14th August, 2008
Brownie Support Group Activities
We had our home school association meeting this evening and boy are my jaws tired. Actually my belly hurts due to the ingestion of the most awesome peanut brownies EVER. I love the whole dessert social concept. I really think skipping the potluck was an excellent idea.
Our group is nice, all-inclusive, come- as- you- are party. I really like the spirit of cooperation we have going on. Two of the events we do monthly are a Project Day and a just for fun skating party. The project day has always been my favorite because it gave the kids a chance to show off their work to someone besides grandpa. Along those lines, we are also working on getting a web-based site/newsletter/yearbook/brag board. Kind of like an online refrigerator to hang good work on.
Science club was another topic bandied about. We want to do something for our older middle and high school age students. Anybody have any ideas? I am working on partnering us up with the local college students/faculty. If anyone has run something like this I would love some input.
The number of activities we are talking about really amazes me. We didn’t do much of anything last year for schedule reasons and the first few years were just catch as we can. This year…we are going to have so many opportunities to get together…well, let’s just say no one could dare call us unsocialized.
So what cool things are going on in your groups…do tell while I finish this heavenly, peanutty-filled confection. Nom, nom, nom…..*bliss*
Posted at 11:01 pm | Comment (1)
16th May, 2007
Soooo….
I feel little like Mr. Rogers updating on what is going on in the neighborhood. I will probably add some more stuff this post later. I just really need to document my life in a medium where thousands of people could look at, but most likely no one will. :)
We found a super cool math quiz for metric prefixes. There is also a ton of other math stuff at this web site. Really cool for the older ones. Joe was drivin me crazeee with the constant guessing of answers. After a few tears, I finally got him to sit down and slowly go through the problem to get the answer. Then he used our little chart all by himself. Then he didn’t need the chart at all. I love it when I am right!
Joe also worked on this art/science project. Step 1 is to draw the world map onto a piece of poster board. He got the Americas done today. I must say, he is an excellent sketch artist. I was way impressed. This will eventually lead to a lesson on plate tectonics but we’re takin it easy for now. 
Posted at 10:31 pm | Comment (1)
26th February, 2007
Confessions of a Twenty-something Burnout
Oi. I am tired. I know this is like preaching to the choir, but man, when February rolls around (and into March) I am ready to pack it in. This is a good time to have unschooling experimentation as I call it. I can’t unschool too much with Joe because he. won’t. do. anything. He lacks mental stamina according to Dr. Levine. Meee too. I think it was those three years he spent in public school. Won’t do anything unless he’s told to. His little brother happily works through an entire section in the math book for fun. I swear school ruined him. He had great teachers, good friends, best school in the county. And it ruined him. I am trying to bring him back. But right now? I am tired. This is getting depressing so I will right more later. I get to write about a John Holt article for Educational Philosophy that I will have to post for you all. Hope everyone had a great Monday.
Posted at 10:35 pm | Comment (0)
2nd February, 2007
Time Warp Trio
How funny are these books? I mean seriously. My son read these vociferously in second grade and I thought that is so cute, books that can develop an interest in learning more about history. Well now there is a TV show and my kindergartener is MAD about it. The show is really funny and covers all kinds of historical periods. From the Greek Olympics to Mary Shelley to Lewis and Clark. Then I told them the show was based on a series of books and omg we had to go to the library immediately! So he was in heaven but I thought, I bet these books are about as much fun to read as the Magic Tree House. I am sure there are a lot of Jack and Annie fans out there, but I want to drive a screwdriver through my eyeball whenever I am requested to read one. But I do it. For the love of children and literature.
So last night we snuggle down to read Knights of the Kitchen Table the first int he Time Warp series. It was funny. It was sooo funny. It had the same dry witty humor of the Bunnicula series that I loved during my own childhood (can I get a holla for vampire bunnies?). It was fun to read, well written (what a concept), and packed–packed– with historical information. I am a bibliophile so it is not hard for me to fall in love with books, but I do have high standards. Now, they are not taking the place of Harry Potter in my heart, but wow, color me impressed. So what’s your favorite series…now or when you were a kiddo?
