Libby took her first test in English this week. She was a little concerned that she wouldn't do well. I don't know why she passed and the only mistakes were in her writing that has to do with her dyslexia so we don't count that.

This week we will be studying vampire myths and folklore and also vampire bats. We will compare the two and see what they have in common. today was the start of our talks on vampire bats and vampires. Liberty started off writing down what she knew about vampire bats and what myths she already knew about vampires. Teyla and Landon helped out with this too. We then started our talks on vampire bats. The first thing we talked about were how bats use their sense of smell and hearing to find their babies in a nursery that has over 500 babies in it and only having one baby to find. To demonstrate this. I glued 500 cotton balls on to a piece of paper. I then took 3 bats made out of construction paper and put vanilla, almond or lemon extract on them and gave one bat to each kid. I then put blind folds on the kids, while they were smelling their mommy bat I put lemon, vanilla, and almond extract on 9 cotton  bats. Liberty, Teyla, and Landon each had a turn to swoop into the bat nursery and find their bats, they each had 3 bats to find.

After each mommy bat found all 3 of their baby bats by using only their sense of smell we talked about how real vampire bats use not only their sense of smell but also their sense of hearing. So to demonstrate this we talked about how mommy bats and baby bats communicate by a series of clicks. I sent Liberty and Teyla into the front room. Liberty was the mommy bat and Teyla was the baby bat, they had to come up with their series of clicks. Landon and I did the same thing. I being the mommy bat and Landon being the baby We then headed outside. Liberty and I put blindfolds on Teyla and Landon flew around making their series of clicks while Liberty and I made our clicks and flew around trying to find them. After each of us found our babies we talked about which was easier using both senses or by using just the sense of smell.

Tomorrow we will be talking about how they use vibrations and talk about sound waves, we will also be discussing more on their amazing hearing. We will also start talking more about Vampires and the folklore behind them. Hopefully we will make an origami  Dracula and we also have a bat cave we are suppose to construct.

We are doing are regular work too, English, math, reading, spelling, and some Heritage studies, we are not doing our science curriculum and only a little Heritage studies because I'm counting our Vampire and vampire bat study in their places. 

Teyla is doing really well in reading. I'm very proud of her. She has been reading short stories in her reading book all on her own.  In math she is working on picture graphs and also her numbers 10 through 20. Her English goes along with her reading, she is working on sight words here, the, love, this and all color words. She still seems to enjoy school and works hard.

Liberty's is working on place values in the thousands right now. She really struggled last year with  place value with math u see, but seems to be picking it up with out any problems. In fact she flew through today's assignment without any problems. In reading we are cruising right along. We have been doing exercises that are suppose to help her brain to recognize letters and words correctly. I honestly have to say I think they are truly working. She still has her problems, but not as often and she doesn't seem to get as frustrated as she use to. 

Landon does school when he feels like it, which is most days. He is working on his letter and numbers also on following directions and making pictures out of  geometric shapes.

I am really proud of the kids and how hard they work. It isn't always smooth and we have our rough days but all in all I think this year has been a pretty good one so far.

A week of field trips

This week we have been busy working away.

In science we talked about how advertisements and commercials claim that their product is the best product to do a certain job. I asked how can you tell whether their claim is true. Can both have the same claim and both be right? Of course not, one has to be better than the other.


We took two brands of paper towels that both claim to soak up the most liquid and we put them to the test. We chose Bounty and Viva, both brands claimed to soak up the most liquid on the front of their packaging.  We marked the brands A and B. Liberty made a hypothesis on which one she thought would soak up the most and we went to work to see.

We first filled up two dishes with 400 ml of water, and marked them with A and B. We then put each paper towel in their proper container. Liberty timed them letting them soak for 30 seconds. We took them out and set them aside. Liberty then re measured each bowl of water and wrote down the results. In our experiment Bounty was brand A and Viva was Brand B. A Bowl had 325 ml of water left and  bowl B had 350 ml of water left. Bounty's claim in our experiment was the one that won.

