School Fun

Aren't my students cute!? This is how we homeschool with a baby. By the seat of our pants, with many hands on the baby and lots of patience.

This day we had begun reading a book about a little boy who took his first flying lesson when he was 10. Then i remembered that i had seen this cool paper airplane while i was stumbling around the internet.


The Soda Straw Plane, on this awesome blog called All for the Boys.

this is all you need....a soda straw, some tape, scissors and a 4x6 or 3x5 card.

Cut the card into three strips.

Tape two together into a circle to make one end of the plane and then tape the last piece into another circle to make the opposite end. Tape them onto the straw, putting the straw on the inside of the circle, as straight as you can.

Then fly that plane. It is amazing, and flies worlds better than your traditional paper plane.

The kids had so much fun. And that is how i want every hoemschool day to turn out, in a perfect world. :o)

Leslie

Life is Full

Life is full of the end of the school year activities!!!

the kids have finished up their first year of gymnastics. They both did so well. I was really impressed with all that they learned.

They are both so proud of the medals and certificates they earned.

Life is full of lots of baby loving!

Our wee baby Delilah is full of giggles and laughs lately. She often just chuckles under her breath at us when we walk in our out of a room. I can hardly believe that she is already almost 6 months old.

She had a lovely time out on the playground the other night with Daddy and the big kids.

I know i go on and on all the time about how cute she is but check out these knees!!! Aren't they awesome!?!

Life is full of quilt and craft plans!!! Always more than i have time for.

Seems like there are an around us awful lot of babies being born, and i really would love to give each one of them a little quilt to say welcome to the world. So it is time to start a new project.

Life is full of homeschool!!

School is almost finished for the year. We had our last group homeschool activity. I have to say that i am just as ready as the kids are to have a little summer vacation. Because of this there has been a lot more playing going on than school. We will finish, but in the meantime Avery has been doing a lot of monkeying around to blow off steam!

What has your life been full of lately?

Leslie

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school, and thank goodness we survived!!!

The kids had a easy transition into school, translate that as little work and lots of fun and introductions.

I decided that this year was the year that we were going to go with a whole "box" curriculum. With the baby coming i am hoping that it will take some of the questions that we experienced last year out of the equation. I chose My Father's World, and so long as we can get into a groove we should do ok when the baby arrives.

Now what is a first day of school without a few celebration treats. This morning we had special breakfast and tonight for dessert i made Wacky Cake. Be sure to check out the recipe. It was so tasty, and moist and yummy! Avery insisted that we have candles.

I sure wish i could share some with all of you...but since i can't i am going to go share some with my hubby!

What we were up to Today

Our homeschool has not come up lately on the blog...but we are still here plugging along. We have been using random things to fill our history quota for the year. i never found something that i was totally in love with but, anyway, i digress...

today we revisited last years curriculum, Story of the World, and picked up at a random lesson and went for it! it was about the fall of Rome and the Celtic rebellion in Britain against said Romans. The lesson came complete with project/craft ideas and food suggestions.

The book suggested drawing our own Celtic knots. I originally was going to try to make some kind of banner with Celtic knot designs because i automatically went into 'how can i put this on fabric mode?'. But then it occurred to me, as i was running out of time before dinner, that i could make this easier on myself. Fabric markers plus inexpensive IKEA napkins equals new Celtic knot napkins/place mats for our feast!

We made a quick run to the grocery store to get some Celtic feast food....bread, chicken, berries and wine. Don't worry it is just sparkling grape juice. One rule, those barbaric Celts did not eat with utensils, so neither would we. Avery and Mitchell were beyond thrilled...i was purposely going to let them eat with their hands!!! it is the simple things.

These are the homeschool lessons that i enjoy the most but that don't come around nearly enough.

School Crafts

Crafts are probably the biggest highlight of school. i am bigtime guilty of not doing them enough, but i confess i just don't like the mess.

We had tried a new/different history curriculum at the start of the year but it just never caught on with us. It was boring and we all knew it. So as January came around I was beginning to re-evaluate what we were doing and what we were going to use. So i pulled out old faithful, Story of the World. I want to order the next book, but while we are waiting on that i went ahead and picked a lesson that we did not complete last year.

The chapter was on the rise of Christianity...and the craft project was to make mosaic crosses. What i enjoy about this book(Story of the World) is that it gives you a variety of crafts and projects to choose from that you can select based on what you have and the age of your children. Since i did not have grout and caulk and tiles lying around to make real mosaics, i went ahead and used the cardboard and pretty paper version.

I pulled out some scrabook paper scraps and the glue, scissors and cardboard and we got to creating. They had fun and did such a great job. I loved how Avery cut her pieces up into little triangles and fit them all together.

Oh homeschool, it is ever changing. that is part of the beauty and aggravation.

Back to School, the Outtakes

this is their favorite first day of school picture!! Bums up!!

I asked to take his picture and then he rolled over and gave me the bum. Then as you can see, he thought it was a riot!

they were having so much fun. i love pictures of them off the ground, having fun!

Ringing in the new School Year

Today was our official first day of school and i am thrilled to report that we all made it through, and we got all of our planned work done too!!!
We made sure to dress nice and brush our hair for a little first day photo shoot. I wanted to be sure that i started to make a point of documenting their school years in pictures. I am not sure that i have been so good about that with Avery's last two years...and since i am not sure that probably means i did not take a picture to save the moment for all of time.

silly brother and sister!!

Since Mitchie turned 5 this weekend, today was his first day of Kindergarten. I think we did good. I had encountered all the glitches with him that i thought i would....his need for first time perfection, inability to sit still and failure to willingly take instruction. Not a great combo huh? But we are going to work with it, because we have to. I got some pointers on teaching little boys form some other homeschool moms tonight that i think i am going to have to put into place...like a mini trampoline, maybe!

Avery began 2nd grade. I think she was hesitant at first but she did awesome. She got all her work done with me and independently. She had a lot of fun, i think. I was so pleased with her handwriting in particular!!!

For school recess we needed to get a little energy out so i sent the kids to the playground where i had them run laps, spelling things for me every time they passed by...one letter at a time.

I hope there are great things to come for our school year. Once we get through the hard first few weeks and get in our groove, i think we will be good.