4 Moms: Kitchen & Dining Room

4 Moms Open House: Kitchen & Dining Room

Smockity Frocks

The Common Room

In A Shoe
Raising Olives

I thought this open house would be fun to join. I may go back and do our yard and entryway - should I have some spare time!? Here is our kitchen and dining room. These are located at the back of our house. We have a small deck but because of the height and little kids we don't have our outside table and chairs up there. But the kids still like to have picnics out there sometimes.

Kitchen - the picture was during breakfast and before we had a chance to clean up some. We usually do clean up in the mornings. On the fridge we keep our picture for our Artist Study (Van Gogh right now). There is also our daily schedule, school schedule, and kids chore charts - these change weekly as I see the need so I don't do anything more permanent than paper! We don't use the counter for school very much - mostly when I need to separate kids to keep them from distracting each other, though sometimes they do decide to work there. The cupboards under the bar hold our art supplies.

Mostly (aside from meals of course) we use the kitchen table for art projects a couple days a week. I like to cover the table with a vinyl table cloth to protect it and let the kids go to work - play doh, painting, stickers, whatever they've picked! In the lower right hand corner you can see an old coffee-table-turned-kids-table where the kids will eat, play, or color. All the kids like to sit on the window sills and look out on the world.

You can join the open house or check out the many different kitchens and dining rooms at any of the links at the beginning of the post!!

UPDATE: To answer a question in the comments here are pictures of the tile and countertop.

Summer Series #7 - Summer Cattails

Outdoor Nature Challenges - Summer Series #7 - Summer Cattail Observations

Spring

Winter

Autumn

We spent a lovely morning at our "Cattail Park." First we took some time to examine the cattails:

Sight: Growing with the cattails were also bulrushes, weeds, grasses, and wild sunflowers. We were hoping tosee the red-winged blackbirds from the Spring, but they were missing. We did see a few cowbirds hanging around.
Smell: We could smell damp mud and the fresh scent of green things growing. Around the splash pad it also smelled of chlorine. And we all decided smells are hard to describe!!

Touch: We compared the green plants with last year's plants. The green ones were soft, but strong and full. Last year's were dry, crinkly, and more easily broken. Last year's also had a different sound.

Hearing: We could hear the wind rustling through the plants and the nearby aspen trees. We could also hear traffic and some model airplanes flying in a nearby field. Lots of kid and water sounds by the splash pad.

After our observations we played at the park - the splash pad run-off provides some of the water for the cattails. When we were home they quickly colored in their nature journals - too anxious to get outside to play with friends!! But when I asked them about their pictures they both talked about including the yellow and green leaves of the new plants and last year's, so they did put some thought into them!

N's-

A's:

Summer Series #2 - Summer Tree Study

Outdoor Hour Challenges - Summer Series #2 - Summer Tree Study

A year of studying our trees!! It was so much fun to look at the past pictures in our journals and on the blog. We have enjoyed watching our trees all year.

Spring - April 2010

Winter - January 2010

Fall - September 2009

A's Tree & Journal Page

N's Tree & Journal Page

My kids enjoyed collecting leaves and doing some rubbings to include in their journals.

Summer Series #1 - Mosquitos

Outdoor Nature Challenges - Summer Series #1 - Mosquitoes

We are getting back to our nature studies after our "new baby break." I printed out pictures of the Mosquito life cycle and anatomy for the kids to put in their journals. We read from and looked at pictures in several books we have that talk about mosquitoes -

First Animal Encyclopedia

Bugs: Discover an Amazing World (Silver Dolphin)

We found a great video at YouTube of the Mosquito Life Cycle. It looks like the poster if this video has a number of excellent insect metamorphosis videos we will be checking out for other insect studies.

And we took advantage of the wonderful studies done by other homeschool families for great pictures and videos of these little pests! Here are a few:

Pebblekeeper - Angie

Barefoot in Suburbia - Allison

All Creation Cries Out - K

I will be including our "Train Your Senses" experiences with the more current challenges as we complete them.

2010-2011 Curriculum Plans

My self-challenge for this school year is to use as many of the resources we already have on hand or items we can get from the library. This has turned out to be much easier that I first thought it would be. Also, with a new baby (1 month old today!), we will be slowly working back to our full-time schedule. We have been doing history for a couple weeks now, next week we will add in math, and so on.

We homeschool using the Charlotte Mason style and I get curriculum ideas from Ambleside Online, Milestone's Academy (LDS Charlotte Mason curriculum), Simply Charlotte Mason, and other homeschoolers, and then weave all those together with resources I feel will work best for our family.

