Fire Safety Fun

Had a field trip today at a local firehouse, continuing with our fire safety unit. The kids had a chance to meet Marzy, the search and rescue dog, see an aerial ladder in operation, and use a small firehose.

Found this little website for a little fun later in the week: http://www.sparky.org/

Fire Safety Month

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While I'm at it (And when I say "it", I mean avoiding lesson planning for the moment.), I thought I'd mention that October is Fire Safety month. And in that vein, this week we are finally getting around to taking the boys for a visit to a local firehouse! I'm so excited! I've wanted to do this for the last two years, but it was never the right time. So this week I'm planning on having a Fireman Theme, and we are going to be spending a little time focusing on Fire Safety. I found these super cute printables at HomeschoolCreations.com for the little one!

Poptropica

Kinda stumbled on this fun game, and since the 7yo saw me playing it, looks like we will be solving some puzzles in the near future.

Art, Not Just For Art's Sake

Well, this was a digression from my earlier post about Science, but I decided to spare you the rabbit trail and let it be its own little post. So here you have it... Remember when I said my Fantasy School would revolve around Science? Well, someone else, who apparently thinks like me, thought the same thing about Art. And actually, this comes in as a close second to my Fantasy School, because I love Art with the same geeky passion as I love Science. :)

So, I recently came across a bunch of books that teach other subjects through the subject of Art, and it so intrigues me, except that I haven't been able to actually SEE any of the pages of these books. (Sharon Jeffus, are you listening? People like to see previews of a page or two on websites.) If this concept intrigues you too, you might want to check out VisualManna.com. They have much more than just books. They have lessons online, art camps and But if you buy a book, can I take a look at it? )

Geeky Post

Home Science Tools is such a fun website for me, even though their website is actually, hometrainingtools.com. When I get their catalogs I just drool over the pages, in a way that I used to do with Pottery Barn catalogs. I start making wish lists and everything.

In my fantasy school, everything revolves around Science: Handwriting, Math, English, History, Art and Gym. I mean, why couldn't it? :) If I could find a curriculum that was basically Teaching Everything with Science, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. And if I had the time and knowledge to do this myself, I think I could get a following. :) So there you have it. I'm a complete geek. My kids are doomed... Or very lucky.

Home Science Tools has a page that lists all different Science Projects. There is a whole section that deals with crystals, and that is what we are focusing on this week, since I've been meaning to do this all winter and now that Spring is coming... well, crystals become a little less timely as the weather warms up. LOL..

Today, we tried out the Quick Crystal Cup experiment. It was a big hit. We are letting the crystals grow over night, and we'll check them in the morning. Can't wait! :)

Update: So here are the pictures of our fun crystal experiments:










As you can see, even hubby got into examining the crystals.... Too cool!

Lots of Dots

Recently, we read The Dot again. Love this book! I think I first read about it over at ArtProjectsForKids.org, and decided to take it out of the library a few weeks ago. What I really love about this book is that it shows the kids that all you have to do is start with ANYTHING, even a small dot, and you can have art. It makes it so simple to do art with reluctant or perfectionistic children. Not that my kids are reluctant when it comes to art!! But I do have a boy that leans towards perfectionism. So we've read the book a few times, just before an art project.

Today, we painted dots! Big dots, little dots, and all different colors and thicknesses. To make it interesting and easy, I pulled out toilet paper tubes, marker caps, plastic cups and empty yogurt containers and a few straws. I demonstrated the general idea to the boys, who were a little puzzled by the lack of brushes, and they were off! :)

Clean up was pretty easy as well, as the paint had been poured out onto styrofoam plates, and pretty much everything could be thrown out when we were done. The only caveat, if you decide to try this sometime, was that the toilet paper tubes roll, if not stood on end, and could easily make their way to the floor. Fortunately, ours didn't quite make it to the floor, but it was definitely on its way when I caught it!

