Miss Kitten Has Finished Her Mittens!

R8 took a little hand sewing project last week. She finished it within an hour. We followed the directions in cutting a pattern for them and cutting out the fleece. I helped her with drawing the correct sized pattern based on her hand and then she went with it.

Pinning the pattern- note her new box of pins (her next project is a hand sewn pin cushion)

cutting the fabric- this is green fleece from Amanda's Winter Kit

getting started with her running stitch- she has knowledge of several hand stitches. So fun!

sewing the rest of the mitten it didn't take long

The Finished Product- not too bad. I think she needs some work on tight, even stitches.

Betsy Ross was a fine seamstress and we've had fun trying out a few things of our own. R8 is fantastic on a sewing machine and she has an impressive knowledge of several basic hand stitches as well. I'm looking forward to some more projects.

Winter Birding

We're at the end of January- already! Time flies in the dead of winter. Am I right? I heard recently that until this week at least there had only been 7 days without snowfall since November. Readers from the south...doesn't that sound blissful?? I'll take it though. I love to watch the snow quietly fall and what is winter without snow? November friends. Six months of November. I prefer the brightness of the snow even though it's messy sometimes. All I need is my LLBean parka and my snow tires. Then it's all good.

When it's super cold out and snow play is out, we like to watch the birds. We have a pair of spruce trees (which J3 affectionately refers to as "funny trees") which the chickadees just adore. We also have a pair of cardinals and lots of crows. I hear a hawk now and then when the hunting is good. We've seen a downy woodpecker and some blue jays and even a tufted titmouse. All this without a feeder!! Just think how many more visitors we could get. I'm just not sure I'm ready to be an enabler. I've seen this in action. Just ask my parents. I think they feed an entire forest of birds down there in West Virginia and they get pesky when you don't refill the feeders. Then there's the whole squirrel defense detail. I just don't think I can take on one more living creature demanding meals from me.

Nope. We take what we get and we rejoice over it! The Great Backyard Bird Count will be fun even if we don't get tons of birds. It will give an excuse to stare out the window for extraordinary amounts of time!

Currently, J3's favorite book- Stranger in the Woods. He loves to name the birds. I love to hear him say certain words- one of my favorites is rutabaga- the other is chickadee! The authors of this book have a few more books like it and a website with a few free activities and some curriculum items to purchase. What a great time to have a little winter nature fun.

Some of our birding resources- you might remember we also added the CD that goes with the Birds of NY book. I don't know about yours, but my kids love bird call CDs.

Look out for the bird count!

Kidwings- a place for researching birds and the home of the virtual owl pellet dissection

Great Backyard Bird Count- coming right up. It's a chance to do some informal bird watching and data from all over the country is available and that could make for some awesome data analysis- we're talking graphs, statistics, the works!

Cornell Lab of Ornithology- world renowned for their bird call collection and work with birds. They co-sponsor the Big Backyard Bird Count and they are in our backyard. Lots of bird news here too.

All About Birds- online bird identification from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Activity Time

So, I've introduced a number of new things into our daily routine since the new year. I'll probably remember to share them one at a time. I've given a glimpse of how we are pursuing passions around here (and I'll add more to that as well), but today I am unveiling Activity Time.

Activity time happens when the formal school work is done and before free time. The older kids have to read for 30 minutes on their own every day and it's up to them whether activity time comes first or not.

Activity Time is when the kids have to choose something off the approved list to play or do. It can be games, activity kits, marble runs, wedgits, snap circuits, Lincoln logs, legos, crafts, etc. It lasts for one hour. It can share time with pursuing passions. It can be extra silent reading time. It does not include video gaming or any kind of screen time.

The current craze is Bananagrams- sometimes E10 plays alone and sometimes R8 joins him. Actually, word games are played nearly everyday here and R8 is becoming a contender. So cool.

Sounds a little much? Well it is working out just great! The idea was to add on to their formal day with some productive activity. I find the kids make better choices with their free time with this plan.

It provides productive time for the kids and big brothers make less poor choices in their relationships with their siblings. I'm just sayin'.

More Printer's Drawers

Once upon a time, I put all my school teacher rubber stamps away. I was "retired" you see. Then one day I found myself teaching again and my stamps started calling to me...

I didn't pull every single one back out but I did pull these. Now as soon as I unearth my stamp pads, I'll stamp away with every math and reading lesson!

Click and check 'em out. Remember I was a science teacher so I was partial to science stamps.

I used to use the "Write in Complete Sentences" stamp a lot along with "This Is Not Your Best Work". Probably one of my favorites is "Your Work Makes Me Smile" Aaahhh memories...

More Betsy Ross

Thought I'd update our study of Betsy Ross. We've been engaged in some language arts and social studies this past week. R8 has done one hand sewing project that turned out well. I'll share that next.

