Sunflower Math

Today Logan and I planted a heather plant in our front yard. When we were done, he asked me how tall the tallest sunflower plant was. So we looked it up. Google is great that way!
We found out that the tallest sunflower plant ever was 25ft 5-1/2 inches. This is a video of us measuring out the height of that plant together. We had a great lesson. After measuring the plant, we measured a few other things around the house and graphed them. We learned that we could stack four of our van on top of each other to be as tall as the tallest sunflower plant. It would take at least six Logans to be as tall as the tallest sunflower plant.


Logan decided to color in his graph by the colors of the rainbow (ROYGBIV) in order. All in all, a very educational afternoon - all because of a simple question. This is a great example of why I love homeschooling my kids. It's not always easy, but it's always an adventure!

Our Week in Review

It was a crazy, busy week for us. I don't think I can even mention everything that happened!

SCHOOL:
We're studying Galileo, Newton, and John Locke this week and next. We've got some great library books on these guys. Along with that, we're learning about observation and the scientific method. Logan and Brynne practiced being scientists by observing ants and tracking them to their nest. They did a simple experiment to see what sorts of food the ants would be interested in. We're also working on multiplication, handwriting, reading "Farmer Boy" aloud, and doing a short Gospel Principles lesson daily.
The kids helped me organize our school books. We put color-coded stickers on the binding. I wanted Logan to be able to see at a glance on which shelf a book belongs. I can also suggest books to them by color depending on what I want them to read. I've got them divided up into five categories: educational non-fiction, K-5 fiction, 6+ fiction, free-reading, and toddler books.

Hannah's been busy doing state testing at school. She had a rehearsal and concert for her choir class. It was really fun! I enjoyed the concert - the teacher did a good job of making it entertaining (because you know it could have been long and boring). Hannah just has a few more weeks of piano for the year and then she'll have a summer break.

Brynne is contemplating going to school next year. I suppose we need to get on that and register her. She is eager to have her turn to experience that world. Personally, I haven't loved living the life of both homeschooling and public school parent. It really is harder to do both. Brynne is lucky to already have some friends that go to school and I'm sure she'll have an enjoyable experience. And I guess I can survive it again. :-)

Josh and Logan headed out to the Father/Son campout on Friday, which was rained out. They got part way over before we found out though. So the dads and sons in our ward took a detour and spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa R.'s instead. They stayed up late playing games and had a yummy breakfast in the morning. Us girls had friends over for dinner (and went to the concert together).

Heading to the rained-out Father/Son Campout.


Brynne's favorite reading spot these days. Cute, huh?


We finished the week with Natalie's baby blessing today. Grandma and Grandpa R. were able to come over for the weekend. We had them and some friends over for lunch afterwards. It was a nice time chatting.

This is just a casual shot in between the "good" pictures that grandpa was taking. Kenna was not feeling cheerful. Can you tell? She got a little pushed around in Nursery earlier.

Logan snapped this on our way out the door. I'm just super glad to be going home to LUNCH!

My School Update for January

My school updates are mostly for me. I like to have a summary of what we studied. If you're not interested...don't read!

This month in school:

We've had two history lessons every week. Our family lesson has been about the 1600s...including some Indian history (that's India the country) about a grandfather-father-son dynasty with the coolest names. They called themselves: "World Seizer", "King of the World", and "Conqueror of the World". Obviously they had healthy self-esteems. "King of the World" was the 'builder' of the Taj Mahal. We looked at lots of pictures of that amazing structure, sampled Indian food, and read some stories about India.

After that unit we turned to Great Britain where Charles I had been crowned king. He dissolved Parliament, was ousted by Oliver Cromwell and then executed. Oliver Cromwell took control of England, but turned out to be a less than stellar ruler. He died and was succeeded by Charles II. So far in our reading Charles II is surviving, but London is not. We've been reading about the Plague and the great fire that destroyed 4/5 of London during this time. Makes for great visuals. :-)

Our other history lessons have been ones I'm teaching for my children and another family that joins us. We have been focusing on American History, starting with the Revolutionary War and so far including the War of 1812. I love studying the founding of our country so it's been wonderful to be able to share some of my favorite stories about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others. There is a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about Paul Revere that has been turned into a picture book with beautiful paintings. I highly recommend it. Just search for works by Longfellow at the library - the poem is in it's original form - not condensed. Some parts might need to be explained a bit to children to help them follow the story.