Spiritual Awakening

January 19, 2011, my oldest son sat at the breakfast table with me, while his little brother slept. I thought to wake the little guy, but was enjoying the one on one time with my firstborn. As we talked, the conversation turned to spiritual things, and we began to talk about what the Bible says about God and Heaven. We talked about how everyone has a decision to make, and how we can choose to live for God, accept Jesus' death on the cross and receive forgiveness for our sin. I asked him if he had ever done that. "Nope." I asked him if he'd like to do it. "Not right now," he said. So I told him if he ever decided he wanted to, he could come to me and I would help him. I went into the kitchen to make some coffee and a few minutes later he was calling to me to tell me that he had prayed!

Now, I'm one who is, by nature, skeptical of everything. And not having been raised in the church, I am skeptical of children that make professions of faith, but I also know that very often these little ones are the ones who really have that childlike faith to trust God... As I talked with my son afterward, I questioned him briefly, but I also noted that the Spirit of God within me seemed to be rejoicing, and so I found that encouraging. Also, Ian soon after started expressing a concern about when his little brother would make that decision as well, which was kind of cool.

So the question that's really been pressing on me lately is where do we go from here? How do you properly disciple a 7 year old? Yes, we are involved in church, and he also attends AWANA at another church, and of course we have devotions in the morning and before bed. Is that enough? Is it the right kind of thing to be doing? Are we missing something?

In my search, I came across this page, which expresses a few things beautifully and gives me a few things to look into: CharlotteMasonHelp.com

Sick Day?

Friday was a sick day for mom, but one in which I could muddle through, provided there wasn't a lot of resistance and whining. So I mixed it up a bit. Here's what the day looked like:

• Devotional time, working in Quiet Time Journals and AWANA verse memorization
• Handwriting in our Handwriting Without Tears book.
  
• Science, in which we read about animals, and watched a couple of brief videos related to what we were reading about
• Reading through a few more Bob books
• Tried out a new website, NeoK12, for some logic games. Ian liked Connect 4 and Parking Zone in particular.
  
• A little time outside before lunch
• During lunch, we had a picnic in the living room while we watched "Sunken Treasure", an episode of Reading Rainbow that dealt with the discovery and recovery of treasure from the Spanish ship Atocha. Part of the episode also showed some real life footage about the Titanic, which was pretty cool too.
• After lunch we went to the library and quite accidentally, Ian saw a book about the Titanic and immediately recognized it and decided he wanted to take it out. :)

Part of our History lessons has been learning about Archaeology, and how we learn about past civilizations, so the Reading Rainbow video really fit in quite nicely. :) After we got home Ian "read" through the Titanic graphic novel he had found, and then I showed him the National Geographic book I have on the Titanic, which he thoroughly devoured as well. All in all, not a bad day.

Later in the afternoon, we worked on making Crazy Hats for our AWANA Crazy Hat night. If you would have seen the hats, you would understand why this presented a physics and engineering lesson all by itself! LOL... But really, it was a fun time of creativity and brainstorming.

Aha moment of the week.

This week we started reading "The Dolphin Adventure" and it's been great so far. I've found over the last few months of trial and error that the boys do better (or so it seems) at listening to the read alouds if they are coloring or playing with play dough, rather than sitting next to me, looking at a book with few pictures. They are good listeners, but they can only sit for so long. So today yesterday I read to them at our dining room table while they played with play dough. I encouraged them to make dolphins and fish while I read and it worked beautifully. I just can't believe it's taken me this long to really make this a regular part of our school day! LOL....

Continuing with the theme, I've found a great little resource for printed pictures and cut outs, and I plan to make use of it this week and in the future! If there's anyone out there looking for great printables, check out LearningPage.com. They encourage you to register for free, but I found I didn't have to and could still get to the pages I wanted.

You've got to try this one!

Today the boys tried out a new website I recently read about. It's called RedFishSoup.com. Talk about a hit!! Ian-6yo enjoyed exploring the site once he realized there was no right or wrong thing to do. Shane-3yo enjoyed watching him so much that I set up the other laptop for him to give it a try too. And he had a blast! There's not many games or websites that can completely entertain all age groups, but I think that this fits the bill really nicely. What I really like is that the 3 year old can actually use the website on his own while I'm working with the older boy... at least that is the hope! :)