Otter: Our wiggly 5th grader
Bear: Our big bear of an 12th grader
Emily: Our froo-froo homeschool graduate working on her nursing degree
January 28, 2010
Recently Otter did a project in History Pockets where he learned about how the Egyptians worshipped cats. He made a cat booklet and wrote some poetry inside after learning about several different styles. I like combining different subjects when he learns about things. This was, of course, a combo of language arts and history.
His attempt at a couplet:
Oh cats, they're so lovely
when they cuddle up on your chair
And then they merrily walk around
and you don't hear a sound.
His cinquain:
Tabbys
Soft, happy
Jump, crouch, purr
They snarl at dogs.
Cats
Here's the site we referenced to write the cinquain: Cinquain Poetry.
I've been working on updating my entire site. I'm converting all of the OurLosBanos pages to the current Guest Hollow theme. I'm also spell checking all the pages (it's amazing how many times I didn't and made some silly mistakes), adding in keywords and descriptions, as well as "alt" tags for the images. It's boooorrring. I don't waaaaaaaaaaaaannnaaa. Why or WHY did I create so many pages????? O.K., back to work. 
January 27, 2010
Do want to make your own copywork and handwriting pages? Check out these links:
- ZB Fonts Online Wow! You can easily make some beautiful Zaner-Bloser templates to instantly print out for FREE. Just choose your parameters (grade level, cursive or manuscript), type in the text and press print.
- My personal fave: StartWrite You have to purchase it, but StartWrite has lots of different handwriting fonts as well as flexibility and the ability to add art to your pages. Great if you are using HWOT!
- Download a free cursive font or a manuscript font with lines at Donna Young's site.
- Educational Fontware Inc. - A little expensive, but you can use the fonts in various applications (unlike StartWrite).
- WorksheetWorks.com - You can make worksheets to trace or copy. Only two fonts are available.
January 27, 2010
Today Otter started an apple mummy project! I considered making a chicken mummy, but that seemed so wasteful... so we settled on making apple mummies instead.
Otter set up the supplies:
- 1 cup Epsom salt
- 1 cup salt
- 1 cup baking soda
- 4 containers (we used disposable cups)
- Something to label the cups with (we used a permanent marker)
- One apple
- Knife
- Cutting board
Otter cut the apple into quarters (4 pieces).
We then labeled the cups with the following labels: control, salt, baking soda, and Epsom salts.
After that, each individual piece of apple was weighed and its weight was recorded on the cup that it went into.
Otter poured the substances into the cups over the apples. The cup labeled control didn't have anything added to it (other than the apple slice).
So now the apple slices are ready to be put in a place where they won't be disturbed for 2-3 weeks! When we pull them out, we'll instantly weigh each piece and compare it to its original weight. We'll determine which substance did the best job of drying the apple.
January 21, 2010
Only a homeschooler...
Otter was working on a page in Logic Countdown. The directions said to write down "things that have two syllables and are found in a school desk". One of his answers:
LAPBOOK
January 21, 2010
I ordered this book: Famous Figures of Ancient Times: Movable Paper Figures to Cut, Color, and Assemble, because I wanted to help Otter remember some of the people we are studying this year. I wasn't sure if it would really be worthwhile to make the figures in the book, but after making two of them (Narmer and Sargon the Great), I'm really glad I scheduled this in.
The book has figures of famous people throughout ancient history to cut out and assemble. You have a choice of cutting out figures that are already colored, or ones that are black and white that you can color yourself. I really like having that option! Each figure has moveable joints and the name of the figure on the back. The front of the book has a short summary of each person and his accomplishments.
Otter cut out the figures while I did our read-alouds. Afterwards, he acted out little bits of our history lesson. We put each figure into a plastic sheet protector in his history notebook when he was done playing with them.
Otter remembers who each person is SO MUCH better than if we had just read about each one of them. Each figure is a concrete reminder of what he's been learning about.
Here's a blurry picture of King Narmer hanging out in Otter's History Pocket:
Here's Sargon the Great (who was accosted by King Narmer's flail as he traipsed across Otter's desk, lol):
I've scheduled in the remaining figures to complement our studies from Mystery of History and Story of the World as we go along through the year.
The author is coming out with more books in the future and I plan on getting them! Check out her website to see more figures, an example of the biographies from the front of the book and some additional titles that are coming soon.
January 20, 2010
We are in our 3rd week of studying ancient history and really enjoying ourselves. The Mystery of History is making a terrific spine. The lessons are short (usually about 10 minutes or so), Biblical, easy to understand for my 5th grader and very informative (enough to keep me interested, as well as Otter). You can take a look at a free sample at the MOH website. I like it that I can cover the main part of our history lesson in such a short time and then leave the rest of what I've scheduled as gravy.