So that's history. Science has been taught by the family that joins us for our American History unit. They've learned about how to conduct experiments, made fog in a jar, and are observing and learning about clouds right now.

Logan is getting ready to start his official reading program. I planned to sign him up mid-February (so it would still be around when I had the baby and could entertain him a bit for me - it's online). Brynne has been reading like crazy. Both kids doing handwriting every day and that's been fun. I write crazy sentences for Logan to copy. His favorite so far was 'Purple penguins play ping-pong'. Obviously, he was practicing his P's. :-)

For math Logan has been practicing his addition and subtraction facts up to 20. I am teaching him about fact families to help him remember which numbers are related (for example, 3+4=7, 7-3=4, 7-4=3).
Brynne is in a review period. Before I start her on multiplication I want to be sure she has a really good grounding in basic math. It seemed to work for Hannah to put multiplication off a year and just focus on accuracy, speed, and usage of basic addition and subtraction concepts. So Brynne's working on borrowing, carrying, and doing her math facts as quickly as possible (on her head, of all things). We won't start multiplication until beginning of 4th grade instead of introducing it now. One area that she is naturally ahead in is fractions...because she loves to cook! She has also memorized some conversions such as how many tsp to a Tb and how many TB in a quarter cup, etc. Interesting to me what children will choose to learn.

Hmmmm. Is there anything else?

Oh, Music - Brynne has suddenly developed an interest in playing the piano. She plunks away as often as I can stand it. I'm letting her explore and play and teach herself for now without launching into formal lessons. So far she's learned several songs from our beginning piano books.

Gardening - we have spent a lot of time working in the yard before the rain starts (yes, we're getting rain again!). I read in the garden section of the paper that January should actually be one of the busiest months in your garden as you clear out old growth, weed, and prepare for spring planting. So I've taken that to heart! On Saturday we visited a nursery run by a friend of ours called Simple Succulent. Our friend specializes in....succulents. Are you surprised? :-)
They grow so well in Ft. Bragg. We have decided to plant succulent ground-covers on the patch of gravel to the north of the driveway. It's the ugliest strip of ground! It gets walked on once in awhile so we wanted something green, that didn't need much water, and could handle occasional traffic. We received a lovely lesson about different types of succulents and some advice, and then were free to browse. Succulents have not always been my favorite plants, but when you see so many varieties grouped together they are interesting to look at and compare. Josh and the girls planted two varieties and we have a third kind to put in still. I can't wait till they've taken root!

Fun Stuff - Hannah was treated to a riding lesson by a friend in our ward. He taught her the basics of saddling and handling a horse, then they took the horses to the outskirts of Ft. Bragg and rode in the hills for 90 minutes. Hannah LOVED it. Brynne was a little envious, but she was very nice and hopes to have a turn herself when she's older.

We've been given a multitude of fresh farm eggs this past month. Got to love having cousins in town!!

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Yep! We just had our first, ever!

Parent-Teacher conference was great. We just love Hannah's teacher. She is very positive, very friendly, and very honest. She was looking at Hannah's reading grade (which is given by her reading teacher) and was so puzzled. He gave her a B+ as her overall grade, but in all the breakdown categories she was a high A. So Mrs. Gibney said she'd ask him about that and see what his reasoning was. Hannah was with us, so Mrs. Gibney explained to Hannah what the grades meant and told her what a good job she was doing and that her hard work was really paying off. Oddly enough, she thinks Hannah is rather reserved and not outgoing. Which is the opposite of what everyone at Church thinks. I could see where she'd get that - sometimes Hannah is reserved, but I never think of her that way because she's so much less shy than Brynne. Anyway, we were pleased! So no grounding for Hannah THIS term. :-)

Seeing as how my blog is my best chance to brag...I will tell you some of what we learned at the Conference:
Hannah is reading at a 7th-grade level. She has a reading fluency of 145 words a minute (goal for someone reading at her level is to be at 139 by the end of the year).
She is doing well in math and getting around a B+/A-.
Probably the area she needs to work in most is Grammar (which is mostly due to her hurry).
The teacher said she writes great sentences - very creative. She should be working on making them more advanced (like bigger vocab usage).
Hannah did well in history.
She qualifed for the Honor Roll, which will be presented at an assembly....eventually. I didn't catch when.

