Horn Homeschool: Week 24

Toast in the shape of 100 for breakfast.

During week 24 of our homeschool venture, we had a split theme.  On Monday we commemorated our 100th day of school!  Yay!

Felt good to reach this typical kindergarten milestone.  And as is also typical, we did lots of activities centered around the number 100. 

Of course there was lots of counting to 100 involved in our day.  We did 100 jumping jacks (that was hard!), counted and ate 100 pieces of popcorn, make posters using 100 items (paperclips and pennies), and weighed five different groups of 100 things.  The weighing activity was especially engaging because we made a prediction chart before weighing the articles.  We weighed a box of 100 paperclips, 100 pennies, 100 cottonballs, 100 popsicle sticks and 100 stickers.

The rest of our week was devoted to one of my all-time favorite children's authors.  Theodore Geisel's birthday falls on March 2.  He is otherwise known as the legendary Dr. Seuss or by his other pen-name Theo LeSieg ("Geisel" spelled backwards).

To commemorate the special day, we read MANY books by the birthday author beginning appropriately with Happy Birthday to You.  We also had a special Seussical birthday party dinner with chicken in the shape and style of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  One of the absolutely invaluable aspects of homeschooling is getting your children actively involved and excited about learning.  Chloe hopped right into the Seuss party preparations and concocted her own "Pink Ink" drink for dinner inspired by a Seuss book.  She also had the idea to dress up as characters from The Cat in the Hat.  She and Clive became Things 1 and 2 and we crafted a cat-like hat for Matt to wear at dinner.

We never watch tv during the day simply because our television is in a bad spot to pick up digital reception.  For our Seuss marathon however, I pulled the tv out and rigged it up so the kids could watch a few episodes "The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That" on pbs.  What a fabulous show!

And because I'm ridiculous I verbalized an idea about making a Cat-in-the-Hat cake.  Chloe got even MORE excited and promised she'd help me make and decorate the cake.  So, we concocted a cat shaped cake.  That part was fairly simple.  It was the frosting and decorating that proved to be the most time consuming.  Thankfully, a kind neighbor friend of mine gave me some black decorator's icing and I did the best I could with my very limited artistic abilities. 

Dr. Seuss' books are so out of this world fun to read!  Though I gave up on the tongue twister book about 1/3 of the way through. That one is crazy!  Conversely, I also dig how many of his books are so easy for beginning readers to read for themselves.  His reader books aren't the contrived no-plot type of books that you find on the library's "emerging readers" shelves.  His books maintain a silly whimsicality while still using simple beginner words.

Happy happy birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Counting 100 pieces of popcorn for her and Clive to eat as a snack.  100 pieces of popcorn is surprisingly small!

100 posters in which the kids glued 100 paperclips and pennies.

Thing 2 was a very helpful cake froster!

The cat cake.

Close-up of my attempt at the cat's mischeivous face.

Thing 2 patiently waiting in her red "box" (a pack-n-play covered with red towels and blankets).

Thing 2 waits to jump out and surprise Matt.

Even Solomon joined in on the Dr. Seuss fun by wearing his special bib!

"Pink Ink" for dinner. 

Our "one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish" were actually homemade chicken nuggets.

Horn Homeschool: Weeks 22-23

In conjunction with President's Day, we launched into a two week unit study on American presidents, American currency, the 50 states, the American flag and general USA history.

Regarding presidents, we mainly covered the two presidents whom we celebrate come February 22.  Namely, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  We read biographies of these two men as well as several picture books about them and other presidents.  Additionally, Chloe did a few mini-books on these guys from enchantedlearning.com.  I LOVE THIS SITE!  I know most of the site is workbook-page-heavy but I love the extraordinary variety of activities and topics they cover. 

In line with the presidents, we talked currency a bit and the kids were able to identify Washington and Lincoln on coins and bills.  With Chloe I did some extra work with counting money and categorizing coins.

