American Girl Treasures Game

Here is a great game for American Girl fans who also love games. We haven't played it much since we got it, but today we pulled it out while the boys watched some football.

It plays a whole lot like Ticket to Ride with some twists which means I think we'll be playing it more often. You have to run around the board collecting each of the girls' treasures (things from their books) and it involves collecting and trading cards along the way. You have to have the card currency to trade in for the treasures. All in all a fun game!

It's still out there this season and bonus Samantha is still featured in this game. A great game for American Girl collectors!

Phonics Game

We've had this phonics game from Discount School Supply for a few years now- since R8 was first in school. I pulled it off the shelf for J3 to fiddle with while we did our work on Native Americans. He loves putting the foam letters in and out of the grid and he likes to match the letters with the one next to it. So, he'll repeat the letter to the left or right of the box. Very cute letter matching for him.

This is actually a great practice game for I-6. He's really getting good at his reading.

The cards are a nice and sturdy plastic which is really nice.

Let it Snow....Let it Snow....Let it Snow!

Another day of snow here before Thanksgiving...first the kids did a little work. Then it was time to play after I found the sleds.

First the recycling bins needed to be returned to the house.

Should this worry me? He's 3 and he does his own stunts.

It's a little hill but it provides plenty of fun...if this keeps up the ditch at the bottom won't be a problem and there will be a nice plowed up wall there.

This was actually the first run.

Happily, our school work was finished this morning.

All this and the snow continues to fall. And just think. I almost missed it for a trip to Maryland and a certain someone's 20th high school reunion.

Oh and the snow tires are officially getting put on Monday- funny I wonder why they were so booked up this week? It better keep snowing so I can monster around with them!!

Fall Co-op Night!

Yesterday was the last day of fall co-op and we celebrated by going out to dinner with the kids and we headed to co-op night. Co-op night marks the end of another successful semester of co-op and we get to see what all the kids have been up to for the last ten weeks. This was our second semester of co-op and all the kids had a grand time- with the possible exception of J3, but he's coming along.

E10 took a knots class using the Klutz Knots book- their display was awesome. He conquered 14 knots including the square lashing, anchor bend, cats paw, clove hitch, and the slip knot among others. I'm surprised he took this class since at one time Dan had set out to learn knots and the kids did a bunch with him then. They come in handy when you go camping.

Dan taught a class on beginning computer programming using Scratch. The kids learned about the Cartesian Coordinate System and Boolean logic (how computers use it to do their functions) in addition to all the programming blocks in scratch. By the end, the kids had some pretty fun games they'd made and it was fun to see how they used Scratch creatively.

R8 took Beginning Sewing and Advanced Fancy Sewing. Below is a quilt that the girls contributed to that will be donated to a local pregnancy center. R8's square is in the upper right hand corner.

R8's pillow- such nicely coordinated colors on the front. The back is one piece of white with black constellations all over it.

I-6 took Cut and Create again which he thoroughly enjoyed both times. The next several pictures are his creations this semester.

I-6's other class was Art with the Masters using the Usborne Art Treasury. He really enjoyed learning about an artist each week and creating something new. He has a whole little portfolio of these now.

His Kandinsky- Concentric Circles (he's in a real black phase)

J3 is in the preschool class. I co-taught in there doing the craft with the kids. Through out the year, he is putting together an ABC book. He was very proud to show it off. They also did a performance for the parents. He sang the ABC song and counted to 20 and did a fantastic job!

Seriously? Latin?

So, you might remember that I purchased a Latin program over the summer. You might also have noticed that there have been exactly no postings regarding our Latin studies. Ahem...I've been a bit preoccupied with impending surgery and of course now have been recovering from it. So, Latin wasn't so high on my list of homeschool priorities! Translation...I put it off!