She's doing awesome, but being suitable challenged!!! That's what we want.

I was thinking how a lot of times home-schoolers define themselves by having super smart children. It seems to be an easy way to measure against public school. I mean, how else do you know if you're doing a good job. But of course, having the smartest kid in the world is so much less important than having one who's also caring, responsible, and has great faith. All around the board, I think Hannah's doing a great job. Good job, kiddo!

Friday Fun Day

We had a pretty fun week of school!
Today we read "Ox-cart Man" and started a lapbook/book report on it. We've got pretty much all of the major pieces in. A few still need to be filled out. I also have a creative writing assignment for Brynne to do that will be put in the lapbook later.

Here's the front (love my color copier):

Here's the inside:

For science the kids made an Autumn Nature Collage out of odds and ends they found in our yard.

They also wrote letters to their aunt Jelaire, who is not feeling well. The dreaded morning sickness that can't seem to confine itself to just the morning time. :-( Somehow, the collage and the letters overlapped. Logan's letter has a little pocket with tiny flowers in it (his own idea and SO cute), as well as lovely chunks of redwood bark glued to the front. Just a little bit of California for ya, Jelaire! Brynne decorated her letter with flower petals and a cute picture of a baby - just to remind Aunt Jelaire that it will all be worth it when it's over. At least, that's what we tell ourselves, right?


For History we studied the Pilgrims and the Mayflower Compact. More on that next week. Next week we'll also be assembling a Thanksgiving lapbook. I've been collecting resources this past week and we'll do it on Tuesday when Hannah can be home to join in the fun.

I made Logan a Shape Match lapbook to help reinforce his shape recognition. I was surprised the other day to find out that he's still confusing triange with rectangle. So this book will be a fun way to practice, and Kenna and new baby can play with it themselves when they are older.

Brynne read the entire "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" (read and listened to the CD) in two days. Thanks for the book/CD combo, Grandma! This was a great way for her to tackle a more difficult book without getting discouraged.

Anyway, that's our week in review.

P.S. - today I made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies that turned out divine. You can find the recipe HERE. I made 2 adjustments. I did 1/2 wheat, 1/2 white flour. Also instead of 1 full cup of white sugar, I did 1/2 cup of honey.

Today's photos

We're always busy - but some days seem more productive than others.

As I promised the kids, we did do our apple wreath. It was EASY and looks fantastic. Brynne picked the apples for me and we all assembled the wreath.

Kenna has been a regular trouble-maker. She's trying to climb over my gate! I know she can climb safely upstairs, and she can slide back down them okay, but she's still not safe at the top of the stairs (doesn't know how to turn around and go feet first). Also, the family room, which is full of things she shouldn't be eating, is her most favorite place in the WORLD. So when she makes it upstairs it's a race to the family room. Thus, we need that gate for a little longer. I just can't believe she's trying to climb over it already. I tried moving it higher and it was too hard for Logan to climb over. :-)

Last, the kids got a surprise souvenir from Disneyland: lollipops!

Did I ever mention what they spent their hard-earned money on?

Hannah bought a Tinkerbell watch, a journal with a lock, and a super long pencil.

Brynne bought a journal with a lock, a Tinkerbell coloring book, and a set of Tinkerbell twistable crayons.
Logan bought a Pirates of the Caribbean coloring book and a deck of Star Wars themed playing cards.

Here is Kenna loving her new Raggedy Ann baby. She gives kisses by pushing her head/face against whatever she's loving up. So cute!

Kenna has learned to play the Kazoo. Fun stuff. She is one of our noisiest children EVER! Such an embarrassment in Sacrament Meeting!

September 29 - October 4

As always, a busy, busy week! I'll try to think of some of the highlights.

Kenna has been oh-so-cute as I have posted below. She's definitely our loudest child - she demands attention with her voice I think. She likes to vocalize and hear herself talk and she does it with a lot of force. I don't think we'll have to be reminding her to "speak up" when she's older. More like the opposite!

