Cindy's Life as She Knows It

Back to school today to start the home stretch for the year 2012.  We have eighteen more school days until Christmas break and we are both excited!  Today got off to a slow start, as Mondays after a holiday week tend to do, but after dodging a mysterious rash that appeared on Dakota and handling a few dozen phone calls, I was able to get him started on his morning work.  His Today's Special was on Charles Schulz, who's birthday would have been today.  We read a short kid-friendly biography, looked at some Peanuts comic strips and colored a picture of Charlie Brown and Snoopy.  Next in his daily prep work was Monday's new movie on BrainPop Jr., which just happened to be about fossils, right on time with our dinosaur unit we are doing this week!  Next came his language arts warm up book, his journal and his handwriting practice. While Dakota worked I stripped his bed to make sure nothing was hiding in there to bite him and cause this rash and started a pot of beef and veget

Yesterday we did a little school work in the morning, finished up the chores and packed up the truck.  At noon Daddy, Dakota and I headed off to swimming and by 1:30 we were on our way to pick up Brian David in Towson and head to Jellystone in Hagerstown for our cabin camping weekend.  We got here about 4:30 and the guys unloaded while I put things away, then they made a fire while I made dinner.  After spaghetti in the cabin, we sat around the campfire and took in the stars.  They were truly gorgeous.  The sky was incredibly clear and it was brisk outside.  There was no wind and the inky blackness was a beautiful background to the stars, which were so bright they seemed unreal.  The brightest ones looked painted in the sky and then if you kept looking you could see the really distant clusters, pinpoints of light unimaginably far away.  We watched for falling stars because there are supposed to be meteor showers this weekend, but weren't fortunate enough to see any.  Brian David se

Today was to be our last full day of lessons before we move on to half days and holidays this November.  I was running behind in my morning chores and preparation so I told Dakota to "be creative", something he is very proud to be!  He got his camera and some of his wrestling men, put on some wrestling themed music and made a slide show and video of a wrestling match.  This may not seem particularly educational, but it is surely creative and the video making and music add ins certainly qualify for creative credit for the day. I got Dakota started with his daily prep work about 10:45, which gives me an additional 30 to 45 minutes to get things done while he works on charts, language arts activities, a BrainPop Jr. video of the week, his journal and cursive handwriting practice.  I love this time when he is independent of me, but working hard and getting himself in the right frame of mind for the day.  Next we did math, which I find is a tension filled time lately because my

Like everyone else, Mondays in my life come way too soon.  This one was no exception and getting little sleep last night didn't help.  I decided to start the day off by going to the thrift store for their 50% off sale.  I love to look for good finds at the thrift store!  The crowd was large, the shelves almost bare and the line long, however.  After we left there, Natalie and Dakota and I went to the Arbutus library to replenish our supply of books and educational videos.  Then we met with Daddy/Poppy, for lunch at Sorrentos before hitting the Landowne library on the way home to pick up my holds.  Once here, we only had half a day left, but we watched a great Reading Rainbow on mummies based on a book by Aliki and it really held Koda's attention, with a few "wow!" remarks thrown in!  Then we moved on to our first Christmas Across the USA unit, starting with Connecticut, with a little embelishment.  We used the clue under our countdown to Christmas snow globe for the d

Today we really started delving into our ancient Egypt study.  We are supposed to be following Story of the World, Volume 1 and I love the program, but we got off to a bad start with all the personal and family issues we had this school year early on and rather than stress about it, I shoved it aside and just got back into it recently.  SOTW kind of zooms past this part, but I found there is so much to learn and tons of great crafts and fun activities to do that we are going to slow down, have fun and really enjoy it. Today we reviewed our SOTW story about the Nile River then did a short mapping activity that they presented.  Then I used www.enchantedlearning.com to pull up a "follow the directions" map on Egypt that was more comprehensive and Dakota did that.  We read a story about the two kings and Upper and Lower Egypt and how King Menes won the battle and combined the colors of the two crowns to make one united country.  We followed up by starting our new Magic Tree Ho

Wednesdays are co-op days at our house.  This is the second year for my own personal AAHE Cooperative and I am so proud of the way it has turned out.  Last year we did Fifty Nifty United States.  This year we are doing Artists and Composers.  Each week a two moms have teaching duties.  We have two age groups of 12 kids each for these topics....the older class is age 8 to 10 and the younger class is age 5 to 7.  From 9:25 until 10:25 the older kids learn about an artist and the younger class learns about a composer.  At 10:25 we have a 5 minute switch and break and the teacher moves to the other class and repeats her lesson, tweaked to be age appropriate.  Today the kids learned about Mary Cassatt with Wendy T. and they did Tempera Monoprints.   http://homeschoolblogger.com/melissal89/506477/    Wendy read the kids a book then they started the project, allowing the kids who weren't having a turn with the art materials to draw on their own.  They turned out great!  For music, Leslie

Life has been anything but normal for us here at our house throughout October, but we have weathered the storm and are coming through on the other side.  I am getting back to my normal routine and that includes our daily, or close to daily, homeschool/family life blog.  I have missed it!  Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.  Leave a comment or two now and then.  They really make my day!  Cindy Yesterday and today I had hoped to get a full, focused day of homeschooling in since I didn't have my granddaughter, but I forgot that if my daughter is off work, that means the neighbor kids are off too!  Dakota was willing to give me a half day of focus both days, but by lunchtime he really wanted to be free to go outside and play, and I couldn't blame him.  Both days, however, we got a great deal done in three hours.  It makes me think that we may start to do all our "important" things in the morning and start saving the afternoons for videos, arts and