London's Burning!!!

My kids have been away since Wednesday and while I've gotten so much accomplished over the past few days, I am looking forward to their return home this afternoon. I miss them terribly and I would be lying if I said I wasn't totally geeked out about teaching them this week.

Before I do go all crazy telling you about what we'll study this week, here are some pictures of our "London" that we burned in the driveway. It's a little lame looking.....I wasn't feeling well at all that day and didn't feel like putting tons of effort into the project but we did it and here it is.

I have no idea what they were doing in the first picture...trying to look scary and fire-y maybe?

The Time Traveling Hamster

Ok. Where do I begin?

Today was an emotional day for me. We have a lot going on in our family.  I haven't slept more than 3 hours a night for at least a week. My oldest daughter began her senior year of high school today. Then, as I was sipping my morning coffee, I noticed Maddie's little hamster's leg was caught in the corner of the cage. After about 5 minutes, I was able to get her free, but her poor little leg is flat now. It's definitely broken. I read that hamsters in pain will starve themselves to death, so I was a bit of a wreck trying to figure out how to tell my daughter.

All of the emotions I've been feeling lately just welled up and I had to cry. Over a hamster. Really. But only for a minute and really only because I knew my daughters heart would be so sad if she lost her little hamster.

Thankfully, the lcritter seems to be eating and drinking well, and we moved her to a new glass home. Hopefully now she won't be able to hurt herself again.

After the emotional day we had, I guess we were all a little loopy and I let the kids stay up until 10 o'clock so that we could make background scenery for the hamster. Today she traveled back to 1666 to the Great Fire of London. The kids had the best time making the flames and coloring the picture for the background, and I know this is something they won't forget. In four years when we are studying this time period again and we cover this topic, they will remember the Time Traveling Hamster and the Great Fire. This is what I love about homeschooling. We can decide on the fly, at 9:30 at night to do an off the wall history project.

Week 4

Yes I just blogged about last week, but now I'm planning the coming school week so here I am at the computer looking for more resources on the great fire of London, the plague and King Charles. This is my plan for the week:

Books

Story of The World Volume 3, chapter 12

A Child's History of the World, story #67 The King Who Lost His Head

William's House by Ginger Howard

*The kids will read other books too. This is just a short list of our history books for this week.

Websites-

http://www.fireoflondon.org.uk/

SOTW3 Activities-

Build, then burn London

Bake Bread

Jamestown Wrap Up!

We just wrapped up the third week of the 2011-2012 school year and really enjoyed our study of Jamestown. In my previous post, I listed the activities that I had planned, but as always we didn't do everything and we also found a few more things to keep us busy.

To my surprise, the kids really enjoyed playing archaeologists at the Historic Jamestowne site. They were able to excavate a piece of land, then examine and study several artifacts. Some of the activities were a bit advanced for my 1st and 3rd graders, so I'm keeping this one on file for the next time we study Jamestown.















We built a miniature Jamestown using the a free sample of Homeschool In the Woods' American Revolution unit study. This was amazing and I do think that I'll go back to purchase the entire kit when we get back to the Revolution in a few weeks. Look at this. Doesn't that look fun?


Madelyn really enjoyed reading about Jamestown from the perspective of a fictional 9 year old girl in a book from the My America series called Our Strange New Land: Elizabeth's Jamestown Colony.

The kids enjoyed learning about Pocahontas much more than I had expected, so they read a few books about her including Pocahontas: Princess of the River Tribes and The Story of Pocahontas. They even watched an animated dvd about her, but not the Disney version. Netflix had this one so I hoped it would be a bit more accurate. To be honest, I didn't watch it so I have no idea. Actually, I'm not a historian so I probably would have no idea about the movies historical accuracy anyway!

I also found a great book series by Mara L. Pratt called American History Stories. We only have volume 1 at the moment, but I think I'll look for the other three volumes.  The book seems to be perfect for 3rd graders and Maddie enjoyed reading her assigned chapter very much.

Story of the World was not a big hit this week, but the kids really enjoyed reading the 66th story in A Child's History Of The World by  V.M. Hillyer. They thought it was hysterical that King James knighted a cut of meat and began calling it Sir Loin. Personally I prefer a filet mignon. Maybe King James never had the pleasure of having one.

It was a good week, and once again I am so thankful I can travel this journey with them. I know that every day is a gift and the memories we are making when we built little Jamestown replicas, make a batch of colonial "pottage" stew, and read together, will be treasured for a lifetime. 

Next week we'll learn about King Charles, the plague, and the great fire of London.

The New School Year

I have been having so much fun planning our lessons for the upcoming school year. We've already finished two weeks, but decided to postpone the third week to accommodate a heavily planned week. I decided that since it is still July, and we got started a bit early, it would be better to take a week off than attempt to cram it all in.

Over the next two weeks, we will be studying Jamestown and the Great Fire of London. We use Story Of The World as our history spine but I like to plan supplemental activities to go with our history topic. My kids are still young, so I doubt we'll do everything on my list but here is what I have lined up-

Week 3 - Jamestown

Reading-

• Story Of The World Volume 3, Chapter 3
• A Child's History of The World, Story #66- King James The Servant
• Pocahontas: Princess of the River Tribes by Elaine Raphael
  The Story of Pocahontas by Caryn Jenner
  American History Stories Volume 1, pages 55-63
• Meet The Pilgrim Fathers, by Elizabeth Payne, Chapters 1 and 2
• A Visual Dictionary of Native Communities, by Bobbie Kalman, page 5
• William's House, by Ginger Howard, take the quiz on Book Adventures
• Our Strange New Land: Elizabeth's Jamestown Adventures by Patricia Hermes

Activities from The Story Of The World, Volume 3 Activity Book

• Map
• Coloring page
• Celebrate Guy Fawkes' Day
• Cooking Colonial Pottage

Additional Activities

• We'll watch the movies on The Jamestown Chronicle website. This is a fantastic resource if you can't make a trip to Jamestown.
• Art Lesson Plans on the Historic Jamestown website 
• Build a paper replica of Jamestown. This is part of the American Revolution sampler at Homeschool In The Woods.  

