Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 22

Boy this week went fast. It seemed like I woke up and it was Friday. This week seemed that it was an easier week for school. Hmmm, well, easier may not be the right word. More like a simple than normal week.

Our week started with learning more information about John Audubon. Most of the stuff we had learned already from reading the extension book in earlier units, but it was nice to touch on it again and relive the information we had learned.

Our character trait this week was diligence. Hmmm, this made me think of all us homeschool moms and dads. We are very diligent in what we do, otherwise we would either give up with the thought of it being too hard or our kids would not learn a thing. I like this trait a lot. I was able to use it in their chores and show them what diligence means when doing your chores to completion or leaving just a little bit left over because you decided to cut corners to make it go faster. They realize they have to do the chore all over again and that corner cutting was not worth it in the end.

Geography was interesting. We took a map and divided it into the first states owned by Americans and then the states purchased from France in the Louisiana Purchase. You know what, Mommy learned a lot from this too. You can see in the picture that we even divided it with different colors. I think that will stick a while for them.

Oh, but our History activity was so much fun. We did it in the house, and nothing got broken. Yippee! I had them get a couple of hats and we happen to have 2 bean bags and played target practice. I did not do the candle, well, frankly because I did not have either a candle that was not used or a candle that was not in a jar. Just take a look at the pictures. You can tell they had a great time.

OK, I have to tell you, my husband is actually just outside of the pictures. He watched patiently at them laughing and having fun then he asked, “What does this have to do with history?” Oh that was great. I plainly said to the children, “What are we learning here?” And they explained everything they had learned about John Audubon. My husband asked nothing more! Now I want you all to understand that my husband’s question was NOT a derogatory question nor is he against having fun in school, just was curious how this all fit in. Don’t you just love it when the kids can answer those types of questions for you?!?!

As far as art this week, we did not have our art class nor did we do the art in the lesson. I felt it was very much like the art we did for the Indian sand art and decided to not do it this week. Next week we are making rolled pots for our art class. I cannot wait to see how that all turns out. And we are having it here at my house…OUTSIDE! It has been raining the last 2 days, so if it continues we are not having 15 children with clay all over in my home! Yuck!

Have I mentioned I really love the Pioneer Sampler book? This is such a great book and this week’s science was FANTASTIC! We learned how a boat can stay a-float. How air is trapped to keep it dry and floating. I loved this experiment and the kids were wowed by it!

Oh, but nothing beats the butter making. OK, my hubby got involved with this one. So we took the buttermilk and shook it and shook it and shook it. When it turned into whipped cream, I opened the jar and had everyone take a little lick. Yea, I know there was no sugar added, but they got to see the first stage of butter making. Whipped cream. My husband was actually shaking it when it turned into butter. He said that it was light and felt as if there was nothing in the jar and then all of the sudden it went thump in his hands. The children were in AWWW! We shook for a bit longer and then poured it out. My son was grossed out by it, but once I added a tiny bit of salt and squeezed the buttermilk out he loved the flavor. OMGosh, DO NOT skimp of this science experiment when you get to it. It was so much fun, a lot of work, and worth every WOW moment the kids had throughout the experiment.

Of course we have our Notebook page. Nothing exciting to tell about there. We just wrote out Henry Longfellow’s poem. Good practice for handwriting for my son and daughter. And of course we have out timelines which we added too. All in all it was another fantastic week. I really enjoyed the ending to the week with our science experiment. So now, as I told you, next Thursday we are having art class at my house and the kids want to make mini Johnny Cakes and homemade butter for everyone. So we will be cooking on Wed.

Have a great week and see you for week 23. Only 11 more weeks of HOD Bigger. God Bless!

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 21

OK, you all know what my first words are going to be. This was a great week as usual. We started off learning about our 7th President, Andrew Jackson. So one of the things I did was to do flash cards for the first 5 Presidents. I happen to have had these for some years now and so before we start our History reading I run through the first 7 Presidents of the USA. Hey I finally know then…I think?!?!? LOL.

Anyway, Geography is always interesting with HOD. I love how Carrie makes it fun and yet correlates it nicely with the history reading as well and correlates it with real life circumstances. And that is exactly what she did. You know when I was a kid, I do not think I could tell you the street names around my street (we happen to be living in the house I grew up in), but after this weeks assignment, my kids know exactly the streets around us. Good Geo lesson.

Our character study this week was decisiveness. I have to admit, I would have NEVER chosen this as a character trait. But it was actually really good decision to do this trait. He he. See how I worked that word into my sentence. LOL! There were many instances that I was actually able to bring up the word decisive over this week.

Art class this week was SO fun! OMGosh. I, personally, really wanted to do this weeks art, but I held back. Anyway, the idea was to draw out a picture and then cut fabric pieces into the shapes of your picture. We were suppose to incorporate different textures, colors etc. Both my kids turned out great. Actually, I wish now I would have taken a picture of everyone’s work at art class. They all turned out fantastic.

Can I just say that Science is wonderful we are having a blast with the book Pioneer Sampler. This really is a fun book to read and the experiments have been a blast. This week we did a few things for Science. We learned the different tracks for foxes, weasels and skunks. Well, we already knew skunks because we have them in our yard all the time and when our Dog was young and spry he use to kill them. And yes he did it without ever getting sprayed. Amazing isn’t it? Anyway, all these animals love eggs and we know that too because we also have ducks and before we started putting them in a huge Dog house at night the skunks would steal their eggs. So real life learning!

We also learned about how they use to plant the seeds in the Pioneer days. Oh my, can you imagine how hard it was for them just to grow a few little sprigs of lettuce? It was fun learning all the different ways they would use all the parts of the corn they grew! Except the toilet part. OUCH! Oh, and we absolutely enjoyed making the Johnny Cakes. I had no idea what a Johnny Cake was until I started to read the ingredients. Then I figured that they were Corn bread. Mmmmm, Yum! They were so good. The kids want to make some for our Art group next week. So hopefully we have time on Sunday to make some for Mondays Art.

Our last thing we did other then of course our Time line and Notebook Page was to do our History activity. Building the boats and trying to sink them was SO much fun! The kids did it over and over and over again! Each time it took a ton of pennies to sink the ship and, well we sunk our ketch a couple times too. Not sure there was much remembering why we were doing it, but they had fun either way and they know what a ketch is now!

Overall, again this week was fun. We did an extra day from last week because we had cut our week short. I went ahead and added the photos for that to week 20. I figure I will keep it all together. So go and take a quick look at them It was all about fence building. We used the Lincoln Logs as well as popsicle sticks. It turned out pretty cool!

I am looking forward to next week and unit 22. Hmmm, as I write this I cannot believe we only have 12 more units left before school is done. Oh Boy, I guess I have to start thinking about what we are going to do during summer. Yes, we school year round, but summer months are only 3 days a week with only 2 of those days being fulltime and the third day is usually fun stuff like science experiments and art etc.

Well, I will catch you all next week for unit 22. Have a great week!

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 20

This week was cut a bit short. Yesterday afternoon both my kids and the entire household came down with fevers. So needless to say we only completed 4 days of the 5 days for week 20. That is OK, we will just do Friday on Monday and then combine unit 21 day 5 to day 4 next week.

So far this week we did learn a ton of stuff. I loved our character study this week of loyalty. We actually had a great example of this on Thursday where the children were not loyal to me and the instructions I give them on how to behave inside the home. I am glad that each week we learn a new character study, but sometimes I wish it would go 2 weeks long on each character trait! This one would be one of them. As far as the hymn this week…well, this one was not for me. I know we will be on this same hymn for a few weeks, but I may change it to something else. We shall see.

I loved our geography this week. Mapping was always a hard thing for me until I got into my late 20’s and my husband actually taught me how to use a map. So this activity with the grid was fantastic for us to experiment with. However, I did things a bit different. I did not explain what we were doing. I had the kids lay down the grid and mark the numbers and letters. I knew my son understood right away what we were doing so I had my daughter go first. It only took her about 2 tries to get it without any instruction. The kids were having fun doing this project and so did I.

Learning about the war of 1812 has been very interesting. OK, call me dumb or whatever, but I had no idea. I know, I know, I probably did learn this stuff in elementary school, but I did not remember ANY of it until this week. I was learning 100% right along with the kids. I really enjoyed playing the card game WAR with the kids. We have not played that game for a while so it was a lot of fun to do it over, over, over, over and over again. Yes, we played 5 times. LOL. It gave the kids a different perspective on war. Red cards were the Indians and black cards were the settlers.

This Pioneer Science is very fun and interesting. It has given the kids a great perspective on how EASY our lives really are. Yea, we may have all these chores we have to do and learning in school etc, but it is NOTHING compared to what they had to do in the pioneer days. This week we once again learned the layers of the tree so we could better understand tapping into a tree for maple syrup/sugar. I promised the kids that Friday we could go and buy TRUE/REAL maple syrup not the fake stuff we get at the grocery. But we are all sick and it will have to wait till next week.

