Day #155/175 Days

Lego-Man/Conductor

• Bible Study
• Mathletics (20 mins)
• Quarter Mile Math (10 mins)
• Math Score (15 mins)
• Spelling (using a sample of Sequential Spelling video program)
• Writing Journal
• Read for 1 hour
• Geography study using a review item from TOS (more later)
• Standard Deviants video on North America (FUN!)

Day #154/175 Days

Our summer school session is starting today. I’m looking at using a very laid back approach. I came up with a simple check-list for both Lego-Man and Conductor. All of their work can be done on their own. This will free me up to work one-on-one with Happy and use some time planning for next year.
Lego-Man/Conductor

• Bible Study (they will be reading through the book of Hebrews and filling out free Quiet Time form.
• Mathletics (20 mins)
• Quarter Mile Math (10 mins)
• Math Score (15 mins)
• Spelling (using a sample of Sequential Spelling video program)
• Writing Journal
• Read for 1 hour

Happy
We are working through a In the Hands of a Child lapbook I was able to pick up from HOAC for $5 (love deals like that – they are offering a new one every week). We’re using Blueberries for Sal. We’ll be covering blueberries, the story line, bears, and Maine. It should be fun and I’m glad I’ll be able to focus on him for a bit.

Day #153/175 Days - 4-H Day Camp

Unfortunately I did not go to camp today. Conductor woke up not feeling well with a high fever. We stayed home for the morning and then I was able to bring Lego-Man and Happy in for the afternoon. Their Daddy was able to get out of work early and see their plays. Thanks to him, I have some photos of their theater debuts.

"Grim Pig" 

Yes, that is a pig head on his head. 

Happy to the right of the photo. He was "the 2nd Pirate."

Day #152/175 Days - 4-H Day Camp

The schedule stayed the same as yesterday except Happy did not help make snack today. He participated in a morning workshop instead. We discussed mothers and baby animals and insects. Each child (and adult) was given a photo of one or the other and then we had to find out matches. The animals were easy. The insects were impossible without a lot of help!

Morning snack was yogurt parfaits. YUMMY! Morning swim happened on the west side of the lake today (the side we were already on). It was a hot day and the east side was full so no extra parking. The kids still had fun although it was a lot more rocky and there was no sandy beach to play in.

After lunch I taught the older kids a class on photography. It went well. The younger crew were at theater. 

Then the younger crew came down and had a workshop on wind power. First they made pinwheels.

Then the instructors showed them how wind power can actually work. 

The fan was powering a pinwheel. The pinwheel was hooked up to a small light/sound board. At first a red light would light up and then the music would start playing. The kids really enjoyed the workshop (so did I!).

My kids are having the time of their lives but they are pretty tired. We leave the house by 8am and don't arrive back home until 3pm or later. I had to run some errands after today so it was close to 4:30 before we were home. Early bedtimes though!

One of the only photos I have of the older kids working on the garden.

Day #151/175 Days - 4-H Day Camp

We just joined 4-H (late in the year) this past April. While we've been busy trying to get our fair project ready, there has been a lot of fun involved as well. Because we are now official "4-H'ers" we were able to participate in 4-H Day Camp. It's held at a local state park and all I can say is WOW! The staff was excellent and my kids are exhausted.

Happy was in the Cloverbuds (ages 5-8) and I was with him most of the time so he will feature prominently here.

Lego-Man and Conductor were with the regular group (ages 9-19) and there schedule each day was this:

• Gardening project - they added a nice garden complete with rocks to the park property. Each 4-H'er also was given a small gardening tote with gloves and gardening tools. They got to bring those home on Wednesday.
• Snack (made by the Cloverbuds)
• Free Swim
• Lunch
• Afternoon workshop (Conductor chose to do a birdhouse basket project that took all three days to complete. Lego-Man chose different workshops. Monday it was a Rocks & Minerals class, Tuesday is was Photography, and Wednesday is was Fly-Tying and Fly-Fishing.)
• Theater

Today I tagged along with Happy. He started out by heading to the Snack cabin to put together the morning snack. They made peanut butter balls. All of the snacks were done without cooking. They kids mixed peanut butter, powdered milk, and corn syrup (although you could use honey) and mixed that together. Then they rolled them in Rice Crispies. They had a blast doing this and the other campers all got to enjoy their efforts during morning snack.

All the little helpers sanitized their hands before helping. ;-)

After morning snack we loaded up all the children and took them to the east side of the park where there was a nicer beach. They enjoyed about an hour of free swimming time. Really enjoyed! It was a hot and sunny day so the cool water was nice.

We had lunch on the east side as well. Then we all headed back to the west side. The Cloverbuds went up to their theater workshop. Wow. The lady that was lined up to teach this was wonderful! She talked to them about theater and worked on getting them comfortable acting. They were also able to go through all of her costumes and pick out something. Then they will start working on putting together a play to perform for family and friends on the last day.

They played the "Name Game." They formed a circle. Then each child moved to the center of the circle in whatever way they wanted and said their name. Then the rest of the children copied what they did and said their name as well. Here is Happy having his turn.

The Cloverbuds ended their day with a talk by our favorite museum educator (Serena from the LC Bates Museum). She talked to the kids about bugs and insects. Great stuff.

But my absolute favorite part of the day was during the morning. The older kids were hauling rocks and granite out from under one of the cabins (it was elevated) in order to make the garden. My 13-year-old looked at me and said, "Mom, I am so happy right now." He had the time of his life and that made me happy for all the extra driving and time away from home.

Day #149 & Day #150/175 Days

The Dino-Pastor came for a weekend long visit to our church. I missed the talks he gave on Saturday but hubby & the boys were all there. We just saw him earlier in the year but he's someone you could sit and talk to over and over again and learn something new each and every time.

