Slices of Life

Today was all about memory in this household.  Ian decided he wanted to jump in with schooling by playing multiplication memory. I helped him fold and cut up some construction paper and then he sat there and wrote out a bunch of multiplication sentences and answers.  Once he had them all written up we put them face down on the table and played memory.  He won!  He's getting real good at his facts too.  Ian then went on to read while Evan asked me to play his Cars memory game.  We played a few rounds and by that time Ian was done reading, so he asked Evan if he could play.  They played a round together using good sportsmanship too.  It was cute to see Ian encouraging Evan and it ended up being a very close game. Evan then decided he'd had enough memory for a while and asked to do some mazes and dot- to- dots.  We also worked together on finding the hidden pictures in a book he has.  I used to love those when I was a kid, it was ...

Each boy will be following his own lesson plan today and for the rest of the week; or at least that's our plan. So far it's working really well. Evan has been using our Leapfrog Tag reading system to read books to himself.   He willingly wrote his own thankful leaf (and tried to spell the word by himself!), and he, of course, asked to do a dot- to -dot.   He quickly finished all his work, all by himself!     We have a homeschool science fair coming up this week so Ian asked me to help him write up a short report to go along with his experiment of a homemade lava lamp .  Once Ian was finished he decided to pull out his McRuffy book for math and we discovered he was due for a test.  He willingly took the test and got a 93!  I was so proud of him. While he was taking his test Evan asked to do his science fair project so we made a tornado in a jar and he helped me write up a summary to go with it.  Ian finished up his morning by readin...

We started our morning getting caught up on a project I wanted to start November 1st but totally forgot about.   Every year for the month of November I write on my Facebook page one thing I'm thankful for each day.   During this time of Thanksgiving it's the perfect time of year to remember everything that we have been blessed with in our family and it's something I really want the boys to start focusing on too.  This year we made a thankful tree.  I drew a tree and cut out a bunch of paper leaves in a rainbow of fall colors.  Each day they will write one thing they are thankful for on a leaf and we'll put it in our tree.   By Thanksgiving we'll have a nice, big, full tree (I realize by Thanksgiving the real trees will be bare but think a pile of leaves would just look silly).   For today each boy had to write up 5 things they were thankful for.  This was pretty easy for them and I didn't hear too much complaining, mostly ...

In hoping to keep our schoolwork fun today,  I gave each boy their bag of Halloween candy and told them to find their own spot on the rug. We then dumped the bags out and I told them to sort all the candy.  I gave them some ideas and told them they could sort by chocolate, not chocolate, chewy, crunchy, or sort by color, whatever.  I didn't really care how they sorted as long as they sorted. For the older boys, once they had it sorted I asked if they could sort it another way.  Once they'd sorted a few time I gave them grid paper and told them to make a graph showing their sort. Drawing the grid  We then talked about the results of our graphs and names for our graphs explaining what they were about. Then we settled in for some candy science! They protested a bit at first as I started rifling through their candy bags looking for candy to use for our science experiments, especially when they asked if they could eat them later and I said no, not really. But I ...

Wow!  Thanks to all of you who've been checking out my blog during the last few days.  I logged on today to find I've made 1,500 page views!  That was just amazing. I haven't posted anything since we've been without power/ Internet since hurricane Sandy came through on Monday.  We still are without power for most things, but my wonderful husband, not only hooked us up to a generator, but also left a portable device with me that enables me to use the Internet!! It's amazing how quickly we become accustomed to technology and feel so lost without it. Part of my hurricane prep was to make sure all the games, science experiments and "school" stuff was printed off or copied from the Internet so we'd have plenty to do.  Many of my friends tried to convince me to let the boys have time off just like the local schools but really I knew without power I needed to keep them occupied more than ever and believe it or not my kids LOVE school now that we homeschool.  ...

We have been having so much fun with our homeschooling Halloween unit and we just had to keep going! Today we made Blood Boil for science today (OK-- so we didn't really make blood boil; but we made a red lave lamp & the kids thought that was really neat!). You'll need a plastic bottle, some water, oil, food coloring and alka- seltzer tablets. Fill the bottle half- full with the oil, add water until you're within an inch of the top and enough food coloring to turn it red (about 10 drops).  Break an alka- seltzer tablet into pieces small enough to fit through the hole. You'll start to see the colored water bubble to the top through the oil.  The boys noticed that the water & oil kept separating even after we shook it to try and combine them.  We added the oil first but the water always sunk to the bottom.  So we talked about density too. For math the older boys worked on a Pumpkin Square Sudoku- like game I found on- line.  They ...

Today my boys surprised me by having breakfast right away as soon as they turned on Wild Kratts.  This is something I've been trying to get across to them since school started; I don't mind if they watch some educational TV in the morning as long as they are doing something to get ready for the day at the same time. They learned all about the porcupine today and then headed off to get dressed.  We settled down at the table for some candy math. I gave Evan two cups; one with candy corn and one with candy pumpkins.  He had to guess how many were in each cup, write down his guesses (to practice writing his numbers), guess which cup had more and then dump them out and count them.  Once he counted them he had to write down the actual number of pieces in each cup (again to practice his numbers).  I was floored when he told me 44 was a 4 and a 4!  He needed help forming a 4 but at least he knew what numbers he need...