So..... about today :/

After such a self righteous post like the one for Monday, it was to be expected that today did not go off without a hitch. We'll just leave it at that, shall we? In the meantime I made this:

Let us hope it makes life easier....

Tinker Toys are simply awesome!

We're learning about simple machines in science. We watched lots of fun videos showing simple machines like door knobs. I found a neat one on gears, and boy does it ever explain gears really well. If I was the curriculum writer I might want to use this video at some point. I will include it here if you are interested.

So that's a well and good, but really what better way to understand simple machines than to do it yourself? And Tinker Toys are simply perfect for this, so shout out to my brother Chris for this awesome Christmas present for the girls. It has helped me illustrate a multitude of physics lessons.

This was the wheel and axle.

Here she is with a pulley. It worked fine for a light object, but it just didn't illustrate the point I really wanted to make. So we tried it again:

This time with a heavier book. I made it the most bare minimum of parts. That didn't work out so well.

So I restructured the pulley.

On to history. We were supposed to mummify a whole chicken or an orange, (ten guesses why I chose the orange) but I didn't have all the materials. Bad me for not looking the night before to be sure. So I bought them today, and here is the project. The first part is the control, a simple orange slice with no change, put in a paper bag. This is part 2.

Part 3

When we go to check it I will ask her predictions. It gets checked every few days.

This was her drawing of where she would hide her burial chamber in a pyramid.

You can see the mummy in the sarcophagus. 

Here was my stick-man explanation of grave robbers and why they built so many false rooms and hallways.

A few worksheets for science.

And there you have it. The end!

Rainy Monday Misadventures

So I am going to begin this post with a momentary blurb from left field. 

I have to say that a lot of people are under some impression that home-school families sleep in very late, and do a small amount of actual work. I actually had one person suggest to me a long while back, that they would "love to home-school because she could sleep in and her son could play video games all day". 

While I suppose the idea of home-school would appeal to those sorts, and I am sure there are those people out there that don't really do much, I don't think that is really the norm. I know that I want and need to be held accountable. The only person who will suffer if I am not is my kid. The idea was to make the learning experience more tailored and streamlined for her, not to pretend that dragging her to Wal-Mart while I shop is a serious lesson for economics and no further instruction is necessary. 

Don't get me wrong, you can most certainly take excursions to sort of drive the point home - real world application if you will - but it is in addition to, not a substitute. It is certainly not an every day kind of thing. She would learn nothing. 

As you can tell, I am a little fired up. For some reason that comment I mentioned before has got to be one of the ones that has really stuck with me the most. Unfortunately it floats back in my head often. I get a little bit fired up when I think of it. I am not sure if the amount of work I put into a day of school (including nightly prepping) as well as at least 4 hours instruction is the norm or not. I go between 4 - 6 hours daily, usually closest to 5 hours. (I'm pretty sure 4 is the mandated number of hours required by the state.)That may not sound like a lot to some people, but considering I have all my regular responsibilities as well it can be daunting. It isn't always daunting, but more often than not I am spent after I "make" dinner. (Notice the quotes around make. It doesn't always work out, what can I say?)

Anyway my point is that in order to have a good school day, something usually has to give. You simply cannot have "it all". The laundry tends to back up beyond what is socially acceptable. My kitchen is perpetually messy, as is the house. I cannot always make dinner, and I find it hard time to keep on the task of cleaning bathrooms, bedrooms, sweeping, ect. That's not even touching on the fact that I have weeds and grass growing up like corn stalks. I have to make a lot of choices. I have to decide when it is important, and when it is not. The idea being that we live here, and life is messy. Every mess you see is a memory my kids will have. Good. Bad. From playing, from the fact that I just never got around to cleaning it up. Whatever have you. What I will say of my choices is that sleeping all day and allowing my kids to play video games as substitution for school has never been, nor will it ever be an option. 

So enjoy my photos, see our haphazard housekeeping system, and read my rants. Just know while I document my children's journey through home-school you are bound to see piles of crap, possible dust bunnies blowing like tumbleweed down the hall, bits of dinner from 2 days ago that never made it to the sink, dirty underwear hiding in the corner because of of my sillies threw it off there in a fit of momentary nude bliss, before I came after her yet again about the need, yes the NEED for clothes,ect. You have been warned. 