The Story of the World is also making a great compliment to MOH. I'm glad I decided to do them together. The Mystery of History is giving me a Biblical based account of history, while SOTW is adding in a "story" element to it all that is memorable.
Here's a map Otter completed after reading about Shamshi-Adad of the Assyrians in The Story of the World. The map is from the activity book.
After reading about the Tower of Babel in The Mystery of History, he made a mini-booklet that summarized the story. You can get it for free from Gospelhall.org.
He's also doing some notebooking. I got the page on the right here (scroll down the page) and the one on the left here. Otter is using the pages to write down short narrations of the things I'm reading out loud to him. At the end of studying ancient history, he'll have a nice portfolio of the things we've covered.
In History Pockets, our lesson today was about frontalism. After looking at some examples from the History Pocket book, as well as online, Otter used the Ralph Masiello's Ancient Egypt Drawing Book to help him draw in this ancient style.
Last week in History Pockets he made a small timeline featuring some main events in Egyptian history.
I'm glad I chose to use History Pockets this year to compliment our studies. The activities are a good overview of Egyptian basics. I didn't want to bother with trying to plug in lapbooks this year and I wanted something a little hands-on that would still leave us plenty of time for other activities. History Pockets is really working out for us.
However, if you prefer lapbooks, here are some that are free:
January 14, 2010
I created an ancient history notebook cover today for Otter's notebook. Feel free to download it and use it too! It's a little busy, but Otter helped choose the design.
Today we studied early writing. Otter created some cuneiform in
Play-Doh after making a review card from Hannah's Homeschool Helps. He looked at this webpage to see how to write the letters.
We also explored these two sites:
Cuneiform Alphabet Free Online Translator
National Geographic Hieroglyphs Translator
Otter also created this "Along the Nile River - The River of Life" page using History Pockets:
I'm putting all of his History Pockets, maps and other items into a 3 ring binder. Everything is being placed inside page protectors to keep it nice & neat, plus we don't have to worry about the pages tearing and breaking from the binder rings.
So far I'm really pleased with our schedule. We're spending on average about an hour a day or so on history with just enough extras to keep it engaging.
January 13, 2010
Today, after reading a story about Isis and Osiris in Story of the World, we followed the instructions in Ralph Masiello's Ancient Egypt Drawing Book to make our own pictures of Isis. You can see our drawings below.
Otter's drawing (outlined in black marker after drawing and coloring):
My drawing (made on the computer):
It's helpful to Otter for me to go through the drawing steps with him - so it's like a "live" drawing lesson. I draw a bit and then he copies what I just did in his drawing. He gets to see all of the steps appear on the computer screen.
Ralph Masiello's Ancient Egypt Drawing Book is a great book to use while studying ancient Egypt. You can preview it at ChristianBook.com. Even complex drawings are broken down to the smallest steps. When Otter first saw the finished drawing of Isis, he thought there was NO way he could ever do that. At the end though, he was really pleased with the results.
I like incorporating other things into our main core like art. It helps make our studies more rich, varied and interesting.
I know that some Christian parents avoid teaching their children things like Greek myths and ancient Egyptian gods, etc., however, I think it's important for Otter to know these things to properly understand history as well as our own personal beliefs from the Bible. You can't fully understand what God was doing with the 10 plagues of Egypt unless you have an understanding of the Egyptian gods. (Here is an interesting article about that.)
Last week in Mystery of History, Otter had an assignment to make some review cards. On the front of the card is the name of the person(s) or event he is to remember as well as the date and on the back is more information/details. As we go along through the year, we'll take them out to refresh his memory about things we've covered. To make things easier, I'm using the summaries posted at the Mystery of History 1 Yahoo group for the back of the cards. That group has all sorts of free goodies posted in the files section. You can find the summaries I'm using in files: Memory Card notes.
We also made a couple other cards after a Mystery of History lesson about dinosaurs. Some "dino" cards:
You can get the blank template for the dino cards from Eduplace.com. I took the template PDF, pulled it into Photoshop and then let Otter choose the dinosaurs he wanted to cover from The Natural History Museum's Dino Directory that I pasted onto the template. There are all kinds of great pictures you can use! We changed some of the info on the back of the cards. Where it says "when" we put "where" instead. That eliminated the young earth vs. old earth dating issues we have.
We are combining a little bit of science in with our history. One of the ways I'm doing this is to read these books with Otter:
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Both are creation books that talk about subjects I felt important to cover in more depth (dinosaurs and fossils). I also purchased a set of fossils from Acorn Naturalists and we looked at them as well as looked up more information about each online. Otter's favorite was the dinosaur bone (of course, lol).
I guess it's obvious we are believers in a young earth (and creation vs. evolution), however, I wasn't always. I do believe it's important for my kids to know BOTH sides and the evidence for each. Emily had some great discussions with her biology teacher in college. I'm glad I gave her a good foundation for understanding both creationism and evolution. She was both successful in her non-Christian biology class as well as successful in defending her faith. I don't think young earth kids should be sheltered from evolutionary science. I think when you study both carefully, you are able to understand why you believe either way.
