Dolphin Tale Unit Study Part Two

We spent a major amount of time today in parent discussion because we had a new mom with questions. And after all, that is what we are here for, to help each other, give support and suggestions on what might work. AND to be an ear just to listen. As moms we need that time to share what is on our hearts. I love this group for that very reason. We are there for each other. We all have different teaching styles and curriculum but we all respect each other and don't think one is doing it wrong just because it isn't the way we are doing it. We learn so much from each other each time we meet. 

 

This week we had eleven kids that were able to come and stay for our craft time. We didn't have a large amount of time for the craft so we didn't do a lot of background on the Anglerfish like we did the Jellyfish. But it is my hope that it will spark an interest in looking into it further. I also printed off some extra stuff for them to do while they were there or at home. 

JC, as always, is being silly and Ryan thinks he is funny. The kids really seemed to have a good time making them. They used egg cartons, pipe cleaners, construction paper to cut out teeth, feathers for the tail and a bead on the end of the pipe cleaner for the "light".  Those two boys seem to really love the idea of the feathers for the tail. I just love the expressions on their faces!

They got to do it all by themselves except for when they asked for our help. It was a pretty easy craft but fun at the same time. They drew eyes and fins on the body with a marker. Each child got to pick from a bag of different color feathers and beads. They got really creative with the eyes and how they decorated them.

The younger AND older kids seemed to enjoy our time working together. Then the older ones had a Winter (that's the dolphin's name) word search and the young ones had a dolphin coloring picture to work on. We are so thankful for the mom's who were there helping us with the crafts, too. It makes it wonderful to have everyone working together. 

I told them if they would take a serious group picture they could do a silly group picture. As you can see, we had some happy kids who were more than willing to take a silly picture as a group. I am so pleased because they all told me how much fun they had and they were full of smiles. THAT is why I love bringing things for them to do. THAT is why I homeschool. THAT is why I love working with kids. Their smiles! 

We have one more week of the Dolphin Tale Unit Study. That will be two weeks from today. There is much more to the study than we have done or will be able to do in the short amount of time we are able to get together. Make sure you take the time to do some of the other activities at home with your kids and share how it turned out with the group. We would love to hear about it.

That's our progress report for today. Thanks for stopping by.

Book Reviews: Guest Bloggers

Guest blogger is Jennifer Lynne will share her review of Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry.

What the Story was about: A horse called Phantom and two kids, Paul and Maureen who lived with their grandparents. Also, Phantom's colt, Misty.

What I thought about the story: I thought it was interesting. You can learn a lot from it. You can learn how to care for horses. The kids in the story worked really hard. Once you read the first chapter you can't stop reading. 

We bought the movie for my birthday party. It was good. The book was better than the movie.

I also read the other three books in the series. I love books about horses.

Guest blogger, Jonathan Cole will share his review of Night of the Cossack by Tom Blubaugh. 

What the story was about: An interesting fictional account of a young boy facing a series of tough life-or-death decisions when forced into a life of a Cossack soldier. 

What I thought about the story: I thought it was a great story. There were many hardships in Nathan's life. I was intrigued by the choices that he had to make through the early years in his life. I was surprised by an important relationship in his life turning out to be false. 

The best part about reading books my mom has read is getting to talk about the book with her. We both get excited about the things the characters go through and the choices they make.  

That's our progress report for today. Thanks for stopping by.

All or Nothing

I'm what you might call an all or nothing kind of person. I throw my whole self into what I am doing or I don't do it. That is really a big problem for me at times. I know this about myself and if I feel I can't put my all into it, I just won't start it. My life is full of many things and I have even MORE that I need to be doing.

I am a wife so I have a home to take care of and run. I am the mom to four children, three living at home right now. I homeschool my two youngest children, grades 5 and 7. I review books and other Christian products. I work in many ministries at my church on Wednesday nights. I work with my family at an apartment church on Sunday mornings AFTER we go to church and Sunday School. I love to sew and scrapbook. 

Right now there are MANY sewing and scrapbook projects that I am behind on. I KNOW I need to get busy and do a little each day or at least pick a day a week and work on one of them. But I am not good at doing that. Remember...I am an all or nothing kind of person. If I can't throw myself into it and work on it until I am done, I tend to avoid it. 