                                            Liberty timing how long the paper towels are soaked

Teyla is still studying senses in Science we only to science two or 3 times a week with her. On Tuesday Teyla had an experiment on distinguishing smells. I took a lemon slice, baby powder,  a peppermint candy, an orange slice, and some cinnamon and placed each thing in their own cup. I covered them with foil and poked some wholes in them. Teyla then had to smell each cup then write down what she thought was in each cup. She then looked in each cup and checked to see if what she smelled was correct. We talked about how some things smell like other things and some things are just have a very distinctive smell, like oranges and lemons.

On Wednesday Morning we took a trip out to the Humane Society. Michelle was kind enough to schedule it and include us. We took a tour of the facility where they told us what they were all about. They talked about the care of the animals and how before any of the animals can be adopted they have to pass a check list. Among those things are the animals have to be spade or neutered. After the tour they watched a video on animal safety. It was about how to go about petting dogs that don't belong to us, and what to do when they see a dog they don't know. After the video they had a test over the video. It was a fun test. Oreo a very cute 2 month old puppy was brought into the room. They had to go up and follow the instructions on the video for meeting a new dog. Everyone did great and all were able to pet the puppy and even got to feed him a treat. That was then end of our field trip, but they said we could go in and pet the kitties if we liked and of course we liked. We had a great time giving all those kitties attention, before we left we went into the store. They have stuff for dogs and cats toys and food and other such things, all proceeds go to helping out the animals. We decided that we would buy our pets something a little special as our souvenir from our field trip.

When we got home we talked about fire prevention. Watched a video over it and then took a test. Each of the kids past and became Jr. Fire Marshall's. Leland's work in sponsoring a fire prevention poster contest so the two girls got to work on making a poster. The theme for the poster was "Protect Your Family From Fire".  Here are their posters.

This was a week of field trips. On Thursday we went  and watched Dolphin Tale. Liberty this year is doing two curriculum's for science. Bob Jones and Apologia. In Apologia we are are studying mammals, so I thought Dolphin Tale would be a great movie to watch. I gotta say it was an amazing movie and I'm glad we were able to watch it.

Tomorrow we have a field trip planned to Walter's Pumpkin Patch so I'm sure there will be lots of pictures.

Plants and Apple Pie

This week in school we have been playing catch up. It's hard to believe that we've already fallen behind, but we have. I am not going to worry to much, I figure we will get caught up and if we don't we will just take some extra days and finish what we need to finish at the end of school. That's the great thing about home schooling, it's very flexible.

This next week in Science both girls will be doing some experiments so we will have some fun things to talk about.

Liberty finished up her first chapter in math this week, so she reviewed and then took a test on Wed. She missed two so ended up getting a 93% which of course is awesome,but the two problems she missed were things she knew. She missed them because she wasn't paying attention, she added when she should have subtracted and vice versa.  She was mad because she missed them, so I'm hoping she learned her lesson and next time she won't rush through it and make the same kind of mistakes.


This week was our monthly class at Botanica. The kids did an experiment where they had to find out if all flowers have the same amount of petals. They broke off into groups and each group had a daisy. They very carefully pulled the petals off and then counted them and wrote their answer down.  They then compared with the other groups and came to the conclusion that all flowers do not have the same amount of petals. They also started a growing bean experiment that they got to bring home that they will be watching through out this month. After class we of course had to go check out the butterfly house and then go to the children's garden.

This Friday we had a baking day. We had to go to the store to get supplies so we threw some math in to the works by having Liberty look at the price of each item we bought and then she had to round to the nearest dollar. At the end of our shopping trip she had estimated  that our total would be  38 dollars. We checked out and our total was 43 dollars. She then had to figure out how much she was off by. 

Teyla had to count the amount of each item we bought and she was the one who read the numbers off for Liberty.  Landon put the things we bought into like groups.

When we got home we baked apple pies. We have so much fun making pies and the kids enjoy peeling the apples. 

