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 #137/175 Days

"Rowing" Ping with Happy & Miss H - we finished our notebooks today.

We did math......

They each colored all the members of Ping's Family different colors.

Miss H's is on the right (the neat one!) and Happy's is on the left.

We added a map with the story disk on it....

We did science...

We did a "sink or float" experiment. I asked each of them what they thought and then we put it in and recorded what the item actually did. They loved this.

Yes, they each have a hand in here. I finally had to put them all in & out of the water. Sometimes they act a lot like siblings!

Finally I had them watch some YouTube videos about ducks using this playlist I found there. Then we finished up by making a "different types of ducks" page. This page originally had a bunch of duck shapes (like the one with words on it) & they we all put together in to a shape book about ducks. I cut out only one and then the different duck photos that were also there. They colored the white duck yellow and then added all the different photos of various ducks. We circled the white "Peking duck."

Miss H coloring her duck.

Final pages:

We'll be "rowing" Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel next week.

No together school today.

Train study with Conductor:

• Copywork with today's quote.
• WOW Words
• Looked up information on the Erie Canal and watched this video and this video.
• Discussed what locomotives do and their purpose. 
• Conductor correctly labeled this entire locomotive with no help and no prompts and not even reading the story that went with it.

• We also designed another notebook page in MSWord about the three different types of locomotives.
• Conductor colored a very colorful photo of a locomotive for his notebook.

Lego-Man did Chapter 2 his Narnia study. He is reading The Magician's Nephew.

Day #135/175 Days

Happy & Miss H "Rowing" Ping

Today we discussed literature, fiction, and stories. Yeah, I talked and then said "What's next?!" It was fun. I printed each a set of story sequencing cards and had them color them (another HomeschoolShare resource).

Then the fun began. I laminated each page and cut out the cards. They had only heard the story twice so wasn't really certain about putting them in order, but that didn't stop Miss H from lining them up.

Our Ping study will be condensed into three days as we have co-op on Wednesday and I'll be gone on Friday. So today we tackled what I had planned for Wednesday. We talked about the pictures in the book and the illustrator. Then I read the kids a poem and had them "illustrate" it. Here are the results:

Miss H on the left & Happy on the right.

Together School:

• Popcorn Prayer
• Pledge of Allegiance
• America the Beautiful
• Poem
• Read aloud
• Matthew Chapter 25
• Devotional - Family Walk
• Hymn Study - sang "Trust & Obey" again

Train study with Conductor:

Day 2 of the study had us again doing copywork and WOW words. He's doing well writing these and doesn't complain at all which is nice.

Today we looked at Scotland and located it on a map. This is where James Watt is from and he is the person we looked at yesterday. We also talked about different train cars or "rolling stock." I went online and searched images of the various types. We put together a notebook page using MSWord. 

The photo below is of Conductor while working on his project today. He is cutting out train cars and we then glued them to a piece of cardstock.

Today Lego-Man started on his Narnia lapbook. I am planning to have him use Further Up and Further In next year but may start him early. For now we're using a lapbook from (where else?) HomeschoolShare. Right now I only have him doing one chapter a day but that will probably change.

Day #134/175 Days

I began something new today. Here is how our day went....

8am - School with Happy & Miss H
I decided to try Five in a Row. We're "rowing" The Story About Ping. It's interesting as I'm doing this with an almost three year old and a 6-1/2 year old but it seems to be working.

We put together the fronts of our notebooks. I found lapbooking elements for all the Five in a Row books over at Homeschool Share and I am adapting them for use with the kids.

Miss H is on the left & Happy's on the right.

I photocopied the cover of the book and had them add a colored picture to it as well.

We discussed geography and talked about the Yangtzhe River today. I had them color a small graphic for the flag of China and let them watch some videos on YouTube about ducks and birds used for fishing in China. We watched Elmo's Ducks and and Five Little Ducks plus birds fishing (just like it was mentioned in the book). 

Here is a photo of the first page in their notebook:

Miss H's elements are open and Happy's are closed. 

They both seem to really be liking this so I plan to continue and see how it goes. Homeschool Share makes it super easy to do this. 

About 9am - Together School

• Popcorn Prayer
• Pledge of Allegience
• America the Beautiful
• Poem - almost got it - maybe one more week
• Read Aloud
• Matthew Chapter 23
• Family Walk - "Mercy"
• Hymn Study (to go along with FIAR) "Trust and Obey"
• History reading

About 10:30am - Train Unit study with Conductor

~As Conductor has grown, so has his love of trains. Some little boys like them when they are little. They love Thomas the Tank Engine and as they grow, that love moves on to other things. Not Conductor. He lives, eats, and breathes trains. He has read through encyclopedias of trains that we have numerous times. He just loves them. I had bought an Amanda Bennett Unit Study on Trains last fall so I pulled that out to do with him. I think he really likes the one-on-one time with Mom. We sit at the table since we need the computer for most of it.

Each day has copywork and "WOW" words (Words of Wisdom) plus "Interesting People & Places" followed by "Read and Discover." The study came with notebooking pages as well so I printed off some and Conductor happily began writing out his copywork - yup, happily.

Then we moved on to the WOW words. Each word needs to be looked up in a dictionary and the definition written out. While there were some links to dictionaries on line - including the Websters 1828 one - I chose to have him use a regular book and used the time to teach him how to use it. He is doing fine with this as well. This is the only writing I ask of him - the copywork and the WOW words. I let him dictate the rest to me and I write it.

His "interesting person" today was James Watt so we created this page for his notebook:

I didn't have any special project lined up yet for Lego-Man but I will have that in place for tomorrow. The kids seem to be enjoying this way of schooling for now and so do I. We'll continue this until our special projects are done. And then re-evaluate.