Personal Felt Boards

These were really easy and fun to make. I got the idea from the Martha Stewart site and made mini ones instead of one big one. This could be a fun thing for your home school closet (it's where I put mine) to practice ABC's, tell stories, talk about colors, shapes, really anything!

Just get masonite board and cut into 8x10 pieces (my husband did this for me, I'm totally a girl when it comes to that stuff). Spray adhesive spray and cover with felt. I used foam letters and kid creations from the craft store and glued them to felt pieces and cut out felt shapes. You can also cut out pictures from coloring books, magazines or whatever and either stick a sticky backed velcro piece to it or laminate it and glue it to felt to have pieces to tell stories or whatever great things you can think to do with them.

I put mine in a photo frame that I just took the glass out of but you could just leave them plain as well. Very fun.

Science Fair Ala Home School

This year Will got to participate in his first ever science fair. He chose to create a model of the solar system for his project. I was really impressed with how well he did. I got library books for him and read those and studied some Internet sites and then we made a list of what he wanted to include. He then wrote a little bit about what he learned and was excited about each object included. I thought he did a great job and all I had to do what remind him to include topic sentences. We found objects and made paper mache ones to show the relative scale size of the planets in relation to each other and I thought it turned out pretty well.

At the fair, we had a great time in a fellow home schooler's backyard (complete with chickens, ducks, goats, etc.). The kids set up projects, played, ate and played some more and then settled down to present their projects. Will was so cute, he was so confident and such the little teacher I was beaming!! He was the only kid that changed his voice to that teacher mode and asked the kids questions as he presented his material. For example, "Can anyone find the red spot on Jupiter?" Then going on to explain what it was. Very cute!! We all had a great time.

Ancient Rome

The last few weeks Will has been studying Ancient Rome in Mom Share. I got a book called "History Pockets" that guide you through information on topics while compiling a little pocket book. Combined with that, resources from friends, the Internet and library books we have had a pretty intense look at Ancient Rome. Here are a few things we have done so far:

Model of Ancient Roman kitchen

Clothing





A Bulla

Feasting

Roman numerals and ancient Roman writing tablet.

A real mosaic

Roman Soldiers

Why I Love Mom Shares

Today we did a mom share on famous explorers. I just read a little passage from What Your Third Grader Needs to Know and then we talked about why explorers explore, some of the character traits they had, etc.. We talked about places we would like to explore, what we would like to learn about the new places, challenges of being explorers, etc. Another avenue this could have lead to was space but we didn't even get that far. Will started talking about wanting to get books about Cortez and making a compass so he could explore. I didn't have to do anything but present a topic and from there Will has already given me plenty to go on to create some supplemental activities and more Mom Share topics! For me Mom Shares are about sparking kids interest, introducing them to the world, where it is, where it's going and where it has been. From there the kid can decide yep I am totally interested in that, or yeah not so much but at least they know it's out there and naturally the true human nature of curiosity kicks in. Any education class will tell you that when kids decide for themselves they will be more invested and more willing to learn. Mom Shares allow for that and days like today remind me of why it is I am home schooling and how great it is. YAY FOR HOME SCHOOLING!!!

Busy and Productive Week at Home School!

This week Will has been a whirl wind of projects and fun. I have been doing a simple mom share and then Will makes a list of things he wants to work on. I've helped him gather materials but mostly he has just worked out of "how to" type books and created some fun things. Boba Fett Sculpture

Will's Museum: Many of the things Will creates he puts on this little shelf in his room and calls it his museum. He makes little name plates and everything. I think it's a great way to display the things he has worked on.

This week we have been reading about Native Americans and some of his projects have reflected that. This is his Kachia Doll.

This is actually from last week. We have been working out of a body activity book and learning about the human body. It's pretty fun. First he traced his body and then he would read a page or two on a body part and then color and cut out that part and attach it to where it really fits in his body. This was the completed project.

Dream Catcher

This was one of my favorite things Will worked on this week. We have a bucket of random recycling stuff and every once in awhile Will will ask for it and just create something. This week he made a food dispensing hat. I had a big smile on my face as he demonstrated and then offered to me as a gift for myself! Kids seriously are so hilarious!

We also had a lot of painting going on this week. Will created a Pinewood Derby car with his dad and his school task was to get it painted. He added fire flames, very cool! Ian wanted to participate as well and painted one of the train cars while Cadey made a traditional painting.

Another mom share was on the brain, nerves and neurons. Will made a model of a neuron out of pipe cleaners and added it to his museum.

Overall a great and productive week! We are looking forward to Light and Vision, Explorers and Constellations next week!!

Homework Assignment

(Notice the "caution work zone" sign, so funny, what a kid!)

I have a Home Schooling Mentor that checks in on me close to daily. Here and there I give a happy report and this was one of those days. She gave me a homework assignment to write the experience of today so that when I was having a bad day and wondering why in the world I was home schooling I could look back on days like this and remember why it is I home school.

One of my biggest challenges is that my kids are on different levels and I haven't felt comfortable with doing projects together, they either feel too hard for one level or too easy for the other. Today though Viv had some homework (she is still in public school) for writing her name. This was one activity they could all do together. Will worked on his signature, Ian his first name in print, Viv her whole name in print and Cadey worked on her name but focused just on the C. The kids did really well and I was praising them and they looked up with beautiful beaming smiles of pride. Will started in as well looking at all the little kids papers and exclaiming what a great job they were doing, then they all started in telling each other how good they were doing. I thought to myself, "I would never see such a thing in a public classroom!!"

