Monthly Archive: September 2012

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Hands On Experiences at Colonial Williamsburg

Over the course of the week we met families from Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Ohio and New York who had come Colonial Williamsburg for the homeschool experience.  During homeschool week they had lots (and lots) of children’s activities.  Every activity we went to was absolutely terrific and educational.  Here are some of the things we attended during the week: We did both the normal orientation walk as well...

Homeschooling in New York 0

Homeschooling in New York

Last year I did a series of interviews with other homeschoolers.  I always enjoy hearing why people choose to set out on the homeschooling path.  I saw an article in The Atlantic about a homeschooling family in New York who has chosen to homeschool their kids and thought I’d share that link with you.  The article is called the Homeschool Diaries.

1

Homeschool Week at Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

  We’ve heard wonderful things about the homeschool programs in Colonial Williamsburg  in some of the yahoo groups. For two weeks in September, there are programs especially for homeschoolers. They offered discount tickets for homeschoolers and their families and have lots of programs and experiences geared specifically for kids.   This year we decided to go with some close friends of ours to check things out. You can spend lots...

2

Games for Thinking and Learning: Set

This is a series about some of games we include in our homeschool. Set is a fast paced card game that requires the players to think quickly and logically.  Set is a fairly easy game to learn to play and can be played by one or more players. To play, we laid out twelve cards.  Each card contains one of three symbols (squiggles, diamonds, ovals) in varying numbers (up to three),...

The Mansion with 32 Secret Doors!! 0

The Mansion with 32 Secret Doors!!

Have you ever dreamed of visiting an almost magical hotel with secret doors hidden everywhere and art, antiques and nick-nacks of every shape, size and description? It has over 20,000 books and 15,000 pieces of art. It’s a mansion that just begs for exploration — and that’s what our family did spending more nearly five hours exploring every nook and cranny trying to find some of the 32 hidden doors...

Journal Writing, Community Service and More 6

Journal Writing, Community Service and More

We just returned from an amazing vacation. It was exciting, educational and left me inspired and oh so excited about life in general! We packed in so much! That said, I know I’m behind on lots of things — for one thing I usually have blog posts ready a week or two out… but having been on the road for so long, I’m plum out of posts (except the Wednesday...

Celery Experiment 2

Plant Experiments: Colored Carnations and Slurping Celery

ED has been learning about plants this past week or two.  We talked about the various parts of the plant and then read a bit in our science books about the function of the stem (and trunk) of plants.  We revisited an experiment we did 2 1/2 years ago — the celery slurping experiment — as I called it then! This time I bought a bunch of carnations to experiment with...

Thoughts on Being Nice 1

Thoughts on Being Nice

Sometimes I’m not as patient as I should be. Perhaps I haven’t slept quite as much as I should have or one of the kids is having an off day.  I feel grumpy, burdened, moody or cross at the world.  On those occasions I know I’ve been guilty of not being as nice as I could. On those days I need to snap out of it, fake it, listen to good music...

Games: Pop-Arty Beads 2

Games: Pop-Arty Beads

I often get asked how I keep my 4-year old engaged while I’m working with my older kids.  Last year ED loved doing Perler Beads. She would spend 30-60 minutes at a time working on those.  This year we added in something new that has brought endless hours of sorting and creativity… Pop-Arty Beads. It is wonderful for small motor skills, sorting and just for fun in general!  The beads are...

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States of Matter – Solid, Liquid, Gas – Learning Activities

Are you working on chemistry this year? I thought I’d share some of the activities we did when we learned about the States of Matter. I also link to a number of other posts from our chemistry unit. We’ve been having a blast with chemistry — well not literally, but sure have been learning a lot! Today we did most of the hands on activities suggested by the wonderful, wonderful...

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Chemistry Unit: The Size of Atoms

We started our chemistry unit a couple weeks ago.  We’re doing lots of reading and really enjoying the books in the NOEO curriculum. We loved, What’s Smaller Than a Pygmy Shrew?  (affiliate link)  It takes a look at protozoa, bacterium, molecules and atoms — even talking about electrons, protons and neutrons. After we read through the book the kids drew pictures of protozoa. (LD’s picture is on the left, DD’s is...

What To Do When Your Child Has a Temper Tantrum 2

What To Do When Your Child Has a Temper Tantrum

There’s an interesting article about what to do when your child is having a temper tantrum posted at Boston.com by Dr. Claudia Gold, a pediatrician and author — don’t leave your child alone, reassure them with hugs (or verbal comfort), etc. In our family, hugs or even a hand on the leg or back really does help to alleviate the temper tantrum. We also talk about the emotions she felt...

Free Math Games: The Great Pet Races 6

Free Math Games: The Great Pet Races

I made this selection of games to help DD practice her basic math facts again.  She’s rusty on the problems like 8+7 and 6+9.  Since she and ED really love their little pets, I drew some little critters to appeal to them! You can adjust any of these board games to suit your preschooler (by just identifying the numbers on the board) or your older child (by creating more complicated...

Zoologic 0

Games for Thinking and Learning: Zoologic

Sorry, I had to bump this post back a day because I wanted to honor the mission team from the Mars Exploration Program – and talk about how we (the public) have benefited from the technology spinoffs we derived from the space program. Now on to logic games! This is a series about some of logic and critical thinking games we include in our homeschool. You can see the first...