Nature Walk

Ash taking notes from a book about a water plant she just identified.

Yguy trying really hard to catch a fish like his sister did.

This is a wild cherry tree see the fall colors this tree was so nice to sit under. See Yguy still trying to catch a fish he caught one right after I took this picture. It is here at the house now in a fish tank with 2 others he caught and water plant we brought home.

He is trying here and Ash is laughing at his efforts. She had just let her fish go. She caught them without realizing she did (she was trying to catch something else) it was funny I don't know who was mre surprized her or the fish. :0)

And here is her baby bluegill we were at the pond maybe 5 minutes and she caught this and another fish. We didn't think it would live to long in our jar so we identified it took a picture and let it go.

We had a fun afternoon ticks and all. LOL

Pond Life...

With the start of the school year we have started nature study. Click here for a more in depth idea of what we are trying to do.

This month we are doing Pond Life. This week we went to a local fish hatchery we have gone there before and always have fun. Here is Yguy petting a Tuffy that is what the sign said at least I have never heard of this fish so further study will take place.

They breed lots of Koi and goldish there and this is 1 of 3 tanks they had full of these pretty fish. The tanks were about 20 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 3 feet tall. They have water always running in them and circulating. This is under a big covered area where they sell them by the bag. I didn't know this but goldfish make great bait apparently. I prefer mine in our little yard pond or in a fish tank.
As we explored the big outside "ponds" we had a curious friend come with us. As we looked at each pond and into each building she would look with us. At this pond she finally gave up and jumped in and swam around and jumped back out. The Koi didn't seem to bothered by her. This was one of several breeding ponds they have all are concrete some with extra air lines and some without. Like this one

More goldfish this one I had to put as the wallpaper on our computer...

These are catfish about 10 inchs long they were separating them out the bigger ones they sometimes pull out and eat at lunch time one of the employees said.

And at the very last tank they had bullfrog tadpoles. The bigger one had legs with a smaller one next to it. They had lots of them at various stages of development.

We are going to go back in the next few days and buy a bag of assorted fish and put them in one of our tanks for observation for a month or so and then release them into a friends pond. Not the gold fish or grass carp though. Oh and we have to get a bullfrog tadpole such fun to see them grow.

The kids came home and researched where Koi originally came from that was fun. And the lifecycle of a tadpole. Below are their drawings and notes in their Nature Journals.

Sept 1 time for school to start....

We started school today.....Its not like we haven't been doing something all summer though with a quick run through American History with Revolutionary War, Industrial Revolution,Civil War, Plains Indians, Roaring 20's, and WW2. We had fun and learned alot of interesting tidbits.

But now onto the Ancient World, Shakespeare, Art, Composers, etc. We are starting the school year with Hamlet we watched the Mel Gibson Hamlet yesterday, which when I think about it came out when I was in 11th grade, anyway they will spend the next 4 weeks reading and studing it.

They have email accounts this year they have in the past had them but are now really using them. I am using this to my advantage. I sent them geography, Shakespeare, and Web site emails last night. With directions and questions for them to follow.

I thought I would give you a tour of how we are organizing our homeschool this year we have refined it every year added, subtracted, etc. This year I was craving our old homeschool room but we have such a small home that I really love instead of finding fault where there is none. I didn't want to find fault in something that I love since then it would make myself unhappy over nothing and that is what the adversary wants right?

So I adapted and am really happy our home has always revolved around our children and so our home is a learning place why have fancy.

This wall we put a shelf and dry erase board up. We had a small one but it wasn't working for us anymore. This one is 4x4 the shelf holds books we are using right now, notebooks with timeline books, workbooks that are hole punched and all put together in big notebooks for each child, the box on the bottom shelf is for me to put completed work for later year end notebooks, bottom plastic container holds books to be used in later study this year, the one on top is craft stuff like cereal boxes, foam trays, empty cartons from the kitchen and household stuff (we reuse everything), on top of that are out scriptures for our family scripture reading daily, and hymn books. This wall is in the kitchen/dining room so easy access.

