Hello Fred!!

One of my big goals this year was to do more math. It just so happens that Conrad has a newfound love of math. He has been telling me he loves numbers, so I naturally thought he might be ready for harder math, and he truly is. I bought him his own Miquon books and he enjoys those. And look what came in the mail a week ago!!!!

You know you're a homeschool mom when you ask for educational materials for Christmas! We've been loving these books! 

The Nutcracker

Today we listened to Tchaikovsky's music, read The Nutcracker, did a ballerina snowflake craft, and then joined our homeschool group for The Grand Rapids Ballet's performance of The Nutcracker. We met up with Emmy Liu and her kids and hung out with them the entire time. 

The kids loved every minute of it (except waiting for the ballet to start!).  Trevor's favorite part was the mice and soldiers battling, and Conrad liked the snowflake dance. Abigail clapped so much and just enjoyed it thoroughly. Conrad was so happy to get a chance to walk the city again and kept telling me he misses Minneapolis. I know how he feels!! I think The nutcracker dances really made an impact on him. When we got home, he kept trying to do the same moves and asked me all the way home about getting ballet lessons again. If only I could find them as cheap as we had them in MN! It was a great day. 

Full Orchard Field Trip

I organized a full field trip with our homeschool group at the orchard that included a wagon ride, apple and gourd picking, cider and donuts, food to feed the goats, and the petting zoo.

History Fair

This was such a fun activity. Our homeschool group did a history fair, where each kid studied a topic, made a display, and some even dressed up. 

Conrad especially loved makng his display. He really wanted to do his on the history of rubber. We even made rubber band guns (ahem, Sean made the guns) and a target in the middle of his display so people could try out some rubber.

We had a timeline on the gym floor and discussed dates. 

Trevor did his on the Kraken, or its legend rather. At first he said he wanted to do boats on Lake Michigan, but changed his mind the morning of the fair and said he wanted to do his on a giant squid attacking a ship. Uh, say what? So we looked up sailor stories, talked about those, he wrote his own giant squid story, and since we started reading 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea that week, we added a quote from it. I think some of the moms were worried that he thought it was reality the way he talked about it. It was a really fun day.

Today's Snapshots

Trevor is the same person he was when he was just a little guy. I decided to put up a rough schedule last night and Trevor was so happy about it he gave me a hug. He loves routine and the predictability of a schedule. I like flexibility, but I also like to have some kind of goal. We'll probably be doing this from now on. There's a lot not included on the chart, and we did some other things instead of music today (read on), but just writing down the goals on the board helps as a visual for all of us.

Abigail has been doing an Eric Carle puzzle over and over lately. 

Conrad and Abigail wanted to fingerprint while Trevor did his history narrative in his notebook. It was a special lesson today because it happened to be about the birth of Christ.

Conrad's quote for today: "Mommy, you're supposed to cook beans, not do math with them." I love that boy. 

Trevor sighted a cardinal out the window and grabbed his binoculars, nature notebook, camera, crayons, and the bird cards that Grandma Arndt gave us (the ones she used as a child) and went out to birdwatch.

Conrad with the bird cards. These boys love to be together.

Afterward we read about cardinals. They eat fruit as well as seeds and insects. And they can have 2-3 broods per year! 

As Trevor was gathering his birdwatching gear, I reminded him that when he came back in we still had some school to do for the day, and he said, "Mom, this IS school." 

You are so right Trevor. Just the type of school we want around here. 

Solar Day!

See our family blog for details.

Piano and Pumpkin Pie

Some friends of ours gave us a piano and Conrad is so happy! He had a few lessons this summer and knows how to play some of his favorite Primary song, The Oxcart, which he has been playing frequently. He begged to be able to do music time first after chores this morning. It wasn't difficult to agree.

We read a very informative book about pumpkins this morning and Trevor wanted to go out and pick his two pumpkins right away. He carved the bigger one and wants to make pumpkin pie with the smaller one, and roast all of the seeds to eat. This has been a fun day already! 

I was so impressed with Trevor's diligence and patience staying with all his projects today. He roasted the pumpkin and made the filling. 

He made the filling AND the crust.

And my favorite part was at the end, when the pie was cooled and ready. Watching Trevor take a bite of pie--a pie that started with a pumpkin seed and a garden, weeding and watering, harvesting, reading a book about pumpkins that inspired him to make a dish that I'm pretty sure he's never even liked, and spending hours today making--there are just no words to express how happy his look of accomplishment made my mother heart feel. 

The book we read with the recipes was Pumpkins by Jacqueline Farmer. 