I'm so glad my frazzled brain somehow still remembers all the words to the classic ditty Fifty Nifty United States!  We sang that tune every day and so often that Chloe can sing it from memory now.  And inadvertently, she now knows all fifty states in the union.  Mission accomplished!  And if you're looking for a light-hearted read, I highly recommend the silly Scrambled States of America books. 

In my quick grabbing of America-themed books we also read about the revolutionary war, the constitution, the star-spangled banner, and the American flag.  During this unit, I led the kids to look for and count American flags when driving in the car.  And Chloe and I crafted an American flag out of crepe paper and construction paper.  (Details for the craft linked here. Though ours didn't turn out nearly as nice as the pictured link!)

Chloe and her friend Kayla had a blast decorating the presidential cupcakes.

Horn Homeschool: Week 21

Week 21 was the week before February 14, so we were obliged to do a Valentines-y lesson.

Of course we made heart shaped everything.  Heart-shaped sugar cookies, hair barrettes, stromboli and a big ole chocolate chip cookie.

We read books about how people celebrate Valentine's Day and made a few valentines for local friends.

We also talked much about love. About God's love for us and our responsibility to love others.  And believe me, there's lots of fodder for application about loving one another with bickering siblings cooped up indoors during the snowy winter months.  :)  This mama is continually getting schooled in the areas of patience and love in dealing with these precious blessings of mine!

Without a doubt, the highlight of the week was going to sing at a local nursing home with our homeschool group.  We sang all love-y themed songs and at the end of our mini-performance, the kids all handed out valentines to the residents. This was our third time singing at this particular nursing home and although Clive acted naughty while I was leading the singing, Chloe is really started to *get* it.  On the way home Chloe initiated all sorts of questions about the nursing home residents.  It was a GREAT opportunity for us to talk about what it means to show love and to consider the needs of others. 

Simple heart-shaped felt barrettes that Chloe and I sewed for her little church girlfriends.  Found this idea on the purl bee.  This was an easy beginner sewing project for Chloe.

My counter-top helper, aka Clive, helped make heart shaped sugar cookies.

Matt's requested Valentine's Day dinner was stromboli. And because I'm a nerd, I had to try to make it heart-shaped.  :)

Horn Homeschool: Weeks 17-20

Our month of January was devoted to studying the human body.  Following this basic lesson plan (thanks to homeschoolshare.com), we did several science lessons, demonstrations and readings which covered most of the body's systems.

We started the unit study with a WONDERFUL and extensive lesson on the body with our homeschool group.  It was a great way to kick-start the human body fun!

After that initial lesson, I used the rest of the first week to talk about how to take proper care of our bodies.  We read books on topics such as healthy eating, exercise, sleep, and cleanliness.

The next three weeks we learned about bones, lungs, skin, the five senses, the heart, the digestive system, muscles, the immune system, and the brain.  We read LOTS of books.  We did several fun demonstrations.  We made manipulatives and watched movies.

The human body is pretty stinkin' amazing.  As we read and learned together I kept finding myself in awe of this complicated machine God has knit together. 

Here were the highlights of our four week study:

