Visiting a real fort!

We had a neat opportunity to take a spur of the moment field trip with a bunch of local homeschoolers to a real fort.

We visited Fort Buena Ventura on a homeschool field trip.

The day was perfect!  The kids learned about a vertical cabin. 

We were able to go in and see two cabins, one furnished and one unfurnished.  We learned about what it took to build cabins/ houses back in 1852.

Katey even got to try out a recliner made out of reeds.

We met a real mountain man. He showed us many mountain man tools and supplies and explained to us why a mountain man would have such tools and how many of them had a dual purpose.  He taught us many ways to make a fire. 

They had an awesome candy canon. All of the kids lined up and the host filled a small real canon up with taffy.  He lit the fuse and had the kids count down. Once it went off the kids went crazy.  It was definitely Tyler’s favorite part. He told every body who would listen about it.

We rented a canoe and floated a dammed up area in the river.  This was fun and I’m glad I had Tommy with me.  He sure knew what he was doing. 

The two younger kids fell asleep for the ride home.  It was a fun day!

La La Logic ~ A Preschool Curriculum {A Review}

La La Logic is a company that strongly believes in the combination of online Brain Challenges, printable worksheets, and enrichment activities. Together these create a strong critical thinking foundation in your child that will result in an enhanced capacity for learning.

They have created a 100 week Preschool Curriculum to teach children ages 3-6 critical thinking and logic skills. The Preschool Curriculum is based on multiple popular IQ tests. (See this page and scroll about half way down to see the list)

When you purchase this curriculum you get a lifetime membership to use with multiple children (up to five). There is no time limit on how long you take to complete it with your child.

The curriculum is broken down into 3 main parts.

1. The Brain Challenge

2. The Worksheet

3. The Extension Activities

During The Brain Challenge your child spends time on either the computer, iPad, Android Tablet, or Mac doing some interactive activities.  Each activity gets more complex as they pass the previous ones off.

The Worksheet portion gets kids using their problem solving and critical thinking skills as well as fine motor skills as they will need to color, cut and paste the worksheets. The first time I printed out the teacher plan, which I will explain below, I made the mistake of printing it double sided and then my son had to cut the worksheet, which in turn, cut up the enrichment activity.  Don’t make that same silly mistake.   

The Extension activities vary from things like word games, scavenger hunts, stories, narration, solving puzzles, dramatic play, picture study, copywork, nature study and more.

These activities usually got done over 2 days the suggested days were Tuesday and Thursday.  You would spend the first day reading a provided story to your child, then on Thursday see if they could remember what happened and narrate it back to you.  You would also discuss the story some more with some given questions.

There is also an area where your child can just play the extension activities and go on and on.  This is a fun way for them to play on a device while still learning some preschool logic games.

Now back to the beginning.  When you first log into the site there are two choices for you.  One says Home- Students.  The other one says Continuous Brain Challenge Mode. For the first week of using this I could not figure out how to get to the lessons, I kept having my son use the Continuous Brain Challenge Mode.  When I finally discovered the weekly lesson plans I felt so silly.  They were right there above where I was clicking for him to play and learn on the Continuous Brain Challenge Mode.

Under each student you will have the choice of La La Logic Curriculum or Extra Practice.

If you click on La La Logic Curriculum it will take you to a section that has 20 of these cute little chalkboards.  Each chalkboard is labeled as a set, like Set 1, Set 2, etc. Each set has 5 weeks worth of lessons in it.  Once you click on the week you are in a suggested weekly schedule appears along with the weeks Brain Challenges and the downloads you will use that week. There is also a section for you (the parent/teacher) to make some notes, and mark the lesson as complete.

 

 

A day/week in our life:

How did you use the product?

Once we got going correctly we used the curriculum exactly as it suggested. The weekly schedule looked like this.

Monday- Brain Challenge

Tuesday- Enrichment Activity

Wednesday- Brain Challenge and Worksheet

Thursday- Enrichment Set

Friday- Off.

Each day took about 10 minutes total with the exception of Wednesday which took between 10 and 20 minutes.  This was the perfect amount of time for my little guys attention span. He is at the high end of the age for this with him being 5, but he really enjoyed it. 

Our thoughts and feelings:

Each lesson is completely laid out for you and I mean completely.  This was the easiest- on me – curriculum ever as far as teacher prep went.  We would log in and he would usually work on his iPad while I printed out the weeks stuff and then we would just come to it each day and do what it said.  This was so simple one week I even had my 14 year old teach him and she understood it all perfectly without having to have me explain to her what to do.  I also really appreciated the fact that you could play the logic games and not mess up where we were at in the lessons by using the Continuous Brain Challenge.  This allowed my 10 year old to play some of the games too. After she saw her little brother playing some games during school, you know she wanted to try them out too.

