Weekly Wrap-Up – Aug 20

This week, I’ve done a lot of this:
Planning, planning, planning. It is exhausting. This week I got the finalized plans for Tornado Boy’s enrichment classes for the fall (think parent co-op). I got to visit the class site and meet with some of the parents and teachers. I am really, really excited for the fall. TB will be doing a Lego class, a once a week, multi-age kindergarten class and also studying with Five In A Row at home and with the co-op. I’ve got my volunteer duties arranged with the group as well.

We also went to our first homeschool gym class – LOVED it. It was well run and Tornado Boy had a great time. He seemed to be engaged and involved. There were a lot of kids, but they did a good job breaking into groups and keeping them occupied. Today we went to sign-ups for a local homeschool group. They do so many trips, tours, exchanges and other activities. I was completely amazed at what they had to offer. I finally feel like we’re becoming part of the homeschool community here and I’m really excited for the upcoming year.

I’m trying to figure out how to incorporate my plans for the year with the classes and group activities. One thing that’s become abundantly clear this week is that we are going to be spending a lot of time in the car – probably 3-4 hours per week. I need to figure out how to leverage that time and use it for car schooling time. It actually works well for us because Tornado Boy is strapped in, so he can’t go anywhere. I can play educational videos or audio books. He can also do some lap work, but he’s still prone to dropping things, but he’s getting better about that. I just need to make sure that I can set him up with activities that are independent so that I don’t get distracted. I am trying to figure out how to leverage our existing curriculum into unit studies that we can incorporate car components into. It will be interesting to see how it all goes.

Camp/Science:

Tornado Boy puddle jumping on his way into camp.

Tornado Boy was at science camp this week while I was hard at work with all my planning and errand running. He really enjoyed it and his absolute favorite experiment that they did was the mentos in Diet Coke explosion. He drew this picture of the experiment:
Evidently the top thought bubble says “camp” and the left one is him exclaiming “Ooohhh!”. The exploding bottle has “DC” for Diet coke. He was so cute and animated when he explained the experiment to us. Tornado Dad says that we can re-create the experiment at home this weekend if Tornado Boy is good, but we’ll see. Listening and following directions has been a huge issue this week. It’s been wearing me out.

Geography:
At home, Tornado Boy continued to be interested in learning more about the United States. We used this neat PowerPoint presentation that I found on ABC Teach. If you’re a member, you can find it here. The interactive map allows you to click on the question mark to reveal the name of the state and capital city. TB enjoyed this activity and was able to name about a quarter of the states and capitals based on knowing the outline and location of the state. For the ones that he didn’t know, I would give him clues – either the name of the capital city, something that the state was known for (i.e. potatoes for Idaho) or something like the state starts with ‘O’ and has 4 letters for Ohio and then he would take a guess. I like that this document could easily be used independently by the child, if desired. Good stuff!

Language Arts:
We did some work on identifying parts of speech this week. We talked about nouns, verbs and adjectives. We used the demo for Destination Reading, Course II to reinforce some of the concepts. We also used a Venn Diagram for the first time to talk about adjectives. We read a story and then Tornado Boy used the Venn Diagram to place adjectives that described two different characters in the story. I found a nice resource for some graphic organizers. They’re in pdf format and you can type directly on to them if you choose. On a technical note, if you use Firefox with the “Download Them All” add-on, you can download them all at once – it’s a huge time saver.

Physical:
Our fun activity of the week was bowling. Trying to get a picture of Tornado Boy bowling was close to impossible. Talk about always in motion! I think that this was the first time that he’s gone “big ball” bowling. We did candlepin last year when we went to New England, but we haven’t been since. They had gutter guards up, so he did okay when he wasn’t totally lobbing the ball. We had fun, so we hope to go again soon.

If you’d like to see what else happened this week, check out the “Weekly Wrap-up” at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

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Wordless Wednesday – Waiting for Daddy

An oldie, but one of my favorites!

Check out more Wordless Wednesday at Five Minutes for Mom.

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Tiny Talk Tuesday – Cordouroy


Overheard this week:

Tornado Boy was talking to his Cordouroy stuffed animal this weekend when I heard him say:

“Cordouroy, you’re really lucky because you’re the main character in your story and that means that you’re really, really important!”.

Darn… I guess he was listening, after all!

Find out what other kids are saying, or link up and post your own story at Tiny Talk Tuesday at Not Before 7.

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Sunday Science – Little Kid Experiments

We went to a great drop-in science class this past week. I posted this picture earlier of Tornado Boy holding a balloon with a wooden dowel passed through it. Here’s what you need to pull that off:

  • A small balloon – one with some ‘give’ to it. Don’t blow it all the way up.
  • A wooden dowel stick with a pointed end.
  • A jar of vaseline.

