These are a Few of My Favorite Things

It’s that time of year again!  Time to start thinking about “bouquets of newly sharpened pencils,” shiny new curriculum, goals and folders, planners and field trips.  It is time for a new school year!

Whenever I start a new school year, I like to think back to the previous year and contemplate what worked, what didn’t, and what I’d like to add or change or cut out.

So here are some things that worked well last year: A list of my 10 Favorite Things from the 2013-2014 school year.

1.  Fun Times with Time Travel.  We won’t do this again this year, since we already did it, but using our imagination and having a theme or a fun little gimmick was memorable for me and we all enjoyed it.  So maybe we’ll do something this year- perhaps pretend we are archaeologists?

Our Time Machine… hopefully someday, the kids will get how cool this particular design for a time machine really is

2.  Science Experiments.  Some of my favorite times last year was our science lessons and experiments.  They were a lot of effort to execute, but oh, so worth it.  We used 106 Days of Creation Studies from the Simply Charlotte Mason website and loved it.

 

3.  Nature Walks and our completion of the Outdoor Hour Challenges.  I really don’t think I can say enough about the Outdoor Hour Challenge.  It has been one of the most important things we’ve done in the past two years.  I have seen the most dramatic change or growth or learning in this area because of our participation in the Outdoor Hour Challenge- and not just in the kids.  In myself as well.  We love our Nature Walks and the Challenges.

This particular fun activity was part of an Autumn Challenge.

4.  Pastels. This was a new thing we discovered this last year.  Through the Outdoor Hour Challenge Newsletter, I was led to the  Hodgepodge  website and specifically her many pastels tutorials.  We explored this medium some this past year (and this not-incredibly-artistic girl was very grateful for those simple and straightforward and easy-to-follow tutorials!) and we all had so much fun!  This is something we all want to continue to do!

My Pastel Pumpkin

5.  Pilgrim Day.  We took a day out of our normal schooling activities and played Pilgrims.   We dressed up, ate pilgrim-inspired food and did pilgrim-like chores and played games similar to games pilgrim children played.  It was a really fun day.  So much so that when asked what her favorite thing about last year was, Princess K mentioned this day.  When asked what she hopes to do in her next school year, she wants to do this again.

6.  The Solar System Puzzle.  This is science again, but what can I say?  I like science.  And fun.  When we studied the solar system, we took a few hours (during the preschoolers’ naptime, of course!) to put together a 200 piece Ravensburger puzzle.  Discovering the fact that my kids are getting old enough to start to do things- like 200 piece puzzles- that are fun for me too was a really exciting moment for me.

7.  Backyard Nature Exploration.  I love the relaxed pace of homeschooling.  I love that part of school can be to go outside (or send the kids outside while I’m making lunch) and explore the backyard.  The kids made huge mud puddles (mud swimming pools, really) and found all kinds of interesting bugs and my Princess was SO excited when she saw the first flower of spring in our backyard.  It was a magical moment.

The first very cheerful flower of spring in our backyard.

8.  Little House Books & Activities.  We did American History this last year, so in about March, we made it to the place in our History lessons where we started reading The Little House in the Big Woods.  This was one of my favorite books as a child and I still had my very book from childhood that I had read so often.  It was a true treat to share that with my children.  It was also very sweet to make maple sugar candy out of maple syrup kind of like they did in the book (except that we did not have snow, so we used our more modern and less wintery methods).

Maple Sugar Candy!

9.  Learning to Draw.  We used many different books (because again, I’m not all that artistic or particularly talented in the whole drawing thing) to teach us how to draw (like Drawing with Children, Draw Write Now, How to Draw 101 Animals, and the Usborne how-to-draw books) and we spent some good time drawing pilgrim things and Christmas things and trees and flowers and animals.  It was really fun and good for my kids to improve in their drawing.  They took satisfaction in their improvement.

Drawing Animals

10.  Graduation.  My mother-in-law approached me last year and told me about this sweet little outfit her mother had made for her own Kindergarten graduation.  Then her daughter (my husband’s sister of course) wore the same little outfit for her graduation.  She really wanted Princess K to wear it for her graduation.  So she asked us if we would mind having a little graduation for our kids for the purpose of getting photographs of Princess K in the little graduation outfit.  I loved the idea.

