Sweet Way to End the Week

The first two weeks of school had us learning about maps and globes. We talked about things like latitude and longitude, the equator, the continents and the hemispheres. We ended our week by making a world cake. I baked a round cake and then mixed the blue "ocean". Sissy spread the ocean. I went ahead and drew the outlines of the continents (don't laugh at the terrible job I did!) and was shocked when I finished the outline of Greenland and the girls shouted, "That's Greenland!" After I drew the outlines the girls filled them in.

Because we spent some time talking about physical maps and the types of information that can be found there, we decided to use chocolate chips to show where mountains can be found.

I also mixed up some different colored frosting and had Peanut draw the equator. She knew that it went right across the middle of the earth but since Mom didn't do the best job drawing the continents, I didn't want Florida to be in the southern hemisphere so we made the equator a bit lower than it actually is. Daddy said it is the "quarter-quater".

I think the best part about this cake is that we shared it with people we love. We went to the home of some home schooling friends to celebrate the end of the first couple weeks of school. We had snacks like a world cake, popcorn and played the Wii till the wee hours of the evening.

Children Around the World

These first 2 weeks of My Father's World - Exploring Countries and Cultures has us exploring the use of maps and globes. We have been talking about the fact that there are people all over the world that have different religious beliefs from ours. The older girls each have 20 minutes of "Book Basket" time. The book basket is filled with books that relate to what we are studying. Right now we have several geography books, story books about traveling the world and some wonderful books that show children from various countries in their traditional dress and providing various information about them.

Today for art the girls created paper dolls that are holding hands. (Mom did the folding of the paper and cutting of the dolls since they were afraid they would mess them up). After the dolls were cut out the girls dressed the dolls like various children from around the world - in their traditional dress. Sissy created a girl from Sweden in her St. Lucia dress, a girl from China and a monk. Peanut did a child from Hong Kong, a child from China in her Kimono and a boy from Ethiopia. We now have them hung near our world map. It was a project that took them about and hour and allowed mom to get a bit of laundry done and dishes put away!

New Friend Was Visiting

Yesterday Sissy went out to get the mail and came running back inside yelling, "Come see what is in the driveway!" Since she is very skittish of animals and bugs, she wasn't about to touch it and stood way back, but Peanut was intrigued and was checking it out..

...she really liked watching it bring its head in and out of its shell. The girls were able to see the claws and the tail and when we go to the library today, I think we'll look for some books on turtles to add to their book basket. We kept it in a bucket for the day so they could run out and check on it (Peanut named him Fire because of the pretty red stripes on his underside.) We did let him go after dinner and if it weren't for the mosquitos eating us alive, we would have watched him run off till we couldn't see him anymore. Peanut delighted in picking him up, but she was the only one of the girls brave enough to do that!

Learning to Read

This is only our 2nd year homeschooling (after having the two oldest in public school) and so I have never had a kindergartner to teach. I have really been struggling with the prospect of being responsible for this responsibility. Peanut came out of kindergarten reading at least a grade level above her and of course I wonder if I'll cause Sweet Baby to be behind by the time we are done with this year.

We are using Sing, Spell, Read and Write and Sweet Baby is really enjoying it. So far we have been able to do one letter a day and we are starting "G" today. She enjoys the song and she sings along to as she uses her pointer finger and points to the letter and the picture of the sound the letter makes at the same time.

Sweet Baby has about 12 small sight words that she knows and one of them includes the word "at". I realized that we had done enough letters for her to be able to start putting them together to make words like "dad", "cab", etc. So we talked about how to squish the sounds together to make words. I pulled out a book that has short "a" words and she was able to sound out 4 words with only a small amount of help - "cat, rat, sat, bat"! I was so excited for both of us that I nearly cried!

Day's 2 and 3

We took a "mental health day" on the 2nd day of school. So how crazy is that? Dear family friends moved early Tuesday night and we were saying our good-bye's the evening before. There was very little sleep at our house that evening and then as we were finishing our Bible and went into prayer, Sissy was really struggling to get through without falling apart. The principal decided to declare a "mental heath day".