My main focus right now is my kids school. That takes a great deal of my time and mental energy. We spend a huge portion of each day during the week getting our lessons done. Some days we are busy in the afternoons with outside the house homeschool activities, like sports or a group get together. Once a month we have Friday off because of a group meeting and an outing to CiCi's Pizza with our group. On those weeks we combine our Friday work during the rest of the week so we don't get behind. We have done so well with that this year. I'm very proud of the kids and myself. After all, if I didn't stay on track they wouldn't either. I know that from past years. It was easy for me to let them have an extra day off if I felt lazy. I refuse to let myself do that this year. This is week 10 and we have stayed the course! 

The next main thing that consumes me is the running of our home. Making sure laundry gets done, meals are made and the kitchen cleaned up. I have to admit that on weekends I am lax in those areas. Monday's usually are filled with playing catch up. I am fortunate that I have my kids to help me. They are learning how to get household chores done so that when they are in a home of their own they will know what to do. As part of the meals for the family, I am cutting coupons and cutting back our expenses at the store. Partially because of necessity. We have to cut back because we have less to put towards it. We are trying to pay off debt so we need to put less towards food and more towards bills. We are not going without food even though we eat less fancy and eat out less. We are learning to make due and eat what we have at the time. 

So while I know I need to get my pictures in scrapbooks and out of containers and I need to get my fabric pieced into quilts for family members, I walk by it daily without touching it. My goal...always...to spend some time working on it each week, if not each day. Maybe I will find motivation to get to it soon. It is my hope.

Until next time...blessings to you!

Jennifer's Birthday Party

Here is a cute Smilebox I created of her party. I wasn't able to get great pictures of all 24 girls that were in my house that night but we got many great ones. We were more focused on having fun! I think we did a GREAT job of that!

Enjoy!

Personalize your own free digital scrapbooking design

Until next time...blessings to you!

Watercolor Art Class

We finished up our Paths of Exploration study last Friday. This week we started our first of six units in the Paths of Settlement study. This is going to be an exciting school year. We are doing the highest level in the main book, which is sixth grade, along with the middle school supplement. That puts us in 7/8 grade work for both kids. Both kids have done really well the last two school years doing the hardest levels together. I am very proud of them for their efforts.

One of the things we are learning in art is watercolor painting. We are using a book called Watercolor for the Artistically Undiscovered. Since we started our new unit Monday, we read the introduction of that book telling us about watercolor painting and how to use the brush and what kind of paper. Then they did a beginner painting exercise. They practiced using the brush with lots and little water to see how the paint went on the paper. They did wavy lines and short lines. In other words, they just had fun.  Here are some pictures of them painting.

They both helped me set up the table with newspaper to keep the table clean. We got a cup of water to share and they took turns getting clean water from time to time. They were allowed to paint whatever they wanted. Mostly just to see how the paints worked. Watercolors are very different from other types of paints. 

Their finished products were very close to this picture. Jenni did a watermelon on a table. JC did a heart and some other abstract shapes. 

The table was a huge success with this activity. They had enough room to each work and at the same time were able to share the paints and water. They had fun and didn't make a mess. That is always a success in my opinion! 

That's our progress report for today. Thanks for stopping by.

A Movie, Time Outside and Money Saving Adventures

Our weekends are always full of activity. Sometimes it is together as a family and other times we are in all different directions. This weekend, we were able to be together because we didn't have things pulling us elsewhere. 

John started off the day going to the men's prayer breakfast at a local doughnut shop. He only gets to go when work doesn't demand his presence. After that he picked us up and we headed to the mall to see a wonderful Christian movie that just came out on Friday. Courageous, The Movie! I knew it would be good because we have loved the other three movies that Sherwood Pictures has made. But I had no idea just how much better this movie was going to be than the others. I didn't realize how much I would laugh and how much I would cry. I didn't realize how much it would touch my heart in so many ways. I am praying that it will touch the hearts of the men in our lives in an even bigger way than it touches us women. This is about them. But it is also about us, his wife and kids. We are to support him as he strives to live the life God has called him to live. There is website to the many resources for you and your family. I am so grateful for these men who allow the Lord to give them a story to tell and for the church that they belong to that works together to bring it to the big screen to share with the world. May God bless them greatly!