We made 4 pies in all, we delivered one to Grandma and Grandpa, one to Grammy and PopPop, one will go to work with Daddy and then we made one for home. 

We had a good week this week productive and fun.

School at Disney

Our trip to Disney was a vacation, but I did count some of it as school days, mainly the days we went to Epcot and to Animal Kingdom. Now I just didn't count them as school and leave it at that, Liberty and Teyla both had work to do while we there, but it was fun and they really didn't see it as work. While we were walking through the countries in Epcot they had to  write two facts about the country, they had to tell me about something that was different from what we do in the USA and then they had to tell me about something that was similar to what we do in the USA. Example  In Italy Liberty said:

  Pizza was invented in Naples,  

buon giornio means hello

Pizza in Italy is similar to Pizza in the USA                                              

In Italy instead of Santa Claus La Befana delivers gifts to children.

In Epcot we also learned from the land and sea which was more of hands on learning. Disney is really like the a big field trip. They are so good at making things educational yet lots of fun too.

While we were in Animal Kingdom there were 6 clubs found throughout the park that let the kids explore nature’s wonders through hands-on experiences as constructing dinosaur bones, going on a scavernger hunt and becoming a wildlife detective. When the kids finished each activity they got a stamp on their book that showed they finished each club. They also had the conservation station where they were able to go in anc watch as they were sewing a fish fin back on. It had been in Typhoon lagoon and another fish attacked it and tore it’s fin. It was quite interesting to watch. They would let us know step by step what they were doing. They also learned about food preparation and what was needed to keep the animals healthy through out the park.

Animal Kingdom gave us a lot of learning experiences that I just let them soak in and learn naturally.

When we got back from Disney we took a couple of unscheduled days off due to me not feeling well. Thursday we did go to the home school day at the zoo. The girls both sat in on a class about why it is important to keep our ponds, rivers and lakes clean and then  a class on sharks. I was not with them, because I went to story time with Landon. He got to listen to a story called Is Your Mom and Llama. In the story it had many different animals in it and they were told a little fact about each animal. When the story was over they got look and touch llama hair, an ostrich egg, some duck feathers, and some other objects that belonged to the animals in the story.

After the classes were over we of course explored the zoo on our own and had a great time watching all the animals. I think watching the otters is one of our favorite things to do that and the gorillas. We were able to be at the gorilla's when it was feeding time, that was fun to watch.

On Friday we took a field trip to Botanica, this was a last min field trip, but we enjoyed the sensory garden and looking at the different flowers and we of course had to go over the the children's area where the kids enjoyed themselves immensely.

This coming week we will be back to the normal grind of the school week. Liberty will start Mythology class with Aunt Michelle and Dimera and then we will have another class at Botanica. On Friday we are going to have  baking day were we will be making apple pies and probably some applesauce too. It should be a fun week.

First Dance class

Monday was the girls' first day of dance class. It's always a big day. It's fun for them to try and figure out which room they are going to be in and which teacher they will get.

This year is Teyla's first year on the bar, which is a big thing. She was so excited to find out she was going to be on bar. This year her teacher is Ms. Lori and a student teacher. Teyla couldn't remember the student teachers name. She has a nice size class this year, including her there are 6. Bella is the only one she has had dance class with before and that was 2 years ago, but I am not too worried about her making friends, she is a very good friend maker

Liberty this year has a very big class, she has including herself 12 girls in class. She too is in Ms. Lori's class, Teyla leaves her class and Liberty goes into class.Liberty was very excited to learn that she has her two best dance friends back in class with her. Megan and Mallory, Megan was able to come to Libby's party over the summer and spent the night once too. So to have them was nice, especially since the class is so big and we have never met any of the other girls before.  Liberty's class is an hour and 15mins so the two little ones and I usually leave and run errands or find a park to play at while Libby is dancing. Sitting to much longer than Tey's class and Landon starts being a grump, but who can blame him, it's not fun being quiet and sitting still.