We read poems today and Will and I wrote another poem together. I felt a little frustrated at this point because pulling words from Wills head are like pulling teeth but somehow we got through it. We also read Ali Baba and the 40 thieves and discussed loyalty and thinking of others. When Dennis got home I had Will retell the story to his dad to check for comprehension. He needed a few reminders that Dennis hadn't read the story and he needed to explain some details but he did a great job retelling the story. Then, it was time for him to choose what to work on. He chose to build a robot from his writing book (this book has you create some concrete object and then uses it to spur on writing topics). He spent two hours collecting materials and creating his master piece he is calling Mr. Zap and having conversations with (pretty funny). Again, I thought, when would you see this happen in a classroom. He would never be allowed 2 hours to work on a project! We also did a family cleaning project of cleaning the car which was filthy. Everyone pitched in throwing out trash, wiping windows, vacuuming and cleaning dashes. The music played and kids danced and laughed as we all worked together. Again, I thought how happy I was to have these experiences. I am grateful to be the one to teach my children not just academics but values and habits that will make them confident, hard working and capable people. It's hard to home school and sometimes I want to pull my hair out, but I have a day like today and it seems clear and sure that it is right for us.

One other change we have made lately is we added an ingredient from the Thomas Jefferson Model. We added evenings. This means we do not watch TV with the kids at night (except Sunday PCandA) or let them play randomly. This is family time. We read scriptures, write in our journals and then do a family activity (mostly reading together, but could be a game or bike ride, anything that we do together). So far this has been a lot of fun. I have enjoyed having Dennis be in charge of scriptures and taking that out of the A.M. routine which leaves me more time to read aloud from picture and story books as well as Viv's homework time. I guess the main idea is that things are good today, I am grateful for the inspiration to home school and I can see glimmers of truth through my faith that it the right thing for our family.

Kids Say the Darndest Things. . .

I use the series "What your _________ Grader Needs to Know" as my curriculum guide. In it is a section of sayings and phrases your kids should know at their grade level. I decided to see what Will knew and made this little sheet for him to fill out. A few are pretty funny, it looks like we have some learning to do. I am planning to go over what the sayings mean and then write a story together using some of the sayings and phrases. Hopefully it will be a fun activity that we can do together for mom share. For now though, here are his understanding of some common sayings and phrases.

Alice in Wonderland

Will and Song made some tarts all on a winter day.
Ian stole those tarts and ate them clean away.
Will got so mad he turned bright red
And that Ian was sick in bed
Will told Song to make more fast
And they ate them all at last!!

Will finished reading Alice in Wonderland last week so we decided to make a tart like the Queen of Hearts. We also made our own little rhyme which was pretty funny. I like to have him do some kind of report after each book so for this one he is writing an Alice in Wonderland ABC book. So far it's coming along pretty well. I think it's a good way to review and show events, characters and thoughts about what he read.

Finishing Up and Continuing On

The Wright Brothers' Plane.

See model instructions here as well as complete unit with tons of info on the Wright Brothers.

South American Rivers.

Will chose a Viking name; "Will the Fast" and wrote it in Runes.

The completed Viking Helmet! RRRRR!!

Great resource and the book I used for the Viking activites can be found on Amazon here.

This week we have been finishing up projects. We are almost done talking about world rivers. For South America I had will use salt dough to make a shape of South America and add the rivers in and then painted it and put little flags on to mark the rivers; The Amazon, The Parana and The Ornoco.

He also built a model of one of Orville and Wilbur Wrights airplanes out of toothpick and an egg carton. He is almost done with reading the biography of the two brothers. He also has "invented" some new paper airplane models.

He has also continued to work on Vikings. We read a short Biography on Eric the Red and he watched a BBC biography on Eric's son Leif Ericcson's. He finished his Viking helmet and learned about Runes. He wants to dye a shirt with beets, but I haven't braved that one yet! I am hoping to find a fun way to create a Viking painting of a boat or something?? Don't know if that will happen but it has been in my mind.

This week Will also read a book of mine from when I was about his age called "No Home for Shannon" about a girl that finds a dog and how she works to keep the dog for her own. Together we are reading an abridged version of "Alice in Wonderland" and we have both laughed and found it strange. It's fun comparing it to the movie. I want to find another version of Alice for him to watch and do a 3-way Venn diagram. I am thinking too of discussing dreams and such to connect to the story.

Finally, Will has continued to work on his human body project. This week we did reproductive organs and I really thought I would get more questions from him, but I didn't and I sighed a breath of relief. I really want to pawn that whole discussion onto Dennis!!

For closet, Will has still jumped around from Core phase to Love of Learning and back and forth again. He is really trying to find things that are Love and Learning but he still really enjoys to just "play". I put together a book of projects from Disney's Family Fun magazine and he has done a few projects from there, such as building a match box car garage out of a cereal box, he has done some beginner sudoku puzzles, made paper airplanes, drawn pictures, completed some easy science experiments and read a lot. It's fun to watch him take directions and just go with very little help from me. One lesson learned that I had to step in for was liquid measuring cups vs. dry measuring cups and what specifically to use them for.

I often wonder is this really enough?? I worry he is behind in math, did he write today? Did I spend enough time? But then we have conversations about mistakes and life and I see that I am able to help him not just academically when he is home, but in life lessons that might get missed if he wasn't here with me and competing with 25-30 other children and just getting passed by or in trouble when he gets frustrated for making a mistake. I am grateful to have him home and hopefully to help him be a stronger and better person because I now have time and opportunity to see his needs more clearly and to guide and influence more directly and effectively.

Still to come this week, art project aka, valentines and park day valentine party with other home schoolers, math (I still need a small game or activity to choose) and his rec center science class. All in all I think it was a productive and good week to date.

Happy Home Schooling!