Happy St Patrick’s Day. Resources.

photo credit
 

Here is some resources:
Why guides
Quick facts on St. Patrick’s Day
A neat downloadable Mommy School Packet of ideas. G is for Green
A fun St Patrick’s Day Tot Kit.
A fun Preschool St. Patrick’s Day Kit.
I always get great ideas from Gourmet Mom on the Go.
Get 60, yes 60 free printables.
Fun Family Games

Family Fun always has great ideas too.    

I hope you all have a great St. Patrick’s day. 

Woodcarver DVD ~GIVEAWAY~

We had a family movie night Friday night.  We watched The Woodcarver.  It was a wonderful family movie that left us all feeling good.


I love movies that share a good message.  Movies that keep all ages interested.  Movies that are family friendly.  Movies that leave you feeling good. 

The Woodcarver is a family friendly feel good movie.  It definitely fit the bill of being all the things we enjoy in movies.

About the Movie:
Matthew Stevenson is a troubled kid from a broken home. When he vandalizes the local church to get back at his parents, Matthew has to repair the damage to the church to avoid criminal charges. While working at the church, he meets Ernest (John Ratzenberger), an accomplished wood carver who created the intricate woodwork decoration that Matthew destroyed. Ernest has become something of a hermit, but reluctantly comes out of reclusion to help repair the church. Now Ernest and Matthew must work together to preserve the church's beautiful antiquity, and along the way, they also manage to restore their faith in God and in life. 

Homeschool Mothers Journal & Week In Review

 



In my life this week… We have enjoyed quite a few activities.

Sunday~ We went to Church. Tommy was set apart as the Deacons Quorum Secretary. Emily had New Beginnings (in our church for girls turning 12).

Monday~ Tommy had Karate

Tuesday~ Katey had swimming lessons. Emily went to the movies (The Lorax) with her friend.

Wednesday~ Tommy had Karate. Katey had a play date.   Emily had a babysitting job and I had a church party.

Thursday~ Emily had her Be The Best You class. Katey had her swimming lessons. We went swimming as a family right after that.  It was also my Father in Law’s birthday.  We made pictures and did a photo shoot.  I send these pictures ' target=_blank>right to his frame via email. 

 

Friday~ We were going to a municipal hearing, it is something that Tommy needs to do for a merit badge.  It began at 11am.  We got to city hall just in time only to be told that is not where it was.  So then we head off to the courthouse, which is where city hall told me to go.  We get to the courthouse at 11:05. (Small town) I am thinking I hope they let us in late.  The courthouse says it is not there it is over at the County Commissioners building.  We drive over there.  Find the office and we are told it is not there.  It is now 11:15.  So we gave up on that.  We are going to attend a County Commissioners meeting on Monday morning.    Katey and Emily went to 4H. (It was a craft, so Tommy didn’t want to go.) Katey went on another play date. Paul, Emily and I cleaned out our car. We had a family movie night on Friday.

Saturday~ Tommy had a scout Pow Wow in the morning. I had to pick up my Bountiful Basket and Tommy and Emily went swimming again. Paul and I cleaned out the garage.

Whew, It was a lot and I felt like I was driving everywhere.

In our homeschool this week… With all the social and other activities we had going on. We didn’t fit in our usual full school schedule. We did do our read aloud (The Cay) and math everyday.

 

Emily did finish up her Magnet and Electricity science unit.  Look for a post on that this week. 

Katey learned the difference between reptiles and amphibians, including their eggs.

Katey has been reading a Little Bear book to me each day also. 

We also played some file folder games.

 

Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share… Slow school weeks like this are okay. It felt really good to have the change of pace and I know that we are ready to go back full steam ahead next week.

I am inspired by… Other bloggers.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing… See above.

My favorite thing this week was… Having French Toast and Bacon for dinner on Saturday night. I know that sounds like I am so easy to please. Actually I am. It was just a quick easy cheap meal. On top of that, I had been craving all week.

What’s working/not working for us… Really I think that my 7th graders math isn’t working. I think it is above his level and that he tries to rush through it. I am looking into Life of Fred Pre Algebra, so I can start him back a level and fill in any gaps. We used Life of Fred before and it worked well with him.

Questions/thoughts I have… I am starting to show some “teenage attitude” signs with my older two. YIKES!!!

Things I’m working on… I am still working on putting myself out there more.

I’m grateful for… Bountiful Baskets. My children ask for less sugary snacks and go to the fruit they offer. I love it.

