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Getting Ready For the First Day of School

You know it's time for school when you sit on your bed on your laptop requesting books from the library. School starts tomorrow for Higher Learning Academy. We are going to use this week (a short one as we are off of school on Friday) to review and get back in the swing.

Next week we dive into our new curriculum for this year. My Father's World Creation to the Greeks. Judging by the 20 or so books I requested from the library we are going to be studying Jewish Holidays and Light.

We have a couple books I am really looking forwIard to and it is a experiment book. I will definitely be blogging more about the book.

But, for this week, we are just getting our feet wet and used to having a schedule again. Dance doesn't kick in to next week and I certainly have been lax about gymnastics. I have until Monday.

Sharing a Blog

Wanted to share a friends blog that is excellent.
http://eclectic-homeschool.blogspot.com/2010/08/mommy-grades.html?showComment=1282241449626_AIe9_BFg8vw3xdWk-iRLXNzGvTIZmzm_KbN4vbp0o9sQiWj8HrGBa2U1BSjM03ILMwASZw4N4qK1GHmWnylvMZLdFCqiGYsHA8F9PFP3tJL3N1zAgS41SDOyGCafcgzPlwDsKi_z5PPxzwei1O9CrTEoj1D2nDAQb6YdXpMwiUEMNrjHZqlNYxfHJi8V5X7ZxKl9pUgtRMorySy4-cPPec7e-P31fJO58XOPuTEeVfd0XU-mc1L56b1ys6kATSN-cyL01nFUW3LPLTccPb14rqCeEc_GejCi3vMarOjCq0czGx2bXF0nVopPOMKyUDkcJGaSR-KxYn5mtwLnDi2jBW7oK8saIrcXrJMv170QFIf-2tTDYWua87JU61cV_4ha2UefijbU5lvXynhngd64rJSgAttZVWJmoGl6WYU15No7_Y02WMmqfpiGTRpfiRKJofHEUUASvGoY81VRX6FSVZGYdYujixgHp2bikIHO5OUO_WrC_-6DPK9HAUxOS4dyulZiMIi8ZGUn7REXg4huQQ2_1qUegXcIx4TSVaO_9O7M4vjoiaGkVx48L0EuzD0B5RPQOg0eAuWLfRPP346_pF4kMf6cZtrwB6pTeXcHq4UtEYxjrY41XjiHAsNzQ3m7m3A6ZdXGzAV2ytGrnH52pAUtF_e-PvSBBhjRglvWYlG9hL0EwOcrUws7wYX_uHSn_OzGzXxluK6hHlU5TXSU2iUCGU2F8VTZlevQEgBafVzIHWUZYbjULM5X5-HNceLyULv9gOtoSziW#c6058016722773809334

I love fielding homeschool questions. I dont get offended, I use it as an opportunity to educate.

The artic (Tundra) Biomes

Court: It does take a village when it comes to sexuality

Court: It <I>does</I> take a village when it comes to sexuality

From India to China

China is just HUGE. A lot of information to try to fit into one week so I am leaving those expectations behind and concentrating on a few things.

Today we watched a video about the Great Wall on You Tube. It was done by the Travel Channel and explores the Great Wall away from the Tourism of it. The untouched parts of the wall. A very interesting fact about the wall.....
It is the only man-made structure that can be seen from a spacecraft 200 miles above the earth. Pretty cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

Another video we watched on China is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TRs2s-22tg


My 8 year old loved the fact the she would start having parties for her birthday at 1 month and would now be considered 9 years old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqIUNIE3XsQ&NR=1

Clever Summertime Learning

Clever Summertime Learning

Saudi Arabia

Today we left the country of Kenya (which Jana has enjoyed saying Can ya the last week) and headed for Saudi Arabia. We briefly touched on the Muslim faith but honestly for her it is just a story. It's all about Jesus and that's all she really knows. We keep those matters very matter of fact with her and she accepts it as it is. It is going to be a very tough country to discuss.

With science we learned of Nomads, desert people who drift to find water. We will continue on tomorrow.

Kal-Tamashaq

Found in the Sahara Desert, they are the Blue Veiled Guardians of the Sahara.

Found in the countries of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso and also in Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, and Tunisia.

Their religion is Islam

Language is Tamashaq

A Geography Curriculum Recomendation

For the last two years I have taught Geography at our co-op. The one I've spent the most time with is Evan Moor's Beginner's Geography. It is a lot of papers for teaching a co-op, but, remember I have binder issues so most of my papers turn into a book in the end. From lakes and mountains, to streams and brooks, to islands and continents, it is a wonderful way to introduce the subject of geography which is a fact filled science. Coloring, games, and puzzles have helped keep my students engaged and not just bored from fact overload.

