New Year's Eve Countdown

New Year's Eve has never been intended to be a celebration for young children.  So, while you may have been able to stay up until the wee hours of the morning before you had kids, now it is almost an impossibility right? Up until this year I thought that might just be the case. With a 5 and 2 year old I just couldn't see any way, or reason for that matter, to try and keep them up to see the clock strike twelve.

This year I am going to try something new. One of the homeschooling forums happened to mention New Year's Eve bags. Hmmmm? What's this you say? Well, the suggestion is to have a paper lunch bag filled with celebration goodies for each hour of the evening, counting down to midnight.



You can fill these up with just about anything that might tickle your kid's fancy. Here is our countdown list of suprises. (Shhhhh....don't let the kids know).

- 4:00 - Balloons and confetti. We are going to blow up balloons to decorate the house. With the confetti we will be making contact paper art. Simply cut a piece of contact paper. Tape the corners to the table and add confetti designs! I will precut the numbers 2009 to put in the middle of the paper. When the designs are finished we will cover with another layer of contact paper and use them as placemats.

- 5:00 - Time to make pizza! I put a pizza cutter, pepperoni (doesn't need refridgeration) and sauce packets in the bag. The kids adore making homemade pizza anytime.

- 6:00 - Silly string. I just popped two cans of silly string in their favorite colors in the bag. We will head outside for some super silly fun before it gets too dark. Plus tonight we are suppose to be able to see three of the planets line up with the moon, just after sunset. So, why not squeeze in a little educational time into the evening too!

- 7:00 - Noisemakers! In the bag are TP tubes and pop corn kernels. We are going to make our own noisemakers by rubberbanding plastic wrap on the ends. Decorate with foil and stickers.

- 8:00 - Hungry Hippos. This is a new game for us! I put one of the hippos in the bag. Perfect for our age group, but you can choose a game based on your family ages and interests. I think that this may become a family tradition to add a new fun family game each New Year's Eve.

- 8:30 - Chex mix. We ran out of this way to early this holiday season, so it's time for another round. Very easy for the kids to make and enjoy during the rest of our countdown.

- 9:00 - Pop -its! While they are still to young for fireworks, pop-it are a great way to get in on the noise making fun!

- 10:00 - Movie time. The bag holds a new movie for little eyes. As they begin to show signs of tiredness, we will take a break and watch a movie and munch on our Chex Mix.

- 11:30 - Cocoa - The bag holds yummy hot chocolate mix, marshmallows, and Peppermint sticks. Yummy!! I also put a few glow sticks in there that I have been saving for a fun evening. When they cocoa is ready we will put on our glowsticks, get out our noisemakers, and watch the ball drop!

Here are some wonderful ideas from other ladies - much more creative than myself. Please check them out:

My Blessings from Above

Sir Galahad Academy

My 3 Little Lights 2007

My 3 Little Lights 2008

Joyful Mother of 6 Children

Even if they don't make it all the way through, we will have a wonderful time!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Christmas Decorations

Here are a few of the things that are decorating our house this Christmas Season!

Our tree was lovingly decorated by the hands of small children...



The family table has a Christmas Carousel - powered by candles of course! And behind it you can see the Jesse tree that shows the path to the birth of Jesus Christ.

The front foyer shows a snow theme.

Precious ornaments from Christmas past hold a special place.



and the stockings are hung on the banister with care. . .

Merry Christmas!

Welcome Winter!

Yesterday started out a sunny 78 degrees. Around noontime we had some strange weather roll through. The clouds blew in and the winds picked up quite a bit. Our small lake in the back was looking more like an angry ocean cove than a calm quiet lakefront. We had a ten minute shower and suddenly......COLD. I believe it must have dropped 20 degrees in a matter of minutes. What a way to bring in the new season!

Hailey took great joy in changing the ornament that our seasonal angel holds from a fall leaf to the snowflake.



Our pumpkin is returning to the earth.



Lots of snuggles and napping.....



With Christmas only days away we will be working on Gingerbread houses today. In seasons past I have gone a bit overboard with gingerbread decorations. This year I am pledging to be calm, cool, and simple in decorating the gingerbread houses with the kids!

Hope that you have a wonderful Christmas week!

