Letters From the Homefront

One day last week, while cleaning up from breakfast, Hoss discovered this guy sitting on the window outside of our kitchen.  Hoss grabbed a plastic food container, captured this guy, and brought him in. I think he figured he was probably not fully alive - which was a WRONG assumption, by the way - and wanted to preserve the body. He put a lid on it, and for a while this huge moth didn't move a hair ( pun intended ). LM took this time to observe every detail she could about the outward appearance, and recorded them for keeping.  (which my phone has apparently turned sideways for me) Then it got interesting, when all of a sudden - he woke up. Then, we heard nothing but frantic wing beating through this container. We let him go, but not before we would at least figure out that what we had found was a 'Waved Sphinx Moth'.  We finally found our moth here , where you can find a good description of this type of moth. They all loved to watch his movements, fee...

Today we worked on some exploration with magnets.  I found this very small, inexpensive set of magnets at a local school supply store here. They didn't have the one I REALLY wanted, so I settled for a cheaper one for the time being.  I prepared for our day this morning by going online and printing off a few ready-made free worksheets. And here is where you insert the gasp-heard-round-the-world. :)  I generally shy away from worksheets - we don't use them on a daily basis. I would not print out a worksheet for something that was new to my children. I believe you should always, as much as possible, give your children a concrete learning experience long before bringing in anything abstract, like a worksheet. In this case, they had already had that.  When you are working with children who have had the concrete first experiences you can build off of those with some that review what they know and give them a chance to expand and show what they have r...

August 1st was our official 'First Day Of School'. We hit this yearly milestone the homeschool way - by not being at home at all. We went to the local Nature Center in town. Of course, it was classified as a *field trip*, so I didn't let it slide away without trying to get some inspired learning in.  Armed with food and a backpack full of goodies, off we went. During lunch, we got our first zoology observations with the geese that frequently come up out of the water and walk all over the grounds. My kiddos had a blast throwing them bits of cheese and banana (turns out, these geese wanted nothing to do with bananas) and seeing them come as close as within a foot or two to eat what they just threw down.  After that, I pulled out our printable journal pages, pre-stapled together for them, and we had a little botany-inspired art.  Leaf Rubbing My only mistake was to NOT get some blank paper stapled together for Buddy Boy, thinking he wouldn't be in...

Simplified, the kids and I learned about when energy makes a change from one form to the next.  As put in our BFSU book:  First, energy always remains a form of energy. It may be converted from one form to another; it may be stored in various ways and subsequently released.  Nebel, Bernard J. (2007-11-30). Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2 (p. 265). Outskirts Press, Inc.. Kindle Edition.  As I quickly read through this lesson, I wanted a visual way to show the kids about the relationship between the different forms of energy as certain circumstances bring about a change. I remembered this post from What Did We Do All Day , about making a quick 'on the fly' Venn Diagram, and was inspired.  (If it's hard to see, click the picture, and it should zoom in for you!) I wanted a way for them to connect the two energy forms that were changing, and this version of a Venn diagram worked well. Hoss ...

We are headed a new direction with Science as of late. I will admit here - this is not a strong subject for me. It never was, and I was really unsure of where I wanted to go with it. I have tried several things, even going so far as to scour books, trying to make it interesting and exciting - I just don't have a brain geared for a love of Science. Nor a way to make it fun! I know how Montessori teaches Science, but don't have the manuals to do so. I was at a loss, but decided to look again in to a book recommended by MBT at What Did We Do All Day? - Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding (henceforth known as BFSU), written by Bernard J Nebel. An excerpt from the Introduction: "In summary, this text is designed to: provide a steppingstone-like sequence of lessons that facilitates systematic building of concepts; maintain interest by centering lessons on what children regularly experience; engage children’s own thinking in reaching rational conclusio...

Let me just start off by saying, I could probably count on one hand the times I have won a giveaway/drawing - and still have fingers left over. So here recently, when I just happened to notice that Safari Ltd. was having a giveaway, I noticed that all you had to do was like their facebook page, which I had done months ago. So simple that I didn't give it much more than a moments thought, and a quick comment to say what a great bunch of things they were giving away. Imagine my surprise..... My children were so excited to see that we were indeed the winners! And when this lovely box showed up a week or so later (ignore the laundry - it just always manages to show up around here!), they couldn't wait to tear in to it! This beautiful basket was inside, filled with all these wonderful goodies! We had fun taking some 'real life' pictures with some of them. :) The Brachiosaurus A lovely Eastern Chipmunk  In the left corner, we have the ...