Bug Week

We're going on a bug hunt.

We're going to catch a big one.

What a beautiful day!

We're not scared!

Uh, oh, a creek. A cold, shady creek. We can't go over it, we can't go under it. Oh No, we have to go thru it! Splish, splash, splish, splash!

We're going on a bug hunt again tomorrow!

I gathered up all our shiny collage paper and glitter and we made shiny beetles.

We made coffee filter butterflies. We made these cool flowers with bugs that rotate around them.
We read:

In the Tall, Tall Grass by Fleming

Beetle Bop by Fleming

Bean Thirteen by McElligott

The Lion's Share by McElligott

Ant, Ant, Ant (An Insect Chant) by Sayre

Thelonius Monster's Sky-High Fly Pie by Sierra

Bird, Butterfly, Eel by Prosek

Bright Beetle by Chrustowski

Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum by Wheeler (BIG hit)

Bugs Are Insects by Rockwell (great introduction; my two year old asked me all week "is a cricket really an insect?")

Have You Seen Bugs? by Oppenheim

I Saw an Ant on the Railroad Track by Prince (BIG hit)

DK Big Book of Bugs

A neat reference for adults is Play and Find Out about Bugs: Easy Experiments for Young Children by Janice VanCleave. It has some really neat, easy ideas.

We listened to:

Pete Seeger, Birds Beasts, Bugs and Fishes

Jane Murphy, Songs About Insects, Bugs and Squiggly Things

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs (Vol 3 of 8 theme based Music CDS)

We watched:

The Jeff Corwin Experience: Insects and Arachnids (We all loved this video. After some boring ones the last few weeks, this has reassured Thing One of the value of science videos. Just the right combination of scary and gross.)

DK Eyewitness DVD: Insect

A Bug's Life

We concentrated on what makes an insect an insect, and how they are useful in the big scheme of things. I told the boys that if they were kind to insects all week, they would earn a "Bug Buddy" certificate. I had Thing One tell me some ways that bugs are helpful in order to get his. When they got them on Friday, they were so proud! You can find your own here.

Volcano Week

We studied volcanoes in school this week. We touched on beginning geology. We talked about how volcanoes form, the types of volcanoes and where they are found. We talked about the structure of the earth, and about the three main types of rocks.

Our list of books this week:

Hill of Fire by Lewis (We used some activities from the unit study here and lapbook activities here)

Volcanoes by Branley

The Adventures of Polo by Faller

Eyewitness Books: Volcanoes and Earthquakes

Magic School Bus Chapter Book: Voyage to the Volcano by Judith Stamper

Magic Tree House: Earthquake in the Early Morning by Osborne

Magic Tree House: Vacation Under the Volcano by Osborne

Volcano! by Nicolson (I like this one because it lists easy science experiments inside)

Braving Volcanoes: Volcanologists by PetersonThat Crazy Eddie and the Science Project of Doom by Cox

Into the Volcano by O'Meara

That Crazy Eddie and the Science Project of Doom by Cox

We examined some rocks closely and talked about their texture, color, and about how shale will flake off in layers. Thing One asked to smash the slate, which led to me learning a secret of little boy happiness. I gave him the hammer and permission to smash any rocks he wanted. He loved this so much, he even asked to do it the next day as well.Of course, we had to make a baking soda and vinegar volcano. We took an small empty bottle and wrapped it in crumpled aluminum foil, and put the whole shebang into an old roasting pan. Add a few teaspoons of baking soda into the bottle, mix your food coloring into a small pitcher of vinegar, and pour the vinegar into the bottle. Do you see the joy on his face? It was worth getting everything in my dining room stained red.

We got a really nice intense red color from food coloring paste (versus liquid).Friday afternoon, I pulled out my nice acrylic paints and some small canvases and let the boys paint real paintings. Here's Thing Two who insisted on having the biggest paintbrush. These are Thing One's:

And Thing Two's:

I'm so proud. I think they are fantastic. They are going on the wall as soon as they're dry!

See you next week, when we explore BUGS!

Airplane Week

We had kind of a lazy airplane week. I feel bad because I just didn't put the effort into filling workboxes that I usually do. I did a good job on Monday but was lazy the rest of the week. I'm starting to think that a good homeschool schedule for us might be three weeks on, one week off, year round.

Thing One has been saying for a year that he wants to be a pilot when he grows up. Specifically, a fighter pilot. Monday, I researched what it takes to become a pilot, and what a pilot does in his job, and I made workboxes about each of those steps.

