Chew on this! Homemade Gum

Funny made her own chewing gum today.  Chemistry is fun!

Stirring the gum base and corn syrup.

Kneading the gum.

More kneading.  She's working some powdered sugar into the gum.

Rolling out the gum after adding the food coloring.

The finished product!  A giant gum ball, rolled in sugar.  Tasty.

Week in Review--In which we get started

I am pleased to announce that not only have we all survived yet another first week of school, I daresay that this year, we are thriving.  No one has been complaining, or whiny, or even too hard to find when I announce, "It's time to start school."  I do not want to curl up in a ball and pray for gypsies.  Hooray!  I am going to chalk it all up to God (props!) as He's really been at work in my heart the last couple weeks.  I mean, He always is, but I guess I'm not in the way.  For once.  I'm sure I'll return to my role as a temper tantrum-throwing toddler (in His eyes) again soon enough, but I'm just going to enjoy where I am.  Tomorrow....well, it'll be there when I get there.

We have finally finished Story of the World book 2.  It took 2 years.  Two years, people.  In my defense, it's no fault of the book or accompanying materials workbook that we got a little obsessive over knights, castles, Vikings, Aztecs, and more.  This means that next week, we are starting book 3, and we're entering into colonization.  In college, I majored in History, with a concentration in Colonial/Early American History.  You can say I am slightly geeked out to finally get to talk about it with a captive audience!

We picked back up with marsupials in our Apologia book, and finished that.  We all love the Notgrass Art book!  I have posted a few samples below.  The kids have been continuing in their math books, and so far we like Queen's Language Arts book.  We started spelling, and next week we'll add Easy Grammar Plus and *gulp* IEW.  I tried IEW last year and found it so time-consuming that it made me batty.  It'll go better this time.  I'm not the same girl, and these are not the same kids.  See?  I have hope.

One of the best things about homeschooling is how I get to relearn, or learn for the first time, all sorts of things.  I was very excited to learn more about Queen Elizabeth I.  This week at the library, I checked out two books about her.

Books read:  Leonardo and the Flying Boy, Martin Luther: A Man Who Changed the World, Katie and the Mona Lisa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Francis the Poor Man of Assissi, Good Queen Bess

Little dudes that Funny made out of modeling beeswax.

8yo Goofy's drawing of the earth from space.

36yo Hub's drawing of the earth from space.

9yo Funny's drawing of the angel appearing to Michael.
The assignment was to draw Mary with a look of wonder on her face.

Check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see how other people are homeschooling this week.

2012-2013 School Year

We have had a fantastic summer.  I have felt a calling for a few years now to be less busy, and focus more on home.  You might be wondering how this can be possible when I'm home with these kids almost all the time.  For me, it's been about attitude.  I am trying to judge the impact of activities or even events on our family life.  I ask myself, "Is [insert name of activity here] good for all of us?"  Yes, I can sign my kids up for many different things.  Scrappy could play fall baseball, but it would mean traveling, and that would mean less meals at home, and rarely seeing Hub as he gets home from work a little late.  And so, fall ball is definitely out.  It's like that.  The alleged benefit isn't that great.

I purposed this summer to say no to most things, and make the most out of the few outings we did have.  No, we didn't go on a vacation this year.  We went camping a few times, we've gone to the pool, and we've read and been lazy.  I can't remember the last time I actually felt refreshed by our summer break.  I admit that saying no has been harder than I thought.  I'm continuing to say no into the fall, and we'll see how the burnout goes.

We spent a day at Raccoon Creek State Park.

Jumping into Deep Creek Lake.

We're starting school on August 27 this year.  Here's the break down, for those of you who like to know these things:

Scrappy, age 10

Math: Math-U-See Gamma (for a couple weeks to finish up) and Delta
Health:  Queen book on puberty for boys

Funny, age 9

Math:  MUS Beta/Gamma
Health:  Queen book on puberty for girls

Goofy, age 8

Math:  MUS Beta/Gamma

Silly, age 6

Math:  MUS Alpha/Beta
LA:  Explode the Code


Everything else is the same for everyone, except Silly who has her own LA:

LA:  Queen Language Lessons for the Elementary Child
IEW
Cursive/Copywork (That's from Queen also)
Queen spelling
a random workbook of vocab word of the day fun
Easy Grammar Plus

Bible:  Humility study (more Queen)
Okay, so really, I need to do this study more than anyone.  We're going to be doing it as a family--even Hub is going to participate.