Logan is so hysterically funny. He's very patient with us not-so-smart parents. He's very proud of his math skills and we've been focusing more on handwriting, too. He's working on forming his numbers better. He likes to do simple worksheets with adding and subtracting. He's essentially finished most of my Kindergarten math curriculum. I still have a couple more things from the book that I want to introduce to him. This is why I never recommend purchasing a Kindergarten curriculum if you are going to be homeschooling. It's essentially advanced Preschool and then you move right into first grade. It's a year of exploration, stories, and discovery.

I finished up a history segment about Mary, Queen of Scots, and then her son King James I of Scotland (who was also James VI of England after Queen Elizabeth died). It's the time period when the first explorers were sent to North America and founded Jamestown. We made an old English cake called Parkin as part of that activity. It's pretty tasty. Not as sweet as we might think cake should be - and gingery! But good!

Brynne is reading like a maniac. She's reading a book that I just finished called "Dragon Slippers". It was a fun book. It was a little older than I thought Brynne would be interested in - she usually sticks with shorter chapter books. This book is more around 200 pages or so and has bigger, more advanced vocabulary. She's enjoying it! Her soccer game took place in the rain today - much to my dismay and the delight of 10 little girls on our team. :-) And if you read my post about soccer woes, you'll be wondering how it went. Well, we didn't win. We held the other team to 1 point per quarter in the first half. They changed their strategy in the second half and scored a few more times. I wasn't really keeping score but we think we held them under 10 points (which is HUGE for this team) and definitely kept their star player from scoring 9 points on her own. :-) The girls felt really good about their efforts and they played really hard. Brynne thought it was a lot of fun.

Hannah has been working really hard in school. She and I played Multiplication War last night and it was such a good review for both of us. We used cards from the game "Phase 10" (which is super fun if you've never played it) and those worked really well. We took out the skips and wilds and just used the number cards (1-12). So we can now multiply up to 12x12...can you? :-) Hannah finished Eragon this week so now she's ready to choose another book for her silent reading. I think she really liked it!

Josh is....working hard. Is that any surprise with the current state of the financial world? He's coming home so much later at night than we're used to! He and Logan like to go out in the fading light and play a game like frisbee or basketball. Kenna loves to sit at the back door and watch them. In all Josh's spare time he's been making salsa. We were given a HUGE boatload of tomatoes. Some were to share with Josh's parents (but they didn't come up this weekend to get them and they won't keep). We're sharing with our ward and STILL making more salsa than Josh can eat. That's saying something! He's in heaven with all that salsa and we're enjoying the bounty of tomatoes.

We've been picking apples from our tree. I think we'll have to get around to making applesauce or pies. Just the thought of peeling and coring all those apples doesn't sound too appealing (no pun intended). They are a little tougher than the kind you buy in the store, so it's harder for the kids to help me. Their little hands get tired so fast. But it would be a good activity.

I realized today that I'm very close to halfway through this pregnancy. It's going so fast. I'm feeling the baby kick quite a lot (though I don't think anyone else could yet). I have so much on my mind and so many things going on I don't focus on being pregnant as much as I usually do. It's kind of nice. Some days I even forget entirely! I guess that's a sign that I'm feeling really good. I just hate looking stout!!!! I'm trying not to gain too much weight. I did really good with Kenna and I'd like to keep it under control again.

The last thing I want to do is introduce you to a cool website called Goodreads. I don't have to check it regularly and if there are updates they go to my email, so it's very low maintanence. It's a site to share what you're reading, rate it, and review it if you wish. You can connect with people you know and see what they're reading and how they liked it. It's nice to see what my friends have liked because we often have similar tastes - and I hear about new books to try! Josh, Hannah, and I all have accounts (Hannah likes to see what her cousin Mandy is reading)!

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Math Games

We've invented a new pick-up game to make cleaning more fun...and secretly sneak in some extra math practice. Brynne and Logan love it. I give them an equation such as: 20 - 15 + 7. They have to solve the equation to figure out how many items to pick up off the floor. It will work for multiplication, too!

