Record keeping . . .

So - here I attempt again to note down the learning we do without even trying; last night we watched "How Stuff Works" about Wheat, Corn, Coffee and Salt.

And Andrew is now on Minecraft . . . whole lot of subtle learning there . . .

And just now this morning - Sarah- my dyslexic picked up and is reading "Lift and Separate" Baby Blues book #5

Finally on our way to the local mill pond we listened to "Stink-Solar System Superhero" which surprisingly was a fun story around the planets and the demoted-to-dwarf-planet the planet previously known as Pluto and the mnemonic  "My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas." for the planets - Mars, Venus, Earth, Mercury . . . etc.  So we get home and watch on Netflix "The Planets" and that was the end of the day! 

Rube Goldberg Machines

Andrew, my "maker" has been reinventing this versions of  a hot wheels Rube Goldberg Machine.

Today we did this after we watched this video: 

And a Mythbusters where they did a Rube Goldberg machine for Christmas.  Seemed appropriate: 

Lessons by Strewing.

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Dinosaur math, enjoyed by all.

Geography lesson taught by dad.

This night, besides the math games, and letter bingo, we talked about presidents that were on our currency and Benjamin Franklin who was *not* a president but on our currency.

This spun off to a talk about what Benjamin Franklin did, and the kite and electricity thing . . . so we ended the day watching a Mythbusters (don't ya' know, we love em.) about the kite flying experience.

In these days

We have NOT been idil, I promise you!

Between educational shows on science, history, natural sciences and internet games on math and physic and logic.  Not to mention Sarah's proclivity now to shout out "What's 2x4?" for anyone to answer . . .

And those multiplication songs keep bubbling up from the girl . . . the best investment I've put towards learning.

Today Andrew and a little bit me, dissected a snake.!!!

We've classified it as a common small Ribbon or Garter snake.

So, what did you do in class today?

Sarah took these pictures.  So we don't see her, but she did participate.  Participate in helping repair dad's car.  She didn't build a city with blocks but she did do archery under dad's supervision.  She worked on a  Math workbook, but only finish half a page.  She wrote me several notes.  And she read a bit from Dick and Jane. 

Also not pictured here is a hike down into the valley where Sarah identified which way the horse was walking by it's tracts.

And Andrew got a bullseye from this distance!

Good times. :-)

Princesses, Roblox, Dentist and Mud.

On Thursday we had Health Education and Career Exploration day with a visit to the . . . . *drum roll* DENTIST with Andrew.  Who left this kid-friendly place with a new t-shirt and certificate for have 3 visits without cavities!  Woot Woot!

Meanwhile, on Friday I introduced Builder Boy (a.k.a. Andrew) to Roblox!  Which is wonderful for his building mind, but I am useless on it and had to watch some youtube "how to" to figure out how to play.  Well, once he got the hang of it his enthusiasm caught to his sister - and so I let her set up an account and play on my computer while he played on the home computer and there they were building their worlds pretty much all day!

Yesterday Sarah had a "Polite as a Princess" class on etiquette given by Princess by Design - the teacher being a former Disney princess character (Belle) and Pageant winner. (also on Facebook)

walking/posture lessons

Special guest, Miss Teen California-World crowned each princess with a crown and a rose

On the drive there we listened and tried to sing along with all the songs on Multiplication by Heart - and she did well with all her skip counting song up to 6.  I think that is wonderful, considering it's nothing we "sat down and taught".  . . it's been entirely fun and easy!  We laughed and laughed the whole time.


Today, Andrew was working on a list of "Things to do that are fun" in response to his question/whine about what he could do.  Having him make out a list was so good - even though I had to prohibit him putting "Fighting with brother" on it, but we finally came to the point where he listed "do science experiment".  Well! that was all the encouragement that I needed because I *had* an experiment  that I've been waiting to do with them.  The idea came from Janet's post, so out we went to "play" with baking soda and vinegar.  Andrew decided that he wanted to make a volcano.  It's still drying, and we think tomorrow we will be able to make the "lava" flow.

What fun it's been!

We went to the beach all day today - S.E.A. were offering a free day of lessons and BBQ -

So they got up on surf boards for the first time, and gathered sea weeds and shells.  

Came back home and Andrew says "That surf kicked my butt! . . . All the way *off* my body!"

Whew! What a Wii will do.

Yesterday the kids were with Grandma, and painted.

Sarah's house

Sarah's, she says "It's just . . . art."

the outside of a card Sarah made me

the inside of the card

Sarah's self portrait

An army for Andrew's boat (details later)

Andrew's and he wrote "mom" upper right hand corner.

Andrew's,this is actually sideways - for some reason the compu won't let me correct it.  It's a sun.

