Just a quick note to say this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling is up over at The Common Room.  I submitted THIS POST, if you’re wondering.  It is about how we use movies in our homeschool.

I just finished spending some time drawing with my girls.  They were looking for something to do and Makayla pulled out our Draw Write Now books and our StudyPod.  If you have never seen one of Marie Hablitzel’s Draw Write Now books let me tell you even a non-drawing person like myself can use them.  Each picture is broken down into simple steps.  The lines you draw in each step are red, while the lines you drew in previous steps are now black.  We used to check the books out of the library through interlibrary loan.  Then last year I was able to buy the set through Amazon for a great price after Christmas.  Each book has three themes and we are usually able to find something to draw along with our studies.   Here is one example from her site.  You can go HERE to see more free samples and enlarge the pictures to try it out.  She’s got a fun newsletter too by the way, so sign up while you’re there.  (And no, I’m not really reviewing these books, they are just something we have and enjoy using so I thought I would tell you about them.)

  Emma decided to draw a pregnant mommy dog (cute!). I played along with Makayla.  Makayla chose the pictures we were to do.  We drew an angler fish, sea star, and ship.  Here is Makayla’s:And this one is mommy’s attempt, no laughing please:  Remember that StudyPod I reviewed months ago?  We still use it every week, and today it held the drawing books open for us like this(though we did not end up doing the chipmunk picture):   While we have an art curriculum we love (Artistic Pursuits), these books are fun to get a child drawing.  For Makayla they were really helpful as she was one of those ‘paralyzed by perfection’ kids, she did not know how to draw something so she refused to even try.  Now she draws much more often, and so do I!

I am awake and my family is still asleep. There is a very good reason for that: everyone is sick. They have actually been sick for several days(the kids) to a week (my husband). Between the coughing, sore throat, and congestion in 6 people sleep is pretty much a wash. I wake up every time I hear someone coughing, then I go check on them. Thankfully the throwing up part is over and only lasted a day.

What does this do to our family schedule? Basically it shuts down a few parts of it. First, wake up time is erased. Everyone gets up sometime before 10AM, and nobody is expected to get up before they are ready. Which means I’m back to fixing 7 separate breakfasts if everyone feels up to eating. Again.

The second thing severe illness does to our schedule is throws quiet time out the window. We have quiet time happening all over the place, sometimes more than once a day, as children fall asleep in their tracks.

The third thing that changes is homeschool. We switch to a lot of easy to do learning. Mommy reads aloud to the children. We watch a lot of Magic School Bus for science, or Planet Earth. If a child gets to feeling energetic we do some “regular” assignments.

Do you remember the plans I posted for this week? I realized midway through the evening yesterday, when my 8 year old took a nap, that the children are still not up for homeschool work. I’m officially closing the school. Effective immediately we are on Christmas Break! (I love the flexibility of homeschooling, don’t you?) I will still be posting all week, including our Week in Review. Unless, of course, I finally get whatever illness it is that my family has. I am really praying I don’t, somebody has to be the nurse here.

Have a great week! Merry Christmas!

Would you believe this is my 500th post?  I know I’m amazed anyone is still reading my blog after that many posts, but I am also very grateful!  To celebrate my 500th post I want to share some answers my 3 big kids gave to a list of questions.  Answers are designated as follows: E = Emma age 4, M = Makayla age 8, J = Joseph age 5.

What is Mommy’s job?

• To do all the stuff at the house. – E
• To homeschool us. – M
• To be good. - J

What is Daddy’s job?

• To do the dishes. – E
• To drive a truck. – M
• To go to work every day. - J

What is your job?

• To play. – E
• To help my brothers and sister. – M
• To not make my room a mess. - J

What is your favorite thing about homeschool?

• Writing. – E
• I like lapbooks and science. – M
• To do lapbooks. - J

What is your least favorite thing about homeschooling?

• Nothing. – E
• Math. – M
• To be done. - J

If you were the mommy/daddy what would you want to teach for homeschool each week?

• How to wrap presents. – E
• Science. – M
• To do lapbooks. - J

Finish this sentence, “When I grow up I want to . . .

• be a ballerina. – E
• be a zookeeper. – M
• to make my kids do lapbooks.  That’s it. – J

So there you have it, a view of life from my children’s perspective. 