Anderson and Girls Orchard

Last week we took a day and spent it at the orchard. We miss our old Fall Harvest Orchard (which I just heard is being sold anyway!), but it was still a blast. This one was actually also a free petting zoo, which the kids loved. We met Emmy Lou and her kids there. I'm so happy Trevor and Conrad have at least one family of solid friendships here. It is really so much more difficult (for me) to do the social thing in a rural area! I honestly really dislike the initial formalities and small talk of making friends, but I'm trying to suffer through it for my kiddos. The homeschool group we're in has one main click, and the rest of the people we just see at activities every now and then. I'm trying to not be discouraged and to continue to just seek what's right in our family's education. The Lord has always sent me and our family what we need when we seek diligently for it, and I gave no reason to think differently now. But boy, is it ever hard to have patience! 

This was toward the end when the kids were hot and tired and thirsty. Poor Trevor! Playing is hard work!

Feeding the goats.

Art Prize 2014

At Art Prize 2014 in Grand Rapids with our friends from the Greenville homeschool group. Trevor and Conrad are third and fourth from the right in the first photo and far left in the second.

Below, we're stopping to eat lunch. Emmy Lou called before we started our walk through the city to say that she was very late and would try to meet the group for lunch. Who did we happen to see rounding the corner right into our group as we were making our way to our lunch spot? Emmy Lou and her kids!

Yarn art

Magnet Study

I was so excited to find a garage sale being put on by a teacher this weekend. I picked up tons of materials and books and she only charged me $10 for all of it! One thing I picked up was a magnet lab. The boys have been begging to start it and we finally did today.

I had Trevor start a notebook and it reminded me of my AP Bio notebook (which, yes, I still have). It makes me all tingly thinking about it. We really love science here, and learning about the world around us and how things work. 

Italy

Abigail's Italy

Trevor's Italy 

Conrad's Italy 

If you go to our family blog, you'll see more photos of our Columbus ships field trip. It was pretty fun!

Unit Studies and Lapbooks

I just wrote a nice post that deleted itself somehow, so I'll just cut to the chase:

We're starting a new chapter in our home education, and it involves unit studies. I took the kids to the zoo last week:

The kids had to choose something there that they wanted to learn more about afterward. Today we started lapbooks about Gila monsters and chimpanzees.

What I'm really looking forward to is our unit on Christopher Columbus coming up. It started when I found this, which we'll be doing this week as a family:

http://www.thenina.com

We'll be picking up books tomorrow at the library, and this is what we'll be following: 

http://mylearningboys.blogspot.com/2012/03/christopher-columbus-unit-study.html

We'll read in the scriptures where Christopher Columbus is referenced, and we just happened to start Ether from the Book of Mormon today, so I got the idea to chart all of the ocean voyages from the scriptures on our big world map. 

I personally will be reading this: https://www.lds.org/ensign/1992/10/columbus-and-the-hand-of-god?lang=eng

And this: http://www.amazon.com/Columbus-Voyages-1492-1504-Laurence-Bergreen-ebook/dp/B0052RDJ5Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409026924&sr=1-1&keywords=columbus+the+four+voyages 

I'm so excited!!

Today we used The Story of the World like usual, but I actually broke out the activity book. It's been months, probably since Twin Cities, that I've used the activity book. Normally I have the boys use a composition book to write a sentance (I write Conrad's) about the reading and they draw a picture to go with it as I read. It was recommended in A Well Trained Mind, and I love it. This time we not only used the activity book for the printouts (a map of India for ch. 30), but we also used the suggestions for enriching the history book. One suggestion was to make Rakhis. I loved the sentiment behind it: girls made this piece of jewelry for their brothers during a special festival/ceremony, and the brother promised to take care of her. 

Except Abigail was napping and the boys made some for themselves. Conrad surprised me by making two and told me the first one was for Abigail. :) I love when he surprises me like that. These are the Rakhis:

I used this website as reference:

http://www.artsycraftsymom.com/diy-handmade-rakhi/

We also tried using our new The Usborne Encyclopedia of History, but I'm not as excited about it as I was originally. I love the pictures, the thoroughness while being brief so I have the opportunity to go deeper where the kids are interested, and the timelines all over. I was really excited about the internet links, but the very first one I tried didn't work (the site says a lot of them won't work on tablets, that you have to view them on a computer), and the other links didn't really relate to our reading today, so I was disappointed. I'm not giving up though--this was just the first day using it, and I still have high hopes! 

In other news, I actually had plans to start out lap booking today for the first time, but we never got to it. The boys were having fun with the rest of the stuff we did. But Conrad got in a double reading lesson (and started off with "I love my reading lesson mommy!"), Trevor got to try out a new spelling app, everyone did workbook pages, and the boys did some random crafty stuff while the craft box was out for Rakhis. 

It was a productive day, but boy am I exhausted! I didn't get enough sleep last night. Zzz...