We also learned how the pioneers measured things. In most cases they really had no real means of a measuring stick of sorts. They had to use their bodies as some sort of measurement. My kids hit that straight on. They knew from me using body parts over the years to measure. The tip of my thumb=1inch, my two arms =2 yards, my foot as almost = 12 inches etc. But we still had fun measuring each other’s body parts!

I really wanted to do the art expression this week, but as we kept going on the kids were getting tired and at this point I realized that no one was feeling good, so we may go ahead and do it on Monday with day 5 of unit 20. We shall see, especially since we do not have our art class this week and next.


Well, as I write this I am praying that I feel better by Sunday and the kids do too. My children’s choir, MERGE, which I direct, is singing for our Missions conference this Sunday morning. I and the kids need enough strength for about 30 minutes! Anyway, we are off to sleepy land for a while and then Monday morning back to finish week 20 and on the week 21. Have a great week ya all and we’ll write to you next week!

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 19

OK, OK, here are those famous words once again. We had a great week. Actually it was short. I actually combined Friday's material to Thursday so I could have Friday off. You see my son's is turning 10 tomorrow (2-25) and I wanted to have Friday to get everything ready for his little party at our home. It was really easy to combine the two days together. The only thing we did not get finished was painting our mountains. But we will get to that in a few minutes.

I have to admit, this week we learned a very little bit about Thomas Jefferson. I was hoping to learn more. But the week was more about Lewis and Clark. That's OK, I know it will come back around once more.

Our character trait this week was about friendliness. This is a good one since my son can sometimes act a bit put off towards his sister. So this week his homework assignment was to find ways to act friendlier to his sister. I really liked the way we talked about the differences between acquaintances, friends, family and then Jesus. This was one character study they really understood and liked.

The history activity was OK, They enjoyed marking up that dry erase map I have. My daughter is still learning how to read so finding things on a labled map can be hard for her, so my son showed friendliness to her and helped her mark the map.

I love their pictures of the rooster. OMGosh! How cute they turned out. And of course my daughter wanted to copy all my sons ideas. He has been much nicer to her this week and she feels much closer to him. But for Science the candle burning and the source of its fire was wonderful. My daughter loved it and asked me over, and over, and over again to re-light the candle so she could put it out.

But the highlight of the week was making the Rocky mountains. Oh my. They had so much fun making the mountain range. OK, so we did not do the assignment exactly the way we were suppose to. But we had a good time and have a greater understanding. That is the whole concept of this. I will post pictures next week of the finished mountain range. We got so busy today (Fri) trying to clean, cook the potato salad, make the cake, clean up the yard, finish laundry (which I still have 2 loads left) and shop for food we just ran out of time to paint our mountains. So we will finish it Sunday after church…along with laundry!

Of course we have pictured our timeline and notebook pages below. But also take a look at our art project form our art class this week. This project was so fascinating that Mom had to get into the act of it too. The basis of it is as follows. We paint a picture using either very dark or very bright colors then we have to wait for it to dry. Once it is dry we paint over it with another coat of the opposite of what we painted. Another words if we painted dark then the coat over the top would be bright. Before this top coat is dry we use the other end of our brush and scratch a designe into the paint revealing the undercoat. OMGosh, they turned out so great. And for those of you who remember, we have ducks, sooooo we all decided to paint…a duck! I love this project.

Anyway, another week down and on to week 20 coming up. Wow, did I say week 20. Going so fast. See you next week!

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 18

So I say it every week, another good week. I think it is about time to come up with a new opening line to my HOD updates. But it really is true. This week was not only good in school, but my voice is back so I was able to sing while I was teaching the hymns, while I was teaching my children’s choir, as well as for all the other singing engagements I do on a weekly basis. I feel like I am on cloud 9 right now. I don’t have it all 100% back, but good enough that I can SING! YEA!

This week, art was a continuation from last week. Wait till you see the pictures. The medium was water colors and how to mix and shade with it etc. They both did 2 paintings and they turned out beautiful. They both really enjoyed working with watercolor. However this is not a new medium for them. When we draw in our nature journals we usually use either pencil or water colors.

In geography the children learned what the difference between Rural and Urban is. I actually went online and pulled up some pictures of some so they could see the difference between the two. Good project!

Our character trait was optimism. Now this was easy breezy for me because I tend to always try to look at the good side of things. If someone cuts me off on the fwy, I think “Oh, it was probably a mistake and they are kicking themselves for it.” I have always been like that although I find the older I get the less optimistic I become! Again this week the kids had a little hard time really understanding this character trait. But like I said before, the idea is to plant the seed in their little brains!

Science this week was all about finishing up the things of the forest. We learned and drew about the different plants that are green and can make their own food verses a fungus that cannot make food. Their drawing turned out good. Oh, and just look at the science experiment from week 17. The pictures are great! I have to add a quick funny story. Our mold experiment got eaten. I had a small piece of bread in a baggy sitting on the counter with a damp paper towel in it. I guess the wetness form the paper towel moistened the extremely hard piece of bread enough that my Mom ate it. So we had to start over. Luckily enough I had a rotting orange in the fridge and that is what you see in our picture. Oh, boy did it mold fast after I took it out of the fridge!

As well, we also learned a bit more about the different wing spans of different owls. Of course I pulled up pictures of each one. Who knew there was an owl that could fit in the palm of your hand?! I could not find our string, so we just drew the project on the floor. Oh, don’t worry when you look at the pictures, we used dry erase marker. My son’s wing span is almost the same as the great horned owl. Good wings for flying. LOL!

Our last science exploration was about the compound eyes of insects. I loved how we got several straws together to make a compound eye. Hint for those who are not on unit 18 yet…do not hold it right up to your eye. Make a funnel with your hand and out it up to your eye and then put the straws at the end of your hand. The way our eyes work without doing it the way I suggested, it automatically makes just one of the straws the one we look through. We enjoyed this activity!

Our history activity this week was all about the paddle boat. OK, the kids really enjoyed getting spatulas and spoons etc together and tapping them up. We made a little error with my son’s paddles. We made it a bit too long for our sink, so it was really hard to work. But my daughter's paddle was just right. The end result, they understand how it works. Although I think they already understood because of the fact we have ducks and they see how their feet works i.e.: a paddle boat!


Well, week 18 down and on to 19. I still cannot believe how far we have come and so far it has been so easy. Oh, and the extension reading book for these past two weeks, Buffalo Knife, was such a joy to read. We finished it today. Do you know what they asked me? “Mommy, can we read it again?” Now that is a good book!

Have a great week and we will see you on the flip side of next week!

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 17

Daniel Boone! What a man! I do not think I could do half of what he did or expected his family to do! This week learning about how this Frontiers-man crossed over form Pennsylvania to North Carolina to Tennessee then on to Kentucky was amazing. We even mapped it for Geography. See the picture below!

Our character study was on Endurance this week and let me tell you this man must of had endurance! I think we are very soft now a days! Well, and very lucky and blessed too! Unfortunately my kids just did not get the whole thing of endurance. Hey, you know sometimes they get it and sometimes they don't. The thing is to repeat, repeat, repeat and eventually it sinks in!

If you are wondering why I do not have any art posted from our art class we go to each week, it is because it is a two part project so I will post it next week. However, this weeks art project from HOD was SO very cute. The kids and I had so much fun painting Boone swinging from the vine just like in the story where he lost the Indians doing that. Just take a look at the pictures below. My daughter's is so cute with the cheeks painted in and the fearful expression. Mine looks a little too happy! And my son's is just right. Hmmm, sounds almost like the 3 bears! LOL!

One of the other History activities we did was to follow a paper towel trail. Just like Daniel Boone did to find his daughter and friends after being captured by Indians. 40 miles he went. Can you believe it? Well my kids did not have to go 40 miles to find the lost little American Girl doll, Kit, sitting in the driveway! They had a lot of fun doing this activity and asked if they could do it again. So we did!

For Science this week we are still learning about the forest. One of things we learned this week was about the root system and how it gives life to trees and other plants. Their picture of the root, tip and hair was pretty good. Check it out below.

Along with learning about the roots we are doing an on-going experiment trying to grow mold with a piece of stale bread in a baggy and spores using mushrooms. I have a picture of us putting each of the experiments together and then one of the mushrooms two days later. I will keep you all posted on how we are doing because I know you are all riveted to the edge of your seats waiting to know what happens next! LOL!

Oops, I almost forgot. We also read about pollination. Now I have to admit we had mixed feeling on the experiment for this one. It worked fine, but neither of us were very excited about it. Maybe because we used Chocolate and Strawberry milk mix. Maybe if we would have used some other powder it would have worked better!? Oh well, you can not have 36 weeks of excitement. You have to have one or two here and there that just are kinda OK. Right? Either way they did understand how pollination works and the experiment was helpful.

Of course we added to our Timelines and History Notebook today. My son wrote out some facts about the frontier. As an example, originally there were only about 400 people in Kentucky in 1775 and just 15 years later there was more then 75,000. WOW! Now that is expansion! My daughter did the same assignment but a little less facts written. She also drew a very cute picture of Daniel Boone and some other guys dreaming about who knows what. I am still not sure I get it, but that's OK, she at least knows who he is and what he did!'

