You Are Loved

I was reminded today about how important it is to make sure our children feel loved.  It seems simple, we think "of course they know we love them."  But it's just as important, if not more, to say it.  It's so simple to get caught up in our everyday lives.  There are schedules to keep, activities to attend, school work to plan, teach, complete, and check, housework to be done, messes to clean up, and misbehavior to be dealt with.  Here is the thing: we need to make sure our kids know they are loved everyday.  So today I am going to make special effort to say "I love spending time with you," "I am proud to be your mom," and "I love you so much."  Have you hugged your kids today?

Weekly Wrap-up: Dr. Seuss and the Iditarod

Well I was hoping to write that we called school off this week in order to enjoy the nice spring weather.  But unfortunately we didn't get any nice spring weather so it was school as usual around here. 

We of course celebrated Dr. Seuss's Birthday.  How can you not?  For us it was a simple celebration of reading a few of our favorite books, and watching The Cat In The Hat movie.  We made Dr. Seuss smoothies (red raspberry) and Cat in the Hat snacks (cracker, pepperoni and cheese piled into hats).

Ms. Q has been working really hard on her Iditarod webquest for the past few weeks.  She completed her research on a musher and made a poster of him.  She is so excited for the race to begin on Saturday.  She has been checking the Iditarod website a few times a day to see what news or videos they have posted.  I never thought she would be so into it.  She's been telling people about it as well and has been surprised when most people don't even know what the Iditarod is nonetheless that it begins this weekend in Anchorage AK. 

Ms. Q's Poster of Lance Mackey, 4 time Iditarod winner

Little M made a poster too

We have been learning about Gilbert Stuart and looking at some of his paintings for the past few weeks.  This week we learned that the portrait of George Washington that is on the US one dollar bill is from an unfinished portrait done by Stuart.  This little tidbit has piqued Ms. Q's interest more than anything else we talked about or saw.  She went online and discovered that the Gilbert Stuart birthplace Museum is near where her aunt lives in Rhode Island and now she is requesting that we visit that museum.  The museum doesn't open until May so we'll see if the interest is still there then.   Funny how that one bit of information sparked a flame of interest.

Little M has been totally captivated by the new bird feeder we hung outside the dining room/school room last week.  We have a cardinal couple that comes to visit every morning and he sits and waits for them to come.  He has learned the name of the bird and also which one is female and which one is male (or the daddy and mommy as he calls them).  We also managed to squeeze in a trip to the library and a playdate this week.  We gotta have a little fun! 

We are off school next week for our monthly break but are planning a trip to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology to see their exhibit on the Silk Road, a visit to the Delaware Children's Theatre to see their production of Tom Sawyer, a tour of the county animal shelter, and a group playdate at a local park.  It should be a fun week!

Wordle Anyone?

A few fellow bloggers recently mentioned a new teaching device called Wordle.  What is a wordle I wondered?  Well this is a wordle:

I used the About page on the blog to create this word cloud.  The program uses inputted words to create a random word cloud.  The more times a word is used, the bigger it appears in the cloud.  I think this is one of the coolest things I have found on the internet in quite a while.  You type in whatever you want, be it a list of  words, a poem, or even a presidential speech and you end up with a randomized word cloud.  You can then change color and font.  This website has some good ideas to include wordle in your schoolwork.  The possibilities for using it are endless. 

We haven't used it in our homeschool yet but I made a wordle of my daughter's name and some positive attributes about her.  When I gave it to her, she read the sheet and asked in a quiet voice if I thought these were true about her.  I said yes, she smiled and hugged me.  She later hung the paper on the wall in her bedroom and asked to make one for each of her brothers.

You can make your own here.  Have fun with it!

Secular Resources for Sonlight Core 1& 2

These are the resources and changes that our family used for the combined Core 1 & 2.  If you are new to Sonlight, or even a veteran Sonlight user, you might want to get a printed catalog to help you determine which books are right for your family.  The print material makes it so much easier to see which books are from Christian publishing companies (marked with an x in the catalog) and makes noting your choices a little easier than just using the website.

History



Many secular Sonlight users keep Hillyer's A Child's History of the World as the spine for their history lessons.  It isn't overly religious but I found it to be slightly condescending and at times bigoted towards non-christian cultures.  We replaced it with Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World, volumes 1 and 2.  If you decide to go with The Story of the World check out this website which matches up the chapters of A Child's History of the world with The Story of the World.  It makes connecting the books to the plan in your instructor's guide much easier.

Geography

Spragget and Johnstone's Window on the World has many pages of ways to pray for non-Christian peoples and describes many different countries in regard to their progress toward Christianity.  We replaced it with DK publishing's A Life Like Mine and First Atlas.