We also play addition, subtraction, or multiplication WAR. You remember that favorite card game of children? (Just so you know, we only do one or two run-throughs. That game can go on f-o-r-e-v-e-r). Instead of laying down one card, we lay down two and either add them, subtract them, or multiply to see who wins the cards. Laying down two cards at a time also makes the game go faster. We can lay down more cards to get into higher addition! We use the face cards so that they are adding anywhere from 1+1 to 13+13. For a 5 year old, that's big time math! Logan's getting really good. Plus, the face cards don't have symbols on them in the amount of the card's value so it adds an extra challenge.

Week in Review - August 18-24th

Photos:
Kenna enjoying her first cupcake
Brynne working on an art project - a 2D dollhouse
Logan at the beach with Devon

School: Hannah had her first week of school. She's now walking to and from school each day (not her favorite option). She is making friends with the other girls in her class and seems pretty happy. Logan and Brynne did semi-school last week - just kind of working us back into the routine. They're really into soccer right now and spend all their spare time out on the lawn kicking a ball around and playing a number of games/drills that Brynne learned at soccer camp. Hannah had her reading evaluation for the school-wide reading program (they put in you a class based on ability and the first two hours of each school-day is spent on reading). We know nothing except that the woman told Hannah she was reading above grade-level. Duh! That's always been the case with Hannah-Banana!

Home: Kenna is finally getting more mobile. I swear she's the slowest to crawl out of all four. She is just not highly motivated, and doesn't seem to be able to figure out that in order to get what she wants, she needs to move her legs! She's finally army crawling, to a point. That's pretty hard work! She's definitely getting into more trouble. She's very fun. She loves food and thinks that baby food is D-I-S-G-U-S-T-I-N-G! She spits it right back out at me. Which is a slight problem only because I was using prunes to keep her bowels moving as they should (she's had a constant battle since she was tiny). So now I've resorted to sugar. Mainly, the sugar found in the syrup on mandarin oranges. She gobbles those yummy treats up and is quite happy - and regular! I'm sure that's more information that anyone else wanted to hear.

Josh: Josh is going and going. He manages to stay out of trouble. He is buying me a new van - we pick it up on Saturday. I'm happy! Between having Devon here with her car, and having many (but not all) of our fall activities start - and start causing car-sharing difficulties, we decided to bite that bullet. Josh took the kids out on "dates" this past week that they had all earned through some major cleaning work. They had a blast. It was their reward of choice. Poor Logan chose a date with me...which will happen. But he wants to go out to dinner together and that's a little harder to pull off. Meetings and sports keep getting in the way. But we're putting it on the calendar and it WILL happen this week.

Kelly: I've been getting more organized. I'm sure Devon thought I was about the laziest, most un-organized person she's ever met. She basically saw me at my worst. Messiest house, sleeping in too much, lazing around on the couch, and totally un-inspiring dinners. Yeah. I'm lucky that's about all morning sickness was this time. She can be grateful there were no other
issues. She definitely carried me through the worst of it. Including taking the kids to the beach so I could have naps! So now that she's gone, I'm stepping up to the plate. The house is looking cleaner. I've been cooking more. I even have been wearing make-up once in awhile! It's a new me!

First Day

Today was Hannah's first day of school! She was up and dressed before I even made it downstairs to make breakfast! (Which was yummy, by the way - stuffed French Toast!)

I drove her up to school and walked her to class. I just love her teacher, so far. She even mentioned that her nieces and nephews are home-schooled! She's a very cheerful, happy person and we loved her classroom when we visited this past spring. Hannah's in one of the recently remodeled classrooms - but it's not entirely finished yet. For instance, no clock! No hooks for coats and backpacks! And no shelves for that poor teacher to store her school supplies! And no direct route to the gym. The hallway leading to the gym is torn up and under construction now, so they have to exit out the rear (towards the playground) and circle around the outside of the school. Which will be oh-so-fun when it's raining! The school seems a little disorganized to me, but I'm going to chalk it all up to construction woes (like, apparently they have rules about what can be put in lunches and what can't - but they haven't sent home any sort of paper on that). We're just playing it by ear right now.

The other kids and I got started on a more normal day, right away. They really wanted to do science (we have some pretty cool science kits) so we spent about an hour doing that, then some playtime, and now on to other subjects. It feels strange to not have Hannah here, but at the same time it's nice to focus on the other two kids.

Monday, Art Day

This photo is from two weeks ago. The kid are getting very serious when we do still-life drawing. It's cute!