Saturday's topics were: The True History of Dinosaurs for kids and Creation vs. Evolution


Sunday morning the Dino-Pastor was back and during Sunday School he covered the Ice Age. He is very compelling and it's wonderful to hear the truth spoken about creation from such a knowledgeable person.

During church he spoke on Human Evolution. Many of the "truths" that evolutionist promote are quickly  proven false and yet show up in the textbooks used in public school for years to come after.

Day #148/175 Days

The boys finished their Lego lapbooks. Here are some photos.

Lego-Man's:

Conductor's:

Day #147/175 Days

Day #3 of their Lego Lapbook (only four days total). Today was about building with Legos. This is a really cool link to a mosaic built using only Legos. It's beautiful.

We spent the afternoon at a 4-H meeting. The group is gearing up and fine tuning our project for the fair. We had started out with service/therapy dogs. It was narrowed down to Service Dogs for Autism. We'll even be incorporating that in to our community service project.

Conductor was able to spend some time shooting a .22 rifle. I find it funny that he instinctively does things like this left-handed. He bats left too when playing baseball. None of us do this. Some long ago genetics are in this child though. He loves shooting and is getting very good at it. (His Daddy is right behind him coaching him the entire time and being sure all is safe.)

Day #146/175 Days

The boys did Day #2 of their Lego Lapbook study.

Then we went and played mini-golf! I had promised to take them last week and they were good to remind me of that. We had a lot of fun. Unfortunately I left my camera home. And Lego-Man won. He was pretty happy about that fact.

Day #145/175 Days

Today the boys started on a free Lego lapbook study. It's pretty self-contained. Thankfully hubby was able to print the color pieces of the lapbook for me at work so the lapbook will be "pretty." Not that the boys care!

I like how it's laid out. I didn't make them do the copywork each day. I did make them do the vocabulary word though. They discovered that Legos were invented in Denmark and were challenged to make a copy of the Denmark flag with Legos. Here is Conductor's:

My favorite part of the day was seeing this:

Those are just part of the Lego-Man's Lego collection. I was able to talk him in to bringing them out in to the living room to share with Conductor. They were challenged to build a taxicab out of Legos (link to instructions is in the lapbook). They didn't have all the exact pieces, but Conductor persevered and came up with this version....

In the evening we went to church to participate in an "Academic Fair." This was a time for the children to share things they had worked on that year - not everything - just their favorites. I think they had more fun playing with each other but I know the parents had fun chatting and looking at everything. 

Here is Happy at his table of things:

He had his geography notebook from co-op class and the three notebooks we had put together from our Five In a Row studies (along with the actual books). There were some miscellaneous papers there as well.

Here is Conductor at his table:

Open in front of him is the large lapbook we did on the Winter Olympics. He also did a lapbook on weather. The metal tray is a tin punching project we did for 4-H. He also had his notebook from geography co-op and his notebook we've started on his train unit study. There were other miscellaneous papers as well.

And finally Lego-Man:

He brought in his posters he created for his ecology class from co-op. One was of an "air community" and the other was of a "forest community." He also had a lapbook for the Winter Olympics and one on reptiles. There are various other things here as well including some photos from the class I taught last fall.

This does not mean our learning is done. We still have 30 days to finish up our "official" school year. Although, we typically school year round with longer breaks here and there as needed.

Day #144/175 Days (Field Trip)

Today we headed south to the Maine Wildlife Park. This is a great place to visit. In fact, we started our school year there (Day #4). If you want to compare how much the kids have grown, click here to go to the Day #4 post.

We began our time there with a class on owls & then dissecting owl pellets. Here are some photos..

(discussing the differences between owls and ducks) 

(talking about how owl wings differ from other birds – seagulls – and let them fly silently)

 

(Saw-whet owls)

On to dissecting….each family was given 3-4 pellets each. Conductor went with my nephew and they worked together and Lego-Man and Happy worked with me.

After lunch we headed in to the park to check out all the animals. The small animals all have new habitats so that was really nice to see.

This is an albino raccoon. When Miss H saw these two (they share a cage) she was studying them more intently than I realized. She asked me at one point, “Where’s his sunglasses?” and pointed to the albino one. ;-)

While walking through the park we came across some wild birds that had decided to stop by for a visit. We first came across this duck in a tiny pond. We were able to get very close to it.

Then we followed this Canadian goose and a gaggle of geese as they walked from the bear habitat down to the same little pond. They took a little drink and a little swim before we moved back up to see the bears.

   My favorite photo of the day….

 

More random photos from the day:

Day #143/175 Days (Co-Op)

Today was our last co-op day. I have no photos but we had FUN.

We started off by having all the kids write thank-you notes to the last three speakers we’ve had. This included Mrs. Thompson who came to share about Australia (no photos from class). Mr. Rich & Smokey as well as Firefighter Rick. The older kids wrote one to Miss Sarah who taught the ecology course.

Then the older kids went in to their room and played a rousing game of Apples to Apples. Once the younger kids were done with their notes we went & played a game of Cadoo. It was interesting since couldn’t read so we read the cards to them and helped as needed.

We ended the day with a snack and some time on the play ground.

It’s nice to see the time ending for the summer. We’ll see how it ends up working next year. We’re talking about meeting less and I think that might actually work better.

Day #142/175 Days

A new week (still a week behind posting though…)

Happy & Miss H & I started “rowing” Make Way for Ducklings. This is such a fun book. They are both good listeners – as long as I sit in the middle. Today we covered geography & talked about Massachusetts and Boston and touched briefly on new words (i.e. molt and incubator).

Conductor continued work on his train study and Lego-Man continued working on his Narnia study.

I will be switching to “summer school” mode very shortly.