Elemental Science

Where we are now...

2011-01-31T09:19:00.000-05:00

Hey folks, we have moved

www.elementalscience.com/blog

Can you hear the crickets chirpping???

2010-08-30T10:00:00.002-04:00

I have been having problems accessing Blogger (the site has been blocked) for several months now. This is serious hampering my ability to post :). I haven't forgotten about this blog and I do intend to keep up with it more regularly, I think that I'm just going to have to find a different host or way to go about it. Anyways just wanted to let those of you who keep up with us that posting will be sporadic at best until I figure out a solution.

Weekly Report-Week 9

2010-08-14T05:52:00.000-04:00

I can't believe that we have finished our first quarter already! I knew that we were starting early so that we could take off while we are in the States, but it just seems so early to have finished the first 9 weeks. I guess time flies when your having fun! Here's what we accomplished this week...

Language Arts: We spent the week reviewing our last 5 spelling lessons. We also played spelling baseball (not a hit) and spelling bingo (definitely a hit). We learned several more Latin nouns this week with Prima Latina. We also completed another analysis and imitation week with Aesop and several KISS grammar lessons. Princess read Stone Fox, which she loved. We also started reading Farmer Boy which princess has enjoyed, but I have found terribly boring to read, hopefully it will get better.

Math: We learned about liters and milliliters this week. This was our first section in the capacity unit and princess handled it well, but then again metric units are so much easier!

Science: We started studying the metalloid group. Princess was very interested to find out where we can find the elements boron and silicon. She still thinks that its cool that we are learning about what things are made of.

History: We studied Charles the 3rd and the 4th. We also looked at the Great Fire in London. Here's a project that princess did all on her own this week..
Other: We're still settling in, so none of the extras got done this week.

Pre-Order Intro to Science Printed Books

2010-08-12T02:17:00.003-04:00

Now is the time to order your printed copy of Intro to Science! We will be putting our order into the printer on August 28th, so from now until then you will be able to order the printed version of Intro to Science for only $24.50 (regular price will be $25.98). That price will include media mail shipping to the continental US. You can pre-order your books on our website here, using Paypal. The books should ship out to you in late September.

Homeschool Showcase

2010-08-09T20:05:00.002-04:00

The next edition of the Homeschool Showcase is up! Kris describes the Homeschool Showcase as a place "where we spotlight all the encouraging, inspiring and just plain fun ways that homeschooling families live and learn together". I've have enjoyed reading these posts for quite awhile and have gleaned quite a few ideas. I highly recommend that you check it out, especially since the Elemental Science blog is in it this time!

Weekly Report Week 8

2010-08-07T02:21:00.003-04:00

Well, it took us two weeks, but we did manage to fit in a week of school despite moving. Here's a look at what we have completed...

Language Arts: We completed another list in SWO B. We began Kiss Grammar, so far we are really liking it. I'm also glad that we didn't start this last year as I don't think princess would have been ready for it then. We learned about Latin nouns with Prima Latina and we finished our writing project for CW Aesop.Math: We spent the week wrapping up weights & measurements. Weslowed down a bit for this unit because princess had a hared time with all the non-metric conversions but I feel that she's ready to move on, so capacity here we come!

Science: We spent the week learning about main group metals. we also did a lab on acids and bases so that we could use the pH paper we found! Princess really enjoyed playing with the pH paper (and so did I).

History: We learned about the 30 years war and played the game from the SOTW activity guide. We also read about what was going on in Japan during the same time. Finally we completed one of our State Study pages. Here's a look at that...
Electives: We did get to our recorder lesson, but that about all the extras we completed this week. Next week will be better... I hope.

To read more weekly reports, check out the Weekly Wrap-up.

Moving...

2010-08-05T10:15:00.006-04:00

There's never a dull moment here! Recently an apartment came available in one of the buildings we have really been wanting to move into (think a lot more room and finally a western toilet, no more squatty potty!!!). The complex is small and the price is low, so when one becomes available you snatch it up. Which meant that we were moving sooner than we thought we would be. The great thing is that now we have a new school area! (The previous renter left this bookshelf/desk combo.)
Princess's room is big enough to have the school room as a part of it. We joke with her that now she will never be late for school, all she has to do is roll out of bed :).

Science Corner: The science of exploration

2010-07-28T07:18:00.000-04:00

Every child loves to create things and my daughter is no exception. I'm always amazed at the different things she creates. Sometimes I get frustrated by all the mess (I know that I'm not the only one who feels this way!). I have to remind myself that she's learning. Exploration is the purest form of learning. I can tell her that she needs to have at least three sides for a building and that the roof helps to give the building more strength and she might even listen to me :), but chance are she will forget. But when she sits down and tries to put it together on her own, she learns through trial and error what gives her building the strength it needs to stand. She internalizes this information and the next time she tries to build a castle, she'll remember what she has learned and apply it to her latest creation.
So how do we as parents encourage exploration as a form of learning?

Provide them the materials: I keep a box of school stuff, such as masking tape, paper, card-stock, paper clips, rubber bands, pencils and so on. She knows that she can take things from this box without asking at any time and I won't be upset (unless she doesn't clean up :)). I also entertain all requests for other materials she needs. For example, when she asked to borrow my plastic bowl and several chopsticks. I asked what she wanted them for; she said for a project. So I said that it was fine, knowing that I probably wouldnt get my chopsticks back. That day she build a bridge for her Littlest Pet Shop animals to go across. She learned which way to place to chopsticks so that they would hold the weight of her animals as they crossed. That day she learned firsthand about the principles of physics. For me, it was worth losing a few chopsticks.
Fill their minds with ideas: We regularly watch Mythbusters which has been fodder for many a project! We use a science program that encourages experimentation and exploration. We also read a lot of books, both fiction and non-fiction. Books are great sources for inspiration. The book Castle Diary inspired my daughter to build her own castle out of construction paper and masking tape. A book on minerals inspired her to grow her own crystals and the list goes on and on. The point is to provide an environment in which they can be inspired to explore the topics more.

Explore things yourself: When your child asks, mom how does this work? Don't be afraid to say I don't know, let's try to figure it out.

It's so important to give our children the opportunity to stretch their imagination and to try out their ideas through exploration.

What happens...

2010-07-26T22:48:00.000-04:00

when two chemists find the street with all the science supplies on it?

They come home with a microscope...

and pH paper...

and more than I can show here!

One of the benefits of living overseas is that we have places like cell phone street, plumbing supply street, wood boards street and science supply street! You'd be amazed (or maybe a little horrified) at what we can get. It's a dream for a chemist!

Weekly Report Week 1-7 of 3rd grade

2010-07-23T21:34:00.002-04:00

Yep, you read that right, weeks 1-7! I can't believe that we have already finished that much school. I thought instead of listing what we've done over the last 7 weeks, I'd share what we are using and what I think of it so far, so here it goes...

Bible: We've been using plans that I wrote for a survey of the New Testament. Last year we did the Old Testament and made several lapbooks to go along with our study. This year princess was tired of lapbooking so we have been making mini books instead. So far, so good. This won't take us all year, so I'm still researching what we will use next.

Math: We've continued on with Singapore Math. Every year we use this program I fall more and more in love with it! I'm so impressed with how it teaches a student the language of math. We have also been having game day Friday where we play the games suggested in the HIG for the week. It's been fun!

Language Arts: Our readers and read-alouds are going well, princess has enjoyed them so far. We've continued with Spelling Workout and now that we are on lesson 23 I'm finally starting to see some progress in her spelling. This series is not the most fun, but it gets the job done and that was what I was looking for. We've started Prima Latina and princess is enjoying learning Latin. I know that this series sometimes gets a bad rap as being boring, but we are thoroughly enjoying our introduction to Latin. Finally, we added Classical Writing Aesop A this year. We are doing the Analysis & Imitation one week and the writing project the next week. So far, we both really enjoy this program. It took me several times of reading through the Core book to really get how to teach it, but I really thing that CW is making me a better writing teacher. I really have no complaints about this program. We do plan to start adding in KISS grammar over the next several weeks as I feel princess needs some more concentrated work in grammar.

Science: We are using Chemistry for the Grammar Stage this year. I have to admit that I was a bit worried since Chemistry is my favorite, I really wanted princess to love it as well. I happy to report that she has caught the Chemistry bug!

History: We are using Story of the World 3 this year (you can see our plans for this under the free stuff tab). I love this series! Every year I wonder if I have it in me to plan it all out again and I begin to look for something different. I always come back to SOTW and the AG because it's just that good. So far princess has really enjoyed this volume as well.

Electives: We are continuing on with Art Adventures at Home, our third year with it. This is a simple yet effective art curriculum and I can see the progress princess has made over the years. We also started the Usborne Book of the Recorder and finally music instruction is getting done! I'm trying to fit in artist composer studies, but with the addition of little man, it's just not getting done.

Well, that's how our year has been so far, thanks for reading and if you want to see what other homeschoolers are planning for 2010-2011, check this out.

So where have I been...

2010-07-20T19:39:00.001-04:00

Well, my old computer died and it takes awhile to get a new one to here. So in the meantime I haven't had access to blogger, but never fear the new computer is here! We've been doing school all this time, so I'll post more about that in a bit. For now I'm off to play (er...um...figure out how this thing works) with my new computer!

What have we been up to...

2010-06-14T03:59:00.002-04:00

It's been busy here! We've been getting used to having little guy around, which has been easy because he's been a great baby. We did have quite a scare when little guy had to have emergency surgery to repair a hernia. Thankfully he came through just fine, but I think it was quite possibly the longest hour of my life. Princess has been begging to do school again, so we have done a few days of it. So far, so good. I'm pleased with all that we are using and I think that third grade will be a very good year for us :).

I've also been putting the finishing touches on Elemental Science's newest program, Intro to Science. Intro to Science is a complete 36 week set of plans to introduce your early elementary student to the world of science. It is designed to be used with K and 1st graders, but the plans include ideas for adding in your older students. The main spine for this program is More Mudpies and Magnets. The plans include a weekly topic and introduction, experiments, nature study, plus additional books and activities. Two scheduling options are included so that you can choose if you want to do science two days a week or five days a week. The student pages include all coloring pages, experiment sheets and activity pages that you will need for your student. It's available for purchase as an eBook at this time and you can view samples of it here.

Baby has arrived and I'm home

2010-05-04T09:07:00.003-04:00

For those of you who follow this blog regularly, I thought I'd let you all know that on April 29th, we welcomed our son into the world. He was 6 lbs, 8 oz and 19.8 inches long. He's such a cute little guy and I'm recovering well. Princess is loving being a big sis, but surprisingly she misses school! We've got a couple more weeks though before I'm ready to tackle that again :).

Weekly Report-Last one of second grade!

2010-04-23T08:46:00.003-04:00

We did it! We've finished the work I wanted to finish for second grade and with a few days to spare before the baby comes. Which is good because his birthdate was moved up to April 29th. Here's a run down of the last little bit of second grade...

LA: Princess finished reading The Corn Grows Ripe which she really enjoyed. We finished up to lesson 16 in Spelling Workout, we'll pick this back up again next year. We also took the final test for Writing With Ease. I'm very pleased with all that she learned this year in Writing with Ease and we'll incorporate some of the principles when we use Classical Writing next year.

Math: Princess spent the first part of the week in review. I gave her the 3A placement test, which she passed with flying colors, so onto 3B next year. Over our break, I'll have her work through the Miquon green book just to keep up her skills.

Science: We doubled up a few days and finished our earth science unit this week. Princess declared that science was her favorite subject this year, hope she'll enjoy chemistry just as much :).

Our other subjects were already finished for the year, so it was a relatively simple week for us. All in all we had a great year! I feel like we've found curriculums and teaching styles that work for us. I'm really proud of how princess is doing in school and look forward to starting third grade at the end of June! If you want to see our line up for third grade, just click on the curriculum tab at the top. Be sure to check out more weekly reports at the weekly wrap-up.

Types of Rock Lapbook

2010-04-15T20:15:00.006-04:00

Two weeks ago princess and I made this simple lapbook to review the types of rock we had studied as part of our earth science unit. Here's a closer look at it...

We started by taping together two pieces of carstock (each was about the size of half a sheet of paper). Princess wrote on the front Types of Rock, but since it was red the picture didn't come out very well.

Then we began working on the inside of the book. First we cut out the poem we worked on memorizing during the rock unit and pasted in the center. Next we cut out 4 books, one for each type of rock we studied, igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic and rocks from space. Princess insisted that we include rocks from space :). We colored and glued on pictures for each type. (Both the pictures and the poem are part of Earth Science and Astronomy for the Grammar Stage) Here's what it looked like...

We then wrote on the inside of each book the different types of rock that fell into that type that we had studied. For instance on the inside of the igneous booklet we wrote granite, microgranite and basalt. Here's what that looked like...

Although this lapbook was very simple, it was an effective review of what we were learning. Princess had fun making this lapbook and has used it as a reference since the. I love when we can have fun and still learn! I hope that this post will give you an idea of how you can use lapbooks for review.

Weekly Report-Week 33

2010-04-09T22:25:00.003-04:00

Truckin’ right along. We finished another week here and it went very well. It seems that princess works quite a bit harder when the end is in sight! Here’s what we accomplished…

Language Arts-Princess began reading The Corn Grows Ripe, this will be her last assigned book this year, so she’s trying to finish it ahead of schedule. We completed another week of Spelling Workout and Writing with Ease. I’m amazed at how much better princess is doing dictation. I’m thinking that next year we may blend Writing with Ease and Classical Writing Aesop.

Math-We finally finished the multiplication section with our x9 facts. We ended the unit with a game of Multiplication War, which princess really enjoyed! I’ll have to remember to suggest playing this later on. We only have one more unit left in 3A, so it looks like we will finish it before the baby comes.

Science-We spent the week studying fossils. Here’s a look at her narration sheet…

History-We finished Story of the World 2 this week! It was a good year, not as good as last year, but I think that’s partly due to the fact that I didn’t get the activity guide. Next week we’ll spend some time catching up on our timeline and looking back at what we learned this year.

Extras-We didn’t get to any of the extras this week.

That’s a look at our week, hope yours was good too!

Weekly Report-Week 30 & 31

2010-04-03T06:33:00.004-04:00

We have been keeping up with school, but I haven't been as good about keeping up with this blog :). I forgot how draining the last few weeks of pregnancy can be; there's nothing like feeling as if you are a beached whale! Princess has been a great helper and is continuing to work very hard on school so that we can finish before our little guy makes his appearance. Here's what we have accomplished over the last two weeks...

Language Arts: Princess read a biography on William Shakespeare and an abridged version of Romeo and Juliet. She loved learning more about The Bard of Avon! We've kept up with Writing with Ease and Spelling Workout. Princess has also been doing more of her copywork in cursive. Her cursive is looking great (much better than her mom's :))!