For the last 7 weeks of our semester we did a continent study. We'd always start our lesson by singing the Seven Continent Song.....I hope I have shared that here already. We studied a continent a week and students made a project from each one to show what they "investigated" for the week. For instance, when we studied North America Jana and I included these things in our tri-folded poster:

New Jersey State Facts
Baseball
Hockey for Canada (even though it is not their National Sport which is Lacrosse) showing all the Canadian teams (Oilers, Canadiens, Senators, Canucks, Flames, Maple Leafs). This also helped us to show the provinces of Canada as they are spread from sea to sea.
Greenland
Northern Lights-who could possibly tire of seeing pictures of the Northern Lights.
Mexico traditions and foods we eat here from there (i.e. Tacos)

There are so many ways to produce different ideas with this kind of a project. Most of all, it's what interested each student, not what I told them to study.

Second

Evan Moor's World Maps & Forms

The wonderful thing about this is the maps!!!! It's definitely better for students who like geography or are in upper elementary. Lots of writing, not a bad thing in my opinion but if getting your student to write is a battle this may be a battle not worth picking. This is more straight facts. Unfortunately I've only taught this 1 semester and am now retiring from co-op so I don't have too many ideas of how to make it more interesting.

The ISBN for World Maps (a reproducible book ideal for co-op teaching) is:
978-1-55799-954-2

I cannot remember where I learned of this song or I would certainly give them the credit. This is sung to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

The Seven Continents Song
Seven continents on the globe, count them now with me
North America, South America, Africa makes three.
Europe, Asia, Australia, are three more I know
Don't forget Antarctica, that's seven way to go!

Kenya

We left Germany this week and flew across the Mediterranean to the continent of Africa (one thing I've stressed a million times this week, is continents-countries-towns, etc. and I think it is finally starting to be remembered) to the country of Kenya. A few of the neat things we have learned so far:

1. The equator runs right through it.
2. Kenya is almost the size of Texas, almost.
3. Most of the country is desert.
4. Lake Victoria is the 2nd largest freshwater lake in the world.
5. Farming and Ranching are the main occupations.
6. Corn is the most grown crop and a main part of Kenyan diets.
7. The life expectancy is only 44 years of age (and being almost 41 I can't tell you how sad that is).
8. Wildlife-zebras, warthogs, rhino's giraffe's help fuel their tourism industry.

We ended our Africa study today with Count Your Way Through Africa in Swahili.

Riffi Berbers

There are many religions in the world and I do not claim to know every single one of them, but, sometimes you come across one that is like, WOW REALLY? I had that experience this week in our Window on the World lesson.

Berbers of the Rif Mountain Range North of Morocco. 1.500,000 live there. (est)

They are mainly farmers.

We looked at a holiday they celebrate.....the feast of Eid-el-Kabir. Muslims sacrifice a sheep to celebrate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice "Ishmael" - not Isaac as Christians know it. Genesis 22.

There were Berber Christians in the years following Jesus' death. Some even died for their faith. The church grew smaller . AD1100 there were no Berber Christians. Thankfully they are starting to follow Jesus more.

More information covered in Germany

Neuschwanstein Castle- this is the castle Disney is based off of. Located in the Bavarian Alps and built by "Mad King" Ludwig who cared more for the arts than anything else.

Autobahn- traveling in speed over 120 mph is not uncommon on this road. The average speed is 80mph which is well over the speeds on US highways.

Germany's most important business_ the Daimler-Benz Company producer of the Mercedes-Benz car.

Jacob & Wilheim Grimm the writers of many fairy tales including Snow White, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood. For many years these stories were not written by passed down by word of mouth.

Black Forest or Schwarzwald. Like any other forest the trees are green not black. It is called the black forest because the trees are so dense barely any light can reach the forest floor.

Rhine River- The water in the Rhine is blue. It is the busiest water system in the world and runs 800 miles through Germany. The river runs South to North through Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands then empties into the North Sea.

Germany

We left the country of England and landed in Germany last week There's so much to learn of Germany. There are so many cultures to learn in this curriculum. I am thankful that I am also teaching a World Maps class at co-op and we are making a binder of many maps from around the corner that are age appropriate. Evan Moore has wonderful geography programs for elementary students (and probably for older as well, I'm just not there yet).

