Sea World VS Solar Eclipse, and Eclipse WINS!

August 21, 2017

Seriah says if you compare the solar eclipse to Sea World the solar eclipse wins. I love that this girl loves science.  We watched the Solar Eclipse this year from Rexburg, Idaho at the kids Grandparents house.  It was so worth taking them up for it.

You Know Your a Homeschooler When...

March 24, 2017

You know your a homeschooler when....one of your baby chicks die and after crying and being sad all the kids are excited to have a dissection class.

Survey Says

December 5, 2016

Clarissa is doing a survey for school today. Please take a minute to help her out and answer in the comments. Her question is: Which of these dangerous animals is your favorite?

1. Cane Toad
2. Shark
3. Snake
4. Cassowary
5. none of the above.

The Coolest Dragonfly Ever!

August 2016

Our nature walk today gave us a close up of one of the most unique and cool looking dragonflies I have ever seen.  Definitely one for the kids to add to their nature notebooks and one to keep photo's of so I can add it to my own book someday.  Anyone know what type of dragonfly it is?

Lego's, Dangerous Animals and a Child's Imagination

February 4, 2016

Treysen choose the cassowary bird as his dangerous animal to write about a couple of days ago for his creative writing assignment and today he begged me to let him do legos as his art time for school.  He even promised that it was school related.  Although bummed that we didn't have enough of the right colors for a realistic looking bird he didn't let that stop him.

Clarissa not to be outdone by her younger brother set to work on her writing project subject a cane toad.  She used every single green block we owned and even convinced her brother to swap out the green blocks he had used for other colors but to no avail.  We still didn't have enough green and just like his cassowary her cane toad ended up a rainbow of lego color.

I love watching my kids use their own ideas and imagination when they play and build with their toys.  It means so much more to them and they learn and grow in so many more ways then when they just follow a printed set of directions.  They both think they would make good lego set designers someday.  I smile and nod knowingly and look forward to what they will decide they want to be when they grow up tomorrow.

Lack of Writing Interest and a Change in Assignments

February 1, 2016

We are still struggling with attitudes that came home with each of the children in varying degrees from public school about writing.  Mostly, a general feeling of it's difficult and not fun and a major lack of understanding when it comes to knowing how to go about writing even a basic paragraph.  What I didn't expect was for science TV to pay off today when it came to writing and attitudes.

When I let the kids sit and watch an animal documentary for science one day last week I didn't think much of it at the time.  They picked 72 Dangerous Animals of Australia and while I don't consider that particular show to be the most educational I figured they were learning something and I was catching up on grading papers so win, win.

Today however it paid dividends two-fold.  No one liked the writing topic from our lesson book today which was a descriptive paragraph about something you like to eat at lunch time.  So I gave in and told them to write a descriptive paragraph about one of the 72 animals they learned about last week.  Suddenly they were excited and couldn't quit talking about which animal they were writing about about and everything they had learned about it while watching the show.  I was frankly amazed at just how much they actually remembered.  Needless to say I am grateful for the inspiration today with a simple solution to our anti-writing attitudes.

Shark TV

January 21, 2016

Is it admitting defeat when you plop the kids in front of a documentary on sharks and call it science for the day just so you can have a few minutes of quiet for yourself? Cause that is sure where I am at this afternoon.

Botanical Gardens and Butterflies

October 2015

Our field trip this month was to our local botanical gardens. It was a lovely day that was not too hot which is a blessing in the desert. 

They had an amazing nature Lego exhibit going on with giant Lego sculptures of birds, butterflies and other wildlife. Unfortunately for my children their mother was in charge of taking the photos and the Lego's were not what I took pictures of.

I took pictures of nature. My favorite part of the entire trip were the butterflies. They have a special section at the garden which is a tropical butterfly habitat. In one portion you get the chance to see different butterflies emerge from their chrysalis and in an portion you can walk through and admire the lovely tropical plants and actually see the butterflies they have up close. We spent quite a bit of time in this portion of the garden and poor Jeremiah freaked out when he even thought a butterfly might be getting remotely close to him. However, the one that landed on his brother was just fine to laugh about and look at.

The rest of our walking through the gardens was at least as eventful, because of the girls decided that one of the small cactus looked soft and fuzzy so she was going to pet it. I bet that you can guess how well that went. Her father and I spent at least 15 minutes if not longer careful picking out all the teeny tiny stickers. It was at that moment I decided that every mom needs to carry a roll of packing tape or duct tape in her purse at all times, because if I had had a roll we could have taped her hand and pulled out all the offending spines quite easily. Trust as a someone who grew up in the desert, this works on tiny cactus stickers, I know from personal experience.

The kids also got a kick out of the chickens we found in a pen in the back corner of the garden. Apparently they are kept to help keep mosquito's down and to help fertilize all the plants.

We ended the day with some very tired kids and a botched family photo. Poor Clarissa wanted nothing whatsoever to do with smiling for the camera. The expression on her face shows sheer torture and you would think we had been punishing her greatly by asking her to sit for five minutes and smile for the camera. Oh well I am sure that at some future time we will all get a kick out of the fact that she refused to smile right?