Math: We've been working through her x 6, 7 and 8 facts as well as continuing to drill her other facts. She's doing a great job and we are very close to finishing her 3A textbook. I wasn't sure we would be able to do this before the baby came, so I'm very proud of her efforts in math!

Science: We've continued to look at different types of rock. We also made a lapbook on the types of rock which I hope to post more about later this week.

History: We studied Queen Elizabeth, William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh and the Lost Colony. Princess is loving history once again, of course this happens when we only have two chapters left :).

Other: Princess has continued her clay class; she has 3 more before she completes the first level of study. Our other extras have fallen by the wayside, but I hope to pick them up again next year.

Hope you've had a great week, thanks for reading about ours!

Weekly Report-Week 29

2010-03-21T09:55:00.004-04:00

I'm a bit late getting our weekly report up due to the fact that hubby is out of town and I haven't had time or energy to write it before this! We did manage to get in an almost full week of school. Sorry about the lack of pictures, hubby took the camera with him. Here's the run down...

Language Arts: Princess read and Magic Schoolbus Chapter book on rocks. She loves these books. They are easy for her, but I figure she had earned a break. We read the Apprentice together this week, which we both thoroughly enjoyed. We also completed another week of Spelling Workout and Writing with Ease.

Math: We spent some time on x6 facts and some time on x7 facts. Princess doesn't have them memorized yet, but she does understand how to do the problems. I allow her to use her fact chart when she does her workbook exercises which is working quite well. We are still working on daily drill without the chart.

Science: We talked about sedimentary rock this week and we tested our seashells for the presence of limestone. Princess also got the DK Rocks and Minerals book this week which she has really enjoyed looking at. She can't read it yet, but the pictures in the book are beautiful and she's been fascinated. She now wants to be a geologist :).

History: We read about the Reformation and the Renaissance.

Others: Princess worked on typing and went to her clay class this week.

Education of Me: Didn't happen this week...

That was our week, I look forward to catching up on all of yours.

Tapestry of Grace Giveaway

2010-03-17T22:17:00.003-04:00

I have a love affair from a distance with Tapestry of Grace. I love their curriculum and think it would be perfect for us to use, but I just have one teeny, tiny problem. I can't afford it. Oh I could buy a DE year plan, but then I wouldn't have any money left over for books and since we live overseas and have no access to a library, having no books would be pointless. So I have drooled over the plans and then walked away realizing reality. Well today someone posted over at the WTM forums that TOG is giving away all four years of their DE plans!!! So of course I entered! I seriously considered not posting something here as I would like to be the only one who enters, thus guarunteeing my success, but that's not really fair. I'm sure that there are others out there just like me. So go check it out and enter to win!

Weekly Report-Week 28

2010-03-12T08:28:00.004-05:00

School went well this week for the most part. I’m a bit cranky as I’m getting to the “I’m always uncomfortable” stage of my pregnancy. Thankfully, princess have given me quite a bit of grace :). Here’s what we accomplished this week…

Language Arts: Princess read The Whipping Boy this week. On the second day of her reading she threw the book down and said “I’m not reading anymore because it’s not fair what’s happening”, then she promptly picked it up and read several more pages. I had to laugh, but I’m also so proud of her because she’s gotten to the point where she gets engrossed in the story instead of in the act of reading the book. Yeah, progress!! We also completed another week of Writing with Ease, First Language Lessons and Spelling Workout.

Math: We spent the week multiplying by 6. Princess has caught onto this quickly, but we still need to keep working on her facts. Thankfully we have a game on her DS to help with that!

Science: We spent the week studying rocks, specifically what rock is and how it can be formed. We did a fun, but simple experiment about lava involving a toothpaste tube! We squeezed the tube to have the pressure build up and then opened the cap a bit and wah lah!

Princess can’t stop talking about this one. Here a look at the experiment page we did for her notebook…
History: We talked about Martin Luther and Henry the VIII this week. Princess was enthralled with Henry the VIII, so much so that when we went to meet her dad for lunch the first thing out of her mouth was the poem about his wives (Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced beheaded survived). My hubby turned very quickly to me and said, what are you teaching her? I had a good laugh and then explained that we had read the poem in Story of the World that day. We all had a good laugh about it after that! I’m amazed at all the “informational pegs” that princess is picking up along the way.

Extras: We managed to get our artist composer study done this week. Princess also went to clay class this week and brought home this project…
I’m really amazed at what they are teaching her to do, it’s far beyond my ability!

Education of Me: I started Gulliver’s Travels this week and frankly, I’m bored. I’m going to keep plugging on and try to finish it, but I’ve taken it off our read-aloud list for next year. Maybe we’ll read it during the logic stage, but I’m guessing it’s going to get saved for high school.

Hope you had a wonderful week! Be sure to check out what others are doing over at the Weekly Wrap-up.

Spelling Workout

2010-03-09T10:08:00.002-05:00

Lately, there has been a lot of buzz on one of the forums I visit about spelling programs. So I thought I’d post what a little more about what we use for spelling and how we use it. In the past we have used All About Spelling, which I liked, but ultimately decided that it wasn’t for us. Then, we tried Word Attack and Spelling City for a few weeks. Next we used Dictation Day by Day, which is free from Google Books. This worked well for us until I got pregnant and had surgery. It was too much work to prepare and I just didn’t have the time or the drive to continue using it, so I ordered Spelling Workout. I have to say that I wish we would have started with Spelling Workout. It’s so much easier on me and princess really enjoys the workbook style approach to spelling. That said, we add a bit to the schedule to ensure that princess is really learning the words.

Here’s how our week goes…

Day 1: I give princess a pretest, we do this orally or we use bananagram tiles so it’s not too much writing. She then copies all the words she missed on her sheet.Next she reads the introductory story for the lesson to me. Then we read the rule and the list together.
Day 2: Princess copies the rule on her sheet and copies the words she misspelled on the pretest. Then she completes the first activity for the lesson.
Day 3: Princess copies the words she misspelled on the pretest one more time. Then she completes the second activity page for the lesson.
Day 4: Princess completes the proofreading activity for the lesson. Then we alphabetize the list together. That night she goes over her spelling list on her own or with her Dad.
Day 5: I give princess her spelling test. We add any spelling words she missed on her trouble words sheet (more on this in a minute) and file her spelling sheet for the week in her notebook. Then we play a game of bananagrams using our own rules. Basically it’s Scrabble, but you get double points when you use one of the weeks spelling words.

Trouble Words: I got this idea from The Well-Trained Mind. Basically we take any words that princess has missed on her spelling test and write it on her trouble words sheet. We write the rule that goes along with it and then she copies it every day for the next week. I then give it to her as a bonus word on her next spelling test. If she gets it right, we put the date on her sheet, if not we carry it over to the next week.

So far, this method has been working beautifully. For the first time I’m noticing that princess is applying what she has learned in her own writing, which for me is a huge success! Plus it takes very little prep work on my part, all I have to do is print out her sheets for the week :).

ETA: I have posted templates for each of these sheets under the Free Stuff tab and over at the Elemental Science Yahoo Group, under the Other Homeschooling Helps file. There's a link to the yahoo group on the side bar.

Weekly Report-Week 27

2010-03-05T10:16:00.003-05:00

Only 8 more weeks to go, less than 60 days and I'll be holding our new little one! Seems hard to believe. I have to say that as the date loom closer I feel more pressure to finish school, but less motivation to do so. Even so, we did complete the week, except for our read-aloud which we should finish this weekend. Here's the rundown...

Language Arts: We completed another week of Spelling Workout and Writing with Ease. Plus we talked about interjections and conjunctions with First Language Lessons. Princess finished Shadrach, which she has declared to be the best book ever. We read three chapters in Secret of the Andes together, but we still need to read 3 more sometime this weekend.

Math: Princess did well this week with division in the hundreds and remainders. She showed alot more confidence about it this week than she did last week. I also discovered that one of her DS games drills math facts, so we have been much better about doing drill everyday this week.

Science: We talked about caves this week. We also started a really cool experiment that I hope will turn out. We are basically making our own stalactites and stalagmites. The only problem is that I couldn't find Epsom salts, so we used regular salt and I'm not sure it's going to turn out.

History: We studied that Mayans, Aztecs and Incas this week. All of which princess enjoyed because she likes to claim Peru as home :). (We lived there when she was three).

We also played the Battle for the Gold Game and I was really suprised that princess was able to answer each and every question correctly. Maybe she really is learning something...

Extras: I got princess to her clay class this week, but that was about all. She did a really neat project this week and I'm impressed with what she's learning. It's drying at the studio right now, so I'll try to post a picture of it next week.

Education of Me: I read 4 pages of MacBeth this week, that's all.

That was our week, how was yours?? Be sure to check out the Weekly Wrap-up.

Weekly Report-Week 26

2010-02-26T08:13:00.003-05:00

Is it Friday again already? It was a good week for us, but it went by very fast for me. Here's a look at what we did...

Language Arts: Princess began reading Shadrach this week. She has fallen in love with this book and I suspect that she might try to finish it this weekend. We also completed 5 lessons in FLL, a full week of WWE and another lesson in Spelling Workout. We began reading The Secret of the Andes this week. Both of us are super excited about this book since it's set in Peru near where we used to live. When I read it, I can hear the panpipes playing and feel the breezes blowing through the valley. It's brought up some great memories!

Math: We spent some time on review this week, which princess did very well at. So we moved onto long division. This has proven to be alittle tough for princess. I think mainly because she doesn't have her facts down cold yet. The strange this is though that when she has a word problem that requires long division to solve it, she can do it without a problem, but if you give her the exact same problem by itself, she has a hard time with it. I'm not sure what to think about this, she obviously understands the concept, maybe it's a confidence issue?? Either way, we are going to pause when we finish the 3A book and spend some time reviewing the concepts she learned using Miquon, plus work on her mult/div facts before we move on.

Science: We studied habitats this week and made habitat fact posters, here's a look at them...

History: We spent the week studying the civilizations of Central and South America, such as the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Incas. Princess really enjoyed history this week and for that I'm grateful!

Extras: We looked at different types of wind instruments this week. Also princess went to clay class again this week, beyond that, it didn't get done.

Education of Me: I'm still plugging away at MacBeth.

Hope you had a great week, read about others at the Weekly Report.

Weekly Report-Week 25

2010-02-19T19:34:00.005-05:00

We had another good week here, here's a look at what we did...

Language Arts: Princess read a book about Columbus, which she enjoyed. We completed two more lessons in Spelling Workout and one in Writing with Ease. We also squeezed in alittle First Language Lessons.

Math: We contiued to work on multiplying tens and hundreds this week and things went very well. Princess is gaining confidence in the multiplication department, so we ended the week with a test. She passed with flying colors, so I guess that means that she does get it after all :).

Science: We talked about oceans this week. The neat thing was that when we looked at the pages about life under the sea, princess was able to point out fish she had actually seen when she went snorkling with her Dad. I love those moments when life collides with learning and your child sees that what they are studying is really true! We also did an experiment on ocean currents. Here's a look at what happened when we added cold colored water to hot clear water...

Pretty cool, huh?

History: We continued to read Pedro's journal this week. Princess couldn't believe that Columbus though America was India. I explained to her that in those days they didn't have the maps we have now; on their maps they didn't have the Americas. She responded with, "Well why didn't Leif Ericson just tell them, he knew about it". I had to snicker a bit but seriously I'm glad that she's remembering things we have studied and making connections. We'll just have to work on the whole timeline aspect of it :).

Other: We actually got to some of the extras this week. We looked at a painting by Michaelangelo and listened to a concerto by Telemann. Princess declared that Telemann was much better than Scarletti and I have to say that I agree!

Education of Me: I managed to read two Acts of MacBeth this week. So far, I'm loving this play. I'll write more about it later.

Well, that's our week, hope you had a good one too! Read more at the Weekly Wrap Up.

Strange Comments

2010-02-16T19:48:00.002-05:00

Lately I've been getting ALOT of spam comments. I guess I should take that as a compliment as it means that my blog is getting more notice. Most of them are just random advertisments and some are vulgar-please people look at the blog, do you really think that I'm interested in that type of thing? The latest one had me laughing, so I thought that I would share it with you. It was tied to this post that I made a year and a half ago, here's what the anonymous commenter wrote...

"elementalscience.blogspot.com You've saved my life again!"

Really? I've saved your life with my very lame review of Prince and the Pauper? I tell you wonders never cease!

Weekly Report-Week 24

2010-02-11T22:07:00.006-05:00

I'm tired this week! I think that my body is trying to get ready for the baby, so I'm not sleeping all that long at night, which means I need a nap, which just perpetuates the cycle. Thankfully I plan at the beginning of the year, so for the most part I've just had to open my plan book and go! Here's what we did this week...

Language Arts: We completed two lessons in Spelling Workout this week. We also completed another week of First Language Lessons and Writing with Ease. Princess read a book about volcanoes this week. She very much enjoyed this book and I'm surprised how much she likes to read non-fiction.

Math: We took things slow this week, but we did get through the beginning of two digit multiplication. Princess understands how to do it, she just gets nervous because she doesn't know all her facts cold. So today we took the day off from bookwork and just played a game suggested in the Home Instructor's Guide. Both of us were surprised by how quickly she did her calculations. It was just another good reminder that games are an effective teaching tool. They build speed and confidence in a very sneaky way :).

Science: We began the week by erupting our volcano. I wrote a whole post about this below, but here's a picture of what it looked like as it was erupting...

Then for the rest of the week, we studied about mountains and glaciers.

History: We spent the first part of the week studying the Moghul empire and then we began reading about the explorers, such as Columbus. We have paused in our reading of SOTW so that we can read Pedro's Journal. So far princess loves this book!

Other: The only extras we go to this week was princess's clay class. Oh, well.

Education of Me: I didn't get any reading done this week. Hey, I was just happy to be able to stay up long enough to teach school and make lunch before crashing :).

Hope you had a great week, thanks for reading about ours! Be sure to check out other weekly reporters over at Kris's blog.

Proof Books are here

2010-02-09T01:10:00.002-05:00

Aren't the beautiful? (just ignore the sheets behind them which are most definately not beautiful, but it's all we could get here) I'm super excited to see my babies ready to go!

We are going to go ahead and have a batch printed out in the next few weeks. This is about a onthearlier that we had anticipated. So, in light of that we will offer the pre-order price of $24 for a combo set for the next two weeks only. Then the price will go up to the regular price of $25.98 for a combo set. For now, we will be including media mail shipping for all orders of $24 or more. The books should ship on or before March 5th, 2010. Physics for the Grammar Stage will be ready for print in several weeks and should be available to ship by April 15,2010. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to send me an email at info@elementalscience.com.

Now I just have to wait 12 more weeks for my other baby to come, who will hopefully be quite a bit cuter :).

Project: Exploding Volcano!!!

2010-02-08T19:51:00.005-05:00

Well, sort of :). Princess was a bit disappointed that our volcano didn't go boom. I think that she's been watching to much of Mythbuster's lately. Anyways, here how we made a volcano from scratch and then exploded it in the shower (that's right, in the shower).

