Happy Halloween!

Amber made this adorable sign to take to swim team practice on their "spooky" practice day. She also made cookies to share with her coaches and teammates. Happy Halloween!

Quick and Easy Author Report Lapbook

When we make lapbooks, the lapbooks tend to be the final project for big unit studies. For example, the Middle Ages lapbook that each child made last fall had multiple, multiple attachments and even had links of chain mail attached to the top! Since I tend to think BIG PROJECT when I think of lapbooks, I truly under-utilize lapbooks as great very quick learning tools.

Recently, my middle son had to do a short report on an author. His favorite author right now is R. L. Stine of Goosebumps fame. My son struggles with organizing essays so I prepared a lapbook project folder for him. I spent about 10 minutes skimming over the materials he had printed from the internet about R. L. Stine. Then I came up with a list of questions and wrote them on mini-books. Then, I put all of the materials in one of his workboxes for the next day with a brief note explaining the assignment.

For the cover, he was to draw a picture from one of his favorite Goosebumps books. He drew a picture from "The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight."
On the inside of the folder, he glued in the mini-books as he finished them. Here are the questions that I asked:
What advice does R. L. Stine have for young writers?
How many books has R. L. Stine sold?
Where does R. L. Stine get his ideas for books?
How many books has R. L. Stine written?
Where did R. L. Stine go to college?
How many days does it take to write a Goosebumps novel?

My son enjoyed this project and the report folder was VERY quick for me to prepare. Now I just have to remember that lapbooks can be used for BIG and SMALL projects.

Week in Review - Week 9

Week 9 was certainly not a relaxed, cozy kind of week. I felt tired, rushed and unprepared at many points throughout the week. Two afternoons were cut short due to an unavoidable appointment with our insurance agent and a trip to the doctor for my middle son. Mason was sick all week-end with flu symptoms and then he was better. Then he developed an ear infection. Now he's almost better. I'm hoping nobody else gets sick.

As well, this was a week for attitudes and fights between my two older children. In the midst of sickness, dealing with bad attitudes, and sibling arguments, we actually accomplished quite a bit this week.

The main highlight this week was art class on Friday. I did not do the art project myself so that I could use the time to cut out all of our monsters and finish our "Wild Things" mural project. The children and I are so completely thrilled with the way the mural turned out. It looks fabulous! I couldn't resist putting it up in our hallway.

Our monsters are all so different and I adore the way the trees turned out. The children painted the trees and drew the leaves on separate cardstock. Then we cut out all of the leaves and taped them on. Then, today, I finished by cutting out our monsters and taping them on the mural.

Mason's monster seems to be made of different animals all pieced together with a visible backbone.
Amber's monster is so imaginative. It is very skinny and has many different appendages. My favorite aspect of her monster is the big eye hanging off to the side.

Duncan's monster seems sweet and fun-loving - just like Duncan. I really like the different shades of blue he used in his monster.


Lastly, I drew my monster while looking at one of the monsters in "Where the Wild Things Are." While I thought it turned out pretty well, my children all gave me a hard time for my lack of creativity. While I was busy cutting and pasting, the children's art project this week was to draw a happy memory and then use watercolors for painting. Not surprisingly, my daughter chose to paint about a recent swimming victory in which she set a new district record for our area.



Mason painted a picture of his brother and himself playing the "Ultimate Crazy Bones Challenge." I thought that was really sweet.


Duncan painted a picture of his last birthday party. In this picture, we are all in our living room along with some extended family members, and he is getting ready to open his presents.


This week found us delving into the Circulatory System! We watched some educational videos that we all really enjoyed:

• Bill Nye the Science Guy - Blood and Circulation
• Bill Nye The Science Guy - Skin

Not only are the Bill Nye videos quite informative, they are the only educational videos I can think of that make us all laugh out loud.

The children all continued with their independent science reading. My third grader read the following books:

• Keeping Clean by Sharon Gordon
• Touching by Rebecca Olien
• How Does Your Heart Work? by Don L. Curry
• Take Care of Your Teeth by Don L. Curry

My fifth grader read A Drop of Blood by Paul Showers and continued reading You're Tall in the Morning but Shorter at Night. My seventh grader read relevant sections from the Usborne Internet-Linked Library of Science: Human Body.

