Play Audition

Our local theater in town had play auditions this weekend for the Best Little Christmas Pageant Ever. Alex wanted to audition so we went down this morning. After the woman called on Alex and another girl she called our their parents. When we went up she said that she really needed our girls in a homeschool play that will be going around to the local schools, assisted living and maybe a couple other places to perform. Only homeschool students are allowed to join and she would rather cast our girls for that play and then have an opportunity to be in a bigger production in the spring. It sounded like Alex would get quite a bit more of theater experience/education by going this route and both girls agreed. So YAY we'll be practicing during the day so we won't lose our nights, this is great news for homeschoolers who are usually done by 5:00 pm. I cannot wait to see what play they will be doing. I should be getting emailed shortly.

Curriculum

Sorry I've been so slack in keeping up with this blog. We have had a busy new start of the year. I decided I would post our curriculum for our 3rd and 1st year (Gavin). I'll try to post monthly posts to keep up with our comings and goings.

Alex started 3rd grade in September. We stick with mostly a secular course of studies though for math we are continuing to use Abeka since it seems to be pretty advanced and challenges Alex more than any secular programs I've been able to find.

We are using two Grammar/Language programs since they both programs are really well and yet offer differences to get a really rounded part of language.

Mon, Wed, Fri we are doing Growing with Grammar

Tue, Thurs we are doing First Language Lessons #3

Everyday Abeka Math

Mon, Wed, Fri All about Spelling (started on 2 and will be done in 15 more lessons, moving to 3)

Tues & Thursday Science Odyssey This has been a fun program to start

Wed, Friday Story of the World We are still on book 1 and working on our lap books slowly.

Everday Winning with Writing

We'll be adding in Handwriting without Tears Cursive shortly. Alex also does some extra work in Explode the code workbook, she is currently on 4. She also reads every night before bed. We also have girl scouts every other Monday, Coop on Tuesdays where Gavin and Alex are both taking Spanish, Math, Karate, Alex has book club at the library twice a month and Gavin has lego club once a month. For exercise right now besides the normal play, Alex is taking soccer and Gavin is in baseball. We are looking at signing Alex and possibly Gavin up for tennis lessons in November.

Gavins curriculum is Click N Read, Click N Spelling and I'm starting him on Abeka Phonics for Reading. Again not secular, but it was a great program that worked with Alex and I will use it until the reading clicks and then move to more just reading books. Also he will learn to tie his shoes this year :) He also has a big math book for 1st grade that he works on a few pages a day.

We are all very happy with how the year has began and its been such a great experience this year without any fussiness or fighting to get work done.

Catch up & Geocaching

Excuse me while I tear down some cob webs around here. Its been awhile since I have written. Summer has been upon us and I haven't been as diligent this year with our studies as I have in the past. Alex has been doing some workbooks here and there, but she worked SO hard in 2nd grade I think she deserved a break. Now that August 1st is tomorrow and even though we don't technically start until the day after Labor Day we are going to slowly get back into the grind and do our workbooks everyday and some writing and of course reading which was required all summer long.

Alex has fallen in love with a series of books called Bean and Ivy Series and is almost finished with the series. She is taking a break and reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and then onto the Ramona and Beezus serious and we found a nice horse series at a yard sale today that she wants to read.

I am settling down on what our school plan/curriculum is going to be this year and will post all that in another thread. Gavin will be starting formal school this year too!!! So exciting!!!!

This weekend started a new adventure for our family, we are now Geocachers!! If you haven't heard of Geocaching before it is a scavenger type game using a GPS device or App on your Smartphone that gives you the coordinates to where you find your treasure and then you will hunt for it. The Geocache is a container some small, medium, and large which hold either a log book where you will write your name, date and a note if you choose and personal treasures if the cache is large enough to do so. We spent all weekend finding Geocaches close to home.

Friday Night 7/29/11

We went to our first Geocache by a local church. There was a very short hike into the woods when Alex spotted a camouflaged tennis ball can in a tree. Inside the can was the log book and various toys. Alex took a miniature Captain Hook doll and Gavin took some blue Mardigras beads and left behind a bracelet and a bubble blow wand. This was a great first geocache, very easy to locate and it was super exciting for the kids and they wanted to keep going.

Our 2nd Geocache was called Yield to the Trees because there is a street around the corner from us where the road started and a yield sign was put in, but the road wasn't completed and there are trees there so it looks like your Yielding into the trees. This was a micro-cache made from a contact case so there was just a log scroll inside that we signed our name and date to.

Our 3rd cache that night was at the baseball field where Gavin played ball at, not just the park but the actual field where he played. It was hidden well and it took us [Arnie] a little bit to find it. This was also a micro one made out of an old film case (my kids don't even know what that is) and there was a log scroll inside that we signed and dated.

Our 4th cache was at a graveyard in town. At first Alex was pretty leery about going in, but then saw the coolness of the old cemetery and started looking for the cache. We were unable to locate this cache and finally headed over to Dairy Queen for some well earned ice cream.

On the way home we stopped off at the grocery store down from our house to look for a 5th and

final cache before we went home. Found it in a very unexpected spot. This was a micro cache that had a log scroll that we signed our name and date.

Saturday 7/30/11

The 6th one was behind Chic-fil-a. There is a wooded area behind the restaurant and Alex found it behind a tree. Medium size ammo inside was a nascar picture that was rolled up, princess frisbees, santa bell, 2 brand new matchbox cars in wrapper and the log book. Alex switched out a bracelet for the Santa bell and Gavin gave a silly band for a matchbox car. In this box we also found a bug tracker. These are tags or coins that you may find in the cache and when you come home and log them you find out where their destination should be and help them get there by bringing them closer to that goal. Our bug tracker had a destination to travel to as many states as possible.