Advent Conspiracy

The Journey of Learning to Read

At first, I didn't see it when we began our learning-to-read journey with Hailey. But as we slowly progressed I noticed it more and more. At first it was that she was having problems with d's and b's then I noticed that she would throw letter sounds in the word that weren't there. So, I backed off. I thought maybe she just needed a bit of time before we pushed forward. When we started back I noticed that while she was progressing in every other aspect of reading, she kept hitting the same stumbling blocks. I also tried to pay close attention at where she was having problems. I noticed that she would also sometimes flip a whole CVC word when reading - frequently.

I tried to keep it upbeat, but eventually decided to try something new and different. I dropped reading altogether. I liked the philosophy behind Spell to Write and Read, but it seems to have a number of steps and I was really hoping to find something that didn't require me to study in order to teach. I found All About Spelling and decided we would give it a try.

AAS is based on the Orton-Gillingham method, as is SWR. However, I love the fact that AAS is an open-and-go curriculum. It also utilized colored letter tiles for illustrating spelling that we have magnetized and keep on a magnetic white board.

While the program is broken into steps we often spend two or three days on one step to assure mastery, but you can easily move quickly through each step as well. The steps have review for reinforcement and additional practice included at the end. It is truly made for moving at your own pace!

New concepts are introduced with the letter tiles. After introduction you can have your child write on paper (I like watch as Hailey traces words on a Ziploc bag filled with liquid soap).

I like the way that the sounds that might be visibly confused are introduced separately. This has been a huge help in getting past the dyslexia problem. Once mastery is achieved then they are mixed in for review. I can already see a marked improvement in comprehension.

The program does not include handwriting which was actually very helpful as we are teaching cursive first in order to help avoid letter reversals. It also does not cover grammar such as parts of speech or punctuation, but does introduce suffixes.

While we do read every day, we still do not have an official reading program. I really feel that by learning to spell the words first the reading will come much more naturally. I am excited to watch her grow into her reading capability through spelling!

St. Lucia Day

So today was St. Lucia's Day and I had a bunch of things planned to celebrate. I was really excited. Unfortunately life interfered again. Mike is working nights and came home red eyed and sleepy. Charlie was up early. Really, really early.

So, while we didn't do more than read the story of St. Lucy, I do plan or trying again tomorrow.

Lighted Wreath - Legend tells that St. Lucia wore an evergreen wreath of candles upon her head as she ministered to the poor and persecuted.

Making Braided Sweet Rolls - Traditionally the oldest girl wakes up early and serves the other family members breakfast in bed.

Making Playdough

I love playdough. So do the kids. In fact I don't think I have ever met any kids that didn't like that satisfying feeling you get from squishing playdough into some wonderful shape - or just the squishing part. The problem laid in the fact that every time I got the playdough out the wonderful creations were invariably left out to dry.

After going through oodles of playdough jars and restrictions of one jar at a time, I simply stopped buying it. Now I know that I must be a terrible parent for not allowing my children to play with playdough, so in remedy I decided to finally try my hand at homemade playdough.

I searched for a recipe and found that most required that you cook the playdough. However, for it to be worthwhile I decided that it should be something simple enough for a 5 year old to make. After all, the whole point is to entertain the little one, not the adult. Here is our no-cook playdough recipe.

• 1/2 cup flour


• 1/4 cup salt


• 1 tsp canola oil


• food coloring


• 1/4 cup water

Mix together flour and salt. Combine food coloring with water and oil. Combine water mixture and flour mixture. Add more flour or water as needed for proper consistency. Store in a closed container in refrigerator.

Voila!  Playdough. Content child. Happy mom.

Advent Tree

We started this last year after my futile search for an appropriate advent calendar. I had two wishes for our advent calendar - It should focused on the nativity and it should not break the bank! As I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for I went in search for other ideas.

Last year I ran in to these adorable little pockets and decided that they would be perfect for holding small nativity scene characters. So I ran to Target and got some extra plastic animals to include in the pockets.

Each night we took one pocket down, placed the figure enclosed under the tree in the nativity scene, and placed the pocket into a basket on the side.

Unfortunately my cutie little advent pockets had milk spilled all over them before I put them away for the year. So, this year I decided to go with a simple little buckets that I picked up last year after Christmas.