First Grade Graduation

I made a little 6 minute slideshow of our year (and my wonderful husband put it to some Graduation-y music!) and printed out some “Diplomas” for my two little (1st Grade and Kindergarten) graduates.  My mother-in-law dug out and ironed the heirloom outfit and somehow procured a shiny blue graduation robe for X-man.  She also made them graduation caps out of cardstock and a lovely lunch for our guests (including diploma taquitos tied with a green onion ribbon).

Kindergarten Graduate

We invited all the grandparents to attend and set up the chairs outside where there was a lovely place for a stage.  We played some Pomp and Circumstance for them to walk down to and they first led the pledge of allegiance.  They sang two hymns they learned this year (Amazing Grace and Crown Him with Many Crowns) and then were interviewed by the Principal, their Daddy, who asked them about their favorite subjects, activities, and books this year.  They received their diplomas and then we had lunch.  It was a very lovely day.

The Graduation Ceremony

And we definitely got plenty of photographs for a very happy Grandma!

So those were a few of my favorite things this past year.  These are good to remember as I plan for this next year.  Taking the time to make this list makes it clear that I really need to make sure I intentionally allow plenty of time for the “fun extras” of education since those are the most memorable and beautiful moments of the year.

Memorable Moments from January: Skating, Space & Surveying

This month, we have been struggling to get back into a normal routine after the holiday season.  With the stomach flu tearing through our house (twice) and my trip to Hawaii with my sister (I’m grinning right now, thinking about it), we’ve really only had time for the basics.  I’m anxious to get back to doing all the fun creative things that add richness, depth, and life to my kids’ education.  Meanwhile, there have definitely been some really awesome moments this month.

1.  Ice Skating lessons with a homeschool group.  My kids are loving it!

2.  Learning about shapes (and finishing our first math book: Right Start A!)- I placed several objects that were spheres, rectangular prisms, cylinders, and cones on the kitchen table and I taught the kids the names of the objects and then we identified them together.  The next day, I pulled out some play-dough and had them form a cone, cylinder, sphere, and rectangular prism.  They really enjoyed this math lesson- the last lesson of Right Start Level A.  We are now a few lessons into Right Start B.  Woohoo!

Princess K pretends to lick her play-dough cone.

3.  X-man teaching himself multiplication.  Earlier this week, a Rhett & Link  song led my husband to explain what one times one means.  The next day, in the car, X-man was contemplating this.  He stated, “2 times 2 is 4.”  And then he asked, “What is 4 times 4?”  We talked it through together and he figured it out himself.  I’m so proud!  (And so is Daddy!)

4.  Being Surveyors.  This week, our history reading was George Washington by the D’Aulaires.  The first day, we read about his childhood and the kids decided to draw George Washington on a pony for their notebook page.  The second day we read about Washington’s young adulthood spent surveying and mapmaking.  X-man came up with a brilliant idea: instead of drawing a picture for his notebook page, he wanted to go outside and survey our yard and make a map of it.  So that’s what they did.  And their maps were impressive.

Surveyors

5.  Studying Space.  We’ve read Sunshine Makes the Seasons and The Moon Book.  The kids had great questions and good comprehension in our reading and our subsequent discussions about the earth, the sun, and the moon.  I demonstrated the earth’s revolution and rotation using our inflatable globe and using the overhead light as our sun.  X-man and Princess K were both able to relate some interesting facts about what they learned to their daddy at the dinner table.

6.  Free Time Fun with Art- their Auntie got them art things for Christmas- instruction books for X-man and a little light projector drawing toy for Princess K.  They have had so much fun during quiet time working on their drawings.

7.  Our Hymn Study- We’ve been learning the hymn, “Jesus What a Friend for Sinners.”  Princess K told me the other day, “Mommy, I can’t get our new hymn out of my head!”  Ah, yes, dear!  That’s the point.

8.  Shortstop’s Drawing.  He draws over everything he can reach as often as he can.  He loves drawing.  And I must say, I’m impressed with his pencil holding skills.  None of my other kids were able to hold pencils correctly at that age.  Maybe he’s going to be the artist of the family.  Based on his current favorite medium, I expect he’ll paint murals on walls… or floors… or doors.  (Thank goodness for Magic Eraser!)

