose of his glider more like the beak of a bird.  This was a great opportunity to talk about his glider being Aerodynamic!

Isaac is also having fun with some extracurricular activities right now.  Besides testing for his dragon belt (halfway between blue and brown) recently, he has also completed swimming lessons (where he did so well I decided he could wait awhile to do another round of lessons this summer) and is in Basketball with Graham.  As I mentioned before, Isaac just finished his TNT book for Awana and will begin Bible quizzing. Isaac also participated in a play with the local public school where he also did really well and got one of the lead roles!  I am so proud of him! Below is a photo of Isaac as one of the "Cool Cats" in the production of "Cinderella."

Europe

For our geography studies, we have been visiting Europe. Here are a couple of the fun activities we have done: Stonehenge in the UK

The Greek Parthenon

Here is my own Greek sculpture, I was highly impressed with my abilities. Isaac was not, however, and he laughed at it.

Loy Krathong

photo of authentic Loy Krathong boats made by the Thai people

For our studies of Thailand in World Geography, we studied Loy Krathong. Loy Krathong is a traditional Thai festival in which the people celebrate water and worship light. The people of Thailand celebrate this by gathering on the banks of bodies of water (in mid-November on the night of a full moon) and launching hand made boats illuminated by candles. The boats also contain offerings to make up for wrongs committed during the past year. We made our Loy Krathong boats, but because we do not worship light (We worship the one who MADE the light!), we wrote "Jesus is the light" on the boats. We took them down to a nearby pond and launched them. We wanted to light them, but the candles wouldn't stay lit in the wind.

First two weeks of school 2012

We have the first couple of weeks of school done! I am excited about how the year is going so far, but I am WELL aware that a million different things can happen to throw off all of our progress and plans. Here's Isaac on the first day of school. He always gets that weird, crazed look on his face when he doesn't want me to take his picture.

Here's my sweet Graham on our first day.

For something new this year, Isaac has an "Independent Research" time.  Isaac will choose a topic from a master list we have compiled together, and then spend at least a half an hour every day researching this topic.  He can use the internet, our books, library books or netflix.  He has to use two sources per topic, and then he will write a brief summary of what he learned.  Here he is researching Steve Jobs.

We have been having lots of fun for World Geography so far this year.  Isaac and Graham both made paper mache globes.

The second week of geography, we visited China.  We made the Great Wall of China. 

I was proud of the boys, they pretty much did it on their own with minimal guidance from me.

Graham is totally enjoying his school time this year.  In addition to our regular activities, we have a monthly theme and will be doing all sorts of fun things to go along with our theme.  For September, the theme is "fall."  We made fall-tree cupcakes.  After we got done, Graham said, "mom, that doesn't look ANYTHING like the picture we saw."  Oh well.  Cupcake goddess I am not.

Five in a Row: Very Last First Time & Volcano fun

We just completed our FIAR "Very Last First Time." This is a charming and suspenseful story of a little Inuit girl from the Ungava bay area in Northern Canada. As part of Inuit tradition, she goes alone to collect mussels at the bottom of the sea, under the ice, when the tide goes out. We did a little research and found out this is something that the Inuit people still do. We found the above video about the dangers of mussel hunting.
Click here to find out more.
Here are some of the other activities we did in our row:
*Discussed Inuit culture and the Arctic region. We found Ungava bay on the world map. We went through the illustrations in the book and compared and contrasted Inuit culture to our own.
*We looked at the illustrations of the book, and identified that they were drawn using the method of pointillism (made up of hudreds of tiny dots of paint.) I had remembered Isaac's aunt Holly drawing a picture for art class using the same method, so I asked her to send me a picture of it so I could show Isaac.

*We talked about safety and crisis thinking. When Eva goes below the surface of the frozen ocean, her candles burn out, and she hears the tide coming back in. For a moment, she panics until she remembers what to do. We talked about the five steps to remember when in a crisis situation: (1) calm down, (2) don't panic, (3) be quiet, (4) think carefully! (5) ask: what am I supposed to do?
*We identified the following scientific terms and discussed their application to the story: Tides, Biome, Echo, Ocean Life and Sea Salt. We looked through some books with pictures of an arctic biome and an ocean biome.
For Road Trip USA, we are in the state of Washington. We talked at length about the eruption of Mount St. Helens, and of course, we had to make our own volcano. We've done this before, but we added a few elements this time. We made our volcano out of dirt. In the center, we placed a plastic cup holding baking soda, dish soap and food coloring. We added vinegar and let the explosion begin!
Before eruption

Mid-eruption

Full eruption!

We are winding down for the year! I estimate we will be done with all of our subjects by May 24th. Isaac and Graham have worked especially hard this year and I am SO proud of them!

Road Trip USA: Hawaii

We've enjoyed our trip through the United States this year for geography. We have "visited" almost all of the states and are winding down our journey. Isaac is familiar with all of the regions (Southeast, Northeast, Midwest, West and Southwest) of the United States, as well as all of the capitals of each state. We learned about each state's state bird, state flag and state flower, as well as anything about the state that makes it unique. If I were to re-use this curriculum (which I probably will), I would put more effort into doing fun stuff like our "Luau" we had for supper the other night. In a few months, Isaac might not remember some of the other states we studied, but he WILL remember our Luau night!


I was going to go all-out and have ham and Dole Pineapple for supper, but because this mama had a VERY long day, and because my van drove precariously close to our favorite Chinese take-out place while we were running errands, we ended up having a Hawaain Luau with Chinese food. :) Oh well. Sweet and Sour chicken is sort of Hawaain-ish, isn't it?

Papa Piccolo and the Peabody

We just finished our FIAR "Papa Piccolo" last week. "Papa Piccolo" is the story of a tomcat who adopts two orphan kittens. The story is set in Italy, and the illustrations are done with watercolor. As part of our row, Isaac experimented with his watercolors to come up with some of the variations in color that are illustrated in the book. It was fun to see the different ranges of colors like turquoise blue or brick red he could come up with!

Isaac took the Peabody last week as well. The Peabody is a standardized test that measures proficiency in several areas of academics such as mathematics, spelling and reading. Isaac did tremendously well. He measured at a third or fourth grade level for every category. His areas of strength were reading and spelling. (Not a surprise to his mama that I have one smart cookie on my hands!) Although we weren't required to take the test, I wanted him to take it to make sure we were on the right track academically.

Fun with watercolors

Today Graham wanted to paint with watercolors. I had some stuff I needed to get done, so I set him loose with some paper and paint.
A few moments later, he comes and finds me to proudly present to me his watercolor he says is called "Even the wind and waves obey Him." At this point, my mama heart is bursting with pride because it shows me he is listening, REALLY listening, to those Bible verses he is memorizing for AWANA!

A few minutes later, he shows me this picture entitled "Church." He proceeds to point out the pews he and his brothers are sitting in and the band at the front of the church. (So far, so good, right?) Then, he points out the spaceship off to the side and the long, long line of people waiting to get into the spaceship at church.
Ummmm, OK.

No, we are not part of the "Heaven's Gate" denomination, I promise.