Slacking off on the posts...

Holy Guacamole! I'm noticing that our last post was in October! :) Apparently, I need to be a little more intentional with our blogging learning journal, eh? Actually, I just need to teach the older kids how to enter new posts since I'm sure they would welcome the opportunity.

Well, the school year is winding down. We're down to finishing up just a few courses, but we are shooting to be completely finished by next Friday. We are all very ready for a nice, long summer break.

The kids have done very well this year- no doubt at least a smidge of learning occurred. :) However, as always, it remains that the children learn best by themselves. No matter how much I try to spoon feed them, their individual interests still fuel their knowledge like nothing else......

For Samantha, it's art- drawing anything and everything...especially horses and fairies. She's also developed a deep and abiding love for all things Star Wars. She's even made her own Star Wars book.

For Tori, it's birds. She finally got her own parakeet...after some grueling research and devouring about 30 library books on pet birds. She is fascinated by birds and bird watching. She was in tears the other night when she thought a momma killdeer was going to abandon her nest after a certain little 2 year old boy picked up one of the eggs. However, all was set right with the world the following morning when she observed the momma back with the eggs.

Hailey remains infatuated with paper dolls. She just loves them. She is constantly making her own dolls, her own clothes, her own furniture. Good old fashioned fun. She also loves reading non-fiction books about animals. She truly does have a deep knowledge of animals and still thinks that she might want to be a vet someday.

For Noah, just a general 'all things boy' description- trucks, tractors, swords, cowboys/Indians, sharks, dinosaurs...you name it. He's taken a liking to the Billy and Blaze book series as well, which has been fun to watch.

Gracie remains the affectionate little momma and she can usually be found either playing with her baby dolls or talking Noah and/or Joe into playing house with her.

Joseph Timothy has such an affection for Thomas the Train Engine that I'm starting to worry if it's healthy. :) I picked up a couple of little Thomas engines at garage sales this Spring and he is seldom found without them. He's also discovered the joys of Buzz Lightyear and Woody the Sheriff from the Toy Story movies. However, his favorite movie is still Dumbo. No idea why, he just LOVES Dumbo.

We plan to spend the summer with some occasional math review and lots and lots of reading. I am really pumped about getting the plans laid out for next year. I plan to implement ideas from Elizabeth Foss's Serendipity website for much of our schooling next year. We will continue with a literature based approach, only much richer and deeper than this year. Should be a fun summer of planning. It will be interesting to see if I can manage to get a fraction of the ideas out of my head and down onto paper!

Just for grins

A fun Sunday afternoon at the zoo. No particular reason, just because it's 75 degrees and we can. LOVE IT. Tori, who loves to journal, took her nature journal along anyway and created a couple of great pages, but otherwise we just mosied around and soaked up the naturally occuring education.

In the Jungle Building:

On the tram tour:

Joe bonding with a goose:Joe and Sam on the playset in the gorilla exhibit:

The reason for our "MIA-ness"

You may have noticed the lack of posts lately....here's why:

PUMPKIN SALES! We decided to try our hand at pumpkin farming again (last year was a bust) this year. In June, we hand planted 7,000 pumpkin seeds and by mid summer we had a very promising looking pumpkin crop. Pumpkins everywhere. Then came the rain and powdery mildew. Pumpkins dying everywhere. We were able to spray a fungicide and stop the mildew from spreading, but we suffered probably about a 25% loss on the patch. OUCH. Then came the rain. Again. And unusually high temperatures.....not a good combination for the latter stages of pumpkin growing and we were hit with at least another 50% loss. Thankfully, the weather began to cool off and our pumpkins quit dying from heat stroke/rot. When all the trials were said and done, we had about 800 good, basketball or larger size pumpkins left to sale. We also had a hundred or so 'baby-boos'.