 

 

Homemade Alphabet Book: T

T is for tissue paper, tiger, turtle, toad, trucks, tractor, and Tyrannosaurus Rex.

A Pilgrim Study

The last couple of weeks we have been studying the Pilgrims.  Our final day, we had a Pilgrim Celebration Day and did all sorts of fun activities.

1.  The Books We Read:

A good unit study includes several great books.  We read several throughout the course of our studies.

Pilgrims of Plimoth by Marcia Sewall- This story was told from the perspective of a pilgrim, so it worked out very well that we “time traveled” to Plymouth Plantation and I dressed up like a pilgrim and read the book to them, as if from my own experience.  It was informative and interesting.  And the kids loved my pilgrim outfit.  My daughter kept asking me personal questions about my children, home, and clothing, so it was a good thing I read ahead.

N.C. Wyeth’s Pilgrims– Mostly we just looked at the pictures and discussed the events that they depicted.  It was a good book for doing art and history together.  While looking through it, I had the kids search for certain objects in the paintings.  It was a good observation exercise.

Sarah Morton’s Day, Samuel Eaton’s Day, Tapenum’s Day– These were wonderful stories of what children did in those days.  It helped my children be able to relate more to these people of long ago.

Pilgrim Stories by Margaret Pumphrey- This book tells little episodes in the lives of the Pilgrims from when they were in England, through their time in Holland and then off to the New World.  We have been enjoying it and will finish around Thanksgiving- perfect timing, you’d think I’d planned it that way.

2.  Pilgrim Activities:

We dressed up like pilgrims.

We did pilgrim chores.  They gathered sticks for our fire, fetched water to wash and to water our garden, washed cloth articles (they were towels), gathered pine needles and leaves to stuff their baby sisters’ mattress, churned cream to make butter and fed chickens and chased them back into their pen when they escaped (this last chore was all pretend, but it was their favorite chore that they read about, so they just had to do it).

Gathering sticks, fetching water, feeding chickens

Stuffing their baby sisters’ mattress- they slept all day comfortable by the fire

We worked together to make butter- it was delicious

We also played a few games the pilgrim children played when they had time.  We played Naughts and Crosses (Tic Tac Toe in the dirt), Hop Frog, and Marbles.

Naughts and Crosses and Hopfrog

Marbles was their favorite pilgrim game

3.  Crafts.  We made candles (another chore the pilgrims did- I got the idea from Dresses and Messes.)

We all loved this activity

We also made lapbooks.

We include minibooks or cards about the route of the Mayflower, the reason for leaving England, what they brought with them on the ship, Pilgrim children’s chores, Pilgrim children’s games, life at Plymouth Plantation, crops grown by the pilgrims, the first Thanksgiving and Squanto’s help.

4. Food.  We ate a modernized Pilgrim meal of succotash and corn bread with our homemade butter.  We also had fun making pilgrim hat cookies.  We all enjoyed those delicious treats.  I think we’ll make these again in a few weeks for Thanksgiving.

Our modern Succotash:

1 can cream of corn

1 lb ground beef

2 cups kidney beans (or 1 can)

1 onion chopped

1 tb oil

Cook the onion in oil until translucent, add the ground beef and brown.  Add the beans and cream of corn and cook until heated through.  Serve with corn bread.

We had fun and learned some.  A good combination I think!

Homemade Alphabet Book: S

S is for sand, smiles, Star Wars guys, and stars.

Memorable Moments: Pilgrims, Nature Walks, & Narnia

After last week’s lovely catch-up week, we were refreshed and ready to resume our regular schooling and studies.  The weather was nice and autumn is beautiful, so we took a lot of nature walks this week.  Our math focus this week was clocks and we kept plugging away at our handwriting and phonics work.

Our top five awesome moments this week:

1.  Pilgrims- We began our studies of pilgrims this week by reading Pilgrims of Plimoth and starting the book Stories of the Pilgrims.  We began our studies on Monday when I sent the kids into the time machine while I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt.  When they came out, I was dressed up as a pilgrim!  Well, sort of.  I had a tablecloth wrapped around my waste, cloth napkins as my collor and apron, and a basket liner hat.  The kids were pretty amazed anyway and asked me all sorts of questions about my family and my life and I told them to call me Mrs. Eaton.  Every day that I read to them from Pilgrims of Plimoth, I was dressed like that pilgrim.  I really look forward to next week when I read them Sarah Morton’s Day and Samuel Eaton’s Day.