Happy Homeschooling!

We are doing one more week of homeschool before taking a nice long Christmas break.  It will be a bit atypical as we have pretty much finished our big cats unit study and we are not starting one with only a week of lessons left.  So here is the plan:

1. Make a lapbook piece on mongooses and one on meerkats.
2. Use our Draw Write Now books to draw lots of big cats and their relatives.
3. Math – more on shapes and angles.
4. Grammar – a few more pages in our workbooks, including synonyms, nouns, and commas.
5. Geography – 3 more states and a quiz.
6. Memorize the 11th Article of Faith: “We claim the privilege of worshiping almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.”
7. Artistic Pursuits – time to do some art!

The only other work is Rocket Phonics for the preschoolers.  It will be a fun and easy week, just enough work to keep us occupied, but not so much to make us tired.  Then three blissful weeks of vacation, of which the last two will be spent explaining to the kids that I am not ready to start homeschool back up yet and that they must go teach themselves.  They never last more than a week or two without asking to do some homeschool.  :)  Of course, that is not a bad thing! 

My children love audio books and music. Every day during quiet time something is playing for them to listen to. They were happy to find out one of our review items for The Old Schoolhouse was from Maestro Classics. Stories in Music CDs combine classical music with literature into a program that my children enjoyed. We received The Tortoise and the Hare, which retails for $16.98.

Here is the track listing:

1. The Tortoise and the Hare... Featuring the London Philharmonic Orchestra with music conducted by the Maestro himself, Stephen Simon, and narrated by Yadu (20:43)

2. About the Story ...Bonnie Ward Simon (2:49)

3. Pretzel Vendor of Paris Song...
Maestro Classics / DixieLand band (2:06)

4. About The Music ... Stephen Simon (4:49)

5. Now That You Know a Little More... (20:43)

6. Want To Have Some Fun? Prepare To Perform ... Bonnie Ward Simon (00:35)

7. Pretzel Vendor of Paris Song - Sing-Along ... Accompaniment Only (2:06)

The CD was fun. While my children were familiar with the story already, having the music involved was neat, and the tracks that taught more about the story and the music itself really added value to the program. My children all liked the story, but the information tracks are a bit over the head of my preschoolers. I would say that ages 5-10 would get the most out of these CDs, though younger children will enjoy listening to the story itself, and even older children or adults can enjoy the CD as well. To get a good feel for the CDs you are able to download MP3 samples from each track of The Tortoise and the Hare(and the other titles) on Maestro Classics’ website.

Inside the CD case is a booklet that my oldest daughter claimed for our first listen through of the story in quiet time. When I finally got to see it I discovered photographs of the orchestra instruments in seating arrangement, information pages about music notes, measures, time signature, turtles and tortoises, rabbits and hares, and a page about the contrabassoon. There was a dot to dot, music for the Pretzel vendor song, a word scramble, a crossword puzzle, and biographies of the composer, writer, and narrator.

Other titles available from Maestro Classics include:

• Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel


• Casey at the Bat


• The Story of Swan Lake


• Peter and the Wolf


• Juanita the Spanish Lobster (available in Spanish as well)


• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Each retails for $16.98, but right now you can buy 3 CDs for $45.00 with coupon code MAESTRO45.

You can learn more about Maestro Classics products by visiting their website or reading my Crewmates reviews.

(Disclaimer: I received one copy of The Tortoise and the Hare on CD free for the purposes of this review. I received no other compensation and the opinions presented here are my own.)

I am so excited I just have to post about it.  Today I bought tickets and reserved a hotel room for the Midwest Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati in April!  While I have attended a homeschool convention in the past in Columbus, I did not attend last year.  I love going to a convention for two reasons.

First, and most importantly, I love attending workshops and seminars to continue growing as an educator.  I can explore concepts I am interested in, learn from the “pros” in the homeschool circles, and gain a fresh enthusiasm for my job as a homeschooling mom.  I find joy being surrounded by thousands of other families who teach their children at home. 

Second, I love the exhibit/vendor hall.  There is something about touching and handling something instead of reading a description online, that helps me see what is really worth my time and money.  In many instances I am able to ask questions of the creator or publisher of specific curriculum right there in person.  That is invaluable.  I love browsing through books, seeing the possibilities first hand. 

