Wordless Wednesday

Homeschooling Beach Bag Style!

One of the awesome things about homeschooling is being able to pack up your books and take them with you wherever you want to travel.  You can do your work from the comfort of your own kitchen table or that of someone else.  Ground floor, basement or top floor of a condo overlooking the water.

This year we ran off to the beach for a month right after labor day.  We packed up our books and took them with us!  Being the type of people that even sunblock doesn't work for we tend to limit our time on the beach anyway, so we'd hit the beach in the early morning before the sun hit its' peak, and then hide inside with our books til the sun was low enough that sunblock would work long enough without having to re-apply it multiple times!

We had a great time learning about tides, guessing what days the surf would be really high or really low.  We got a full sample of the different types of wind on the beaufort wind scale.  We learned that wind speeds on the ground are different than those at say the 14th and 15th floors of a high rise building.

We awoke with the sun a couple times to take in the Blue Angels amazing practice sessions.  We also took the opportunity to explore the Naval Air Museum - which took us back through history a fair bit and helped the oldest visualize some of the airplanes used during various wars.  Along with battle ships.

The middlest got to practice her addition skills over multiple games of mini-golf.

Grade 1/2 (2012/13) - Current Plan

A new school year is almost upon us.  So while the kids are enjoying some much needed free time to do as they please, I am off gathering supplies for the upcoming school year.  Below you'll find our initial plans for the year, and as always I will update as we go and share any changes that we make.

Our first year of school was very successful with S. While her age-mates would be starting 1st grade this fall, S will be working on a split grade this year.  We learned of some challenges in the latter half of the school year that we need to work on - which would keep her at 1st grade level, but in some area's she's ready to blossom into 2nd grade.  the beauty of homeschooling is we can just run with it! 

Again I will continue to update as we progress through 1st/2nd Grade! :)

LANGUAGE ARTS
- Various reading level books - read alouds, chapter books, poetry - (Junior Great Reads??)
- Spectrum Reading (gr 2)
- All About Spelling (1)
- HWT (1&2) writing practice - some cards to family and various workbooks (working on this)
- Growing with Grammar 1
- Prompt Plan Write (mostly typed - as spelling skills increase!)

MATH
- Singapore Math US Edition (1B + 2A & 2B)
- Spectrum Math 2 for review and practice

HISTORY/GEOGRAPHY
- World History/Geography - History Odyssey
- USA - Geography - RoadTrip USA along with Highlights Which Way USA?

SCIENCE/HEALTH
- Unit studies and lapbook for Science

LANGUAGES
- Rosetta Stone Spanish - self paced
- Sign Language at home
ARTS/CRAFTS/MUSIC
- Artistic Pursuits
- Great Artists
- Story of the Orchestra
- Great Composers

EXTRACURRICULAR
- Daisies
- others as interests permit!
- Piano, Swimming and Soccer at a later date


I will continue to update as we progress through this first year! :)

Grade 6 (2012/2013) - Current Plan

We're always fine tuning and making adjustments here and there.

LANGUAGE ARTS
- Growing with Grammar 6
- Various Reading materials (poetry, classic literature, intro to Shakespeare)
- Creative Writing assignments from various topics
- Penmanship - finishing HWT along with various letters and thank-yous to family

MATH
- Singapore Math (6A & 6B)
- Various online computer games
- Various Worksheets for practice

HISTORY/GEOGRAPHY
- K12 History (Grade 6)
- Civics and Politics (via Unit Studies)

SCIENCE
- K12 Science (Grade 6)
- various topics

LANGUAGES
- Spanish Rosetta Stone
Re-visiting ASL

COMPUTER & TECHNOLOGY STUDIES
- Research & Investigate new Apps for iDevices - based on usefulness and practicality and cost
- Develop and maintain a webpage (still in the process of defining the details!)

ARTS/CRAFTS/MUSIC
- Extra Curricular Art Projects
- Artisitic Pursuits
- possibly study Great Artists
- Story of the Orchestra
- possibly Great Composers
- Music Projects
- extracurricular classes as appropriate

EXTRACURRICULAR
- Swimming
- Piano
- Cadette Girl Scouts (Silver Project)
- Soccer
- outside classes as interests deem necessary

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If anyone out there reading has an absolute favourite program that they want to share, I'd love to check it out! :)

I will continue to update as we progress through this year! :)

Homeschooling Year 6 + Technology

Summer is in full swing here, complete with heat indexes above 100F (40C.) So we are basking in the comfort of our air conditioned home, each engaged in our own activities. The youngest is practicing her music skills on the keyboard, the middlest is practicing her gaming skills and the oldest creating her writing masterpiece.

All jesting aside, my mind is fast forwarding to the fall and planning what we need to be working on and with for the upcoming school year. Our 7th year of homeschooling is fast approaching and this year we will add preschool (3), split 1/2, and 6th grade to our skills list. I didn't blog much last year, due to distractions and learning how to teach all three at once, plus Facebook was a major distraction and life, the blog fell by the wayside, apologies! I'm hoping to better plan my year this year, and actually have time to blog more of our adventures.