Having said all that. Here is a picture of the Motley Crew that my children like to play with. Ken is kind of a big deal in this house. He gets to wear all of barbies things. He is their absolute favorite. I don't know what that is about. I suppose their dad needs to stop wearing pink shirts with cuff-links and all the fanciful fixin's. (Love you, honey! ;)

On a side note to Matel, why are all Ken dolls made with Justin Beiber hair? Stop that. It is making this worse. I'm just waiting for the day they turn their Ken doll into this: 

Anyway now that left field has been sufficiently beaten to death, back to the point of this blog: home-school stuff. Without further adieu:

Teaching +2 and -2 using the even and odd system. This is done by illustrating that when you start with an even number and add 2 to it it will be the next consecutive even number. The same goes for odd. An odd number plus 2 will be the next odd number.

As she discovered this using her hundred chart, I wrote the facts on the board. Then we showed subtracting. It is the same except instead of being the next even or odd number it would be the previous.

Ironically I posted this upside down. I just don't care enough to fix it, and you get the point. She practices all her math facts with a game either rainbow math or addition crossout.

Ah, well the screw up fairy visits my house often, this one is also upside down. You get the point. This is one that Keira (my 4 year old did) before people start getting all kinds of funny, she did not add them all up. I added a lot for her and told her what to color, and then she just decided to color what she wanted anyway.

So we went back over using the hundred chart and the even / odd number system again to create these fact cards. This was after listing the same problems on the board.

Kelsey is doing her literature project. She is making a newspaper article about it for comprehension. 

Here's the finished product.

Science - she is learning about physics, specifically this week about simply machines.

I guess I didn't take any photos of her history work.

So pretty much immediately after she stopped school, she had about 1 hour to herself, and then we were off to gymnastics which is every monday. One day I will take pictures, but I can never get a good one.

It was pouring rain, and poor Kelsey came home with a hand injury while doing handstands. Always proud to know the graceful gene will be passed on! Her fingers were pretty swollen, and I think she is as of today starting to bruise around her knuckles. I also have an enormous bruise that has yet to truly show up, but is wayyyyy painful to the touch when I accidentally slipped into the car. It was a fun drive home let me tell you!

Some Junie B. before bed, and that's the end of yesterday.

While going through to post this, I found these videos I had forgotten about on my phone. They are a bit old. I think it is possibly from November?

Keira imitating me when I was still trying to use the cd to accompany the phonics. I am not sure she knew I was taping. I think she thought I wasn't really paying attention, but she certainly won't let me know that!

Some fun in the snow.

The end!

Pretending to Shop at the Grocery Store...

So real quick:

More math, learning how to use money to pay for items (this was my version of an at home grocery store, the lesson plan called for sticking price stickers on empty food containers, but then I would have to clean them out, or I would have to tape back together the ones already broken down for recycling. So yeah, um No thanks. That was more prep work than I wanted to do, so instead I did this.) I printed out simple things to buy, then drew a grocery store back drop in the morning while she was working on her dailies. (Calendar Journal, and Number of the Day sheets)

Down below more rainbow math. She really likes it.

Language Arts, Y as a vowel and Soft "G"

Oops, there's a cat on my school work, and she won't get off. She really wouldn't either. She laid down right on it. That fat cat is actually kind of hard to move, girth and all.

Keira made a sad cat. She didn't mean to though, she was upset about it, but then found it amusing that the cat was sad.

So she drew a happy cat on the back.

Kelsey reading from her LA curriculum. Then we do comprehension exercises.

Part of our History Lesson

Video of Rainbow Math

Video of the Grocery Store project.

I was prepping tomorrow's math lesson while waiting for the videos to load, hopefully they will work. If they don't well, I am NOT fixing them tonight. Then end. Now time for bed!

Tuesday's Work

Here comes a huge understatement: Tuesday was a busy busy day. 

The Laundry monster ate up my whole afternoon and a bit into the next day, today. (Envision Fraggle Rock's Trash Heap but as clothes and you'll have a significant idea of what it was like yesterday) So between that and my prep work I didn't get to go to book club - pretty much the only social event I even attempt to commit to (insert laugh here, as I have only been to one in months). It was a bummer since I actually read the book and would like to have a social life that doesn't revolve around kids, but I digress.

