Spelling Fun!

In talking to a very good friend of mine (that just so happens to be a 3rd grade teacher), I was voicing my concerns with the amount of writing that seems to go on with our 3rd grade Language Arts. She mentioned that with all of that required writing, one of the areas that we can take a break from it is Spelling practice! There are so many fun ways to practice spelling words...and we can put that paper and pencil away for a minute! Thanks for the reminder Jenny! Today we used shaving cream and fingers!!!

A Proud Moment!!

This post is more for me than anyone. I just wanted to record the test that B-Bop took today. We have been very inconsistent in our efforts of getting through our History curriculum this year. It is a shame because it has been one of B-Bop's favorite subjects and somehow we just haven't gotten to it as much as we should have. We are attempting to finish it out so that we can get our 3rd grade History ordered for this fall and try to fit it in next year in a more consistent manner.

I was worried that with the couple of months off that we have taken along with our inconsistency that she was going to bomb this test. Apparently if you are passionate about something it sticks with you!! She scored 23 out of 25 on the following questions (they were multiple choice)...

1. Which city is located on the Tiber River in Italy?
2. Which city was the capital of the Byzantine Empire?
3. Which city is a holy city of Islam?
4. What is a republic?
5. What did the Romans build to carry water into the cities?
6. Who was the first emperor of Rome?
7. Who was the leader of the barbarian tribe called the Huns?
8. Whom was the month of July named for?
9. Who made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire?
10. What did the ancient Romans build all over their empire?
11. What is Veni, vidi, vici Latin for?
12. What was the troubled time of change in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire called?
13. Whom did the Knights of the Round Table serve?
14. What is a Muslim?
15. Where did monks live, teach, and copy books?
16. What is the Muslim place of prayer called?
17. This king supported learning and united much of Europe. His name means "Charles the Great". Who was he?
18. Where did republican government and the Colosseum come from?
19. Whom did the Romans borrow many of their gods and goddesses from?
20. What is the name of the volcano that erupted and destroyed Pompeii?
21. What greatly weakened the Western Roman Empire by 476 A.D.?
22. What was the Colosseum?
23. Who traveled between Mecca and Medina and had a vision that started Islam?
24. Who wrote a set of laws followed all over the Byzantine empire?
25. How many parts was the Roman Empire split into?

I just had to jump for joy when she tested so well!! It really has been one of those years that at times I have wondered if she would have learned more at school. I was more than happy to see that she retained all of that information this year! I think that it is one of those things that I am happy to see taking place because I wasn't good with History in school and it is fun to see her excitement with it. Granted it was multiple choice and she didn't have to come up with the answers without a few choices to pick from but she fired out those answers pretty quick with no hesitation! Good job B-Bop! I am SO PROUD of you and I am now looking forward to next year with a lot more excitement than I first realized! Bring on 3rd grade:).

So our friends are moving...

follow their adventures as they sell everything they own to travel the world with their 4 small children. Oh, and they're not revealing their destination. That's for you to guess based on the clues they leave.

Their Mission

Discover. They’re on a quest to discover the wonder and beauties of this world and experience new places and cultures.

Share. They want to share their discoveries with you...but there’s a twist...you won’t know where they are until you guess all the clues. Guess right and you’ll win the grand prize. They’re also giving away 1,000,000 books to unschooled children in the world.

Inspire. They want to inspire you to live your dreams, whatever they might be.

Rachel has put together an AMAZING video to help other better understand why they have embarked upon this incredible journey! Scroll to the bottom of my blog to watch (or click on their website and go to their videos at the bottom).

Follow their journey at...
http://www.discovershareinspire.com/

We have really enjoyed getting to know this sweet family through our homeschool playgroup! We are so excited for them and think that they are amazing for following their dreams! We will miss you guys! God Bless!!

B-Bops Valentine's Box....