First, we started by making some salt dough. For this project I chose a salt/cornstarch dough because it tends to dry quicker, here's my favorite recipe for that...

Mix 2 cups salt with 2/3 cup of water and heat over medium heat for several minutes. In another bowl mix 1 cup cornstarch and 1/2 cups of cold water. Remove the salt water from the heat and add in the cornstarch water. Return to the heat and stir continuously until thickened. Let cool a bit and then knead the dough until it's smooth and workable. This makes about 2 cups of dough.

So after making two batches of dough, we had enough to cover our glass bottle. Here's what it looked like (she's already started to paint it in this picture as I forgot to get the camera out on the first day, but you get the idea)...
Next we let our volcano dry for several days. This is where the size of you volcano makes a difference. The bigger the volcano = the more dough = very long time to dry. I had a friend who made a huge volcano (about 2 1/2 feet tall); very cool, but it took three weeks to dry! So after your volcano is dry, you can paint it. We opted for standard black paint, but you can use any color you like. Here's what it looked like after that...
After the paint dried(this took about 1/2 a day), we filled our bottle with 1/4 cup of baking soda, 2 Tbsp of liquid soap and some red food coloring. A funnel comes in real handy for this step, but if you don't have one or if your's has a wire mesh that won't allow baking soda through, like mine, you can always cut off the corner of a plastic bag.
At this point I would move your volcano to a place that can get messy, such as outside, the sink or the shower. Now for the fun part, add 1/2 cup of white vinegar. Do this very quickly, as the reaction begins immediately! Here's what our volcano looked like as it was exploding...
We had alot of fun with this project, from start to finish! I highly recommend doing this at least once during your homeschooling journey.

ETA: I received an email from a dear friend of mine that let me know of another option for exploding your volcano. Apparently diet soda (preferrably orange as it makes cool colored lava) and a Tbsp of sugar creates alot more fun. We're going to try this later on in the week and I'll try to post a picture of it when we do. (We tried this and it didn't work for us, but I think that it's because we had alittle baking soda at the bottom of our volcano.)

Weekly Report-Week 23

2010-02-05T02:39:00.002-05:00

Keep on trucking seems to be the theme of our school this year. I keep expecting the burn out to hit or to hit a wall, but thankfully that hasn't happened yet. Here's what our week looked like...

Language Arts: Princess finished Mrs. Piggle Wiggle's Farm this week and I'm very proud of her because this book was a bit of a stretch for her. She did great though and only complained about the length of her assignments once. Our switch to First Language Lessons and Spelling Workout is going great and I'm pleased with the decision to make the change. We also completed another week of Writing with Ease.

Math: We continued to work on multiplication and introduced multiplication within the tens and hundreds. At this point she's just doing problems like 600 x 2, but I can see that she's frustrated because she doesn't know her facts down cold. For the time being we are going to keep moving forward, but we'll see how things go next week.

Science: This week we talked about tornadoes and volcanoes. Here's our tornado...

We also made our volcano out of salt dough, which is currently drying. Next week we'll explode it, which is the part princess is really looking forward to.

History: We talked about Spain and Portugal during the Middle Ages and we also looked at the African kingdoms of Ghana and Mali. We continued to work on our mapwork, coloring pages and narrations. Her notebook is really looking great!

Other: Here's the one part of school that doesn't get done as much as I would like, but I guess that's bound to happen. Princess is continuing to go to clay class. Here's a look at some of the projects she has made so far...

Education of Me: I started to read MacBeth this week. I haven't finished all that I wanted to because of all the other things that needed to be done this week, but so far I like it. But then again I love Shakespeare so I'm not surprised.

Thanks for reading about our week, if you want to read about others, go check out the weekly report over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Having a Homeschool Business

2010-02-03T19:21:00.002-05:00

Awhile back I read this blog post over at The History of the World Blog. In it Susan Wise Bauer says,
"Cooking, I think, must be like writing. You do the same thing day, after day, after day, after day. You’d better enjoy it for itself, not for the rewards."
This is really true. There are days when you don't want to write, but you have to keep going because people are counting on you finishing what you said you would finish. It's not about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, because frankly it's not there. There's not alot of money in writing homeschool curriculum, some, but not alot. Her post got me thinking alot about why I continue to move forward with Elemental Science. Lately I've seen too many companies start up only to have to change their plans before they even have one product out. This is discouraging to me because these ladies have worthy, marketable ideas, but the nitty gritty of getting it done has become to much. I have to admit that there are days when I'm overwhelmed by the process of writing a new program, but I also enjoy the process as well. I love tapping into that part of my brain that doesn't get used as much as it did when I was a part of the academic/working world. It's a thrill to see it all come together after I've worked through the "slog".

So what is the reality of having a homeschool business? Well, the last few weeks have been very hectic for me in the Elemental Science department. Not only am I working on finishing writing Physics for the Grammar Stage, but we are also working on getting all of our books published so that we can offer them directly from us. And although my hubby helps out on the administrative side by dealing with the printer, getting the ISBN's and so many more things, I'm the one who has to have the files ready to go. This should have been an easy process since all I needed to do was finish the quizzes for each program and the files would be ready to go. Not so, I've found out! The files were ready for me, but the printer had other ideas about how the files needed to look. So after spending countless hours reformating pages numbers, changing copyright pages, redoing the covers and resizing my files; they are finally ready to go! The proof copies are on their way and I couldn't be more excited! The process really is like given birth. It's a whole lot of pain to get it done, but when you finally see your baby for the first time, it's so worth it.

Weekly Report-Week 20-22

2010-01-30T03:57:00.003-05:00

We've been busy here with friends visiting from the states and conferences to attend. Then we got back to find out that my Nana had passed away. We have managed to keep up with school, but I haven't been so good about keeping up with the blog :). Here's a look at what we've been up to...

Language Arts: Princess is doing great with reading so I have been steadily increasing her requirements. There's been a few times where she has balked, but on the whole she has risen to the challenge. We have continued to work on Writing with Ease and that is going well. We've also added back in First Language Lessons, which is much easy for me to keep up with. Good English was taking too much preparation on my part, so even though I think that it's a great foundation, it had to go in favor of what I know will get done. We've also switched to using Spelling Workout instead of Dictation Day by Day. Again my reason for this is purely because I don't have the time to prepare it properly and it wasn't getting done. We also read Kildee House together. Frankly I thought this book was boring to read aloud, but princess loved it.

Math: We wrapped up our review of addition and subtraction and entered the world of multiplication and division. We also spent some time working on making bar graph models of our word problems. It was alittle rough going for a few days, but princess seems to have gotten a handle on the models, she just doesn't want to write them out :).

Science: We've talked about storms and earthquakes and several other things that escape me at the movement. Mostly we are looking forward to next week when we'll make our own volcano!

History: We've continued to work through Story of the World and we are enjoying it. I really wish that I had ordered the activity guide this year, but alas I didn't. Next year though, I've already got it waiting.

Other: We've kept up with our artist composer studies and we've started to look at the abridged version of Hamlet.

Education of Me: I'm mostly finished with The Chaucer Storybook and so far I have enjoyed it. It should be a perfect choice for us in the logic stage.

Well, that's what we've been up to the last several weeks. Now if I could just get the baby off my sciatic nerve, things would be alot better :). Hope you've had a great January!

Story of the World Notebook

2010-01-06T20:16:00.007-05:00

Recently I have received several questions about the history notebook I make for princess. So I thought that I would explain it in a post here as I hope that it will help many of you.

I prefer to make up our notebook ahead of time. I usually print out half a year at a time and bind it together because the whole year at once gets pretty thick :). Princess always makes her own cover as she likes to do that.
This year we bound our notebook at the top by punching two holes and inserting brad fastners, which I recommend that you tape in the back or they will pull out.

As for what's inside, I start with the notebook pages that I create.
I print one template for each chapter. Then as we read a section we add to our chapter notebook page. Sometimes princess will draw a picutre, sometimes not. Somedays I will have her copy her narration onto the page herself, sometimes I will write it for her depending on how much writing she has already done that day.

Next I add the coloring pages and the maps from the activity guide. I purchased the activity sheets as a pdf from Peace Hill Press halfway through the year, so it's been really easy to print them up and add them to the notebook. Next year, I will just copy them from the activity guide.

Then I add her copywork sheets.
I absolutely love Zane-Blouser website because you can make customized copywork sheets for free (just click on the get started button). So I take the list of copywork sentences I have, enter them in and print them out. I then put these sheets in her notebook.

Finally I add the project pages that I have created.
I count up the number of projects we have planned and print out that number of pages. Then put them in the back of her notebook.

For me I find it easier to have sections for each catagory (ie. notebook pages, maps and so on), but you could certainly arrange your notebook by SOTW chapter. It take quite a bit of effort on my part, but it makes our days go so much smoother. Princess really loves looking back at what we have studied and I'm grateful that I don't have to constantly keep track of papers to hole punch and put in her notebook. So there you have it, our SOTW notebooks.

ETA: All the pages (with the exception of the AG pages) and my plans are available for free here and at my yahoo group (link in the side bar).

Weekly Report-Week 19

2010-01-02T03:37:00.003-05:00

Back to the grind again! We are keeping at school so that we can finish second grade by the time the baby comes. So here’s what our week looked like…

Language Arts: Princess read about Marco Polo, which she absolutely loved! I was surprised how much she got into reading a biography, good thing I’ve planned some more for this year and next. We completed another week of Writing with Ease. We also add First Language Lessons back in. So far it has been far more successful this time around. We also started a verb lapbook as princess has been asking to do more lapbooks. Math: We continued working on subtraction within 10,000. We also began work on two step word problems and how to draw a basic bar diagram to solve them. It went well, but we’ll see for sure when she has her test on Monday :).

Science: We completed our first week of Earth Science, most of which was review from our Astronomy unit. Here’s a look at her notebook page… We also attempted to make a paper mache globe, but I don’t think it’s going to turn out, as our balloon started to shrink before our paper was dry.

History: We talked about Marco Polo and his exploration of China. Princess found it all very fascinated, so now I’m really looking forward to studying Columbus with her!

Others: We started studying Leonardo DaVinci’s paintings this week and we started listening to Scarlatti as our composer. Princess also started a Clay art class which she is really enjoying. I’ll try to get a picture of what she’s doing for next week.

Education of Me: I began reading The Chaucer Storybook and so far I like it, but I haven’t got very far. Hopefully I’ll be able to read more next week!

Hope you had a great week, thanks for reading about ours.

Weekly Report-Week 18

2009-12-23T02:40:00.005-05:00

Well, we finished Week 18 of school today, just in time for Christmas Eve. I will never again school this close to Christmas! Princess had present fever all this week and she found it very hard to focus on learning. We also took a long weekend to do visa paperwork and stop off at one of the places I have wanted to visit for a very long time, Angor Wat. It's one of the benefits of living in Asia, you're close to alot of the ancient wonders of the world :).
All things considered I'm shocked we actually completed another week of school. Gotta keep on schedule though so that we can be done (or at least close to done) before the baby comes. Which is approaching faster and faster! Here's what we did accomplish over the last week and a half...

Language Arts: Princess read an abridged version of Robin Hood while we read Ann McGovern's version aloud together. We also completed another week of Writing with Ease. Princess still doesn't like dictation, but she is tolerating it better and I'm glad that I stuck to the plan on this one.

Math: We started the week studying subtraction within 10,000 and it went well until present fever hit. So we ended the week by playing math games.

History: We read about the Jews and the Diaspora. We also read about Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire.

Science: We finished our astronomy unit this week by reading a biography on Neil Armstrong. We also did a review quiz and I was surprised that princess knew the order/names of the planets right of the bat. I'm really pleased with how much she retained from our astronomy study especially considering we weren't able to get to half of the experiments.

Other: We completed our study of Sandro Boticelli and Antonio Vivaldi this week. We also watched the BBC animated version of The Merchant of Venice. Finally, thanks to a very special friend sending use some glitter pens, we made some Christmas ornaments.

Education of Me: I've almost finished Stories from Dante and we will definately be reading this in several weeks. It's totally appropriate for this stage, so we'll have to find something different for the logic stage.

Thanks for reading about our week. Hope that you and yours have a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends!

Weekly Report-Week 17

2009-12-13T05:08:00.007-05:00

This was a tough week for me, as I was sick for most of it. When they say that if your pregnant it will take you twice as long to get over a cold or the flu, they mean it. Luckily princess knows our routine and she can do some of her work independently. I was able to give an assignment and then lay back down in bed while she completed it. Gotta love homeschooling! Thankfully after much rest I actually started to feel human again by the end of the week. Here's a look at what we accomplished this week...

Language Arts: Princess read A Minstrel in the Tower and we finished reading A Door in the Wall together. She completed another week of Writing with Ease and spelling.

Math: We continued to work on numbers within 10,000. Princess had a test this week which she passed without a problem, so we moved onto adding thousands. So far, so good.

Science: We read about astronauts this week and she did her narrations. We also managed to complete our experiment for the week on Friday. We learned all about the importance of insulators in the spacesuit which was fun!

History: We talked about Richard the Lionhearted, Jack Lackland, the Magna Carta and the legend of Robin Hood. We will start working on memorizing the first paragraph of the Magna Carta probably sometime after Christmas.

Other: We did get to our Artist/Composer studies this week. We also combined our art project on stencils with our history project of making a Crusaders Flag. We cut out a cross stencil and them painted red all around it, here's the result..

Education of Me: I was able to get some reading in this week. I started reading Stories from Dante by Mary McGregor and I'm impressed. There was a great, but brief bio of Dante and how he came to write the poem. It was a great introduction. The author has written such a readable version of Dante's Divine Comedy that I think we are going to fit this into our read-aloud schedule for this year rather than waiting.

Well that's what we accomplished this week, thanks for reading about it!

Weekly Report-Week 16

2009-12-04T06:01:00.003-05:00

It was a bit rough here this week, princess got sick halfway through the week and was so kind to pass it on to me today. I really don't like being sick when I'm pregnant, tylenol just doesn't cut it for me! We did manage to complete almost a full week despite the sicknesses, here's the run down...

Language Arts: Princess read from several books this week, but mainly we read aloud this week. We did manage to complete a weeks of Writing with Ease. She also practiced some cursive this week.

Math: We talked about numbers within 1000 and how to compare them. We didn't get much farther than that because when you have a head cold it's hard to concentrate on math.

Science: We discussed telescopes this week, but didn't get to our experiment.

History: We read about the Crusades, but didn't get to our project.

Others: These didn't happen this week.

Education of Me: I did finally finish Piers Plowman, but didn't move onto my next book.

It was a light week here, but I am pleased at how much we did accomplish despite not feeling well :). Be sure to check out what others did this week at the Weekly Wrap-up.

