You All Are AMAZING!!!

This is just a quick ‘thank you’ to all of you who participated in the Curriculum Clean-Out by either offering things from your shelves or visiting around and entering the giveaways. There were almost 100 links up to the Clean-Out!!!

Your generosity in sharing is a true blessing to others and I hope that you all made some friends and were blessed in return! Thanks so much for helping to make it fun. :)

Historical Paper Dolls ~ Noble Rose Press Summer Sale!!

I have been eyeing these historical paper dolls for quite some time and today saw that Noble Rose Press is having a summer sale of almost 40% off {until August 31st} on their beautiful Daughters of His Story Paper Dolls. The entire collection of 6 dolls is available for $21.95 ~ and if you find a friend to order along with you, they are offering free shipping on orders of $40 or more!

Be sure to check them out {and plan on seeing them in some of my future posts!}. I’m off to find a friend to share shipping with!

Making Water Spill {Water Cohesion} ~ Science Sunday

This week we did a pretty simple experiment, but one that ALL of the kids enjoyed being a part of {even Kaleb}.

It involved two of their favorite things: money and water. What’s not to like about that, eh?

 

Question of the Week…

How many pennies would it take to make the water spill over the top of the bowl?

Items we used for this experiment:

~ a bowl

~ water

~ lots of pennies

Predictions and Experiment…

Each of the kids made a prediction that underestimated what actually took place. :) They had to guess how many pennies we would be able to drop in an already full bowl of water. Each of them figured under 10…when in reality it was almost 40 pennies!

We divided out a pile of pennies and the kids each took a turn dropping a penny into the bowl of water.

and dropping…

Can you see the water bulging over the top? Ours bulged even more than this before it started spilling.

 

The Nutshell Reason…

The water molecules are attracted to each other {cohesion}. Cohesion keeps liquids from spreading out {gas will spread, liquids stick together}. A dome will form on the top of the water as the water rises higher because the water molecules are pulled inward {toward the center} of the water mass.

As pennies are added the water starts to rise due to cohesion. The water will eventually spill when gravity kicks in.

After the Experiment…

While we talked about the ‘why’ behind the experiment that we did, the kids illustrated their version of the experiment on the back side of their experiment sheets. Later we answered a few questions together about the experiment.

And then fought about who got to keep the pennies…{sigh}.

Resource: How to Do Science Experiments with Children is available from Amazon and you can also check it out {and do some of the experiments} using Google Docs! The experiments use easy-to-find objects and also include record sheets for kids to fill out with their predictions and experiment results. Each experiment also includes teaching tips and explanations…which are rather handy! :) Don't forget to check out some other great science ideas at Science Sunday hosted by Ticia at Adventures in Mommydom.

 

Learning About Early Explorers

I generally share bits and pieces about what we’re doing in our school week, but every now and then I am hoping to pull all of the kids together in one post and sum-up what we are doing ~ and participate with Kris in the Weekly Wrap-Up. For our first week I had intended on starting off slow and over the next few weeks adding more as we go along.

Turns out the only thing we didn’t have in our day was Spanish. Way to start off slow, eh?

We’re getting back into a semi-routine and still working out a few kinks, but overall the kids are doing great ~ and starting off the new year with a bang. This year we added a few new texts to our studies and we are loving them!!! Here’s a quick sum-up of our week.

History ~ We’re going to be mixing the literature part of Beautiful Feet along with the Time Traveler Units from Homeschool in the Woods. Can I just say I LOVE the New World Explorers unit that we are doing? The kids are really enjoying the hands-on activities that we do almost every day.

This week we talked about explorers {what they are and reasons for exploring}, the life of an explorer {jobs of a sailor, flags, maps} and parts of a ship. We learned how to tie knots…

and completed some interactive notebooking pages on the parts of a ship.

Science ~ Our first week using Nancy Larson Science 1 and it has been great timing since we’re talking about the stages of life and have a new little nephew to observe and talk about while we’re learning! I am so excited to use this science program this year!

Sunday I’ll be posting about our latest science experiment too as a part of Science Sunday, so stay tuned for that. :)

Spelling ~ The girls are reviewing some of the lessons in Level 3 of All About Spelling {and I’m so glad to see that they are remembering more than I thought!!}. Zachary is also reviewing a few lessons in Level 1 and doing great!

Reading ~ I have been beyond amazed at Zachary’s reading this past week. We picked up our Cobweb the Cat reader and he has been reading so well. Considering he hasn’t been reading to me all summer, I was really worried that we would have some major catching up to do. He has been so proud of himself!

Language/Writing ~ We started right back in with First Language Lessons and the Complete Writer. So far, so good! Zachary isn’t necessarily enjoying the step-up in needing to write more…but he’ll get there. :)

Preschool ~ If you’d like to see what we did for preschool this week with Kaleb, you can visit my Preschool Corner post that went up a little earlier today.

That’s it for this week! I generally share bits and pieces about what we’re doing in our school week, but every now and then I am hoping to pull all of the kids together in one post and sum-up what we are doing ~ and participate with Kris in the Weekly Wrap-Up. Be sure to head over and see what other families did this week.

Preschool Corner ~ Assessing and Starting Up

I had much bigger plans this week than what we actually accomplished. We thought that Kaleb was feeling better after last week’s bout with sickness, but this week the sickies were lingering so more time was spent holding a feverish boy than completing the lesson plans and activities I had planned.

Such is life at times, right?

When we WERE able to work, I pulled out some different activities to try to get a good baseline on what he does/doesn’t know. I printed off some of Carisa’s preschool assessment tools from her Raising Rock Stars Preschool page and we completed a few of the activities together.

