Midwest Homeschooling Convention

I am so tired but really jazzed! The Midwest Homeschooling Convention in Cincinnati Ohio was small but all Quality! I had trouble choosing sessions but am so pleased with the choices I made.

• Jessie Wise - First Language Lessons
  
• Gary DeMar- Teaching History So Kids Remember
  
• Jim Weiss- Story telling and Character Building
• Andrew Pudewa-Teaching Boys and Other Children Who Would Rather Make Forts All Day
  

Just to name a few. If you ever have the chance to listen to Andrew Pudewa go! He is an amazing speaker. And if anyone has a favorite Jim Weiss tape let me know, I didn't buy one because I could not decide on a title!

I also bought some of my resources for next year (if they met or beat Amazon's price) and a few surprises.


(Melissa & Doug Anatomy Puzzle, MUS Beta, Adventures in Odyssey Platinum Collection, History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations, Geography Matters Time Line Figures & 2 sided Mark it Map, Story of the World 1 Student pages, Miller paper pads, and a Tee featuring the comic at the bottom of my blog)

MUS Clock

G is great with time using a Judy clock but "real" time is different. So I peeked in the back of our Math U See book and checked out the appendix on time. Really strange teaching time with blocks but everything else they teach seems to work so we are giving it a try. We watched the video... great visual. But who can leave blocks lying all over the table? Not me. So I thought I would find a cheapy clock at Goodwill and try to make a block clock.

Cheapy Clock

New Center

5 Block photo

Glue it all together

Voila!

Not Perfect but I think that it will make a big difference. I wrote an H: and an :M on the hands. We can keep it down where we can handle it rather than it hanging high on the wall. I am really proud of it.

Goo Experiment: Wiggly Goo

G found this kit at Big Lots... I gave in. Hey it is school.

Wiggly Slime Ingredients: Glue, Borax & Water
(opt. food coloring)

Mix water & borax

Mix glue & water

Mix 2 bowls together

GOO

If you let it sit awhile it will ooze flat.
but hold its shape when you play with it.

There was a whole lesson about polymers but that was WAY over our heads. We just has fun creating. Next week: Bouncy Putty

Bubble Painting

I am going to teach of couple of weeks at our Keepers group so I thought we would try out my project before hand. I used this lesson when I taught school but it has been awhile. I am glad I tried because it did not work at first... ugh!

Supplies: Tempera Paint, pan, dish soap, straws, paper.
(water too I later discovered)

My goal was to put in each color and as they blew the colors would mix;
they are learning about colors. Wrong! After blowing this is where I learned
I needed the water and it became a big blue-brown mess.
FYI: water, soap, 1 paint= mix

Blow, DO NOT suck, softly and straight down.

Place paper on bubbles making sure not to touch the wet pan.

BUBBLES!!

Even though we finally got it to work, I think I will try to find a new project. When we finished G was covered in blue freckles and it wasn't as cool as I thought it would be. If we are only going to do one project I want it to be AWESOME! Back to the drawing board.

Nesting Bag

I recently read a post about making a nesting bag. I wish I could remember where. I thought this was very interesting so we made one today. UPDATE: I just found this great article on nesting bags.

You need a mesh produce bag, dryer lint, and yarn

Cut it up and Stuff it in.

Then hang it where the birds can find it.

Later we can walk around our neighborhood and look for our yarn and lint. We are very eager for the hunt to begin.

New Web Discovery

Have I told you about WOWIO? Wowio offers free books in PDF format. If you can get past the twaddle/ trash (which isn't hard) you will be rewarded with many gems. Classics... Twain, Shakespeare, Austen. Resources... Greek, Egypt, DaVinci. Did I mention it was FREE! You can download 3 books per day. I have used the Tools of Ancient Rome when I taught the mini lessons for our fieldtrip and have many other titles saved for the future. I was amazed when I saw that some of the titles I have downloaded were for sale in some homeschooling catalogs. WOOHOO!

Something I read at School for Us today led me somewhere else which finally landed me at a new gem called ARKive. It is a gorgeous database of images and movies of countless species. For example the Sri Lankan Frogmouth... cool! Watch the video the camouflage is spot on. This site will be so helpful when we study animals next year in science. I cannot wait to really explore it.

AHHHH Spring!

We finally had a day where we could go outside. Ahhh fresh air!! The weather here has been horrible lately, loads of snow & ice. We were out for an hour and a half. That is a long time for us. I am not and never have been an outside person. I want to change that.

I am tossing around the idea of adding nature study to our lessons next year. If I don't formally have it scheduled I won't do it. So I think I will have to be a bit artificial about it in the beginning to help form the habit. I have been so motivated by "friends" posts as they follow online nature study assignments. I want to join the bandwagon. I think it would do us both good physically and mentally. Getting out from the computer and TV which seems to suck all of our time during the day when not doing lessons. I think nature would be a great for our souls.

Red Maple

mmm Chives

Cleaning up and preparing the garden spot

Iditarod Results & Lapbook

G's hamming it up with our completed Lapbook. All of our finishing mushers placed in the top 1/3 of the field.... pretty exciting. We are eagerly waiting to watch the replay on Versus starting Sunday night. I really enjoyed this unit and am excited about all of the potential it holds as G gets older and into more complex math skills.

Jessica Hendricks Scratches in Nikolai

(Pic From Jan Brett dot com)

My mushing pick scratched. I guess I'll start rooting for Rohn Buser with G. If he can keep up his pace I have a feeling he will be the Rookie of the Year.