We have a K12 Valentine's Party on Wednesday at the local skating rink. They said each kid could bring a decorated Valentine's box or bag and Valentine's to pass out. We are really excited to go! We decided to make a "purse" for B-Bop and we are still trying to come up with ideas for Buddy's box.... We started with a cereal box and cut a slit in the side...

Then we found some metallic tissue paper left over from Christmas and wrapped the box...

Then we re-cut the slit and reinforced it with tape. We found some pink ribbon (left over from our hair bow making days) and stapled it to each side of the slit (later we covered the staples with crepe paper)....

Then we took strips of crepe paper (left over from birthday parties) and cut slits to make fringe and rolled the fringe with a pencil....

We taped three rows of fringe across the bottom and added our crepe paper heart that we had made earlier in the day for our house decorations AND Wa-La we have our "purse"....

Our original idea was to cover the entire box with pink construction paper and then cover it completely with rows and rows of our fringe to make a "shaggy purse", but then when we saw how cute it looked with the silver tissue paper we decided to just add a few accents!

Happy Valentine's Box making and if you have any ideas for Buddy send them our way (so far we just have the idea of Sponge Bob Square Pants)!!

Poems and Experiments!

We have had a full day of lessons in every subject today! B-Bop spent the morning writing and memorizing her poem for the upcoming Zoo-etry Festival!! They are supposed to either memorize one from a book or they can write their own and memorize it to recite at the festival! The theme is Zoo-etry so it needs to involve animals in one way or another. Part of our Language Arts curriculum involves public speaking skills...this has been a great way to incorporate that! Her poem turned out so cute...

Dog Food vs. Ice Cream
by B-Bop

Ice cream oh, ice cream
you are so sweet!
All flavors and toppings,
complete my favorite treat!

My furry dog Chewy,
this sweat treat he shall not eat.
Biscuits and dog bones and stinky dog food,
are the only things dogs can eat!
Eating toys and shoes and slippers so rude!
He needs to learn manners,
that crazy furry dude!

I'll stick with ice cream,
and he with his bones!
Together we'll dream,
of giant ice cream cones!


This afternoon we dove into our Language Arts lesson. B-Bop read a non-fiction article on how animals are suited for the environment in which they live. She learned how to compare and contrast . We learned about Camels in the Sahara desert and Polar Bears at the North Pole! To better demonstrate how they are suited for their environment we did this little experiment....

First we put a rubber glove on one of her hands and covered it in Crisco...
Then we filled two bowls with ice water and had her put her hands down into the water...

That hand on the right only spent a couple of seconds in the water!...

The one on the left was able to stay in for a couple of minutes!! The glove represented the Polar Bears skin and the Crisco was the bears layer of fat. She is really glad that she doesn't have to dive into the freezing cold ocean to get her food!

The holiday's got the best of us!!

We haven't posted to this blog lately but we sure have been busy! We are loving being back to a regular schedule this week! We look forward to putting more on here and hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday!

As I marked our attendance online today I noticed that we have hit 100 days of school, WOOHOO!!! That means that we are more than half way done with the school year...only 80 more days to go!

A couple of more spelling helps...

www.teachnet.com/lesson/langarts/spellingwds040299.html

http://www.sd5.k12.mt.us/elrod/multiage/Spelling.html

Thanks to my good friend Jenny who was so kind to share these with us!

We're Goin' Crazy for Cornucopia's!

Although we have been listening to Christmas music since November 1st and have already put up our Christmas Tree we have not forgotten about one of our favorite holiday's...THANKSGIVING!! We have had a lot of fun making Cornucopia's! This first one came from one of our favorite sites, to print out your own template click HERE! My original plan for these was to decorate the front window, but both of my kids decided to give theirs away to their Grandparents!


B-Bop's Cornucopia...
Buddy's Cornucopia...

The next one we made out of a paper grocery sack. We started by cutting out one large side of the bag. Then (leaving about a one inch border) we cut slits going across lengthwise. We then cut out the other large side of the bag and cut it into one inch strips going across the short length. We colored those short strips using a brown crayon. Then we took the short strips and weaved them into the long slits...