Project: Coat of Arms

2009-12-01T19:39:00.001-05:00

I've been looking forward to doing this project since I got my plans together last year! I know it's sad, but I remember making coat of arms in school and loved it, so much so that I made many more on my own at home. So I was sure to participate in this project!

We started out by looking at some different coat of arms on google pics. That way princess could get an idea of what they looked like. We then decided how we wanted to divide our fields on the shield template from the SOTW activity pages. (As a side note, I recently downloaded the activity pages from Peace Hill Press and I'm kicking myself for not getting the activity guide this year. We loved it last year, but I thought I could pull it together on my own, wrong-get the activity guide, it's worth the money!) Anyways here's princess drawing her fields...
We then chose a symbol to go in the center of our shield. You could choose an animal, a man-made object (like a castle) or something from nature. We decided to go with animals. Princess chose a rabbit; I chose a turtle, great mascot, I know. We colored and cut out our animals.
Next we chose our colors, You are suppose to choose one metal (gold, silver or copper) and a color or colors for the coat of arms. Since we didn't have any metallic crayons or paint, we decided that the yellow colored pencil would be our gold. I opted for one additional color, princess opted for a few more...
We pasted our symbol in the middle of our shield. Then we chose a brief motto and wrote it under our shield. Here are the finished products...
We really enjoyed this project. Princess even went on to make another shield later that day. Gotta love when learning is fun!

Weekly Report-Week 15

2009-11-28T06:41:00.004-05:00

We ended up doing a full week of school, despite the Thanksgiving holiday. They don't celebrate the holiday here, so it made it easy :)! Here's a look at what we did...

Language Arts: Princess finished reading an abridged version of Black Beauty. She decided in that end she really liked the book, for which I am grateful! Once again she's seen the value of finishing a book and not giving up on it too early. A skill I'm sure she'll use throughout her life. We also finished another week of Writing with Ease which went much better this week.

Math: We began 3A this week, our topic was numbers within 1000 this week. It went well, so we'll keep on going!

Science: We continued to study constellations and thier stories again this week. We been using a book that my mother-in-law gave me awhile back called Heavenly Zoo. It tells the stories behind the animal constellations in the sky. It such a good book, but unfortunately it's out of print. If you find this book at your library, I really recommend it, princess loved it and learned quite a bit!

History: We talked about knights and samurai's this week. We made our own coat of arms, which I'll post more about later, for now, here's a picture of hers...

Other: We studied another of Boticelli's paintings and we listened to more of Vivaldi's Four Seasons Concerto. We also read more of a children's version of Merchant of Venice. For art this week, we made some Thanksgiving crafts.

Education of Me: Still plugging away at Piers Plowman. (I got a bit distracted by Squanto and Johnny Tremain this week!). Maybe this weekend :).

Thanks for reading about our week, hope you had a great week too!

Weekly Report-Week 14

2009-11-22T02:47:00.005-05:00

Ok, I'm alittle late in writing this, but by the time this weekend got here, I just crashed. I forgot how much fun it is to be pregnant (said with quite a bit of sarcasm). Be sure to check out others at the Weekly Wrap-up. We had a great week of school though, here's what we did...

Language Arts: Princess finished reading Viking Adventures and we started reading Castle Diary together. She continued to practice her cursive and phonics. However, we had a melt down over writing this week though. Princess felt that the dictation was too hard. Which lead into a nice discussion about how school is going to be challenging, that's how we learn. We disscussed the reasons I want her to learn dictation and how it will help her in the future. After she understood the purpose, she was willing to give it another go. We adjusted the way we are doing dictation to challenge her, but to still give her the confidence that she can do it. Let's hope that next week goes better.

Math: Princess passed her final exam for 2B this week! Some of the things she missed I wasn't completely surprised as we are working on them already. Others I was really surprised as they were things that I knew she had down cold. I'm thinking that she just got anxious because it was a test. So now I'm looking at adding a few more tests in to reduce her anxiety over them. If you've got a better suggestion, please leave a comment! I just don't want to send her off to college dreading having to take a test. I realize that we've got plenty of time before that, I'm just trying to be proactive :).

Science: We began studying constellations this week. The plan was to make a shoebox planetarium, but since I don't have a shoebox or index cards or a flashlight, we decided to make a book about them instead! Here's a look at that...

History: We started talking about medieval England this week. We learned all about nobles, serfs and castles. We made our own model of a castle, here's a picture, but you can also read more about it below.

All and all it was a great week for history!

Other: We completed our artist and composer studies this week. Our composer right now is Vivaldi and we have been having alot of fun listening to his Four Seasons Concerto. We also began reading Lamb's Tales version of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. So far, so good and I'm really glad that we are back to our Shakespeare studies! We didn't do art this week because I figured that our castle project was enough :).

Education of Me: I haven't been the best about keeping up with my reading this week, my brain just hasn't been able to handle it. Maybe next week will be better.

Hope you had a great week, thanks for reading about ours!

History Project: Building a Castle

2009-11-18T08:48:00.005-05:00

We started studying castles this week so we decided to make one of our own. I've been saving toilet paper tubes and paper towel tubes for weeks so that we would have enough for towers. I would have saved cereal boxes too, but cereal is kinda expensive here, so we don't eat it regularly, instead we used cardstock. We started by laying out the design.

This was so that we knew how many pieces we needed to paint :). Next we mixed some black and white paint to make grey and then we started to paint.

And we painted and painted, I really recommend spray paint for this step, as we painted for nearly an hour! Once all the pieces were done, we let them dry.

Then we started to assemble our castle. It was at that point that I realized that we should have painted both sides, but since we were out of paint there's not much we could do. We used masking tape to put it together, but again I recommend that you use a hot glue gun. It would make the job much easier!

Our castle had 4 towers, with two more guard towers outside, a peasants house, a peasants jail on the other side, a king's great hall and a moat.

We were both very pleased with the finally product, plus we had alot of fun making it!

Next Year Plans

2009-11-16T01:54:00.003-05:00

I know, you're thinking, ALREADY???? One of the benefits (or downsides depending on how you look at it) of living overseas is that it costs alot to ship books, so if someone is coming to visit and they are willing to bring books, you jump on the opportunity! Our friends are coming in January, so that means that get a whole six months with my new stuff before I actually get to use it! It also means that I will have lots of time to become familiar with the material and have time to plan out next year before the baby comes. Because of the holiday mailing season I decided to order now to make sure they receive it before they leave. So, since the orders have been made I thought I'd share what we plan on doing.

Language Arts:

Writing: Classical Writing Aesop A-I am so excited about this one because I have been drooling over this the last year and a half, hope it doesn't disappoint!
Grammar: We'll just use what's in Classical Writing and from our Latin program
Spelling: Spelling Workout B & C-I'm learning that princess needs a more systematic workbook style approach to spelling, so we're going to try this one out.
Reading: Books that tie into history (mostly) for both readers and read-alouds.

Math:

Singapore Math: Don't fix what ain't broke! This program works for us, so we are sticking with it.

Science:

Chemistry for the Grammar Stage: This one was easy to figure out :)!

History:

Story of the World 3 with the Activity Guide: Another if it ain't broke, don't fix it. SOTW just really work here! We are going back to having the activity guide, not sure why I didn't order it this year as I really missed having it. I'll post my plans after I finish them.
50 State Notebook Study: I'm working on putting this together. I plan on doing this over the next two years. I'll post what I have when I'm done.

Electives:

Latin using Prima Latina: I'm also excited to start this, but alittle nervous about adding another language to princesses studies.
Chinese with our tutor: Not a choice, she's got to learn to communicate.
Art with Art Adventures at Home: I've got it so I'm going to use it.
Artist/Composer Studies: We'll be studying famous artist and composers from the Late Renaissance. I'll post our plans when I get a chance.
Music: Recorder-I'm going to better about this next year!
Shakespeare: This is just a continuation of what we have been doing for the last two years.

It looks like alot all laid out, but it is her third grade year and we've been gradually stepping up.

Weekly Report-Week 13

2009-11-13T08:00:00.004-05:00

I'm acutally writing this on a Friday night (it's 8pm here), amazing! We had a tough beginning healthwise to our week, but a decent ending, so no complaints. Here's a look at what we did...

Language Arts: Princess read half of Viking Adventure this week. I had to crack up because I asked her to tell me what she read about, she claimed she didn't remember any of it. So I asked her what happened to Sigurd and she launched into a five minute summary of what she read about. I guess that it's all about asking the right questions :). We also read Viking Tales together and she completed another week of Writing with Ease.

Math: We spent part of the week on review and the other part on geometry and area. Princess is flying through the end of this book. I suspect that we will get to the final test by the end of the week, then onto the next one.

Science: We learned all about stars this week, thier life cycles and about galaxies. We also actually did our experiment this week. Lately I haven't been the best about getting those done, but I'm going to give myself a pass on it given how things have been lately.

History: We continued studying the Vikings and made our own paper Viking longship. Princess was upset that it didn't have a flat bottom since all Viking ships had flat bottoms, oh well, here's a look at the finished product...

We also talked about Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror this week.

Other: We completed our artist/composer studies and we did an art project this week. I'm telling you, I was on top of it this week! We finished the week off with a trip to the local snake farm. The principal declared a field trip day today because it's probably the last day he'll feel normal in awhile. He's got to take some nasty meds to get rid of a digestive pest that just wants to hang on. While we were there we got to see a demonstration of snake milking.

I can't believe how those guys handled the snakes, I would have been freaking out!

Education of Me: I am continuing to work my way through Piers Plowman and enjoying it. I'm thinking that it's going to take me another week and half to finish it and then I'll try my hand at writing a review.

Hope that you had a great week also! You can read about others at the Weekly Wrap-up.

Science Corner: What about lapbooks?

2009-11-10T04:49:00.004-05:00

We have used lapbooks in the past for science with great success. They are a wonderful way to review what you have learned and to create a quick reference guide to use in the future.

So what are lapbooks?

A lapbook is a record of what your child has learned in scrapbook form. You can make one after a field trip or as a form of notebooking or to review what you have learned. Lapbooks are extremely versatile and can be used for any subject.

How can we put one together?

You begin by deciding what information you want to include. For example when we did our solar system lapbook, we started by looking back through her notebook to see what we could include. Princess decided that she wanted the Sun, all the planets-Pluto included and some information about the other stuff out there-meteors and so on. I decided that the poem we have worked on memorizing also needed to be in there. Next you decide into what you will put your information. Usually you use a file folder to for this, but I have found that two pieces (or more) of cardstock taped together also do a great job. Then you decide how to fit it all in and what types of mini-books and flaps we would use. There are websites with free templates, but once you get the hang of it you'll be making your own mini-books and flaps. The next step is to add the information to your mini-books and flaps. This can take several days or an afternoon depending on how much your child wants to do. Finally you glue all your mini-books and flaps into your lapbook and your fantastically beautiful resource is finished!

Some websites to look at for ideas...

Getting started is sometimes the hardest part, so here are a few places to look for ideas.

Homeschool Helper: This website has lots of free mini-book templates and directions for lapbooks that you can make.
Jimmie's Collage: This is another homeschooling mom's blog. She has some fantastic resources to share, plus she has some great post on lapbooking that are sure to inspire you.
Finally do a google search. There are so many homeschoolers that do lapbooks and lots of ideas out there. So do a search and see what you find :).

My daughter has treasured each lapbook we have taken the time to make. She looks back at them often and reads what she wrote. It's a sneaky way of reviewing, but more than that lapbooks give her an educational resource she can enjoy for years to come.

Weekly Report

2009-11-07T05:11:00.003-05:00

We had another good week here. I'm constantly amazed at the flexibility of homeschool! All the things that we have been through in the last two months and yet my daughter is still getting an education. I am truly blessed to be able to homeschool. Ok, off my soapbox, here's a look at our week...

Language Arts: Princess read Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky this week. The first day she looked at me after she was done reading and told me she didn't understand a thing she read. So we went back and team read it, explaining the words she didn't understand as we went along. The book had alot of new vocabulary for her! The rest of the week she was able to complete her reading on her own. She was pretty proud of herself when she finished the book! I knew that the book would be a challenge for her, but I had no idea how she would handle it. I'm pretty proud of her too!

Math: Princess breezed through the remaining graphs and then we started to work on the geometry section. She is loving the last half of this book, but she is also excited to finish it :).

Science: We studied asteroids, meteors and comets this week. We also made a lapbook about our solar system. I'll try to post more detail about that later this week, but for now, here's a picture from the inside of it...

History: We started learning about the Vikings! Princess is quite interested in this because she actually has some Viking blood in her. We mainly talked about Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky, but we also discussed some of the Norse gods.

Other: We completed an art project and our artist/composer studies this week. However the highlight of the week was at a park we went to Friday. We happened to run into a bit of nature that gave me quite a fright...

I thought this big guy was a Komono Dragon, but it turns out that it's a monitor lizard. They are actually quite common in the parks around Bangkok, a fact I never knew about! Maybe we need to start up our formal nature study times again :).

Education of Me: I have continued to read Piers Plowman. I'm really surprised how much I am enjoying this book. It's a well written allegory and it's definately going to be on our list to read in the future.

Hope you had a great week, visit here to read other weekly reports at the Weekly Wrap-up.

Weekly Report-Week 11

2009-10-31T08:56:00.004-04:00

I feel that we had a very successful week here given the recent transition. Here's the rundown of what we accomplished this week.

Language Arts: Princess is reading through Black Beauty which she has informed me that she does not like. She doesn't like that Black Beauty has been sold, but I'm encouraging her to finish it. We completed a week of Writing with Ease and princess worked on spelling with Explode the Code.

Math: We worked through another review this week. We also began the unit on capacity. Princess is doing well and it seems to me that the second half of the 2B book is alot easier then the first!

Science: We talked about Pluto and complete an experiment this week. Here's a look at princess's notebook page from this week...

History: We talked about Charles Martel and Charlemagne this week. Princess thought that it was really neat that she can write better than Charlemagne could. She also completed two pages for her notebook and we did some map work.

Other: We didn't do too many extras this week, but we did take advantage of the pool. Swim lessons are PE class, right?

Education of Me: I've been reading through Piers Plowman. I'm not as far as I would like to be, but I am really enjoying this so far.

You can read other weekly reports here, thanks for reading about ours.

Science Corner: How does nature study fit in?

2009-10-27T05:00:00.000-04:00

So where does nature study fit into a science education? Easy, nature study can be the core of your science education or it can just be the icing on the cake. Either way, there is so much to learn from the outdoors (and the indoors).

What is nature study?

It's the study of the plants and animals around you, which can be found both inside and outside your home. This makes nature study very accessible!

How do I do nature study?

Nature study can be as simple as, "Hey kids look at this caterpillar I just found on the driveway. You see the way he walks along my hand. What does he feel like to you? Do you want to put him in a jar and go look him up on the internet to find out what kind of caterpillar he is?" You can take it a step further and try to "hatch" you caterpillar into a butterfly or moth. The idea is to introduce your children to the nature around them and spark their desire to learn more. Your kids will learn so much from this type of study.