Posted at 10:54 am | Comments (3)
25th December, 2006
Rockin around the Christmas tree…
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Here’s hoping that your homeschool is rockin the holiday today! Merry Christmas, Stephanie
Posted at 3:58 pm | Comment (1)
20th December, 2006
It’s a record! I blogged 2 days in a row!
Today was a good day. I love starting posts that way. I wish I could write a daily post as well as Faith. Her entries are so delightful and mine feel like chewed up cardboard. Or maybe that’s what it feels like to write them. Enough with the self deprecating humor and stalking: here’s what we did today!
I have decided to give up science until after New Year’s. It’s stressing me out. So that’s that. We are booking it to finish the first half of England because we want to dip into Islam and the Crusades. Anyone know some good resources/books? That are cheap!?! I would like for us to finish verbs also, but it seems like a review of exactly the same things we did last year in his A Beka book. I need a new grammar book too (Hint hint Santa). This amish one we have is. so. boring. Even I hate it. And I am a grammar nerd. Not that you can tell by reading my posts. We should finish Geometry by the holidays, so yeah, one checkmark in the win column! I finally found a math book I like and it was free! One of our homeschool vets gave it to me ( free and brand new from the publisher!) and lo and behold it is the same text our county uses. Who woulda thunk it, they actually got something right. It’s the McGraw Hill text for 5th grade. The manipulatives are fun too. I don’t know how you can get it, but I got mine, so yeah. ;) We covered triangles and corrected history summaries and read Robin Hood. And baked a million chocolate hazelnut cookies. Ok more like 60, but wow. I am tired. You chickens have a good one.
Posted at 12:01 am | Comment (1)
3rd November, 2006
Vikings, ho! How we pillage our way through history.
So the past few weeks we’ve been studying Vikings. Joe has been enthralled with them lately, especially the old Norse Mythology. I found this very interesting because, while I know a good bit about Greek and Roman tales, I knew nothing about the Norse gods. Joe especially liked d’Aulaire’s Book of Norse Myths. It is an old edition that isn’t even on Amazon, but worth looking up. So we learned how the Norsemen traveled from Scandinavia outward thanks to The Story of the World Part II. This included the settling of Normandy and Vineland (now New Foundland). There were some nice make yourself projects with this section as opposed to others (my only major complaint with the series). We also used our Usborne Internet -linked Encyclopedia. There were some great challenging games and info sites. We got a lot of info on day to day living from Adventures with Vikings. Lots of cool cartoon style pictures with little captions, good for younger ones too. I always like to do a literature connection so he read a translation of Beowulf. I can’t figure out if he liked it or not. Fortuitously, our latest copy of Dig Magazine came this past week and is all about vikings. Cool archealogical info, I love that magazine. To cap off our extravaganza we held a feast with turkey legs, peas, and potatoes (instead of cabbage that no one would touch). The kids got to eat with their hands and Joe told us what he had learned. This has been a nice way to review wth him as well as give what he does meaning. He loves to teach us and offer his analysis of history. His opinion of vikings? I am so glad you asked. He thinks they got a bad rap in history. “They were certainly not the only culture to travel around pillaging other places, they just excelled at it. When you are the best, others get jealous and say bad stuff about you.” Nothing like clarification from a 9 year old. Joe even dressed up as Thor the god of Thunder for Halloween. His costume was awesome if I do say so myself, fur cape and all. From here we are moving on to England. Since we’re not following the history book in order we made a big timeline out of butcher paper and add to it as we go. This helps keep things in perspective while allowing us to explore a culture more fully.
We are also taking a break from division and doing some geometry. If I come across anything good, I ‘ll pass it on, and vice versa please. And thanks for the mention from A Room of One’s Own. I am so glad you enjoyed the cell cake, except yours looked better than mine! Good for you for not getting bullied into chocolate cytoplasm. 
Cheers!