Back to the point: When I am not spending between 4-5 hours home-schooling, I spend a lot of time prepping. If you are thinking about home schooling be prepared to spend a lot of your time scrounging the internet for worksheets, ideas, videos, and other items to meet your child's specific learning ability. My daughter Kelsey is very visual, so we have to really illustrate the concept for her, and then she is golden. This takes a huge search effort for things that work on more abstract concepts, but I promise is well worth it. If you can ignite the spark that would have been lost in translation then the hours spent searching were worth every minute. No one tells you that. So I am. Home-school doesn't end at the end of the "school" day. The questions commence. You are always looking for new things, always discovering. Each kid is different, so they learn differently, and it takes work to find things that work well with your specific kid.

Having said that, my poor kid could probably use some time in front of a boob tube with the old school game Tetris. After some tries, she finally got it. There is no cure for that, but to let her try and see why the shapes didn't work, and start to see the shapes come together.

She then had to take her filled shape, and graph the amount of shapes she used.

She can do that easily.

We have been struggling with math facts a bit. She does not have them memorized, and she tends to want to use her fingers, a hundred chart, a manipulative, or a number line. I tried so many things, and some were frustrating, some were just okay, but nothing was really working particularly the way I wanted it to. Through looking for ideas on Pinterest, some of which worked, some of which didn't, I found this - "Rainbow Math". I didn't get to it right away, because I doubted it would work well for her, finally I gave up on the other ideas, and gave her this. Well I should have done it sooner. She is adding faster, and she is excited about it. I guess you really do have to try everything, even things you think are stupid, or will never work. I apologize creator of "Rainbow Math". I thought your creation was stupid and a waste of time. Bah! I said. This is too simple for my prized belly-fruit! And yet, I printed it as a last resort. Well you showed me! Well played, sir! People who do not create games, should not knock the games that are already available for their simplicity. This is where I think I should have tried for an engineering degree. Then I could create the perfect software to help each and every kid, and I would be rich, and successful! But Nay! I tell you! I just had to get that Theater degree! (This is the obligated blurb about not actually having finished my degree, and depending on your stance it was either a saving grace to have quit wasting my parents' money on a useless theater degree from a school that was known for business and engineering, or it shows that I am also a college drop-out. You decide! :D Either way, the world did not stop moving, I assure you!) There I go again, off on my tangent! Back to home-school!

For Literature, she was to write a friendly letter. Apparently this was spaced out to work on for 3 days. We finished it that day. I figure why stop, she was on a roll. She actually wants to send it to Ruby Bridges. (Since it is almost Black History Month, and just passed MLK jr day, the curriculum called for "The Story of Ruby Bridges". Let me just tell you it is no easy feat trying to explain why what would seem like ordinary nice adults would be screaming and "wanting to kill Ruby" - yes it says that in the book- Ruby a first grader. :/ Talk about a weird conversation. Um, people are stupid, and so they are afraid of things that are out of the norm, sort of the same reason people will think you wandered off of a commune if you ever tell people you are home-schooled. The sooner you see that a lot of people are just plain stupid, the better! Speaking of that, here is a funny video my friend sent me about the seven lies about home-schooled kids.

Back to school now:

This was part of our history lesson. They are carving in (homemade clay) to see what it was like for the Ancient Egyptians, and the Sumerians. They are actually carving their names in Cuneiform - the language of the ancient Sumerians.

Our science project doesn't often make it in my blog because it is always interactive. I can't take pictures and dramatize the effects of inertia, force, and work. So you'll just have to do without. It mostly consists of me rolling around on a rolly-chair and pretending to drive a car, then running into things and showing hoe the chair stopped but I didn't and other "experiments" like that.

Now, I have to blog about today.

The Huntington Gardens

You simply cannot take a bad photo in this place. It is THAT beautiful. My first experience at The Huntington was when my step-mom took the girls and I over winter break since she had a membership. It was, to say the least, just amazing. It most certainly kicked the sad behind of my membership to the San Diego Botanical Gardens, that's for sure! It was so fun, we went back for the Chinese New Year celebration with the kids on our anniversary. So what do you do when you have kids and beautiful scenery and everyone is having a great time? You take pictures! Bucket loads of them! Without further adieu:

Had they been older I would have taken them into the art galleries and the library there, but the finer things of life are probably best still out of reach for my bag of screaming banshees as of yet. Though, I highly recommend it! 

http://www.huntington.org/

The End!