You can also use the Handbook of Nature Study to help guide your nature study time. This valuable resource has information that is written to the parent, so keep that in mind! It provides backround information about a topic and some relevant questions to use to guide the nature study time. Barb at Harmony Art Mom has put together a wonderful guide on how to get started with this book. She has also hosts the outdoor hour challenge which give you topics to focus on and how to go about doing accomplishing those nature studies. You can access all this information at her blog. I highly reccommend that you take a look as it will be well worth your time!

When do I do nature study?

Nature study can be a scheduled part of your week. In the past we have set aside one day for nature study and a library trip, that way we have plenty of time to explore both! You can also make nature study a part of your life. Take the time to take advantage of the crazy things you run across, like snails in a house plant, carrots sprouting in your fridge or the bugs crawling on the milkweed pod you pass while out on a walk.

Some of our best memories of our study of science have been during our nature study time. So, whether you chose for nature study to enhance your science curriculum or whether you choose nature study to be the core of your science education, you can't go wrong!

Hopefully I'm back up and running again :)

2009-10-26T21:28:00.002-04:00

We are here and have found a place, so school is once again being taught. I was able to see my doctor's here and they were quite puzzled because they found no evidence of the incisional hernia, PTL! However there is some nerve damage and the scar is not fully healed, so the risk of another hernia is quite high. I will have to get injections every other week or so until things heal up better, so for now we'll stay put. Hopefully things will settle down and I will have the time to be blogging again! Thanks to all of you who are thinking about me, hope that you and yours are doing well :).

Here we go again...

2009-10-19T03:38:00.003-04:00

The last month or so has been quite a roller coaster for our family. In my weekly report I said that it had been a difficult week for me health wise. Well I wasn't sick with a cold or the flu, instead I've developed a quite painful incisional hernia where my appendix was removed several weeks ago. This is probably due to my expanding belly :) and it most likely won't get better on it's own. Needless to say that this now puts my pregnancy in the high risk category and after a great deal of thinking we have decided to temporarily relocate to a place where I will have access to the medical care I need. So my posting may be spotty for the next few weeks until we get settled again. Hopefully we'll be back to a routine soon; I really miss it :)!

Weekly Report-Week 10

2009-10-16T10:04:00.005-04:00

It's been a rough week for me health wise, but we did manage to get some school done. Except for today, which was kinda a wash-sigh...

Here's a rundown of what we did accomplish...

Language Arts: Princess began reading an abridged version of Black Beauty. So far she's doing well and enjoying the book. We began reading The Little Duke together. It took awhile for princess to get into the book, but the last two days she's been asking for more and more. We didn't complete a full week of Writing with Ease and we did no Dictation Day by Day.

Math: We wrapped up the unit on fractions and began working on clocks. Princess is doing well as usual.

Science: We continued our study of the planets with Neptune. It turns out that Neptune made it around the corner of the wall. Princess did go alittle overboard with the storms that were on Neptune, but really this has been such a fun project!History: We studied Clovis and the Franks and added them to our timeline. We also discussed the Islamic invasion. I had no idea that Spain was part of the Islamic empire, learn something new everyday!

Other: Didn't make it to any of the extras this week.

Education of Me: I didn't read anything this week, my mind was elsewhere :).

Hope you had a great week, you can read other Weekly Wrap-up here.

Weekly Report-Week 9

2009-10-10T04:54:00.003-04:00

Ok, so there are no pictures from this week, but we did get Shakespeare done :). Here's a look at our week...

Language Arts-Princess finished reading Little Pear this week and I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to assign her for next week, oh well :). We finished read White Stallions of Lipizza and I was surprised at how much princess loved this book! She now rides her own White Stallion around the house and it's teaching her to ride properly, absolutely hilarious! We also completed a week of Writing with Ease and Dictation Day by Day.

Math-We spent the first half of the week reviewing the first half of the 2B book and then princess took a mid-book test. She passed with flying colors, so that means that we kept moving. We finished out the week with learning fractions. Princess has declared that this is her new favorite math concept! I have a feeling that will change when we get around to graphs again :).

Science-We spent the week with Uranus. Princess was quite perturbed when we added it to our wall model of the Solar System because she feels it's too far away from the other planets. I explained that's because it really is that far away. To which she replied, Ok, but it's probably pretty lonely. Just wait till we get to Pluto :)!

History-We spent the week in the East. We read about Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. I have to admit that alot of what we read about this week was totally new information to me. It also helped me to connect a few dots about Asian cultures. It's pretty cool to learn from your second graders curriculum :).

Other-We looked at another painting by Jan Van Eyck and listened to another piece by Corelli, who by the way is one of my favorite composers! I'm so glad that princess is enjoying him, but I have to say that neither of us are going to be big fans of medieval painting. We also got back to reading Lamb's Tales of Shakespeare "As You Like It". My plan of doing two plays a term is probably not going to happen, but we are enjoying reading through the play and I'm surprised how much princess remembered from the last time we read.

Education of Me-I finished reading Otto of the Silver Hand and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. What a great book, it will definately be on our list for the next go around. I'm hoping to write a more in depth review later this week. Next up Piers Plowman, only because the idea of reading Dante right now doesn't sound so appealing :).

Hope you had a great week, see what others are up to at the Weekly Wrap-up.

Give Away

2009-10-07T02:03:00.002-04:00

Want to win a copy of the Elemental Science program of your choice? Check out this give-away for more information.

While you are there be sure to check out the rest of her blog. There is a recent review of Chemistry for the Grammar Stage and so much more. She also has another blog where all her reviews of classical curriculum can be found. I have really enjoyed poking around over there and getting to know this great homeschooling mom :)!

Weekly Report-Week 8

2009-10-04T20:48:00.005-04:00

I'm alittle late in writing this because over the weekend I couldn't get access to blogger, but better late than never, here's a look at our week...

Language Arts: Princess read A Grain of Rice and began to read Little Pear. The cool thing is that because it's a holiday week here we were actually able to buy one of the tang hu lur's that Little Pear ate in the book. It's always fun to tie a book to reality! We also completed another week of Writing with Ease and a Dictation Day by Day.

Math: We finished studying subtracting money and then spent the rest of the week reviewing money. Next week will be our mid-book review and then onto the beginnings of fractions!

Science: We spent the week studying Saturn. Princess really liked this planet because it was big and light, plus it had pretty rings! We added it to our wall solar system and we also expanded our Sun to make it a bit more realistic.

While we were working on our Saturn, princess told me that she loved big projects like this and that I was a great teacher because I let her do them (gotta love it!).

History: We spent the week talking about the Sui and Tang dynasties. We are still really enjoying Story of the World, it makes learning history easy!

Other: We did do our artist and composer studies this week, but we didn't get to many other extras.

Education of Me: I continued to read Otto of the Silver Hand and I can see why this book is so popular for middle age studies. It's definately going to be on our list. Hopefully I can review it more thoroughly after I finish it next week.

Hope you had a great week, read reports over at the Weekly Wrap-up!

Review of Chemistry for the Grammar Stage

2009-09-28T08:00:00.003-04:00

Here's a look at a review of Chemistry for the Grammar Stage on the higher education blog. She's has alot of great reviews about different classical homeschooling products plus a few other blogs. It's an interesting place to poke around in, so go take a look!

Weekly Report-Week 7 (sort of)

2009-09-25T02:33:00.001-04:00

Well we did finally complete Week 7 of school, but it just took us two weeks. We had a brief interruption as I had to be flown to another country with better medical care to check out some problems I was having from getting my appendix out. The good news is: it's not infectious, the bad news is: I have to have another surgery to correct the problems created by the first surgery. I'll have to wait alittle while for that because #2 has finally decided to come! That's right I'm pregnant, which is zapping my energy a bit more than I anticipated, but at this point I'm just excited to still have the little guy with me that it's worth it :). So here's what we accomplished in the last two weeks...

Language Arts: Princess read a version of Arabian Nights suitable for her reading level and several other books off our shelf to occupy her time. We completed another week of Writing with Ease and Dication Day by Day. We also began reading White Stallions of Lipizza, which I am very excited to share with princess considering she loves horses.

Math: We did alittle work with adding and subtracting money, but mostly we did word problems. I just didn't have the heart to teach math, never thought I'd see that day!

Science: We talked about Jupiter and added the planet to our wall-sized solar system, here's the picture of that... I know, it's huge compared to the other planets, we may even have to expand our Sun! But, that's why I wanted to do a scaled version of the solar system this year so that princess could really visualize that Jupiter is the largest planet and how close Mercury really is to the Sun.

History: We talked about the spread of Islam and read about the Sinbad and the Valley of the Snakes. We also added some mapwork and copywork to her history notebook.

Other: We managed to complete her artist and composer studies for the week. Princess also completed a rough self portrait. Next week we will discuss more about how to draw faces and then try to draw the self portrait again. I'll post pictures of both next week.

Education of Me: It's a good thing that my reading selection for this week was an easy one or I don't think that I would have gotten any reading done at all. So far I'm really enjoying Otto and the Silver Hand and I think that it will definately be on the list for the next rotation.

I'm amazed we were able to complete any school work admist the choas of the last three weeks! I'm really looking forward to getting back to a semi-normal routine as I now have the baby's arrival looming on the horizon. I'm guessing that might throw a wrench into my school plans :)! Be sure to head on over the Kris's blog to read other Weekly Reports.

Weekly Report-Appendicitis Edition

2009-09-10T18:47:00.000-04:00

Hey folks, this isn't really a weekly report, but I'm positive that school won't get done this week! This past Sunday morning I had emergency surgery to remove my appendix. It was quite an ordeal as healthcare here is quite different and my medical language is not up to par. For now, I'm home and slowly recovering. I'm not sure when we'll get back to doing school again and for now I think that it's best to take a bit of a blogging break as well. Thanks for understanding and we'll be back at it as soon as I'm up and around again!

Weekly Report-Week 6

2009-09-04T20:29:00.006-04:00

Another week of learning down! Here's the rundown on our week...

Language Arts: Princess read a book about Young Arthur and a book about space travel this week. She enjoyed both, which I am grateful for because I wasn't sure how she would take non-fiction books. We also completed another week of WWE and Dictation Day by Day.

Math: We continued working on money, specifically on adding money. She's still going strong, so we will keep going. We also took some time out to do some origami as well, here's a picture of our peacocks...

Science: We spent the week studying Mars, the red planet. We also read about the medieval scientist Roger Bacon and added him to our timeline.

History: We read about Muhammed and the begining of Islam. We also read a book about Maps and Globes.

Other: For art princess drew the same plant, but from a bird's eye view, here's a look at both projects (bug's eye view is on top, then the bird's eye view)...

Education of Me: I finished Stories of Roland and found it to be very interesting! I'll try to do a separate write-up about it in a few days. Next up, Otto of the Silver Hand, which I am very much looking forward to!

Thanks for reading about our week, to read other, visit the weekly wrap-up here.

Wordless Wednesday

2009-09-02T08:55:00.001-04:00

Science Corner: Impromptu Nature Study

2009-09-01T10:08:00.004-04:00

We live in a very big city, that's full of people, cars and buildings, which leaves little room for wide open spaces to view nature. Our parks, which are few and far between, are more concrete than grass. So needless to say that our nature studies have not flourished. This year I have felt the challenge to discover nature where we are at.

I have been growing an herb garden so that I can have some of the herbs that I am accustomed to. Let me first say that I don't have a green thumb, so we have had a few discussion on the many ways that mommy can kill a plant! Recently my majoram plant was returned from my friend the herb doctor who managed to save it for me. While it was at thier house, it began to bloom. I was disappointed because now I won't get as many leaves from it, but glad because at least he was able to revive it! What I didn't realize is that the flowers on my plant would attract butterflies all the way up to the sixth floor. We've had a great time observing the butterflies from our window, talking about how they eat, how we know their butterflies and looking them up online. I really couldn't have planned this one if I tried!

Another impromptu nature moment came from our vegetable bin. Apparently the conditions were right for my carrot to sprout, so I cut off the top and put it in a bowl with some water. Then I used the rest for Thai Chicken Wraps (super yummy!). A few days later my daugther reminded me that our carrot was growing and it should be planted, so we did. I'm not sure how this will work as I've never grown carrots, but so far it's been a lesson about where our food comes from and how there really is nature all around us.

Hope that this weeks Science Corner inspires you to look for nature study wherever you are!

Weekly Report-Week 5

2009-08-28T20:09:00.003-04:00

Another great week, man I love it when a plan actually works! Here's the rundown...

Language Arts: Princess finished up Mrs. Piggle Wiggle and started Gooney Bird Greene. We also started read Twenty-one Balloons together out loud. We completed another week of Writing with Ease and Dication day by day. I love these two programs and I'm seeing progress in her writing and in her spelling. One day I'll have to post more about how we use Dictation day by day, it's an oldie but goodie free from Google Books.

Math: We began our unit with money and I see now why Singapore holds off on going to deep into money in early books. Princess now has the mathematically basis to do all the money calculations and so far this unit has been a breeze to teach. Plus she loves to play store!

History: We learned about monks who lived in caves and read some of the Jataka Tales this week. Our timeline is looking good, here's a picture of it...

Science: We did finish our Venus experiment with the use of our heat fan instead of the Sun, see Science Corner post for a picture. Then we moved onto the Earth and the Moon. We didn't go into to much depth here because we will study the Earth more as part of our Earth Science unit. Even so, Princess enjoyed the week and learned alot about the Moon.

Other: We continued to read and narrate "As you Like It" in Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. We did a bug's eye view sketch of a plant in our house which was fun. We also completed our artist and composer studies. Here's a look at her artist study sheet...

Education of Me: I spent the first half slugging through the original Song of Roland poem and the second half breezing through Stories of Roland. You can read more about the journey in this post. Needless to say, I am learning more about Charlemagne and the brave knights of old. What I am wondering is did they really have that much gold, seventy camels full of golden objects?

Hope you had a great week! You can read more weekly wrap ups here.

What's the purpose of my self education?

2009-08-27T20:24:00.001-04:00

I found myself asking this question this week as I was slugging through Song of Roland. I had no idea what this poem was about or the history behind it. I found the verse to be beautiful, but I wasn't understanding it. I was having a hard time following the storyline because I had no pegs of information to mark it with. The good thing is that I'm starting to see firsthand the reasons for the plan that is laid out in The Well Trained Mind. The bad thing is that I didn't have this type of education and although I consider myself well educated and well read, there's still some work to be done.

So back to answering the question, the purpose of my self education is to learn so that I am prepared to teach her. It's not to finish books on a checklist. With that in mind I am switching to Stories of Roland by HE Marshall. This is an easier version of the Song of Roland poem that I am considering using with princess in the logic stage. So I'll kill two birds with one stone; I'll preview the book for her and I'll actually learn who Roland was and the storyline behind the Song of Roland poem. Although I'm a bit embarrassed to post this, I'm hoping that it will help others as the pursue thier own self-education :)!