We set up shop at two different local craft fairs and ended up selling out about all but 5 or 6 pumpkins, which was great! Those two days were some LONG days, but it went well and was a good experience for all of us. We learned that pumpkin farming is a pretty labor intensive effort if you plan to try to do it for profit, so I think that from now on we will be "providentialist" pumpkin farmers. We'll always plant some pumpkins just for grins and to give away to family and friends, but I fear our days of labor-intensive and cost-ridden pumpkin farming may be over. WAHOO and Amen!

A Columbus Day Reprieve from school

I (mom) had my first ever teacher inservice day on Columbus Day. It was a beautiful rainy day and I organized/lesson-planned/cappaccino-ed the day away to to the sound of NOTHING but the rain.



Daddy and the kids had a fun-filled day planned to Great Plains Nature Center for some serious exploring and nature study, but the rain stopped those plans pretty fast. So, they opted for visitng The Museum of World Tresures in Old Town, which fit in perfectly with our study on ancient Egypt. Here are some pictures of the excursion:

There were some other pictures that were too blurry to even bother posting, but I wish they would have turned out because one was a really cool shot of the kids with the life size T-Rex skeleton in the background.

Tori's Narration

Miriam: A Novel

by Beatrice Gormley

Copyright date: 1999

Number of pages: 192

Number of chapters: 28

Type of book: Historical fiction

Book report/narration by Tori. Typed by mom.

Yesterday I finished reading my assigned reading book, Miriam. It is a story about Moses and Aaron's big sister, Miriam.

The book started on Aaron's birthday and they were having a party on their roof because all of their cousins and relatives couldn't fit into their tiny hut. Ancient Egyptians had a flat roof because they used it as extra living space. In the middle of the party, the slave driver named Steward Peneb came with orders from the palace that the Pharaoh had sent out a new decree that no more Hebrews could have baby boys. Shortly afterwards, Miriam's mother got pregnant and they were really worried that it was going to be a boy. Miriam's family asked Steward Peneb what the punishment was for having a baby boy and he said that her (Miriam's mom's)hands would be cut off if she had a baby boy.

It turned out that Miriam's mother had a baby boy, but they kept him hidden for three months. Then Miriam had a dream of what to do with their little brother (they hadn't named him because they were afraid to mention him). The next day, the princess's pleasure boat was sailing out and she was swimming when a basket floated up with a baby in it. Princess Bint-Anath had never been able to have any children of her own and she believed that this baby was sent to her by the gods. Miriam ran out and said that she knew of a nurse for him, but the Princess's head lady-in-waiting could tell by Miriam's face that they were somehow related. When Miriam brought her mother for a nurse, the head lady-in-waiting (whose name was Nebet) tried to convince the Princess to not accept her. The Princess accepted anyway because she was very stubborn.

Princess Bint-Anath raised the baby, whom she named "Mose", as a prince. Miriam stayed at the palace and took care of him for about two years, with her mother. Miriam started to feel like she would rather be an Egyptian than a Hebrew because she liked the ways of the Egyptians. For example, she liked the food, clothing and music that they played. She even started learning how to play the lute a little bit. She became one of the Princess's favorite musicians. Her mother got very homesick and wanted to go home. She didn't like the way that Miriam was acting because she thought that Miriam had forgotten about all that she had left behind at home.

They returned home after the baby was old enough to wean. Miriam was amazed when she saw how small and puney the Hebrew houses were. She was happy to be home. Aaron threw himself into Miriam's arms and started crying when she got home.

The book I read wasn't really my favorite, but I still really liked it because it was very touching. Most of it was probably fictional because we don't know that much about the life of Miriam. I would probably recommend this book to someone because it's just a fun story to read.

Four words that I would use to describe this book:

1. Egypt

2. Miriam

3. fun

4. fictional

Book Report from Hailey

Book Report/oral narration by Hailey, typed by Mom.

Mummies in the Morning, Magic Tree House Book #3

by Mary Pope Osborne

I just finished reading the book, Mummies in the Morning. It takes place in Ancient Egypt in a pyramid.