Overview of a pilot's training and job duties, why it's a stressful job

School-I asked a few questions of each boy like what's 2+2, sing the ABC song, etc. You could present them with a diploma and a graduation hat, if desired.

Pilot Training School-They sat in their chairs and pretended to fly a plane as I narrated what to do.

Health Check-up- I was the doctor and used the play doctor kit to certify them able to fly.
Pilot License-I printed out a photo of each child, their name, address, etc on the back, and put them together back to back and put contact paper over each one. You could also use an old badge holder. I also gave them "pilot's hats" which were just two hats out of our dress up bin.

Checking the Weather and Aircraft-We pointed to today's weather on a chart, and then pretended to check the outside of the aircraft (our chair) and fuel it up.

Planning Routes-I made a Departure/Arrival Chart on a piece of posterboard. Thing One looked at our US map and decided what city he wanted to leave from, and where he wanted to land. We wrote these on our chart, plotted the cities on a dry-erase US map and he drew lines between them. We compared which routes which were longer, shorter, etc. We also wrote times on our chart, and discussed AM and PM, noon and midnight.Seating Chart-I made a very simple plane diagram with four rows (A, B, C, D) and four columns (1, 2, 3, 4). I made up silly passenger names like Angry Alice, Bald Bart, Perky Pam, etc and wrote them on index cards cut to fit inside the boxes on the chart. On the back of each card, I wrote a letter and number (4D) and Thing One had to put these on the right place on the chart. He also had fun reading the names. I also made pilot, copilot, and flight attendant cards to put in the Cockpit and Flight Attendant sections of the chart. I think this would be fun to do with stuffed animals, too, on a large sheet of paper or a sheet or just mark the floor. Just tape the chart coordinates on the bottom of each animal. Payday-I put some play money in the workbox for their salaries

We also made some simple styrofoam prints of some of Thing One's airplane drawings. I cut cardstock to postcard size so we could mail these for our postcrossing project. These turned out really cute. The only step added to my basic directions are that I taped Thing One's drawing onto the styrofoam, and he traced over it with a dull pencil, pushing hard into the styrofoam.

Our airplane reading list this week was:

Miss Mouse Takes Off by Ormerod

Cam Jansen #12 The Mystery of Flight 54 by Adler

Airport by Barton

Eyewitness Books Flying Machine by Nahum

Strange and Wonderful Aircraft by Weiss

Feathers, Flaps and Flops by Zaunders

Moon Plane by McCarty

DK Experience Flight by Platt

Goosebumps How I Learned to Fly by Stine

We listened to:

Most Amazing Truck, Train and Plane Songs (Music for Little People)

My Green Kite CD by Peter Himmelman

We watched:

Bill Nye the Science Guy's video about Flight

Reading Rainbow Bored with Nothing to Do

We made several paper airplanes. I have to admit that none of them flew worth a darn, but Thing One had fun with them. We had fun experimenting with how to improve their flight. Paw Paw sent Thing One a neat book of paper airplanes recently called Pocket Flyers by Ken Blackburn & Jeff Lammers. They are pre-printed sheets that you fold into tiny paper planes. I love that there are multiple sheets of each plane.

We wrote a few interview questions for Paw Paw because he used to be an air traffic controller, drew him a nice picture of airplanes, and stuck it in the mail.

We learned about an early aviator from Brazil called Alberto Santos-Dumont. You can learn more about him here. There are some nice links and activities on this site. This was a nice opportunity to learn about Brazil and do a bit of geography with our globe and map.

Friday we went to the College Park Aviation Museum. We had been there several times before. I made a scavenger hunt for Thing One to do while we were there, based on things I knew were there (map, model plane, goggles, etc).
Daddy let Thing One play "Flight Control" on his ipod. This is his new obsession!

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

That's all til next week, when we learn more about volcanoes!

Parrot Week

What the heck do you plan for a whole week of parrot themed activities? Well, I'll tell you what we did.

I asked Thing One what it is about parrots that interest him and that helped me figure out where to go with our studies. He wanted to know more about talking birds.

Our book list:

Princess Penelope's Parrot by Lester

Beastly Feast by Goldstone

Talking Birds by Flanagan

Parrots by Altman

We listened to Nonsense Poems and Stories on CD by Edward Lear

We had a pirate day. We read pirate books and dressed up like a pirate.

