Week of September 14

We had a week of mostly independant/book work type stuff and no really fun projects to share here. The highlight of our week by far was our 4H club field trip to the landfill. Here is Two holding the flag for our ceremony time.


A shot of the work at the landfill...

And this is Duke, "the landfill dog"...

I took a trip to the school supply store over the weekend. The last time I was at my friend Jemma's (of Life is Not a Cereal super-blog-dom) she had the poster you see pictured on the right. I loved it, and was so happy to get one. I've been doing something similar, just writing them down on paper and giving the girls options after they are done. Mostly it's Two that needs suggestions....One can typically entertain herself with Barbie and Littlest Pet Shop pretty well. The poster on the left is for our Vocabulary work. They'll take turns and then we'll review all of the words they both did on Friday's.

Two helped Three with a puppet project this week. This is from a kit I found on clearance at Walmart. It had 4 fabric puppet sets in it, with directions to make the puppet. I need to go back and see if they have the other set. They had wild animals, and farm animals. I got the wild animal pack (containing a bear, tiger, elephant, and a monkey.)

It was a good week for bugs at our house....unfortuneatly this butterfly was gravely injured when Two found him, but holding a butterfly is exciting nonetheless.

And this guy spent a lot of time hanging around our porch, so One snapped a shot of him.
I'm currently providing after school care a couple days a week for a dear friend, and the kids have been playing with Wedgits, A LOT. Here is one of their creations.

My 15 Favorite Blogs and The Lovely Blog Award

I appreciate Jemma over at Life is Not a Cereal for nominating me for this award. Jemma knows not how wonderful she is, and how lucky I feel to have the priveledge to have her in my life (yes Jemma and I are REAL friends, like in the real world! LOL).



Now, I'll share my 15 favorite blogs:

Homeschooling:

1. Life is Not a Cereal (this is Jemma's blog, and I'm not just putting this one in there because she nominated me...it really is one of my very favorites. She's so creative, and has such brilliant ideas.



2. No Time for Flash Cards is probably my current favorite haunt on the web. I'm there at LEAST once a day.



3. Making of a Montessori Mum has lots of cute stuff (for my littles anyway...)



4. Mariposa the site that brought me "Smart but Scattered" a book that shall forever be given credit for changing how I think of my eldest child.



5. The Wonder Years



6. BookWorms Book Nook



7. Totally Tots

8. SCHOOL-N-SUCH I've had the pleasure of knowing this author for years via an online group.

9. Art Projects for Kids, I think I may have shared this blog on my own blog before, but it's worth repeating.

(Just for me)

Multi-slacking Mamalicious is a lot of fun to read....I enjoy it, she cracks me up!



To the Moon and Back again, just something I enjoy!

Frugal Upstate a frugal living website.

A Year of Slow Cooking can be a life saver!

Parenting (but not homeschooling):

Milk Allergy Mom as the mom of two milk allergic children (one of them also being egg allergic) I appreciate this site so much!

Best Parent Ever is a very tongue in cheek parenting site. I <3 sarcasm, so I love every minute of it. Enjoy!

Back from Hiatus

I did NOT fall of the blogwagon again, really I didn't. We had company, and took a full 2 weeks off (they came in mid-week, and left mid-week...the days before and after were spent cleaning up). So, I have had no school things to share with any of you.

But, today we climbed back into a normal routine. I have a blog award I need to answer (that's on my to-do list for this week), and a "typical day" post I want to share after reading Jemma's (Life Is Not a Cereal) post about her typcial day...I'm afraid mine will pale in comparison, but I'm going to share anyway. Tomorrow Four has a specialist appt that will eat up most of my day, so we'll probably do mostly independant work in the afternoon (I hate morning appts as they mess up the whole flow of my day but this particular doctor only does Tuesday and Thursday 9-1...and we need at least 2 1/2 hours for the appt).

Today....

We had a 4H field trip to the local landfill where we all got to stand atop 80 ft of garbage! We got to see the dozers working on spreading and covering the trash, we got to see huge piles of mulch from the yard waste that people have brought in, and they gave us these great recycled newspaper pencils.

Music Education

This week we worked on rounds. Two was also learning about mountain ranges of the world, as well as how mountains are formed, so the selection was appropriate. Two is the one with her fingers in her ears...it helped her keep track of what line she was on! :) You will also notice that One hurries her ending...she was over it. Tween!

Better than a Book Report

Here is a link with 50 alternatives to a standard book report:

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/EJ/0871-jan98/EJ0871Ideas.PDF

One has just finished reading The Trumpet of the Swan (which she LOVED, by the way). And, as an alternative to a book report, I had her write an acrostic of the main character's name (an adaptation of an idea I got from the above link). If you're looking to change things up, you may want to check it out.

And, here is One's finished product:

Louis is dumb.
One hundred dollars was the first money he earned.
In Philadelphia, he played at a nightclub.
Under a bush was where Louis kept his things.
Serena was the most beautiful swan Louis knew.

Group Project: Relief Map of South America

One and Two had a group project assignment this week. They were both learning about South America in their Core Knowledge books, and a teaching idea that was listed in my book for One was to create your own relief map of the continent showing the Andes Mountains and the Amazon River. Well, Two was learning about South America as well, the Andes Mountains, and relief maps....so I included her in the project. They struggle some times to get along (what sisters don't I ask you??) and I think it will be good throughout the year for them to work together on things. They did come to me more than once asking what they should do when they had reached a disagreement about how they should do something, and I refused to intervene. I told them they had to work TOGETHER, and that how they handled the disagreements would play a big part in their grade. Overall, they did well in that area.

Rolling out play-doh to make the Andes.

Painting:

Thier finished work:

It's not the neatest project in the world. But, I don't know that they've ever had to do something of this nature, especially together, so I think it was good first effort. I expect later projects in the year will be done with more care for details.

That care for details is something I've been discussing with One this week anyway, she told me she didn't know she was supposed to put 100% effort into ALL her work. *eye roll* She's such a tween!

Volcano

This is a VERY simplified volcano model. We could have jazzed it up, and actually BUILT a volcano of clay around the jar, but we've had a busy week and didn't get to that but I still wanted to do the 'hands on' part of the unit.

*I wanted to add: Two was very unsure of herself, and didn't like that I was video taping her. But, in the end, decided I could use it here anyway.*