• Easy Make & Learn Projects: Human Body by Donald M. Silverman.  This book was phenomenal!  A lot of crafty learning books are pretty lame but this book actually taught concepts through the crafty manipulatives.  Through the course of our study we made paper arms with muscles to demonstrate pulling action, skin diagram with hair follicles (made of yarn), and a skeleton to review various bone names.
• Boiling bones.  To show Chloe the various parts of bone, I purchased some beef bones at the grocery and we boiled 'em up.  We also cooked up some chicken thigh bones to compare to the beef bones.
• Magic School Bus Human Body dvd.  I LOVE THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS!  Talk about making complicated unseen concepts come alive!  Wow.  We watched all three body episodes repeatedly.  The dvd was entertaining, packed with education and enjoyable enough to watch over and over again.  I'm certain my kids understand the digestive process solely because of this fabulous dvd. 
• Human body poster and model.  My mom scored a few body books for us at yard sales and one of them opened up into a life size poster!  It was hanging in our dining room/school room for the duration of our lessons and it was fantastic to be able to take the kids to the poster and point out various parts.  Additionally, I had a simple body model we used primarily to learn the parts of the digestive system.  We named him Hugh.  The kids had loads of fun taking Hugh's organs in and out.
• My Amazing Human Body computer software.  I picked this computer game up at the library not realizing what a valuable teaching tool it would become.  Chloe spent many an hour playing the games and she learned much without even realizing it!  The interactive cd not only taught body basics but it also allowed for body exploration and unguided learning.  One memorable activity let the user choose a body part or organ and then do various virtual things to learn more.  You could virtually poke the organ to see it's texture/density, take an xray, or turn the organ around 360 degrees. 

This was a super fun unit study but I wish we could have done it justice!  We didn't do much with the circulatory, nervous or respiratory systems.  At times like these I remember Chloe is in KINDERGARTEN.  She'll catch up when she gets to high school biology.  :)

Horn Homeschool: Week 16

Week 16 in our schooling was all about CHRISTMAS.  Surprise, surprise!

We did all the usual Christmas-y activities including cookie baking and frosting, decorating the house, trimming the tree, and making ornaments.

Another beneficial Christmas activity we partook of was caroling at a local nursing home.  I dressed up the kiddos in their Christmas best and we sang with a few other families from our homeschool group.  Then we gave out homemade ornaments to the residents.  Let me tell you, those old folks LOVE seeing little kiddos!  Their faces beamed with joy and their pains were momentarily relieved.  What a blessing to be able to spread some joy and remind them of the miraculous baby Savior born so long ago!

We hammer it into our kids that Christmas is the celebration of Jesus' birth.  Along that line, we did a countdown paper chain as well as a Jesse tree to further emphasize and anticipate Jesus' birthday celebration. 

Additionally, we read myriads of nativity centered books and watched portions of The Nativity Story.  We sang Christmas carols, made a timeline of history leading up to Jesus' birth and sang the song Matthew's Begats way too many times.  (Check out this fabulous Christmas album too by Andrew Peterson.  Along the same lines as the Jesse Tree, the songs travel throughout the Old Testament showing the foreshadowing and expectation of Jesus throughout history.  There's also a book that follows the song Matthew's Begats that is a fun and helpful visual aid.)

Lastly, we learned a readily applicable Bible verse for the Christmas season.  "It is more blessed to give than to receive."  Not sure that lesson sunk into their little brains yet.  But it is SO TRUE.  It truly is more fun to give than to get! 

Horn Homeschool: Week 15

December began with a bang in Ohio.  We went from fall to winter in a single dramatic day!  With several snow storms dumping inches upon inches of snow in our yard I quickly switched up my week 15 game plan.  Instead of studying fairy tales as I originally planned, we launched into a week-long snow lesson!  

Each day we focused on a different aspect of snow.  Monday we talked about snowflakes and read several books explaining the science behind the formation of snow crystals.  We also read Snowflake Bentley, the true story of a farmer from the early 1900's who spent his entire life studying, photographing and learning about snowflakes.  Inspiring stuff!  We also made LOTS of paper snowflakes and played around with cyber snowflake creation using this addictingly fun site. 

Tuesday we did a snowman lesson and failed miserably at making our own real snowman.  The snow was just too dang fluffy and didn't cooperate.  Instead we constructed edible marshmallow snowmen.  Way better (and tastier) than the real thing!  We also made snowmen out of paper plates and decorated them with various shapes. 

Wednesday we read about fun activities to do in the snow including ice skating, sledding, hockey, and snowboarding.  And then I took Chloe out sledding!  It was an absolutely perfect day for it too.  Sunny and warm-ish and we had the hill entirely to ourselves since everyone was in school.