Our pirate book list:

Pirates Eat Porridge by Morgan

Tough Boris by Fox
Pirates by Lamm

For crafts, we stuck feathers in a styrofoam ball and glued googly eyes on it for a parrot head. We printed out some parrot bookmarks, colored them, and laminated them.

We looked at and felt real feathers, looked at a picture of different sizes and shapes of feathers, and learned the parts of a feather. We talked about the different ways that feathers help birds, and the different ways that people use feathers. We talked about types of beaks and why different birds have different kinds of beaks.

We watched silly videos of birds talking and playing and bathing in the sink on youtube.com. We watched volume one of David Attenborough's Life of Birds but Thing One declared it "boring." I think he doesn't have quite the attention span for it yet. I thought it was fascinating.

We played a parrot game, where one person was the bird owner and one person was the parrot and repeated everything the owner said.

And I saved the best for last. We got to visit a friend who owns a 12 year old African Meyer parrot named Oscar. The boys got to pet and hold him. He knows how to shake hands which they thought was soooo cooool. They fed him tortilla chips.

We tried a new kind of puzzle for our treasure hunt this week. I put a clue into code that had five letters in it "Mom's room" (five counting the apostrophe). Each day after finishing his first workbox puzzle, he got the key to one letter in the week-long puzzle (?=M for example). By the end of the week he had the puzzle solved and found the treasure chest. I gave him a "Canadian Oreo", a maple cream cookie that daddy brought back from Canada this week.

We also found a venus fly trap at the local garden center and Thing One is so excited about his new "pet." He is thinking up a name for it, and chasing house flies to feed it.

I Love Mondays!

I understand why most folks in the workaday world hate Mondays. I used to have the boring 9 to 5 job that I dreaded returning to on Mondays.

Nowadays, I love Mondays! Our weekends are always full and fun, and usually exhausting. Monday is our slow down day in a way. It's our get-back-into-the-routine day. It's usually my catch-up-on-chores day. I always have a lot of energy on Monday mornings. I always seem to get a ton of stuff done. And I love that feeling of accomplishment when I get a lot of stuff done.


Last night I prepared a few activities for Thing Two (who happens to be two years old). He has seemed content enough to be included in a few of our school activities (if we do a crafty simple workbox I prepare enough supplies for two, and I've been planning at least cooperative play activity per day that all three of us can do together). He likes to play by himself downstairs most of the time. But I felt a bit neglectful and I want to offer him more structured activities. He may refuse them but I feel like I at least need to have some prepared in case he wants to do something. So I made him a mailbox out of empty oatmeal canisters and a shoebox, and a packet of empty junk mail envelopes, play "stamps" (stickers), old postcards, and a small shoebox that he can make into a "package" to send or receive. This turned into our daily cooperative game before 7:30am! Both boys loved it. I remember Thing One loving it at this age.






I also prepared some cut up straw segments and a couple of pipe cleaners to thread them on. He mostly filled up his dumptruck with them and said they were pipes. I bought a bag of multicolored popsicle sticks and he liked building roads for his trains and cars with those. We also laid them out in shapes for a few minutes. I made some animal matching cards, and a new shape puzzle. He wasn't too interested in those today.












Thing One's first workbox is the weekly treasure hunt box. We've been doing a treasure hunt each week. Upon completion of a "puzzle" (usually a worksheet or physical puzzle), he gets one word in a five-word sentence clue. For example, last week's clues were "The opposite of wetter is" and he had to figure out "dryer." His wooden treasure chest was hidden in the clothes dryer with a whole dollar bill inside!


Today he had to complete a new puzzle of a world map. He's been bugging me for one for months and I found one in the Target dollar bin.






Our theme for the week is Penguins. He chooses each week's theme. We did a couple of small lapbook activities from http://www.homeschoolshare.com/. I've printed out a couple of games from http://www.filefolderfun.com/ for later in the week. We usually do one or two lapbook activities Monday thru Thursday, then put it all together on Friday.

We also did a file folder game of the sign language alphabet. Thing One has become very interested in learning sign language. I think because some of our friends at church know it and use it as a family. He also likes to make up his own secret signs, and often chooses to communicate with me in strange gestures that he assumes I can understand. He likes making up all sorts of things like this. Stories, yoga poses. He's always inventing.








We played a rousing game of Scrabble Junior, on the difficult side of the board today. Thing One was learning how to play his new words onto the existing words.