Reminds me of back in the day when I was in high school. I lived right on the school districts line and convinced the county to let me attend my high school because I wanted to take Latin and the other school didn't have it. When I say I lived on the line, I mean half our street went to one place and the other half to the other high school. I thought I had four years to get it in- you know sometime while in high school I needed to take it, but it turns out I needed to take it the whole time in order to stay enrolled at the high school of my choice. I found another way to stay at good ol' Liberty High without constantly taking Latin, but I did manage to take one year of Latin in my senior year (along with the five years of Spanish and three years of French). Latin was like my study hall it was so crazy easy!

Funny thing though...somehow while doing homework for other classes and participating once a week to get my A, I don't remember all that much! Ha! But... I digress-

I pulled it off the shelf to mull it over about a month or so ago and wondered what I could have been thinking with this workbook program. Seemed dull and I had some serious doubts about its success in our home. Fast forward to Friday. I pulled it down again and really read it to see how I would teach it with my kids. R8 begged to start at that very moment. After some hesitation I threw caution to the wind and put together the beginnings of their Latin notebooks.

We all gathered on the floor next to the CD player and we had our first lesson. Salvete! I'm telling you...there is almost nothing cuter than a 3 yo who eagerly sits in a group and repeats latin words. E10's favorite part is to see the English word derivatives.

Prima Latina focuses mainly on vocabulary without too much in the way of declensions and conjugations...that's next year.

Lesson 1 a rousing success. Next week the kids will begin to learn the Sanctus. I think a field trip will be in order...anyone think I can convince the local Episcopalian priest to say the Sanctus in Latin next Sunday? How about my Roman Catholic friends...any masses still in Latin?

Seriously though, if you are looking for a fairly light investment in a language program consider Prima Latina. I'm hoping to give the kids a basic start with Latin and then as they get older they can choose a language. I'm not sure I'm looking forward to teaching four different languages, but why not. Actually, having had three languages already I'm looking for a new alphabet. How about some Russian? Or a character based language? Hmmm....

Oh wait, I think my next language of choice is American Sign Language- another homeschool elective for R8 that has been put off so far this year. Stay tuned for updates!

Native Americans Stop 1: The Inuit

We read The Very Last First Time this week and focused on the life of the Inuits. We compared modern day Inuits with those of long ago and what types of houses they are in now and the ice fishing traditions along with the tradition of gathering mussels under the sea.


Each pocket has a story to read and a label for the pocket in addition to the vocabulary words and house icon.

The kids will put a square with an icon of tribes' home on the map as we go along.

The are also making a book of Native American vocabulary. You can see the igloo on the first card in this picture. They colored them and glued them in and then wrote about them in their own words.

The Ferby Pencils- joy for the whole family! I had a mission the other day to sharpen them all- always with a small Fiskars hand sharpener

Updates in Home Decor

Remember back in January when we were working on R8's dollhouse? Well she and I have occasionally been adding to the decor. It is not in the neatest condition today, but I simply had to take a picture. Her doll bed is down in front partially obscuring the view of the first floor. Every once in a while I will surprise her with new furniture from her box of dollhouse things we put away a long time ago. This dollhouse was a gift to her from a friend of mine when she was 2. We remodeled last winter putting the backing on, adding partitions for rooms, and repainting it. The most common doll residents are the Polly Pockets. They really like the Sculpey furniture R8 has made. Looking at this photo I think we'll add some things to the walls. The back board is a dry erase surface. That has the potential for fun!

We moved these photos my mom took to one wall in R8 and J3's room. We have a new addition- a lovely photograph of a trilium flower. I haven't decided where to put that one yet. My mom is quite the nature photographer. Thanks mom. Of course, my favorite are the black-eyed susans. Maryland State Flower anyone?

Remember R8's Kandinsky painting from earlier this summer? It looks awesome at the head of her bed.

We did a little make-over in the boys' room. Underneath the yellow stripe is a sponged edge with alphabet stamps and hand stamps. Perfect for toddler and preschooler boys- not so perfect for a tween and his 6yo brother. So, at AC Moore I found sticker borders and check it out. I bought the sports stickers for the border and up near E10's top bunk. I-6 has Batman stickers. Of course. The rest of the room shows off Brian Jacques posters (author of Redwall) and more of my mom's photography. Although we are still waiting on that bird of prey Dad. I'm just sayin'.