Well, this week was just a little off for me. I am still not sure why. Maybe because I am having singing withdrawals. Yup, it has been 3 weeks since I have sung a note and I am still not all the way healed form that laryngitis. Bummer. Hopefully I will get back into all my singing that I do weekly and be back on track next week. Well, until then, have a great homeschool week!

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 16

Back to school this week. As you all know I had to take off last week because I did not have a voice to teach with. I still can not sing a lyc, but at least I can teach. So this week was very interesting. We had a lot to learn about the new Government of the late 1700's and the branches of the Government. I was not too sure how my daughter would do with all this information, being she really is only in 1st grade, but she did FANTASTIC.

First let me say that a friend of our has a son that has been widdling rubber band guns for a while now. I still think he should sell them to all the kids and make a few dollars. You know? Anyway, that has gotten my son to want to learn to whittle. BUT, after much research I found out that whittling is really called wood carving and for a child of 9, the knives you have to use are extremely sharp and is not recommended. Most of the sites I went on recommended soap carving to start with. So that is what we did. We got his pocket knife and some Ivory soap and he has now, at the writing of this, carved a duck and a car with windows. I only have the duck pictures up right now. This is a great little hobby and he can gift the soaps to friends and family as well as sell them too.

On Monday we had our art class and we finished up our paintings. My son's is of the race track and my daughter is the ice skaters. I took pictures of some of the other kids paintings too. They ALL turned out soooo good! I love this class. Not only because my kids are learning how to express themselves through different mediums of art, but also because we are doing it with all are great friends!

So the first thing we did in school this week was to learn to recognize the 13 colonies on the map plus the other 2 East Coast states. I have this huge dry erase map of the USA and World and we had so much fun playing a game of who can tell me where the state is and what the abbreviations for each of the 15 states? You can tell in the pictures my son was having fun trying to be the first one to say "I found it!"

Our Bible study this week was Proverbs 27:19 and all about integrity. I was really able to show them how such a young child can have integrity just by not allowing another child to talk them into doing something that is not right either morally, lawfully or Biblically. Good character trait this week.

For our first Science project this week we learned about how animals and bugs camouflage themselves from predators. So they had to draw their own animal or bug, color it, hide it and then have dad try to find it. So I had them use just the dinning room because I figured it was small enough that dad would not take all day to find them. Their bug drawings came out cute and dad found them in just the right amount of time! Along with all this we also learned about the lifecycle of a butterfly. I found a wonderful book (picture below) that really made it come to life for them. But I have to say I loved how they worked together to draw their lifecycle picture!

And lastly today for science we learned about the Maple tree and how the fruit/nuts are distributed around to reproduce a new plant. The project did not work as well as I was hoping. But we finally found that if we threw our little paper Maple nut in the air we had better luck of it traveling. Oh, and then, of course, the wind started blowing about an hour after school ended. Couldn't have done it while we were doing our project. I found a few more books I truly thought were great for learning a little bit more about trees. See the pictures below.

Now I have to say, I taught my son cursive first and then printing. However, I did not quite do the same with my daughter. She taught herself how to print while I was working with my son when she was about 3 and 4. So we are working on cursive now. Just look at her work. She really is picking up on it quickly and doing a great job. She has said many of time she wants to learn how, so here we go!

We also had to map out or branches of the Government. I did it on the white board and the children copied what I did. Here is another thing I went on-line and found some great sites that really helped to make it more clear to the kids and me. The best site I visited was Ben's Guide to the USA. I thought this site was the easiest to run around in and had the best info in easy to understand format. I also had them find the 15 states on a small paper map and mark them on Friday just to see if they got it. They did really good. Raquel found 9 out of 15 by herself. Good job for a little 1st grader doing 4th grade work!

Oh I almost forgot, we also did our timelines. OK, wait till you see the pictures. Not that big of a deal until you see my drawing of the Presidents seal. OMGosh! What the heck is that thing? Is it an animal, vegetable or mineral??? We had a good laugh and my son made me promise I would share it with my readers so you all could get a good laugh at my artistic skills. Well at least my bird drawing skills. YES! That is an eagle!

OK, we are off to the weekend. See you again next Friday for week 17! Remember to double click on the picture to see them bigger.

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger Week 15

We had an exceptionally fantastic week this week. You see my daughter took a huge step in school this week. Usually she can sometimes be disruptive during the readings and when I ask her to retell, of course after I read and after my son retells, her answer, most of the time, is I don't remember. But not this week., She was on top of it this week. She even asked to retell before my son on a few occasions. And during her phonics/reading lesson…OMGosh, what leaps and bounds she did this week. All this time, I was not sure she was listening and guess what? She was!

As far as HOD goes, of course it was a good week. I can not recall a bad week yet. Our geography lesson was fun. We drew the Delaware River on a piece of paper and then my son got his army men and the kids had the battle of the British/Cornwallis and General Washington and the crossing of the Delaware River. They enjoyed this activity, but my son asked why he had to play the British each time?

Our Bible verse was Proverbs 13:13. Oh boy! I got to use this one on several occasions this week. I love natural consequences and how they work to really hit home a Bible verse you are memorizing. And the character study was a good one too. Initiative. This one was used during an argument the two of the children had the other day. My question to them was who will take the initiative to apologize? It worked out good. Oh yea, and of course I used it several times to ask who was going to take the initiative to give me a kiss. They both ran to me so they could be the first ones. LOL. I enjoyed that!

During art class this week the kids were learning about drawing portraits. I was their model. My daughter did real good on her first try. My son, on the other hand, took 3 tries to finally get it. But once he got it he did a great job. I think what was tripping him up was the fact we were using a new medium…chalk. He had really never used chalk before so I think he was just trying to get used to it. Anyway, yes, I had pigtails in my hair if you are wondering why they drew my hair that way.

We really enjoyed science this week. I know I have seen some reviews saying the science is weak, but really it is complete! Learning about the leaf and tree was a joy for the kids. My daughter could not say the words correctly. She says them like this, "phototsisasis and clarpill". At least she has the right idea and understands what we are talking about. We did some leaf rubbings which turned out real pretty. Just looking at a leaf real close up under a magnifying glass and learn about the parts of a trunk of the tree was actually exciting to them. It was a very good week for science. On Saturday we plan to go to the Park for a hike and try to look for galls on leaves and look for the burrowing bugs in the tree trunks. Or at least I hope to. Today I have a fever, so we shall see.

OK, the Lincoln Logs activity was so much fun. They built the tower like Marion had built and they even made a flat top for the toy soldiers to stand on and fight. They once again had fun acting out the battle of Marion and the British armies. Can I just stop right here for a minute and say that I have such an appreciation for our forefathers now that I never had growing up. I only wish my teachers would have taught me American History the way my children are learning it. This has been such a great experience for them as well as me.

Of course the kids did their timeline this week and for the note booking project we drew a map of New Jersey and Delaware and the River in which Washington crossed to fight the British. And after we were all done doing our projects today, the kids really wanted to look through their history and science notebooks. That was fun. Dad even came in for a moment and looked too. I, and even the children, were amazed at how much we have learned in just 15 weeks of school so far. My son said, "We really have learned a lot. It does not feel like it!" Just in case you were wondering, I love this program. I think it is the most comprehensive curriculum I have used even though I do not use the spelling and reading program. Next year I will use the reading program with my son, I just thought it was way too much for him this year. I can tell already that he will be ready for it next year. If you are just contemplating what to do for your school curriculum, I highly recommend Heart of Dakota.

Oh gosh, I almost forgot. My daughter came in this afternoon with a paper plate filled with dirt and two worms. One thing I can say about homeschooling is my kids are not growing up being scared of God's creation. I am really glad about that. We will see you all next week.

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 14

My poor little girl was very sick for the first three days of school this week. I have to admit, as bad as it may sound, that it was actually really nice to only school one child. You see, my daughter is, well, the child who always makes the teacher have to stop class to correct, discipline or wait on. Where as my son, just does it right away and answers a question right away. Plus, without having to do her math, reading and penmanship, the day went faster too because I only had to focus on one grade level for the academic subjects. Despite the fact that the first three days went very quickly, we had a good week. I was able to bring my daughter up to speed on the things we had learned while she was out. And since she was still very tired the rest of the week from being sick, I just went onto Starfall.com to do her reading and math instead of her regular school books.

Anyhow Both the kids had a love/hate relationship with the History activity this week. My son's smile just got bigger and bigger as I kept taxing his M&M's until he had 1 left and he said to me "is this one for me?" Mommy said, "Oh wait I forgot about the tax for children with messy rooms. 1 please. Ok, honey now you can have your M&M's. Go ahead eat them all up." I say this as I have 20 M&M's dripping from my mouth. LOL! Needless to say I gave him 20 back. My daughter's reaction, later in the week, was not so funny. She sat there almost in tears. She hated the idea I was eating all her M&M's. Don;t worry folks, I gave her 20 too. But I will tell you they both got the WHOLE idea of taxation.

