Homeschool Discoveries

You know how it goes…time flies…when you are…having fun, preparing for Vacation Bible Camp, preparing for a big road-trip vacation, oh and getting ready for a new school year all at the same time!  I looked back today and realized it’s been three weeks since I did a wrap-up post!

Here’s some of what we’ve been up to:

The week of July 22nd we went on a field trip to the Oliver Kelley Farm and did a three day local “mini mission trip” called Mission to the City:

The week of July 29th we visit the Minnesota Zoo with friends from our co-op, and took a weekend camping trip in Clear Lake, Iowa with some old friends from our college days (and their three cute kids!):

The animatronic dinosaur exhibit at the zoo was a favorite on that outing, and a new bike carrier for our car led to a favorite on the camping trip — actually being able to take our bikes with us so we could take a bike ride with our friends!

A highlight from this week was a field trip today to Historic Fort Snelling, a site near us that is a fort that was recreated to be as it was in the 1820s, complete with costumed characters.  The boys’ favorite was watching the soldiers doing their drills and shooting their guns.  Miss M’s favorite was chatting with the cook in the kitchen and doing a scavenger hunt:

Here are a few other highlights of things we’ve been up to lately:

1. New books are arriving in the mail/UPS…but between Vacation Bible Camp at our church (which I am in charge of, so it is kind of time consuming), and our big vacation, we won’t be starting until the day after Labor Day, just like most public schools around here.  I’ve updated our curriculum page with our picks for 2013-2014.

2.  Watching bikers go by for a local 24 hour bike race

3. – 4.  Helping out with making summer treats (mini popsicles and rhubarb crisp)

5. – 6.  Having fun, laughing and playing

7.  We actually played a math game this week (Corners) — not something we have done much of this summer!

8.  Our National Night Out block party is always a top summer highlight.  This year we had to wrap it up early, unfortunately, due to a sudden thunderstorm.

Whew,…that’s it for now.  I’m looking forward to all our hard work with VBC coming to fruition next week, then relaxing and having fun on vacation.

Linking up with:  Collage Friday and The Weekly Wrap Up.

I’ve had a little “side job” for over a decade helping edit a small devotional publication.  My deadline is quarterly, which is a great situation because I can re-arrange my life for a couple weeks before the deadline to fit work in as necessary, and then I can ignore it for a couple months!

I should have learned by now, after 18 months or so of regularly writing this blog, that I can almost never accomplish writing blog posts and editing at the same time.  Note to self: Write some articles ahead next time or just plan to take a break…instead of thinking “oh, I’ll get to that” and just not posting.  🙂

This past two weeks has been even crazier than usual.  I may not be trying to get schoolwork done with the kids but…

We’ve also been doing:

• Daily tennis class for the older two kids at the neighborhood park
• Swimming lessons 8 days out of the past two weeks, plus random trips to the pool where we have a pass as well.  I like to get swimming lessons out of the way at an indoor pool before summer really starts…but the program we like was full for one of the levels the kids needed, so that bumped us into summer lessons at an outdoor pool.
• Miss M still has her guitar lesson…and the boys are thrilled to play at the park during lesson (and everyone plays all together for a bit afterwords).
• We had a HUGE storm that knocked out our power for only about 15 hours (some people were out for days).  Thousands of trees fell all over the city (luckily, none of them were in our yard!).
• We fit in a quick trip last weekend to the Minnesota Children’s Museum
• I told the kids, “No monarch caterpillars right now. We’re too busy”  We usually raise at least one every year.  Then my mom brought some milkweed for us to replant in the yard (for future caterpillars).  It was in water in a jar, and I promptly set it in the corner and forgot about it.  Lo and behold, a couple weeks later…there were three healthy caterpillars munching on the milkweed.  So, we went ahead and brought them in the house and put them in our caterpillar boxes.  🙂
• Oh, and on top of all this…I had a garage sale with my mom and a neighbor that lasted three days over two weekends.  Crazy!!!  It was supposed to be last month, but we had to postpone it due to rainy, cold weather.   At least it was a successful sale and I am pleased with how much stuff I got rid of and how much money I made.

Needless to say, not a lot of organized “summer school” activities took place…though we have been doing a lot of reading aloud to relax from all this craziness.

