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Posted on February 21, 2012 by Stephany

My Little Motivators

So I guess we are going to get this up-and-running again. I can always tell when I have become too far removed from the homeschool blogosphere. The ideas kind of go stale and we spend a lot of time working on computers. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but eventually my kinesthetic little learners start to get bored and I have a full-fledged mutiny on my hands. I know I’ve dropped the ball, when I have to fight with them to do their schoolwork. So we are shaking things up here for the new year. I am certainly not going to put Time4Learning and Simple Schooling to the curb, nor am I going to put the Montessori stuff on Ebay, just yet. But we are going to slow down and do fewer modules daily and add more “projects”. The boys are like me. They like to create. That is why against my better judgement, I am going to dive into this notebooking thing as a way to pull together all my resources. So far the plan is to do individual notebooks for most subject but to work history and science together. The boys want to do a timeline notebook and they want to start from the beginning again. That wasn’t necessarily in the plans for the year, but it makes sense aesthetically. They also want to start at the year 10,000 B.C. , because they never make anything easy. So right now the question I am dealing with is do I try to do it all at once or do I transition one subject at a time?

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Posted on May 25, 2011 by Stephany

We have a lot going on in our family, including a new baby granddaughter on the way. I am also developing some sort of career, LOL. So I am going to break for the summer and hopefully pick this up in the Autumn. If you want to keep in touch, check out Naturally Simple Living or “like” Naturally Simple Living on Facebook.

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The Treefrogs are Here!

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Stephany

We started the pond about two years ago, in the fall. We let the pond sit last year so that the water condition could level out and enough insect life and decayed plant material could build up to support algae, plant and water critters. For Mother’s Day, the kids got me two water lily plants and since they seem to be doing okay in the water, I decided it was time to give some tree frog tadpoles, a go. We had a tree frog or two in the yard last year but I didn’t see any evidence of them returning to the pond, so we’ve decided to jump start things a bit. I bought 12 tadpoles because it is a tiny, tiny pond. We will see how it goes. We released them this morning and so far we’ve netted a few to see how they are doing and they seem pretty wriggly and happy, still.

Posted in Science | 2 Comments

Living History

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Stephany

The dinnertable set for a medieval feast.

I love learning history through immersion and it is no secret that we are large fans of a Renaissance Faire. With the Renaissance Faire coming up, it has been difficult getting the boys interested in American History so we’ve decided to jump to another project. We’ve been working on putting together garb and gear to get involved in the SCA. It is proving to be a time-consuming project, but a lot of fun. In keeping with our ancestry, we’ve chosen to make our family an Iron Age Celtic family so that makes it even more challenging as that sort of thing isn’t necessarily well-documented although I’ve found far more information than I thought I would at first. We will probably work on this for most of the summer before starting our World History year in the fall. We alternate back-and-forth every year, building on previous studies as we go but really I have to admit that I enjoy World History more than I do American history past the revolution, so I probably spend more time on World History than US History in the grand scheme of things. History might even be a bit of a misnomer, as I tend to start with prehistory and work forward. I think we may just focus on World History for the next couple of years.

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Posted on May 12, 2011 by Stephany

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Memorizing Math Facts

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Stephany

Brower's using his addition board to help figure out a math problem.

I remember those hating those deadly boring math worksheets they made us work on in school so it is easy for me to sympathize with the boys on the issue of memorizing math facts.

On the other hand, when working with public school kids as a tutor, I can see that most kids fail in math because they have not memorized these facts. So along with presenting the lessons we work on, I really want the boys to practice. I refuse to hand them worksheets though and I hate flashcards as much as they do. So we’ve been putting our heads together to come up with alternatives. We’ve used board games in the past, but they are getting tired of the ones we have. Lately we’ve been having good luck using the online math games at Fun 4 the Brain. Sketch’s World game seem to particularly appeal to my boys and they are actually asking me to help them find the games on the Internet. I always make sure they have a hands on way to check a problem if they don’t know the answer. Brower is working on addition, so he keeps his addition board, nearby. Trapolin is working on multiplication so he uses his abacus. He has a multiplication board but the abacus is a bit quicker for this type of thing. Trapolin has noticed that the better he has his facts memorized, the less time he has to spend working on his Time 4 Learning lessons. He likes that and I like that I don’t have to fight with the boys to get them to practice. I am sure they will get tired of this too, so I have to look for some new board games. Does anyone out there have any other fun ways to drill math facts?

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Plant Unit

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Stephany

Dissecting the Seeds

I try to plan our units based on what is going on around here. This time of year is pretty much devoted to gardening around here, so plants it is.

Looking for the real thing.

The nice thing about using the nomenclature cards is that they are reusable year-after-year but it does take a little bit of time to put them together the first time. I actually bought some pdf files from Montessori Press because I am a bit pressed for time but I also used some free sets available here and here. Basically our “lessons” consist of short movie segments which I find on Discovery Education or You Tube, working with the card sets, and hands on experimentation. Today, we worked with a set of cards on bean seeds, dissected seeds and planted some snow peas.

Planting Activity

I start my own garden plants from seed so tomorrow we will take a look at seeds which have recently sprouted and check out a new set of cards. I keep doing this for a couple of weeks, saving Fridays for review with the card sets. Working with the cards incorporates language activities as does the record keeping for our experiments. Then the boys work independently on Time 4 Learning, leaving me time to play in the dirt.

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SaPaDaPaSo 36th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Stephany

Ghrá Na Gaeilge Irish Dancers and assistants

For those of you who are wondering what on earth this means, SaPaDaPaSo is the “The Saint Patrick’s Day Parade Society’ a group which has been hosting a St. Paddy’s day parade in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for 36 years now. We’ve been attending the parade for years now and the last couple of years we’ve been participants because my daughter and I dance with the Ghrá Na Gaeilge Irish-Dance Group. Getting ready for the parade is quite the process, but it was an amazing day full of wonderful memories.

Trapolin gearing up to hand out beads.

The boys and I at the post-parade party.

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Spring Break: Chicago Trip

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Stephany

All our "littles" waiting for the river to be dyed.

Hanging out in a coffee shop on Michigan Ave.

The first couple of weeks of March were a bit crazy around here but I finally have a moment to sit down and do a photo dump to explain our whereabouts.
First, we decided to take advantage of Riley’s Spring Break from classes to do an educational field trip to Chicago.