The usual line up of suspect subjects will be on the roster for the fall, including Language Arts (reading, phonics, spelling, grammar, writing -pen and creative), Math, Science, history, geography, Spanish, art, Music etc. But this year, we are hoping to add a little technology to our repertoire.

Earlier this summer my oldest and I managed to read the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins on our iPads, iPhone and iPods. This got me thinking about how we use our iDevices and how we could make better use of them. This morning I found a blog about a middle school teacher who encouraged her students to use iPads for the year. They seem to have used them in every subject and for a variety of purposes from making stop motion videos for various projects to math on whiteboard type apps while recording lessons as the teacher was explaining it!

While I think the technology is still in its infancy, it is hitting potty training pretty quickly and with great success. People are seeing the potential, both as a portable knowledge share that the internet provides, but also as a tool for teaching with specialty apps designed to suit a purpose, giving students and businesses more creative freedom than they have ever had before!

My hope  is to investigate apps that will cover our current grades, and future grades. I'd love to get involved in beta programs for review of apps that might be useful to homeschoolers.   But most of all we're looking to use these cool tools for more than videos, Internet, books and personal reminder systems.


I plan to make a better effort this year in keeping our homeschool blog a little more up to date, and hope to do a few features on the materials we are using and maybe a little R&D (research and discussion! LOL!) on the apps we find to enhance our studies.


So to my readers out there in blog-land, if you know of apps, programs or other blogs that will help us focus on our goals, I'm all ears and would love to check out your suggestions!

(the next few updates will include our grade level plans for the coming year.)

Tadpoles

As a responsible pet owner - before buying this tadpole kit, I did some research online and discovered that these frogs are called African Clawed Frogs, and that they can live up to 30 yrs in good conditions - I also learned that they CAN NOT just be released into our environment because they are not native here and so have no natural predators and can also be harmful - due to whatever possible bacteria they carry!  SO before engaging in one of these kits be prepared for a life long pet!
 

A couple years ago, we purchased a tadpole from the Grow A Frog Company.  It was a kit that provided a glass tadpole, which would grow into a frog and my dd could watch it's metamorphosis.  




Anyway  One thing lead to another and somehow we ended up with 2 Frogs.  Just my luck they end up being male and female.  The Frogs  (Lily and Tad) are now about 3 yrs old.  (Tad is the male and the littler one of the two.)

Despite reading literature on the Net - that these frogs are supposedly sterile - it turns out ours are quite fertile! LOL!  Low and behold, this past December - we ended up with a pair of Tadpoles.

(the little line off center in the above picture is a newly hatched tadpole.) 

Here are the twins Saguaro (big at front) and Barrel (smaller barely visible in the rear - seems to have growth issues) a month and a half later.  Saguaro has visible back legs and is in the state that Tad was when he arrived.  Barrel seems about 2 weeks behind in growth but also has showing back legs.  (if size is any indication, we think they are also male and female - if they are - they will be separated.)

This was an excellent science lesson for my Frog-obsessed older dd way back when and even now.  She beginning to assume the responsibility for cleaning the tank and caring for them.

I'm hoping that the 6 yr old will gain the same appreciation for this lesson!  She has claimed responsibility for the twins and will eventually end up with the resulting frogs as her pets.  So while we dabble with plants at the moment, we are also watching real life metamorphosis!

Science Experiment - What Plants Need

Some time ago, I purchased a plants kit from Little Labs, to teach my 6 yr old a little bit about plants.  The first experiment involves learning what plants need in order to grow and survive.  A little over a week ago, we took 3 paper cups, some cotton balls and water.  We planted some Cress seeds in the cotton.  One we placed in a sort of sunny location, one we placed in a dark cupboard, and one we put blue food colouring in, just for the fun of it to see if colour would affect the plant.

#1#2  

#3

#1 - The Sun Plant - Sprouted the following day and grew very well producing fine green leaves.  (this plant was healthy and as tall as the other 2 plants but got dropped just prior to the photo being taken.)

#2 - The Closet Case - Also sprouted the following day and grew well but produced sickly yellow leaves.  (I would continue to grow this plant in the cupboard for a little while longer, but my 6 yr old feels very bad that the plant doesn't look good and she is afraid it will die - can't argue with that - so now we will see what effect placing it in the sun will do to it now! - I may put a secret plant in the cupboard and watch it for a few weeks.)

#3 - The Dyed Plant - Also Sprouted the following day - grew well, and had slightly blue tinged stems.  (we're going to add more blue food colour when we water it next time and see if that will have an effect.)

So our experiment provided that in order to produce a healthy Cress plant with green leaves a plant needs water, sun and "soil".

Our next experiment, we picked up at Michael's this afternoon.  Involves a little "Egg" Terrarium.  I'm not sure yet how I'm going to present this to the girls, but I just wanted to grow a little terrarium of Herbs and Cacti and see what would happen.... I am the notorious assassin for Cacti - apparently I water them too much! LOL!