I am thoroughly enjoying the Great Science Adventures curriculum and the Body Book. One of the projects we completed this week was putting together a model of the heart from the Body Book that clearly shows the flow of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood in and out of the heart. We worked through the model step-by-step and I think the children all have a better idea of how the heart and lungs work together...at least I do!My seventh grader completed a Blood Typing test that I ordered for her. My boys were not interested in finding out what Blood Type they are when they found it involved a bit of bleeding! Amber did some background research before the test to learn more about blood types and the distribution of different blood types in the population.
Amber was really excited about doing the test but then she got nervous when we started.

I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked since she made me use the lancet on her finger to bring forth the blood. For whatever reason, we never could get her finger to bleed very much so I'm not sure we put enough blood on each circle on the Eldon card. I wanted to go grab another needle and poke her again but I didn't suggest it as she was feeling a bit squeamish. She drank apple juice (to help her regain her strength after her blood loss :) ) and followed the directions to read her blood type. We both enjoyed watching the results appear before our eyes but we thought they would have been darker and clearer if more blood was used. Nevertheless, it was a very interesting experience.
All three children are moving along well in their independent work as well. This week, I have been working on placing my boys into the appropriate level for Writing With Ease. I am just not happy with the writing workbooks that I purchased for my boys this school year. I heard Susan Wise Bauer speak about teaching writing last April at a homeschool convention and I purchased her book and I read it. Her talk and her book made a LOT of sense to me. Then, at the last minute, I decided to go with another writing program for the boys.

Anyway, since I no longer suffer from curriculum guilt, I decided to go with my original plan and use Writing With Ease. I have also decided to simplify life for myself and just use the Writing With Ease workbooks. While I would love for the weekly copywork, narration pieces, and dictation to tie-in directly with our unit studies, I just am not willing to add that work to my already overflowing school prep. My youngest is clearly in Level 1 and I am still working to determine which level in which to place my older son.

Well, that's our week-in-review. To find out what other homeschoolers were up to this past week, check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers for the Week in Review.

Apple Tree Nature Study

A few weeks ago we wanted to purchase some more Honeycrisp apples from the local apple orchard and we needed a pumpkin for our art lesson later in the week. Since I have been trying to incorporate nature study into our homeschool, I decided that while at the local apple orchard, we would take a walk through the orchard. My husband came home from work before we left so we all headed out for the apple orchard.

The children were far more interested in picking out a pumpkin and looking at the gourds than taking a nature walk but we plodded out to the orchard for a walk anyway. While walking with my children, I asked them if they noticed anything different about the apple trees from the other trees that we studied (oak and maple). One of my children (I think it was my almost teenage daughter) told me that these trees had APPLES on them. Undaunted, I pointed out that the shape of the tree was quite different from others we had studied. We talked about why the trees were so short and the advantages of short apple trees to the orchard's owners.

The children's favorite part of the walk in the apple orchard was racing up and down the large hill.My husband's favorite part was relaxing at the top of the hill after a long day at work.As always, when we venture out for nature study, there were some unexpected delights. I loved seeing this beautiful butterfly eating a rotten apple. It reminded my of being in the Butterfly Garden in Niagara Falls, Canada. Duncan found a goose feather on the ground.

The children all raced up and down the big hill again and again and again. I am thankful for their energy and youthful exuberance.

At the beginning of the path through the orchard, there were some lovely gardens. The flowers were so bright and colorful.While this nature study didn't match the "perfect" nature study in my mind's eye (children clustered around an apple tree eagerly sketching and discussing the differences between the trees that we have studied), we did get out in nature as a family, noticed our surroundings, made some observations, and enjoyed ourselves. Sadly, all of the Honeycrisp apples were already gone but we did get a lovely pumpkin that worked perfectly in our still-life art project.

Chugging Along in Weeks 7 and 8

With this week in review I will be caught up - next week I can actually write about week 9 at the end of week 9! We have been chugging along with school over the past two weeks. No fun field trips, no neat experiments, just lots of book work and reading. We finished our American Revolution unit study and have begun to work on our Human Body unit. Basically, we are just moving forward, chugging along and have really settled into the school year.