Science Corner: Experiments, but I don't have everything I need...

2009-08-25T09:26:00.005-04:00

...so I can't do the experiment, right? It happens to me all the time, I forget to look ahead in my plans and so I didn't get all the materials I needed for the experiment we are suppose to do. (I know that I'm not the one one this happens to!) So do we ditch the experiment all together, pushing it back till another week that probably will never come?

Heaven's no! As the Super Slueths do, we think, think, think. Here are some helpful hints for doing experiments with what you have on hand...

See if you can substitute an ingredient: For example if the experiment calls for vinegar, try lemon juice. If you don't have a potato for your starch test experiment, try using a piece of bread or cooked pasta. For baking soda, well there just is no substitute for baking soda that I know of :). The internet and your cookbook are great places to look for "recipe" substitutions.
See if you can substitute a material: For example, I use my meat thermometer for all our experiments. Don't laugh, there's no need to go out and buy thermometers for you to use in science when you have two of them sitting in your kitchen. I have used my oven and a heat lamp (they look like fans here) for the Sun. We don't get too many sunny days here, so when our experiments have called for the Sun, I've had to improvise! If you don't have a two liter bottle, make a mini-experiment using a one liter. The list can go on and on, but the basic idea is that you don't have to have the exact item, just something close to it :).

See if you can subsitute the experiment: Take a look at your experiment book. They usually have several experiments for any given topic. If you don't have the supplies for the one that was scheduled and you can't make a substitution to make it work, go ahead and change the whole experiment. Your kids will still learn about science!

Hope that these tips give you some ideas about how you can continue to share hands on science with you kids even if you don't have all the materials. Trust me, it's worth the time and effort!

Weekly Report-Week 4

2009-08-21T04:26:00.005-04:00

We've had a fun week! First we took a field trip to the local science museum, which is always an adventure in a foreign country. Actually, we really enjoyed ourselves and I can see going back at some point. Second our local bookstore re-opened with huge (at least for this area) English books section. It was such an exciting event for this book lover that I had to blog about it here. Even with all the excitement we did manage to fit it a bit of school. Here's the rundown...

Language Arts: Princess enjoyed reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle so much last week with Writing with Ease that she chose the book for her reader this week. I'm impressed because she was able to keep up with a chapter a day. We also completed another week of WWE and learned about questions with Good English. We finished A Little Princess this week and princess decided that this is her favorite book so far (that's because it's the first one of the year!).

Math: Princess took her Unit 2 test and passed it with flying colors. We spent the rest of the week playing games and reviewing what she has learned so far.

Science: We spent the week studying Venus, which we added to our wall sized solar system. It's a scaled model so it looks like Mercury and Venus are right on top of each other.

We haven't completed our experiement yet for this week because we haven't had a sunny enough day. We'll try to get to it this weekend, but if the Sun doesn't show I'll have to figure out some other way to make an artificial Sun.

History: We moved on to the Byzantine Empire and princess was most impressed by Empress Theodora playing with bears. We are really loving Story of the World! So much so that princess decided to pick up volume 1 this week and re-read it on her own. Guess that means that we can't use Story of the World with Sonlight Core 6 & 7 in the future. Bummer!

Education of Me: I spent the week reading all about scientists from the Middle Ages so that I could complete Great Scientists of the Middle Ages. It's now available and I have a new blog to host the Series, which you can see here. It's free to download, so go take a look.

Also be sure to check out the other weekly reports and the Weekly Wrap-up.

Book Lover's Oversea's Paradise

2009-08-19T02:24:00.004-04:00

When we first moved here we found a local bookstore that had a decent section of classical books in English. It closed for remodeling the week after I had found it, so I never got to take full advantage of it. Today it reopened! It's beautiful indside, picture marble floors(well fake ones at least), wood detailing (ok, it's paneling but it's still pretty!) and good lighting (this is a really big bonus here where we see the sun once every 10 days or so). It has three whole floor of books! Yes, I was drooling, but given the fact that I can't read 90 % of the books in there (I only know about 40 of the 10,000 characters); I made a beeline for the escalator that leads to the top floor which contains the imported book section.

My pulse quickened and I had to force myself not to run because this is what happens to a book lover without a library, it's the worst form of sensory deprivation! What I found was almost a dream come true, three whole, very long aisles devoted to classical literature in English (trust me, this is huge!). After I picked my jaw off the floor, I started hunting for the books that I plan on reading this year for my self-education. I wasn't able to find them all, but I found some good substitutions, like The Travels of Marco Polo and Piers Plowman, and a ton more books that I want to read in the future. It's a good thing that I had a budget because I could have easily left with every book they had in there.

I also found a section of abridged classics that are used to help teach the locals English. The books have some Chinese in them, but all in all they are perfect to use with princess. I snatched up these to use this year...

I also picked up a few for next year so that I won't have to worry about whether or not they will be there the next time I go back.

Now I have to find room for the books and change my reading list, plus I need to calm down from all the excitement. Does it make me certifiable that I'm still alittle giddy from the whole experience?

Project: Making An Illuminated Book

2009-08-17T03:30:00.001-04:00

I thought that I would share more about the project we did last week as I thought others might enjoy seeing a closer look. I found this website http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1220_gothic/make_book.php when I was doing research for our study of the Middle Ages. It looked like something that my princess would enjoy so I scheduled it into our plans.

Princess worked on coloring the pages while I was reading aloud her history. When she was finished; I had her make up a story to go with the pages. Her story was the medieval version of Mary and Joseph, kinda cute huh? She then asked me to write in cursive because she wanted it to be pretty.We then made a "golden" cover for the book. This was a neat project for princess and it helped her to understand how long it really took to make books in the middle ages. She has a new found appreciation for monks and for how precious books were from that time period, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

Science Corner: What about experiments?

2009-08-15T20:43:00.012-04:00

Experiments take time and preparation. You have to make sure you have the supplies. You need to read ahead to make sure you know the science behind it. You have to be willing to answer the questions that will inevitable come up. So is it worth doing experiments with your elementary age student?

Most definately YES! Experiments are the best way for your student to learn the principles of science in a fun and enjoyable way. Experiments make science an exiciting adventure. It's a sneaky way of teaching your student the principles of science and it's definately worth the time and effort you put in.

So how do you go about adding experiments to your week?

I highly recommend any book by Janice VanCleave! She uses common household items for her experiments and gives thorough explanations of the science behind them. She has books for every discipline of science and most are available at your local library. Add in some living books about the topic you are studying and you've got a complete science curriculum free from the library.

If you don't want to do the planning yourself, find a curriculum that does it for you. Elemental Science offers plans that include reading schedules, narrations, experiments and ongoing projects. Biology for the Grammar Stage was what sparked my own daughter enthusiasm for science. Although I believe Elemental Science offers the best, it's not the only program to include frequent experimentation. You could also check out NOEO and Real Science by Pandia Press.

The main goal of science in the elementary age is to get your student interested and excited about science. They will learn far more about Newton's law through experimentation than they ever would by reading a book. So get up, get yourself an experiment book and start learning!

Weekly Report-Week 3

2009-08-14T07:50:00.007-04:00

Here's our weekly rundown...

Language Arts: This week I let princess choose her own book from our self. She chose Dolphin Adventure by Wayne Grover. She loved this book and it gave us an opportunity to discuss the differences between manatees and dolphins (for some reason she wanted to call the dolphins manatees, which are not the same, to clear this up we looked both up in our Kingfisher First Animal Encyclopedia-problem solved). Writing with Ease went well this week, in fact I noticed that her dictation is getting better. It's nice to know that progress is being made!

Math: We talked about multiplication and division within 10. Princess declared that this was the easiest week of math so far. Guess all that skip counting paid off!

Science: This week we studied Mercury. Here's a look at her notebook sheet...

Princess has really taken to Astronomy so far. She's very interested in the planets and it's cool to see her excited about another discipline of science!

History: We finished Our Little Celtics Cousins and we finished her medieval book. Princess insisted on it having a gold cover, which we made out of yellow construction paper since I haven't found where to purchase gold paint yet. Here's a picture of that...

We also began to talk about St. Augustine and what monks do.

Other: We continued to read Tales from King Arthur and watch the BBC animated version of Shakespeare's As You Like It. We also managed to practice the recorder for the first time this year! I'm hoping that we will be able to keep up with it as I would like her to have some sort of muscial instruction.

Education of Me: I began Song of Roland this week, but didn't get very far because I had a ton of things to do this week. It was an insanely busy week for me, but next week should be better! Anyways, so far I enjoy it. I'm reading a translation of the original version, so it's a step up in difficulty from last weeks selection. However I find the poetry easy to follow and I'm looking for more time to curl up with this book. I ran across this article on the importance of self-education by Susan Wise Bauer and I thought that I would share it with you all.

Hope you had a great week, thanks for reading about ours! If you want to read more reports check out the Weekly Wrap-up.

A New Look

2009-08-13T08:40:00.002-04:00

I've been admiring blog headers and buttons from afar but figured that I could never create what I wanted on my own. That was until I discovered that you can save Microsoft publisher files as jpeg's. Which makes it very easy to design your own headers and buttons. Here's the tutorial I used to figure out the picture buttons with links. Now my clickable links are all pictures :). Hope you enjoy the changes!

Had to share this...

2009-08-11T21:46:00.003-04:00

On our recent travels we were able to see wildlife and flowers that I've never seen before. This flower made me stop in my tracks and stare in awe and wonder for quite awhile.

I have seen pink and yellow lady slippers, which are rare where I come from in the US, but I have never seen a purple one. It was way cool!

Biology for the Grammar Stage: New Edition

2009-08-09T20:34:00.004-04:00

I just wanted to let you all know that Biology for the Grammar Stage has been revised. Several of the books planned were taken out of print this summer and it became apparent that a revision was in order. The new edition lays out a 20 week study of animals using the Kingfisher First Encyclopedia Of Animals, a 10 week study of the human body using the DK First Human Body Encyclopedia and a 6 week study of plants using Plant Parts from the Life of Plants Series. It still includes vocabulary, experiments, narrations and ongoing projects. The student workbook has also been revised to add some new pictures and change some of the narration and experiments sheets. The workbook still includes all the pages you need for the ongoing projects, narrations and experiments that are planned. You can check out the new samples here.

If you orderd Biology for the Grammar Stage within the last several months and would like to have the new edition, please email me at info@elementalscience with biology in the subject line, your paypal email and your approximate order date (so I can verify your order). I hope that you all will enjoy the revisions.

Weekly Wrap Up-Week 2

2009-08-07T04:57:00.007-04:00

Another good week here! I feel that we have a good routine going and I'm really happy with the material that we are using. For once I feel no need to tweak, I never thought I'd see this day. Now let's just hope that it lasts :)!

Here's the rundown of our week...

Language Arts: Princess finally got into The Sword and the Tree! She kicked it into high gear and finished the last half of the book in two days. We'll add a review sheet for this book to her reading notebook sometime this weekend. We completed week 2 of Writing with Ease and I'm so glad that I got the workbook for this as it has made it to much easier for me to do (thanks, Linda!). We also talked about what makes a sentence and a statement with Good English and completed another week of Dictation Day by Day for spelling.

Math: We worked on multiplication and division with 5, which princess handled well. We finished the week with a mental math sheet reviewing the 3, 4 and 5 facts. I let princess use manipulatives for this. I have put together unifix cubes in groups of 2, 3, 4 and 5. We pull these out and uses them to skip count her way through her multiplication facts. Here's what it looks like... History: We spent the week reading a book called Our Celtic Cousins. This is a wonderful old book that weave tons of history through a storyline about two boys. So far so good. We have also been working on making our own illuminated manuscript. Hopefully it will be done next week, so I can share pictures of it.

Science: We spent the week talked about the sun. We started our wall sized solar system, here's a look at the sun...
Princess was fascinated by solar spots, so that's why our sun has several of them!

Other: We watched more of the BBC Animated version of As You Like It on you tube. I love these videos, they are a great introduction to Shakespeare for this age group. We also read more about King Arthur and looked at another painting by Giotto di Bondone. Princess completed her first art project of the year, which was a still life using a pen (so that they can't erase), here's the result (it's a purse, a candle and two pixie sticks)... Education of Me: I have been frantically trying to rewrite Biology for the Grammar Stage since 4 of the six books have gone out of print in the last two months, grrrr! Hence the lack of blog posts. Even so, I finished Stories of Beowulf and I am shocked to say that I actually enjoyed it. I remembered hating reading this in high school. I think it's because it was a snippet view, watered down, poorly done version. Now I'm actually looking forward to reading the real poem and sharing it with princess. Maybe there is something to this whole classical education thing :)!

That's a look at our week, hope you had a great one! You can read more weekly reports at the Weekly Wrap-up.

Weekly Report-Week 1

2009-07-31T02:29:00.003-04:00

Yes, we are already back to school again. We arrived back from our trip and I sat down with a calendar and realized that we will be traveling so much that we need to go to more of a year round approach. So when we are home, we will be doing school, which princess is excited about because she loves school! This was technically the first week of her second grade year, here's the rundown...

Language Arts: Princess spent our break reading up a storm, but she's not so keen on the first book I assigned to her for school, The Sword and the Tree. I'm not really sure why she doesn't like it, but she is reading and understanding it and she is going to finish it. Meanwhile she's devouring Boxcar Children books on the side. We also started WWE and so far so good. I really like this approach, so we shall see how it plays out. For our read-aloud we began with The Little Princess. I love this book and I can't wait to watch princess get caught up in it!

Math: We spent the week reviewing Unit 1 and part of Unit 2 in Singapore's Primary Math 2B. I was pleasantly surprised at how much princess retained. Looks like I won't have to reteach anything and we are ready to move on to multiplication/division by 5 next week.

Science: We had the rare opportunity to observe the eclipse two weeks ago (for us it wasn't that spectacular because our sky was extremely overcast, but it did get dark for a full 3 minutes in the middle of the morning), so in honor of that, we began our year with Astronomy. This week we talked about the solar system and princess is looking forward to recreating it on our wall!

History: We talk about the fall of Rome, the Celts and the Anglo Saxons. We also did some notebooking and added to our timeline, here's a picture of the timeline (it's alittle blank right now)...

I'm really pleased that we went with Story of the World again this year, even though I miss Sonlight, it really is a better fit for our family. We also began to read Tales of King Arthur as part of our look at historical literature. Princess thought that it was cool that he just had to pull out a sword to become king.

Education of Me: Since princess has begun reading independently, I am taking the time to read my books. I began with Stories from Beowulf by HE Marshall. I've finished about half so far and I like it. It's a easy to read version, but it is a bit gory and I'm glad that I put it off until our next history rotation. Hopefully this year I will do a better job at keeping up with my own education! If you click on the reading list tab at the top of this blog you can see my plans.

Hope all is well with you and yours, thanks for reading about our week. You can check out other reports at the Weekly Wrap-up.