Read Alouds and Readers

These are the books we left out and are really the easiest to replace.  If it was a biography/memoir I tried to replace it with a biography/memoir.  If it was fiction/literature I replaced it with a good children's literature title.  Have fun and choose what you and your children will enjoy.

Titles we replaced:

And the Word Came With Power by by Joanne Shetler, Patricia Purvis

Gladys Aylward by Janet Benge, Geoff Benge
 
More Stories from Grandma's Attic by Arleta Richardson

Weekly Wrap-up: Spring Fever

Last week we really enjoyed the springtime weather we experienced here on the east coast.  I guess we should have expected the break in winter to be fleeting.  It was just a tease but it gave us a serious case of spring fever.  We will just have to wait patiently I guess.


So here is how our week worked out:

History

We continued our study of the rise of the Roman Empire.  I indulged the kids interest in gladiators and allowed them to watch a documentary on Roman gladiators.

Since subscribing to Notebooking Pages Ms. Q has been really working hard on her notebooking.  She has been using colored pencils and really making them look good.  I am always encouraging her to "make work you can be proud of."  Sometimes it's difficult to get her to have any accountability for her work considering she doesn't receive any grades but she likes showing off her notebook pages, at least for now.

We switched gears a bit to follow Ms. Q's interest in Ancient Egypt and have been spending our evenings enjoying National Geographic Channel's Treasures of Egypt week.  Each night there has been a different documentary on the time period.  Ms. Q was holding her breath in anticipation of Friday night's show about Cleopatra.  She and Fred went to the Cleopatra exhibit that was showing at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia after Christmas.  (This was actually Fred's Christmas gift to her.)  Since then she has been interested in learning more about Cleopatra and this period in history.  Look for a webquest about Cleopatra next month per Ms. Q's request!

Science

We started a new unit on inventions.  I really thought that this would spark some interest in inventing things but Ms. Q doesn't really appear to be interested, even after we learned about child inventors.  She and her father are always thinking of  things that would make life easier.  I was surprised that this did not motivate her to actually pursue her ideas further.  Sometimes you just can't tell what will interest your kids I guess.

 Language Arts

Little M had a lot of fun this week working on his alphabet.  He's not required to do any work but he likes to feel like a big kid so he has school boxes with things like ABC cards, objects for counting, puzzles, and scissor practice.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with him next year with regard to preschool but so far he really enjoys learning and asks for things to do.  I hope it stays that way.

Ms. Q finished the internet scavenger hunt and the sports reporter assignment for her Iditarod webquest this week.  She was disappointed that she could not work on the third section of the webquest, which is to create a poster for a musher.  She is really looking forward to choosing a musher for us to cheer for when the race starts.  She also practiced her writing skills by sending out some emails to our friends and family asking them for pledges for the Girl Scout Pull the Plug event.  She is trying to get others to notice how vampire electricity usage contributes to depleting resources.  (Vampire electrical usage is the power used by appliances and other electrical devices when you are not using them, like a remote ready tv or the clock on your coffee pot.)

We finished reading Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski this week and it is now one of our favorite books.  The story is set in the 1800's in rural Florida but don't let that put you off.  It chronicles the feud between two neighbors and how the feud affects their children.  Ms. Q actually drew a parallel between the Slater and Boyer families in Strawberry Girl and the Montague and Capulet families in Romeo and Juliet.  She wondered if the two young characters in Strawberry Girl would find themselves as star-crossed lovers.  The story also sparked some interesting conversations about neighborly responsibility and alcohol abuse.

Math

Ms. Q has been working on multiple digit addition for what seems like a really long time.  In reality it has only been a few weeks and she really needs the practice but she has begun to complain.  So today we made banana muffins for math.  It was the most delicious class of the week!

Well hopefully for next week's wrap-up I will be able to write that we called off school in order to enjoy the spring weather because we sure do need it to cure our spring fever.

Crafty, Craft

Ok maybe we aren't that crafty but I just loved this idea and wanted to share it.  Ms. Q made this gem initial window hanger for her cousin's birthday.  It's a little difficult to see in the picture but her cousin's name starts with the letter "R" so in the center of the frame is a blue "R" surrounded by green gems. 

Basically what she did was take the back off a decorative frame and hot glued the glass into the frame.  Then she arranged the blue gems into an "R" and filled in the rest of the frame with green gems.  Once she was happy with the placement of the gems, she used clear drying tacky glue to secure them to the glass.  Next she cut strips of ribbon to make the hanger and to cover the back of the frame where you could see the glue spots from removing the cardboard backing and hot glued those ribbon pieces as well.  It was really easy to make and Ms. Q had fun making it.  She asked for one for her birthday but requested that I not make it, only give her the materials to make it herself.  That girl cracks me up. 

Oh, and Happy Birthday R!!!