Here’s to a (maybe) relaxing weekend, and hopefully finishing my editing before the 4th of July holiday.

I’m linking up with Collage Friday and The Weekly Wrap-Up.

Happy Friday!  Last week at this time we were heading to the Chicago area for a four day “mini vacation.”   We went for a family event on Saturday, and had Sunday free for sight seeing (driving there and back took most of the other two days!).

I already shared this collage earlier this week in my post about our museum visits, but in case you missed that post, here it is again:

A Trip to the Field Museum and the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

The day after we returned, Miss M left again to spend the rest of the week with my mom.  Grandma takes each of the three older kids for a special visit “one on one” each summer.  It’s a fun chance to get extra time with her in a different way than they can with their siblings around.   Miss M will return later today!

So, it was just me and the boys this week:

We had one completely rainy day — which was the perfect time to play board games and math games, enjoy some color by number printables, and do lots of reading.

Ever since our visit to the Field Museum, the boys have been very interested in mummies.  I pulled out a few books I was collecting for our next trip through ancient history, and we also watched a Netflix documentary about Egyptian mummies.    I also started a new read-aloud with the boys — The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary.   Mostly Mr. E is listening to this one, and we’re read at least two chapters every day this week.

Despite the fact that it’s not overly hot, we went to the pool twice this week.  We’re making the most of our season pass…even if it means that I’m shivering while I follow Mr. J around the little kids’ pool.

The boys (or the boys and I) also did a bunch of things I have no pictures of — like tons of time playing with neighbor friends who are out of school for the summer, a trip to a really large play area to meet up with an old friend of mine from college days (who recently moved to our metro area), errands conducted in a relaxed manner (instead of having to cram them in at the end of the day or on weekends like we often do during the school year), and tons of play with legos, blocks, light sabers and toy cars.  🙂

I totally flopped at having Mr. E  practice reading this week.  We’ll try and get back at that next week, I guess.

I have a suspicion we may end up back at the pool later this afternoon if it’s not raining.  Then we are looking forward to a busy weekend.

I’m linking up with Collage Friday and The Weekly Wrap-Up.

This was our third week of summer break — though the weather has still not been very cooperative to make it feel really like “summer.”   We also started adding in just a light amount of “summer school” into our schedule.

Monday, we headed to the Minnesota Zoo for a short visit after running an errand to a friend’s house nearby:

We especially enjoyed the special exhibit of African animals, the outdoor Bird Show, and the baby prairie dogs.  Baby prairie dogs are really adorable!

In other highlights this week:

1.  Miss M (age 9) built  new Lego Friends set she received as a belated birthday gift

2-3.  The two older boys (ages 4 and 6)  practiced making scrambled eggs

4.  Though we don’t own a cat of our own, Miss M really loves cats a lot.  So much so that she spent some of her birthday money on jar of catnip to make homemade cat toys as gifts for friends with cats, and for herself to use while playing with the many friendly cats on the block.  Thanks to Family Fun magazine for a great idea (I continue to get this magazine not because I ever take the time to read it…but because Miss M loves the crafts and other fun ideas!).

5.-6.  Speaking of fun ideas, Miss M really wanted to make this travel art case she saw on one of my Pinterest boards.  It was a total fail (my fault — I couldn’t figure out how to properly cut the case).  She made a small cardboard-and-duct-tape small crayon box instead with inspiration from daddy.

7.  With continued less-than-ideal weather much of the week, Mr. E created art work as well.  I really liked this one he is holding up in the picture.  I think he said it was a “Red Guard with a Double Bladed Lightsaber.”  Or something like that!

8. We finally planted a garden.  The kids and I took advantage of a short break between rain storms and planted a few veggies on Wednesday afternoon.   We’ll see if the weather is favorable the rest of the summer for actually growing any vegetables!

9.  Miss M and Mr. E continued typing practice with Dance Mat Typing this week, and everyone played educational games on the iPad.  “Summer School”-wise, Miss M started learning about Minnesota History by reading two “Studies Weekly” newspapers, and I played math games with the two older kids. And of course we did plenty of our usual reading aloud.  Like I said, a nice, light start to a bit of planned summer learning.  🙂

I’m linking up with Collage Friday and The Weekly Wrap-Up

This was a short week for us (as I’m sure it was for many people) with our family returning late Monday afternoon from a 4-day weekend out of town.   It felt more like a “break” week than last week did, since last week was so full/busy.   We didn’t make any big plans — we mostly stayed home (besides taking care of a bunch of errands…and actually having time to do them in the morning before everyone was tired and crabby!)