When we were all done weaving and gluing down the strips that stuck out on the ends, we thought it looked like a nice place mat (maybe another project for another day)! The possibilities are endless, can you imagine how cute these could be out of scrapbooking paper?! My mom also reminded me that to "laminate" them you can use clear shelf paper!

Then I got really sidetracked and started arranging our colored cornucopia's on it to see how cute it would look as a Thanksgiving Day place mat! Buddy's...

B-Bop's...

Alright, back to the actual project! Once it is all dry, roll it up into the cornucopia shape and staple, then we took an extra brown strip we had left over and glued it across the top to cover our staples...

B-Bop did a great job on this and is planning to fill it up and give it to Grandma as a Thank You Gift for hosting our Thanksgiving! I have been looking for other fun Cornucopia projects, we are planning on making a few more. One of them will be out of fruit and vegi pictures that we have cut out of magazines, and the other out of waffle cones and candy fruit! If you have any other fun ideas, PLEASE SHARE!!

Shakin' it Up!!

B-Bop LOVES Math and she does well with it. Now that she has been introduced to all of the different ways to find her answers I wanted her to brush up on her memorization skills. We started today with dice! She would roll them and whatever numbers they landed on she would write down the equation...that turned out to be easy peasy so we moved on to just yelling out the answer as quick as we could when the dice hit the table... Again that was way too easy...

So we moved on to dominoes (they go up to 12 + 12). As she would build her rows to tip over she wrote down the equations and figured out the answers, again our goal being memorization! She made all sorts of swirls, shapes, zigzags, and my personal favorite...SANTA'S SLEIGH!...

I left her for a few minutes to play on her own and I came back to this...

Although I will never expect her to have a quick recall of what 93 + 29 equals, it totally made my day:)

She obviously does NOT get it from me!

This morning B-Bop and I were studying the paintings of the French artist Henri Rousseau (we are having an Art-A-Thon because we are a little behind on our Art curriculum through K12)! She was in the midst of creating a tropical rain forest using the overlapping method taught in the lesson and she needed to create some jungle animals to go in the scene. I attempted to show her how animals are basically made out of different shapes and how you can lightly draw the shapes and then outline them and erase the shape lines to help your animal look more realistic. It took me a solid five minutes to demonstrate for her.... Ya, it's okay to laugh! Mine was far from realistic (obvious...LOL!!). What is that anyway...a giraffasoarus? She looked at me and I could tell she wasn't feeling up to using my method! She proceeded to whip this out in about 20 seconds flat!....

My flash actually washed out the color, it appears much more vibrant in person! You should see the things she can draw when she actually applies herself and takes her time. Seriously though, someone should fire her Art teacher!!!

Election Day Fun!

For the big Election Day we put together a fun activity to teach the kids about voting. We invited our good buddies down the street over to join in on the fun (I have cute pictures of the group but Buddy is wearing our state's college gear, being that this blog is public and I'm paranoid, I'm not posting the picture). We started off by talking about the story of the 3 Little Pigs then we read the Wolf's Side of the Story! The kids made these Wolf and Pig puppets to act out the story... We then cast our ballot on which story we thought was the true one...

The Pig's WON!!...

Our friends brought these yummy treats! We voted on which cookies we wanted to eat...

And the Sugar Cookies WON!!...

And as if we didn't have enough sugar in us already...Grandma joined us for dinner and brought these festive cupcakes!!...

We talked about how the outcomes could have been different if someone chose not to vote. We taught them that every vote counts and that they can voice their own opinion through voting. Our K12 teacher emailed us a lot of great ideas, including activities and lessons that could be used for older children (things like the Electoral College that I didn't feel up to teaching a 7 and 4 year old)!

To view or print your own puppets click HERE!

To view or print your own Uncle Sam Ballot Box template click HERE!

To view or print your own "Wolf's Side of the Story" as well as additional Election Day lesson plans and activities click HERE!