Posted at 12:32 am | Comment (1)
16th October, 2006
Camp Crazy Cold
Wow, what a weekend. We did the full blown crazy, camping in the cold weather. Joe, Elijah, and I traveled about 30 miles down the road to attend Cub Scout Family Camp. It was a lot of fun. Also cold. Did I mention it was C-O-L-D? No? Well let me tell ya….I think you get it. Besides being you -know-what, the boys had a blast. It was so neat to see Joe behave so well in a group of boys his own age. So take that everyone who thought my kid was going to turn into a pathetic weirdo via homeschooling (that wouldn’t be you guys. This is the best support group evah!). Elijah is the one having adjustment issues lately, but that is a whole other post. The boys learned archery, cooking over the campfire (mmmm, smores, mmmmm), bee bee gun rifling, fire making, etc. The best part was seeing them love the outdoors. Even though we are in WV, we are certainly city dwellers. So watching them just soak up all the vibrancy of mother nature was truly special. It sounds sappy, but I swear their behavior has improved since the trip. It was very special. And cold.
As for the homefront, Joe has started England in history. We are bucking the classical trend and doing our history geograhically through the Middle Ages. Because Joe is such a strong thinker/reflector, I thought it would be best to let him soak up a whole culture at a time. This week we are learning about the Viking Invasion, Eric the Red and Norse Mythology. He (and I) love mythology. It really seems to connect you to the group of people you are studying. We decided to do a timeline to keep some type of chronology of the history we study this year. For language arts we are working on Writing Strands right now and then will probably switch to grammar next week. Reading about learning styles has really helped me clarify what he is doing and giving him extra time to soak it up and mull it over makes him more peaceful. Frenetic is not a good pace for us. Hope everyone else is well. Cheers to the end of a peaceful, thankful, reflective day.
Posted at 9:53 pm | Comment (0)
3rd October, 2006
Math Mentionables
Well we took a week off last week for various reasons. I am currently working on my bachelor’s degree and it was test upon test upon test week. I’ve realized that we need a break every 5th or 6th week. We just burn out and need to recharge a little. It’s funny because I’ve been a little more unschooly this go around, but my list of must does is about as long as it ever was. I am having a little trouble finding a math program I like and Joe responds to. We used Saxon last year and I was trying ABeka this year. It’s just boring and a little off the mark in instruction. I am thinking about Math U See. I’ve also looked at Singapore math. I think I might like the Math U See because my 5yo can use it just as much as the 9yo. I just want to make math a little more fun for him. Any ideas? We are also finishing up Joan of Arc and we are now backtracking to England starting with the Viking Invasion. Joe also decided to switch gears to Physics after visiting my lecture class last week. He sat transfixed as my professor explained friction, energy transformations and what not. So I am setting that up and will report on anything cool I find. Also any material on William Wallace out there (besides Braveheart?).
Posted at 11:03 pm | Comment (1)
27th September, 2006
Cell Cake: science never tasted so good.
Apologies all around on how long it took me to get this post up. How do you all find time to blog? I’m having blog guilt. Like as a mother I don’t have enough guilt in my diet. Speaking of diets, check out this beauty:
(I have never posted with pictures before, this could be disasterous. Please bear with me.)
Leading up to our tasty little project we studied cells from a couple sources. First we read in How Nature Works about animal and plant cells and what the differences were. This book always has very nice experiments in it. We took scrapings of our cheek cells and examined them under the microscope. Then we used the Usborne Internet Linked Science Encyclopedia to look up animal cells in particular. I love this book because the pictures and graphics are colorful and precise and 3 or 4 internet activities go along with every page. This one had a virtual frog dissection. The information is well presented and you can just hit the high points or really go in depth. We discussed the parts of the cell and what their specific jobs are. I generalized a lot just so this would be fun and familiar later on in his science studies. Here is our list of ingredients, or “organelles”:
Cake mix- obviously because I am a baking hack.
Cytoplasm- white icing would probably show up better but….mmm fudge.
Nucleus- giant gumball filled with Nerds, represents that there is a lot of going on in there.
Mitochondria- Hot Tamales!
Golgi Apparatus- Laffy Taffy (this was the best I could come up with)
Ribosomes- Nerds
Lysosomes- Sweet Tarts
We had fun matching the candy to the shape of the organelle and that helped give the mental picture and tactile learning dimension to a subject that can be hard for younger kids to grasp. We discussed/reviewed as we decorated and then Joe did a little presentation.
Next up, cell division!
Posted at 10:52 pm | Comments (5)