Proverbs 11:14 was this weeks Bible Study verse which was all about Leadership. I loved this one once again. I think I love them all so far. Anyway, I showed each child that even though they are not adults, they are still leaders. "What do you mean Mommy?" Well, I showed my son that he is a leader in the home with his younger sister. That she looks up to him for guidance, asks him question she does not understand and asks him to help her with things. I told him it is up to him to guide her correctly and be a good leader. Wow the smile I got from that. "Light Bulb!" My daughter then asked me, "I guess I am not a leader at all since I am the youngest?" My answer was of course "Not true." I asked her how many friends of hers are younger then her…all. Well then, they look up to you for guidance on how to act like a young lady, how to play, do makeup/hair or maybe even to look to God in everything you do etc. She was so happy that she was considered a leader too. I want my kids to be leaders in everything. Whether it be in a play group to show how to play or act or even in their own home as we homeschool Moms are leaders. Great subject for discussion this week.

Now last week we were on vacation from school, but we still finished reading "Guns for General Washington", which I am glad we did. This week I got to pull out a few books I had on hand to read in place of the "Guns for General Washington "book. What a great book BTW. The Henry Knox story was very inspiring. The Geography lesson was really good to see the difference between what kind of determination they had to have to get those guns across to Washington compared to what it would be like today to go that same 300 miles. WOW!

OK, bad Mommy, we got the first science exploration only half done. My son did not draw pictures of birds, but on the last day of science both kids drew the three birds we talked about. Ostrich, Humming Bird and Bustard. Ah, but day 3 of science was so much FUN! OK, so my son drew the mouse and put it in the sidewalk. Then our tape measure was only 25 feet, which was a good refresher for counting by 25 for him. Do you know we actually got to 250 feet before it was really truly unrecognizable. But really 150 feet is where we would not have know it was a mouse. We could see the white piece of paper, but really if we did not know what it was we would have never known. I think a few of our neighbors thought we were crazy measuring 3 house down. Oh well, crazy homeschool Mom!

By the time we got to the Art Exploration my daughter was feeling much better. So after giving her a run through of everything we had learned thus far, and because we did not have our art class this week, and because I thought this project was a good one to help remember Valley Forge, I went ahead and did art. I loved the way the foot prints came out. I had my son trace my daughters foot and visa versa. They came out so cute and it was a great fun day for my daughter after being sick for 4 days. She got to go outside to get some fresh air for a little bit while we finished our art.

This week we learned about the Declaration of Independence. I have in my possession so many very cool things from when I was a kid. I got to pull out a copy of the Declaration, a movie about the Declaration as well as the Constitution, School House Rock DVD (always fun), several books and we even went over the difference between the Declaration and the Constitution. The movie we watched was very good. A little long for young kids, but Very good. You know it even cleared up some confusion in my mind about a few things.

OMGosh, I almost forgot. I read a book to both kids on Monday while my daughter was in bed called "Breakfast for General Washington". It was so cute. It was about a boy who was very into George Washington and wanted to know what he ate for breakfast. So he researched and researched and finally found out. Both the kids were so into finding out what a hoecake was that we looked up the recipe and I made some. Well, lets just say that they DO NOT cook up like a traditional pancake, nor taste like one, smell like one or look like one. Shoot I had to use OIL to cook them. Ok, ladies, I almost NEVER use OIL! They do not taste bad, but it would not be something I think I would do again. But it was a fun experiment for the kids.

Once again, we had a good school week. My daughter is better and today we walked down to Rite Aide and got ice cream. I look forward to week 15.

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger Week 13

This was a lazy week for us. We did not do much of the academic things, but we kept up on our history, science, Bible study and math.

We enjoyed the History Activity on day 1 with the water, but Mom forgot the camera that day. Oh Well. Now both my children understand water flow as well as know exactly where the Mississippi River is on a map.

Proverbs 30:5 talks about dependability. I thought that was a great time to bring back our past character studies on responsible and being trustworthy. I am constantly telling them that they need to be more responsible with their toys etc. But after this week there was a better understanding of those three character traits.

Oh My Gosh! Who was the one who thought of shaving cream to make mountains and valleys and hills?! Fantastic idea! The kids were having a hard time at first, not diving in and just have fun with the shaving cream. But once I told them that the activity would only take about 10 minutes and if they focus they can do whatever they wanted with the shaving cream, they focused right in. Just take a look at the pictures. Too much fun afterwards. They chased each other around the house with shaving cream gloves. The pro to this all…their hands and nails were sparkling clean! LOL!!!

On day 2 of science the kids always enjoy a time to draw. Yes, I helped my daughter do some of the writing. It still is a bit much for a 6 year old, but she enjoyed drawing her owl. And I learned they have 3 eye lids. Who knew?

But for day 3 learning about vertebrates and snakes was a cinch. We owned a snake at one time and knew exactly how they eat. The only thing was our snake was a python and he would suffocate the prey where as some snakes strike. But we still had fun do the science project. I love the science in Bigger. It is very simple and there are times I feel like it may not be enough, but it really is. They have learned a lot form the science aspect of Bigger!

For day 4 of science we had a good time jumping around and dancing and flying and acting like a Cookoo bird. My son says to me "Oh, Mommy is that why you call our Cookoo clock a Cookoo clock?" "Yes, honey, because the sound it makes is just like the common Cookoo bird." So of course we went online and looked up the sound of the common Cookoo bird. Sounds just like the clock we got from Germany! Hmm, imagine that?!

Our week ended with the typical timeline and note booking. I love the maps they made of W.Virgina, Ohio, Virginia etc. The map in the book was a bit confusing to them so we pulled up a map online of just those states with the rivers and lakes the assignment asked for and drew it from that. They did such a great job!

Well, tomorrow is Christmas Eve and we have the whole family coming over to celebrate Christ's birth as well as our church service that night. So sorry, this weeks entry was a bit short, but there it is! Got too much to do and so little time! You all know exactly what I am talking about! So I am off to get ready for Christmas! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend celebrating Christ's birth! Merry Christmas! We will see you in 2012. We are off all next week. YEA!

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger Week 12

This is a hard time of year for me to stay focused on school. With all the performances either that I am in or I am directing and parties and shopping and cleaning and preparing. Uugghh, it can over-take my mind and life. I think that is why I am very thankful that I am using HOD this year. it has really made school go smoothly and easy. Although we did skip school on Thursday this week to go to our Homeschool group party. But we made up for it on Friday.

Anyway, we had a grand time in school. I loved geography this week. It was a great experiment with the flash light and showing the different zones and how the sun is used to warm those zones. Just check out the pictures below. Both kids really got into using the flash light and figuring out on the wall map which zone is hot etc.

Self Control. Hmmm, can't we all use a little of that one on a daily basis. That was our character trait this week. At this time of year it is hard for parents and kids alike to have self control! You know? But I know the Bible verse, Proverbs 21:23, was talking more about our tongue. Luckily enough my kids are pretty good with their tongues. They speak nicely, for the most part, to each other and to elders.

Washington's rules for conduct and behavior was very interesting. My son's was "Wear not your clothes foul, ripped, or dusty, but…take head that you are not unclean." Need I say more about why that was chosen for him?! And my daughter's was "Do not laugh too much or too loud in public." My daughter can be very loud. And let me be the first to say I understand. I am not exactly the quiet rose sitting in the corner either, but she does have to learn to control it!

Ok, you all know by now by reading my blog that I usually do something that is not in the HOD manual. Well, I bought quills to write with and this was a perfect opportunity to pull them out for this writing assignment. How did it go? Well, take a look at the pictures below. In a few words, my kids have a great appreciation for the pen now. LOL Will we use them again? Uuh, "NO"! Wow, that is hard work!

Learning about the birds beaks was cool. We did our project but we also looked at the few birds that were in our yard that day as well as our own ducks and how the beaks/bills of the different birds work.

Food chain was nothing new to my son, but my daughter had an Ah Ha moment and using the index cards was a great idea. Very simple and very easy yet a great impact on how the food chain works and what happens if something is missing.

I loved the art project this week even though we still had our art class and finished the painting of our Henri Rousseau pictures from last week. Check out how wonderful they turned out! Anyhow, the art project was about symmetry in the HOD manual. I had to join in on this one. Their cherry trees came out great. And yes, I allowed then to paint an ax only on one side to signify it was Washington's cherry tree!

And then the Science project of the egg. As I have said before we did a whole year on flying creatures, including the bird, back in 2009. But this was a great refresher for them both. My daughter remembered everything we had gone over about the egg form 2009. As well as my son did too. But I did catch a great picture of the air pocket in the egg. It really marvels me how wonderful God is in creating everything that everyone and every animal needs!

Of course we finished up our week with our timeline and our note booking pages too. Once again we had a great week. We had our homeschool party where we made snowflakes out of hot glue which was a great idea and it came out so cute. Gifts for the Grandma's. The bad part about the party? Toooooo much yummy deserts! I brought some veggies which I am glad I did. I tried to munch on those, but yummies kept sneaking into my mouth. I don't know how, but they kept landing there. Oh, well, Christmas is only 2 weeks a year. Or is it a whole month? LOL!