Last week-end we spent both Saturday and Sunday at a swim meet; the short-course meet schedule has begun! My husband and daughter are spending most of the day Saturday and Sunday at a swim meet this week-end but my middle child, my youngest, and I will not be attending because my middle child is sick! He was supposed to swim this week-end but his yucky sickness really hit him after swim team practice on Thursday evening. He spent all of yesterday in bed, therefore, we didn't do art this week so that he wouldn't miss the lesson. Yesterday was QUITE a quiet day with my most active child sick in bed for the day!

We are all happy to be starting a new unit study topic. The American Revolution was fascinating but, after 7 weeks of study, we are all ready to move on. I will be sure to post pictures of one of their American Revolution lapbooks as soon as we get them all together.

In our human body unit, we focused on the skeletal and muscular systems this week - bones, joints, and muscles. I am using Great Science Adventures-Understanding the Human Body and Senses, as my main spine for this unit study and I love it. I am also using The Body Book: Easy-To-Make Hands-On Models That Teach by Donald M. Silver and Patricia J. Wynne, Scholastic Professional Books. Each of the children assembled a large skeleton this week that will be added to as we work through this unit. While I adore the projects in The Body Book, I do find them difficult to assemble as there are hardly any pictures of the completed models in the book.

We watched three great videos this week - all of which I would recommend. I was able to get all three through my local library. The Human Body for Children series is geared for children K-4, and the Human Body in Action series is for older children. I thought it worked perfectly to watch the Human Body for Children video first and then the Human Body in Action video really built upon the information covered in the first video.

• Human Body for Children - All About Bones & Muscles, Schlessinger Science Library (23 minutes)


• Human Body in Action - Skeletal & Muscular Systems, Schlessinger Science Library (23 minutes)


• Human Machine Bodyzone, Eyewitness Video, Schlessinger Media (27 minutes)

I am also trying to incorporate much more non-fiction independent reading regarding our unit study topic for each of the children. This has worked very well this past week and both my oldest and my youngest have been eager to share the facts they learned in their independent reading. Amber (7th) read Understanding Your Muscles & Bones, Usborne this week and she really liked it and found it very interesting. My youngest (3rd) read Bones by Stephen Krensky and You Have Healthy Bones! by Susan DerKazarian. Lastly, my middle child (5th) read The Skeleton Inside You by Philip Balestrino and is working through You're Tall in the Morning But Shorter at Night by Melvin and Gilda Berger.

For literature I was not able to choose books for each of them that fit in as neatly as the novels they read for the American Revolution unit. So, I just picked books that I thought were good, thought-provoking, and enjoyable. Amber (7th) is reading House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer. I read it first so that we could discuss it as she reads through the book. I loved it! House of the Scorpion is filled with hard issues (cloning, illegal drugs, illegal immigrants, human dignity) which are great for discussing with a junior high or high school student. Mason (5th) is reading Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins - highly recommended! My youngest is continuing with Magic Tree House books. He is currently reading Night of the Ninja - his choice.

As mentioned previously, we didn't have art this week due to Mason being in bed sick, but last week we finished our "Wild Things" project. The "Wild Things" mural was another great project from our art curriculum, Atelier Art, and I can't wait to see how the mural looks once the completed monsters are added. I'll be sure to post pictures!
So, now I am completely caught up with my Weeks in Review! If you would like to read what other homeschoolers have been doing this past week, check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers for the Week in Review.

Deer in My Front Yard

During a quiet afternoon this week when all of the children were working on their school work, Amber crept out of her bedroom and quietly told me to look out the window. I was delighted to see a group of five deer out my kitchen window. Usually our dog sees the deer first and scares them away quickly with her crazed barking. The dog was fast asleep and my daughter's reaction to the deer didn't serve to alert Hershey (our dog) to the deer. I was even able to take some pictures of the beautiful creatures.

Week in Review with a Princess, Rope Ladder Master, and a Joust

We are currently in our eighth week of school but this post is about our sixth week of school, the week before last week. In Week Six, we continued on with our American Revolution unit study and focused primarily on important battles in the American Revolution. The children all continued with their independent work. Friday's art class consisted of the first part of a two part lesson. For the first part, we all drew monsters inspired by the book, "Where the Wild Things Are." We also drew a page full of leaves for our "Wild Things" mural.

