Days #171-175/175 = DONE!

Our last week of school for the 2009-2010 school year is finally done. Lego-Man and I completed a Hunter’s Safety course offered by a local church. This is part of their ministry. We both scored a 94 on the final test. I was worried about how he would do since we don’t typically test in our homeschool. I was happy to see him do so well on it.

We took a trip to Mt. Blue State Park the Monday of this week. It was a fun day but full of adventures. I blogged it all over at my family blog. My favorite photo of the day was this one of the three younger cousins:


The boys had a lot of free time this week. We didn’t do a lot of formal lessons. Conductor did some work on Head of the Class. They read a lot and played a lot of board games, Wii games, and computer games.

We’ve also begun “Money Camp” with our 4-H group. Our first meeting was this week. Our 4-H coordinator for our county is wonderful. She is teaching the kids how to be entrepreneurs. When you are in a 4-H group one of the things you can do is place entries in the local fairs and earn money or premiums for them. Debra is teaching the kids how to turn that in to a business. I think this is going to be a lot of fun for them and teach them some valuable skills as well.

So another school year is complete. I’m now working on what we’ll be doing for the new year which we’ll start in a couple of weeks.

Day #170/175 Days – Field Trip

Today found us all getting up rather early. Conductor (obviously) loves trains. I’ve been talking about taking him to Boston on the Amtrak Downeaster train now for a couple years. My MIL treated us to tickets and off we went. Well, that sounds simple. We were up at 5am since we live about two hours north of the closest station. I think he was pretty happy about the whole trip though.



The train takes about 2-1/2 hours to get from Portland to Boston. My SIL and her two young boys went with us. My boys enjoyed seeing their cousins.



But the train  - that was probably the highlight.



We left the station and headed out to find the Public Garden. Earlier this year Happy & I did a Five in a Row  study on Make Way for Ducklings. I wanted him to see the Garden, ride on the swan boats, and see the Make Way for Ducklings statue.

Rest stop once we get to the Garden

Riding the Swan Boat…

Photo Op….

Jack picked out a stuffed swan that we named “Bella” as his souvenir of the day.

We then walked back to the Aquarium stopping for lunch on the way. Check out this flower we saw growing in one of the city gardens along the way.



The Aquarium was a “zip-zam-zoom” kind of trip.  We only had a little over an hour to spend there before we had to head back to the station to make our way back home. Here are some photos of our time.

Checking out the seals in the outdoor tank.

      

Penguins – lots of penguins. It was feeding time too!

Hello, Mr. Turtle.

Touch Tank

Near the end….

It was a long 18 hour day but fun. The boys had a great time and really, that’s all that mattered.

Days #168-169/175 Days

Two days were spent on lots of 4-H. This is our first year in 4-H. I've wanted to participate in the past but the schedule never really seemed to work. We joined up with a group of friends in April. The majority of the children in the group are homeschooled and know each other so it's really just a fun play date for the most part.

We managed to get our paperwork in just in time to put in individual projects in at the state fairs. This has certainly been a learning experience for us!

Monday we spent about two hours at our leaders home filling out all the paperwork needed to enter the projects. Lego-Man and Conductor are regular 4-H members and had the ability to enter 10 projects each. I managed to convince Lego-Man to enter five and Conductor did four (I think). There isn't a ton of writing needed, but it needs to be done by the children (I love that rule) as much as possible. I would write a lot of it out for them to ensure correct spelling and they would copy. 

Each project needed a "judging sheet" that had basically demographics of the child and the project name. The second sheet was a "Life Wheel Card." Every project uses certain skills to create. This card highlights those skills (literally - as the front as a "wheel" and the skills are highlighted). The back is what got to the boys. They had to list the skills used and what the learned making that project.

Happy is a "Cloverbud." These are children ages 5-8. They are basically "junior" members. Happy still doesn't write much or well so I simply had him write his first name and I wrote the rest for him. He was able to enter five projects. The Cloverbuds can enter the same number as their "4-H age." While Happy turned six in January 2010 for 4-H he's still considered 5. It's the age they are as of December 2009.

Tuesday we spent over four hours at the fair getting our booth set up. Three families (including ours) were able to display individual projects. We had reserved a space that would hold 80 projects. We just managed to squeeze in 70. The young girl who put it together was amazing! We just handed things and bounced ideas off each other. The boys did help and it was certainly a learning experience.

We'll be attending the fair (for the first time ever I might add) next week. I can't wait to see how they did on ribbons. I hear that our booth did well, but I haven't been in to see it yet.

Lego-Man's Projects:

• Tie-dyed T-shirt
• Photo collage of "My Chickens"
• Photo collage of "Home" (robin & nest)
• Photo of flower with bee on it
• Photo of a tree blooming

Conductor's Projects:

• Tie-dyed T-shirt
• Tin-punched cat
• Photo of baseball batting helmets
• Photo of a jack-o-lantern

Happy's Projects:

• Tie-dyed T-shirt
• Photo collage "Me & Odie"
• Photo collage "My Home"
• Photo "My Mom" (Yup, I let him enter a photo of me.)
• Photo "My Car"

Days #163-#167/175 Days

The end is in sight! Similar schedule to last week....

Lego-Man

• Read 1 Chapter in Cricket in Times Square
• Put together lapbook elements (we're making it in to a notebook)
• Do one math page (worksheet printed from Math-U-See)
• Mathletics for 30 minutes
• Read for 1 hour

Conductor

• Read story of the day
• Put together notebook page
• Do one math page (worksheet printed from MUS)
• Mathletics for 30 minutes
• Read for 1 hour
• Do one science page (using The Complete Book of Science grades 3-4)

Happy

• Zoodles
• Starfall
• Reading to him