Science: Apologia Land Animals (hoping to finish in December) and Astronomy

SS:  Story of the World vol 3 (finally we're done with vol 2!)
assorted readers about American history
Maps & Geography workbook (just parts of it)
some yet-to-be-determined project on PA inventors or history (I'm organizing something with other homeschoolers.  I probably need to think about that.)

Health:  Abeka

Music:  orchestra unit study

Art:  Notgrass Draw to Learn--The Life of Jesus (has anyone used this?)

2011-2012 Year in Review

I knew I hadn't blogged for a while, but I had no idea it was so long.  I can't say I'm surprised, as it was a rough winter around here, and I was absolutely not in the mood for, well, anything.  On a positive note, things are much better, spring has sprung, and we're winding up the school year.

I'm not very good at giving myself a break, especially where my children are concerned, and I fully admit that this was not our best homeschooling year.  I'm having a hard time forgiving myself (because, of course, being me, I'm to blame).  I started to put together portfolios for Scrappy and Funny and then burst into tears.  This is what real homeschooling is like, people!  There are lots of tears, and regret, and fear.  At the same time, I am making a real effort to find the good things.  I adore these kids, and they get along so well (mostly).  Today we were discussing the word "drip" and how one of the meanings is "a person who doesn't like to have any fun."  Funny immediately announced that I was not a drip.  That really warmed my heart.  It's the simple things, really.

And with that in mind, here are some of the good things from this year.  Please know that there were lots of not-so-good things, and I don't want anyone to think that I have it together and that things are always rosy at my house.  Homeschooling is hard, but I know that God has called us to it, and that He will continue to equip me, if I would just get out of His way and let Him.

Flour Children petting a ray.  Always fun!

Monopoly.  For about 2 months here, this is what my table looked like.  Every.  Day.

Goofy and Scrappy played basketball.

Making Valentines for friends.

We learned how they make the doughnuts at Dunkin' Donuts. 

Silly and Funny are BFFs, and always breaking into dance.

The kids are really interested in photography.  Scrappy took this.

Funny learned to use chopsticks.

We went to the museum to check out some dinosaurs.

Scrappy likes fossils.

These kids love to draw!

Goofy's work.

The Flour Children played soccer for the first time.

Running out of the Steelers tunnel at Heinz Field.

Home is where the school is

I haven't posted too much about school this year.  We are still homeschooling, and we've been having a bit of a difficult year.  This is largely due to personality conflicts, which exist in families.  No amount of sending them away to school will change that.  I don't need "a break" from my kids, as if they are some horrible burden in my life.  They are my life (along with the ever-supportive Hub).

This year Scrappy is in 4th grade, Funny is in 3rd, Goofy is in 2nd, and Silly is in K, but mostly doing 1st grade work.  Here's the summary up to this point:

We tried Wordly Wise with Scrappy, and it turned out to be the thing we fought about most often.  It was pure misery.  I would become exasperated, he would become frustrated, and we always ended up screaming.  So we chucked it.  I'm back to my old methods of teaching vocabulary, which pretty much means I stop and ask if they understand a word, or I define as we go.  Who wants to do vocab flash cards?  Well, I do, but I'm not like other people.

We have lots of traditional homeschooling materials again this year.  The kids have an assortment of workbooks for language arts and math.  Scrappy is about done with MUS Gamma, we're almost finished with Apologia's Swimming Creatures book (we can't ever seem to get to this).  Story of the World is still the favorite for history.

The kids are still using games to learn a lot of different things.  We've started playing Bananagrams, and we use that for spelling and vocab practice.  The kids love to play Scrabble, Settlers of Catan, chess, Uno, Stratego, and even some math games on the iPad.  I think if all their practice/drill can be done through game playing, then that's good.  And even better, a lot of the games they like require strategy and critical thinking.  Yeah, I am okay with that.

We've already gone on 15 field trips this year!  My goal is 20, and I think we should manage to make that.  We have one or two more scheduled for this month, and I know come February, it's all I will want to do.  Gosh, I hate February for homeschooling.  Only you other homeschoolers understand that.  Alas, no worrying about it now!  Here are some highlights from our most recent trip to the Heinz History Center:

Flour Children and friends.  The museum is currently hosting an exhibit on the history of the flag.

Goofy makes pickles.

Funny preps her tent.

Silly and her friend taking a turn at packing pickles.

Flour Children and friends with statue of Franco Harris.

So, in the end, I suppose we had a rocky start.  Each year I find it easier to embrace our less traditional version of education, but every year I still fight myself on it.  We do a lot of reading, playing, and exploring.  We even do worksheets and book work.  Everyone here would rather read a book about homophones (which we did, Dear Deer) versus filling in a worksheet on homophones.  That's just how we roll.  It might not be your way, but it's our way, and it works for us.

