Winter Art

It's been SO long since we blogged. One of my New Year's resolutions was to try to keep up more with our homeschool blog, my cooking blog, etc etc. Life gets busy.... must.make.time.

Right now it is COLD here in Missouri.... we are discussing winter, hibernation, arctic animals, etc.
We had really slacked on art so far this year, I finally think I have it in my mind, a schedule that will work for art. On our day when we have no special activities in the evening, Wednesdays, we will try to focus more on art.

Today we did an arctic animal against the Northern Lights. I originally got it here. Jackson didn't want to do a polar bear, so he opted for a penguin. I just printed a penguin out for him, he did oil pastels for his ice and lights and we cut out some mountains. The girls, being older, are much more advanced. They drew their polar bear first on blue paper, colored it in with a white oil pastel... then cut him out. Colored their northern lights in on black paper and pasted the bear on. VOILA!

Busy Week

Hi, It's Gabriela Again!

This past week was a pretty busy week. We started school Normally on Monday. That's the day Jackson had drum practice, Grace had guitar, and I had dance.

Tuesday we had Homeschool PE and Grace and I had dance.


On Thursday, we went to the Apple Orchard. Spent about 70 dollars on apples, and they're already gone!

Friday, we all had Spelling Tests.


Jackson, Grace, and I all got a new Math Program that we love, "Teaching Textbooks." It's really fun, it makes you want to do math!





This week, we have to work together to make an apple commercial of why we should eat apples.


That will be up next week!



Have a great, fun week everyone! :)

Second week of school

Grace here.

   Last week was our second full week.

   Many things happened like:

  Gabby's first dance class on Monday, along with Jackson and I's first music lesson, Guitar for me and drums for Jackson.
    Tuesday was our first day at homeschool PE. Quite fun.


        It was the week of fairy tales, fables, and folktales.  We read Jack and the Beanstalk, Three little pigs, goldilocks and the three bears, and then we made a map of all the fairytales.
  When we talked about The Three Little Pigs, we made houses.
One out of legos.
One out of gum drops
One out of sugar Cubes.
One out of Popsicle sticks.


       Here is a photo of our map.

   Here is a photo of a puppet show we put on about Jack and The Beanstalk.

Here are some photos of us building our houses and blowing them down. One house was made out of gum drops and tooth picks, one out of sugar cubes, one out of legos and one out of popcicle sticks. Which one do YOU think was easiest to blow down. The Lego house was blown to the side, the gumdrop house the sturdiest, besides the sugar cube house.

 We were told to make a commercial or an ad for our favorite tribute in the hunger games to get sponsors.

Below is a photo of Gabby's ad.

We also talked about Indians and how they used different plants medicinal purposes.
    We took an adventure outside to collect three plants each and look up what Indians might have used them for.

   We hope you come back next week!!! Hope you had a great Labor Day if you live in the US.




   Grace, signing off.

Our First Week

Hiya! It's Gabriela. 

Last week, was our first week. We started by reading a story, called Chrisanthemum by Kevin Henkes.

We took our first field trip of the year on Monday, to Elephant Rocks. Elephant Rocks, all of their rocks are made out of granite. Did you know, these rocks formed more than two billion years ago? That's crazy.

Here are some pictures from our field trip.

 The Quarry

 Rock engraving from World War 1

We also found a really neat spot, called Johnson Shut-ins.

Tuesday and Wednesday were normal days. We had gym on Tuesday, and went for a short walk/run out by our house. 

On Thursday, we read Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. 

We also did "About Me" Sheets, where we drew ourselves and adjectives that make up us.

Along with that, we did our art projects , spin art and Collages. 

Grace's Collage about her.

 My collage about me.

 Our collages, about our calm and wild side. (Left, Jackson. Middle, Grace. Me,  right.)

Our spin art. Jackson left, Gabriela Middle, Grace right.

     

If we made a 100 on our spelling tests this week, we got to take a trip to the lake, which we did. :)

Darth Vader at the lake. 

Sadly, the lake we went to wasn't very clean, quite disgusting actually. But we had fun playing in the sand! 

Here is our fact of the week, from Jackson Miller:

A golf ball has 300-500 dimples. 

I hope you liked our blog post! 

Enjoy your week, Happy Monday! 

First Day

Hello, Grace here!!



  This blog post is going to be short and sweet, as I was only reporter for a day.








 Friday was the first day of school, starting with circle time.


   Mom (or should I say Mrs. Mom) read a story called Funny Lunch, written by Max Spaniel.






    After circle time, we headed to the back table and started to write in our journals to the journal prompt.


Journal Prompt: Describe one time you were Brave

 In the photos below, Jackson and Gabby are shown working hard on their drawings.

Gabby and I had a little break, and it was MRS. mom and Jackson's one on one time to learn math and spelling.

    Gabby went off and did her Social Studies on a site called den school.



     The subject was Maps. They asked Gabby to Map her bedroom.



 Below is a photo of Gabby mapping the door frame.

  While Gabby was mapping, Jackson was learning his fractions while my father took apart the pool.


Below is a photo of Jack learning fractions

   After hard work and concentration, it was time for lunch.




    After lunch, we took a field trip to the Library to pick out books.



Below is a photo of Jackson searching for a good book.

  That is all we did on Friday, August 16th.





 I look forward to being reporter again. Thank you,  and good night.

Time 4 Learning...

Over the next 30 days, I will be reviewing Time4Learning. It can be used forhomeschool study, an afterschool curriculum or for summer learning. My opinion will be entirely my own, so be sure to come back and read about my experience. You can write your own curriculum review, too!

I'm excited to review it, I looked at it last year for Jack, decided against it for the $20 a month price tag. But maybe, if I try it free for a month and HE enjoys it, as well as the girls...  we will pay the $$ a month. That is worth it if they  like it and get something out of it. 

On another note, we started school yesterday. I wish I could say it ran smoothly.... after we got our kinks out, it did. It's so hard to take off three months and then start back up out of no where. I can see now why some homeschool all year long. Maybe after this year we'll continue and implement an all year long homeschool. 

We started a unit on roller coasters, as Jack is fascinated with them right now... next week we'll start talking about ourselves, what makes us unique, emotions, etc. 

Grace is our first "reporter" and will have a new blog post up on Monday the 26th about our week from last week. 

Until then... 

Welcome!

This year I decided to start a project with the kids. Each week one of them will be our "reporter" they will photograph our homeschool week and type it up during the weekend. I hope that this will get them excited about school, excited to share and help with vocabulary, writing, etc.

So, the goal is to post every Monday morning... that will give them all weekend to get their photos edited and content up. Please follow along with us, comments would encourage them and mean SO much to my three!

I'll start by introducing them and then Monday we'll have a short post, as we are beginning our year tomorrow.

Grace age 12 ; music enthuiast, dancer, photo amateur, future guitar player, Buffy Fanatic, big sister

Gabriela age 12; dancer, crafty girl, compassionate, currently love The Walking Dead ;), big sister

Jack age 7; affection, gamer, roller coaster freak, soon to be a drummer, my youngest

Me! Principal, general ed teacher, activity coordinator, lunch lady, janitor, photographer, mother, wife. (photo credit Jack) hubby in the back. He is our math, science, PE teacher, also janitor and time keeper.  

I hope you'll subscribe and follow along with us as we embark on this second year.