This year will be an adventure.  In the past I have attended the homeschool convention with my mother, who is a huge support to our homeschooling endeavor.  We drive over and spend a day at the local convention before driving home.  This year my sister will be going with me!  (She homeschools her children too.)  Because this convention is further from home (several hours away) we are having a mini-retreat.  We will drive down Friday and spend all day at the convention.  Then we will stay the night in a hotel and spend a second whole day at the convention!!!  Can you see me jumping up and down?  I am so excited!  It is early April, which just happens to be right after we finish this school year (we started in June), and my birthday is in April too.  Happy birthday to me!

We finished another week despite the kids coming down with coughs and minor colds the last two days. We took time to focus on the essential studies for the week, and skipped a few things we really did not feel up to doing. You can read our original plans HERE. I also blogged about the 50 States Bingo game we made HERE. At THIS POST you can read about some of our Big Cats unit study fun.

In the unit we read about different big cats and their relatives each day, used art supplies to draw them, lapbooked information about them, hunted each other (predator/prey games), etc.

Other things we did:

Makayla did several math pages on angles and using a protractor. She did several grammar worksheets on synonyms and capitalization rules. She worked through more N states in geography, and did another step in spelling.

Joseph and Emma worked on shapes by finding things in the house with a shape I called out. We then extended that to finding things that begin with a certain sound, or finding a specific number of items. Daniel participated by finding specific objects I named like a book or crayon or pillow. Everyone used the markers and oil pastels for art this week drawing lots of big cats.

We worked as a group to learn the 12th Article of Faith this week: “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates; in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.” We also worked our way through part of the kids Old Testament scripture stories, from the Creation through Noah, and then a jump up to Daniel and the Lion’s Den (hey – it fit with big cats this week!).

I got some planning done for January and all I will say about that right now is two words: Ancient Egypt.

We have one more week of school before we take time off for Christmas, so check back over the weekend to see what we are doing next week. I’m still deciding on that.

Don't forget to go check out the other Weekly Wrap Up posts linked over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

We have had a quiet week at home, no major surprises, taking it a day at a time in homeschool.  Our unit study on big cats has been a lot of fun.  Each day we learn about a big cat or two.  This week has covered tigers, cougars, bobcats, and lynx.  Today we learn about two cat relatives, the hyena and the meerkat.  Which means that combined with last week’s learning about lions there is one movie that just needs to be watched with my children.  Can you guess what it is? 

The Lion King. 

That’s right, lions, hyenas, and meerkats alongside other great African animals, music, and animation.  That is the big surprise in store for my children after they finish up their regular school work today.  We even have a  disc of special stuff for The Lion King which includes video of the crew’s trip to Africa in preparation for drawing the movie.  We’ll probably watch that, then draw our own animals from the movie if we are really ambitious. 

We’ll also take a poll of favorite characters to graph for math and you can help us!  Just choose your favorite character in the poll on the left sidebar of this blog.  Go ahead and vote, you’ll make my children’s day.

Yesterday my oldest and I made a quick Bingo card to help her practice the abbreviations for some of the 50 states. She used a list of the abbreviations to fill in all the boxes on her card. I read the names of states randomly from the same list. She had to remember what the abbreviation was for the state before covering the squares. It was quick, easy, and fun.

I copied my bingo board from our Hands-On Geography book, but you can print blank cards free at Bingo Cards Creator. Be sure to check out their site for tons of ready to print Bingo games (also free!). I see some covering history, geography(including 50 states), math, musical notation, instruments, and composers, numbers, and science.

The next version we’ll make will list the state names. We will probably stick with using blank cards so my daughter can get practice spelling the words herself. Then I will be able to say a capital city or the abbreviation and she can cover the appropriate state.

Oh, and don’t forget that you can use chocolate chips, cheerios, or other fun snacks as your Bingo chips. Once the game is over everyone eats their treat, a reward for a job well done.

Bingo is an easy game to review a sometimes tedious set of material, and that works for me!

You can read some of my other Works for Me Wednesday posts:

1. If/Then Chart
2. NaNoWriMo and Binding Papers
3. Kid’s Free Scripture Fun Online
4. Puppet Show
5. Undercover Agent Vegetable – Chocolate Beet Cake!

Be sure to also check out this week’s entries for Works for Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family.