I didn't get as many of Libby's class since we had to leave, but she said she had a lot of fun and was glad

to be back to dance class.

3rd week

So in the midst of getting ready for our vacation, I also have to continue to do school.

We are officially in our 3rd week of school it seems like that isn't possible, but it's true. I have been pleasantly surprised that  school has been running as smooth as it has been. The first day I was a little worried, but after making a couple of changes and getting my schedules up where I can see them, things have been running smoothly.

On Thursday of last week we had a field trip to the zoo, we worked it into Science for both girls. In Science Liberty is learning about Vertebrates and Invertebrates, so while at the zoo she had to identify 3 different types of vertebrates one from each group of amphibians, reptiles, and fish. I had pictures of her choices, but sadly I erased them while trying to make space for Toy Story on Ice pictures. I thought I had them protected, but I was mistaken. I do have some pictures that I took at the zoo with my phone that I will share.

Teyla is studying her 5 senses in science, so while we were at the petting zoo she had to tell me how she was using her senses and she had to give me an example of the senses she could use and then explain to me what senses she couldn't use and why. Touching of course was when she pet the sheep and goats. Seeing was looking at all the animals and all the surroundings. Hearing she identified sounds before she saw them, such as a peacock calling out. Smell she said she could smell all the stinky little piggies. Of course she didn't use her sense of taste. I asked her why and she said because it would be just nasty to taste the animals food.

In mathLiberty is reviewing but learning all at the same time. We are working on Identity property of addition, Subtraction strategies and zero property and the Associative and commutative property of addition. We are also working on fact families. Now I myself am not fond of math, but I am enjoying this curriculum and I am learning new things too. This is just a basic thing but we are learning fact families. I have never heard of fact families like these. An example  6, 7, 13 are a family because 6+7 =13, 7+6 =13, 13-6 =7, and 13-7=6. I can't tell you how much this would have helped me in math if I would have learned  this way. I might have even enjoyed math. We and I really mean we are learning how to count without using our fingers by learning different little tricks. One example is adding 9 when you are adding 9 to another number such as 7 instead of counting 9 you round 9 up to 10 and then add 7 which of course gives you 17 and then you subtract 1 and get 16. Let me tell you I have never enjoyed math because I just couldn't  get it, this I get and Liberty does too. Don't get me wrong I scraped by in math and did enough to get by, but I think if I started out with these basics I would have done so much more than scrape by.

Teyla in math is working on numbers to 10 identifying and writing them. This is a review and she is doing awesome with it and in fact will be taking her first ever math test tomorrow. When she found out she was going to take a test she freaked out a little, but I reassured her that it wasn't a big deal and that she knew everything that was going to be on the test so she had nothing to worry about.

In English Liberty is reviewing. We have been talking about the parts of sentences and also the 4 types of sentences. Telling, Question, Command and exclamation. Tomorrow we will be moving on to combining subjects and predicates.

Teyla's reading, English and phonics are all linked together, right now she is learning the word families it and in. She also has two sight words here and I. Tomorrow Teyla will read her first story. I am really amazed how she just picks things up so quickly.

Liberty in reading is already on her 2nd or 3rd story and is doing awesome, this year on Fridays instead of doing her reading curriculum she will read in a chapter book and when she is finished with the book she will have a quiz over the book to see how well she retained all that she read. This will not happen until after our trip to Disney.

Teyla  is super excited about the fact that she gets to do Heritage Studies, so excited in fact that Heritage Studies is all she could talk about when talking to Grammy who had been gone for a week. Right now she is learning about the earth and sea.  She has learned that  large and small bodies of water are held in low places on earth and that oceans and continents are the largest bodies of water and masses on earth.  We talked about the different continents and which continent she lived on and then she got to put continent puzzles together.  We will be discussing maps and directions in our next lesson. 

Liberty has yet to start Heritage Studies, I forgot to order a workbook that is pretty important for her class, so we are on hold until it gets here, hopefully it gets here before we leave for Florida, but if it doesn't it isn't a big deal.