2.  Our enthusiasm last week for drawing led us to want to continue this enjoyable pasttime this week.  So instead of having our normal notebooking pages for history, I pulled out my Draw Write Now book that contains directions for drawing pilgrimy things and we drew a picture that matched our reading every day.  It was a lot of fun and I have to admit that I spent more time on my pictures than the kids did on theirs.  They were off playing while Mommy was finishing her schoolwork.

A sample of our pictures this week

3.  Our nature walks and studies were great fun and the time we spent jumping in the autumn leaves was enchanting.  A beautiful, breezy day with the fragrance of fallen leaves, and the laughter of delighted children- a perfect moment in time.  We also drew seeds and leaves in our nature journals and identified a few trees, which made us feel very proud of ourselves.

4.  Baking zucchini bread and muffins with the kids and then eating them- yum!

5.  Friday Family Fun Night this week included pizza, popcorn, and the movie, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe.  The kids loved it and it was so much fun to watch it all together.  This morning, the boys found some swords and we made a bow for Princess K- I’m sorry, excuse me, I  mean Queen Susan- and they played Narnia battles.

Once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen

Homemade Alphabet Book: R

R is for rice, rocks, rainbow, and rhinoceros.

Memorable Moments: Catch Up Week

This week was our first scheduled catch up week. We finished up A Lion to Guard Us, did a few handwriting pages, and read Jamestown, New World Adventure- a book that had not been available at the library on schedule. We also took the time to do some extra little fun things. These extras were the highlights of the week-

1. Snuggling with X-man while he read a chapter from Frog and Toad to me. At the beginning of the week, he read only one or two pages a day because he was easily fatigued from the hard work of decoding the words. The third time we did this, he got so caught up in the story that he didn’t want to stop. We laughed together and he finished the chapter- and wanted to keep going. I am so excited that he found delight in reading a story himself. I am hoping that this is the beginning of a life-long love of reading.

A love of reading begins

 

2. Going through a few art lessons through the book, Drawing with Children.  We did this nearly every day this week. They loved the drawing lessons. I need to encourage Princess K to keep practicing and keep working at it, for she wants her drawings to end up like what she sees in the book. And then when it doesn’t, she flings her head into her arms and weeps. But I am encouraged that they commented that what it takes to learn to draw is to look carefully.
We had a lot of fun drawing lines and dots and circle designs. We also drew birds and lions. Princess K was very excited to draw Aslan, as we have been listening to Focus on the Family Radio Theater- The Horse and His Boy.

3. Reading Winnie the Pooh outside, under our tree, on a breezy day. It was a lovely day and a refreshing time.

4. Discussing the three different paintings we’ve looked at by Winslow Homer. We’ve looked at Snap the Whip, Canoe in the Rapids, and The Bridle Path. We discussed their favorite (both liked The Bridle Path the best) and the colors and the subjects. It is neat to see their powers of observation grow and develop.  They are able to tell back to me colors of objects and small details from the paintings.  We discuss the subjects of the paintings- who they are, what they are doing, where they are going, and why they are doing these things.  It is great fun to engage them in these conversations and so much fun to hear their thoughts.  These art studies get me excited about the adults they will become and the conversations I’ll have with them then.

5. Family Devotions time singing How Great Thou Art and listening to Bible stories and finishing The Horse and His Boy. It is sweet fellowship time with the family! I love it!

Memorable Moments: Autumn Walks, Apples & Chalk

Top Five Fun Things We Did This Week:

1.  They created “Teen Books” for math.  That is, they made a page for each number 11-19 (actually, I could not get them to stop at 19, they had to go to 20).  They found little stickers and made cute little booklets and were very proud of them.  X-man decided to keep one theme throughout his booklet.  He titled it, “The Rescue Number Book.”  All of his pages had a sentence: “11 Soldiers going to the rescue.”  Then, “12 Trucks going to the rescue.”  And so on.

Finding the right stickers for their booklets. Princess K would only use ones she deemed “pretty.” X-man only used soldier themed stickers.

