After christmas clean up

House is actually pretty clean despite 3 christmas times this weekend. Kids are playing with new toys and watching videos today and I am trying to teach myself how to make bread without a bread machine( I really miss mine very much!!!!!) I am trying a no-knead recipe. Since the one Tippy-toe and I made the other way turned out like rocks LOL. Today is a vacation day from homeschooling. Little man has a bad cold and runny nose just like me. Dad is gone fishing.The kids new fish say its a good day to fish( up to the top of their tanks). Pityy-pat and tippy-toe got pet Beta fish for christmas. We hope to teach them responsibility and biology with the fish. Dad just likes the fishing barometer in the living room LOL.

Picture Day

Today we are taking school pictures. The kids have been making paper ornaments. We got a nice shepherd ornament from http://www.daniellesplace.com/images/shepherdboypat.gif

CHRISTmas program

Tonight was Cams christmas program it was wonderful! Both pittypat and tippytoe sat through the whole thing without incident. (just a little whining.) What a huge improvement!!! I am so lucky to have Aaron he took the littleman out when he couldn't sit still anymore and both bottles had run out. he's such a wonderful Daddy!

busy week

Aaron has been working with tippy-toe on his letters and he can now write 4 letters himself when asked. It's been busy here but I see such an improvement in both their behavior the skills, to sit and do school work will soon follow. Pitty-pat and big sis moved into to a bedroom suite downstairs putting beds in one rooom and making a playroom out of the other. It seems to be working out good. I just need to get the rest of Aimers things out of the playroom and clean up the mess she left down there. I am so lucky to have Aaron home with the kids.

Balancing Work and Homeschool

Yesterday I had to work and pull a night of call for work. I purchased some file folders and Disney Princess stickers and hope to get pitty-pat interested in a Act Like a True Princess LapBook using a Disney Princess theme. Last week we rented a non-animated version of snow white from the library. The girls are moving in together into their new big girl bedrooms. It is so nice to see them getting along and cooperating toward a common goal. It takes time to blend a family. It's good for pitty-pat and tippy-toe to be seperated too. The time has finaly come for that to happen. After all they were each others only constant for so long. For those of you who don't know I adopted two of my little cousins at ages 4 and 5 years old, then a year later I also adopted their one month old baby brother(hence the blended family).

Christmas is Here

Today we cleaned the living room to set up the Christmas tree. Worked in our Unit Study "The Mitten" by Jan Brett and Snow Unit Study with "Stopping by the Woods" by Robert Frost. We are moving toward a workbox system. Today the kids kept asking to do school work. They really like the cutting out activities for they're Lapbooks.It's the same work but the box system seems to make it more interesting right now. I tried to make student I.D. cards and Aaron installed a program on the computer to help me (but I need to learn how to use it). Right now Cam is working on homemade paper ornaments with Pitty-pat and Tippy-toe. Of course the lights didn't work when Cam tried them (before putting them on the tree), so Aaron and Tay went to buy a couple strands.
Aim moved out tonight. She's eightteen it's a hard lesson she has to learn and I am afraid she's not prepared for the consequences of her actions. She's been looking for a reason to get mad and leave. Today she was asked to pick up her stuff from the living room (she's been asked for over a week)and it was her day of the week to do dishes. (I guess she doesn't realize, when you live on your own it's dish day every day!) The irony goes on forever with that one. At least she finished one semester of college. She has the skills she needs to get a good education. I love her and I hate to see her get hurt. Well this isn't really a homeschool entry so I will end it here.

Winter Wonderland

It was a bad storm last night and today. I stayed home from work. No school for the oldest kids. We all got up and cleaned the house for three hours. The kids got out to play in the snow and make a snowman. Aaron and I made a run to Dollar Daze, a store and found a lot of neat things to fill a couple of workboxes. Wipe off addition books, wipe off subtraction book, phonics workbooks, princess +/- flash cards, and colored dice for addition games. All for just $1.00 each. Hooray. Indoors today they have both played Leapster Kindergarten (don't tell them it's a learning tool). Jon had destroyed his power cord over six months ago and they were without the Leapster till just last Friday. Mostly they are fighting at the table instead of working on their lapbooks. Tonight Aaron bought ornaments to decorate with stickers and everyone is going to make one--EVERYONE even the surly teenagers! Taylor made one and headed to the basement but everyone else really enjoyed the activity. Now to put up the tree.

Snow Flakes

Reading "Stopping By the Woods On A Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost Illustrated by Susan Jeffers It's December in the great North and I am sitting here still waiting for snow outdoors to go with my unit study LOL!We are using the lap book ideas from Homeschoolshare.com I am new to Lapbooking and this website has alot of neat ideas.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening


Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.



My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.



He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.



The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.
I had always heard the last two lines of the poem and never knew they were from Robert Frost. My favorite poem is The Road Not Taken.

winter wonderland

Big snow is coming tommorro. Set up a snow unit study for little ones.

Girls Home From Craft Store

Aaron and the two youngest girls are home from the craft store. A Great field trip to get homeschool supplies. They are all three Cam, Liz, and Jon busy coloring the posters they bought. Aaron picked up some stickers and foamies for some ideas I wanted to do. Baked spagetti is done. The bread Jon and I made earlier is on its last rising before baking so it should all time out.