How the story started: A little boy and a little girl named Jack and Annie went to the Magic Tree House and got a book about pyramids and opened it up and said, "I wish we could go there." Then the tree house whisked them back to the time of ancient Egypt. They saw a black cat and followed it into a pyramid where they saw an Ancient Egyptian Queen's ghost named Hutepi.

My favorite part of the story: My favorite part of the story is in chapter 4 where they had to find the ghost queen's Book of the Dead or else she couldn't go on to her second life, which is what the Egyptians thought they would have after they died. The Egyptians thought that she would have a second life and she would be a Queen in that life too.

How the story ended: Jack and Annie got trapped in a tunnel underneath the pyramid and they heard the black cat meow and they followed it out and finally saw the sun again. They went back to the treehouse. It was a long walk back to the treehouse. They took the book of Frog Creek Woods, because that's where they lived, and they said, "I wish we could go back home" and the treehouse whisked them back home again. Annie said, "I think mom is making peanut butter and jelly for lunch" and they ran home and she was. The end.

I really like this book series and if I could talk to Mary Pope Osborne, who wrote the book, then I would ask her to make books of all different times and a book where Jack and Annie get whisked back to the time before dinosaurs, like when God created the world.

Four words that describe this book:

1. Egypt

2. Jack

3. Annie

4. exciting

That's it.

Hailey.

Bullet Math

Noah was working on subtraction today. He decided that his subtraction problems needed a bit of illustration, so rather than crossing out the birds for "7-4=?", he shot them down. Note the boy on the ground holding a gun and the bullets whizzing upwards to the birds, which, I am told, are turtledoves, since it's turtledove season and all....

Our best school friend

The library.

Oh, how we love the library! At any given time, we will have a BARE minimum of about 50 books/videos /audios checked out. More like 90 most of the time. With online reserving and renewing, it has never been easier.

Since switching to a more reading-centered approach last year, I am constantly amazed at how fast the kids will DEVOUR the books that are laying around. When a new batch of library books are brought home, the excitement rivals opening Christmas presents. It does my heart good to see my children learning to appreciate literature in ways that I never did. Best of all, the "bigs" love to share it with the "littles" and cozy up on the couch for a story.

We are also unearthing some pretty amazing older stories. No offense to modern authors, but the authors of old seem to write circles around the modern day 'twaddle' that we find on bookshelves. I love a good Dora the Explorer video as much as the next person, but when it comes to comparing a Dora book to a Beatrix Potter book, the difference in quality of writing/content is phenomenal! Why do modern "child experts" feel that everything has to be watered down? Kids can get it. Give them a chance....

The School of Dad

Thought this picture was too cute not to share! Joe Joe thought HE needed to drive the hayrack ride at our OktoberFest last weekend! When that plan didn't quite work out, he made sure he was positioned on daddy's knee at the helm through the event.

A few pics that I snapped today

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Tori enjoys her assigned reading atop the dome climber- one of our favorite perks of homeschooling is being able to get out and enjoy the weather.

Hailey checking out the new blog

Noah and his Dinosaurs book

Sam doing "Garfield's Typing Pal"

Science: the kids had to hypothesize how many seconds it would take them to smell the vanilla molecules in the air after I unscrewed the lid (FYI- it took 4-10 seconds depending on where they were standing, which gave rise to a discussion about experimental error and ceiling fans...)

Observing how the smell of vanilla molecules travel through a balloon wall

Noah reading to Gracie

All in a day's work... except I'm noticing that Joseph was absent from all pictures, which usually equates to more work for mom when he is located....

Sacred Heart Academy on the web!

Greetings and welcome to our family and friends!

We are often asked "what do you do all day?" in regards to schooling, so we thought setting up a blog that chronicles our learning could be a fun experience. Here you will find little tidbits and sneak peeks into our school day and family life.

Enjoy the blog and feel free to leave comments- the kids will love to read them!

Jamie