We Did It!

We finished our first year of homeschool! The kiddos did SO well this year! I couldn't have asked for this school year to have gone any better.  God truly blessed us with curriculum that worked for each child and a year of knowing what works and what doesn't, and knowing how to fix it:)  It is alot of work, but it is SO fun teaching our children! They were excellent learners and hard workers for me!  Good job, guys!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To the Zoo!

As you know, we have been studying reptiles and amphibians.  Yesterday afternoon we headed out to the zoo to visit the snake and lizard area. We were planning on going through the whole zoo, but when we got there, I found out the the zoo hadn't started their summer hours yet......so we only had 1/2 hour before they closed the gates!  We decided to head right to the reptile and amphibian section.  It was so cool for the kids and was exciting for me as they were yelling out things that we had just learned about all the different snakes and lizards!!  Even though we had a shorter trip than planned, it was super fun!

Snakes!

Last week we were studying snakes.  That particular day we were talking about how snakes eat and after school Dill went into the "wayback" yard and this is what he found!  God really brought that lesson to life for the kids!

At the Farm

Yesterday we had such a fun evening at my Aunt Marie's farm.  We are studying a unit about "ungulates" in science which means we are studying hooved animals.  We just started learning about the "two-toed" ungulates this week, and cows were the first animal in the chapter.  Soooooo, the first thing I thought of was calling Aunt Marie! She and my Uncle Randy have lived on the dairy farm most of their married life.  They moved to the farm 6 years or so after they got married. Previously, my uncle was a mechanic.  They decided to move to the farm and start a whole new way of life.  At the time, they had 3 kids; Jake was 5, Sarah, was 3, and Dave was 1!!!!

I remember having such a fun time when we would go to Aunt Marie's house when I was younger and I really wanted the kids to feel and experience the farm.  Needless to say, they loved it!! I asked the kids afterward if it was what they expected or if it was different and Ruby said, "It was way cooler than I expected!"

We went through all the barns of cows from newborn calf all the way to milking cows.  WOW, farming is ALOT of work! My cousin Mary took us through the milking barn, I think it was surprising to the kids when they saw how "mechanical" it is.  On our way I asked the kids how cows were milked, and they described pulling the udder into a bucket and filling it with milk.  When they saw the actual process of the big cows coming in and standing in a line and getting their udders cleaned with iodine and the milking machines attached they were very impressed with the whole process!

The highlight of the day for the kids was working with Aunt Marie in her calf barn.  She allowed them to feed and water the calves and then the newborn babies she let the kids feed them their bottles! There was actually a baby in the calf barn that was born just hours before we got there!

We are so thankful to my aunt for taking the time out of her busy day to show our kids what it looks like to run a dairy farm!!

Thanksgiving Activities

Making the butter(above), finished product(below)

Beginning of candle making project

Finished candles

This morning, we did things kind of the way the pilgrims may have done them.  We made butter from cream, we melted wax to make candles, and we made corn bread to eat with our beef stew dinner.  The kids really enjoyed making these "Thanksgiving activities".  They also learned just how much hard work the pilgrims had to do to enjoy the simple things we just go to the store to get.

Thanksgiving

This week in school, we have been talking about celebrating Thanksgiving.  The kids made turkeys yesterday, and today we made a "Thankful Wreath". They turned out really cute! Tomorrow, we are gonna do things maybe a little bit like the pilgrims and make our own cornbread, candles and make our own butter.  I will post pics of those experiences!

Fossils!

 These last couple of weeks, we have been taking a break from our normal science studies and learning about fossils.  I told the kids at the beginning of the year that we have time for each of them to choose their own topic that they are interested in and we will take a week and a half to 2 weeks to study it.  Dillon chose fossils, so we went to our local homeschool building and picked up a book on fossils that was written by creation scientists.  It was a fun study for the kids, which we ended with creating our own fossil impressions.  I went in the back yard by our creek because I remembered that a few years back Adam was digging back there and found clay.  I had Dillon help me find the spot and sure enough within a couple of minutes we found some clay! I brought it in and cleaned it up and flattened it for the kids and they made impressions of dinosaurs that we had and a dino skeleton that we had and some shells and dino footprints.  It was such a fun hands-on project to end this study, and the kids LOVED it!!

School Projects

Here are some pics of the projects we worked on this week in homeschool.  The first pics are of our history lessons this week.  The last couple pics are of the states we learned about the last two weeks in geography.  (click pics to enlarge)

 Naomi's pyramid

 Ruby's sample of Stonehenge

 Zaria's unique creation

 Dillon's Stonehenge

 Rosie's sample of Minoan art. (Bull leaping is a sport the Minoans did.)

 Our "Alabama" poster - Each of the kids make a picture or creation of the thing that they enjoyed or were interested in most about the state that we studied during the week.

Our "Alaska" poster