My Homeschooling FAQ

I've been confronted with quite a few homeschooling myths recently. Here are the answers to some of our most frequently asked questions.


Homeschoolers have lots of free time.
We are busy. Just because we are home all day does not mean we are available all day. We do school, then we do chores, then we practice piano and go to lessons and run errands. 80% of the time the day is over before we've had a chance to do it all. I love you and I want to see you, but there are certain days of the week I'm just not available. I'm sorry.

**yes, I know there are some homeschoolers who manage to learn everything they need to know by simply living life and "unschooling." I'm not that smart. I use books and the books take time.

Homeschoolers are weird and unsocialized
This is probably the most common homeschooling myth. We go to scouts, church, group piano classes, sewing classes, science classes, story time at the library, swim lessons and more.

What? Maddie doesn't like Bratz and Hanna Montana?
Okay. This isn't a homeschooling myth, but I hear it so often. Hmm. maybe this does make us a little weird. But it's a good weird, so I'm happy with it. We do watch television but very rarely watch the Disney Channel. Most of our tv watching is Netflix on demand family movies or documentaries.

Well since you are home all day, you have time to (fill in the blank). Of all homeschooling myths, this one is probably the one I hate the most. Just because I'm home all day does NOT mean I'm cleaning my house and cooking fabulous meals,. I'm overseeing my kids' education and preparing them for their future. This takes time. And I'm cleaning up the cereal the 3 year old spilled and trying to find time to write enough articles to pay for our extra curricular activities and school books.

Where do you get those books that you use? Are you sure they are good?
Okay not a homeschooling myth, but this is what my father asked me one day a few years ago.
I'm not flying by the seat of my pants. We use real curriculum and I teach all subjects and we have lesson plans. I teach Reading, Writing, Grammar, Spelling, Math, Science, History, and Art. I have hand picked the best curriculum for our family in each of these areas. We work from the beginning to end of each book, then start the next grade. The curriculum I use is real and published by people who know what they are doing. Even some fancy private schools use the same curriculum I use. I didn't just buy some hillbilly homeschool manual from ebay and throw it on the school table.

I know there are many more homeschooling myths to cover, but right now these are the ones driving me the most crazy. I will probably come back and post more later.

Benjamin is 3!!!

My little man turned three years old last week and I've been so busy getting ready for The Hope Project that I didn't have time to blog about it. He started out the day by eating breakfast at the table Maddie and I decorated for him. Then, he opened his presents- a plasma car, a Thomas the train board game, a motorcycle that does wheelies, and a large batch of new hotwheels cars.

After breakfast we decided to take the plasma cars to the park and the kids had a blast! We actually ended up with two of them because they were on sale and we wanted the other kids to have one to share. I have a feeling we'll end up buying another one very soon because they are just too much fun.




We had a picnic at the park, then visited Yogurt Mountain for the first time ever! YUMMY!

We attempted to visit the zoo (too crowded) and the Southern Museum of Flight (closed), but we ended up at one of our favorite places- the McWane Center.

Ben's dinner choice was hot dogs! I lucked out on his cake! My plan was to make him a plain sheet cake and decorate it, but I happend to find a Harley cake at Walmart and knew he'd love it more than anything I could create.

Why I Will Not Take My Kids to the Shoe Store

Picture this. I'm sitting on the floor of a shoe store, helping my son try on shoes. He doesn't like the nice Merrells I picked out for him, despite the fact that they will last forever and aren't an eyesore like the Iron Man, blinking, glow in the dark, shoes that just happen to be out of stock in his size. He's arguing with me, telling me he doesn't care if they are too big. He wants them anyway.

Meanwhile, my toddler decides that the shoes do NOT belong on the shelves. The look much better on the floor, so now would be a good time to walk down the aisle, knocking them all on the floor. When I realize what he's doing, get up off the floor, leaving my 5 year old sitting on the bench, wearing one shoe.

Toddler takes off running. I chase him. 5 year old, wearing one Merell, carrying his old shoes, begins chasing me, yelling "wait mom, don't leave me here!" 7 year old daughter, who has been well behaved until now, freaks out thinking I won't catch my 2 year old, who is giggling like mad as he runs through the shoe store. People stare. We are all making noise. I am embarrassed.

"Ben, get back here!"

"You can't catch me!"

"Mom, wait I'm only wearing one shoe. I can't keep up!"

"Get him, Mom! Get him! Are you gonna get him?"

By the time the ordeal is over, I've convinced myself that there is nothing I need so badly that I will put myself through that again. My kids will go barefoot before I take them all into another shoe store. Thankfully we live in modern times and I will order on the internet.

Yesterday we discovered that my 5 year old needs new shoes right now, and I almost took the kids to the shoe store this afternoon, but then I remembered. Instead I traced his foot onto a piece of paper and sent him off to play. After I pour myself a cup of coffee, I will figure out how to determine his size and then order him a nice new pair of shoes. When they arrive, he will be so thrilled that a package came just for him that it won't matter that they aren't ill fitting, ugly, or flashy. I'll probably spend less too.