At some point I'd love to repaint the room a more neutral color, but we have some other rooms on the docket first. The one that comes to mind is my kitchen and dining room. Since we aren't traveling at Thanksgiving now, Dan has agreed to work on this. Wish me luck!! A trim wall will look super with my new 6.5 ft pencil tree. More on this later if my dream comes true...

More Snow!

Well folks...I had to take another this morning. This is what we call "lake effect snow showers" in our neck of the woods! I tried to get a shot of the same place in the yard out the back door. In my pjs. Before MOPS this morning. It's a busy morning, but I do have blogging priorities. How could I let this snowy moment go by? I let it melt too much before taking that photo yesterday!

I'd say we have about 6 inches. Speaking of 6 inches, I know for a fact that my kids are not from where I'm from. The other night at the dinner table, while discussing snow, we talked about a dusting. Dan and I nearly fell out of our chairs when E10 goes, "Yeah 6 inches is a dusting." All matter of fact like. Six inches? Yeah...my kids are New Yorkers. What happened here??

My beading party was a huge success last night (my first big night out since surgery), but I gotta say I wasn't in for the ride home! There wasn't any pavement to be seen within a 20 mile radius of my home! What was I just sayin' about snow tires??

Now I'm just wondering if I can manage a pair of jeans for today's outing since I'll be sporting boots too. I'm going to try to get to MOPS and the hairdresser's this morning. Wish me luck! Then I have to get Dan in the next town- at about 1:30 so I can take my nap!!

Oh yeah...still recovering from surgery...

FYI- all this snow in November ROCKS because we are studying The Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews this week. Well honestly snow pretty much ROCKS all the time with the exception of perhaps May. Yes May. Don't you want to join us up here now??

Second Snow...

It's been snowing on and off the last couple of days. Lake effect snow is in on tap for the day. I can't tell you how cool it is to live in the shadow of a Great Lake. We get more rain and clouds than I would like, but this time of year...it's all about the SNOW!

This is the second snow. When I was in the hospital the last week of October, it snowed then too and I got a picture on my cell phone of my kids playing in it and building a snowman. I love snowmen!

We are expecting just some lake effect snow showers- about 1 to 3 inches for today. Moving to NY means we get to shovel and scrape our flurries and snow showers now. In Maryland and Virginia life as we know would shut down. Not here. I love that! Our van is due for an oil change and it looks like it's time to have the snow tires put on too.

Bring. It. On.

Native American Unit

One of the units I had planned to do with the kids this year is Native Americans. I had not had the chance to really develop the unit over the summer, but I had some ideas of what I wanted to include as an overview of the various tribes across the United States and North America. I planned on using it in November because we can talk about the northeastern Native Americans as Thanksgiving approaches. I know. Terribly clever.

After reviewing one of my cool new resources- The Evan Moor History Pocket on Native Americans, I decided to use it as the basis for our exploration. We'll be using some picture and chapter books along the way and we'll see where our studies take us.

Have you ever used History Pockets? Oh these are a gem of a resource and offer some excellent print outs for students. We used the Going West History Pocket when we did our Little House on the Prairie Unit. All that gorgeous paperwork in that link is from the history pocket.

Our Native American Itinerary:

• The Inuit of the Arctic- we'll be rowing Very Last First Time
• The Tlingit of the Northwest
• The Nez Perce of the Plateau- R8 we'll be studying the American Girl Kaya
• The Maidu of California
• The Sioux of the Plains
• The Navajo of the Southwest
• The Iroquois of the Northeast- E10 will be doing a study of The Sign of the Beaver
• The Seminole of the Southeast

We have five weeks until the week of Christmas which means I need to decide how I will time out this unit. I had planned to begin a new study after the New Year, but I may need to rethink that. Five weeks and eight nations of Native Americans. That's how things are shaping up. Be sure to check for updates as we travel and meet these peoples.