Quitters Never Win

Every now and again, I have one of those homeschooling days when I remember why we're all doing this.  Last week, I wanted to send my kids to school, wholly convinced that I was ill-qualified to teach them anything.  This week, I can't imagine not being with them.  Funny how that works.

It was field trip day today.  We went on a free (thank you, taxes) tour of PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates.  It was a thorough tour, and we got to see the press box, batting cages/pitchers tunnel, dugout, and even walk out onto the field.  The tour guide was excellent, and obviously loved the Pirates.  He also knew a lot of history of the team, which the kids found especially interesting.

The rest of school looked rather untraditional, I suppose, but it works for us.  The kids watched an episode of MythBusters.  We read about echinoderms.  We talked about the purpose of the nose, and how to stop germs from spreading (cover your sneeze, please).  Scrappy read to us about taking care of our teeth, while Goofy begged for his turn to read to us.  The five of us snuggled under a blanket and read a book about maps, another about nouns, and a third about the military alphabet.

Right now they are all upstairs measuring their rooms so they can map them out.  FOR FUN.

See?  This is what I call a good day.  I'm so glad I didn't throw in the towel.

Enoch Wright House and Museum of Westward Expansion

You know how we love a field trip!  Today we went on our 7th field trip of the year.  This time we traveled about 20 minutes away to the Enoch Wright House and Museum of Westward Expansion in Peters Township, PA.  Enoch Wright's father, Joshua Wright, settled in the area in the mid-1700s on a land grant.  At the time that he settled here, the Pittsburgh area was a vast wilderness.  You can visit the log cabin that Joshua Wright built for his family, as well as the larger house that his son, Enoch, had built in the early 1800s.

Here's Scrappy's perspective:

I went to the Enoch Wright house. He was born in 1776. He lived in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. There were trees all around the cabin. His dad had to cut down all the trees to build the cabin, which was probably hard work. Then, years later, he built a big house, which was done in 1816. He traded his goods and became a rich man.

The big house is made of brick. Two families lived in it. It had one main staircase. Both sides of the house were exactly the same. One of the old bedrooms has been turned into a room where you can learn about coal and coal mining. I thought it was strange that coal miners wore gas lamps on their helmets because the mines were full of gases and it could have exploded. I don't think that job would be very fun.

Another thing I learned was that young boys learned to shoot a rifle, use a bow and arrow, and throw an ax. A lot of boys had knives to skin animals. When boys turned sixteen, they had to help fix the road. I'm glad I don't have to work on the road.

Such a nine-year-old boy, isn't he?  And just for fun, here's Funny's five-year-old girl perspective:

Today I went on a field trip. I went to the Enoch Wright house. There were a lot of steps there. It was a big, fancy house. There were a lot of dresses in one of the rooms. They were pretty. There were two kitchens. There were two of everything because two families lived in the house. In the kitchen, there was a big fireplace for cooking. There was a hook and a bucket was on it and it hung over the fire. The cook had to pull the hook away from the fire so the food didn't get burnt. I also saw some weapons. There were axes and a bow and arrows.

There was a cabin there, too. The cabin is older than the house. They built a ladder so everyone could get up to the beds. The cabin was small. It was made of logs from trees that were cut down where the cabin was built. There were American Indians nearby. The people in the cabin were not friends with the Indians because the Indians didn't want them to destroy the land. The people who lived in the cabin had to hunt for food. They had to hang the meat up to dry so they could eat in the winter. It was a hard life.

New School Year

We're three weeks into our homeschool year.  I've been way behind on my blogging (obviously).  I am going to try to get back into doing the Weekly Wrap Up posts, probably next week.  My camera is broken, so I have no pictures, and I'm sorry for that.  I know pictures make blog posts way more fun.  Eh.  My dearly devoted will read this anyway.  I think.

So this year has been going pretty well.  I would say it's our best kick off so far.  I chalk a lot of that up to my gaining experience and confidence.  Sadly, this doesn't mean I never question what we're doing.  I've had to hide myself away a little bit.  I have been hiding from Facebook ("Look, here's a picture of my kid going to school.  Yay!"  "My kid went to school and I went home and cried."  Either way, it's hard to look at when you're so obviously thumbing your nose at the whole system.).  I've been really trying to immerse myself in my family, and surround myself with people and information that supports our decision to homeschool.

Anyway, let's talk about the kids and their materials.  I know what you homeschoolers like:  curricula!