When it was time to take our summer break, I told the kids I would give them two weeks without bugging them about “school stuff” at all (We have some light schoolwork planned for the summer).  But they still managed to learn a lot anyway.  🙂

I tried to keep a few notes of the learning activities the kids did this week…mostly on their own initiative, or with a little prompting/suggesting from me when they were out of ideas on a few rainy afternoons:

• Letter writing (Miss M — age 9)
• Using the dictionary to check spelling (Miss M)
• Snap circuits (Mr. E  — age 6 and Mr. K — age 4)
• Fill-it-in Math Word Problems (like mad libs, but with a math question at the end)
• Miss M and I tried a new yeast bread recipe (Italian breakfast bread)
• Educational iPad games
• Science “One Minute Mysteries”
• Mr. K dictated a short story to me
• Started “Owls in the Family” as an afternoon read-aloud with all three older kids
• Finish a woven potholder (Miss M)
• Miss M learned how to make twice baked potatoes
• Typing practice (Mr. E and Miss M)
• I finished a long read-aloud with Miss M
• Finding new books at the library (a nice review of using alphabetical order for Miss M)
• Practicing etiquette at a backyard tea party
• Birdwatching in the backyard (we observed a female goldfinch for quite a while)
• Started Life of Fred Cats, at the kids’ request
• Random picture book read-alouds

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and Homeschool Review!

Not only was it the first week of summer break for the kids…I ended up taking an unplanned blogging break too.   I had plenty of ideas to blog about…but I just ended up being too busy with other things:

1.  Swimming at an indoor pool (we received two one-day family passes almost two years ago to a pool not especially close to home, and we finally got around to using one of them).

2.  Last weekend Tony built the kids a giant sandbox, and got it filled with sand on Tuesday afternoon.

3.  Miss M celebrated her 9th birthday on Tuesday with an “old fashioned”-themed birthday party that evening.

4. – 6.  Miss M’s wish for the day of her birthday was to visit the MN History Center — everyone had a blast.  We saw two newer exhibits — one aimed at kids about MN history in general, and one about Minnesota’s role in the Civil War.

7.  Miss M and I made cake pops for a end-of-year co-op picnic on Thursday.  They were just as hard to make as I always feared they might be.  😉  Luckily they tasted good and were snatched up in a few short minutes at the picnic.

8. – 9.  Enjoying a long weekend hanging out at Grandma’s house with swings, monopoly and lots of room to run and play.

Hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and Homeschool Review!

Whoo-hoo! It’s Friday, our standardized testing is done for the year, and we’re calling it a wrap on this school year.

Here are a few highlights from our week:

1.  Miss M had our required-by-state-regulations standardized testing this week.  We opted to do the Iowa Test of Basic Skills with our homeschool co-op.  It gives Miss M a quiet environment away from siblings, (and with no worries that I might not be a fair test administrator to my own child).   On Monday and Tuesday I read a test to a younger student from another co-op family (and the boys played with other siblings too young to need to test).  Then on Wednesday while 3rd graders and up continued testing, I took the boys to play at a park.

2.  I told Miss M I would treat everyone to lunch after she was done with the last day of the test.  She picked Little Ceasar’s Pizza.  I asked her if that was what she really wanted, because I didn’t mind going to the “nicer” pizza place…but no, she really wanted the cheap pizza as her post-test reward.  🙂

3. Miss M is thrilled to now have more time for outdoor pursuits…like trying to climb the tree in the front yard.

4.-5. Miss M and best friend Miss J from across the street had the brilliant idea of a “free art” stand.  They get to have fun chatting with neighbors and others who stroll by, and I get the side benefit of less paper accumulating in the house.  I told them they can definitely do this one again!