First you blow up the balloon and tie it off. Make sure that it is not full stretched, it will need some slack. Dip your finger in the vaseline and carefully coat the dowel stick all over with it. Pass the stick from the middle of the top side of the balloon (the dark spot where the rubber is thickest) to the other end of the balloon right next to where it is tied off. It helps to work with your child to slowly twist the stick in order for it to get through the balloon. It’s like magic! The balloon will slowly deflate once the stick is through, so take your pictures right away!

Station 2 had earthworms to observe. The instructor had schematic drawings of earthworms to help the kids identify their different segments. She also had some photographs of an earthworm dissection that she had done with an older class of students so that the kids could see what the different organs were inside of an earthworm, and to compare them to their own bodies. The kids could scoop the earthworms out of their dirt container and observe how they moved on a plate.

The third station that we visited had a microscope and lots of different things to look at. I wish that we had a microscope at home, but I really don’t want to make the investment yet. Tornado Boy can be pretty rough on things still. He did have a great time looking at different things under it, though. They had salt crystals, crayons, pencils, playing cards, rocks, Lego blocks, feathers and other objects to look at. Tornado Boy enjoyed this a lot. Since I don’t plan on buying a microscope any time soon, I looked up virtual microscopes and I found a couple of possibilities: Kbears Interactive Microscope and for older kids, Discovery Education has a Virtual Electron Microscope.

Station four was a sense of smell experiment. There were six small film containers (remember those?). Each was capped and contained something for the kids to sniff. There were blindfolds to use if the kids would let you (no way!) so that they couldn’t peek and were truly only using their sense of smell. Tornado Boy had a really hard time with this one. The items that I can remember were coffee, bread, and laundry detergent. Each container sat on a piece of paper that had the answer for the item written on the back of it. For non-readers, you could put a picture of the item on the card.


The final station that we visited went way over Tornado Boy’s head, but he enjoyed watching the reactions. The experiment started with three containers of purple cabbage juice. To each container, the student could mix in a different item and watch the juice change color. They had lemon juice, dish liquid, sugar, Dr. Pepper and vinegar. The juice reacts and changes color depending on if what is added to it is an acid or a base. There are more instructions if you want to perform this experiment here.

This class was really fun and had a great mix of experiments that can be done with children of various ages. We were really glad that we went!

For more fun science lessons and activities, check out Ticia’s Science Sunday post at Adventures in Mommydom!

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Ad – TOS Homeschool Planner

Are you looking for a great way to get your home AND homeschool ready for the upcoming year? Do you have tons of great ideas rolling around in your head with no “special place” to write them down? If so, take a look at the 2010 Schoolhouse Planner. When I think of a planner, I think of a calendar. This is a calendar and so much more. You get calendars, recipes, grade sheets, lesson ideas, bible study guides, and many more charts and forms. There are four main sections in the planner:

  • Monthly Features – things like tips, study ideas, resource links and recipes for each month of the year. I was really thrilled to see that the planner includes 12 gluten-free recipes. I love to be able to try new things with Tornado Boy!
  • Calendars – annual, 2-page monthly and blank versions.
  • Homeschool Forms for things like curriculum tracking, attendance, planning and grading.
  • Household Forms for things like addresses, budgets, meal planning, and home inventory.

You can purchase an electronic copy of the planner from The Old Schoolhouse Store for $39.00. The planner is over 600 pages long, so if you’re on dial-up Internet access, you may want to consider purchasing the CD version for $44. Thankfully all of those pages are linked in the table of contents, so you can jump directly to the page that you want.

My very favorite thing about the planner is that you can type directly onto the planner pages using the free Adobe Reader software. I’m an electronic girl, so not having to resort to putting pen to paper is a big deal for me. My handwriting is pretty much like chicken scratch, so a neatly typed page really helps me. Of course, if you want to, you can print all or part of the blank planner if you choose.

One of the areas that I’m most excited to use is the one for menu planning. This is an area that I am totally committed to improving in our home for this year and the planner has several great forms to help me out with that goal:

Still not convinced? Be sure to download a free peek here. You’ll see about 1/10th of what is included in the planner, including the full table of contents so that you can get an idea of the broad range of content in the planner.

For today (August 15th) only, you can receive a free add-on of last years supplement modules with your purchase. Each of the 12 modules is filled with great unit study information that you can use in your homeschool.

Happy Planning!

I am a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, an independent contractor with The Old Schoolhouse magazine. I received a copy of the 2010 Schoolhouse Planner and have used the Planner in order to write this advertisement. This is not a review, but an entry in an ad-writing contest.

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