Thursday we learned about how animals handle the snow.  Also talked about animal tracks in the snow and how to identify them.  And Friday was a day for Clive -- snow plows!

Because the snow was so deep and fluffy all week the kids did MUCH playing in the snow followed by mugs of steaming hot cocoa. 
 

Chloe said she was examining snow flakes up close.

That's a snowflake shaped quesadilla in case you were wondering.

What snow lesson would be complete without eating snowball cookies?!?

Snow-mower!

Our family display of snowflakes.  Lovely!

Chloe venturing out to *study* snowflakes armed with her snowflake board and magnifying glass.

Our sweet marshmallow snow people.

Horn Homeschool: Week 14

Week 14 of homeschooling found us in Thanksgiving preparation mode.  In the midst of the preparations, we spent some time talking and reading about Thanksgiving.  I picked up this little book awhile ago (The First Thanksgiving) and it proved to be just right in its depth of explanation and length of pages. 

The main thrust of our lesson however was not so much about the history of Thanksgiving but about THANKFULNESS.  Thankfulness was plaguing my brain in November as I blogged in a daily countdown of thankfulness up until turkey day.  We talked MUCH about practicing thankfulness and memorized the following verse together as a family.

Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. [1 Thessalonians 5:18]

I also took the kids to a nursing home with our homeschooling group to sing to the residents. I'm hoping to make these nursing home sing visits a semi-regular thing for me and the kids.  Not only does it give us a chance to spread some joy but it is a very visible lesson about meeting the needs of others instead of living selfishly.  And believe me, it's pretty natural for a kid to live selfishly.  Heck, it's really natural for me to live selfishly too.  I have a feeling thankfulness vs. selfishness is going to be a lesson we keep learning for years to come.

I also did about 1/4 of this hefty Thanksgiving study guide.  We talked about the food the pilgrims and indians ate, read some brief real stories of pilgrim children, and we made some corn pudding in the crockpot.  I will NOT be doing that again.  Ever.  The kids each had one bite and that was enough corn pudding for them!  I don't blame them either.  That stuff was mushy, gushy and tasteless.

And the best part of our Thanksgiving week was enjoying our family!  We traveled up to Michigan and got to spend the weekend with both of Matt's brothers' families.  

Horn Homeschool: Weeks 12-13

Solomon is intrigued by Chloe's pretend T-rex tongue.

After our week 11 break, we took two weeks to study dinosaurs.

My strategy in tackling a dinosaur unit study was to spend a few days defining dinosaurs and review the creation week.  Then we took one individual dinosaur a day and studied it more indepth.  We read several non-fiction and/or picture books about each dinosaur and then we did a correlating craft.

 Lastly, Chloe and I created a dinosaur comparison chart in which we graphed the heights of several dinosaurs.  This was a FANTASTIC activity!  I found some excellent resources here which gave me all the tools we needed.  The website linked above had a complete table listing dinosaur heights, weights, and lengths.  Using these simple tables, Chloe and I recorded various stats on a handful of dinosaurs.  There was SO much math involved here I was one happy math nerdette!  It was especially satisfying to see that Chloe was enjoying the math and not even recognizing it as such.  Sneaking math into fun activities is way more fulfilling to me than putting covert veggies into foods ala the Jessica Seinfeld method.

I knew close to nothing about dinosaurs at the beginning of our unit study.  Thank the Lord for helpful resources!  One such treasure trove came from our local library.  Our library has recently created some brand spanking new discovery backpacks. You guessed it, we snagged a brand new dino discovery pack!  It was incredible!  I won't even begin to tell you all the fun educational dino-themed gems included.  

Of course there are endless activities you can do when studying dinosaurs.  We did role-playing to cement the various behaviors of dinos, categorized dinos based on eating habits (herbivore, carnivore, omnivore),  did dino-computer games on the dinosaur train website, dug in the sand for dinosaur toys, and learned about fossil hunters/scientists. We should have visited the natural history museum to look at real dino bones but I was too tired to plan such a big field trip.