6.  We had one surprisingly hot day in the middle of the week, surrounded by warm or even cool days.  The temperature was over 90 degrees on Tuesday, but unfortunately our outside faucets were not on yet and I couldn’t manage to get them on myself.  So, the kids enjoyed water guns and buckets of water.  Mr. J can’t quite figure out the water guns yet, but he could definitely use part of one of the guns to cool off the “old fashioned way”  (aka just dumping the water on his head!).

7.  Today was our “official” (as I determined it) last day of school for this school year.  I had originally planned this for next week…but the way our schedule was shaping up, we’ll not have a single “ordinary” day.  And we always call a summer break by Memorial Day. So today (among a couple other errands), we bought a few new books for summer reading at Half Price Books, and went to Panera for a treat and to discuss our favorites, least favorites, etc from this year (that will deserve it’s own post, perhaps, another day).   This afternoon I’d like to do some clean out of school supplies, books and papers…but I am not sure that is going to happen.   I guess that’s what “break” is for!

Between our Monday-Wednesday testing and our “last day” today, we went to one of our favorite museums, The Works, on Thursday to see a new exhibit and do the new activities in the “design lab”:

It feels good to be on break…like maybe I can catch up or begin on a few projects and goals of my own.   I promised the kids I wouldn’t bug them about any summer schoolwork/review for at least two weeks (though I am still going to try and keep Mr. E practicing reading…I’m afraid even two weeks would be too long of a break for him with his budding reading skills!).

Then once June rolls around, we’ll add in math review/games, learning to type (at least for Miss M, and maybe Mr. E), and a summer study on our state’s history (coupled with plenty of field trips, of course).  At some undermined point (July?), we’ll add back in a few new lessons in some subjects…leading up to two weeks of vacation in the end of August, then a full start to the new school year on September 3rd.  Good times!  But for now, bring on the Summer Bucket List!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and Homeschool Review!

Happy Saturday!  We had a busy day yesterday with little time for blogging, so I am reviewing our week today!

Yesterday afternoon the older kids had Ornithology/Bird watching classes at a local wildflower garden/bird sanctuary.  While the big kids were in class, the little boys and I went to visit a nearby bog and pond (and we observed some birds ourselves):

Here are a few of our learning highlights for this week:

1. I am trying so hard to not rush Mr. E through RightStart C too fast…but somehow even though I planned to only do one new lesson this week and then review or play games, we did three new lessons AND reviewed/played games. 🙂  We enjoyed Short Chain Solitaire and Subtraction Corners this week, and tried a game of Long Chain Solitaire (but that was waaay too long for a six year old’s attention span!).

I am planning on no more new lessons for a while, and just doing review/games for the summer…but this math-loving boy may insist on learning some new stuff over the summer.  I just don’t want him to finish C before the end the next school year, since I already promised a friend she could borrow my D book next year!

2.  Speaking of level D, Miss M finished the very last lesson in RightStart D! Hooray!  She liked this week’s drawing/geometry lessons because they required less precision.  😉  It’s on to games/review over the summer, then RightStart E in September.

3.  and 4.  I printed out the new Star Wars free printable packs from 3 Dinosaurs and Royal Baloo.   There were tons of preschool-level pages that kept Mr. K busy for days, plus Mr. E was thrilled to find fun printables at HIS level as well (he especially liked the clocks, word problems, add/subtract sort and word search).

5. Miss M is really into Robins, and did a lapbook and science unit about them recently. Just when I thought the robins must be nesting somewhere else, we had the opportunity to observe a robin building a nest on the overhang of our house this week!  We watched while a male robin very industriously brought a ton of nesting material up over the course of only a day.    But now we haven’t seen him very much in or near the nest, nor have we seen a female in the nest yet.  We haven’t really done much research about robins’ nesting habits yet, but we are hoping that we will see a pair at the nest soon sitting on their eggs!

6.  Congrats to both Miss M and Mr. E on completing their Geography Challenge at co-op.  Mr. E had to recite his complete address and phone number, as well as identifying the highlighted states on the map in the picture.   Miss M had to know the locations of all 50 states again this year.  Each student gets $5 for completing the challenge for their grade level, so they have a lot of motivation to practice.  🙂

7.  Miss M spent some time cooking this week.  I finally had the confidence to let her loose in the kitchen (after helping her select a recipe and making sure she found all the correct ingredients.  I actually left the kitchen and sat in the dining room (close by so she could ask any questions!).  She did an excellent job making these M & M Blondies all by herself.  She also make some pizza dough with very little help from me.

