History Comes to life

***Added note at the bottom***
We are learning about Egypt and the Exodus in History. The kids got to pick their project. They picked Unleavened bread. They followed the recipe and pretty much made them their selves. They even took these pictures. Not bad, but we are still working on photography.

Unleavened bread tastes similar to tortillas.

***We tried these after a few days, and they were really hard to eat. Much better out of the oven. They got the feel like they were microwaved a few times. In the lesson, we were told not to complain, like when God gave His people manna!***

A Site for Ya

I wanted to share a nice site for all of you fellow homeschoolers. You may already know about it. It The Homeschool Lounge. I started going there a little before this school year. There's tons of helpful ladies. It's basically a place where you can go and ask questions, get encouragement, encourage others, read reviews, etc. Time doesn't allow me to go there often, but when I can it's always worth it. I also have a page, a "nook" there. It's not very active, but it's F5 The Refresh Button. Let me know of you go and check the site out!

Class Pictures

We got some pictures taken of the kids for "School Pictures". Here is our "class" picture. I don't want to show you all of the photos...you may get some for presents!

Our Schedule

I know that every HSer's schedule is different, but I wanted to share ours. It is not a shedule that is on the dot. So keep in mind that the times are more on the -ish side! LOL!

We are on day 49.
Start @ 8:00 am
We almost always do Math first.
8:30 - 9:00-ish we start Language Arts
I try to get into the shower no later than 9:30. Sometimes it doesn't happen until 10:00.
During my shower Jared practices his drums for 15 min., 10 min break & then reads out loud to C. C reads and prays during that time until J gets her to read. He'll read until I'm ready to start back with school.
10:00-ish We start science or finish LA if needed.
11:00 is lunch.
the time for lunch break varies on how much we need to get done that day.
After lunch we do history/bible. Sometimes we are able to start this before lunch. The kids will sometimes work on their history for more than an hour, when they have projects. They love doing these.
Most days we are done by 12:30 - 1:00

Every other Wed. we go to the public library. Every other Mon is grocery/errand day so we have a much shorter schedule, usually just math and LA. We throw other things in there too.

Visual Velcro

I wanted to give you an update on how the Right Brain teaching is going. I am still learning how to teach the right-brainer, but here's some spelling tips. These have made a HUGE difference. It's all called Visual Velcro.

Here the words that J has gotten wrong are spelled out on old church concert tickets.
The letter he got right are in black.
The letters wrong are in green (whatever color you want.)
The sneaky, tricky, silent letters are given drawings, more colors, etc. to make them stand out.
As you can see above refrigerator has many different things going on. We started out with a little bit of visual velcro, and have added as needed. The green are the misspelled letters, the blue wavy lines are cold air under them. The red divides the sections of the word. The red around the "ator"are supposed to be lips "eating" that part of the word "ATE or". J drew the gator - ator. The orange are the letters he kept forgetting time after time.
Any visual velcro you can think of helps. J comes up with his own many times. Right Brainers are very visual and take pictures with their brains.

Also, here's how we practice. After writing the words. I hold them up. (My elbow is on the table, my hand is up in the air.) "Look and the first and the last letters and any funny letter." I instruct. After a few seconds. I put the card down. J keeps looking up at his "screen" to see the word in his head. We do this up and down with each word until he gets it. (Usually now more then five times.) We try to do this with each word everyday. The words that he doesn't get right I keep in and the right ones I take out at the end of the week.

These spelling words are kept in a baggie clothes pinned to our dry erase board. We also keep our Sentence rules, -ing rules there too. We use some visual velcro here too.
I hope this has helped. It may seem like a lot of work on your part, but it is fun and they really get into it. You won't have to do this forever. They will start to get it and make pictures for themselves in their mind automatically.

We have done the visual velcro with C too. She uses it a lot in test taking, review.

Tiny "Miracles"

I must say that today was some what non-typical. However, one thing that stood out is our son. Normally, he doesn't want to read let alone out lout. Today in history, we had to read the Bible. He volunteered right away. He read a whole chapter. And he read really good. I love these "small" miracles!

Substitute Teacher

Man, it's been awhile since I've blogged on this blog. Sorry! I have been busy. Right now DH & DS are gone they went to a men's discipleship class, out of town and DD is playing with friends. Onto school. Today DH played substitute teacher for me for a few of the "classes". He worked the night shift, so he was home today. I had errands, grocery shopping to do and he offered to help me out. What a swell guy! You know as I was putting on my shoes to leave, I was listening to DH in the kitchen teaching our children. My heart fell in love with him even more. Here's a man dressed in grubbies getting ready to work on the truck (again), with his "do rag" on and yet he stops to take time to teach our children and to help out his wife. I am truly blessed. I won't be forgetting today for awhile!

Sorry to get all sappy on ya!