After the movie we stopped at Braum's for a small lunch, since we were FULL of popcorn and soda from the movies. We went to Veteran's Park and walked around the trails. Jonathan rode his skateboard and Jennifer her scooter. Both had MAJOR crashes! But they are both fine and managed to keep having fun. We sat and talked after our walk around the park while the kids played. We have some things we are working on to downsize our lives, not just our stuff, and we rarely get the chance to talk face to face about them. The air was cool and even though there were people at the park it did not seem crowded and crazy. Everyone was having fun and enjoying a day outside in the cool temps after a long hot summer. 

As we downsize, we must fix up the house. We have many small, medium and large repairs that we MUST do in the shortest amount of time possible. I am working on a list and will do my best to set aside time each day to do something towards getting that list of things done. I am also committing to doing as much of it myself as I can or finding someone to help me to take some of the load off of my husband.  Another thing on my list is to get my scrapbooking and sewing projects done and out of the way. I have my photo's divided into different containers according to season or type of picture. I HAVE to get those containers empty. I also MUST go through everything and figure out what we are keeping and what we are not. THEN sell what we are NOT, figure out what I don't NEED for a long period of time and pack that away to reduce the amount of STUFF around the house. That will help with the home repairs and how the house looks. We need the house to "show" well.

We are also working on downsizing our monthly expenses. The thing I am working on right now is the grocery bill. I have found some great sites to help me with that. I have put their links on my sidebar link page if you are interested. One of the sites talked about saving money by planning your menus based on your weekly grocery purchases. Whatever you find on sale for the week, plan your meals around that. I am very excited about it. We have two more weeks before we get paid again so I am going to have to be VERY creative with our meals and what I can purchase. I am not going to be able to purchase non-food items until we get paid. Everything will have to go towards our meals. I will try to post at least one new recipe and/or meal idea each week. One of my big things is crockpot meals because of the time I spend each day teaching my children. I love to put a meal on to cook and then get back to what I am doing instead of spending hours in the kitchen and making a huge mess to clean up. 

Until next time...Blessings to you!

Dolphin Tale Unit Study Part One

After watching videos about the movie Dolphin Tale, we couldn't help but want to see the movie as a family. We are a big supporter of family friendly entertainment options. When I found out there was a unit study, being a homeschool mom, I was super excited. I love to turn anything that could be school into a fun time as well as learning new things. I see life as a big school room that we can learn and have fun at the same time. The study has five lessons but I am breaking it into three parts because we meet every other Thursday. We take from an hour to an hour and a half to complete some of the experiments and crafts while learning some neat marine biology. 

We did a science experiment called Sink or Swim. We made our own water column. Water columns are used or observed to better understand aquatic phenomena. We tested different items, such as a cork, grape, rock and dab of solid shortening. We learned that the difference in density of an object is called buoyancy or the ability to float. We had a pitcher of water and added syrup and oil. The syrup sunk below the water and the oil rose above the water. Then we tested each object and recorded where they fell in the water column. We also learned what sea creatures lived where in the oceans water column and made charts for our notebooks.

Our craft for that day was a Jellyfish.  Jellyfish are amazing creatures. They have no complex body organs, but they are able to survive quite well in the ocean. They are not able to swim against the currents of the ocean. They are called planktonic creatures. They have muscle-like fibers in their two layers of skin. They use those to pulse their bodies and move their long tentacles to help them stay afloat in the water. They use their tentacles to capture prey. 

After we learned some things about the jellyfish we made one out of the end of a plastic bottle and yarn. You cut the end off about 2 1/2 inches from the end. They picked yarn from a variety of colors. You need to have 10 long strands of thick yarn and 20 strands of thin yarn a couple of inches shorter than the long ones. Cut card stock the size of your plastic container. Staple the think strands to the middle and the thin strands in twos all the way around the outside. Then tape the card stock circle to the container. Attach fishing line to the top to hang the jellyfish with.

Not all the kids could stay for the group pictures because we did take a bit of time, due to the fact that I didn't bring more than one stapler so we had to share. That was a process that took the longest. I plan on being more prepared with supplies next time. We had a great time and as you can see, they turned out pretty neat! Stay tuned to see the neat things we do the next two weeks of our study during the month of October.

That's our progress report for today. Thanks for stopping by.