These are the materials everyone is using:
Apologia's Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day (finishing up from last year)
Apologia's Land Animals of the 6th Day
Story of the World, Book 2:  Middle Ages (our 2nd year for this.  Thankfully, I knew we couldn't complete it in one year and I don't feel like we're behind at all.)
Orchestra unit study
Lamb's Book of Art
Around the World coloring book
Abeka's Health, Safety, and Manners

Scrappy, age 9, 4th grade


Math-U-See Gamma (he started the year in lesson 11 and I am planning for him to move onto Delta after Christmas)
Steck-Vaughn's Language Arts Handbook, 4th grade
Wordly Wise 3000, book 1
IEW: Writing Structure and Style
Sequential Spelling

Funny, age 8, 3rd grade


Various Steck-Vaughn Early Math workbooks
Various grammar workbooks (right now using Writing Sentences from TCR)
IEW: Writing Structure and Style
Sequential Spelling


Goofy, age 7, 2nd grade

Various Steck-Vaughn Early Math workbooks
Various grammar workbooks (right now using Writing Sentences from TCR)

Silly, age 5, Kindergarten

Come on now.  I don't have a Kindergarten curriculum.  She's kid #4.  She just magically knows stuff!  Though, she does use a few things:
Bob books
Various Steck-Vaughn Early Math workbooks
Explode the Code

We also have a ton of supplemental materials.  Being part-time unschoolers, we have a house filled with all sorts of fun, educational things (and a well-loved library card).  Some of the highlights I'm looking forward to using this year:
Math Shark (handheld electronic math drill game)
Cooking Up Sentences board game
Math wrap-ups
Spellominoes


I also set a goal this year to take the kids on at least 20 field trips.  We went on 18 trips last year.  So far we've gone on 6 trips.  Once I get my new camera, I'll be back to posting more field trip posts with pictures.

It is Finished...For Now

We're done with school!  Yippeeeeeeeeee!  Scrappy and I (mostly) wrapped up the portfolio today.  He was short an art page but only because he has a psycho mother who needed an even number of art pages.  I need help.  Anyway, I am very pleased with how it has turned out, and am very happy to have a great memento of his third grade year.  A portfolio really is a great idea, vs. saving random bits.

Our 18th, and final, field trip for the 2010-2011 school year.  These young elephants
were wrestling and it was very entertaining.

Art project:  color blending.  This was a great way to see how secondary colors
are created when primary colors are mixed together.

A little "getting to know you" page from the portfolio.  Not required, but totally counts
as a writing sample, and I will love reading this 10 years from now.  

 This was a pretty good year.  I had those days when I wanted to quit, but I figure that I'll always have them.  As I've said before, these are days when I want to quit mothering in general.  I think it happens to every parent, no matter where their kids go to school.  I am working on my attitude here, as I do believe that my children are a blessing, not a burden.  I want my words and actions to reflect that belief.

I really feel like this is the first year when I figured a lot of things out.  I decided that if I have to label myself, I would go with Charlotte Mason/unschooly-ish, with a tad of Classical thrown in.  Well, and the field trips.  We love a field trip.  It sounds like an odd mix, but it works for us.  The end of the year saw us doing more and more notebooking, and I am really looking forward to exploring that more next year.  We were weak on music this year, so I need to think about how to fit that in.  Will we study one composer a month?  Will we just do a unit study?  The state requires it, and besides, I LOVE music, and so do my kids.

As for what the kids have accomplished, they amaze me.  They are such sponges, and it's awesome!  I am very proud of them all.  Scrappy's attitude has really changed and there was way less whining about doing school this year.  He wants to play all day every day.  Well, who doesn't.  I remember mid-year when I was freaking out about his reading, and now he reads every day...for fun!  Silly is more than ready for Kindergarten.  Funny and Goofy have been reading a lot, too, especially Funny.  It's not unusual to catch her with her nose in a book.  Everyone has a little dream of what their homeschool might look like, and mine is just that--noses in books!  It's so encouraging to see a glimpse of it every now and again.

Yep, I'm pretty content.  We've had an amazing week.  We went to the park, library, and zoo.  We snuggled on the couch and read books.  We watched many episodes of MythBusters and we all want to blow something up (still thinking about what).  And besides the little tab dividers, the portfolio is done!  Scrappy's evaluation is tomorrow, and then off to the district.

What will we do after that?  Go to the pool!  It's summer break, man!

Mammoth Cave National Park

My dear readers know how much this family likes a field trip.  It really is one of the best ways to learn about something.  On our recent vacation to Kentucky, we were lucky enough to visit Mammoth Cave National Park. If you have never been there, then I am a little sad for you.  I really recommend the trip to see it.  It was beautiful!  I always thought caves were sort of interesting, in more of a historical sense vs. science sense.  I think it's fascinating to think about who used to live in caves, and what their lives may have looked like.  Did American Indians live there?  Did some bank robber hide out in there?  Anyway, now I know that caves are also very nice to look at.  I was really just delighted by the whole experience.

