Taking a Blog Break

Hope to be back when this migraine is over.

Crawfish Day

Today was finally the day for another dissection day. Here is the smooth looking chick. Doesn't she look pretty?

So how did we know it was a she? Well there are ways of figuring that out and we did it. As you can see in this next picture my darling son was barely touching this beauty. I could tell he was not liking this. He was sort of turning a slight shade of green. I don't know what is wrong with these kids. hehehehe I had my hands all over this girl and these guys were barely touching it.

This picture shows it all. I was having fun but I could tell he wasn't. So I gave him a break and I finished it all for him. I think he was happy about that.







Here is the book with all the lovely pictures. Now who wants to do this. I'll be happy to come on over and help out. *wink*

Make sure you click on the pictures to make them super big. I wouldn't want anyone to miss a thing. *ROFL*

Watching the Birds

Today was a fun day. We went to art class. While the boys were at art I went to the grocery store. Then went to the library for the library book sale. I must say that the sale was very disappointing. Almost all the books were already sold and it is just Wednesday. Next time I am going on the first day.

We got home and I saw birds. So what does someone do when they see birds or at least what would I do? hehehehe Yes, I grabbed my binoculars and my camera and went outside to see what I could take pictures of. This first picture is the regular house sparrow. I see them all the time but sometimes I just get the right picture and today was the day.

I also got a picture of an American Kestrel. This is one cool bird. I love the colors on this bird. I looked in my ID book on this bird and I saw a funny thing. It said that they are usually found perching on telehone wires. I've always seen them on the wires and I was able to get a picture of one on a wire.



Then I saw this bird. I saw some yellow on the rump. I had no idea what it was but then figured it out. I had a *duh* moment when I figured out it's name. Ready? It's a Yellow-rumped Warbler. Wow, what a great name. I wonder who was the genius that named that bird?

So those are some pictures for our nature time today. Hope you enjoyed seeing what we see and maybe I'll encourage you to do the same cause I sure would like to see some bird pictures from your neck of the woods.

Lewis and Clark

Today I finished up some notebooking pages on Lewis and Clark. I also have the book Seaman the dog who explored the west with Lewis & Clark. We will be going into this study soon and figured this book will be perfect for our reading book. Some books I've chosen for reading and one as a reader. Then there is that neat book with with different things to read and projects to make.

Netflix also have some PBS documentaries that we will be watching. I can't wait to get into this. Check out the google group for the free notebooking pages on this.

Little House for boys?

What do you think? I've always wanted to read the Little House books but since I have boys they have always looked down on it. They look at them and say that those books are for girls. I am still going to read them. Has anyone ever tried reading them to boys with success?

Since starting this blog earlier this week, I started reading the first book in the series. I can't wait to continue to read these with the boys. Even though, they complain every time I say that it's time to read the book they listen intently. So I guess that means, don't tell anyone we like the stories.

Another book I wanted to get was The Prairie Primer to go along with the books. I saw it last year at the homeschool convention and almost got it but then I figured the boys would complain about the "girly" books I was going to have to read with them. So guess what? hehehe This book is on order. Now I'll be looking to see when it gets here. This book is a unit study for a year or two. It goes thru every subject except math. I will be using that for some of the subjects so it can go along with our reading.

One more thing I got.....yes, the cookbook. I saw one at the library and it seems to have more reading in it. It tells you a little about where it was referenced and in which book. I think it will be nice for the boys to see how people used to eat and what they used to eat. Maybe they will not make faces when I make beans or dishes like lasagna. What do you think, should I make them some succotash, blackbird pie or what about pot roast of ox? Yummmm.....I can just see you all laughing at the thought of me making it. I'll be outside running around like a loony trying to figure out how to catch those blackbirds. hehehe

Can't wait to see how the reading goes and can't wait for UPS to drive up with my little box of books. "Like I really need anymore book!"

HIstory -- American Revolution

American Revolution

I don't need my children to know a lot or go in depth on some topics but I do want them to know some of the history of this world. I am not those moms that have co-ops or classes on some history topics. I'm not the type of mom that goes all out when it comes to history and war. Yes, it is interesting to see what happened and how people went about it but it's not going to help my children to know every single detail on the subject.

So our way of doing some things is by notebooking pages and dvd's off of Netflix. PBS and History Channel documentaries are usually pretty good with showing our family what happened in history. We are a documentary movie type family.

What about the notebooking pages? Well, I love making these pages. I like lapbooking but notebooking is my favorite. That is the reason for the google group with all these pages posted on there. I just need to work on some more pages. More pages soon to come.

Scheduling

I have been working on scheduling our school time and other things. I got inspired by a sister who is doing the same and figured I should give it a try too. This first picture is our school schedule of our day. I wonder if I can stick to it? I sure am going to try. Don't forget to click on the picture to make it bigger. The spaces that are open during the day and early afternoon are for school. Not that we will be using all that time for school but I have it open for that. This is just my first draft. So it could change as we move on to another week. I want to see how our day progresses and see what I can change.