Our 7th cache was behind our Target on a short road that leads into the woods. This one was a little tricky, but Arnie & Gavin found the small tube behind a tree off the trail. This was a small cache that had a log to mark your name and a bouncy ball. We logged our name I took a picture of Gavin in this location and we moved on.

Our 3rd stop was back at the graveyard. We are not going to let this one go. I have a feeling that it looks like part of the fence like a bolt or something. We were unsuccessful again, but we plan on going back a 3rd time without the children. Its in a fenced in area, but Sam was running around too much to really pay attention to detail.

Sunday 7/31/11

There is a little White Church a couple miles from us. It is a very sweet church that seems very lonely since I don't think it sees a lot of traffic. This geocache hunt is our current favorite hunt. This one had clues leading up to the cache which was really fun. There were 4 clues that we had to hunt down before finding the Long Ammo Tube containing all the goodies. Arnie found the first and second clue, Gavin found the 3rd, mommy found the 4th and Alex found our 8th cache. Inside the cache there was hotel soaps (not the best cache goodie, very melted), lotion, aromatherapy sleep aid, bouncy balls, 2 name logs, a playing card with a name and date on it, golf ball, and a few other small items. We left the tracking bug we found yesterday in this cache and took the playing card to travel with us to the next cache.

For our 9th cache we drove up the road a couple miles to a park in Hoschton, there was a creek with sliding rocks to see and walk down leading to the trail. We hiked in the woods a good distance past where the cache was showing on the GPS because we wanted to see if the trail lead around to that location. When it didn't seem like it was going to and we back tracked. When we arrived back to where the gps was guiding to it we had to get off the trail about 20 yards and found the cache chained to a tree that was leaning to the left. The cache was a medium size ammo box. Inside there was a new spiderman washcloth, winnie the pooh toy, bracelet, USA map, the name log. Gavin took the sideman washcloth and Alex choose a bracelet and left behind a toy diamond ring, butterfly marker and I put in the playing card that I took from the last cache.

Our 10th cache was a quick cache on the side of the road that was placed inside a fence post in a medicine bottle. It was a name log mini cache. Arnie found this one from his view in the car while I was out trying to find it by the fence.

We had a great weekend geocaching and plan to put out our own cache shortly and also send out a few travel bugs to people we know and see how long it reaches them.

Coat of Many Colors

Its been awhile since I've posted though we have been doing things. We've gone on some field trips to Yellow Game Ranch in Lilburn and the Atlanta Zoo. It was alot of fun being hands on with the animals one week and then watching the giraffes, gorillas and of course the pandas the next week.

Before our fieldtrips we did work on a history chapter for SOTW and the kids made their Coats of Many Colors which is the story of Joseph and the coat his father gave him. Both Alex and Gavin had a lot of fun designing their coats.

Until next time...

Archeology Dig

We finally had our archeology dig :) Our little archeologists had a fun time digging for their treasures. They would find their treasures, brush them off, and then identify them. I'm posting picture of their dig and of most of their treasures. We had some yard art buried as well that didn't make the pictures.

Double Crown of Egypt

I left these off on the last post, I thought there was another project we had worked on. The kids had fun putting their crowns together.

Story of the World

We have finished the first 5 chapters of Story of The World. We have made our own scrolls with Hieroglyphics from Ancient Egypt and also had some berries as the Nomads would of eaten., we decided we would pass on the lizard stew! We made pyramids today and caught up on our lapbooks. We still have to do our archeology dig for our treasures, I'm hoping that is done this weekend. I'm posting some pictures of them making their pyramids and some video of them describing them. I'm so proud of them, they had a lot of fun making these and of course the bonus of sucking on a couple sugar cubes is always a treat. Theres also a couple pictures of Alex's lapbook, I'll be working with Gavin on his this weekend.

I had some pics of them writing their hieroglyphics on their scrolls, but my phone was recently restored and I forgot to back them up on Iphoto first :( I will get some pictures of them with their scrolls this weekend and post.

Beginning our next Lap Book Ancient History

For a week that I didn't have much planned turned into a week of not enough time in the day to do everything LOL.

We've added quite a bit of exercise in our routine this week. Each morning we either walked, jogged, or rode bikes. We took 2 hikes this week at our local state park and the kids and I have been riding our bikes around the neighborhood.

We have moved back to Language, Writing with Ease (WWE) and Story of the World (SOTW) Volume 1. We have started our lapbooks and we're using this awesome website I have found that has done most of the hard work for me. We read chapter 1 and cut out some artifacts and also put together a story book for the first people on what they ate and where they lived. We will begin on Chapter 2 next week, but we are going to be bouncing a little back and forth because I have books coming in still from the library and we are planning some projects that may take place after we complete a chapter.

My husband is planning on an Archeological Dig with the kids and we are picking up some sand next week and finding some treasures to add. We'll be using paint brushes to brush off our artifacts and draw pictures of what they find. I'm off to find some treasures....

Saint Patricks Day

Our first lapbook was for Saint Patricks Day. We learned about how Saint Patrick was kidnapped by pirates to Ireland and then how he escaped 6 years later. He then had a calling to return to Ireland and convert the Irish to Christianity. There are many legends of St Patricks day, the pot of gold, leprechauns and fairies, why we wear green, & snakes. We also study the Scientific reasons for these legions as well. The older kids spent the night at Grandma and Grandpas tonight so we're saving our Irish Dinner for Sunday where we'll make a homemade Irish Stew and some homemade bread YUM! I'm going to attach some pictures of Alex and Gavins lapbook tomorrow along with some video of them describing their books.

Here are some pictures of the kids discussing their lapbooks and pictures of the lapbooks themselves. I'll be adding some video of them discussing their lapbooks as well. I have one video ready now to put on so I'll attach it.