Here the girls are creating their John 3:16 poster. Because I wanted them to be able to store part of the poster in their notebooks when we are done with it, I had each girl create their own 8x10 poster that was then glued onto the larger poster board. One section has John 3:16 typed nice and large as well. We are hanging this above our world map so that we can be mindful of all of the people in the world that we need to remember in our prayers. To get the kids thinking of how lucky we are to have access to Bibles, we also read God Speaks Nummangang twice and my kids love it. It is a small book that was produced by our curriculum company - My Father's World. Sissy was amazed to learn that there are 700 languages in Paupa New Guinea alone and Sweet Baby just likes saying "Nummangang".

We decided on an impromptu nature walk at a local nature area with a couple friends. In science we are studying various habitats and in 2 weeks will be talking about forests. The crazy thing is that the mosquito's are so bad here right now that they were driving us out of the forest!

Today we discussed the equator and the hemispheres that are created by the equator. In addition the girls colored the 7 continents, drew the equator and labeled the hemispheres.

Hopefully I'll get a chance this weekend to share how we are organizing our day and let you know how the first week went! Until then, have a great day!

Back in the Saddle...First Day of School

Well, it is that time again...can it be that summer is nearly over? Here in Michigan we have had such a mild summer (completely unusual) so it does not seem like we have even had summer yet! Mom decided it was time to get back to school, so today was the day. This year the girls are in 5th grade, 2nd grade and Kindergarten. Here they all are at the table in our school room, ready to start the day. (Notice the bathrobes? Sissy LOVED that last year we spent most of the day in our p.j.'s. Even though she was dressed, she insisted on putting her robe on!)

For the first day, things went really well today. The kids were getting used to the "workbox system" that I am trying to use to keep us organized, and they did really well with that. Let me tell you, trying to add a 3rd child to the school day really can throw you for a loop! As this is just our 2nd year home schooling, I still struggle with how much work is to much/little work. Well, throw a kindergartener into the mix who can't read directions and needs to learn SO much and the pressure is huge! It is especially huge when you have a child who delights in fighting you on everything! Here is a perfect shot of Sweet Baby trying to write the letter "A". She was really unhappy when I explained that we need to try our best to bring the legs of the "A" all the way to the bottom. She stuck out her lip, hung her head and said, "I can't do this."

BUT, because I know that she "can", she just "did not want to", this is the face that made my day when she finally accomplished her writing task.

As I have mentioned before, we are using My Father's World - Exploring Countries and Cultures and we began our study today by discussing the fact that even in ancient times people used maps. We discussed that it used to be that people believed that the earth was flat as a pancake and they would sail right off the edge of the earth if they sailed to far. Peanut was amazed at this and truly enjoyed looking at the globe and contemplating how silly that was!

The one thing that worked out really well today was that Sissy was able to help Sweet Baby with the 2nd piece of handwriting that I had for her. Later in the day (after the "A" incident) I had her write her name and while I was working on spelling with Peanut, Sissy was able to help. I don't know who liked the fact that Sissy could help more - me or her!

Checking Out the Bees

You may or may not know that my dear husband is a bee keeper. He has been keeping bees for approximately 4 years. We have about 5 hives in our backyard and then another 4 or 5 at a friend's house down the road. He is nearly completely self taught (his dad was a bee keeper for a short time in the 80's) and really enjoys it. In addition to harvesting honey he also will go out and retrieve swarms of bees that may be in a tree in someones yard. This past week his father called and said he had a swarm of bees in a pine tree in the yard - so off he went. Typically swarms will stick around for a day or 2. Maybe 3 days, but that isn't typical. The swarm that was in his father's tree had been around for a week! It was amazing to see that they had built comb right in the tree and were prepared to stick around and call it home. He was examining the comb that they had built when he noticed the youngest "bee" he has ever seen. He found larva that was only a day or two old. The kids had much fun checking it out.