History Alive!

We had a long day today. Really needed to get things done. The kids are still working on history. (it's 1:40) We are at the end of Egypt & the Exodus. Here are a couple of shots of them working on history. J's painting the parting of the Red Sea.

(sorry for the slant here.) C is doing a comic strip on the confrontation between Pharaoh and Moses.

I will post pictures of the finished products.

They have also been studying presidents. We found a great book at the library. They each picked one newer/older president and tell me about them. This is not for grades, just for learning, familiarizing, etc. I want to them to learn to learn, if that makes sense. Just knowing facts is one thing, but if you know how to learn then you can learn anything.

I think J is really getting the concept of multiplication!! Seems like we have been doing so much that our brains hurt!

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!

Check out my other blog.

Just wanted to let you know that I have three Hot Air Balloon stories on the Coffee, Tea and Me blog. You might want to check them out.

Brain Test

Here is the TEST to see what side of your brain you use, if you wanted to take it!

My results:
You Are 60% Left Brained, 40% Right Brained
The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning.Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others.If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic.Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet.The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility.Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way.If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art.Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Right-Brained/Left-Brained

In my pursuit to teach our kids the best I can teach them, I do a good amount of reading. I read more about HS and teaching then anything else, after the Bible. Long story short, I believe I have found out some of DS problems. He is a Right-Brained learner. DD is a Left-Brain learner. Which leaves me going from teaching right to left, right to left...equals tired brain for mom. I have found some info on teaching the Right-Brained learner, and am praying that it helps. Most of the world, curriculum is set up for Left-Brain learners. I took a quiz to see what type of learner I am. The results say that I am 60% Left-Brained and 40% Right-Brained. (I guess all of that teaching back and forth is balancing me out!) I have a lot of reading to do the next few days. I will let you know how it goes.

PE

As you know, I've been starting to run. Which is no small task. Our kids take after DH. So they are natural runners. Anyway, today I actually fit in PE. I took them on my usual run aroung the neighborhood. I just have to tell you, I did better than them! So, I will try to add more PE days in here.

Update

Just a quick update. Things have been going good. Some days are longer then others. Math has been taking a long time. It seems like they both need help at the same times. Other times they just sail through it.

Some non-academic changes, C smiles when I wake her sometimes now! (It's been years.) She likes to cook and is quickly picking things up. J does better having sister there. There are more but my brain is a bit tired.

Some of what we are covering.
History - The Rise of Civilization's
Math - Angles, measuring, big addition, fractions, subtraction, Roman Numerals, $$, etc.
Language Arts - Homonyms, poems, speaking, listening properly, propaganda, spelling, etc.
Science - Types of science, scientists, insects, birds, etc.

J still practicing his drums. He also reads to C. She is such a help to me. They are both reading a classic book each. C reads all of the time though.

Well, I need to get! I just wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten about you all who read my blog!

Spiritual Science Experiment

Our words are like toothpaste, our mouth is the tube


What we say out loud
Won't go back in the tube.

So choose your words wisely
And think before you speak
If they aren't too kindly
Better to not even sqeak.

We have been talking to the kids about the words they speak. It wasn't getting through to one of them. So I did this hands on lesson. ( I saw someone else do it along time ago.) It seems to have helped.

In-service

Man, it's been awhile since I've posted. Sorry. Things are going good in the homeschool world. Math doesn't take as long for one kid and as long for the other. But they are getting it! Yesterday, we watched Sarah Palin's speech. The kids watched Obama's speech the day after he gave it. I'm going to be honest here. We do talk politics and they know where R & I stand and who we side with. When we watched the speeches and I kept quiet unless they had a question. I wanted them to make up their own minds. They were bored with Obama's and didn't like it. Frankly, they were kind of down afterwards. They didn't understand a lot of what he said. As for Sarah Palin, they liked it much better. One of them even commented during her speech, "This is much more interesting the Barrak's." Near the end of her speech I asked if they wanted to keep watching or stop. They wanted to keep watching. Not so with Barrak's. Today we will watch McCain's speech. I don't think we'll watch the whole thing as I've heard it's like an hour long. I think just from their reactions to the speeches they would be McCain voters. (Which R & I are) I must confess that they probably are biased towards him due to all of the talks we've had about issues and where the candidates stand.

On another point, we had a "Teacher In service day" yesterday. I had so much I needed to do and really didn't feel like teaching. So we had a day off. Today it's back to the books.