Landon is really surprising me on how much he wants to do school. Last year he really had nothing to do with it, and this year he is a little eager beaver. He is working on writing his letters and numbers on his own and of course knowing them by sight. He really enjoys working on his fine motor skills with his cutting and pasting book. He is also quite the drawer.

So right now we haven't had a lot of  picture taking experiences, but the kids are enjoying school and learning and that's all that counts. 

Check back later this week we will have our first Botanical class and I'm sure lots of pictures to go along with it.

Raggedy Ann's Birthday

Today is Raggedy Ann's 93rd Birthday. She was introduced to the world on Sept. 7th 1918. The funny little rag doll is a house hold name, so in honor of her Birthday the kids and I threw her a party. We made a cookie cake with sprinkles and Invited her and Andy to join us for her party. Grammy and PopPop joined us too. The festivities started out by me reading about one of the many adventures that Raggedy Ann and Andy went on this particular one was called Raggedy Ann in Cookie Land. We thought this was an appropriate story since we were having a cookie cake. The story ended up being pretty long so we will finish it tonight before bed. We then  gathered around to sing Happy Birthday to Raggedy Ann. The kids wanted real candles but we settled for pretend candles we didn't want Raggedy Ann to end up in flames that would have been a sad ending to our party. We sang Happy Birthday we all enjoyed our cookie cake and then we played some party games. Ring around the Rosie and duck duck goose. It was a fun party enjoyed by all.

After all the fun I read a few facts about Raggedy Ann. Did you know that the first doll had brown hair instead of the well known red hair?

More than 10 million copies of Raggedy Ann and Andy stories have been sold.

Those are just a couple that I read, the kids really enjoyed learning all about the famous rag doll and I had a great time learning about her too. Thanks Michelle for all your help. 

First Day of School

Today was our first day of school and to be honest with you, it came out of no where. I could have sworn I had another week to get things ready. I did however pull it all together finished the school room, got all the books organized, luckily I had finished the lesson plans last week or we may have not been able to have our First Day of school today.

The kids woke up, who am I kidding I woke the kids up bright and early, made them pancakes that spelled out school and they had kool aid to wash it down with. They got on their Brand new first day of school outfits and then we headed outside to take first day of school pics and to shoot their sillies out. The kids got to pic out two cans of silly string to shoot all of their sillies out so they could focus and be ready for their first day. It's a lot of fun for them and it actually does help them to get all those sillies out. If the dang spray wasn't so expensive I would have them do it on a daily basis.

                                      Yummy Breakfast

       Aunt Michelle and Uncle Michael gave the kids flowers and a card for their first day of school

                   

Getting their sillies out

School started and to be honest it's going to take a little while to get use to the schedule. I have it so when Libby is doing her Journal I am doing something with Teyla and Landon, and then I have it where the two little ones are doing something that they don't need help with I'm working on subjects with Libby. It's a vice versa kinda deal, and it seemed to work out today, but I need to put up the schedule in the room. I have it in the grade book but I have to flip back and forth, quite frankly it's a pain, but I figure if I can get it up on the wall in here it will be a lot easier to do.

Today we mostly just looked through our books, but there were a couple of subjects we did some work on just so I could see if my plans would work out. It works out great as long as I know what I am doing.

Tonight happen to be Family Night at the Museum of World Treasure so before our trip there we made a trip over to see the kid's new baby cousin baby Johnnie, and then made a bee line to go and see their Grandpa in the hospital. Baby Johnnie was adorable and very sweet. Grandpa was his old story telling self so I knew he was feeling pretty good, after we made out little side trips we were off to the Museum of World treasure. It is a pretty neat little museum the kids really enjoy it, especially the kids area.

It was a busy but fun first day of school, hopefully tomorrow won't be quite as busy. I will be stopping in here and blogging every couple of days, so please feel free to save this to your favorites and check back in every once in a while