The shelf above the board hold reference books, narration can, basket with lots of dry erase markers all colors, and a birds nest that fell out of a tree a couple of years ago. Oh and the wooden chicken his name is Horatio we love Shakespeare. I want another named Hamlet.

This is our file box last year we had all our outlines for our studies in a big notebook. It didn't work for us. This year we divided the weeks for the school year into folders and put each weeks outline in a folder with the dates on the folders. I will add work sheets as needed, maps etc. I also have folders with this summers studies in them since I haven't finished organized them in a notebook. I also have our wall timeline figures in there, map originals, helpful info for me that I don't want to loose.

This is our calender on the side of the freezer, chore wheel, magnets kids have made, flyers for field trips etc. This is about as cluttered as it gets since I don't like alot of stuff on there. But I use every surface I can.

This year the kids are learning to use student planners, they are using them like day planners, mine is the little one, I like them simple and small enough to fit in my purse. But this little thing holds everything for me and is cheap.

This is the side of the fridge and we bought a few years ago word magnets. This year Ash put all of them on the fridge :) I pick a word and put the definitions etc up and they have to make a sentence with it and use it that day. Alfresco was todays word Ash's sentence was silly but fun. Can we go alfresco and eat chocolate eggs. Yes she is her mamas girl we love chocolate! I want to use words that are not normally used by us so the sentences are sometimes short and sweet.

This is what is in this weeks folder maps for the geography fair, and another mapping assignment, biography pages for the presidents notebook, map for geography notebook, and assignment sheets for the week. I use a highlighted alot hence the pink. Now at the end of the day there are mini books for Darwin's theories that was fun seeing the kids faces as they read about the father of evoltion. They are said very strongly that he was wrong. But I want them to know what both sides are and what other cultures believe when it comes to creation etc. There is also one on Labor Day. This year I have gone through the calender and pulled out all the holidays and they are to research them and tell me about them. We've done the major ones now its on to the small ones.

Our time line board we have tack boards everywhere in our rooms, laundry room, everywhere, 4 in the living room alone. This one will be just time line info we will add more than what is in our packet from our scripture study, holiday study etc.

See another 2 in the living room we have a smaller one that is our nature study. Oh and our globe. As you see the boards are empty right now but will have stuff very soon on them.

This blurry picture is an antique dresser that we use for all our extra supplies glue, paints, stickers, cardstock, etc all kinds of craft stuff. This to is in the living room it has the turtle Tadpole on it and our file box hes a hungry little thing and is always attentive when we are at the box!

A miracle: A writing assignment

The kids writing assignment yesterday was to find and read about a miracle in the scriptures. They were to tell me a little about it and what they thought. They both dislike writing but both need to work on it so we take it a little at a time. mom...

Ash
In 3 Nephi 17 it talks about when Jesus was in the America's.

He asks for the sick and heals them. Then he asks for the people to kneel and pray he prayed to also and the things he said were not written. And the people were full of joy because they had faith.

Then he blessed the children and angels came out of Heaven and encircled the and ministered unto them. This means to me that Jesus loves us and wants up to pray to him and be like the children.

Yguy

I found it in Luke 17 it is about the 10 lepers and one glorified Jesus but nice did not.

Jesus and his disciples were on the road and 10 lepers came to him and asked to be whole and he said, " Go shew yourselves unto the priests." and the turned and they were cleansed. One saw that he was whole and he turned back and glorified God and Jesus said that he will be in the kingdom with him.

I like it but I don't like that the 9 did not glorify him. I like that the 1 did glorify him. The 9 were foolish.

We have been learning about the Revolutionary War, Colonial America, Plains Indians, Industrial revolution and the Civil War this summer We have had alot of fun learning about our countries history and all that went on durin those first 125 years. We still have the roaring 20's and WW2 to read about. Such fun!

Ash: Renaissance Theories

As you know people used to think many different ideas of how our universe worked. They had what was called theories but no real evidence pointing to what was really out there.

