6th April, 2009
Field trip today to see Margaret Hudson :)
Margaret Hudson is a local treasure, an artist working in both paint and clay. I arraigned a trip to visit her home, garden and studios today for the local homeschoolers group!
Here we are in her front yard. Many of the trees were planted there by her father, and they are HUGE!!
We visited her studio, and saw where she works. She paints HUGE beautiful flowers. She spoke to the children about print making and painting.
The children worked on a collaborative drawing, here Danielle and Shraddha add their artistic touches.
The final product was beautiful, with all the color added by the children, and Margaret adding outline and shading to their work.
We then went on a tour of her “backyard” which is actually the backyards of several of the homes that the owners have chosen to have no fences. They have an organic garden, chickens, a sweatlodge and a swamp! The grounds are scattered with Margaret’s sculptures. I don’t have any good pics because it was SOOO bright, my iPhone was not taking good shots ;(
The kids then were given pieces of clay to make their own sculptures. They had a great time folding, smooshing, poking and playing with the clay.
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6th April, 2009
Sneaky ways to get them to pratice reading ;)
Danielle is not much of a reader, she really doesn’t seem to have clicked with it yet. She can read, don’t get me wrong, she just chooses not to unless she has to. I have let her pick her own books, I have appropriate reading materials scattered throughout her living spaces, but she really just isn’t one to pick up a book and start reading. She has done that, but it’s not often. So, I am constantly looking for little ways to slip some reading practice in our everyday lives.
Danielle and I have been playing a game called Animal Crossing: City Folk on the Wii for the past few weeks. She loves it and begs for time to play. I went out and bought the guide book for it, because let’s face it, I am NOT a video gamer and with out some guidance my city would be burned to the ground by now, LOL!
Now when I am playing, she is the official price looker upper for all things. She is learning to use an index, practicing sounding out words, and reading descriptions, prices and everything! YAY!!
Best of all? She LOVES it 
She doesn’t whine and complain, she happily looks things up and reads them aloud to me.
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16th March, 2009
Just some fun pictures..
Danielle reading a Junie B. Jones books 
Painting some shamrocks for tomorrow
Trying to make splatter fairies I think we need thinner paint or bigger lungs, LOL!
Danielle had a bit of an easier time then the little ones
Posted at 6:40 pm | Comments (2)
12th March, 2009
I know, I know I’ve been bad about updating ;)
But here is a short update on where everybody is…
Jack-Jack is rocking his speech therapy! His therapist has found his button, cutting and pasting!! He will do what she wants in exchange for getting to cut things and paste things. So now she has him cutting little pictures or just squares of construction paper and gluing them on to sheets, which mommy dutifully hangs up on our wall of projects He can now say all of his (M)(vowel) sounds like MA, MO, MI and his (B)(vowel) sounds! We also printed some sorting games from File Folder Fun to practice memory matching and sorting biggest to littlest. Shraddha has been having fun with that too! The lacing cards have been a hit lately too, I am making shamrock lacing cards for them to play with next week
Danielle is chugging along. She is almost finished with her math book, and she took to fractions like a duck to water! I can’t believe how fast she got that concept! Reading is still going slowly, I think I am going to have her eyes checked when I go in next month. I am concerned with how frustrated she gets. Her spelling is going well, though she gets upset when she has to read to finish the pages 
The butterflies we sent out to migrate to Mexico will be winging their way home soon. Our frogs are growing so fast, I think we are going to have to get a bigger tank! We are growing grass seeds, and soon will be growing sunflowers again!
Danielle wants to take piano lessons, not sure I can afford them at the moment, but I will look into it. She really seems like she is destined to play some instrument, she loves to play with her guitar, and she pretends to write music rather often.
I guess that’s about it
Posted at 7:28 pm | Comments Off
18th February, 2009
Math for Minis ;)
I was lucky enough to pick up some Conversation Hearts on clearance yesterday, so I decided to put them to good use!
I used the printable graph at http://www.fastq.com/~jbpratt/education/theme/valentines.html
Posted at 11:32 pm | Comments Off
16th February, 2009
Haagen Dazs cares about the Honey Bees..
And they want us to as well I happily signed up to receive a book about honey bees from Haagen Dazs (and to be honest, 2 coupons for free ice cream for spreading the word). I expect something goofy and one huge ad for ice cream, but was pleasantly surprised to find it was actually a nice little book, with no advertising at all, save for the Haagen Dazs name and logo.
The booklet was in PDF format for me to print, and I went ahead and printed the pages two to a page. Danielle and I spent part of our day reading through it, and there was lots of great information about how life at the hive goes. The different kinds of bees and their jobs. Even about how bees dance to give directions to other bees for the best flowers!
We saved the list of bee friendly flowers for our spring planting plans. And we made a string of paper bees and hung them up on our project wall. All in all it was a fun and education little booklet, and Danielle enjoyed going through it with me.
If you want your own copy of the booklet, please email to nancy.martira@ketchum.com and tell ‘em Beckie sent ya!
