Posting to my Family Blog

I'm posting homeschool stuff on my family blog now... www.jonesfam02.blogspot.com

A Short Update

We have been making a ton of presents.  I can't reveal most of them because it may ruin surprises but along with all of the Christmas presents we have been making we have been doing full days of school as well.  We are trying to stay ahead so that with all the trips we're planning on going on this next year we don't have to go into July.

Here are the girls making homemade play dough.  So much fun!!

Playing with Homemade Play Dough.

We have a Girl Scouts Troop that is for homeschoolers.  I love it.  I love the people, I love that it's during the day and only every other week, I love that my girls get some awesome interaction with some awesome people from 5-17 years old.  I love that they have people to look up to and can strive for littler girls to look up to them.  ...And this is how my girls are.  They are snuggly and huggy, almost all of the time.  Okay well, maybe it's just these times that I like to remember. Haha.

Making handprint angels.

Just a few things we have done this month.  Maybe I might post about our trip to Rockport. We'll see.  I've been kind of spotty with my blogs so you never know what might happen.

Motorcycle... School

We took some pictures in September.  I know I know.  I should've had them on my blog a long time ago if I took them in September!  Well, that's not how I roll.  I want to roll in organization and get stuff posted right after it happens but that's not how it works here.  So, giving myself grace, knowing that I post for family and friends that aren't able to see the girls much... here ya go!

Tuesday of Week 5

We are having a great time this year studying countries and cultures in geography.  We are also doing a lot of fun things in science.  That was never one of my favorite subjects in school but now that I'm teaching it I am learning a LOT!  PLUS having fun with Rosetta Stone learning Spanish, and doing some fun things with art.  Of course we do a lot of other FUN things such as math, spelling, English, Handwriting, read aloud, and chores.  Here are some of the things we have done this week.

We learned about how worms move dirt around and are good for our soil.  They had fun putting them into this jar.  The experiment we did didn't turn out as well as we had hoped but they had fun messing with the worms anyways.  Just look at their faces.

We are doing an experiment to see where our beans will grow best.  We have some in the window where the sun can get to them, we have some in the refrigerator and we have some in a closet.  The ones in the window and the closet are winning so far.

If you look closely you can see a little sprout on this one.

We also buried a piece of ice in a plastic bag and put one on top of the soil to show why some animals burrow in the heat of the day.  The piece of ice in the ground didn't melt as fast as the one on top.  Maybe that's something we should try to beat the heat in the summer.... burrow.

Alyssa started a writing class for an hour and 15 minutes on Mondays.  This was her first day of "school".

Here is the bean seed a day later. A bigger sprout has grown.

Today we were like the Navajo Indians and made sand paintings.  The Navajo Indians would destroy their paintings after they were done but we are going to keep ours.  I kind of like them.

Here are their finished projects!

We have studied a little about the United States the 3rd and 4th weeks of school, and studied a whole year of it last year.  The 5th-this week-and the 6th week we are "in" Mexico.  We have passports that we have to use to "get into" the country.  We are reading about Cameron Townsend a missionary to Guatemala.  (We are learning about North America as well as the different countries in North America.)  So far it has been a great year.  We are halfway through our 5th week and only have had a few hiccups.  So glad that I get the opportunity to teach my kids!

Update

Just thought you'd like an update on how school is going.  It's going very well.  I am super excited to teach my kids countries and cultures this year.  I am learning so much with them.  I guess I didn't pay attention or just forgot most of the stuff I learned in elementary.  Hopefully I will have a chance to post pictures later but as for now, I need to go make lunch.  The familiar sound of "I'm HUNGRY!"  Is being yelled at me. 

Getting Warmed Up

We are finishing up our second week of school.  It's going very well.  I didn't mention in my last post that we are also using "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" for Natalie and also Explode the Code.  The curriculum is EXCELLENT!  Here's a picture from this week, not during school hours but still fun nonetheless.

First day of school 8/6/12.  We started our first day of school on Monday.  We are using a lot of the same curriculum that we used last year.

Our core curriculum History/Geography, Science, Bible, Art, and Music we're using MFW (My Father's World).
Science-Apologia
Spelling-Spelling Power
Math-Math U See, Rapid Recall
English-Bob Jones
Spanish-Rosetta Stone

Trying to make the "world" a flat map.

Eating the orange and trying to flatten out their map.

Alyssa at her first day of school.

Samara at her first day of school.

Nattie at her first day of school.