There was a Polish monk who thought the earth revolved around the sun. During his time and before people thought everything revolved around the earth. This was the Catholic churches theory at the time. So Copernicus the monk wrote a manuscript and dedicated it to Pope Paul II so that he would make the church so mad. The church didn't go againest or for the book but many people complained about it. Copernicus died before it was published.

Then a man named Tych Brahe had a theory that a comet is supraluner (meaning above the moon). Before this Aristotle had said the universe to be in separte disks and that comets were in one disk and the moon in another. Things could not travel from one disk to another so the comets were sublunar (meaning between the earth and moon). So the Brahe theory was saying that Aristotle was wrong and that the universe wasn't separated in disks but all one piece.

We are learning all kinds of weird theories that man believed in throughout the renaissance from a book called Galileo his life and ideas for kids.

HSJ: March 17, 2009 & summer schooling

Homeschool Journal or HSJ
Last week we completed week 27 of our curriculum we have 6 more weeks of school left. Then we will have a campout that same week that school ends with 4H our end of the year trip. After that we have a weeks down time and then 2 weeks of camping 1st Ash and I going to girls camp and then Yguy going to camp with dad for scouts. It will be full!

But I will give them a week after that before I jump them into more school! Can you here the "ugh mom!" That is from Yguy he is in a faz right now. I want to keep the momentum up this summer. I always try to do something but this summer I want to do more than we usually do which isn't much except keep busy.

I found this wonderful magazine a few years ago Learning Through History each issue is on something in history the one this month is on The Late Middle Ages. We have some on Ancient Near East, WW2, and American Revolution. These are really neat and well put together mags. Since we love reading together and learning about our past I thought we would take one of these mags and turn it into a 1 or 2 week mini unit. We would check out books related to the topic of the mag and I would give them writing assignments from those topics and we would keep up with our math, spelling, and english but wrap them into that weeks topic. We also have been doing a Home Ec I have learned alot on that one LOL. One of the things we have lagged on is our Shakespeare, music,and art studies hopefully we can jump start those again.

But my journal for the day of yesterday.... I slept in I feel terrible guilty about that I have been doing that lately and it bothers me and it kind ruins the day for me. I like getting up with hubby but when he leaves at 5 in the morning well I just can get up at 4 sometimes.

The kids started making a solar system model yesterday and we started learning about space exploration. Flying was wrapped up last week and weather we have gotten very good at judging what the weather will be like by little signs in the enviroment it has been fun.

They played around with quills yesterday and writing things down like they did during the renaissance period it was a time when great discoverys, thinkers, art, music came out. We learned that they way they communicated with each other was by writing. They couldn't texted, email, etc LOL so they wrote long letters to people. So I drug out the feather quills and ink from a science kits a couple years ago and they started writing drawing. It was funny Yguy is so into Harry Potter he wanted to do all his school work with a quill;)

Ash and I had piano lessons and then we came home in time to for Daddy's to come home for work.
Below are pictures of the kids' planes they made with a carboard roll from christmas wrapping paper, a ceral box, and tape. They are painting them here silver and antique gold (paint I have from past projects) Ash added more detail to hers the next day. Yguy's he said was a spy plane and has no markers.

Nature Walk: Week of March 9-13

Our wild roses are starting to sprout just love these! The deer love their rosehips much more than I do though. This was our first stop before heading out on one of our trails.

Along the road we have maple trees these beauties are one of the first things to wake up for spring along with the huckleberries, jasmine, and dewberries.

A maple helicopter they are such a pretty red! See the teeny tiny one there were a couple even smaller that that one. Their seeds aren't ready yet but they are coming along nicely.


Yguy and a huckleberry stem it was in the 80's and he had his sweatshirt on :0)
he has been sick though we are going on 2 full weeks now of him being sick.

And a lovely green bug scampering along the trail. We tried to find it on the internet but didn't we wanted to know what it was. Soooo if anyone knows please let us know:0)