As we reviewed different letters of the alphabet, Kaleb had fun using his new Do-A-Dot markers to color in his alphabet phonics coloring pages. We didn’t make it through the set as I had planned {more like up to the letter G}, but he is loving his new markers and the pages, so they will continue into next week too.

 

We’re also trying to get Kaleb into the routine of his new workboxes {which he is not very excited about yet} and figure out how his schedule is going to mesh with our daily school routine. It’s a work in progress at this point, but we’re working at it one day at a time.

In case you missed them earlier this week, I posted some Cubbies verse printables that I put together for Kaleb to use this year when he starts Awana…and then found out he’ll be using a different book. :) Be sure to check out the Cubbies verse page though, since you can use them with your preschooler even if you aren’t doing Awana.

Other Resources We Used

Ready to Link Up?

Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and be sure to link back here too! The updated guidelines can be found here if you need them.

 

 

Tired of Being Anonymous?

Several many of you like to enter giveaways or ask questions…but I can’t get ahold of you to reply to your comment. There are several of you who have actually won a giveaway that I’ve held, but because you didn’t leave a comment, someone else won some lovely prizes.

Sad, but true.

You do not need to have a blog in order to have a blogger profile. Your profile can include two simple things ~ your first name and an email address.

If you have either a Gmail or hotmail email account, the set up is SUPER easy and quick {and if you don’t have a Gmail account, it is really easy to create one of those too!}. Go to the Blogger home page {blogger.com} and log in using your Gmail/hotmail email address and password. You will see a page that looks like this:

Click on the Edit Profile link and look for the part of the Profile page that says ‘Email Address’. You can change this email address to ANY email address that you would like to ~ meaning the one that you use on a daily basis {yahoo, aol, etc…}.

 

Scroll up the page just a little bit and make sure that these two boxes are checked {the ‘share my profile’ and ‘show my email address’}.

 

SAVE your changes!!

This is how your profile will look to others when they click on your name if you leave a comment on their blog.

 

Now, whenever you leave a comment asking a question, your email address will be directly linked to that comment for only the blog owner to see so they can quickly reply to you!

On a side note, I have tried installing Disqus on my blog in the past, but had some major issues and got a little burned out trying to get it figured out. I love the ‘interactive’ feature that it allows in the comments and really hope that someday I can get it working..but that’s a project for another day!

ABC Phonics Coloring Pages

While we are trying to get back more into a school routine, I put together some phonics coloring pages for Kaleb to work on each day. I’m trying to assess what he knows for beginning letter sounds so we’re reviewing several each day and talking about the sounds of the letters.

There are 26 pages in this pdf set ~ each page is 8 1/2” x 11”. Here’s a quick peek at a few of the pages:

 

Click on either of the thumbnails to download the A-Z Phonics Coloring pages. Have fun coloring!

{Almost} Fall 2010 Curriculum Clean Out Begins!

Time to Link Up!

 

If you would like to join in on the Curriculum Clean-Out! and have fun giving away the excess on your shelves, now is the time! Once your post is ready, leave your link below using the MckLinky. Be sure that your post follows the 'rules' of the Clean-Out! ~ and please be sure to link your post back to this giveaway page and that you are using the permalink for your post. If you have any questions, I would be happy to help you out.

There are several different ways you can enter your link. It would be helpful for readers to know what you are giving away to. For example:

Jolanthe {A Beka K Phonics Guide} or
A Beka K Phonics Guide {US shipping}

Giveaways will be added daily, so be sure to check back so that you don't miss any of the great giveaways! Spread the word, make some new friends and have fun!! The big thing to remember - grab the code below, put it somewhere in your post, link back here, and start giving!!

Note: If you do not have a blog and would like to participate in giving something away, feel free to start a discussion in my Blog Frog community forum and link to it there! Be sure to start your own discussion!

When you are done posting your giveaway, grab the html at the top . It should look a little something like this:

http://theblogfrog.com/293470/forum/44313/where-are-you-in-your-planning.html

And the code for the Curriculum Clean-Out button:

<center><a href="http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/search/label/Curriculum%20Clean-Out" target="_blank"><img border="0" alt="Photobucket" src="http://i678.photobucket.com/albums/vv146/homeschoolcreations/CurriculumCleanOutButton.jpg"/></a></center>

Learning Math Facts {Giveaway}

 

This is one of my giveaways for the Curriculum Clean-Out. The math pack giveaway includes a few things to help your child with their math facts. I say your child…since my kids never even saw these, let alone used them {ahem}. :)

 

The pack includes four items:

• Multiplication Songs by Kathy Troxel with the song cd
• Addition Songs by Kathy Troxel with the song cd
• Practice Time write on/wipe off math book from Learning Playground
• Pack of math flashcards…never even cut apart {and I’m assuming they are all here….}

This giveaway is now closed ~ thank you!

Nature Time {Science Sunday}

No experiments this week ~ just fun in the great outdoors. Rick and I took the kids to a nearby park/river and we spent time exploring the things around us.

The first thing that we saw was a water bug ~ a great opportunity to talk about what we remember about our surface tension experiment.

We found an inchworm crawling on Daddy’s shirt and had fun watching it crawl around on our fingers.

Laurianna and I saw this flower in the middle of the river…growing on a rock. A great time to talk about deep and shallow roots…

There were SO many different butterflies clustered in one area on the bank. We have yet to look up and see exactly what these two are.

 

During a walk around the park we found a decaying tree stump with both moss and lichen growing on it.

  

The stump was a great example of decay and we had fun peeling back parts of the stump, squeezing parts of it between our fingers to see how squishy it was {compared to typical wood} and looking at all of the bugs crawling around inside and around the stump.

It was a lazy afternoon…but so much fun and lots of learning too. :) Gotta love that! Don't forget to check out some other great science ideas at Science Sunday hosted by Ticia at Adventures in Mommydom.