Well we have one more week of school then we are off for a week. So onto week 13. Have a great pre-Christmas week!

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Heart of Dakota week: 11 update

It was interesting on Day one of Unit 11 how it talked about finding out where we came from. My son went right to the map and touch Poland, Austria, Czech and Germany. We really did not get a chance to call anyone, but we talked to Grandma for a few minutes about her parents from Poland, Czech and Austria. I think the kids learned a bit more about themselves on day 1.

They also learned how much easier children have it now a days. Learning about Anthony Benezet was an eye opener to how children were treated and thought of in those days gone past. They have always known that the children worked much harder then they do now, but they did not realize how school was. How children were not taught 3 hours (like us) a day with breaks in between. Or that when they got something wrong they were told to just try again. They were struck with rulers and beaten and NEVER allowed to speak before spoken to. So far that lesson has stuck all week.

OK, so, in my "got to have it my way" style I changed things up just a bit for geography on day 2. It did say to get a little toy and make it go to the Polar, Tropical and Temperate zone. Well, we made little people dressed according to their zones and stuck them to the globe. That was fun. I even got in on the act and drew a few little people. Seems because of this time of year we all drew either Santa or Elves. LOL.

OK, I know this has nothing to do with HOD, but for all those out there who do not agree with Santa…please do me a favor, make sure that your children do not ruin it for those friends of yours that do participate with the Santa theme of things this time of year. Even if you have a 1000 reasons for not doing Santa and even if those 1000 reasons are 100% right, don't let a silly thing like Santa ruin another friends holiday season with their children and their family holiday traditions no matter how right or wrong anyone may think they are. Talk to your kids and make sure they say NOTHING to your friends children! Ok that is my soap box for today!

The assignment for the feathers was a repeat for us. 2009 we spent a whole year on flying creature and part of that year was birds. So this was a fast experiment for us. Plus we have ducks, so we know all about the different feather as well as the zipper effect of feathers and all about the oil glands etc. But they enjoyed going over the information again. And enjoyed looking around the yard for feathers from the ducks.

I loved the Bible verse this week. Proverbs 20:22. All about Perseverance and reliance on GOD! Can not get any better of a lesson. You know for whatever reason all of the sudden the Bible verses are really hitting home for the kids as well as the character traits. They are really understanding what this all means. Well, mainly my son. But even my daughter has really had a deeper understanding. I really love HOD's Bible Study portion. It is so simple, but really has a great impact! Both my children are growing stronger in the knowledge of God. Especially this time of year, it is really important to me that they understand who God is and what Christmas is all about.

The science experiment was so much fun. Both my kids love to draw so this was a ton of enjoyment for them. They were pretty close to the size of what they thought the Thrush to be, but way off on the sound. My son now wants to move to the east coast so he can see a thrush. Umm! Let me think about that one. "NO!" Too cold. California is warm 24/7. I think we'll just look at pictures thank you!

On Thursday we had the opportunity to go to a Ballet. OMGosh, I loved it! It was so well done considering there were so many children in it. The children ballet dancers were fabulous and the adults were even better. They took the Nutcracker and condensed it down to an hour long show with narration so the children could understand what was going on. Both my kids liked it a lot and my daughter came home and wanted to put on a ballet show for us which I proudly sat and watched for 30 minutes with her jumping and doing splits etc.

On Friday for our last day of unit 11 we caught up on the reading for Thursday. We did not do the art project for HOD this week. But take a look at the drawings they did in our Art class on Monday. We learned about Henri Rousseau in class. So this week we got to start with the drawings and our rendition. I will take another picture next week once they finish painting them too.

As normal we did our Timeline and Notebooking. Nothing really special about that one this week. Just the norm. But the science project was SO much fun. Hint for those who are not on Unit 11 yet. Use an ice pack under your kids nests and they will harden faster. We even doubled the recipe so Dad and Grandmas could have one each. We had so much fun doing the birds nest for our science experiment and even more fun licking the bowl. But the best part was eating them. Just look at those faces. Mmm, Mmmm good!

Well, once again I end my week with a smile on all our faces, happy children, a non-stressed Mom/teacher, no extra research for me as a teacher and all of us with a little more knowledge gained from this weeks school. What more can I ask for?!

By the way, I apologies ahead of time if there are spelling errors. For some reason the spell check was not working and you know how it is. Even if you read your own work 100 times, it is so easy to miss things. So sorry!

See the picture here

Heart of Dakota week: 10 update

What a great week. Well, I have to be honest, it was HARD at first. You see we had two weeks of vacation. One week away from home and then a week at home. So Monday was not easy to get back into the swing of things, but once we got the week going, by Tuesday we had things in full gear.

Monday started us off with a great little experiment in geography. We talked about how maps are taken from the sight of above the earth. I do not think my daughter ever actually realized that. So we got a few toys and had the kids stand over the toys and draw the toys from above. My son got this so fast and easy, and when my daughter struggled a bit, he helped her out.

I loved our Bible verse for the week: Proverbs 2:6. All about Wisdom. I was actually able to really use this several times throughout the week in our everyday life. I love when school stuff can go past the school hours. Don't you?

The migration map was not one of our favorite science activities so far. But you can see they did an OK job of their mapping skills. Oh, but the science activity on day 3 was so much fun! Flapping, soaring, fluttering, hovering and gliding. We actually spent a little too much time on this, but they were having so much fun. Just look at those happy faces as they fly around our school room!

Now this week we skipped our art class because at our church we do these huge Broadway Style musicals and we had a rehearsal that night and I still did not have 1 piece of my daughters costume so I needed to skip art class to go do that before rehearsal. Anyhow, long story short, we ended up doing the art in HOD this week. It was fun. Now, I have to admit we did things a bit different then what the guide told us to do. But you have to understand the art class we are in is far advanced then the art in the HOD manual. I gave them a white crayon and had them draw some designs on their kite then paint over them in watercolors. The only rule was that they were only given the primary colors to paint with so they had to mix colors. They turned out pretty darn good. We were going to try to fly them, but Mom got lazy and kept forgetting to get the supplies needed. So my son says all he really wants is to hand it on his wall. Okay Dokay!

Of course we added to our timeline this week, but one of my favorite activities was the Benjamin Franklin Quotes. I had both my kids only do two quotes. Both my son and daughter choose one of the same ones..."Early to be and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise". I loved the creativity they both put into the drawings to go with them. Let me explain them for you.

"Early to be and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"

Daughter: you got a man sleeping at the table because he did not go to be in time. In the next frame you see him sleeping peacefully like he should in bed at a good time of night.

Son: The first frame shows a man going to be on time, 2nd frame show the alarm clock and a rooster waking him up early and the 3rd frame shows the same man at his lab inventing a cure for some horrible disease.

"A good example is the best sermon"

Son: Here you have a man off the street helping another man with a very heavy box just out of the good of his heart.

"Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow"

Daughter: She has a lady walking her dog in the park which is her job and in the 2nd frame you see her kneeling beside her bed praying to God before bedtime.

Anyway, you can see how imaginative they are with their art work. I am sure your kids are too. Well all in all we had a great school week. We are all a bit tired from all the rehearsals and performances this week, but it is all well worth it. If only one person in that audience receives Christ from something anyone of us did on stage, then that is all that matters. Right!?

Well, we are off to week 11.

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger, Week 8 Update

So am I a bad Mom? This week was just off. Every night starting Sunday night we went to bed no earlier then 10:30pm. Ok, now my kids go to be by 8:30 maybe 9:00 if I read or we are running late at night. So going to bed 2 hours after bedtime was not acceptable. So what this meant is that we ended up getting up 2 hours later then normal. Even I had a hard time getting up to exercise this week.

Anyhow, what I ended up doing, and here comes the bad Mom comment, was only doing history, Geography, Bible, Science and Poetry. OMGosh, will my kids even graduate from High school now? Will they ever get a good job? LOL! Just kiddin. I have to admit I felt bad about it, but I know that they will live and things will be fine.

Besides being tired all week, we had a fun and exciting school week. Maybe even more so since we scrapped the academic stuff which them left us to mosey through the other parts of school.

We did not have our normal Art class this week so we decided to do the art project. They actually had so much fun making the Wampum belt out of rice. My daughter ended up taking the rice outside and playing with it. Thank God we have ducks and dogs etc to clean up the mess she made. Better outside then inside.

When we got to the history activity this week of building with Lincoln Logs, you should have seen the faces. They were shocked that I said it was time to build forts and house etc."Really mommy? That is part of school?" "Yup!" They worked together very well and it gave me a little time to read my emails. We ran out of logs, but if we would have had enough they would have been able to make a wall all the way around. But they have a flower garden and fire pits etc. Check out the pictures below.

