Monthly Archive: November 2010

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Earth Science Unit — Gravity

We have been making slow headway through our Ancient Rome unit, but we needed some new spice added into our homeschool days. We’re off to do a unit on earth science — studying concepts such as gravity, horizontal/vertical, directionality–N,S,E,W, and then moving on to the layers of the earth and the surface of the earth — the “ups and downs, ins and outs” of the landforms and waterforms and how...

Europe Pin Map 6

How to Make a Pin Map of Europe

We are heading off to Europe in our world music class this week and to get ready for that, I made a pin map of Europe.  I’ll explain how I made mine in case someone else finds it useful. Step 1: I printed off a blank map of Europe from freeusandworldmaps.com.  I also printed off the labeled Europe map from that same website as a control. I laminated these two...

Happy Thanksgiving! 1

Happy Thanksgiving!

Top Left is by ED, Middle Top is by DD, Top Right says (from bottom to top Time To et Me — Time to eat me — by DD). Bottom cards are by LD. This past week we’ve been singing this lovely Thanksgiving song together called “Thanksgiving Day” by L. Maria Child during our collection time: Over the river and through the wood To grandfather’s house we go; The horse...

Catching Up 0

Catching Up

Our internet has been down for a week. Ugh! Hope to be up and running in the next day or so.  ED has had a horrible case of hives (from head to toe) and it turns out that she has Strep. We’re taking it easy and will just enjoy some nice weather outside since we can’t go anywhere until she’s not contagious. 

Lots of Math Manipulatives! A glance at DDs work. 6

Lots of Math Manipulatives! A glance at DDs work.

 Here’s a quick glance DD’s math work for the day (she just turned 5).  I had her set up the numbers.  She counted from 10 to 100 several times before I had her build double-digit numbers. I put a large handful of tiles in front of her and asked her to figure out whether there were an odd or even number of tiles (meanwhile, ED is making a tower!!).  Also,...

Fall Fun (Indoor Activities-counting,letters, crafts, etc.) 2

Fall Fun (Indoor Activities-counting,letters, crafts, etc.)

We’ve been enjoying fall both inside and out! This post has actually gotten quite long, so I’ll post more of our outdoor adventures in a bit.  Here are some of the fall-themed activities we’ve been up to inside.  Here are some more activities I’ve had ready to pull out for ED when I’m working with the older kids. I just want to add that suddenly ED gets it!  She’s easily...

Addition/Subtraction Game –Mmm Brains 0

Addition/Subtraction Game –Mmm Brains

We try to play lots of games — and this one is worth a mention because it involves addition, subtraction and simple multiplication.  It’s called Mmm Brains — so it also had great appeal to LD in particular! There’s a large selection of brains.  Red brains are each 5 points.  White brains are 1 point. There are 5 dice — with the numbers 1 through 5 in different colors (yellow,...

Snowflake Math (2 1/2 yr old’s activity) 8

Snowflake Math (2 1/2 yr old’s activity)

Since we had our first frost last week, I guess it’s okay to bring in some snowflake-themed math, right?  Actually, I just stopped by a hobby store and saw the pretty snowflake ornaments. Since ED is STILL doing the spider counting, I thought it was about time to change it up for her as she ALWAYS comes running when I tell DD or LD that it’s math time. ED is...

Morning Collection (our version of “circle time”) 3

Morning Collection (our version of “circle time”)

Quite a number of years ago, I taught history at a Quaker boarding school.  At the beginning and end of the day, the students and staff gathered together for collection–10 minutes of silence together. At the end of that time, students or staff could share something with the community — music, a poem, etc.  Now as you can imagine, 10 minutes of silence wouldn’t really hold for the kids, but...

Great Preschool Printables Website 2

Great Preschool Printables Website

I was looking for the alphabet and number cards with certain themes — fall leaves, snowflakes, and penguins.  I stumbled across this terrific website that has all kinds of beautiful free printables: Communication 4 All.co.uk. Some of the early learning themes include space, pirates, minibeasts, animals, dinosaurs, under the sea, castles, India, months and seasons, the water cycle, and other themes. Just thought I’d share my discovery in case someone...

Indian Corn Science — update 0

Indian Corn Science — update

Some time back, I shared our Indian corn activity. It’s now growing quite tall in big pots at the end of our dining room table! So here’s the corn after about 1 week of being watered. After a while we decided to plant the corn in some empty flower pots. The corn grew steadily. And now it’s about 12-15 inches high! Unfortunately, the corn cob attracted lots of fruit flies. ...

Snippets of Our Week (for our 7-yr old) 10

Snippets of Our Week (for our 7-yr old)

This post is a long time in coming; it’s taken forever to get this posted! I wanted to share some of the curriculum choices that are working well for our 7 year old this semester. MATH: These past five months or so, we have been using a math workbook for much of LD’s math practice.  Only recently have started back on our beloved Right Start Math curriculum. It was written...

Carnivorous Plants Lapbook 2

Carnivorous Plants Lapbook

A few weeks ago, LD pulled out a project he started back in Australia — a lapbook on carnivorous plants (free from http://dynamic2moms.webs.com/carnivorousplants.htm) He enjoyed reading up on these plants again and put it all together. 

Snippets of our day (Mom’s Week) 4

Snippets of our day (Mom’s Week)

This blog is so often about the kids, but I was thinking today (last Sunday) about writing a blog entry about my life–as separate to the kids. Sometimes I feel quite discouraged. The house gets away from me, manipulatives wind up everywhere, but I know I do work hard… So kind of more to be affirming to me (Go Me!) — I wanted to jot down the things I’ve done...