For our dinosaur studies, Otter made this dinosaur lapbook wheel last week. You can get it for free from Homeschool Share (scroll down to "Day 7").
I got an email recently from a mom who is looking forward to seeing what we are doing in ancient history. Even though I won't be posting the full schedule for awhile, I decided to post the first week so you all can get a feel for what it's going to be like and what we are working on.
Ancient History Sneak Peek (.doc format)
January 11, 2010
We are enjoying our 2nd week studying ancient history. Otter started his first History Pocket for ancient Egypt. Here's the cover:
Here is the first pocket, a "fast facts" card and a free printable card (text is on the back to review the Story of the World chapter) from Hannah's Homeschool Helps.
In Mystery of History we covered Noah's ark. Otter played with his Playmobil Noah's ark during lesson time:
All three of my kids have always loved Playmobil, even when they were older. I found that Playmobil is a great "review" toy for things the kids have learned in history. You can set it up and reenact all sorts of things like famous battles and more. Here's an old post I wrote on Playmobil awhile back.
Someone recently asked what readers I'm using in ancient history. Here is a link to an UNFINISHED, totally rough "working" page showing some of the books I've scheduled in for Otter. Hopefully it will be helpful to any of you who need some extra ideas for ancient history. I will be posting the schedule I'm using later.
January 8, 2010
Otter is playing with a Dune Craft Astounding Polymer Properties Observation Kit. Oh wait, is it playing or doing school? We tend to confuse that sometimes...
Slime:
A polymer ball ("slippery spheres"):
More polymer spheres - These started out as teeny hard little balls and grew more than 20x to the size of a marble after adding water:
"Silly squares":
Besides having a lot of fun, you get to learn about crosslinking, hydration, molecular bonding, polarity, viscosity and absorption.
I like to have a few science kits on hand at any given time. They are great for adding some fun into a week and keeping school from feeling "stale". They also give Otter the opportunity for some free science exploration with plenty of practice in reading instructions as well as making and testing hypotheses.
January 7, 2010
Otter started a new core program - ancient history. I created a schedule for us to work from that combines Mystery of History, Story of the World, lots of great literature, optional activities, movies and more. When we are done working through it, I plan on posting it. So far, we both like it. The MOH lessons are short but interesting. SOTW has always been fun to use. This week we covered the beginning of history and archeology. Here's Otter's first MOH map:
I like starting a new program along with the new year. It helps keep things fresh while we are still working on the same math, language arts and other items.
While I was reading some of the lessons out loud Otter created the following out of Play-Dough (yes, he is homeschooling in polar bear pajamas):
It's kind of hard to tell what it is from the picture - but there is a river with a bridge, benches, a house with a garden and a pond, etc. I've found it to be really helpful to keep his hands occupied while he's listening to read-alouds. It actually helps him pay attention better and retain what I'm reading. Sometimes he plays with quiet toys (cars, arranging army men, fiddling with a slinky) and other times he colors. I bought the Play-Dough for him as a stocking stuffer since I knew he had a specific project coming up in ancient history requiring clay. I thought Play-Dough would be easier to manipulate. I never realized what a HUGE hit it would be. He has been playing with Play-Dough all week during our read-alouds and was lamenting that we got rid of all the Play-Dough tools and toys years and years ago (when he, ironically, hardly ever played with them at all).
I'm glad I've always felt comfortable allowing my kids to like specific toys, books and even on occasion curriculum - long past (or even before) the "recommended ages". Each child is such an individual! I remember Emily bringing her American Girl doll to a homeschool park day when she was about 13. You could tell all the other girls were a little shocked. Wasn't she too old for that??? Emily was confident in who she was and what she liked. She didn't care that 13 year olds are not supposed to tote their dolls around let alone play with them...in front of other people!! It was kind of cute to see a bunch of girls with their dolls the following week.
I promise, she didn't turn out to be maladjusted by playing with toys as a teenager. She is currently a well adjusted young adult attending college. And you know what? She is still very much her own person who doesn't care one whit if she's not in style or likes something or is too old for something or not. She won this year's college costume contest and received a gift certificate for $50 dollars off her college books. This is the same 18 year old that suddenly appears in the family room after she's done with school for the day (or work) dressed as a pirate, or a lady from the 20's, or any number of other things. LOL. Seriously, my 18 year old still likes to play dress up! But hey, it got her $50 bucks for college books!
I love it that homeschooling gives my kids the opportunity to be free of silly cliques and made up "rules" about who they should be and what its O. K. and not O. K. to like or dislike. I'm glad Otter doesn't feel pressured to have the cool $100 shoes or that he has to watch xyz show on T. V. or that he is ever "too old" for Play-Dough. 
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