Betsy Ross Notebook Cover
The next two pictures are E10's work on literary point of view

Ben Franklin Fast Facts

R8's Narration on the Liberty Bell- she was given the underlined words on cards and had to form sentences with them that told me about the chapter. It had been about 3 days since we'd read it. I copied her words to me.

booklet of "First Times"

Personification

Some fast facts on Quakers

As we get into our study of Betsy Ross, we'll be discussing colonial times and the Revolutionary War. I thought I'd share some resources we'll be using.

Dinah Zike fans? The color photos in her Big Book of Social Studies give some fun ideas on how to display facts. The thematic unit on My Country will provide some early American tidbits.

These three are Scholastic resources on Colonial American and The American Revolution. $1 a piece friends. Scholastic sale and a friend who brought them to me.

My Secret Lair

So, I've been working on transforming my secret lair. It's been kind of a big project really. It's taken me about a week or so. What is my secret lair? It's a spot in one corner of my home where I create- stamped stuff and scrapbooked stuff and now even sewn stuff. That was actually the inspiration for the lair overhaul. After browsing all those sewing blogs, I felt it was time to set up the sewing machine in a permanent location. I had worked hard to do this in the opposite corner of our basement, but I found it was too difficult to keep clean and I needed more light. So, as I thought about it more, I realized I had the perfect spot. I'd add it to my lair!

You might take a peek at the original post regarding my lair, but in summary the lair was a gift from my family for completing my masters degree way back in 1999- just before moving to New York State. It's a delightful little corner on the unfinished side of our basement. My company includes Dan (his computer is behind me when I sit there) and lots of spiders.

I debated whether to give up devoted paper crafting space to our sewing, but in the end I figure the machine and the subsequent use of it will prevent the dreadful piles from getting too big. I think this is a great solution. Enjoy the tour!

This is it. My Secret Lair.

This is a close up shot of the new drawers that hold a lot of the stuff that would just sit on my work surface or on this same shelf. I needed a more efficient way to store those things I work with a lot. I used my label maker. This always brings joy to my life. Notice also the tilt bins against the wall. You just pull on the handle and the door leans out.

The sewing end of the lair- this side used to have a xyron machine which has been moved and a set of drawers that were easy for me to reach. I cleared it all out to place my machine there. Above it I put one large drawer which has my sewing notions in it, a little set of drawers for R8's notions and anything new we acquire, and a our little sewing library. Fabric will be stored in our craft corner on the other side of the room.

Underneath the counter is a set of Elfa drawers and a rolling Elfa cart. The cart holds papers and will roll out when we pull up a chair to sew.

On this side I have some of the tools of the trade at the ready. I thought about cleaning up for the picture but seriously? I am, after all, entrenched in a weekly challenge with a friend from back home (Maryland). We check in with five pages complete each week. If we've kept up with things, then on April 1st we will exchange a fun little gift of scrapbooking stuff of course.

This is the cutting counter. I put the xyron here and it's where pages and works in progress are stored. The big drawer on the bottom holds the bags I take places. I have the shelf down there holding the xyron cartridges. To the left on the floor is the problem I have left to clean up. On the floor next to the Cropper Hopper are some boxes. Mostly full of memorabilia - college and some other stuff. I'll be working on that...

The southern corner. You can see how I store a lot of single stamps in antique printer's drawers. How fun is that? Not so fun to keep clean in a basement, but that's cool. Above my boxed stamps on the top shelf are stamping accessories like embossing powder and rollers- things like that. How did I get all these stamps? By hosting stamping shows with Stampin' Up. They have a great hostess program. I'm just sayin'.

I had to include this shot of my label maker. I found a snug spot for it in its magnetic holder. In all its glory. All ready to go. Happy Sigh.

There you have it. My Secret Lair. A place of seclusion. And creativity. In the midst of busyness.

Pizza Fondue

I've only been talking about making pizza fondue for about two weeks or more. I finally did it yesterday. I went with a meatless recipe and made two batches of focaccia to go with it. R8 helped make the focaccia.

The focaccia dough ready for the oven

The fondue- it was yummy. My presentation leaves something to be desired I'm sure.

Rolling out the focaccia which I make into a flatter bread sliced in long pieces. I don't make a nice round loaf. Ignore the junk on my counter please. Tiny kitchens sometimes have messy counters. Sometimes they don't.

It was pretty good! Next time I'll put meat in it and serve it with a tossed salad. This time I went with a different green veggie. The meal did lend itself to a dinner conversation about fondue pots and the 70s. We imagined sitting around the table dipping things and eating them. We sung some disco. We reminisced about those early childhood days. Dan's family had a fondue pot. Mine did not. But I'm betting my parents did dabble in disco. Yes. I bet they did.

StartWrite

I've had a few questions about the StartWrite software that I use for handwriting and copywork. So, I thought I'd do a little feature on it here on my blog.

How do I use StartWrite?

• Make notebooks for the kids to use for dictation, Reading Made Easy, spelling, copywork
• Make full sheets to use for writing which I put in the notebook/lapbook
• Make half sheets with lines and then a blank spot for drawing a picture
• Handwriting instruction letter by letter in manuscript
• Handwriting instruction for cursive letter by letter
• Type in what my child dictates to me that I can leave lines under so he/she can copy his/her own words as copywork.
• Type in sentences for handwriting/copywork that come from our unit study topic/FIAR book for the week.