They were about $ 0.25 each in the clearance section of Hobby Lobby and they are only about an inch and a half tall, perfect for the little tree. When we aren't using them during the Christmas season I keep  them in craft drawer to hold little odds and ends.

Our Jesse Tree

So, this year is the first year that I had ever heard of a Jesse Tree. What a wonderful way to weave the meaning of Christmas into the busy holiday season! By placing a new ornament with a meaningful symbol on our tree each day we are sure to take the time to reflect on what is really important.

I am going to use the same tree that we started using as our advent calendar tree last year. So we will have our advent pocket ornaments covering the tree to begin with and replace them with the Jesse Tree ornaments as the season progresses.



Many folks take the time to make their own ornaments using sculpey or by finding items that fit the theme from around the house. Of course, I am going to go the simple route this year or it might remain one of those things that we had every intention of doing, but just couldn't find the time. I found some free printable ornaments here. They also have a sample sheet of reflections to use through the month, or you can change it to suit your family needs.



I laminated the sheets with my very addicting new laminating machine that I got from Walmart,  cut each ornament out, and punched a hole in the top for a piece of ribbon to hang from the tree.

I love that we are going to be able to do a wonderful review of the Old Testament in preparation for the birth of baby Jesus.

The Rag Coat

We had  a wonderful time rowing The Rag Coat. Although we read this book several times over the course of two weeks I could not manage to get through it once without tearing up a bit. It was beautifully written and the illustrations are vibrant.

We made butter during the course of our study which has nearly replaced the purchase of butter at the store. My dear husband has decided that it is the perfect compliment to his homemade bread. So now we are not only blessed with the wonderful wafting aroma of bread baking, we are also privy to the "butter dance" as he excitedly shakes the cream past it's frothy prime and into a nice yellow clump of butter.

While we did have lofty ideas of putting together a quilt we decided to settle for making rag dolls as Minna does in the story. We made our dolls out of knit gloves by cutting off all but the middle two fingers for legs and then sewing it together.

I was quite impressed with Hailey's manual dexterity with a needle and thread. Just a couple of months ago I recall trying to explain cross stitch with one of those plastic needle kits that you purchase at the craft store. We both ended up getting frustrated and decided to put it away. So when she managed to sew the arms together and then attached them to the body I was quite proud of how well she did.

I did purchase the Hands of a Child project pack to go with this book, however the majority of the items within the pack require answers to be filled in. While perfectly suitable for children a bit older it did not suit our needs at this time.

As Minna's father was a coal miner in Appalachia I took the opportunity to discuss the formation of coal. We decided to place our story disk on West Virginia after discussing where the Appalachian Mountains were as well as our top coal producing states.

We also covered three of the basic formations of rocks - igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Hailey had a difficult time understanding the word "sedimentary" so I filled a glass with water and sprinkled in some sand, dirt, and leaves. We watched it settle on the bottom and discussed how it could eventually turn to rock.

We also made igneous rocks by watching our chocolate "lava" cool off. Although we did speed up the cooling process by popping it in the freezer!

In order to solidify her understanding of the variations of rocks how the earth is constantly changing, I explained the rock cycle. I tried to find a basic illustration, but all of the pictures seemed to be too complex for the early elementary level. I ended up making my own illustration for her to color and labels to place . Please feel free to download it for your own personal use.

rock-cycle

Owl Moon and Unit Study

This turned mostly into a Unit Study on Owls, but we did use the Five in a Row title Owl Moon as well as HomeschoolShare title Owl Babies to implement our owl study. HSS also has Owl Moon lapbook graphics here. Owls weren't actually on the schedule to study at all, but the local park was having a ranger talk with a rescued non-releasable barred owl named Merlin. Of course I decided to work it in to the schedule!

Since I don't actually have the FIAR volume that Owl Moon is covered in I ended up just doing things my own way. Owl Moon is really a beautiful book. We also got the huge library storytelling book for Owl Babies. Charlie loved the life-size pictures! I thought about dissecting owl pellets for a minute, but decided that we would push that somewhat icky discovery off until another year. We used this online owl pellet dissection instead.

