Fun School Day

Monday's are always hard days to do school. For some reason the 'kids just wanna have fun'. That reminds me of a song about just wanting to have fun. LOL Anyway, we started off slow today. The kiddos got to go outside for PE. They ran around, rode bikes and just enjoyed throwing sticks. I'm so glad our extra TVs broke down and died. I see more creativity now in finding things to do since there is no TV to entertain them.

Our weather has been getting more spring like. If you live down in the southern part of Texas then it's time to start preparing gardens and planting. Not trying to make you Canadians jealous at all. hehehe So our project this year is to seriously start a garden. I've been looking at a blog at My Nature Journal which she shows square foot gardening. So that is what we are starting this year. I hope ours come out ok. We have just started so we will see how it goes as time goes on.

After spending some time outside we came inside and worked on our math lessons. It took us around 30mins and that was with me running back and forth from one to the other and keep encouraging to finish. We did finish and there was no crying about not wanting to continue.

We also did my notebooking page on Sergei Prokofiev. It was an easy page and just a page to review what he had already learned.

Oh and sometimes it helps for my son to wear headphones to keep him focused and to work faster. They were happy to have done this page. It will go into our Art & Music Biographies binder.

Then it was back to playing outside. AAHHHHH nice productive day!

A Boy, A Bird, A Duck and more....

Another creation by yours truly. I love making notebooking pages to go along with what we are studying and learning. This time around was Sergei Prokofiev. That's the Peter and the Wolf guy! I have always loved listening to that. I remember hearing it for the first time when I was in school. That was many, many moons ago. I enjoyed it! I could actually see the whole thing going on even though we only heard it when I was in elementary.

We will work on this one tomorrow. Maybe the little one will want to hear it again. I sure do hope so. This page is going into our Art & Music Biographies binder.

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.

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.

What is Lapbooking?

I got an email from someone wanting to know about lapbooking. So here are my thoughts on lapbooking. If you go to this squidoo page you will see pictures and links to different lapbooks. I love to go back to this site often to give me more ideas.

Basically lapbooking is a crafty way to do school work. Instead of the monotonous worksheets they can make little books and other paper crafts to show what you have learned. You use a file folder to put all your little creations on one place. Then your child has this folder as a study method or an easy way to review things learned. The picture shows a lapbook the boys did on Marco Polo.

Then there are these other links that you can go to learn more about lapbooking.

http://lapbooklessons.ning.com/
http://www.homeschoolhelperonline.com/lapbooks.htm

There is not only lapbook but also notebooking. I like notebooking just as much as I do lapbooking but notebooking is faster to do than lapbooking. Notebooking is more like a one or two page worksheet without the work. hehehe I have made several notebooking pages that we have used from topics like Benjamin Franklin to nature pages. Here is a link about a 50 states notebook.

These two forms of learning are great for younger kids, those with learning disabilities and for the creative kids. This is because they don't do too much writing but enough to not get them tired and frustrated like with a worksheet. Then they have something nice with pictures or drawings that can be kept and looked over and enjoyed for many years.

We are working on a lapbook about Christopher Columbus right now that was a freebie from Hands of a Child. Hands of a Child is an online store that you can buy these lapbooks ready made and download them directly to your computer. You then print them out and do them. The work is all done for you. You don't have to make the projects all you do is print them out and have the kids work on them. They also have a quarterly freebie and right now it is one about Thomas Alva Edison. Dec. 16th will be the last day you can download it free. There is also Currclick that will have a freebie every week and sometimes they are lapbooks.

I hope this answers some lapbooking questions.

A Little of This and That

We got lots done today. Well, I guess it would be yesterday since I am up late into the next day. For those that don't know, I am a night owl. Here are the boys doing their math. My baby is doing triple digits. He loves to see how he is doing big boy things.

Here is middle son hard at work doing his math.

We have also started a HOAC lapbook on Christopher Columbus.

Both boys are hard at work and so far we have finished up to 4 activites for the lapbook. These two are the only ones that like lapbooking. Our next lapbook after this is on Benjamin Franklin. I will print that out on colored paper. I've always printed them out on white paper so they can color but the lapbook on Benjamin Franklin is going to be done fairly quickly so colored paper it is.

Between our other work and the lapbook on Columbus we are starting on guess who? The pages give it away. Today I made up another notebooking page. The boys really enjoy when I read to them and they have a page to do.

When we get the other notebooking pages done I will be sure to post them on here for you to see. For now this will have to do. Today was a little of this and that day. Hope you enjoyed reading what we have been up to.

What is the difference?

We were watching tv and a program was on about alligators and my baby asked what the difference was between alligators and crocodiles. So what was my response?
I promptly told him we would go over the information in the morning. So I made a notebooking page and the next morning we read about it. We looked up some sites on the internet and looked at some books in our library. Then they wrote and drew. I just love these pages. These are pages I will keep forever and when they are bigger I will look thru them and remember the fun.

I put this page on the google group if you want to use it feel free to print it out.

Arm-a-dillo

The boys had fun this day. Isaac came inside and told me he saw an armadillo. So of course I went outside with my camera. We found it trying to hide behind our shrubs and it did not being found. It started running. The one thing I found interesting about an armadillo is that while running they also take big hops.
That is how he got into the pool. He took a big hop into the pool. I guess he thought it would be easy to get out. WRONG!!!! We had to get this long pole we have with a net to clean the pool and Isaac put it under the armadillo to give it a chance to get out.
It did get out and went right to a sprint and hop and ran into the tall grassy field by our house.

So in honor of our armadillo I made a notebooking page. I put it over on Homemade Homeschool.

Nature Studies

We have decided to do a tree study a while back and never got around to it. This week we finally did it. I made a notebooking page for our tree study and that is what we used along with the book Handbook of Nature Study. We still have to do one more thing. I want them to take the boys outside to do a tree rubbing but I'll wait till the mosquitoes die down some.
I loaded up those pages on the Homemade Homeschool group. Along with the following one about hummingbirds.
Since we have had a ton of hummingbirds at our house I had to make a notebooking page for them and read up on them.
As you can tell these pages are pretty easy for the kids of all ages to do. I want them that way because I do have a little one and then the older ones. Even if you don't have hummingbirds you can still read up on them and have some nature time with the kids. Did you know that a hummingbird nest is about the size of half a walnut? Amazing isn't it!