Some cool features:

• You can add pictures- color or black and white to your handwriting page
• You can make different sized handwriting sheets depending on your child's age or fine motor skills
• You have the choice of different fonts- manuscript vs. italics and of course cursive
• You can go landscape or portrait style
• You can make as much as you want!
• You don't have to purchase consumable workbooks for handwriting practice
• You can print out copywork with the traceable letters.
• You can print out copywork with the letters that have arrow marks for beginners.
• You can make a sheet with both on it plus one to just copy outright

This stack shows the bindings for the notebooks. I get them done at Staples. Though I think i will try my comb binder the next time to save a little cash.

I-6's Reading Made Easy notebook. I set up the copywork for him with the reading cues and he copies it. If I was all together I could type all this up and then have it bound. I'm not that intense. Despite what you think!

In general, he does the copywork for a lesson and we review it and he draws his own picture and writes a sentence about it the next day. You can see my written directions at the top of the second page.

I have blank books of different line sizes for free writing too.

We keep single sheets in a folder for when we need them for other studies.

R8 uses one for spelling. She has her list on one side and her paragraph using a set of the spelling words on cards on the other.

I made a cursive reference sheet and printed it on cardstock before laminating it.

That about covers it. I love this program. It's so versatile. The possibilities are endless!

Owl Moon Notebook

We finished up our study of Owl Moon this week. We spent the week doing art and some language arts. Plus, we ended up with a study of the forest mammals (remember our mural?) and of owls and tracks. We even had an Owl Moon a few nights and enjoyed some crunching in the snow.

First page in the new scrapbook notebook for I-6. We go back and forth between those and the folders for lapbooks or the pronged folders for notebooks. Whatever suits my fancy really. These came from Walmart.

We talked about mammals found in the forest. We talked about what mammals are and did some classification of mammals. The lapbook materials are from the winter kit from Hearts and Trees. She still has them for sale and is trying to sell them out because of the looming new child safety law that is wreaking havoc in the small homeschool business world. You can just purchase the pdf of the forms.

We talked about some owl basics and animals tracks. I-6 was begging to do a story using words he knows. So I chose some owl words for him. We put them on the outside of his copywork book.

I let him read each word card to me and dictate a sentence using that word. I typed it into StartWrite as he dictated them to me and when we were done, he had his copy work. Brilliant! I plan to do this often. Not his best writing, but I will say for first grade leftie boy he is coming right along. This is much improved from even earlier this school year.

Finally, a word about the virtual owl pellet site. This is even more fantastic than I had originally thought! Not only can you "dissect" the pellet, but there are also questions and activities that you can do to go along with them. We had to decide how many mice one owl had eaten. You can choose from a list of owls too and check out what the different species are prowling after. This is definitely worth a visit and all the kids had fun using it.

Snowy Art

Today we spent the morning on some art lessons. I mentioned the other day I would be using the book Storybook Art for our Owl Moon study. We read a little about the illustrator John Schoenherr and worked on a project imitating his art. Storybook Art is a fabulous resource to have on hand and for those of you who are rowers, there are quite a few FIAR titles in there.

There are a couple of things to note about this project. First, if you do not have tube watercolors in your collection, I highly recommend them. I bought a set of 18 for about $6 at a local art store. I'm sure they aren't the highest quality ever, but they are so fun! Totally worth trying out with the kids!! Once again the art palettes came in handy for the kids to experiment with the colors. Second, make sure the masking tape isn't super pressed down onto the page or you will be in some trouble when it's time to take the tape off.

The set of tube watercolors- good thing they sell them by the tube because we are just about out of white!

The kids had a great time experimenting with shades of blue and gray. Notice that elements they wanted to stay really white have tape over them.

As with most art projects, this was a family affair. J3 is painting here. You can see where his tape is and where he used black crayon for a resist. After the kids drew a sketch, they chose where to tape and used black crayon to outline a few things.

J3's painting still taped to the mat. We taped the paper so that there would be a white border when it was done.

I-6 chose some really simple shapes. He also had a great snow color.

I-6's finished product- a bit washed out in this picture. When the painting was dry, we carefully peeled the tape from the objects on the painting and from the edges.

I updated our gallery wall- finally! And take note of the pencil tree. It has a MOPS snowflake on it and a Let it Snow hanging. Remember it is staying put to help us celebrate throughout the year.

Close-ups: I-6's on top and J3's on the bottom

E10's on top- his shows a sledding hill and a lake, On bottom- R8's. She had a hard time with this one but her finished product is gorgeous. She was fussy about that tree, but it turned out so well! One other thing - some of the kids chose to sprinkle salt on their wet paint so that when it dries it will sparkle. Fun stuff!

All in all a great study today! We followed it up with a Snowy Day collage since we needed some water color papers for it. Of course I'll share pictures when they are ready.