Week in Homeschool #13

 Here's what our homeschool week number thirteen looked like.   11.05-11.09

Our Theme of the week
Gratitude

This week we didn't read any special stories to go with our theme.  Instead we brought out our Thankful Tree.  A tradition that started 7 years ago.  Each Thanksgiving we write what we are grateful for on a paper leaf with our name and the year.  It's wonderful to bring this out every year and see the things that meant so much to us in years past.  Every year we watch our tree grow a little bit fuller.


Letter of the week
L

Poem of the month

Art
We worked with 7 different "autumn" water colors. 

We painted blends on both sides of heavy paper.   

I traced leaf shapes from a printed template.

 
Now we have beautiful new fall leaves for our Thankful tree.
I LOVE these leaves.

Art Study

Cave Painting from 15,000 B.C. Lascaux, France


History
This week we reviewed the past 10 chapters of Story of the World, book 1.  We reviewed Ava's notes, and I asked her questions based on a combination of those notes, and the student guide book.  They colored review cards, which we laminated to keep as a hands on timeline.

Math

 

Nature Journals
This week the kids each wanted to make turkey pictures.  Ava chose watercolors, and Cyrus used markers.   Cyrus also included an owl carrying packages.  (an homage to  Hedwig, I'm sure.)

I also asked Ava if she would paint something in our new natural environment that she's grateful for.  She painted images of our backyard redwood tree.  She came up with the idea to paint the tree in several different times of day.  First you see the purple gold of sunrise, the light blue of afternoon, the pink of sunset, and the dark blue of evening.  Oh my goodness.  I love her.

Peace

I asked each of my children what Gratitude means to them, and then to list 5 things that they are grateful for.

Cyrus: "Being Grateful.  Helping each other.  And when you say good things about other people's things."
*Dad's cooking.  Pizza, pesto, peach cobbler, and teriyaki.
*Honey Crisp apples
*Harry Potter books
*Candy, and presents
*Pretzel my cat

Ava: "Being grateful for the things you have, and saying thank you"
*That we read the first 3 Harry Potter books, and watched the 1st movie
*A Place to live
*My own room
*Beautiful garden
*For little libraries scattered all over the house



Field Trip

 

We headed out to the Cafe Gratitude.  This is Ava's favorite restaurant and I can understand why.  The food is so wholesome, that it just makes you feel good. 

This post has been sitting in my drafts list for ages.  I never got around to writing the technical aspects of the post, and now weeks later...  I just don't care!  I remember it was a great week.  I remember feeling grateful, and that we were very happy.  So really, who cares which math lessons we covered?

Week in Homeschool #15

Here's what we did in our fifteenth week of homeschool.  11.26-11.30

Let's just get this one out of the way.  I didn't take a single relevant photo, mostly because there was So Little "relevant" school this week. 

 

Ava:
* took a spelling pretest, and when she got 100% I told her she could skip the rest.
* completed the scheduled phonics pages in one sitting
* maybe did a math review sheet, maybe not

Cyrus:
* completed one page of phonics.

And that's pretty much it.  As far as "school" goes.  I'm not saying that we didn't learn anything, just not anything with a schedule or a check mark attached to it!

 I'm not a super seasoned homeshcool mom, but this makes 0 for 3 attempts at completing a last week of homeschool before our December break.  hmmm.

2013

Happy New Year!

So.  I've been obviously absent for the last few (5-6ish) weeks.  It wasn't planned, and I kept meaning to come back, and then... well, I didn't.  I hardly even took pictures this last two months.  To put things into perspective you can look at the numbers.  I take a lot of pictures.  I average around 1300 a month, with sometime highs soaring to the two and three thousand range.  In November I took a little over 400, and in December I took just over 300.  I plan on spending the next week playing a bit of catch up.  I have a few past homeschooling wrap ups that I'd like to put together, and a little glimpse of our holidays.

And while I've been gone, my family has been fantastic.  We had a wonderful, special, magical holiday break.  I'm looking forward to catching up on all of the blogs that I've been missing!

Many blessings on our New Year!

Turkey in the Brown Straw

 

 Around 4 or 5 years ago I looked up and printed out several Thanksgiving songs and rhymes for Ava.  I'm pretty sure that I used this webpage here.   I set a few personal parameters narrowing the list down to what would be appropriate for our family.  (for example, nothing about eating the turkey.  Even if that's what my 3or 4 year old was going to do, it still seemed macabre.)  Now an annual favorite (and one of the most silly) it gains popularity with the flannel pieces that I made.  (side note, while looking for the link with the lyrics I came across these felt pieces, and wow.)

Turkey In The Brown Straw
(Tune: Skip To My Lou)


 Turkey in the Brown Straw, Ha Ha Ha,
Turkey in the brown straw, Ha Ha Ha,
Turkey in the brown straw, Ha Ha Ha,
Turkey in the straw my darlin'


 
Turkey in the green tree, Hee Hee Hee,
Turkey in the green tree, Hee Hee Hee,
Turkey in the green tree, Hee Hee Hee,
Turkey in the tree my darlin'.


 
Turkey in the white snow, Ho Ho Ho,
Turkey in the white snow, Ho Ho Ho,
Turkey in the white snow, Ho Ho Ho,
Turkey in the snow my darlin'.


 
Turkey in the red barn,, Harn Harn Harn,
Turkey in the red barn,, Harn Harn Harn,
Turkey in the red barn,, Harn Harn Harn,
Turkey in the barn my darlin'.