The highlight of the week was a trip to the Renaissance Festival on Thursday. We visited the Renaissance Festival last year on education day and had an absolutely wonderful time. At that point, we were right in the middle of a huge unit study about the Middle Ages so it fit in perfectly with what we were doing. This year, we visited just for fun. My daughter, in particular, desperately wanted to go to the festival again.

The children couldn't resist trying out their skills on the rope ladder. Neither of them could best the rope ladder. They were both flipped off before they could reach the top. The whole time the two older ones were trying, Duncan kept asking to try it, too. I didn't think he could do it so I discouraged him but he kept asking so...
we paid the $2.00 fee and let him try. Duncan made it all the way to the top! The "peasant" working at the rope ladder said that he was the only one to make it to the top all day.Amber climbed all the way to the top of the tower and rang the bell. We were quite impressed with her climbing skills. Those uber-powerful arms of hers are good for climbing as well as swimming! We laughed and were amazed by the antics of "Daniel, Duke of Danger." We so enjoyed his show last year, we had to see him perform again.The children did a bit of shopping. Amber purchased a lovely princess hat with matching bracelets. Mason purchased an unique die from an elf. We ended our day with a rousing good time at the joust!

A fun day was had by all at the Renaissance Festival!

If you would like to see what other homeschoolers are doing, check out the Week in Review at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

Signs of Life and Creativity

I have busy children. They enjoy making things, doing things, and being creative. Therefore, my home is filled with "creativity in progress," otherwise known as messes.

I remember going over to an aquaintance's house for a meeting several years ago. While I KNEW she had children (I had seen them and met them), I saw absolutely no visible signs that she actually had children living in her home. Being the incredibly tactful person that I am, I blurted out, "Don't your children have any toys or art projects?" She quickly reassured me that all of their art projects and toys were kept in the basement, out of sight, so they could entertain in an adult fashion. Hmmm. Yes, in the basement, out of sight. Hmmm. I have often thought about that moment when I look around my own home and see signs of life and creativity everywhere. Sometimes I feel bad that my house is so clearly a house filled with messy children but, overall, I prefer my vibrant home to a picture-perfect home. My children LIVE here and I'm glad that they do.

I am convinced that one of the most important aspects of encouraging creativity in children is allowing the messes that go along with creativity. I enjoy neatness, organization, and having things in their place. On the other hand, I am more than willing to allow the messes that go along with genuine creativity and artistic expression.

To have smiling boys who just completed another magnificent fort, one first has to be willing to step over...

this in the hall - the remnants of the Lincoln Logs basket that weren't used.To delight in the finished container of jumping frogs and other origami creations, one first has to endure...

a table filled with origami patterns, papers, and half-folded projects.

To enjoy this really cool creation that my son made by stacking cards, one first has to be willing to put up with...card stacking projects in progress and piles of cards piled around the house.

To enjoy cool cup stacking projects...one has to put up with the in-between stage of cups scattered all over the floor.

And, of course, there HAS to be a puzzle table with a work-in-progress at all times.

My middle son is passionate about clay sculpting. He creates with clay every single day. He has a table set up in front of "his" couch with containers of clay by his side. I know he wouldn't spend nearly as much time devoted to his hobby if he had to work away from the flow of our family life. So, I leave the clay table out for him with a huge towel underneath it to catch the tiny pieces of clay that inevitably fall down. But, the rewards of a perpetually messy corner in our living room are many...

like a tiny island, bookworm guy, Hamburger Helper guy, mashed potato guy, and a little mushroom guy that were baked just yesterday.Lastly, my home is filled with knitting projects-in-progress. My daughter often sneaks in some knitting time during the school day during our read-alouds or during an educational video. The piles of yarn do turn into delightful creations, though. For example, a pile of yarn can be transformed into a...

lovely hat!

Perhaps one day I will have a home that is neat as a pin and filled only with adult decorations - a home that could be featured on the cover of a magazine. Hmmm. I certainly hope not, though. When my children leave one day to start their own lives, I hope and pray that my house will one day, once again, be filled with the creative messes of my grandchildren.