If you are wondering about this picture.....it is a chore list. I have been wanting to do this for a long time. I have a morning chore chart and an afternoon one too. I might make a few of these up with different things on them and then I can move them around and not do the same things over and over. For now I will get them used to this for a few weeks and then will change things around.

I am going to try to live by a more scheduled life. Some what of a scheduled life, anyway! I'll let you know how it goes next week sometime.

Nature Days

Well, I thought I would play around a little with the colors to go along with the birds. Sometimes I just amaze myself at how creative I can get. hehehe This is the first time that I've ever seen an American Robin in our trees. I was able to get some good pictures of them and this one just eyed me as I slowly got closer. This bird is all over the country. It is supposed to be in Canada in the spring and summer for their breeding times. As for now they are here and I was able to catch some with the camera.

Then we saw the Rusty Blackbird. There is nothing Rusty about this bird. He is totally black. It just stayed put so I could take a couple of pictures of him and then it flew away.

My little one is always looking to the sky to see what bird is flying around. Maybe we will see something new next week.

We Did It!

Well, today we finished our prep work for the meeting. Yes, this counts as school. This is the most important work there is. We read, wrote and discussed everything that will be used and discussed at the meeting. The book Come Be My Follower is not on mp3 yet so I could not download that but that is where we practiced our reading.

I also made these pages that I will probably work on a bit

more still. Tomorrow will be a longer text so I will see if the lines are too big and maybe I can put 2 days into one page. This is counting as handwriting. I told them they had to do their best handwriting on these pages. Now hopefully their writing will get better and not look like chicken scratch.

I think this is a good time to start a new schedule that includes all prep work for the meetings and try to make it still. We started out our year right. Now, let's see if we can keep it going. A sister is working on her schedule and I figured I would too and see if we can stick to it. I will eventually post on my schedule when I get done with it.

So what have you all done? Are you including meeting prep as part of your school day or do you do it later on in the evening?

Is this school?

Today was a rushing sort of day. The boys go to art at 1-2:30pm so the morning seems shorter. Maybe it's that we have to leave the house by 12:40 so they can be on time and that means lunch before then too.

We listened to the last 3 chapters of the bible reading for this week. Then they got to their math. By the time we finished math it was time to rush and eat lunch to take them to art. I took some books back to the library while the boys were in class. It is always a luxury to spend over an hour in the library without the kids saying, "Are we leaving, NOW!"

At dinner time, which by the way was delicious, we listened to My Book of Bible Stories on my ipod with the speakers my hubby got me. This is the first time that the little one really paid attention without having that look of being in la-la-land.

So ends our day.

I've always heard if our studies would or could be considered as part of school. I say, oh, absolutely! I consider it in the language or english category. We learn and sharpen our listening skills. We also take turns at time with reading the publications. I would still like to add a bit more like maybe some copy work and I would be happier.

That was our day today and I am hoping tomorrow will be better.

Laundry Detergent in the Making

A while back I heard about making my own laundry detergent. So I looked into it. I looked at several sites. Most of them looked about the same with the exception of a few here and there. Basically they were about the same though.

Here is what I did:

1 bar Ivory soap

1/4 cup Arm & Hammer Washing Soda

1/2 cup Borax

I grated the soap and added 6cups of water to heat then added the soap a little at a time. Melted it. Then added washing soda and borax till dissolved. Removed from heat. Poured 4cups hot tap water into bucket. Added soap mixture and stirred. Then added 1gallon plus 6cups of water and stirred. Covered it with lid and let sit for 24hrs.

The end result was.....not what I was expecting. I is just looks like soapy water. No gel at all. hhhhmmmmmm So what happened? Don't know but I have half a bucket of this water to use. hehehe I wonder how long it will take me to finish this so I can try again?

Anyone have any ideas? Suggestions?

FWN

Ok, so I have not posted in a while. We were sick for a little over a week and I think maybe, perhaps, the oldest is getting sick again. Not looking forward to more sickness.

We did start the new arrangement. We had family worship night on Tuesday. It was fun. We went over the Jan Awake mag. We did the last page called How Would You Answer? My little one was so excited to do the Children's Picture Search. After finding the pictures he was so proud of himself and said, "I am good at this." It was so cute. Glad we only have 3 kiddos because there is 3 pictures. Each got a picture to look up and then they could look up and find the others.

After doing that we also listened on mp3 to the article A Penchant for Pizza. That was a yummy article.

Next week we have decided to go over the information for CBS (congregation bible study). We also plan on listening to some other article on mp3 and discuss it.

All the boys enjoyed it and the little one still talks about the 122ft pizza which he said was bigger than our house.