The cover page shows a graphic from HSS on the Owl Babies lesson plan page. Hailey wanted it to be a screech owl so she changed the coloration a bit and wrote the sound that a screech owl makes. You can hear owl sounds here.



The inside shows a nocturnal animals flap book on the left with the different animals that the owl babies might have heard during the night. The right flap has a book where Hailey illustrated the materials needed to make a nest using construction paper and crayons. The middle shows a food chain chart the we used from Teacher Created Resources. This was a terrific purchase! While it is geared toward a classroom setting it was chock full of ideas and resources that we easy to work with and put together. It has ideas for interactive plays, story telling, dissecting owl pellets, and more.  The right middle is a flap book that opens to show three of the animals that make up an owl's diet.



The second side of the folder shows a matchbook with the definition of nocturnal and cursive handwriting copywork on the left flap. The right flap has a layer book with several owl poems and songs from HSS. The middle shows a printout on the preservation of owls from Teacher Created Resources.



The middle flap opens to show a graph with the different heights of several owls, also from Teacher Created Resources. Hailey is the first column.



Inside the flap there is a book with three different types of owls and the sounds that they make as well as a flap book about owls and their habits.

Halloween Costumes

Just a picture of our kiddos dressed up for Halloween last night. Hailey was a lion (boy that mane was a pain to make!), and Charlie wore the tiger costume that I made for Hailey last year. Michael took them trick-or-treating together with Hailey's friend.

As you might be able to tell Hailey loves big cats!!

Making Homemade Butter

We are rowing The Rag Coat this week and since I have been wanting to make butter for a while now I snagged the chance to introduce it to the kids.

We started with 32 oz of heavy whipping cream and a large glass jar. I had heard that putting a marble in might help with agitating the cream, but I was afraid it might hit the jar wrong and we would end up with a huge mess! Instead, I just put a heavy plastic kids spoon.



Next came the shaking....... lots and lots of shaking. To brake up the monotony we alternated between jogging around the room with it, rolling it back and forth on the floor, and practicing counting by ones, twos, tens, and hundreds while vigorously shaking. After about ten minutes it didn't feel like the cream was moving much anymore. Our view through the glass was a solid white jar. When I unscrewed the top it looked like super smooth whipping cream.

After another 5 minutes the cream began to break up a bit.



2 minutes later it began breaking up even more and we could see through the jar again. Then we suddenly had butter! The buttermilk began to separate out and we had a huge lump of nice yellow butter in our jar.



We used a strainer to pour the buttermilk off. The buttermilk is actually sweet, rather than the sour stuff you buy from the store, since the cream wasn't soured beforehand. The kids each had a small taste and we are left with 1 1/2 cups for cooking.





After separating the butter we rinsed it by covering it with clean cold water and kneading until the water was discolored. Then we poured off the water and repeated for a total of 4 rinses. This helps to remove the remaining buttermilk and prevents the butter from becoming rancid.



We were left with a little over a cup of yummy butter! I did find that this butter was a little bland and I think that might have something to do with the ultra-pasteurized cream we used. I would love to try this using cream from raw milk, but that would be a little cost-prohibitive and difficult to find. Next time I might look for low pasteurized cream or try making cultured butter with yogurt. For now I think I will add some fresh herbs and enjoy our freshly homemade butter!

Stellaluna and Bat Unit Study

This was actually a unscheduled study on bats since one of our local parks was having a presentation on bats this past week. I thought it might be fun to squeeze it in!

We read the book Stellaluna which was already in our book collection, and hit the library for some supplemental reading. One book I think is worth mentioning is The Little Lost Bat. It follows the life of a baby Mexican free-tailed bat as it is born in a cave. The book itself was quite sad as the baby loses its mother to an owl and eventually is adopted by another bat mother that has lost its own baby. It does quite a good job of showing the hardships that baby bats face.

Here are some pictures of our lapbook. We got most of the graphics for our lapbook from our favorite site Homeschool Share. The cover has some cutouts that we found at  First-school.ws . I reduced the size by 50% to fit two on the cover. Hailey and Charlie loved playing with the full size versions that they put together.