Now I think I mentioned last week that we had spent the whole year last year learning about the Solar System, so once again the science for unit 8 was a good review for us. Both kids did a great job diagramming the planets. We added Pluto to our diagrams though. As far as the experiment, well, kind of hard to take pictures in the complete darkness. But we had fun with this one. Raquel and Vincent both did drawings on the experiment sheet. Hers in on the right, his on the left! The real cool thing is that the hole I punched in the index card was so tiny and they were so surprised how much light really got through that tiny hole!

For Geography we had a great time following directions. Except Mommy forgot the camera! Oh Well! My daughter really did a great job at this. I know each week I write at how amazed I am at her, but you can not forget that she is just turned 6 and this curriculum is for 8-10 year olds. So it amazes me how much she can keep up with her 9 year old brother. They had a good time and brother was a good big brother. When she would forget what the directions were, he would help her out. Ok everyone say..."Awwwww!" LOL!

I liked that we got to revisit the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego this week. Hope I got the spelling right. Shocking those names are not in spell check! It has been a very long time since we have talked about that story. My son was totally on top of it and basically told me the whole story, but my daughter said she remembered it, but was glad to hear it again! They loved the courage it took for those 3 men to stand up to Nebuchadnezzar. Great story about courage!

Now for our last Science activity, I have to say we have NO carpet in the house. We have only wood floors. I looked everywhere for wool, but none. Besides, it makes me itch anyway! So we did something very different for science. My husband came in with a battery and steel wool and lit the steel wool on fire with sparks. He explained how the energy form the battery was able to do that. It was actually very interesting and even though it did not have anything to do with static electricity, it still had something to do with electricity. Oh and of course Dad had to show them how to check if a battery is still good. Stick out your tongue!

All in all we had a good relaxing school week. Next week back on track with the full load. Can only be a bad mom for 1 week at a time, right? Then we are off on a vacation for a week right before the holidays. I am sooooo looking forward to it. I did tell the kids I expected them to do their reading even though we will be on vacation. Me? I will be scrapbooking at least one day while away and then we will all go to Lego Land as well as the Aquarium down there in San Diego. Yea, I know we are not going far, but it is still getting away from the everyday! I will write you all next Friday. Have a great school week!

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger, Week 7 Update

OMGosh, we forgot to play Jeopardy this week. Our week started out pretty slow. This week with HOD I felt was a little slower and not quite as much to do as normal, but let me make darn sure you realize that this is NOT a complaint. It was actually nice, since towards the end of the week, I was feeling a wee bit tired and by Thursday night I realized I was getting a little cold.

Our week started nicely learning about John Winthrop's generosity and making sure that my kids understood that generosity is not just a trait to have with strangers but with each other too.

As most of my regular readers know we pick and choose the art projects because we are in a fantastic art class with our play date group. This week we choose not to do the HOD art and only to do the art in class. This was a good choice since we could not finish the project in class. Just wait till you scroll down and see the real cool paintings the kids did. And they were right in line with the time period we are learning...early colonial America. Well almost in line.

I have to say this weeks Poem, "Thanksgiving" was beautiful. I think I am going to pull this one out and make a copy for everyone for thanksgiving dinner. It truly was a blessing of a poem this week!

Our Bible verse for the week was Proverbs 6:6 and our character trait was industriousness. It really is amazing how each week the character trait for the week really ties into previous week. Have those of you that are doing Bigger noticed that too?

We had fun trying to find Goods and Services with our History Activity for the week. Do you know how hard it is to find things that relate to that time period? We gave up and just did the collage for todays time period. Then I downloaded some traffic signs for the services side. My daughter is becoming quite the artist. She really watches her brother and what he does and tries her hardest to copy him.

As our week continued on we learned about how rice was brought to the wet lands of South Carolina. Who knew we even had that here? OK, well then you are all a bit smarter then me. I had no idea about the rice in S. Carolina. However, I knew all about the Indigo. The first question asked..."Mommy, can we get some Indigo seeds and plant some in the yard and make out own Indigo paints and dyes?" Well, now guess what I am surfing the web for?! Anyway, Eliza Lucas's story really helped to hone in on the Industriousness character trait we are working on this week. And learning the male and female parts of the flower was interesting for the children too.

Many years ago, my son and I did a study on Dinosaurs. At that time we made fossils. He really had fun with it then. But this time my daughter had a chance to do it with us too. We used cars, leaves, toys etc. And then afterwards they went to town building all sorts of pots and planes etc. with the clay. Hey, I could not let very good clay and fun go to waste, right?

Ok, so learning about Berkeley and Bacon brought actual laughter throughout day 4. For those of you who are coming to Unit 7 day 4 or who have been there just wait till you get to the reading. The people all shouted "Bacon, Bacon, Bacon!" I know it really is not that funny but when you have two elementary kids it's hilarious. I was told they were getting hungry and wanted Bacon for lunch and dinner.

Anyway, Geography was good. My daughter and son now understand the difference between an Island and a Peninsula as well as a Bay and Isthmus. As you can see by our project we were able to sort of make those things above with our sand and water. It was not a PERFECT replica, but they got the idea!

I loved the notebooking project today. Why, because I was not feeling good and I did not have to attend to then that much. I actually kinda gave my son the run to help my daughter out with this one. As you can see by their pictures, they did a very good job. As well as a good job on their timelines.

As far as the science project, well, we skipped it. Why you ask? Well, two reason. 1. Cough, cough, sniffle, sniffle. I was tired and not feeling up to it. 2. We spent the entire year last year learning about our solar system. I have something for all of you to use for Unit 7 day 5.

My Very Early Morning Just Started Under Nancy's Pancakes

OK, so what the heck does that mean you are probably asking yourself. Take the first letter of each word (red) and that is the first letter of each planet in order including Pluto. If you do not want to include Pluto, just say Under Nancy. SO anyway, back to what I was saying earlier. Because we worked so hard of the Solar system last year, both my kids reminded me about this (?) acrostic. So I was happy enough that they were both able to name off the planets and give me a little information about each planet so we skipped the project.

My son is really enjoying math. I even took a picture of him doing it on the computer. I may have to sell off all my Abeka math books. Aleks is NOT cheap, but it is working and he has actually asked to do math on Thursdays (our non math day). So I know it is working.

Well, all in all this week went very well. As usual I look forward to week 8 and see what HOD has in store for us. Write to you next week.

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Week 6 HOD Update

We have a very unusual schedule. We typically do school for 5 weeks and then take a week off of course during the holiday season it gets a bit tricky. Well, for those of you who follow my blog closely, you probably noticed that I did not have a week 6 update last week. Yup, you guessed it, we were on our week off. But we are back this week. So now we have 6 weeks under our belt. This week was a very amusing week and we, I mean I Learned a lot.

First we started our week off learning about William Penn. OK, now don't laugh, but I really had no idea who he was. I mean, I knew about Pennsylvania, but I had no idea how good of a man he really was, or that he was a Quaker/Friend. And I certainly did not know how much he did for the Indians with the very first Treaty! Well, the kids really enjoyed learning about William Penn and they had even more fun do the jumping History activity. My son of course did really well, but mainly because he is 3 years old and a whole head taller then my daughter. But she did not get too discourage. They really enjoyed that and kept jumping even after the activity.

On Monday we were able to finish our art work in our art class. I have to say I am very impressed with my daughter. She is really giving this art class a run for its money. The curriculum we are using is really geared toward 6th, 7th graders. I knew my son would do very well with it…he the up and coming artist. But my daughter is doing fantastic. The project was to draw either a King, Queen or Jack of whatever you want. My son chose to draw a King of Rockets and my daughter drew the Queen of Butterflies. Just take a look at the pictures below and how cute they turned out.

Hmmm, green pine cones rubbed on the face for wrinkles. Come on ladies lets go get some NOW!!! LOL. Yea, the kids enjoyed giggling at some of the silly remedies that people use to do as Folk Remedies. However the Willow Bark my daughter found interesting. We giggled about how I need to go plant a willow tree in the yard and lick the bark daily for my daily headaches and migraines. LOL! Loved both the kids drawings for the Folk Remedies.

But that lead quit nicely into the immune system. HOD had us cut up some circle for each of the different type of cells. I decided to explain the immune system in a different way then HOD explained. I wanted to make it a bit more real for them.

This is what I said. The Virus is like the bad guy trying to steal your health by setting off a bomb in your body. The T-Cells are the police which are there to maintain control of the situation and keep the virus contained. The B-Cells are the SWAT team who then send in their most well train bomb squad the Antibodies and lastly is the K-Cell come in as the clean up crew. OK, so the kids really understood it so well that they actually each day asked if they could play the game again and again. I caught it on video for you all to watch below.

Lastly we learned about I think one of the very first American Artists, Benjamin West. I liked the little project we did with the paint box circles. Although my daughter complained a bit about all the copy work involved in that, but she did it and it turned out well. And of course we filled out Timeline with William Penn and Benjamin West.

Oh, I have to mention here that we are reading Seabiscuit right now and we are totally enjoying that book. Now I have to say that my husband usually does not involve himself with our school work (he has to work of course) unless he happens to be in the room at the moment or I need help explaining something.