Some other links and information I came across:

Candace's Native American Unit Study Candace took a different approach to her unit. Check it out because she has some good ideas.

If You Lived with the Iroquois This is a unit from Homeschool Share. I'm sure we'll spend some time with this book since we live in the heart of the Iroquois region.

Native American symbols

Native American Regions I always get confused about which tribes were where and which ones belonged to which nation. This is a really helpful site with a map.

Reading Games

I know I have mentioned the book Math Games by Peggy Kaye, but I finally got around to making a game from another of her books, Games for Reading. Again, if you have not seen these titles try your library and make a few. They are totally worth the approximately $12 I spent at Rainbow Resource. Trust me they are easy to make and don't take much time at all. One word of caution. After you have made a game, try not to leave it around for your resident toddler/preschooler to cut clear through when you are napping. R8 did her best to repair it. She was there when I made it and felt badly that it had been cut.

This one is called Word Ladder and so far I've made two sets of 15 cards. You put a marker on the bottom and you have 15 tries to make it 12 rungs up the ladder. If you make it before the pile is empty (which means you have to get 12 out of 15 words correct the first time), then you win!

I-6 played at least half a dozen times yesterday, eagerly seeking others to play with him or at least watch him play. Notice that I have used the Reading Made Easy visual cues on his cards. He's doing very well with his reading, but he's not quite ready to drop all the cues yet. The one above is a new sound this week. My next step is to make more word sets.

Our Favorite Atlases

Do you have a favorite family atlas? I thought I would share our favorites. E10 is the kind of guy that loves to pour over atlases and incidentally almanacs. One Christmas I insisted on getting a US Road Atlas and an almanac from that year. Dan thought I was being ridiculous. I'm here to tell you that they were two of his favorite gifts that year. I wonder when it's time to get him a current one??

Without further mumbling...our favorites are the National Geographic World and US Atlases for Young Explorers. I like the way they have icons in the map for showing industry and natural resources. Plus, the map depicts the topography really well.

Please excuse the blogging indiscretion. Yes, those are my legs. Back a few weeks ago actually when I could still wear jeans. Hmmm...I wonder how long post-op before I can wear my jeans again...

I waited on the World Atlas for about a year and a half before I finally succumbed. It is the newer addition.

I have a real thing for satellite and physical maps! So pleasing to the visual learner.

Some Thoughts on Writing (an update on the Great Depression project-as promised)

Have you ever noticed how different each of your children can be in talent, personality, likes and dislikes? I think it is amazing to watch the differences (and similarities) in our children. Homeschooling is cool because you can really capitalize on what your children are good at to help enhance any weak areas you see. Take R8 for example. She loves to talk! I have NO idea where she gets this from though I do recall getting a bus referral in the first grade for talking too loudly and numerous comments to this effect on report cards throughout my school career and somehow it wasn't spun in such a positive light as she loves to talk!

She loves to do creative writing. You can find R8 writing silly stories and eloquent poems all the time. However, this lovely young girl really hates to write facts of any kind. Give her the assignment to research and write about it and well it just isn't going to turn out like you'd expect.

Research isn't the issue. When she did her oral report and salt dough map on Hawaii, it was superb. She read as much as she could find about the island and proceeded to give an outstanding oral presentation about it. She was able to field questions and tell us all that we wanted to know with confidence. I also noted that she barely wrote out any of it. Seriously.

Getting her to sit and write down all the things she has read and committed to memory is near impossible sometimes it seems. Yet clearly it is something she needs to work on. It is a skill she needs to tackle.

That's when I began to think back on a book I've been reading all summer. The Charlotte Mason Companion is a thoughtful review and handbook on the writings of Victorian era educator Charlotte Mason. This book comes highly recommended by many in the homeschool community and I am a voracious reader of information (not so much of fiction...) and I find it to be a rather tough read. But I keep at it (mostly at the myriad of drs appts I've had over the last four months) and was delighted to recall some chapters on oral narration from children. Charlotte believed that reading aloud to children and having them read on their own and narrate the contents of a chapter or so to the teacher was a very valuable tool for both student and teacher.