I learned a LOT about dinosaurs.  I hope the kids learned a few things too.

Clive REALLY loved playing and learning about T.Rex in particular.  Chloe enjoyed the study too but not nearly as much as her rough-and-tumble brother.  Near the end of our second dino-learning week Chloe sighed and asked, "Mommy, can we study something more nice next week like . . . princesses?"   

Chloe (in very tight pants) modeling her homemade Stegosaurus blades and T-rex mouth.

Putting the hard-boiled cracked eggs in to soak up some dye.  In a few days these babies become neat-looking dino eggs!

Clive creating a dino-stamping masterpiece.

Chloe stamps a dinosaur scene.

Cracking the hard-boiled eggs before soaking them in colored water.

A dinosaur egg!

Pretty realistic looking, don't you think?

Our dinosaur height chart.  Brontosaurus was the tallest by far!

Horn Homeschool: Week 11

For week 11 of our homeschooling ventures we took a much-needed week OFF.

It was, in a word, blissful.

We did NO school work whatsoever.  I was tempted to do some minimal school-related tasks but thankfully I did not go down that road.  No handwriting, phonics or math worksheets.  Just playing, casual reading and lots of free time. 

Taking a break gave us the motivation to jump back into homeschooling refreshed and ready to learn!  

If you homeschool, when do you take breaks?  Do you just tailor the breaks according to your family's needs or plan on taking regularly scheduled times off?

Horn Homeschool: Week 10

Week 10 continued our letter F themed studies with a unit on FARMS.

• Farm field trip.  If you live in Ohio and have children, a visit to Lake Farmpark should be mandatory by law. Heck, forget the kids, everyone must go regardless of offspring because this place was amazing!  Lots of demonstrations, education, and hands-on animal petting all facilitated by the most friendly and knowledgeable staff you can imagine.  We attended a milking and cheese-making demo, petted countless farm animals and even rode a tractor-pulled wagon around the grounds.  I appreciated the small scale to the exhibits and demonstrations.  The kids were all able to get right up close to experience everything.  
• Tractors.  There are a myriad of benefits to homeschooling but one facet that I especially love is incorporating special topics for both Chloe and Clive.  Since Clive is still so young I don't force or expect him to do much school with us.  But one aspect of the farm unit that I spent much time on was just for him -- tractors.  Chloe could care less about farm machinery.  That doesn't mean we wouldn't have talked about it some anyway but because Clive is a serious machine enthusiast we did it in excess for him.  It was so fun to see his excitement at reading tractor books and watching tractor dvds.  AND during our field trip he got to pretend to drive one.  Bonus!
• Farm pretend play.  Got out the little people farm and animals for our study this week.  It had been packed away for awhile so the kids had a fresh new longing to play with it and act out various farmy scenes.
• Food origins.  We learned much this week about where food comes from and the various types of farms that produce our food.  Even though we're weeks past this lesson, Clive still often holds up a piece of food from his plate and asks, "Mommy where this come from?" 
• Charlotte's Web.  We had already finished Charlotte's Web as our read-aloud a few weeks prior but the experiences and farm setting from the story were brought back to life with our farm study.  If you're doing a farm unit, Charlotte's Web would be a perfect and fun tie-in!
• Farm animal babies, mommies, daddies and groups.  There are a plethora of specific names for animal families.  It's borderline ridiculous.  We just did the basic ones and then reinforced with some matching worksheets.  Also read a whimsical book that depicted animal group names through the letters of the alphabet. Did you know a group of doves is called an exaltation?  And that a group of elephants is technically a kindergarten?   

The farm week was purposely light since we were coming off some heavy school weeks and needed a break.

Besides the above activities, we continued on with Chloe's regular math, reading, read-alouds and handwriting tasks.  And, as usual, we read LOTS of books about our theme throughout the week.