On Wednesday, my husband sat in on our reading of Seabiscuit. He was enjoying it so much he kept making me read more and more until he got the answer as to whether Seabiscuit won the race or not. It was so much reading we got 3 days done in that time with Dad and even the kids really enjoyed all of that reading! I think it was the first time he really understood how the kids really enjoy the Charlotte Mason way of learning.

Anyway, all in all, it was another prosperous week. It was (I feel like) a light week for HOD, but we still learned a ton.

Week 5 HOD Update

Ok, I realized I need to purchase a thesaurus for the phrase" We had a great week" I keep saying that each week and I am sure my readers are getting tired of that same line. Anyway, I have realized that the Early American History that I learned as a child was very watered down as well as my memory of it has been watered down too. There is so much over these past 5 weeks that I have learned I still can not believe it. All those holes in my timeline in my head I have had for years have started to be filled in! Being able to re-learn history has not only given me a love for the subject, but I also have a greater appreciation for history now. Making a timeline has helped greatly too, and you can see from the pictures below how well my son and daughter's Timelines are coming along. Making a Timeline really helps to see how things fall in place. I highly recommend each of you to take this task on. It is so easy and well worth the few moments it takes.

One of our projects this week was to learn more about the Indians. The art project was to make a sand art craft. So the ingredients for this was simply salt, food color and paper plates. I had the kids look at some real sand art on the internet to understand exactly what we were doing and to see the beauty and complication of this in real life. My son really went to town on drawing out his project on the paper plate. My daughter was having a little more difficult time understanding that she needed to make the drawing a little larger to be able to fit the sand into the open spaces of her drawing. But once she understood this concept she had a great picture drawn up. We went out in the back yard and the kids went to town using a paint brush, watered down glue and our colored sand (salt). What a mess, but what fun. I even had to join in on this project! However, I made WAAAAAY to much sand so now we have plenty left over for many more projects. I see Christmas gifts in the future!

I loved the geography lesson about the four different hemispheres. Not that the lesson was anything new for my son, but the fact that we used a melon and masking tape to mark off the northern, southern, eastern and western hemispheres made him crack up. And then I went ahead and had the children mark where they thought each of the continents were. They did a great job.Then we got to eat the world...Haha!

My favorite part of this week was our science project. You see children, in general, have a tendency not to wash their hands really good, But this week was all about how the pilgrims dying off so easily because of hygiene problems and the spread of germs.

We got out some hand cream, glitter, soap, paper towels and water. Using the cream as a glue for the glitter and rubbing the glitter in the creamed hands to act like germs, they had a chance to wipe their hands just in a paper towel first. The result is that their hands were still full of germs. Next we had them just rinse their hands and low and behold, their hands were still full of germs. It was not until they actually washed them with soap and water that all the germs were gone. It was a huge Aha! moment for my son especially. They realized that if the Pilgrims would have had this soap they may not have spread so much germs therefore it is possible they could have not died off so easily at first. They also learned that they need to do this in their own lives too to be able to keep themselves form getting sick and spreading germs to and from others. Great lesson!

We finished up our science by learning about Vertebrates. My son already knew about these as well as mammals, but my daughter was really intrigued by the thought that animals were put into the two categories. Vertebrates and Invertebrates and that we humans were considered vertebrates along with other animals. I wish I would have had a video of this moment for her this week.

Another one of those "Aha" moments for both children was the Need/Want collage they were asked to do. They had to go into magazines and cut out things they thought were wants and things they thought were needs and glue then to a paper. Here is the "Aha" moment... even though there was plenty of things that were good for us like weights, bicycles etc, they still went under the want list. The only things under the need list was food, body coverings and water. What we need ultimately to survive is food and water. Everything else is a want., even a bra and undies. Look at my daughters collage. LOL!!

On top of all that fun we were able to visit the Discovery Science Center and learn about bugs this week and spend a few hours at the park with Dad. Have I mentioned how much I love homeschooling and how it allows for us to have such a flexible schedule?

So, week 5 over and done. Learned a ton and had fun doing it. Jeopardy was great fun. My daughter and son tied so they both got to pull a treat form the treat bag. YEA! They are looking forward to next week though. We school 5 weeks on and 1 week off, so next week is our week off. Unfortunately I will not have a post regarding HOD next Fir/Sat, but I will be back the following week. Hey do me a favor if you like my blog posts, hit the LIKE button up top for each one you read.

Have a great couple weeks everyone and come on back for week 6.

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Week 4 HOD Update

Ok, so this week was not as exciting and good as last week, BUT, it had nothing to do with our curriculum. We were just having an off week. Everyday seemed to start later then we wanted. I was having a hard time sleeping at night all week,  I could not pull my behind out of bed to exercise this week, so that put me in a funky mood. We ended up taking a walk everyday after school, which was great and made up for not exercising in the AM! But, my daughter was in one of those "I Can't" moods all week. My son put on the tears a couple of times during math when he did not understand something and instead of just asking for an another explanation or my help...whine. UUGGHH! Stressful attitude week! 

You all know exactly what I mean. I am sure at least one of you out there has had a week like that. Well, that was ours. But, as far as what we accomplished, wow, it was a lot. I still can not believe how much you learn in just 5 days with HOD.

So this week we learned about trading and how the pilgrims (John Smith)  traded with the Indians for food with the much needed help from Pocahontas. I truly believe without her, there would have never been a Jamestown! Now I think the Indians got the raw deal of it all, but I won't get into that hot topic. However, even my son noticed and mentioned that he thought the trades were not fair.

My son and daughter bartered back and forth for cookies, M&M's, pretzel sticks, and crackers. It was fun. My son got the good deal! He got both cookies and almost 3/4 of the M&M's. Oh well, I gave her extra after our activity!

I also read a book I happened to have called Adventures in Colonial America: Jamestown, New World Adventure by James E. Knight. We read 1/2 of it on Wed and the rest Thursday. The ending actually made me tear up! Sniffle, Sniffle!!!   I highly recommend you all get this book. Very easy read and it takes the perspective from a Master Carpenters point of view while building Jamestown. Such a great book!

One of the other things I added this week was a replica of Jamestown. You see I use to be on the Old School House review board as a reviewer, so I have tons of different curriculums sitting around that I reviewed and am either waiting to use or sell. One of them was this cool eBook on Jamestown by Homeschooling in the Woods. I printed out the pieces on cardstock. The kids colored them and then I had to cut them out. My fingers still hurt! This project is for sure not for the young grade schoolers who can not cut intricate objects. More for Jr. High students and up, but never the less, we did it and the kids started playing with them after we were done assembling them. Look at my son's picture of Jamestown below. You can see he made a mini John Smith (with gun) and Indians etc. to go with his colony.

Now as I have stated before I pick and choose the art projects with HOD because starting Oct 3rd we will be in an art class every week with our homeschool group. But I thought that the art project for unit 4 would be fun. And it was! The kids enjoyed making the Indian blanket, although I had to keep reminding my daughter to make each side the same. But they enjoyed getting to do this and my son has his hanging up on his wall in his bedroom along with mine!

Now HOD had us make a map of the continents. They wanted us to use graham crackers, but I was out so we used 5x7 index cards. We ended up gluing them to a blue piece of construction paper and then labeling them including the oceans. Turned out real cute and now we have another thing to add to our History Notebook!

For Science this week we learned the difference between Invertebrates, vertebrates, and Arthropods. We were taught how to tell the differences in the mollusks by the shells and Yup, mom learned some new things this week once again. I never knew the names bivalves and univalves and really what that was referring to in sea creatures. 

We also learned about air bladders in ocean life. This is what makes plants and fish float. Hmm, very interesting. Didn't know that either!!! OK, do not laugh. The curriculum asked for an eye dropper for our experiment this week. Well, I could not find one of course until after school when it suddenly appeared in the upstairs bathroom. Anyway, we improvised and used a.......Turkey baster. Weeeeell, it really is just an oversized eye dropper. Right? LOL!  The kids are really enjoying science and all the experiments. The experiments are short and quick and they love them!

Oh, the last picture is of my Jeopardy board. I have had a few people ask me what it looks like and how it works. I mean we are talking reeeal simple. Take some 5X7 cards with numbers 1-160 on them. I put the questions of the week on more 5X7 cards behind the number cards and as they are answered I turn the number card over and give the child who answered the question right, the card. Who ever gets the most cards get a prize from the $1 grab bag and who has the least gets 1 M&M for each correct answer. You should see these kids fight over who is going to answer the questions. It really has been a great tool in our home. One of these days I will get my hubby to video tape the kids during Jeopardy...shhhh...without them knowing!

So that was our week in a nut shell or maybe a bivalve clam shell! LOL!!! Overall it was a good week for our learning and bad week for attitudes toward everything, including me! Well, except for Friday. That was a great day. Good way to end the week!!! Next week is a new week and we will pray heartily over the weekend that our week 5 will start and end with GREAT attitudes, yes including me! I need more sleep this week! Tylenol PM here I come!