Scripture Study- We are using the Discover the Scriptures: Old Testament Grades 1-3 for Old Testament Stories through the end of this year. I was worried Old Testament Grades 4-7 would be too challenging, but have since decided Grades 1-3 is too simple for my kids. We read the scripture stories when A & N were around 3-4 years old and have been reading directly from the scriptures since then. In 2011 we will begin Discover the Life of Christ and then follow with Discover the Acts of the Apostles.

Character Building- The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennet, A Story to Tell: The Classic Book of Virtues for Children, Teaching Your Children Joy and Teaching Your Children Values by Linda & Richard Eyre, and Friend magazine.

Copywork- The kids will be practicing their handwriting through the writing they do in other subjects like Scripture Study, Science and History. There are also lots of free online resources for copywork, such as the Yahoo!Group LDSCopywork and Homeschool Freebie of the Day.

Grammar- We will be using Milestones: English for the LDS Child Level A (free download) or First Language Lessons. We won't be completely using either program - just reading through the grammar exercises together.

Math- We are currently working through Math-U-See's Beta . We have been going at a very slow pace with math to make sure they are mastering the skills before we move on.

Literature- We will be making selections from the Milestone's Academy Year 4 or Ambleside Online's Year 4 suggested chapter books.

Poetry- I have a variety of anthologies we will read from, such as The Oxford Book of Story Poems and Sing a Song of Popcorn. I also like to pick poems that go with what we are studying in other subjects. For example, we are studying the American Revolution now, and we read Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to go along with that event.

Shakespeare- I've picked 4 plays that we will be learning about this year: A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, As You Like It, and The Winter's Tale. We read from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit and Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb. I also like to find a few picture books from the library that help give the kids an idea of how the plays look. And we like to watch Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, a DVD series we can get through our library (See a Squidoo lens here).

History- Right now my kids are in love with PBS's Liberty Kids TV show. Its available on Netflix Instant Watch. There is also a website here. We watch the shows, the kids narrate by drawing pictures in their history journals or verbally to me, and we put important people and events on a timeline poster. I also add in things here and there as it seems important, like Paul Revere's Ride by Longfellow or Patrick Henry's speech.

When we finish with this we will continue reading The Story of the World Volume 2 where we left off last year, narrating, journaling, and keeping a timeline as we go. We will also be reading some biographies and historical fiction- D'Aulaire's George Washington, and any others as they come up/occur to me. I like to check the Simply Charlotte Mason History Module details for suggestions.

My kids also participate in Liberty Girls and Knights of Freedom - book clubs that read historical fiction (American Girl- Josefina, and The Childhood of Famous Americans- ???) and do related activities at club meetings twice a month.

Geography- My kids have a great interest in the Oregon Trail right now so I have been trying to find a book for us to read and map as we go, but haven't found just the right one yet. If I don't find one we will read Minn of the Mississippi and make maps of the turtle's journey.

Nature Study/Science- I am excited to get back to doing Handbook of Nature Study's weekly challenges. We will probably jump in with current challenges, and then slowly work on the ones we have missed the last month or so. For Science we will be doing Exploring Creation with Astronomy. I decided to splurge for this subject this year and purchase the Notebooking Journal and a science kit too.

Composer Study- I haven't decided if we are going to do composers this year- if we do it will be Handel, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, & someone else. We have been listening to Stories in Music: Peter and the Wolf, which the kids have enjoyed. We've read a couple versions of the story from the library, listened to a couple different versions, and watched a couple different cartoons. So we might do some more of this CD series, like The Sorcerer's Apprentice and The Story of Swan Lake. We'll see.

Artist Study- A friend in our homeschool group has decided to host an Artist Study class this semester that my kids are going to try out. The artist she has chosen is Renoir. I like to purchase Taschen Portfolio's for Artist Study, but there isn't one for Renoir, so I am going to purchase a 2011 Calendar to supplement the class. I know there are past calendars that are cheaper, but I'm getting this one because none of the pictures are nudes (personal preference). I'm also going to get one for Degas- 2011 Calendar. I haven't decided who else we will study this year.

I know this seems like a lot, but most subjects are only done one or two times a week, and we stick with Charlotte Mason's idea of short lessons, 15-20 minutes for each subject.

We are taking a break

On July 1st we welcomed a beautiful new baby into our family (who is suddenly crying in the other room so this will be short!) I am taking the rest of July off to rest, recover, recuperate, and find a "new normal" for our family.

I hope you are all having a wonderful summer!!

Interesting Articles

A couple articles I've recently read that are very thought provoking -

Misery Loves Company and Wants to be Passed Down



The Public Schools' Parents Guice to Homeschool Parents