 
Turkey in the blue sky,, High, High, High,
Turkey in the blue sky,, High, High, High
Turkey in the blue sky,, High, High, High
Turkey in the sky my darlin'.

This project came together quickly in one afternoon.  I used ecofelt that I had on hand, and decorated with puffy paint.  Ava's little hand plays the role of our turkey, the rest of the pieces were just quickly cut out.  When we moved I left behind my felt board, so for now I'm using a scrap of blue felt wrapped around a box.  (I'm such a perfectionist!)

The Day After

Last night we ordered pizza, printed out these coloring pages, and watched the election unfold.  It was so exciting to watch my children get involved in the process. 

This morning, in order to give my children a sense of closure, we gave Florida to Obama, but didn't assign him the electoral votes.  Ava asked if they could keep their election maps in our America Box (similar to our continent boxes) so we laminated their maps and will keep them for prosperity.  In a few weeks we'll print up the final statistics from each state and store them all together. 

I love how all of this came together.  Very organically.  It started with answering a lot of questions and led from there.  This is one of the beautiful things about homeschool.

Sight of Sol

Yikes.
I'm smitten.

(most of these photos were his idea.  He likes to see himself on my camera's view finder)

Gratitude Monday

Here are some of the things that I'm so very grateful for today...

*fall rains that are turning the hillsides green again

*The beginning of our new Autumn/Winter trimester in our homeschool

*fires at night to warm the house

*fresh baked bread

*November!

*A partner who works magic in the kitchen

*A baby who shares his love so freely

*A little girl who spends hours a day talking about Harry Potter

*A boy who tells strangers that we pass in the grocery store that he is a wizzard

*Painting my fingernails dark blue

*Children's art work

*Voting!

I'm super excited to be in November.  I love this season.  Here's to a new week!

Week In Homeschool #12

Our theme of the week:  Halloween

We read:
All the Halloween books in our home library!
And Then Comes Halloween:  A poem of the turn of season, and bringing of Halloween.
Dem Bones:  A classic, we sing it.
Old Old Witch:  A short poem, that reads like a song.
Pumpkin Shivaree:  The story of a seed to a pumpkin, to a jack-o-lantern, then back to a seed that returns to the earth.
Child of Faerie, Child of Earth:  A favorite loved by the whole family.  We love the story, and the illustrations.
Which Witch is Which?:  Try to solve each riddle using imaginative illustrations.
Two Little Witches:  A counting rhyme.
It's Halloween:  A collection of 13 poems by Jack Prelutsky.  They are funny, spooky, but not scary. 

All of the books on this list are loved.  Most of them I picked up used at the library, some of them were gifts.  We look forward to bringing them out every October.

Our Letter of the Week:

 

GFJ review.
Snack of the week:  Pumpkin bread, and Halloween candy!

Art:

Our art project this week was a gift from their Aunt Rachael.  She sent us the materials to make these wooden bead, and pipe cleaner spiders.  These will surely be a treasure to bring out every year.

Art Study:

 

This week we explored  Fast Break, by Red Grooms.   The last image in the book.    

Cyrus:  "This looks too much aggressive, and I see a person getting hit in the body  There is a lot of movement, and wood missing on the floor.  It looks like the ground is shaking up and down. "

Ava: "I see a lot of movement energy and noise with the way the people are acting.  And I see how people would be moving."         

Science:

We brought home dry ice on Halloween as a surprise for our family.  It was a great review of the states of matter.

History:
We read about Ancient China.

 

Math:

Ava:
*Roman Numerals
*Finished graphing the weather for October
*Continued charting her time of 8 different review sheets.


Peace:

 

Using Dumbledore as our example, we talked about the qualities that they thought would make a great leader.

respect, peace, wisdom, 

honest, fair, 

powerful, kind.

Field Trip:
This week's field trip was Trick-or-Treating on Halloween.

 

 

 

This week we wrapped up our first trimester of the year!  Next week we will start our Autumn/Winter trimester.   This was another week that was less than perfect academically, but we managed to get done what needed to be done.    I'm going to stop making predictions that next week I'll be on top of my game!  The week may have lacked a few lessons, but it sure turned out to be a very fun, and memorable week.  And that's one of the reasons why we homeschool.

Oh Sweet Ninja Goodness.

4 months ago in June we found our Halloween costumes.  It's not unusual for my family to have our costumes figured out really early.  After we buy our costumes, I put them up until the big day.  After the 31st, they add their precious costumes into their everyday play.  On that special day in June, I asked Cyrus if he would like to try on his outfit before I put it away.  What followed was something that I both never expected, and something that I have wanted to share publicly for months, but had to wait so not to spoil any surprises.

Cyrus not only slipped on his ninja costume, he slipped into a ninja character.  He spent close to a half an hour coming up with new poses.  Neither of us spoke during his fashion shoot.  All of these photos are 100% Cyrus's idea.  Oh I love these photos so very much.


Things started out pretty much how I thought they would.  Him standing very still and straight.

Suddenly he started posing.

I started to notice that his smile was slipping, as he adapted a warrior's demeanor.

 Suddenly he was playful again, throwing his sword in the air.

I have absolutely no idea where he learned these poses, or what inspired him.  I just know that my sweet 5 year old with a face full of jam, gave me the best photo shoot of his little life.  And I love him.