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Showing posts from April, 2014

Zoinks! That was fun.

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The boys wanted to head to Zoinks fun factory this week and since it was another cold & cloudy day yesterday we decided to seize the day and have some indoor fun. There were only two other families there so it felt like we just about had the place to ourselves.  We all  had so much fun jumping, playing, chasing each other, throwing and catching balls, using the slide and the rock wall. It was lots of fun. The boys were great about including the smaller kids in our play.  We played games with them on the light up floor, showed them how to play "popcorn" on the bouncy pillow (a game the boys once made up-- you sit down cross legged with your hands on your knees and try not to fall over as everyone jumps around you), and broke into two teams to play a fun game with the balls inside the bounce house. The bounce house is open topped and so the kids and parents in the bounce house tried to get all the balls outside it while the kids and parents outside the bounce house tried to

Visiting The Zoo As a Homeschooling Family

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The boys remembered my promise for a real week off from school.  We've been looking so forward to an April vacation and we kicked it off just right with a trip to the zoo.  I told all the boys as soon as they got up that we would be going to the zoo today but that since it was vacation they could watch TV, play video games, etc. and not get ready right away.  I counted on their enthusiasm to make sure they would be ready in a timely manner and it worked! It was a nice (if somewhat still cold) day and we had a great time at the zoo.  Now that I'm a homeschooling mom I tend to look for any and all types of learning opportunities. We don't do things all that differently but I sure do look at things differently now.    When the kids were young or in school and I was "just a mom" looking to keep my kiddos occupied I would have known a trip to the zoo was educational but I would have been more focused on keeping them busy and less occupied with HOW it was educational.

Self- Guided Schoolwork; Relying on my Boys to Teach Themselves

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I love that I can rely on my boys to teach themselves! We had a super busy morning and I knew we wouldn't have a lot of time to sit down and work together on school.  I told the boys I wanted them to do some schoolwork and pretty much left it at that. They all picked out a science video called Really Wild Animals; Animals of North America to watch.  They piled onto Ian's bed to watch the movie.  I loved that they were watching something educational and all getting along! The older boys took their math minutes with Alec starting on his 8 times tables.  Ian then worked on a multiplication page in his book that was "so easy!" Evan wanted me to sit with him while he re-read me P is for Pancakes and then worked on an alphabet dot- to- dot page.  I thought that would be too simple for him but he made a few mistakes and sang the alphabet song quite a few times through.  He then declared himself done with school and since he had been counting and asking us all subtraction pr

Geography Fair Time

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Yeah, the geography fair is finally here! We had a few final things to finish up before the fair, so Evan and I made some crock- pot tapioca pudding nice and early in the morning.  We followed this very simple recipe and hoped for the best.  I have never made tapioca pudding so it was sort of like the blind leading the blind.  Evan helped me measure, count, and pour everything into the pot. The boys helped me load up the car and we did our best to make sure we had everything we needed. Our geography fair was amazing too! We had fewer participants this year (which was a good thing since we had a smaller room this year too) but it was just as wonderful. One family studied the origins of the Superheroes and mapped them out on a large world map.  They had found Avengers crackers for their snack and had a chart that we could fill out the country and continent of the Superheroes.  It's always neat to see ways families and children can tie in fiction with fact. What a

Using what works

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With lots of rain pouring down we knew we weren't going to be heading outside to work on our fort.  The boys were bummed and are really chomping at the bit for a day off. We couldn't really take a day off though since we HAVE to finish everything for the geography fair.  But I did think I could make school a bit more fun today and let them use video games for some/ most of their learning.  I find using video games makes the boys more excited about doing schoolwork and I am all about using whatever works to get them eager and interested in learning! Ian added some small pieces of aluminum foil to his bin of sand; it's his "faux bauxite mine."  Since bauxite is mainly used to make aluminum we thought it might be a fun twist for the kids to have something to mine for during the geography fair.  He broke off bits of tin foil and rolled them up into little balls and hid them throughout the bin. Evan went to ABCya ! and played sight word bingo using he pre-primer words