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

 

April Happenings in pictures

 

We had a very busy April this year.  I took a few pictures to be able to share that with you.

I really want to get better at updating my blog and I hope to be able to do this more often.

First things first. 

Remember, we just made a major move the end of March.

I registered for and began Real Estate School.  I am working on being done by the middle of May. Then our crazy life will really begin, as I go to work as a real estate agent all while homeschooling and being a mom and a wife.

I ran my first 10K race. I ran it in 1:11.  I am pretty proud of that.  The fact that I was able to keep training during the packing and moving sounds crazy, but I did it!

Our kids got season passes to an amusement park for Easter.  We took them to an Easter Egg Hunt there and to spend a day there.  We got to see a peacock all spread out. 

Tyler has spent tons of time on La La Logic on the iPad.  We love these simple logic games.  

Our tarantula molted.  This was very exciting! 

Katey and Tyler build a fun fort while I was mopping the floor and read and played with some Usborne cards.

For Christmas Katey got a science kit and one day we got it out and made some eyeballs!  The kids really loved doing this.

We took a little road trip to spring clean our family cabin.  We had to get up really early to leave.  Most people in the car slept while Emily and I stayed awake.

We did lots of cleaning and had lots of fun!

Even a food fight!

Emily had a friend  from our old town come and stay with us.   We did tons of stuff with her.

Some of the highlights were us going to a chalk festival.

Emily and Tyler made brownies.  It was pretty cute to see them work together.

The weather has been so great that we spend a lot of evenings at the parks near us. 

 

Tyler and I have been reading his book My Silly Body and Book and doing the activities in it.  This really is a great book.

Softball season started for Emily.  She plays short stop and catcher.  I am really proud of her and it is neat to see how far she has came in softball.

 

We did all of these things along with more along with our normal day to day schoolwork and household stuff.

WOW!

Artistic Pursuits {A schoolhouse review}

 

We were lucky enough to be chosen to review Elementary 4-5, Book 1: The Elements of Art and Composition from ARTistic Pursuits.

 

 

About The Company:

Artistic Pursuits is a homeschool art curriculum company who has been around since 1999.  They produce art curriculum for Preschool to High school.  Their art curriculum is written for homeschool or independent study. They are made for novice and experienced artists alike. You learn by capturing your interests as you work from direct observation and personal preferences. A range of activity books is offered, from focusing on drawing, art and composition, art history, art appreciation, color theory and composition. They also have sculpture specific books; construct, model and coming soon, carve.

About The Product:

We have been working out of the Elementary 4-5 Book One The Elements of Art and Composition. Written by Brenda Ellis, this book of 68 lessons divided up over 16 units is in it’s 3rd edition. $47.95.

This book is for ages 9 and up. The child is never told what to draw.  They pick their own item to draw while focusing on the concepts taught.

 

Students learn art by:

1. Learning to observe the world around them- to really see it.
2. Learning what to look for.
3. Learning to focus on one element of art at a time, while drawing, and block out the others.

Each unit is divided up into 5 pages or lessons.

The first page of each unit focuses on building a visual vocabulary by showing students which topic to focus on, explained in words and pictures. One of our favorite things have been reading the stories in the first lessons. Students create a work of art from their observations and ideas.

The second & third page of each unit focuses on American Art and appreciation and history by showing students how the topic is used in master works. They learn about artists and the times they lived in. Students create a work of art from their observations and ideas.

The fourth page of each unit focuses on Technique.  Students learn how to use the materials and tools of art.  They again create an original work of art using what they have learned.

The fifth page of each unit is Application. Here is where you create a final project of each unit, using what you have learned so far.

Students are encouraged to spend upwards of an hour on each class or lesson. The reading/ learning part only took us about 10 minutes.  The drawing we spent anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 minutes on.  To make this curriculum last a full school year it is recommended to do two one hour uninterrupted classes per week.

A day/week in our life:

We used this curriculum as more of a family style curriculum.  Even though it is geared for 4th and 5th graders to do on their own.  My 4th grader, 8th grader, 10th grader and I all worked on it together.  We would all gather in the afternoons with our art supplies (see the list above).  One of us would read the days lesson and then we would just work on it quietly. One time we all drew the same things, after that we all always chose our own things to draw. This made art time very relaxing for all of us. We would all show each other our pictures, with no judgment, which we discussed at the beginning of starting this curriculum.

Our thoughts and feelings:

We all really enjoyed this curriculum and while I have used the higher levels before with my older children I still found it very easy to do as a family. I like how we did NOT all do the same project/ drawing each time.  We loved how it was open to our own interpretation.  This left no comparing each others drawings and no competition as to who’s is the best.  I was thankful that the curriculum, while written for individuals was able to be used in a family setting.

ARTistic Pursuits can be found on social media here:

Facebook

 

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