Posted at 6:04 pm | Comments Off
24th January, 2009
Wii love Fridays :P
It was a week here. Not good, not bad, just there. We continued to study the solar system, working our way out to Jupiter. Danielle is working on counting coins and telling time.
We have been switching back and forth between her assigned reading materials and just fun books. This week she read an Eloise book that she really seemed to enjoy. I am still bent about losing that Fancy Nancy book that I just bought her. I swear, it was in my hand, in the van, and then *poof* it was gone. Thankfully, I have Paperback Swap and can order another copy as soon as I get some credits in, LOL!
Speaking of, have I mentioned Paperback Swap here?
I highly recommend it as a great source for books, homeschool and otherwise! If you join up, let them know that Spookygirl sent ya (cause I get a credit ) It’s a great system, you list 10 books you are done with and willing to ship out, and you get 2 credits to start ordering books. Once you start sending out books, you get one credit for each book you send out (when it is received by the other party). The only cost is the postage to send out a book, usually around 2 bucks. I have sent out 250 books, and received 267 books, and currently have 33 books listed on my bookshelf and another 85 books on my wish list. I just can’t say enough good things about it
On Tuesday we watching the Inauguration, and talked a little bit about it. I don’t know, I guess she’s a little young to get the whole thing, plus it was hard with the little ones running around, they are used to watching Noggin or Sprout in the morning, not the news, KWIM? We read and colored a booklet about Obama, from Enchanted Learning.
Since today is Friday, we added up all of Danielle’s stickers for her work, and she earned a prize out of her box. She picked a beading project, and made herself a cute ladybug necklace. Plus, she decided she wanted to use her Wii minutes (that being minutes she earned to play the Wii ALL ALONE, with out having to share with brother, LOL) She chose to play WiiSports. She bowled, played baseball and tennis. Then she fell, and in her words “broke her arm in half!!” Screaming ensued, and her Wii time was over. When I took over, I had fun importing famous Mii’s and then bowled a few games. I switched over to the WiiFit, and was happily hula hooping when suddenly Danielle made a miraculous recovery!! I told her she could play again tomorrow assuming she keeps a right attitude.
So it seems the Wii is a good incentive for finishing her work with out protest. It is not a magic pill, but it does seem to help..
Posted at 1:56 am | Comments (6)
9th January, 2009
Happy Friday ;)
We’ve survived another week, not with out a few bumps and stumbles along the way. DH and I were decided that this was it, she was going to public school! She has decided it’s better to throw tantrums, and pout and scream then to just buckle down and do a few math problems. She somehow from one day to the next forgetting that a penny is worth 1 cent and a nickel is worth 5 cents. And rather then ask for help, she decided to just put her head down on the table and cry.
But we survived, and I am happy to report today we only had one tantrum over 5 pennies being equal to one nickel. I try to express to her that she is LUCKY that she is homeschooled, because I doubt every much that any teacher would put up with her attitude for very long.
We finished her 1st grade science book, and I will talk to her teacher about moving on to the 2nd grade. Until then, we will fill the science time with things we like to study, like the special astronomy projects I mentioned before. We have started a map of the solar system, and started talking about the sun today. We also talked a bit about the space shuttle and the International Space Station. Guess I better look up more information on that one, because the book I had was a bit thin, and she was dying more more! LOL!
Jack and Shraddha colored pictures of the planets while we talked about the sun. They both have sheets to cut out the planets and put them in order. I told them about the mnemonic “My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Noodles”, slightly changed from way back when I was in school and Pluto was still a planet, LOL!!
Posted at 8:28 pm | Comments (5)
6th January, 2009
Vacation is over, and it’s the fresh start for 2009 :)
We started back to “school” today. Meaning instead of just every day moments of discovery and learning, now we additional seat work time, to produce the kinds of results that the school district likes to see. There was grumbling, and pouting, but then I pulled it together, and got Danielle to the table to start. Jack-Jack colored a book about the solar system, to go along with our newest addition to our homeschool schedule, the Monthly Theme! I picked the theme for January, Astronomy. 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, in honor Galileo first looking through his telescope in 1609 After this month I will let Danielle help me choose the theme. The theme will give us some framework for fun learning, outside reading and math
For our astronomy theme, we’re using Children’s Atlas of the Universe and Exploring Space: Grades 1-3 Today we started learning about the Moon, and we’ll start studying the Sun and planets in order out from the Sun, learning tidbits about each planet. We’ll finish up with taking a look at stars, and constellations using The Glow in the Dark Night Sky Book . We will draw copy some constellations and make up a few of our own
So that’s it for now.
Posted at 1:35 am | Comments Off
13th December, 2008
Danielle’s new work area ;)
We were having some distraction issues, so I built her a mini-office. I used quite a few ideas I found online, and came up with a nice workable divider to keep her focus on her work, and not on what’s going on around her. On her side, which I forgot to take a picture of there are lots of nice useful printouts, like her numbers 1-100, phonics sounds and such
Posted at 8:20 pm | Comments Off