2.  Playing “I Spy” in our backyard and accomplishing our Fall Fun Grid for our Outdoor Hour Challenge.   While we were playing, we noticed the types of clouds in the sky.  We’ve all been noticing clouds more frequently since studying them a few weeks ago.  I love witnessing the growth in us all as we learn.  It is so invigorating.

Clouds

Playing “I Spy”

3.  Creating Chalk Pastel Apples.  The kids loved using the pastels so much.  It was a brief activity and required very little set-up and we enjoyed so thoroughly.  I have been looking over at Hodgepodge and there are tons of pastel tutorials and ideas.  I am very excited to do some of these with the kids in the coming days, weeks, and months.

4.  Our Autumn Outing where we collected leaves and acorns, watched the wind rushing through the trees while we ate our picnic lunch and then we hopped on wooden posts and crunched leaves under our feet.

X-man was counting how many he could hop in a row without falling. He got to 7.

5.  Watching my older son read to my youngest son.  What a precious moment that was.

Next week is our official catch-up week.  I’m so glad I planned those in!  I need it!

Memorable Moments: Clouds, Grapes, and the Water Cycle

This week, we continued our studies on Jamestown through reading Pocahantas by the D’Aulaires and by progressing through A Lion to Guard Us.  We are loving our science curriculum 106 Days of Creation Studies and all the fun activities we do.

Top Five for This Week:

1.  We did the story of King Ahab and Naboth’s vineyard on Monday.  So we ate grapes, looked at pictures of vineyards, and used flannelgraph to tell the story.  When I put my “Naboth” on the computer screen that had pictures of vineyards on it, the kids laughed uproariously.  I’m not sure why it was quite that funny, but I appreciate their appreciation.

Grapes, King Ahab, and Naboth at his vineyard

2.  The joy of watching my students learn and improve in math and phonics.

Math & Phonics

3.  Science this week was SO fun.  First, we studied clouds.  We looked up types of clouds on the internet and I pointed them out and told them their names.  Then we used cotton balls to form clouds and label them on blue paper.  Finally, we went outside to find clouds to name.  They loved this and then named clouds for the rest of the week.  Princess K especially was very enthusiastic about identifying the clouds she saw.  She exclaimed at the park, “Oh, Mom!  Look up there!  Those are the thin wispy clouds!  I forget their name.”  And then the other day she pointed out the thick clouds on Friday and said, “Those are the thick blanket clouds.  And I think it is going to rain.  You said that when clouds get dark, they are full of water.  So it will rain, right?”  (It did rain that very evening!)  

Then we studied the water cycle.  First, we got a large bowl and put some water in it.  Then we threw some salt in the water.  The kids stirred up the water and were surprised to see the salt disappear.  They tasted it and were delighted to discover that they had made salt water!  (Like the ocean!)  Then we put an empty small bowl in the middle, covered the whole thing with plastic, and placed a marble in the middle, directly over the small bowl.  We found a warm, sunny place outside to place it and then went on with our school day.  A little after lunch, we checked the bowl and amazing things had occurred.  They noticed little bubbles on the plastic.  We found a little water in the small bowl that hadn’t been there before.  And that water did not taste salty at all!  Amazing!  We watched a video on the water cycle and then used construction paper to illustrate what we learned.  They were so delighted to show Daddy what they had learned!  Later that evening, it rained.  X-man asked me, “Mommy, did you know that it would rain when we studied the water cycle today?”  I replied honestly, “No, I didn’t.  Isn’t that an amazing and wonderful coincidence?”  And he replied, “Yes!  That is INFINITY weird!”

 

Setting up our little water cycle demonstration

The results of our experiment

Water Cycle Diagrams

4.  Free Time Creations- One day this week in their free time, they decided to make a surprise for me.  So they built me an astronaut!  They were very excited about this little guy and then decided to take turns being the astronaut.  I love their creativity and imagination.

And this little guy was so excited just to be around his big brothers and sister.  He is so very cute.

5.  Our fall nature walk at a nearby park.  What a great time we had!  I’ll do a full Outdoor Hour post soon.

 

*Bonus Cuteness- Today the older two children went to Awana and we had some special time with our preschoolers.  Daddy and Z-urchin mowed the lawn together (starting that training young!) and Shortstop and I took a walk to the park.  What a precious afternoon.