Traveling and a Blogging Break

2009-06-26T21:03:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let you all know that we will be traveling the whole month of July. My internet access will be on and off and I don't think that I will have the time to update my blog. So, I'm going to take a blogging break. Hope you all have a great month of July and I look forward to catching up when I get back!

Summer Review: Science Lapbooks

2009-06-22T20:52:00.004-04:00

We have been working on lapbooks for the past several day to review what we learned this year in Biology. We used the pictures from my program Biology for the Grammar Stage and the narrations that she wrote in her notebook from this year. Here's a closer look at the plant lapbook...

Here's a closer look at the parts of a flower book. We pasted the parts of a flower poem next to the booklet and then I had princess draw lines to the different parts mentioned in the poem. She knew each one without my help.

Here's a look at the types of seeds book, for this we just colored the pictures and labeled them.

Here's a look at the parts of a plant book. We pasted the parts of a plant poem above the flap book and them cut one of the pictures so that it would show the four different parts on different flaps.

Then we wrote her narrations from the student workbook under each flap, here's a look at that...

This was a really fun project and a great way to review. I was really surprised how much princess remembered. You can see more pictures from our other two lapbooks over at my yahoo group. Hopefully it inspires you to look at review time in a different way!

A Little Change...

2009-06-18T08:47:00.003-04:00

I've finally figured out how to add buttons to my header on my blog! It's so much cleaner than having all those things down my sidebar. Hope you guys enjoy the changes! Now back to trying to figure out how to reschedule some of the book in Biology for the Grammar Stage because they went out of print and trying to put together Great Scientists of the Middle Ages.

Story of the World 2 Plans

2009-06-18T08:37:00.004-04:00

I have already put my plans up over at my yahoo group, but I thought that I would post alittle something about them here. This year we decided to use Sonlight books to suplement Story of the World rather than going with Core 2. I know myself and I know that if I don't have a plan it will stress me out. So I set out to write a "Sonlight" style plan for Story of the World 2. What I ended up with was plans that include read-alouds, copywork, timeline figures, scheduled maps and some readers. I'm pleased with the finished product, now I just have to wait to use them, that's always the hard part!

Weekly Report-Last One of the Year

2009-06-12T01:59:00.004-04:00

I have to say that I almost cried several time today, it's silly I know, but this year has been so much fun. I don't want it to end, but alas all good things must come to and end. Plus there's always next year! Anyways here's a look at our final week of the 2008-2009 school year...

Language Arts: Princess finished by reading the Titanic, which she enjoyed, but she was upset that the boat sank and mad at the people for not being prepared with enough lifeboats for everyone. One of my favorite movies is Titanic, so I was having flashbacks the entire book, LOL. We also did a week of Level 1 from Writing with Ease just to make sure the she would be ready for Level 2 next year. I think that she will do just fine and I'm really looking forward to starting this in the fall. Thank you to my dear friend who was kind enough to ship this book halfway around the world to me!

Math: We wrapped up multiplication by 4 and then we made a skip counting book. For princess skip counting has been the most effective way to memorize her multiplication facts. So we will use the book the practice the facts over the summer. Here's a look at some of the pages from the book...

History: We read about the fall of Rome and the last Roman Emperor. Then we put together our notebook and pulled down the timeline so we could make a booklet out of that. That's when I got a bit misty. We've had such a great year and it was neat to see all our memories wrapped up in a neat little notebooks. Here's what they looked like...

I just have to thank Susan Wise Bauer for writing Well-Trained Mind and Story of the World and Sonlight for having such great books for me to choose from! The two of you have made this year great! I'm hoping that next year will be the same, since we are continuing along the same path.

Hope you all had a great year to and I'm very excited to get started again next August!

Weekly Report

2009-06-07T08:38:00.002-04:00

We are in the home stretch now, only two more weeks to go. Here's what last week looked like...

Language Arts: We tried something new this week. I split up the reading time into oral and silent. Princess has been reading to herself for a while now, but only when she chooses. I figured it was time to add it to our school day. So she read and I read, then we talk about what we just read. So far, so good, plus it's nice to get some reading done for a change. It should help me to complete the last book on my Education of Me list.

Math: We worked through the section on multiplication by 4. We also played a few games on the way!

Science: We continued to work through my new book, Great Scientist of the Ancients (which you can download from my yahoo group here). It's been alot of fun to learn about these scientists who were also philosphers and mathmeticians. I have to admit that I have learned alot as well!

History: This week we talked about the beginning of the end for the Roman Empire. We talked about what it meant to be so large and how the empire was split in two. We have only two spaces left on our timeline, I can't believe what a wonderful year this has been and how much princess has retained. Thanks SWB for writing Story of the World!

Others: We continued to read the Lamb's Tale's version of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Princess is enjoying this one and so am I. We also have recently acquired a recorder, which I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing. It's quite an ear-piercing instrument when played at random, but hopefully with a bit of training I will begin to enjoy hearing her play instead of running for the Advil!

Hope you had a great week, thanks for reading about ours!

Weekly Report--Week 31 & 32

2009-05-30T05:52:00.004-04:00

This really should be called a biweekly report because that's what I have been doing lately! Even though this blog hasn't been very busy lately, we have been.

Language Arts: Princess has been reading Frog and Toad chapter books in school over the past two weeks. We also finished reading Wheel on the School. This is hands down my favorite book of the year! We finished Lesson 4 & 5 of Word Attack and have read 4 more chapters of Grammar Land, so far so good!

Math: We wrapped up our review of addition and subtraction and then moved onto multiplication by 4. I'm thinking that we will finish this unit and then work on Miquon's blue book over the summer.

Science: We have been working through Great Scientists of the Ancients. This is a book I put together from the free resources on the web. It contains information on the scientists that were alive during the Ancient time period. I hope to have it ready to put up at my Yahoo group later this week. I plan to make it freely available as a resource for others to use, we will see how it goes!

History: We've continued talking about Rome and about Jesus. We did the mosaic cross project from the SOTW AG. Here's what it looked like...

Hope you all have had a great few weeks, thanks for reading about ours!

Weekly Report

2009-05-15T19:14:00.000-04:00

Moving right along...

Language Arts: We started Lesson 5 of Word Attack and decided to ditch the word list and just use the copywork. I'm having her copy the sentences and then we look at the sentence together and point out the spelling rule we are studying. It's working much better than the lists so far. Princess's reading is moving right along and we are enjoying reading The Wheel on the School out loud.

Math: We are working throught Singapore PM 2B Unit 1, which is addition and subtration review. So far, so good. We will wrap the unit up next week.

Science: This is our last week of Biology for the Grammar Stage since we already completed the plant section last year. I'm not sure what we will do next week, probably lots of nature study.

History: We met Julius Caesar and watched him die. Princess decided that he was very selfish and he shouldn't have been that way. What a great intro to Rome!

Other: We are still studing Van Gogh and Mozart. Next week we will get to art, I hope!

Hope you had a great week too!

Weekly Report-Week 29

2009-05-09T07:57:00.004-04:00

We tried an experiment this week, I did not have a schedule!!! If you knew me, you'd know how huge this is as I tend to overplan everything. I just wanted to see what we happen if we did the next thing instead of making sure we checked all the boxes. It turns out that the ground won't open up and swallow me whole if I don't plan every last minute of our school time. Go figure! I did however learn that I do need to plan a basic outline of where we are going, just maybe not every day, moment by moment. Which is good because I need all the time I can get these days! So here's what we did accomplish this week...

Language Arts: Princess read Owl at Home and Mouse Tales this week. We also completed lesson 4 with Word Attack. In Grammar Land we read about adjectives. We are really enjoying this book and princess is learning about the parts of speech in a sneaky way :).

Math: We continued reviewing the strategies for solving addition/subtraction problems. We also played a few games from the Home Instructor's Guide which she really enjoyed.

Science: We spend the week discussing reproduction and the similarites in families. We did a picture family tree project and then examined the similarities and differences between our extended family. This was alot of fun, but sad too, since we miss everyone alot!

History: We read about gladiators and Julius Caesar. It was a good week and I'm looking forward to spending some time in Rome!

Other: We are about halfway through The Wheel on the School and it's a big hit here. This is one of my favorite books from this year, so I'm glad that princess is enjoying it. We also enjoyed listening to more of Mozart and looking at another VanGogh painting.

Hope you had a great week, thanks for reading about ours.

Wordless Wedneday

2009-04-29T08:31:00.001-04:00

Weekly Report-Week 27

2009-04-24T20:00:00.001-04:00

I spent the week agonizing over what to use next year and realized that there is alot out there! It's sometime overwhelming to see how much there is and you just have to stop searching. Anyways decisions have been made and order will be placed soon, so that the decisions can't be changed! You can read our plans for next year below. Despite my lack of concentration, school was done this week. Here's what we did...

Language Arts: Princess read her first Level 3 book this week, at first she was intimidated but once she got into it, she did fine. We also are enjoying reading a little bit of Grammar Land everyday. This is such a neat way to introduce grammar!

Math: We began 2B with reviewing addition and subtration, so far so good.

History: We talked about the birth of Rome and the legend of Romulus and Remus. We made a fasces with chopsticks instead of craft sticks which I could find here. Princess got a good laugh out of the project because she thought it was very funny to make an axe out out what we use to eat with!

Science: We talked about the respiratory system this week and made our own lung. We had to use a smaller bottle as I haven't found a 2-liter bottle yet. This week was definately an adventure in how to do project in our new home! Anyways, here's a picture of our lung...

Other: We continue to talk about Van Gogh and Mozart. Other than that, the extras just didn't get done this week.

Hope you had a great week, thanks for reading about ours.

Unveiling of the Plans...

2009-04-24T19:44:00.004-04:00

Ok, the plans are set, the principal says no more changes! Have I mentioned that I have really agonized over these decisions? This is what we are doing...

Language Arts:
Writing with Ease
Word Attack
Readers and Read-Alouds mostly from Sonlight

Math:
Singapore Math

History:
Story of the World 2: Middle Ages (I will try to post my plans for this over at my yahoo group next month)

Science:(this is the one thing that I never had a question about)
Earth Science and Astronomy for the Grammar Stage by Elemental Science

Others: (I'll try to post these plans also as they get done)
Artist/Composer Study I put together using AO's schedule
Poetry using AO's schedule
Shakespeare using Lamb's Tales and BBC videos
Art Adventures at Home

I think that's it! It was hard for me to decided not to use Sonlight next year, but I realized that I was going to butcher the schedule so much that it was better for our family to go with Story of the World and use Sonlight books to fill in. I'm looking forward to next year, now let's just hope the books actually get here :)!

Weekly Report-Week 25 & 26

2009-04-17T03:08:00.002-04:00

The last two weeks have been business as usual as far as school goes, but I have been too busy to really post much, sorry about that! I did post about our spelling plans yesterday which you can read about below. I hope to post our second grade plans soon. Anyways here's what we have accomplished...

Language Arts: We have almost finished the ETC book we are working on and I think that next week we will switch to doing spelling with Word Attack. Princess's reading has really taken off in the last two weeks, so I'm thinking that it's time to transition from phonics into spelling.

Math: We finished division by 3 and spent a week reviewing the 2A book. I gave princess the 2A placement test and she passed with flying colors, so we will be starting 2B next week. I can't believe that she actually understands all this and I'm very pleased with Singapore math.

Science: We have spent the last two weeks on senses and the circulatory system. Princess is really enjoying learning about the body. I thought I'd share a picture of her body outline so far, it's only the front; the back has the skeletal system and the spine on it.

History: We spent time in Ancient China and Ancient India. It's been a good couple of weeks, but I am disappointed that I have not been able to do all the projects I had planned to do with her. The thing is that she is still learning and it will all be ok!

Others: We have been enjoying works by Van Gogh and Mozart. We made some salt dough animals that kinda melted in the humidity, so now I'm in search of real clay. We have also been doing nature walks instead of Barb's outdoor hour challenges as I have found them harder to keep up with.

I hope you all have had a great couple of weeks too, thanks for reading!

Studied Dictation for Spelling

2009-04-16T20:40:00.003-04:00

I've been looking into spelling programs for next year and I thought I'd share some of what direction we are going to take in case others find it useful (and so I can find it later on!). We are planning on starting Word Attack in a few weeks after we finish ETC. The reason we chose this was because I wanted dictation to be a part of my spelling program and I think Hannah does a great job at giving you the tools to do this. After we finish that we will begin studied dictation, which I anticipate will begin about halfway through next year. I'm not sure what program we will use to help us do that or whether I will just put it together on my own. I thought I would share what Charlotte Mason has written about this subject as I found it interesting...

"Of all the troublesome subjects that students spend hours on, dictation is probably the most troublesome, at least the way it's usually taught. People don't realize that every school subject rests on some kind of philosophic principle.
A Major Cause of Bad Spelling
Generally, the teacher dictates a passage phrase by phrase. She repeats each one three or four times because the students ask questions and ask her to say it again. Every line of the students' work has one to three spelling errors. The teacher, trying to be conscientious, marks the errors with red ink. The students use various methods to correct their mistakes. They might exchange work and grade each other's paper, correcting errors by copying the correct spelling from the blackboard. A few unenlightened teachers still make students copy their errors, with the correction written three or four times to learn it, and then spelled out loud to the teacher. The teacher is surprised that, with all her painstaking effort, students continue to make the same mistakes again and again.
The Logic of Spelling
But the truth is, the ability to spell depends on the person's ability to see the word and stamp a photographic image of it on their mind. This is a skill and habit that must be developed in children from the beginning. When they read the word 'cat,' they must be taught to try and see the word with their eyes closed. This same technique works equally well with big words like 'Thermopylae.' Imprinting words on the retina seems to be the only sure way to become a good speller. Once an error is made and corrected, there will always be doubt as to which image is the right spelling, and which is the wrong one. Most of us are never quite sure whether 'balance' has one l or two, and that's because we saw both spellings when we corrected it. Once the eye sees a misspelled word, the image is imprinted for good. If there is also an image of the word spelled correctly, we will never be totally confident about which image is the correct one. That's why the common way of doing dictation almost guarantees bad spellers. Every misspelled word makes an image in the mind that even the correct spelling can't obliterate. Therefore, it's the teacher's duty to prevent wrong spelling in the first place. And if an error is made, she must cover it quickly before the image gets fixed in the student's memory.
Steps of a Dictation Lesson
Dictation lessons done the following way usually result in good spelling. A child of eight or nine studies a paragraph; older students study one page, or two or three pages. The students prepares for the lesson by himself. He looks at any word he isn't sure of and tries to see it with his eyes closed. Before the dictation begins, the teacher asks him which words he thinks might give him trouble. He usually knows, and she can write them on the blackboard. She asks him to look until he has a picture of the word in his mind. Then she erases each word one by one. If he still isn't sure about a particular word, she should have him attempt to write it on the blackboard from memory. She must watch closely so that, as soon as he begins to add the wrong letter, she can erase it before it lodges in his memory. When the word is on the board correctly, the student again tries to make a mental picture. Then the teacher dictates the passage, a phrase at a time, and only repeating once. She reads expressively enough to make punctuation evident, and students are expected to include correct punctuation. But she should not say, 'comma,' or 'semi-colon.' After students have spent maybe ten minutes preparing for the dictation as outlined, there are rarely any spelling mistakes. If there are any, the teacher would be wise to cover them with adhesive paper or white-out to erase the wrong spellings from the student's mind as much as possible. At the end of the lesson, the child should study that word from his book until he's sure he knows it. Then he should write the correctly spelled word on the adhesive paper, or over the white-out.
Children cooperate enthusiastically with this kind of lesson because they feel like they have a part in it. It also prepares them for the second thing necessary to be a good speller, which is lots of reading with a trained habit of making a mental image of words as they are read.
Bad spelling is usually a sign of not much reading, or, sometimes, reading so fast that words are skimmed over instead of really seeing each word.
Spelling must not be overlooked and lost in the rest of the curriculum, but children also shouldn't be nagged to spell. It's good to write long, difficult names on the blackboard as they come up during history or geography lessons. When the children say they've made a mental image of the word, it can be erased. The secret to good spelling is visualizing words from memory, and students must learn how to do that by visualizing words as they read their other lessons. Children do enjoy learning to spell this way."