Another Week

I haven't posted in a REALLY long time!  I feel my blogging withdrawls... okay maybe not but I thought it would be nice to post a few pictures to let everybody know that we are still in the learning mode.  I will be posting on my other blog http://www.jonesfam02.blogspot.com/ about Nattie's birthday and a few other things.  If you want to hop over there and check it out. 

We are learning about Jesus in school and the different things that He is.  We learned that Jesus is the Light Of The World so we made this "sun catcher".  It was supposed to be a lot different but I had the iron on too hot and the crayons went everywhere.... so we did crayon shavings in between two pieces of contact paper and that seemed to work just fine.  The girls still loved it.  What could've turned out to be a disaster turned out as a success.  Praise the Lord!

I was trying to figure out how to get the girls to learn calendars and I found this on Confessions of a Homeschooler's site.  If you go to the right her blog is linked from this blog.  I love it!  I ended up laminating it so all they have to do is erase the stuff, other than the numbers in the month, and write the new date in each day.  It's been great to teach ordinal numbers, how to write the extended date, addition, tens place and units place, how to write out numerals in word format and how a calendar looks.  Someday I will have them plan out their months and days so they get used to doing that as well, but we'll save that for a later time.



Nattie putting her capital letters in alphabetical order.

We were learning about air so we did an experiment where you fill a cup way full of water then you put a piece of cardboard on it and flip it upside down.  The pressure of the air on the outside of the cup kept the cardboard in place.  The girls were amazed.

When the cardboard was pulled away by force (Daddy) water came gushing out.

We are learning about Astronomy this year and the last couple weeks we've been learning about the sun.  Here is our makeshift balloon solar system.  The sun is first, which is not to size, but the other ones are close in size to the ratios of what they would look like next to each other.  Of course Saturn is the one with the rings, and even though Pluto's not a planet anymore I put it up there anyways because it's part of our song.  Maybe I should post a video of our song.  I'll see if I can find it.

Here is an overview of the week. Week to of Adventures in My Father's World. I'm not going to go over everything we did this week because some of it is just basic school stuff. I will go over some of the important stuff and some of the fun stuff.

This is my favorite picture of the week. Nattie had just woken up from a nap so she was super tired and super whiney so while I got dinner ready I asked her if she wouldn't mind snuggling with Mara for a minute. Mara and Nattie both agreed! So they sat and watched Bill Nye the Science Guy (from the library) on wind while I got dinner made. So sweet.
We learned about Columbus. After Alyssa's initial shock that he really wasn't the first person to be in America... in fact he never set foot in the United States... she really had a good time learning about him. Above are some of the books that we read this week about Columbus.

We learned about JESUS. The name of Jesus and that Jesus' birth was foretold in the Old Testament. They really loved looking at these verses and seeing that what was told in the Old Testament came true... although their faith hardly ever waivers so they knew that was the way it was anyways.

We moved the keyboard into the school room... SMART!! Why hadn't I thought of this before. They like it when people can hear them practice so they've been practicing a lot more.

Syssa practicing.

Some free time... I think this is one of the times I said was MANDATORY P.E. time. Sometimes a Mama just needs a small break!

Like I said before we learned about Columbus this week. We made tin foil boats and sailed them from Spain the New World. They really liked this activity.

Art was from I Can Do All Things, part of My Father's World curriculum. They are getting the hang of drawing okay. This is one of their favorite things to do but the lessons (as of right now) are so short I squeeze like 3 in at once and then I don't do it for a couple days.

Nattie got a two new sets of books called Now I'm Reading. She's already knocked out 5 of them so I may have to order more soon. This little girl (3 years old, will be 4 in August) is a reading machine!!

Some of the journals that the girls have been writing have blown me away. They are so awesome! This is Samara's journal. I asked her to write why the name of Jesus is so important to her. She has been fighting a stye on her eye all week (it got HUGE and now it's a lot better, still there but not close to what it was), so she drew a picture of God healing her stye on her eye. I love it!!!

This is Alyssa's joural with the same question.

I love the read aloud that is assigned. American Pioneers and Patriots. It's a book that is fiction but is a story about the life and time of the people back when people were coming to America. This week it was about a little boy and his sister and family and the boat ride and finally reaching America. It was really cool and since there were kids in the story (7 and 9 year old) the girls really paid a lot of attention.

I didn't put any of our Astronomy work on here so I'll just let you know that we are learning about what Astronomy is. The post right before this one goes over what I did to help them learn about space. Hopefully I will be able to do the same thing for the Bible lessons that we cover. Our History is on our wall in the form of a timeline... I didn't take a picture of that this week either. Oh well, all for another post I guess.