Chloe announced this week that she had changed her mind (again) about her grown-up occupation.  After week 10 she decided she wants to grow up and be a farmer.  Surprise, surprise!

Horn Homeschool: Week 9

Wow, I am ridiculously behind on these homeschool posts! In case you're interested, I'll be posting these on a side box from now on so you can find them easily.

For week 9, we skipped a few letters in our alphabet progression and fast-forwarded ahead to F so we could learn about FALL.

Studying fall in October in Ohio accorded itself to some instant visual learning opportunities. Here are the highlights of our funnest fall learning moments:

• Fall Hike. We have a plethora of amazing hiking trails in our community. A national park is almost literally in our backyard and our county park system is seriously impressive. It was a no-brainer to incorporate a leaf-and-acorn-gathering hike into our school week. And we all got some exercise to boot! When we got home we used a tree field guide to identify a few of the most common trees in our area by their leaves.
  
• Leaf Crafts. There are countless leafy fun activities splattered on the internet. It was hard to choose which to do! Of course we did the classic leaf-rubbing because no childhood would be complete without a little leaf-rubbing. We also painted over leaves with watercolors, did an autumn tree paper-tearing craft, laminated a few of our favorite leaves and painted paper-bag cut outs of leaf shapes. The paper bag leaves turned out great and are now decorating the border of our November calendar.
  
• Photosynthesis and leaf color change. Truthfully, I wasn't quite sure I understood why leaves change color in the fall so this part of our study was slightly intimidating. One science-y book I grabbed from the library put all the pieces together well and smacked me upside the head with its common sense. Another DUH moment for teacher-mommy! In the process of making their own food, plants use chloroplasts as the food making factory. Chloroplasts are made of chlorophyll which is GREEN. When fall rolls around, the tree goes into energy-conservation mode and no longer needs to produce any new food. It sort of hibernates. Since it's not making food, the chloroplasts are no longer needed in the leaves. And the leaves themselves are no longer needed. As the chloroplasts "die", the green goes out of the leaves and an identifying color remains. There's a lot more science in that part about the color but I won't go there. Because I don't understand it. I taught the kids a very basic watered down version of photosynthesis using the awesome amazing Here Comes Science cd by They Might Be Giants. There's an entire track devoted to photosynthesis. And you've NOT experienced cuteness until you've heard my darling Clive sing the word photosynthesis.
  
• Seasons Demonstration. We usually have some kind of Bible time during our homeschooling day so in line with our fall studies, we read appropriate Bible stories. (We use the Egermeier Bible Storybook which is unusually complete for a children's Bible and includes strikingly beautiful painted illustrations.) I also set up a demonstration to show Chloe why the seasons occur. I took some yarn and created an oval shaped orbit on the living room floor. Then I stood in the center of the circle and acted out the sun's role while Chloe held our globe and slowly walked in orbit around me. Using a globe makes this demo work easily since globes all have the 23.5 degree tilt of the earth built in. For it's the tilt that makes the seasons happen (details here). Chloe really got into it and I think she mostly understood the concept! She even did a little teaching session later that night to help explain seasons to Clive and daddy.
  
• Autumn Leaf song. Songs and poems are magic teaching tools with my kiddos. I stole this one from our library story time and it was a perfect fit! (Sing to the tune of London Bridge)
  
  Autumn leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down,
  Autumn leaves are falling down, all around us
  
  Red and yellow, orange and brown, orange and brown, orange and brown
  Red and yellow, orange and brown, all around us
  
  Take a rake and rake them up, rake them up, rake them up
  Take a rake and rake them up, all around us
  
  Make a pile and jump right in, jump right in, jump right in
  Make a pile and jump right in, all around us
  
  [We then proceeded to rake up our leaves and jump in the pile. Fall fun-nity AND I got a household task done. Homeschooling = Awesome]