Then we played the generic version of Jenga (Jumbling Blocks $4.99 at Target). I picked this up because Thing One has been playing a Wii game called Boomblox, and it has a Jenga-inspired section. He didn't really understand the mechanics and physics of it. So I thought playing the real game would be fun and would help him understand. It certainly did, and he loved building towers and playing the game. Thing Two loved lining up and stacking up the blocks as well.





At lunch break while the boys played, I finished up the laundry for the day, and then started baking. I set out two loaves of bread to rise. DH is playing around with a recipe from mother earth news that says you can have freshly baked bread in five minutes per day. You mix up a big batch on the weekend and leave the dough to sit in the fridge for up to two weeks. You take a chunk, let it come to room temp then bake it. It turned out pretty well. I forgot to slash the top so it busted open and isn't pretty to look at but it tastes yummy. It develops a sourdough flavor the longer it's been in the fridge. This one is about 8 days old.


While two the loaf pans were rising I made blueberry cornmeal muffins from a recipe I got from Family Fun magazine. My kids love blueberries, and love corn muffins so I thought I'd give this a try. I've been looking for good easy breakfasts. We each had one at lunch. I love them. Thing One picked out the blueberries. He says he doesn't like them cooked. Thing Two didn't really eat any of his. On to the next muffin recipe, I guess!





While Thing Two napped, we watched March of the Penguins, read Tacky the Penguin, Gor Vol. 2, and played a simple animal classification file folder game. I made it from a worksheet I got from http://www.montessoriforeveryone.com/.








Then we played outside, blew bubbles, dug in the dirt, ate dinner, took daddy to class, had a bath and story time, and I put the boys to bed. Whew! It's been a great Monday.

Homeschooling 101

I'm Misty. I homeschool my two sons, ages 5 and 2. Perhaps one day I will blog about how we came to decide upon homeschooling. It was a long, twisty journey. I am not surprised that we have ended up here. It seems quite comfortable, like I was supposed to be doing this from the start, only I didn't trust myself enough to choose homeschooling from the beginning.

I don't know if I am a "stereotypical" homeschooling mom. I have a Fine Art degree and a French degree. I worked lousy jobs until our first son was born, at which point my dh's job allowed me to stay home with our son. I have no plans to rejoin the workforce anytime soon. I can't imagine doing any other job than managing our household, educating our kids, and enjoying seeing them grow up. So that makes me "conservative" in a strange way. But I am very politically liberal. I voted for Obama. I'm pro-choice. My dh and I belong to a UU church and choose mostly secular curricula and books. But I am comfortable teaching my kids Bible stories because I want them to be literate about Christianity. I teach them Buddhist and Hindu and Muslim stories for the same reason...I want them to be literate about all world religions.

We live in a suburban area outside of Washington DC, which is a fabulous place to homeschool. We are close to Baltimore, DC, and Annapolis. We are within easy driving distance of NYC, Philadelphia, Richmond, tons of historical sites and great museums. There are tons of co-ops, playgroups, support groups, and umbrella groups in this area.

Some of our homeschool challenges are living in a very small townhouse. Our boys share a room so that we can have a small classroom and office space. We are always cramped for space. Our oldest son is extremely bright but is a handful...He is already reading quite well, can add and subtract numbers up to fifteen, is extremely creative and imaginative, can memorize anything especially if it's set to music. But he is often very oppositional, and has a very difficult time transitioning. Getting him motivated to do anything is a fight. Often every step of our day, from getting dressed to doing a workbox to eating dinner is a battle. It's a little early to tell but it appears that our younger son has a very similar temperament. It's hard to tell if he's just mimicking big brother. There are days I want to run away, or even *gasp* put them in public school and go back to work. I miss my private time. I miss having time to make my own art and quilts and crafts, not just file folder games and lapbooks. But I do some yoga, play some bejeweled blitz, plan some workboxes, and start over again the next day with an open mind and heart.

I am decidely eclectic in my hs approach. I recently discovered the "workbox" system and have set up 12 boxes per day for Thing One as he is affectionately called around here. It is working extremely well for us so far (four weeks in). I'm doing unit study so far. He is choosing the unit theme. We have done dogs, cats, monsters and ships. I will slowly be incorporating Five in a Row, All About Spelling, Miquon Math and Story of the World. All in good time, Thing One's just starting Kindergarten in the fall.

I have a fabulous dh, who is totally supportive of homeschooling. He is the type of dad that is home each day at 5pm to help cook dinner, bathe the kids and read them stories, and take off during the week for a field trip. I could not do this without his loving help and support.