The inside front cover shows a booklet with different species of bats (bumblebee bat, fox bat, vampire bat, etc). On the first side of the folder we have a book of different diurnal (daytime) and nocturnal animals, a vocabulary pocket of words from Stellaluna, a book with a map of the places that we can find fruit bats (mega bats). The left side shows a three pocket strip that we got from Hands of a Child where we sorted different characteristics of Mega bats and Micro bats. On the right flap is a flap book of Omnivores, Herbivores, and Carnivores. Under each flap Hailey glued pictures of the animals that belong in each category.

The second side of the folder shows the Anatomy of the Bat, the different mammals that use echolocation, and a booklet that uses some word problems pulled from the book for math. The left flap shows a sample of handwriting. Since I am teaching Hailey cursive instead of print first I invested in software called Start Write. I can print out tracers in almost any learning font I wish, which for me is cursive. They also have manuscript, Handwriting without Tears cursive and print, Palmer and more! I love this software. The right flap has some really corny bat jokes on one side and some a poem and song about bats on the back.





The back cover shows Hailey's art work. She started drawing the little lines for echolocation without any prompting. I asked where she got the idea to do that and she said she had seen it in a book we read. I love that she picks those things up. The insects all have frowny faces because they are about to be eaten!

Storm in the Night Lapbook

So here is our completed lapbook for our the Storm in the Night. We used some materials from Homeschool Share, but for the most part I made my own graphics for this one. Feel free to click on the links and download them for your own personal not-for-profit use.



The left flap involved a discussion on how our bodies change as well as how our roles change as we get older. I used a cute picture that I found here. The right flap has a Venn diagram depicting the characteristics of Grandfather and Thomas and a Vocabulary flap book with pictures for the vocabulary words errands, bough, and mandarin. We added in the word babbling and wrote "blah, blah, blah" under the flap. In the middle you can see our introduction to onomatopoeia. Hailey now shouts out "Onomatopoeia" every time she recognizes one in a book. You can get those graphics here. We made a facial expressions booklet. And the book about our listening walk.



The second side of the folder shows a large diagram of the Water cycle in the middle. The cloud booklet opens up and shows the water droplets that a cloud is made of. Then the raindrops were drawn directly on the folder. The left flap has a pocket with pictures of 4 different cloud types.  I got the cloud pictures here.The pocket on the right flap is holding cloud charts that we used each day to see if we could predict the weather by observing the clouds.



On the back cover is the painting that Hailey did with a dark background.

To find out more in depth about what we did during the week check out the previous post! Next week we will be doing BATS!

A Storm in the Night

This past week we rowed Five in a Row (FIAR) title A Storm in the Night. I decided to go ahead and row this book since we had been inundated with thunderstorms the previous several weeks. Of course, as soon as we started we had nothing but sunny skies!

A Storm in the Night proved to be a bit more difficult at first than our first FIAR book The Story About Ping. The book was mostly dialogue and in order to help the kids follow the book a bit easier I used different voices for the characters.

We discussed the use of onomatopoeia for the first time. I realized that we had a wonderful supplemental book for this discussion called The Listening Walk by Paul Showers. Every single page has a new sound that the young girl hears as she goes on her listening walk with her father. We decided to go on our own listening walk and talk about the different sounds that we could hear. Then we figured out how we could make those sounds into words and made our own book .

We discussed how we know people are feeling by the expressions they have on their face. We made a mini booklet drawing the characteristics of different facial expressions.  I also dug out some old pictures so that Hailey could note the changes as people get older.

For science we focused in on the Water Cycle. We made our model of earth and its atmosphere by taking a plate of water and placing it in one side of a large tupperware container. We closed the top and placed a heat lamp above the side of the tupperware with the water to represent the sun. On the opposite side we placed a bag of ice cubes to represent the cold air in the upper atmosphere. As the lamp (sun) heated the water the water evaporated (turned to water vapor) and condensed  (formed a cloud) as it rose and hit the bag of ice (cold air) on the opposite side. Once the water droplets became large enough they fell (rained) back to the plate (ground).

We also decided to learn more about clouds. We learned four of the basic types of clouds - Stratus, Cumulus, Cirrus, and Nimbus. I found some great pictures of clouds here, Royalty free! We charted what clouds we saw in the morning and guessed what type of weather we would see that afternoon. In the afternoon we would check the weather again to see if we were right. I also had Hailey make a rain gauge out of an old peanut butter jar and a ruler. I took the top off of the jar, turned it upside-down and filled it with spare change to weight it down. Then I taped it with packing tape to the bottom of the jar to keep it from blowing away.