I’m praying for… My Grandmother in Law.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It's not.
~Dr. Suess, The Lorax

Winter- Sledding fun

 

 

We live in small town, Utah.  We are surrounded by mountains and lakes and outdoors.  We love it here.  While we are know for “The Greatest Snow On Earth”, this year we have really lacked.  At least where I live.  We took a 10 minute drive up to the mountains and went sledding.  We had so much fun. 

I also made a scrapbook page using My Memories Scrapbook Software.  Now, I am not that great of a scrap booker, but I am loving it. 

I truly love their software it is so user friendly.  They are always offering Freebies on the Facebook page as well as in their store you can just look at their free kits. 

You can save $10 on the software purchase and get $10 to spend in their store when you use my discount code over in the side bar.    Their software is so much more than scrapbooking software you can add in movies.  You can even make an interactive scrapbook.  That means when you click on say a picture of cookies you made with Grandma’s famous recipe, it can take you to a copy of that recipe.  How cool is that. 

I make custom size pages to fit into a digital picture frame for my In-Laws. 

 

The Art of Argument

Classical Academic Press sent me The Art of Argument for review.  I chose to use this with my 13 year old.

Let me just say that I wasn’t real sure about teaching my child how to argue.  This book is really about logic and teaching your child to be better able to reason with clarity, relevance and purpose at a time when he has a penchant for the "why" and "how".  This will teach your child how to form an argument for or against something.  The Art of Argument is the first in a series.  It teaches children how to sharpen critical thinking skills while evaluating the arguments of others.

This will teach your children formal logic as well as informal logic.
Formal logic is the study of the types reasoning processes that depend primarily on the form or structure of the argument to determine its validity. Formal logic is like math in this regard; if you add two to two, you should always get the answer 4. Similarly, if you posit that, “All men are mortal,” and that, “Socrates is a man,” the conclusion, that “Socrates is a mortal,” should be something of a no-brainer. Formal logic is thus like math in that it is primarily about understanding these sorts of black-and-white, no shades of grey, binary system, types of reasoning. Also like math, formal logic generally tends to deal with deductive reasoning.
Informal logic is the study of everyday types of reasoning. It’s the logic of the give-and-take, shades of grey that is the real-world marketplace of ideas. It also, by extension, tends to give more focus to inductive reasoning, the scientific method and to the boundary areas where logic tends to segue into rhetoric.                                                                                            ~taken from FAQ’s


The student workbook ($21.95) aims at the practical application of the informal fallacies through an analysis of current social, commercial and political issues, which are discussed and evaluated. This practical application should insure that students continue to evaluate arguments, detect fallacies and reason well long after the course is completed.  I happen to know a few people that don’t reason very well.  I see how it affects many parts of their lives.  I want my children to be able to reason well. This workbook engages students by using a variety of written and oral activities, including a skit. Check out a sample of the workbook.

The teacher guide ($24.95) includes

• Keys for all the exercises in the student book
• An extensive set of quiz and test masters
• Keys for those quiz and test masters

See this sample of the teacher guide. 

They also offer a DVD set as a teaching help for $54.95.
See this sample video

You can also bundle and buy the entire set for $88.95.

 

There are 2 more levels available.

I enjoy how this curriculum is not overwhelming and it really is fun.  You can interact and it opens up the door to many conversations with teens. (Which often don’t like communicating.)  This is set to be able to use a lot quicker than we are.  We are stretching it out over a year.  It is working out wonderfully.

I have reviewed for Classical Academic Press before, their customer service has always been superb along with their high quality products.
Latin For Children

To see what others though of this check out this post. To see a wide variety of reviews check out our crew blog.



As a member of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew I review products like this, which I receive for free in order to be able to share my honest opinion.

Blogging Through The Alphabet~ Letter C

 

 

 

 

I don’t know what it is about the letter C, I just couldn’t narrow it down to one thing.  So here is my list of C.

Cookie My very favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.  What makes it so good is that you add pudding mix to it.  We have even done flavored pudding mix such as butterscotch or chocolate.

Coloring Ahhh, coloring.  I love it, it is not something that I make time to do, but when my kids are coloring and I join them it is so relaxing.  I use special giant coloring books for my youngest two to color in while we are doing read aloud time, or more recently we have been doing audio books after lunch and that is when they color, with the audio books I can color with them. 

Creating I am a creator.  I love to create things.  I have always been into crafting and such.  Currently I have been enjoying some time creating digital scrapbook pages (My Memories, they always have TONS of freebies, plus save on the software using the discount code in my sidebar.) that I send to my in laws via a ' target=_blank>digital picture frame that has an email address. BEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT EVER!!