Not pictured:

History:  We finished up our Civil War unit with a few more book basket selections read.  We’ll be studying our state’s history in an informal way over the summer.

Spelling/Reading:  Miss M finished up lesson 36 in Logic of English Essentials with another perfect score on the end-of-week assessment! Yay, Miss M!  We’ll now take a break from spelling lessons over the summer.  I think we’ll do the last few regular lists from Essentials in August, and start over the with the advanced lists by September.   Mr. E checked off about “three and a half” more lessons of LoE Foundations.  He read all of “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and part of “A Fish out of Water” (two scheduled books in the curriculum), plus did two lessons with spelling lists.  I would still like him to finish up the remaining 4 lessons currently written in the Foundations curriculum sometime in the next two weeks.

So, other than those few spelling/reading lessons for Mr. E, we’re basically done for the year other than testing and fun stuff like field trips and a couple other fun “at home” activities I want to do to wrap up the year.  🙂  Next week Miss M has standardized testing from Monday through Wednesday for most of the morning each day (once travel time, breaks, etc are figured in).  That will involve me and all the kids as well, since we test with our co-op.  I’ll be administering a test to a different age group of students (other than Miss M’s group), and the boys will play with other kids too young to test.

Just for fun, here are my favorite “Cute Toddler” shots of Mr. J this week:

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and Homeschool Review!

Last weekend (and all way into Tuesday), we had beautiful weather.   And then it got cold and snowed again.  But let’s focus on the fun we had over our beautiful weekend:

We so enjoyed a family bike ride, first Dairy Queen trip of the year (It’s an outdoor/seasonal DQ), grilling, and a bonfire.  It was J’s first taste of S’mores!

Here are some of our learning highlights from this past week:

1. Miss M had her first-ever guitar recital over the weekend.  (See my “G is for Guitar” post here.)

2. It was warm enough to do school in a tree on Monday!

3. Mr. K was really into his dry erase/wipe off books again this week.  But low and behold, I actually did some RightStart A math with him as well.  He really wants to do school most days…it’s just hard to prioritize the 4-year-old!

4.-5.  Science and History book baskets are looking empty as we returned read books to the library and we’re wrapping up a science unit on backyard birds (with some other random nature-related books thrown in), and our history unit on the Civil War.

6.  In Logic of English Foundations, Mr. E has completed up to lesson 108 (with the exception of one “read a book” lesson for which we didn’t have the book on time from the library).  He’s doing a “match the contraction” activity in the picture.

Only 5 more lessons with spelling words, and three more lessons with books to read are left (of the 115 that have been written — I think the final program may have a few more).   Miss M did a review week in Logic of English Essentials.   We’ll do one more lesson next week (#36) before we break for the summer.

7.  Mr. E practiced 4 digit addition this week in RightStart C…and we played a lot of addition and subtraction war.   Since he is a Kindergartener is in early lessons of what is typically a 2nd grade math book, we’re good to take a break whenever.  😉  He loves math, so I am sure we’ll do some new lessons next week, and maybe even while we are on summer break.  But even if we don’t do new lessons, my goal for him is that we would find fun ways to review/work on facts over the next couple months so he doesn’t forget all we’ve worked on!

8-9.  Miss M continued with drawing/geometry related lessons in RightStart D.   Today’s lesson involved drawing and assembling a paper cube. Only five more lessons left in level D (not counting the bunches of lessons we either skipped because they were review, or covered with alternate lessons in Math Mammoth instead).

Next week is our last “normal” week before summer break!  It hardly seems possible given the weather outside! And we might be able to be mostly done at the end of the week if everyone works hard.   Then we have three days of standardized testing for Miss M the following week (it’s a state requirement to test here in MN), and the week after that features Miss M’s birthday, and a special end-of-the-year co-op meeting and picnic.   I will be tickled if we can be mainly finished up at the end of next week, and use the “extra” days in the next two weeks before Memorial Day for field trips, educational games, extra reading time, and other such fun pursuits!

Have a wonderful weekend…I hope it is warmer wherever you are than it is here (where it is cold enough for freezing rain and snow flurries).

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and Homeschool Review!