Our final stop was the gift shop where we bought each of the kids a t-shirt to remember to day. My personal favorite when it comes to things to buy because: hey it's clothes, they will wear them out, the shirt won't break in two seconds, and the designs are usually unique. We also bought a wooden art project for them. Each of the older three kids got a 3D wooden puzzle butterfly for paint or color and put together for art the next day and they didn't cost me any more then if I ordered them from Amazon so I was very pleased.

Over all a lovely trip and some beautiful pictures. I think I might just have to start a nature book of some kind to keep a record of all the fun animals and plants I find on our field trips.

Mummified Apples Teach History & Science

September 2015

We have completed our first science experiment this month.  Our science book: Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology gave us a fun project as our first one.  We learned about the history of anatomy and physiology.  Then we learned about the ancient Egyptians and mummification.  After that we experiments with different mixtures and kinds of salts and baking sodas to see which ones would work best to mummify an apple slice.  And after sitting buried for a week in our coffin cups.  Here are our results.

Definitely a fun project and one I won't mind doing again when Jeremiah and Kyrilene get to that age and are ready to learn anatomy themselves.  What a great way to start science.

Crafting a Homeschool Education

“Should I homeschool my children?”

I think this is a question that is gaining more traction with parents over the past several years.  Personally it is a question that I have considered briefly several different times in the past.  Each time I faced the same feelings and questions that most parents do when considering this option:

• I don’t have a degree in education.  Am I qualified to teach my kids?
• Will I do more harm then good by educating them at home?
• How can I possibly re-create public school at home?
• What about socialization and letting them have friends?
• Will they be able to get into college without being an official High School Graduate?

How does a parent decide to homeschool their children?  Well I don’t think I can answer for every parent, but I can share my journey in reaching my decision with you.  It first began about the time that my oldest was getting ready to begin third grade.  She had struggled through second grade with reading and fluency and I spent hours everyday when she got home re-teaching homework that had not been covered well enough in class for her to understand.  Ultimately that year I figured I had helped enough and she would be okay, since her class work was getting done and it was only the testing she struggled with by the end of the year.  Fast forward to this spring as she began the second half of her fifth grade year in school.  I could tell there was something wrong, but I had difficulty figuring out exactly what it was.  My daughter seemed depressed and was quiet all the time.  She took to hiding assignments until the last minute because they weren’t something she felt capable of doing.  A chapter book like “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief” was well beyond her reading ability.  She still preferred to read Rainbow Fairy books at about second grade level, and this was after the battle of wills it had become to even get her to read at home for her required thirty minutes a day.  I was beside myself with worry knowing that if I didn’t do something she was going to fall far enough behind that it was really going to affect her confidence and possibly her future if she needed to be held back a year or struggled in high school.

This same year her sister has been struggling with the fourth grade.  She clashed with her teacher and with the restrictions and lack of creativity in the curriculum.  I really hadn’t been paying much attention to “Common Core” until it hit our schools and started affecting my children.  As I started to research what it was and what it involved and asked my children how they were being taught different subjects in school I learned something that really opened my eyes to our current education system.  Not only were the teachers struggling with teaching common core either from not enjoying what they were required to present or because it was difficult to present, but it also made it impossible for the teachers (that we love because they work outside the box and really teach our kids well) to teach our kids, some of the best teachers have even given up teaching for a different profession altogether.  For example: so many restrictions were placed on my girls science fair projects this spring that it was no longer a fun science fair project but drudgery that everyone in my house groaned about and didn’t look forward to.

My son’s experience with first grade this year has been a rollercoaster, and while I couldn’t ask for a better teacher, because she is an amazing woman who not only manages to keep my son who is quite ahead challenged each day and engaged in school, but she also manages to do that with the kids who are struggling.  In a perfect world we would all have teachers that could reach our kids and teach them as well as she does and homeschool wouldn’t even need to be considered.  If you want to read more about his challenges read my previous post about drugs in school.

Finally I looked at the school’s calendar and schedule for the rest of the year.  I was surprised to find out that from January to May the only thing the schools are teaching our kids is how to take tests.  No new material is being taught.  They spent a couple of weeks doing drills and practice problems to get the kids ready for the upcoming test and then the following week they test.  Then this cycle is repeated until the end of April.  By the time they reach May both the children and teachers are burned out mentally and don’t do much until the end of school.

After much prayer, debate with my husband and pondering I came to the conclusion that I’ve had enough and so have my kids.  I talked with each of my girls individually and had them pray about the issues as well.  Together we felt it was time.  Our family was going to stand up and say “Enough.”  We were going to take back the control of our learning and education and learn how to love learning again.  With the decision made my family’s journey into the realm of homeschool has begun.  Where we go from here I have faith in the Lord to guide me as I begin crafting a new talent.  The talent of teaching my children and crafting a curriculum to fit their needs and interests.