Baking Bread with JonBoy

Today Jon and I are baking bread. He was so amazed with the yeast when it bubbled over the measureing cup. Let's forget when I let the milk on to scald and it went over the pan while I was giving little man a cracker. Jon likes it when I let him help me in the kitchen. He is doing a kindergarden program on his leapster. The time for the bread to rise is flying by for him since he has been without a powercord for his leapster for about eight months now. This is only my third or fourth time trying to make bread without a breadmachine. I hope it turns out for him. I read an article this morning while looking for homeschool ideas and thought since the girls are gone with Aaron I would try the recipe with Jon. Little Man has fallen asleep in his giant play yard and our cat tiger is curled up with him. I will try to post some photos. I plan to use this blog to record our home school activities for our first year. I am not using a planner but have some unit studies I have put together into lapbooks. We use workbooks we have found and printouts for our math concepts. We are checking out most of our books we don't already own from the local library. this week we read The Mitten a folk tale illustrated by Jan Brett. We used the lapbook ideas from homeschool share and jan bretts web page to make our lap books. We are also reading M is for Mitten by Annie Appleford since we do live in the mitten state...Michigan.

New To blogging

We are planning to use this blog to record what we actually do for our home school with the little kids day to day. I am not much for record books and papers will fill waste baskets fast around here. So this will be a more accurate lasting record.

Thanksgiving break

We are following Cam's school schedule for holiday breaks. So we are suppost to be off all week. But we are doing a lapbook on the mayflower anyway and visiting National Geographics cool mayflower interactive website for kids.

Brothers Grimm

Aimee took the kids to see "The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon" play at Alma High School. So we have been stuying some of the tales referred to in the play.

Brown Bear,Brown Bear What do you See?

We are reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you see? by Eric Carle. I just love his books. I found several worksheets to go along with the book. We watched several National Geographic videos someone from from work gave me for the kids. I have to say the videos were too old for them. They each did a unit study on black bears in a file folder.

Pilgrims

We are reading Sara Morton's Day and Samuel Eaton's Day both by Kate Waters. We also read Mayflower 1620 by National Geographic. The intereating thing about that book is it lists by ancestors. I didn't know he came over on the mayflower just that the daughter was the first marriage in Waterford Mass.

Jan Brett's The Mitten

This week we are working on Jan Brett's The Mitten. I found alot of ideas and coloring pages to use for a unit study right at Jan Bretts home page. I copied a mitten and made lacing cards. Another copy I used to place stickers of each animal on as I read the story aloud. Pitty-pat and Tippy toe loved this book. We also lapbooked this book using materials I found at homeschoolshare.We discussed hibernation and tracking in the snow. Aaron went hunting. After he shot a deer and we processed it ourselves for the freezer.The kids helped as much as possible. They loved seeing the deer up close.

Sea Creatures Unit Study

Some called it a Halloween trick others called just mean. As part of our unit on sea creatures I found a bag of very unusual seafood at Sam's Club. I made a Halloween Paella and told Pitty-pat and Tippy-toe they had to eat supper or no trick or treating. Pitty-pat didn't think octopus was even edible. Tippy-toe dug right in. After she ate one octopus I told her it was a trick she only had to finish her rice. Tippy-toe, he asked for seconds.  As a side note Pity-pat now knows what could happen if she complains about what I am making for dinner.

King David

History lesson as part of our wolves, sheep and shepherd theme we read the story of David the shepherd boy from a bible story book we have. We made cottonball sheep.

Lying

Pitty-pat and Tippy-toe have had a lying problem so we are studying "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" i checked out from the library the picture book by BG Hennessy in preperation for this unit study. We are also studying wolves as our animal this week. I hope I see an improvement in the truth telling around here. I didn't do it sure gets blamed for everything.

Parade

Took kids to CMU's homecoming parade. Pitty-pat, Cam, and Aim got to ride on a float with Aaron's Mom. The boy's, Jessica, and I enjoyed watching.

Little house Books

We took a trip to the local Public Library.
Pitty-pat checked out a Hannnah Montana chapter book "Secrets and Sneaks" which surprised me. It's about a third grade level reader. She hasn't put it down since we got it.
Tippy-toe and I picked out "The Deer in the Wood" a picture book adapted from Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House Books. It goes along with our bow hunting we are all gearing up for this year. We love to read each night. I was getting a little tired of Go,Dog Go by PD Eastman. Aaron says he'll take the kids out in the woods hunting with him one at a time and show them the deer. We did a worksheet on animal tracks for our nature journal notebook.

Falling Leaves

We took another nature walk on the Rail Trail near our home. Collected more leaves for our book. Studied the parts of the leaf and chlorophyll. Made leaf rubs and compared sizes of leaves. The hickory tree in our back yard was the biggestleaves. Words this week: yellow and four.

The Giving Tree

We read The Giving Tree by Sel Siverstein. We did acorn counting sheets. We started Nature journals and collected leaves for the tree pages. Filled the bird feeder for bird observations. We also made pinecone feeders to hang in the pines outside our house. We watched the video "Kids love spanish #2 alphabets and numbers" from the public library. For our field trip this week we took a walk in Aunt Caroline's Woods.

Water unit study

This week we watched the movie "Inkheart" and discussed the importance of reading. Our spelling words are: two, water, rain, drop, bow, the, end, blue, ball, sea, & see. We checked out the movie "eyewitness ponds and Rivers" from the library. It was awful I don't recommend it at all. We did worksheets on rain. Our color this week is of course BLUE.

An Apple A Day unit study

We are reading "The Little Red House" by Caroline Bailey. We made apple shape books, A is for Ant handwriting sheet, and trace the numbers apple picture 1-10. Our spelling words this week are ant, apple, A, An, And, red, tree, fall, all, one, & ate. We also read a story about Johny Appleseed for our history lesson. The apple blossom is our state flower so we did a work page about our state. This weeks color is RED. We colored a page with a bushel of apples