Monday, April 28, 2008

Legos: one of the greatest learning tools ever made!!!
Last week out of A Child's History of the World we read Ch.21-All the Way Around the World in China. And then we also use the Usborne Ancient World, and they had a great picture of The Great Wall of China.
So.... Riley built the wall! And then took the picture all by himself!
Here is the Ancient World page about the great wall.
For his timeline picture for this lesson I think we will print out this picture of his Lego wall, I think he will really like that!!
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On other fronts, I have to get going on figuring out what I am planning for Jake this next school year as he will officially be "Kindergarten Age"!! But he is still a young guy and so we will be taking it easy. But he LOVES letters and can not wait to read, so I am thinking we may end up diving into that later in the year. I have a couple GREAT sites for that, I will share later. But for today you get free sites about kindergarten! I was compiling this list for a friend who is just getting her feet wet in this crazy (but great) endeavor of homeschooling and thought it was a great list to share here. These are all sites I have had in my "schooling" bookmarks for a while, but they are all great! :) Hope they are helpful, and PLEASE if you have any other FREE kindergarten sites post them in the comments for all of us!!

ambleside online - scroll down and there is a list of great books (lots of them)!
Brightly Beaming - They have different curriculum's for different ages (scroll down to see them all).
LDS Home Education Association - Their philosophy.
Simply Charlotte Mason - Really neat compilation of information.
Trivium Pursuit - 10 things to do with your child before age 10.
Homeschool Share - Under unit studies they have a similar set up as the FIAR, and it is FREE!!
Higher Up & Further In - A GREAT mama who has written down all her curriculum and shares it for free. I used her 1st grade for Riley this year with minor tweaks! :)
*Here is another!!
Best Homeschooling.org - A good comprehensive list of fun (& therefor learning) activities to do! :)

Friday, April 25, 2008

For not being readers it is sure hard to get them to put the books down! :)
This is what I had last night at bed time, each of them with a flashlight and a pile of books! It does not get much better than that!!
Other than that we are just going about our usual business. Riley is still enjoying his math pages, the other day Jake surprised me with Riley's math page. There were several rows of 7 "things" like 7 watermelons, mice, etc., then it would say you have 7, cross out 3 what do you have left? Riley went through and did them all, on the last one he did the problem by saying it out loud, as he got to the "what's left" part Jake said the CORRECT answer. With out counting! So I tried a few others, he would look at the pictures but was not counting and he knew all the answers! It was weird! :)
Jake has had the short end of the schooling stick so to say, we have not been able to get the book for BFIAR for almost 2 months, our library system just does not have them! This week I was excited because I owned the book we were to use, and then of course it is no where to be found! POOF disappeared! :) Oh well we read tons of books anyway, but we have been lagging on the fun art activities he enjoys. Things have just been crazy and the house too so it is hard for me to pull out mess, ya know!
Anyway enough of my rambling, I just loved the picture, I wish it had turned out a bit better, but oh well you get the idea! :)

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Left to his own devices...
or what my airplane crazy kid did! Riley decided that he would invent an airplane engine, so here are his diagrams.
Lots of plans!
He poured over these for days!!
Then I gave him an empty cracker box and scissors! He made this model all by himself, he designed two different engines and so made a model of each that way we could all see! :)
He has been very proud of this work, and he should be! :)
When Dan got home from his trip he was dully impressed, then he and Riley went onto the Internet and found actual diagrams of a propeller, V8, and jet engines. Dan printed them up for Riley and he has had quite a treasured "book" of information! :)
Two completely airplane crazed boys in my house, I pray for Riley's future wife and I hope you are all praying for Dan's wife. I may go (completely) crazy yet!!