Here's a paragraph Scrappy wrote about our trip:

Mammoth Cave is really big. I had to walk down a whole bunch of steps to get inside. The walls were made of rocks. There were a lot of big puddles and pools. My favorite part was the Frozen Niagara. I was surprised that there was only a tiny waterfall there. It was mostly made of rock. I thought it was going to be like a regular waterfall, and maybe as big as Niagara Falls. But it was very small. It was cold in the cave. I had to wear a jacket. I didn't expect it to be that cold because it was so hot outside. I also saw cave crickets. They look kind of like spiders, except smaller. The ones that we saw were brown. I saw a giant spider, too. At the end, we had to walk across a giant sponge full of chemicals to wash our shoes. This is because of a special disease that bats can get. When we washed our shoes, we were making sure we don't spread it around to other bats.

You can see the layers in the rock here.

You do not want this to fall on you.

Pretty rock formation.

Everything inside this cave is big.  BIG.

Weeks in Review

The end is near!

I made an appointment for Scrappy's evaluation this week.  That means we are almost done!  This is our first time being evaluated, as the school age in PA is 8.  So we've been collecting things for the portfolio and I have been thinking about the last few weeks of school.

Goofy enjoys a nice day.

Baseball season has started again!  Funny got co-MVP at her first game.

Silly turned 5.

Scrappy rides his bike.

The race is on!

Fun with Bendaroos.

I tried really hard to get back on track this week.  We did do some math and everyone has been reading.  We haven't touched our science in a while, but we've been watching Mythbusters and The Jeff Corwin Experience.  I mean, it's something, right?  I am feeling the pressure to finish things up, so I suppose I better come up with a plan.  That I probably won't follow.

Week in Review--We're crabby

Remember last week when I fantasized that I would have some sort of perfect, traditional homeschooling week?

Bwhahahahhahahahahaha.

Seriously.  I'm so funny.  I admit that I only hinted at the fantasy, but I knew what I meant.  You know, lots of boring worksheets and evidence of education.  I think about the evidence a lot because my state requires portfolios.  Exhausting.

We had a wonderful week.  There was a lot of sunshine so we played outside a lot.  I forgot how much I love to play softball with the kids!

One of the talks I went to at the homeschool convention last month was about notebooking, and I am really working to integrate that into our way of doing things.  The kids all drew pictures of crustaceans.  They each produced a "serious" work, but then started inventing their own crustaceans.  I think that's pretty awesome, as they all were decapods, arthropods, etc.  They were applying what they've learned, so that is good.

Silly's rainbow crab.

Goofy's, well, goofy crab.

Scrappy's rock star crabs, and audience.

Funny's Christmas Island crab invasion.  That's a car running over the crabs.
That's what they do there.  There are that many crabs.

The kids spent an entire rainy afternoon reading all sorts of books to one another.  I look back on how stressed I was over their reading at the beginning of the year.  I wonder why I keep worrying so much?  I totally know better.

I am hoping to wrap this year up in mid- to late-May.  Whew.  What a fun journey!

As usual, I am linking up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Week in Review--the week of slacking

Someone once told me, "I don't read homeschooling blogs.  They make me feel like a failure."

While I am not responsible for this person's reaction, I admit that sometimes it does look like most people have it together while the rest of us do not.  The fact is, I don't always want to admit to how long I fought with Funny over math.  Or how many episodes of Avatar my children have been watching.  Or that I just don't feel like it anymore and really need summer vacation already.

This is a non-post post.  I have decided to call this week "spring break."  And why not?  Everyone else gets one.

I've been sick, yet again.  Yesterday I took the entire day off.  We did one educational activity.  Scrappy and I snuggled on the couch and watched an episode of The Story of India.  Yep, that's all.  The kids have spent the week playing and fighting, and I have spent the week sneezing and yelling.

This is real life, people.

Yes, they did things that we relaxed homeschoolers consider school:  played baseball, explored the neighborhood, ran around, built with Legos, went to dance, went to AWANA, read a little, and helped around the house.

I don't have any pictures of the cute and/or fun things we did, because there aren't any.  It's a good thing I know that's okay.  Next week, when I report on all our goings-on, please know that while things may look good (I am feeling optimistic), they are completely balanced out by a certain amount of power struggles, exasperation, and exhaustion.

But these kids are so worth it.

For more homeschooling stories, check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.