 When my husband and I returned we placed a globe we found at a thrift store and that attracted so much interest. The first question posed was - can you find where we live?  And then talking about "from here to there" . . .

Today we went swimming at a nearby pool for 4 hours and we *were* going to go to the beach, so before we left we watched Bill Nye the science guy about Ocean Currents.

One of the things we did while at the pool (site change because I really don't like the sand at the beach and papa wanted to stay home, pool is easier for me) is the kids circled around the kiddy pool creating their own current.  Way fun.  They were so excited about it.

And now, wearily dragging myself in - (why does a day at the pool wear me out more than the kids?)  We hook up the Wii borrowed from my brother, and play a few rounds of wii sports.  

Well, amend that, the boys were too tired and weepy so they laid down and are sleeping.  Sarah and I played some bowling and tennis, but I really want to blog before dinner - so right now, Just Sarah is whacking at the tennis = she is playing 2 players with just herself, wii remotes in each hand. Interesting.

Natural Dissasters

Andrew has been on a self instigated interest run of drawing different natural disasters and chasing me around the house with "What other nat'rul dissasters are there?!?!"

That and request to draw people running - anyway here are most of his drawing so far - I think he has hurricane yet to do and another one I forget the name.  Meh, once they are done, I'll upload a picture.

whirlpool

avalanche with trees near the bottom - where one guy got smashed and is dead

I helped with the drawing on the right. 

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday not a lot happened.  At least in the regard to the kids day.

I went with my hubby to meetings and then we had to take our sick baby boy (ok, he's 3) to the ER because of a cold triggered asthma attack.

When I asked my mother, a.k.a. the babysitter, what if any learning was done she said  - well no, since 3yr old was so sick they just mostly watched cartoons.  So whatever Dora the Explorer was teaching yesterday.  And Sarah made scrambled eggs in the microwave and toast for herself.  Home economics?
And Andrew spent hours using wooden blocks to create a town. Using cars to drive around.  We didn't get a picture and this morning - by the time my mom tells me about it -it looks like it was hit by Hurricane Irene.

Today we are off and running.  Sarah has been watching videos and talking about orangutan mothers in captivity and them learning to be mothers.  Followed by Anaconda Hunters video and talked about poisonous vs non poisonous boas and snakes.  She likes to study snakes.  She also left me this note:

It's actually an improvement to her spelling and sentence structure.  Her improvements are that the first word is capitalized in the sentence, all the correct letters are in "love" and *almost* in the right order - before it was spelled "lavo" or some such combination.  And "mom" is spelled right and not capitalized - before it was "Mooomy" or something similar.  This is *IMPROVEMENT!*

And then she worked on a "to do" list - she drew boxes and numbered them, then drew the "to do"s for her day.  Let's see what she if we can figure it out . .  .

1. lift weights  sell magazines
2. wash car
3. surgery on teddy bear sell toys
4. puppet show
5. walk the dogs (for money)
6. wash windows
7. learn something - teach people English
8. baby sit
9. ?

So - after asking Sarah she tells me this is her list of ways to earn money!  Good Job!  

Anyone want their dog walked?

Andrew, meanwhile is making a knight. Dressing his knight up with aluminum foil.

Every good Knight needs a well armored steed!

   

Making final adjustments to the helmet, and VOIALA! 

 Any damsels need rescuing?

Finally we had a great time in PE and aquatic sports playing in the kiddy pool! 

OK - Here we go!

Big reason I'm keeping my kids home from public school is because I want to teach them what I believe is important - namely about Knowing God.  As Jessica explained the difference in her blog - I want them to Know God not just know About God.  You know?

Today is the first day of public school here and my kids are still in jammies . . . so, aside from reading our Bible and talking about Paul's willingness to die and his fearlessness in the face of danger to talk about Jesus . . . I'm going to go in with my "See Learning" eyes on and see what my kids are learning today

They watched programing on Discovery Kids about animals.

What was really fun is that we found out on coinflation.com that pennies made before 1983 are worth, in their straight up copper, 2.5 cents.  And talked about how that means some of our pennies are worth -you guessed it- more than a penny!  So we pulled out our penny jar and sorted out the ones 1982 or less.

Some of the pennies were corroded bad enough we couldn't read the date, so we pulled out some things that we learned online would clean the pennies for us.  We had one bowl with just vinegar.  Another bowl we mixed lemon juice with baking soda and the last one had just water. (The internet didn't suggest this as a penny cleaning agent - it was mostly for our fingers)

So that was fun to see what cleaned best, how the chemicals reacted with the pennies and with each other . . .

Finally we learned that it's illegal to deface money - so the option of melting down our pennies for copper is out . . . but that is whole lot of learning today that we ALL enjoyed.