That's when it hit me. R8 is an excellent narrator for information she hears or reads. Why not take it a step further and allow her to improve her writing using this method. I had R8 narrate to me all the facts she'd learned about The Great Depression and I wrote them down. She dictated to me what she wanted and I wrote down all those facts. To take it one step further, she will copy what I have written (which is nothing more than her own words to me). After doing this for some time, I hope it will begin to draw out her own talent to write what she has in her head. Until then, we can use her own words to improve spelling and build her confidence. Charlotte Mason believed it worked. Let's see if she's right!

There's barely any room left on this paper. It's full of facts about The Depression that she narrated to me after doing her research.

Somehow R8 was going to use this library pocket poster for her display about The Depression. In the end, she chose the poster format and just yesterday she dictated to me many facts about Louis Braille (the other topic she chose to work on for her last Helen Keller assignment). Today she will finish writing down each fact on to index cards to put in the pockets. Again, doing copywork from her own oral narration to me.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology

On Friday, my parents took my suggestion to visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Sapsucker Woods. You might be familiar with the Lab of Ornithology. They sponsor the Great Backyard Bird Count each February. Hard to believe we've never been. Time gets away from you when you are having babies and have young kids. This seemed like a good idea for the week and it went really well. Now I can't wait to return in the spring when the birds are coming back to town. Maybe my mom and dad will join us. Seems to me a great place for a nature photographer to hang out.

They have quite a lot of programming at the Lab of Ornithology with the largest library of bird calls in the world.

They took a walk on the Wilson Trail 3/4 mile around a pond. It should be noted that J3 made it all the way around even though half way he announced he had to use the potty. Did I mention he's been wearing underwear for two weeks?? I don't want to get too confident, but I think our last child just might be potty trained. That. Is. Awesome.

Mmmmm....cat tails one of my favorites. I keep telling Dan we ought to transplant some to our ditch at the front of our yard. Beats mowing it and think of the little wetland habitat we could develop. I think that would be way better than a traditional garden. I'm just sayin'.

Canada Geese are handsome even if they are a common nuisance to water front owners and park patrons. Remember those bright fall leaves we had a few weeks ago? Welcome to November!!

Of course there are feeders. Somehow I thought I'd chosen a picture with the bird facing us. But I sure did like the look of the sky in this one.

The path- I bet they are beautiful in the spring and summer.

Kinda boggy...reminds me of Cranberry Thanksgiving

...and even MORE boggy...good thing there is a raised, wood chipped path with occasional board walks.

The bonus to all the special time with their grandparents was the gift shop. Did I ever tell you how much my kids like bird call CDs?? I have to admit I enjoy them too. Now I know which birds are all around us all the time. My personal favorite is our resident red tailed hawk. We hear his call often right in the trees around our house. Now I just need a snake in my yard and maybe the mice woudn't be so noticable!

The kids are very excited about their new field guides and I've read the meadow and log book a million times already. This morning E10 and R8 were having a contest to see who could reference a bird the quickest in their respective field guides. R8 had to do the calling because she has the more limiting book (her words not mine). I think we'll have to go back for more bird CDs! There is one that matches the bird of NY book and of course we need one for birds of prey. They all took their books and insisted on listening to the Backyard birds on a car trip yesterday. We received some awesome instruction on bird calls and songs. I can tell this will be a favorite on errand days.

Crazy you say? Perhaps, but they remember it. My parents reported that there was a program going on in the building with slides of various birds. The presenter included our kids and J3 was naming a bunch correctly. The woman had to stop and ask him his age. He replied matter of factly, "I'm three." He's currently chatting about all the things you can find under a log and naming the kinds of leaves on the ground under those animals.

Thanks again Mom and Dad! Come again soon!! Next time I'll join you!