Hopefully my child will enjoy learning to spell this way!

Wordless Wednesday

2009-04-08T08:39:00.002-04:00

Weekly Report-Week 24

2009-04-03T10:10:00.005-04:00

This week went well, I was able to finish Chemistry for the Grammar Stage (see the post below). This was also the last day of Term 2 of our school year. We finished the term with Charlotte Mason style exams for the first time. I thought I would share about that instead this week. I got the idea from this blog. We recorded her answers which was alot of fun for her and for me. I let her answer all the questions without me listening so she felt free with her responses. Here's the questions I askesd...

Bible:
1. Tell something you learned about the Holy Spirit OR Forgiveness.
2. Recite Acts 5:29 OR Hebrews 5:8 OR Colossians 3:20
3. Which test of obedience do you find the hardest to pass and why?
4. Can you sing one of the hymns we have studied?

Math:
1. How many dimes are in $1.00?
How many quarters are in $0.50?
How many nickels are in $0.20?
2. I give you five boxes. Each box has two cookies in it. How many cookies did I give you?
3. Sally bought 356 peanuts on Monday and 167 peanuts on Tuesday. How many peanuts did she buy altogether?
4. There were 700 children at a park playing. 468 of them were boys. How many of them were girls?

Poetry/Recitation:
1. Recite Mr. Nobody.

Read-Aloud:
1. Which was your favorite read aloud book from this term? (Understood Betsy, Indian and the Cupboard, The Year of Miss Agnes, Follow My Leader) Why?
2. Can you retell a part of your favorite read aloud?

Writing:
1. Write in your best handwriting…
“Good morning, Jimmy,” she greeted him. “My, we all looked spruced up.”

History:
1. Tell me what you remember about Cyrus the Great OR King Nebuchadnezzar OR Alexander.
2. Describe how they built the Great Wall.
3. Show me China, Egypt, Babylon and Greece on the map.

Science:
1. Tell me something you have learned about the human body.
2. Tell me about your favorite animal.

Music & Art Appreciation:
1. Tell what you liked about Tchaikovsky’s music. Which piece was your favorite?
2. Which artist did you like better Haeckel or Audubon? Which was your favorite piece and why?

Shakespeare:
1. Which was your favorite story from Shakespeare this term? (The Tempest or A Midsummer's Night Dream)
2. Can you retell your favorite part?

Wordless Wednesday

2009-04-01T08:44:00.002-04:00

NOW AVAILABLE!!! Chemistry for the Grammar Stage

2009-03-30T10:10:00.004-04:00

Chemistry for the Grammar Stage is a complete 36 week set of plans for chemistry. It is designed to be used with 3rd and 4th graders, but the plans include ideas to adjust the plans for use with your younger students. The plans lay out a study through the periodic table using Fizz, Bubble, Flash as your guide followed by an adventure in experimentation using Adventures in Atoms and Molecules Book 1. They inculde vocabulary, experiments, narrations(summary sheets), ongoing projects and additional readings from the Usborne Science Encyclopedia. I have also created a student workbook to go along with the plans. The workbook includes all the pages you need for the ongoing projects, definitions, summary sheets and experiment sheets that are planned. The workbook also includes over 100 pictures for you to use with those pages. I have put in the hard work so that you don't have to! You can see samples here at my yahoo group.

This program is the same quality that you have come to know and expect from Elemental Science. Even though this program took quite a bit more work to put together, I am offering it for the same price as my other programs. The teacher's guide is $6, the student workbook $7 and the combo is $13 for download only.

Our website is currently under construction due to having multiple problems with those using Firefox as a browser. So for right now the only place the program is available is on the sidebar of this blog. We hope to have the website updated and moved by the end of the week. Thanks for your patience! Feel free to email me with questions at info@elementalscience.com.

Weekly Report-Week 23

2009-03-28T03:00:00.004-04:00

We had a productive week here. I was able to finish the pictures for chemistry and I am almost finished with the remaining editing issues. It's my hopes that Chemistry for the Grammar Stage will be available for purchase later this weekend! In between all that, we did manage to get some school done. Here's the rundown...

Language Arts: We spent the week taking a break from what we are currently doing to try out a few of our options for next year. I think that we have settled on sticking with Sonlight readers. As for the rest, it looks like I'm going to put together my own materials to go with our Core 2 studies. Hopefully, I'll post more on that later.

Math: This week we wrapped up times 3 facts and had a test on her times 2 and 3 facts. She passed it with flying colors. For some reason multiplication clicks better than the rest of the operations for her. I'm not sure why that is.

Science: We studied muscles this week and tested our own muscle strength. It was a good week and princess is enjoying studying the human body.

History: We started studying ancient China and the Great Wall. Princess loved doin her own chinese calligraphy. Here's what she did...
Others: We used oil pastels to make impressionist style drawings and listened to Tchiakovsky. We also looked at another painting by John James Audubon. Here's princess's notebook page from that...

I hope you all had a good week, thanks for reading about ours.

Thoughts on Next Year (revisiting SOTW & Sonlight)...

2009-03-26T06:32:00.006-04:00

If you've followed this blog for long, you know that I'm constantly planning. It's a disease that I can't shake! The thing is my time is very short these days and I'm realizing that I will not be able to plan out every subject next year. I was very seriously considering using Story of the World 2 next year and planning out my own reading, read-aloud and language arts program along with arranging history and math. Plus I would still have to plan out the extras. The reality is that I don't have access to a library and I don't have the time to pull together all those plans (you know I wouldn't be happy with mear schedules for reading). The biggest problem is that I would want my plans to have what Sonlight's plans have.

I'm realizing that Sonlight is what I really want and need at this time. They have pre-read the books, organized them and adding questions, vocabulary and so much more. It's much easier for me to tweak Sonlight by adding maps and a few hands on activities than for me to write everything from scratch. So we will be using Core 2 next year, which is a good thing because I already have the guide!

I'm very glad that we did the Story of the World and Sonlight combo this year because it helped me to see what is important to me and what I want to have as a part of our day. I love Story of the World and the activity guide, but I love all that Sonlight has to offer. It's the good books and the whole package that keeps me going back. I'm probably going to end up writing my own language arts to go with Core 2 using the Aesop fables they have planned. And I will continue to plan out our extras, but that doesn't take too long. You didn't think I'd give up all planning, did you?

When I get everything set, I'll do a what we are doing next year post for those that are interested!

Weekly Report

2009-03-21T19:57:00.003-04:00

This was a typical week at our house as far as school goes. Except for me, there are just not enough hours in the day to get done all that I want to. I need a few 28 hour days to put the final touches on Chemistry for the Grammar Stage! Maybe next week will be better. Anyways here's a look at what princess did this week...

Language Arts: Princess read "Teach Us, Amelia Bedelia" this week and she did a great job. I also caught her reading one of our previous books to her animals at bedtime! I was really encouraged as I was beginning to wonder how I was going to transition her from oral reading to independent reading. Now I'm thinking that time will do the trick for me!

Math: We talked about our multiplication 3 facts this week. I'm realizing that all that time working on skip counting was really worth it as it is making mulitlication a breeze to teach. I also stumbled upon this scene the other day...

Daddy and daughter working on algebra problems. She actually got what he was doing and did a few problems herself, which is very scary to me. Eventually having to teach calculus is a very strong possibility!

History: We spent the week with Alexander the Great. Princess was far more interested in his horse Buchephalus, though. I really like SOTW and the Activity guide, but the projects are getting harder to do because I don't have access to the same supplies that I did in the States. None the less we are still enjoying history!

Science: We studied the skeletal system this week. Princess was very excited to find out that bones keep her from looking like a pile of jelly (her words, not mine). Here's a look at her notebook page from this week...Other: We watched part 1 and 2 of the BBC animated version of the Tempest on you tube. We really enjoyed these. Princess spent some more time working on her cross-stitch butterfly which is now two-thirds of the way done. I'm really proud of the job she is doing on it. We also did our nature study this week which you can read about in the post below.

Hope you had a wonderful week, thanks for reading about ours....

Wordless Wednesday

2009-03-18T06:08:00.002-04:00

Education of Me

2009-03-17T06:46:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I haven't done a post on this in quite awhile, but that's because I haven't done much self-education. I've been mostly on survival mode as moving overseas takes alittle out of you. So I plan to try to get back on track this week and I'm writing it here for accountability.

Over the last two months I have...

Read the Tempest. It was a great play by Shakespeare and I read it in preparation for our own Shakespeare study. We read Lamb's tales, but I wanted to become familiar with the story.
Read absolutely nothing from my history list, but I did read Five Little Peppers and how they grew, that counts, right?

What I plan to do next week...

Begin to read A Winter's Tale. This is our next Shakespeare play and I have the next three weeks to read it.
Read 60 pages in the Saying of Confucius. I still need to download this book from Google, but once I get that worked out I can begin reading.

Hopefully my goals aren't too lofty seeing that I still need time to work on learning a whole new language. I guess we will see how things go.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #45 Squirrels

2009-03-16T22:13:00.004-04:00

We began this challenge by watching the videos that Barb had linked the the callenge, which we enjoyed immensely! It was so much fun to watch the squirrels. We then read about squirrels in our animal encyclopedia and headed out for our walk.

I would love to show you a picture of the squirrel we found, but it appears that none live in our city. So we decided that we would just have to go on memory. Before we moved, we used to sit and watch a squirrel try everything it possibly could to get into our bird feeder. It never suceeded, but it was fun to watch!

Anyways, we listened to Chapter 5 of the Burgess Animal Book from Librovox while filling out a page for our journals. Princess enjoyed the story and here's a look at her journal.

Weekly Report-March 13, 2009

2009-03-13T01:24:00.003-04:00

We finished up week 20 this week, only three more weeks left in our term. Which means I need to get going on planning next terms artist/composer studies and our character study. I have an idea of what we will be doing, it's just a matter finding time to write it all out. Which is a problem, because between trying to learn a new language, dealing with computer frustrations(I can't get my Adobe to work right) and putting together the last bit of my chemistry program time is nearly non-exsistant here. Deep breath, this to shall pass!! Sorry about the slight vent, now on to the weekly run-down.

Language Arts: Princess finished up another Amelia Bedelia book this week. We completed the review lesson in Explode the Code. We also read some poetry about spring, which is slowly trying to arrive here.

Math: We wrapped up our two facts for multiplication quicker than I had planned, so we spent the rest of the week playing math games and working on mental math. We also did a few pages in the Miquon blue book on odd and even numbers.

Science: We began our look at the human body this week! I was ready for a change of pace. We talked about cells, hair and skin this week. We also did an experiment that looked at the ridges on our fingers and why they were important to us. Here's a look at her sheet from that...

History: We hung out with the Greeks this week, mainly in Athens and Sparta. Nothing much to report here except that princess is really enjoying our timeline and starting to make some good connections about the flow of history from it.

Others: We did our nature study, which you can read about below. We also started to read The Winter's Tale from Lamb's Tales of Shakespeare this week. It's a new one for me, so I'm looking forward to it. Finally, we finished our three week mural project, framed it and hung it up in the school area. I'm so proud of the job princess did (I only helped on the tree-she did the rest)! Here's how it looks...

I hope you had a great week also, now I'm off to get some more studying in!

Outdoor Hour Challenge #44-Rabbits

2009-03-13T00:57:00.004-04:00

We are back with the outdoor hour challenges and today's went well. I never really thought I would have to do nature study in an urban environment. We have always lived in the country or very near to it. Now living in the big city overseas I'm starting to understand that urban nature study requires that you take advantage of all the reasources availble! So we began our study by going over some facts from the Handbook of Nature Study. We then watched these two videos on you-tube to observe rabbits in the wild and baby rabbits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbfrBq5WCOw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cv14BYah4o&feature=channel

Finally princess drew rabbit tracks in her nature journal and colored a picture of a rabbit to go with it. We talked about what she had learned and put some of that in her journal. Here's a picture of the page we made.

Not exactly a walk in the woods looking for nature, but we did walk to lunch afterwards. Seriously, although our nature study is taking on a new form, she is still learning about nature and that's the whole point anyways.

Wordless Wednesday

2009-03-11T08:18:00.001-04:00

Weekly Report

2009-02-27T20:46:00.004-05:00

We had a so-so week. We had a great field trip, but then I got the stomach flu. Dad stepped in to teach a few days for me and he did a good job, I just felt very disconnected to her schooling this week. So with that background, here's our week in review....

Language Arts: Princess read Amelia Bedelia and completed a lesson of Explode the Code. Very little grammar or copywork were done this week. We did begin a new read-aloud, the Year of Miss Agnes, one of my favorites when I pre-read books for this year.

Math: We completed our intro to division early in the week and then just spent time working on drill and solidifying addition and subtraction. I really wasn't up for teaching something new.

Science: We started the week with an experiment. We used suction cups to open the fridge and saw that the more we used the easier it was to open. Here's a picture from that...

I then tied this into a lesson about the starfish and how he uses his "suction cup" to open a clam shell. It was alot of fun, but after that not much science got done. We will be doing some science this weekend to make up for it which is ok with princess because she loves science.

History: We are back to the Greeks again. Princess got a real kick out of righting her name in Greek and declared that she wanted to study greek right now. I'm not quite ready for that, but it's on the list for later, maybe.

Other: We worked on our mural project but didn't get to finish it, maybe next week. Here's a picture of princess hard at work on it...

Other than that, we didn't do any of our typical extras this week due to the teacher being out of commission. Hope you all had a better week, thanks for reading about ours!

Wordless Wednesday

2009-02-25T08:22:00.002-05:00