Don't forget to hover over the pictures and they will tell you what we are doing in that picture. You can click to enlarge them a bit, but click 2x and they will get perfect size.

[http://nutbugs.com/heart-of-dakota-week-4-update/]

Week 3 Heart of Dakota Update

Well, this week was pretty good. Our hick up was Math for my son. You see my son hates math. Probably somehow my fault in the earlier years, but none the less, he hates it and therefore is about 6 months behind his "grade" or "age".

(Just FYI, I figured out how to do a gallery of pictures, so I now have all the pictures at the end of the post on my Blog at http://nutbugs.com/heart-of-dakota-week-3/.

Not sure if I like that better becasue I can not put captions under the pictures, but if you hover over the picture it will give you a caption.)

I got an opportunity to try out Aleks math online for 2 months free through Old School House. Well, I just figured maybe their explanation of each type of problem might be better then how I explain it and maybe it would not be as intimidating to him or be more helpful!

The first couple things that went wrong with this was the fact that he had to answer 30+ questions to help place him in the right level and have the computer understand what he knows and does not know. Of course, some he had no idea of because we had not covered it yet. That was very stressful for him! Then there was the learning curve of figuring out how to work the computer program and the last thing was there is not a teacher talking like I thought. The student has to actually read each of the explanations, questions etc.

So I ended up having to sit with him each day. Not because he could not read it or understand it, but because there was the intimidation factor and the lack of confidence in himself with math! It was stressful for him and for me to go through this. But once we got that done it was done and it went much better as the week went on. The program is pretty good and I think he has got the hang of it, but we will see.

I will say on the brighter side of it that the stuff we are covering right now is great and actually beyond what we are learning currently in Abeka. So when (if) we do go back to Abeka, it should be pretty easy for him to understand what is being taught! He is getting it and the explanations through Aleks are really good! I want him to try this for a couple months. Too bad they do not have First grade math for my daughter. (LOL) I signed her up thinking they did have 1st grade math, but since they do not, I decided to do the college math for myself for 2 months. UUGGHH! Much I do not remember!

As far as all the other subjects, fantastic as usual. This week in History we learned about John Smith and Henry Hudson. I actually never knew how the Hudson River got it's name and I never knew that Hudson was the one who landed in New York. Seems you are never too old to learn new things! Of course Pocahontas was my daughters favorite because she was a princess. Plus they loved the idea that she was a "savage" in a sense and still a princess. The one thing my kids asked was why Pocahontas stayed in England and never returned home. The books really never gave an answer, but I figure that she really like the high life living where she did not have to run around in the wilderness and decided that this was the life she wanted to lead. Plus I am sure she wanted to stay where he husband was and be a good wife.

Geography was very simple and my son actually helped my daughter learn this. He already knew his directions, so we chalked out a compass on our driveway and placed North in the correct position as well as all the other directions. Then I shouted out direction for each child to move. "Move four steps SE then 6 steps NW." My son helped my daughter when she was confused. It was very sweet and a lot of fun to be out front of our house at 9:30 am doing school! We also learned about the different parts of a river as you can see here in our drawings.

In Science learned about tide pools and the rocky beach. Our project was to make a beach and see what kind of things make the seashore change. This was a fun experiment, but a little too short and easy. So....Once again, we went to the beach, Corona Del Mar beach, CA with my dear friend Shannon and her children, (which she has a smile box account with even more pictures of our adventure) to check out these rocks and tide pools. Shannon and I are both doing HOD and both doing BIGGER together. She is just 1 week behind us. So it is nice to have a friend doing the same thing as you!

OK, well, we could not have a better day to go. There were hundreds of dead squid all over the beach and sardines. Ewwwww! OMGosh, it was unreal. So according to the OC Register paper (in short) "Squid have washed up on Orange County beaches. The Orange County Register says the squid washed up on the beaches Wednesday night or Thursday morning. Ty Gevas of Davey's Locker Sportfishing and Whale Watching in Newport Beach says the squid are most likely Humboldt squid, also called jumbo squid. He says they've been seen in large numbers of the coasts of Orange and San Diego counties over the past few days. Cleanup crews worked Thursday to remove the carcasses. A state Fish and Game warden tells the Register the squid most likely died after spawning, a natural occurrence." There are so many interesting creatures in the sea.

So like any good homeschool mom, my girl friend and I ran down the beach to see all the dead squid and fish so we could have a chance to teach our children about them. You know us homeschoolers never skip over an opportunity to teach. Oh and later on in our trip to the tide pools a seal got washed up on shore. Yes he was dead. There was a puncture mark on one side of him so I think maybe a shark may have attacked it. As far as I know we do not have shark nets along our shores.

My son asked me, "Why there were so many animals that looked weird and are they very useful? My answer was, "Each creature that God created was made for a very specific reason. We may think them ugly or weird or not useful, but each one has a purpose and without them other things could die or over populate. An example is the honey bee or the spider or even a roach." He understood exactly what I meant and was very satisfied with that answer. Whew! Even my girlfriends kids got it too!

We actually had several experiments this week. The first one was to see how rain and other things effect the sea shore. We got out our sand and blew water on the shore line, then dripped water on the beach to see how a river is made. The our second experiment is an on going one. One plate had just H\plain water in it and the other as salt water. We are to ask what will happen to the water and what will happen to the salt. We will write about the conclusion next week.

Man o' man, am I ever glad I live in California. Whenever we start to learn about forest I can travel there, beaches, no problem, winter wonderland, no problem. We got it all here. I said this before. I really thought that the science was way too light in HOD when we started, but I am glad for the way Carrie has put this together. It really is fun and exciting. So as you can see by all the pictures we had a fun, exciting and full of learning week. Thanks HOD!

Week 2 Heart of Dakota Update

As suspected, we had another wonderful week. Currently we are learning about things on the sea shores and I finally thought to myself on Monday after school. "Self,' I said, "You live in Sunny Southern California, why the heck are you sitting in the house to learn about the sea shore. Take the book, a magnifying glass, colander, bucket and a shovel and get on down to the beach." I have to say here for those who are reading and do not live around me. I am only 15 miles from he beach. Yea, silly me! Anyway, that is exactly what we did. We headed down to Newport Beach, CA., parked the car and started right in to finish up our science for the day. You see we learned about the strandline, high tides, low tides and all the animals that live in between all those areas.

Not only was I able to teach my children out of the box about the sea, but there were some other children there listening to me teach and they hung around to hear all the wonderful things I had to say. It was fantastic.

We also learned about the birds on sea shores and their beaks. How they use them, why they are shaped the way they are, and which beak is used for what. In the following pictures you will see our experiments.

So here we are trying to pick up rocks and cereal with different household objects. This was a way for the kids to see how the beaks on seashore bird work .

Here are their Science Notebooking entries. OK, I admit, I helped my daughter with her bird drawing (on the right). She was having such a hard time with the outline. All the rest is hers!

One of the other projects we did was to see how and why animals float so well in the ocean. ie a huge whale. As well as knowing what dense means. Our experiment was to have 2 glasses of H20. One with salt in it and the other plain. They were amazed at the egg floating in the salt water (right) and sinking in the fresh water (left). Hmmm, which water do you think in more dense?

I know there are a lot of pictures, but as the saying goes, a picture is worth a 1000 word. So there you go!

And this poor Sea gull lost its wings. yes, that is all that was left...wings !

We did get to see a sand worm, but the picture did not come out too well. It got away before we could get a really good picture of it.

This is a mussel we found that had been eaten by a bird. Look at the close up shots of the barnacles that have made a home (hole) on the outer shell.

Here are great pictures of how mussels attach themselves to piers, boats and even whales.

In the pictures above you can see the byssus of the mussels as they attach themselves.

The picture upper right is of the typical barnacle you will see holding onto pier etc. The first picture lower left, is of a barnacle that my son pulled off so he could see the inside. Unfortunately he killed it, but you can see the backside of a barnacle.

The above right, below left as well as right are of coquina clams. Some are just an 1/8 of an inch and others are over 2 inches. Of course the one of bottom right is the inside of one. We ended up feeding this one to a bird.

Here you see on the upper and lower left more of those baby clams with some mama clams. They dig themselves into the sand during low tide. you can see in the pics above that they will go straight up and down so they can reach wetness in the sand.

The insect on the right????? I actually sent a letter to a marine bio with a picture, so maybe we will find out. If you know what it is, please leave a note.

This is a sand crab. You can see how big this one is. Most we find are maybe an 1/8 of an inch. This one is a good inch.

Here you can see us digging for clams on the left and on the right as my son said , as a joke, "Sea Duck foot prints." But of course we know they are sea gulls.

Ok, well, you got to have some fun at the beach. All work and no play? No way!

Here, on the bottom right, is the strandline. It has been blown away a bit, ( it was a windy day) but you can see the line up of seaweed. On the left is a great shot of a wave line. This is where the wave had been coming in as low tide went out.

Last but not least we dove into our history. Of course last week we learned all about Columbus. But this week we went into Cabot's journey too. Here you will see the maps and timelines we are keeping for History!