These are some of the graphics that I created while doing the lapbook for A Storm in the Night. Please feel free to download and use for your own personal, not-for-profit, use.

Onomatopoeia

Facial Expressions Booklet

Cloud Charting

Water Cycle

Cloud Types - Thanks to Carl Wozniak for the great cloud pics on this graphic. You can get more here free for educational purposes.

I will be posting pictures of our completed lapbook in the next couple of days.

Bug Adventures

Hailey has been so interested in bugs lately that even though we have completed our units on butterflies and bees the bug observation continues. She happened to find a curious looking moth yesterday outside of our front door. After doing a little searching online we found that it was a Sphinx moth.



My first encounter with a Sphinx moth was actually during the day at my mother's house. I remember looking at this odd creature that looked to be a mix between a bee, butterfly, and hummingbird. It had the coloration of a bee, was drinking nectar from flowers, and hovering with its fast beating wings like a hummingbird. Needless to say, we were stumped as to what this creature could be. It was not until Hailey became interested in bugs over the past few months that I finally found the name for this unique creature!



The moth that Hailey found yesterday was of a different subfamily of sphinx moths - macroglossinae subfamily, xylophanes tersa. We found a website that is currently categorizing all sphinx moths (also known as hawk moths) county by county across the states as well as throughout the Americas. We checked our county, but found no active listings. After checking the more populous county to our north we found a picture of our moth. Apparently this particular type of moth is fairly common in our area. We then decided to submit our own pictures as well as our county to the site to aid in their research compilation project.



We received a return email stating that Hailey's finding would be posted on the site, activating the webpage for our county and giving credit to Hailey for the find. You can see it here. Hailey was ecstatic!

Bee Unit Study

Continuing on our theme of insects we moved to bees as our next subject for unit study. Since we already had a thorough understanding of butterflies, learning the anatomy of a bee was pretty straightforward. I thought that Wikipedia had a pretty good anatomy of a bee diagram, but we also found one to label yourself at Enchanted Learning, and another great one on the "How Stuff Works" website.

We were fortunate enough to get two different bee downloads for free this summer. One from Hands of a Child that contained all the research information in one handy area and one specifically on honeybees from Notebooking Nook that contained 14 mini-books to use in your lapbook. We used both of these, but I must say that the freebies from Homeschoolshare on bees were wonderful additions!

Unfortunately I wasn't able to locate a beekeeper nearby so we could visit, but we did do some backyard observations. While I haven't yet gotten around to it I am planning to order some honeycomb for the kids to examine. They usually sell it in 4 inch sections. The great part is that after they are done examining the honeycomb they get to eat the honey. I have read that you can either drain the honey and enjoy it in the usual way or simply take a bite of the honeycomb and chew it kind of like gum until the honey taste is gone.

In addition to the loads of books from the library I was also able to borrow a copy of a PBS NOVA movie called Tales from the Hive. It was an incredible up close look into the hive of a honeybee. It was great to see things like the bee dance, hierarchy of the hive, and how the queen bee is chosen as if you were actually there! I would highly recommend looking for this video if you are planning a bee study of your own.

I thought it would be cute to make the lapbook in bee colors. We took foam paper and cut strips to glue to the outside and made lines with black marker on the inside to match. I found the clipart for the beehive here. Hailey finished it off with some of her own artwork.



The first side of our lapbook includes the types of bees that live in a hive, I copied pictures from a library book to place on each page. The anatomy of a bee diagram was from wikipedia. The bottom of the folder has the lifecycle wheel and bee predators (robber fly, birds, spiders, praying mantis). On the right side is a book that has a list of all of the different jobs that a worker bee has in the hive throughout their lives.



The second side of the lapbook has a book on social bees (honeybees and bumblebees) and solitary bees (mason bees, leafcutter bees, etc) and a flap book on the dances that a worker bee when she has found a source of nectar. I had Hailey draw a picture of the direction that the bees would go after observing the bee dances under each flap. The left flap shows a pocket full of bee vocabulary words and on the right flap is the pocket holding our bee observation charts.