Cooking Cooking for me comes in phases and it goes just as fast as it came.  hahaha.  I have tried everything from “the dinnertime scramble” to eating out often, to processed frozen foods to freezer cooking. Currently I do cook mostly from scratch and use a ton of produce thanks to Emeals and Bountiful Baskets.

Camping Our family loves camping, we love to be outdoors.  We do own a 5th wheel, so don’t think I’m roughing it by any means, it’s camping to me though.  (for the record, I have tented it many times) Some of our favorite things about camping are the campfires and games we play. 

Church I am not super active in my church currently.  I actually had some feelings that I needed a break from Church and to be able to form my own relationship with God.  I went back this past Sunday and even wrote a blog post about it. 

Join us all as we blog through the alphabet.  I love seeing all the different things people come up with.

 

 

Our K12 Journey

Well, here we are just over half way through the year.  We have been using the K12 curriculum this year as well as I have been reviewing items that we add in when we can. 

We have been moving right along. 
Here are my experiences so far.
It was a new style of schooling for all of us to get into.  The teacher prep time and the student work time took some getting used to.  Then getting into our routine was a whole other thing. It took us 3 months to get used to a routine. 

The support structure-  I have really enjoyed having the resources to go for help they have open classroom times you can go ask a question at.  They also have “class connect” sessions, these are live online sessions for certain subjects.  These are good, because they give me a break from having to teach every subject.  They are at scheduled times each week and those are often hard for us to comply to.  If you miss a class, you would need to make up that days work, so you remained “caught up”.  The next class will be  They are recorded also so you can make up at your own pace, however there is some amount of pressure to remain on the same lesson each day as the “class connects.” 

The outings and clubs- There are some outings, our area has an outing once a month.  We have done things like bowling, the water park, the food bank- donation and tour, a spelling bee, pumpkin patch, and the gingerbread house contest.  They have all been really fun and we have met many other families through these. Our state has also had some outings, such as the Nutcracker, the Capital, and a few other events at the aquarium and zoo etc.  We haven’t been able to attend any of those.  We live to far away.  There are also many online clubs. i.e., survival clubs, photography clubs, and many more.  These clubs are a webinar type fashion where you get to share your work and discuss things.  There are participants from all over the world in these clubs.  We haven’t participated in any of the online clubs yet.  The desire is there, the time  and commitment is not. 

The progress- There are progress goal to meet.  Each week you have to make 3% progress in your courses.  Sometimes this has been hard for us.  We took more time off over the holidays then the school allotted.  We also started later than their start date.  It felt like we were just playing catch up all year.  We also missed many of the beginning class connects due to our schooling schedule.  I have felt self pressure to meet the progress requirements and then I realized it was taking all the fun out of learning and my children were just trying to meet progress and not really learn.  I am sure they were feeling some pressure from me.  I have decided that I will not put so much pressure on myself in turn not putting so much pressure my children to meet progress.  It is much more important that they fully understand rather than they can just pass lessons assessments to make progress.

The curriculum- I have enjoyed some of the curriculum.  It is all taught from a public school (secular) standpoint.  I am going to divide each curriculum by grade level that I have experience with.  These will be done in a separate blog post.   Once the blog post for each grade is done, these will become clickable.
First Grade Curriculum
Fifth Grade Curriculum
Seventh Grade Curriculum

The parent involvement time- It widely differs with each of the grades in my experience.  For 7th grade, I am mostly needed to enter passwords so he can take assessments and answer any questions he has.  Also help him to understand things he is struggling in.  For 5th grade, I am needed to teach a few subjects and I also administer some assessments, i.e. Spelling tests, some history and art discussions.  Some things I do the lessons with her, such as science and the experiments to go along with them.  The 1st grade understandably requires more parental involvement time.  She needs my assistance in every subject.  She also has some worksheet type activities she can do on her own once I get her started.  She needs to read aloud every day and sometimes I let her read to someone other than me, if all their work is done and I am busy.

The school time- We spend about 5 hours on the curriculum a day.  I just shuffle myself between kids.  We do take a few breaks for rest, picking up, and lunch. 

Our favorite subjects through K12 in their words.
7th- Utah Studies- I like learning about where I live.
5th- Art- because it is easy to read and there are fun projects.
1st- Science- because there are lots of projects

Our least favorite subjects through K12

7th- Vocabulary- It is just too hard.  (they use vocabulary from Latin roots and he just struggles through this.)
5th- History- it is boring.  (They use a text book to teach.  We were using Story of The World before and it had projects to go with it. We also all learned together.)
1st- Math- I just don’t like it. 

As of now I have decided that we will finish out this year with K12 and next year we will go back to our eclectic selves.   
Stay tuned for more posts about our K12 experience.