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.

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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!

Trying a New Curriculum: Week 1 Heart of Dakota

This year I am trying a whole new curriculum for History, Geography, Timeline, Notebooking, Poetry, Bible and Science etc. Heart of Dakota. A friend showed me this curriculum at the beginning of last year and after a ton of research and the fact I LOVE the Charlotte Mason approach, I fell in love with it. Now, we are still using our own curriculum for Math and Reading, but everything else is through Heart of Dakota. The main thing I loved about this was it was a complete open and go curriculum. No downloading and researching like I had down in the past. That is my kind of curriculum. Yet is stays in with the Charlotte Mason style of teaching

My first week went really good. The first day was a little longer then I had planned, but that was due to "old habits die hard" attitude in teaching that day. I found the rest of the week if I just followed the teachers' guide I was able to get it done by 12:30 or so everyday starting at 9:00am or so! As I said before, I am doing a different Reading program and Math program for each child then what HOD is asking us to do because Raquel is not up to Bigger's standards. She is still learning to read and Vincent is above it the Bigger guides Math standards. The main reason I chose Bigger was so they could learn all the Non-Academic subjects together which is what I have been doing all along with them!

They both said they had a great time this week. The only thing was, we are so use to Apologia Science (which we LOVE) which has always been about 25 minutes each day or so that HOD science seemed REALLY light. But today we were talking about the beach and tides and waves and my daughter told Daddy all about how the tides work and how the waves wok etc. My son chimed in with his $.02 too. That told me I was doing the right thing! The science was not light, it was just perfect!

On Friday I started playing Jeopardy with the kids. In a nut shell each day I pick 2 or 3 facts from the reading and mark them down on index cards. Each day we go over the previous days cards and then add more cards. On Friday I have a board with numbered index cards starting at 10 going to 160 (counting by 10's)and as the numbers get bigger of course the questions get harder.

They each take turns calling out a number and trying to answer the question. If that child cannot answer then the other child gets a chance to steal the question and answer it. Each correct answer gets 1 M&M. In the end the person with the most M&M's get a prize. The prizes are no more then a $1.00 item from the dollar store. Today they both got 6 out of 16 question. YEA! Not bad. That meant Mommy got a few M7M's too! Yea me! And they each got a prize...Yea them! Great way to end the week! They were having so much fun with this that Daddy had to come downstairs to find out what all the commotion was. He was absolutely shocked to see them screaming and yelling answers and having the time of their life answer school questions!!!!!

This week is our first week starting Heart of Dakota (HOD) and we have had a blast!

We have learned more about Christopher Columbus and his adventure to North America.


Leif's Journey

Columbus' Journey by Vincent

Columbus' Journey by Raquel

We learned about what makes the Waves vs. what makes the Tides. In one week we have learned so much more then I could ever imagine. And since I placed my kids in the same book...Bigger Hearts for His Glory...I am happy to see my daughter doing so well! This is one of the reasons I decided to do my own reading and math program. Because the math in Bigger was to easy for Vincent and the reading was too hard for Raquel and I wanted them to be learning the non-academic things together. This is working well so far.

Anyway, here are some pictures showing us learning why things sink vs. floating

Balloons Float


Empty Cans Float but full ones sink


Coins Sink


Raquel's floating diagram and Vincent's sinking diagram

Also we learned where the continents and the different oceans are. So we got a balloon and made the kids write out the 4 oceans and 7 continents and place them on the balloon. Raquel was a little off on the continent the first time through, but she got all the oceans right. Vincent, he got them all right!


Vincent placing his continents


Raquel placing Africa. Just a bit off! Good try babe!

Also we learned about how the moon makes the tides and the wind makes the waves. We used a blow dryer to make waves and see how the wave erode the sand on the shore of the beach.

Homemade beach in a baking dish


Raquel's rendition of Low and High tide!


All in all I can honestly say we had a great time this week and I can see that this year will be a great year for learning for both children! My goal is to takes pictures each week and post about it on each of my kids blog as well as my own. Lets see if I can keep that up for 36 weeks. We will try!!!!

From October 2010 to June 2011 We were involved in an Art class with our homeschooling group. We had so much fun with this class. How this got started was one of the ladies had purchased the Atlier Art DVD's and she figured it would be fun to have her daughter have a few friends over to join in. Well, it turned into a full fledged class. Most of the time there was about 11 of us.

Each week we learned a different type of art concept. Whether it was about color, or mixing colors or a specific artist and their style. Vincent had a wonderful time too. This is right up his alley. He loves art and someday I would love to see him maybe be an architect or something. It was a little frustrating at first for Raquel because these specific videos were geared towards the upper elementary, but after a few week she really got the concept. Check out her blog post too!

Below is not all the art work we did, but a good portion of it. He really did a beautiful job on all his work. Don't you think? We will be picking this up again in the fall of 2011. I will try to post each project as they are done instead of waiting for the whole year to go by. But at least it is posted!!


Vincent's is Colonel Mustard and
Raquel's is Scarlet (red)