The Berlin wall, we watched some great You Tube videos, but, explaining to a 8 year old how things were under Hitler was very hard. I am a World War II history buff and I read everything on the 101st Airborne in WWII and can basically recite their entire tour( ok, enough detail on my little obsession) but, those facts are for middle school. For now, we talk basics. I was surprised that she loved learning about why the wall was built and very thankful that "not very nice people who hurt other people for no reason" at times was good enough. Man is brutal with man, but, at 8 she really doesn't need to dive into those details just yet.

Here are the links to a few of the videos we watched......


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnCPdLlUgvo&feature=related
Peter Jennings on ABC News

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oanmD3HHv4M&feature=channel
ABC News

Mercury and Venus will be visible in the sunset sky!!

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2010/31mar_sunsetplanets.htm?list1117156

This is totally cool. I will be looking.

England

We are using My Father's World and one of the hardest things I've found this year is the amount of time we spend studying a certain country. I think for an older grade it would be fine, but, I find with my 3rd grader, she is ready to move on after a week or so.

Today we left France, (partly, there are still a few more things to do, but I will use them in review instead of as part of her lesson now, like building our Eiffel Tower)and entered England. We will stay there for the rest of this week and then we are off to Germany.

Today we learned about the flag and where it came from, St. George. I did not know that. We are still utilizing Iknowthat.com and all that they have as games for my daughter. She has even enjoyed playing the math games.

A Homeschool Day in the Sun at the Zoo

Sometimes we just need to put the books aside and remind ourselves why we home school. Well, one of the reasons we home school, flexibility.
Today my husband took off of work and we slept in (we all really needed it before the Easter holiday hits) and then went to the Philadelphia Zoo as they were offering discount tickets and free parking!
Unfortunately, my daughter still hasn't seen an elephant in person. We've been to three. But she did get to learn that they are endangered by the graph they used to show the dwindling numbers. They had two tubes set up. One side was filled with tons of little elephants showing the numbers from years past. On the right was a similar tube and to see how many little elephants are in there you have to look under the table. That's a really hard lesson to learn for a 8 year old. How we as humans destroy the environment that God has given us. How we take advantage of our surroundings sometimes (and when I say we here I'm not referring to any particular person, haha, long story). When we studied South America we took a really in depth look at the endangered species of the Rain Forest. I think seeing the tube really helped! I do have a picture somewhere and when I get to it I will add it to this blog. It is definitely something that could be reproduced in the home.
The weather today was a warm as I can handle it being so I am very happy we took the time to get outside after all this rain we have had.

Cursive Writing Worksheets

Cursive Writing Worksheets

Blogged with the Flock Browser

The End of Norway- Land of the Midnight Sun

This week we are packing our bags, grabbing our passports and saying goodbye to Norway. I have always loved learning and find it fascinating the facts you remember and relearn through homeschooling in elementary. We learn so much through school.

This is just a list of some of the facts we learned (and for me, re-learned) concerning Norway:

1. The bodies of water surrounding Norway are the Norwegian Sea and the North Sea.

2. Part of Norway lie on the Arctic Circle, or as we say, brrrr.

3. Aurora Borealis, Northern Lights. I find them absolutely incredible. If there is something I would want to do before I pass, it's see the Northern Lights in person.

4. The Olympics were held in Lillehammer in 1984 (so happens as we studied Norway the Olympics were being held in Vancouver).

Books-
We really enjoyed reading the book The Day Hans Got His Wiay by David Lewis Atwell. I can see us reading it again in the future. It has a very good life lesson as well.

Welcome Back Sun by Michael Emberley. A story about the dark months from September through March and how the people try to hasten to arrival of spring and the sun.

Recipes-
Friday we are cooking making two recipes from Norway-

1. Fruit Soup and 2. KRAM.

Music-
We have also been singing a Norwegian Song in our Wee Sings book. (Music from around the world) Row, Row Little Frogs. Jana has even started to sing it on her own. No song does she sing as much as Going Over The Sea, which is a song we learned studying Canada.


Next stop...................France. Jana wants to learn French and we are starting now that we are arriving in France next week. Hopefully that will "all come back" as well. It's been years since I've spoken French.

Online Math Curriculum - Time4Learning

Online Math Curriculum - Time4Learning

Back to Co-op

We went back to co-op on Monday. With all the snow we've been getting this year (and I am not complaining) we have had off for weeks now.

