Officially in 3rd Grade

I can't believe we on our 5th year of our homeschooling adventure. My Little Guy just started 3rd grade at the beginning of this month. He is doing wonderful so far. We haven't been struggling and school is being completed in a reasonable amount of time. Of course his favorite subjects are still Math, History and Science. He is improving in reading, thankfully. I was so concerned about issues with that. He's been reading Flat Stanley by himself at night for a half an hour before bed. We made a Flat Stanley of our own and is currently off on it's first adventure with my Mother-In-Law. I am hoping that this proves to be an adventurous year for him and myself.

Excited about 3rd grade

is enjoying seeing Lil' Man's face light up as he is getting out his new 3rd grade books and

 seeing ones that he loved from 2nd grade for 3rd graders. He is so excited and actually

 jumping for joys, hugging me and say I LOVED THIS BOOK, I am so glad that they have it

 in a 3rd grade edition Mommy.

Sum, Sum, Summer Time!!!

Okay once again time has just gotten away from me. I will have to go back when I have some downtime (ROFLOL, what is that???? not sure what downtime is anymore). Who would have thought that homeschooling 1 would be so time consuming? I guess you could say that busy is an understatement. My health for the past year has also played a huge part in my downtime. I have another blog about that subject, so I will digress. Lil' Man has grown so much this past year. He turned 8 in May. Hard to believe. He had a Phineas and Ferb birthday party with his friends at a local park. We did some science experiments, in addition to the just plain playing and having fun. We finished up Sonlight Core C at the end of May. We will be doing Core D in the fall. We have been wrapping up all our other curriculum as the summer has progressed. I am a stickler about finishing all the workbooks and completing all the assignments. We basically school through out the year, a littler lighter in the summer time. I like to do a bridge program with him, to help keep things fresher for him. This was recently shown to be a positive thing to me, we took off the first 3 weeks of June for a surgery and recovery time for me and then we had company. After just 3 weeks of being off, it was just way to hard to regain focus and get back into the rhythm of things for Lil' Man. He finished his 2nd year of tap dancing in May. He took his first year of Piano this past school year. His teacher offers summer classes for the months of June and July, so we continued with them. He'll have August off. Swimming Lessons are planned for this month. He is in a Bowling League for the summer. So far he's been enjoying that. This is his first experience without bumpers. He's also been taking a monthly 2 hr Monart Workshop for pretty much the past year (only missed 2 months -- 1 because he didn't want to draw bugs and the other because there wasn't enough interest). We're going to be beginning a lapbook next week about Chocolate. We are looking forward to that. Of course there will be tasting the different types of chocolate, cooking with it and we are even going to be making chocolate from scratch (found a really neat Make Your Own Chocolate Kit). Who says science has to be boring? He is signed up for another year of Tap. He finished up Sparks (Awana's) and will be starting the TNT (Truth and Training) Awana's Series in the Fall. He completed 2 Awana's book last school year. He was so excited to have made such an accomplishment. We have been doing History Pockets this summer also Life in Plymouth Colony and Native Americans, while we have been reading American Pioneers and Patriots. I choose to do a summer history lesson with him because he was so upset when we end Mystery of History vol. II. We are looking forward to starting Mystery of History vol. III in the fall. Of course he was also upset when Math-U-See was completed. Luckily, we had a few other Math workbooks to complete. This seems to have kept him happy. However those are almost completed now too, so I will have to print of worksheets from Math-U-See's website. Well that about it in a nutshell for an update. I hope to be able to go back and put in some more specific updates from the past year. God Bless!

The Big 8

Lil' Man turned 8 a few weeks ago. Today we had his birthday party with his friends.

Phineas and Ferb was the theme (of course!!! LOL!!!) He loves this show and so do we, it's very creative and I must say that we've only encountered 2 episodes that we deemed unwatchable.

Playing in the sand together! They were building Kidsboro (Adventures in Odyssey) 

Blowin Out the Candles

Soda Gyser (need I say more -- as you can see by the picture we did more than one. This one was much better than the first. The bottle was agitated a little before it was loaded, it seemed to increase the effect of the gyser going off)

Worms (Science Project)

Showing off one of his worms

Some of the kiddos with their worms

Mini Native American Artifacts

  

The Canoe

The Teepee

Arrowhead necklace

I found these cute little Native Indian leather craft  and necklace kits for Lil' Man to do while we are learning about Native Americans. He really enjoyed doing them. Especially the leather ones.

Health Experiment with an Egg and Vinegar

This is an experiment that we recently did in health, regarding teeth and the importance of brushing them consistently. The experiment is a simple one, all you will need is 1 fresh egg (do not crack or break it, it needs to be whole), a small container with a lid and vinegar (enough to cover the egg). The egg represents your teeth and the vinegar represents the acids that food create in your mouth. It shows what the acid does to the enamel on your teeth overtime if you didn't brush regularly (it eats away at the enamel, which is why you get cavities). This experiment will take 96 (4 days) hours to conduct. I had my son look at it everyday, so he could notices the small changes that were going on with the egg. Place your fresh egg in the small container and pour the vinegar over the egg. I found that over the time, the gases that are building up seemed to push the lid off the container if I completely sealed it, so just place the lid loosely over the container (it helps to cut down on the smell). After 4 days, you can throw this experiment away, but I think that what really made the point to my son was when he gently poked the egg with this finger and it broke the egg so easily. He was able to see that only the thin lining of the shell was left, all the actual shell was gone.
Please note: that our enamel on our teeth is made of calcium and that the shell on the egg is made of similar material. When we eat food, the saliva in our mouth helps to break down the food. But it can also break down the enamel on our teeth. Below are pictures from our experiment over the 96 hours.


24 hours after we placed the egg in the vinegar


48 hours after we placed the egg in the vinegar


72 Hours after we placed the egg in the vinegar


96 Hours after we placed the eggin the vinegar (last day of the experiment)


After lil' man gently poked the egg with his finger


What is left of the shell after 96 hours in vinegar

So, So Far Behind

Just realized that I have not updated this blog since July of 2010. I am going to go back through the past 6 months and try to update the blog as best I can. Please look from July 2010 until Jan 2011 for updated posts. Sorry for the neglect. God Bless and Thank you for reading my blog

Lil Man went to the doctor yesterday because he had some funkiness going on between his big toe and the "pointer" toe. She thinks it's a combination of a few things (caused by sweaty feet from tap and just being in shoes and socks), ezcema, callouses, corns and possibly warts. So she has him soaking his feet nightly and me filing them and apply medicine, along with keeping his feet aired out and putting on clean fresh socks immediately after he changes out of his tap shoes. Praying it takes care of this for him. I feel so bad for him.