When we first started to go we went at 9am and Jana took 3 class' while I taught 1. (She has always been in my class' and I generally teach geography). It was insane as we are NOT morning people. I tried to conform, but, being a musician it just isn't possible at all. So I delayed out entry until 10am. At that point I was teaching two class', middle school history (the exact title was Exploring World War II with the 101st Airborne), as well as geography.

This year with my work schedule (I am working 5 nights out of the week) and being at church until 9pm on Sunday I realized 11am is the perfect time for us to go in. It also helped that I was in the dreaded boot for the 1st semester. Getting out of the door was hard.

I am teaching a World Maps class. I love geography and I love reading maps. I have a pretty good class that really seems to like geography. My daughter does as well.

After lunch Jana plays chess. She definitely understands more than me. I spend my time in the class listening and helping with discipline if need be. Usually I get to work on our lesson plans for the week or for our next class. We meet once a week on Monday but I find if I don't jump on class quickly time will get away from me.

One thing we have started to do in our regular curriculum (My Father's World) is keep a geography vocabulary box. We write the definitions on cards and keep them alphabetically in a recipe box. We found one at the dollar store that even came with dividers. It reminds me of the U.S. History book we made last year. We can always reference back to it in later years because it is organized so well.

We are still in the country of Norway and will be leaving for France. There is so much to study about France. Before we depart Norway (my daughter actually uses a passport when we "travel" to another country), we are going to experiment with some Norwegian cooking. I will post the recipes and pictures as we progress.

Valentine's Homeschool Party

I remember the day very well. We were at the library for storytime and crafts and the craft was for all the children's Valentine Parties they would have at school. Jana's head whipped around and I could see it in her eyes "they have parties at school?". So, that would be the last Valentine's Day that we were without a Co-op. We joined Living Water Home Educators that spring.
Today was the annual Valentine's Day party for LW so we put the books aside for the day. It's not a huge deal but Jana loves it. We get together and the kids do a craft and exchange cards and candy according to age groups. They play some games as well. Most importantly though, it gives Jana a chance to have a school feel without having to depend on sending her to public school to get that. I really love the variety homeschooling gives. It's the best of both worlds.

Schooling on a Snow Day

I found out today that snow falling in huge amounts is a great motivator for getting your schoolwork done. Granted since daddy was home I shortened her school day but we got some work done. We were supposed to be on a field trip to the New Jersey State Museum. Not many people were out and about today in what is now known as the Blizzard of 2010.
Someone shared a cool new website with me so I am going to post it here to share as well. I love geography and agree with my friend Amy that games make it more fun than the pounding of facts. I have a book I love to use as well called the Geography Bowl. MFW curriculum also includes a geography game as we travel around continents.


http://www.iknowthat.com/com

Homeschool Tennis Day. Great sport for younger children.

Homeschooling

This is my first blog here. I wanted to leave my other (Random Thoughts-to be just that-random thoughts and my opinions). This one I am totally dedicating to our homeschooling journey.
We are from New Jersey and are using My Father's World. We have since K. My daughter is in 3rd grade and we are using Exploring Cultures and Countries.
Today we left South America and the country of Brazil to go to Europe and visit our first country of Norway.

Valentine Exchange

This year a fellow home schooler and friend told us about a yahoo group for home schoolers that is a penpal group. (Wow, I really surprised at that sentence since I teach grammar). I decided as an incentive to write, and also what kid doesn't like to get mail, to let Jana participate. Thankfully she has a great friend now who really likes to write her and keeps the ideas coming of subjects to write about. I was blessed enough to find her mother on facebook as well so now they can share more pictures and really get to "see" each other.

Another first for us this year is the Valentine Exchange. The cards could not be bought at the store. They had to be handmade. Our schedule is one of running and God blessed me two ways......
1. The homeschool toolbar which has so many link buttons to so many things. We decided on something simple but yet still fun to do together without tons of mess and tons of time. I admit that Art is not my art of choice (music and dance.

and

2. About 2 feet of snow. We were shut in and off from the studio and just about everything else for two days. Church services were even cancelled from the storm.


Geography is one of my stronger subjects and one that I enjoy teaching at our co-op as well. So, I am using this experience to reinforce her learning of the 50 states. The World just seems larger to a 8 year old girl with big dreams :).

Today we received two Valentine's from siblings in New York. That's an easy state for her because we have family there and I play there often. I am going to pull out our 50 state binder from last year so we can review the state facts (My Father's World - Adventures curriculum) and look at the Atlas from towns in New York. I love google and am addicted to "typing" information that I need to know.

Thankfully we met the deadline as well by the way. We were at the Post Office before 4pm and sent them on their way.................just before the next foot of snow falls.