May & June 2011 School

In May we ended up doing only 3 weeks of "official" school. Then the weather became nicer, we had some house guests, field trips, birthdays, and even though we completed most of our subjects for the year, school sort of fizzled out. 

 

 Devotional

This is the one subject which we continue to do (most days anyways) by starting out with a prayer, singing songs, memorizing scriptures, and reading our way through the New Testament.  The value for May was Courage and there were many wonderful stories to go with this value in the Book of Virtues.  

Math

We finished Math-U-See Beta!!! A and N have also had some great practice with their math and strategy skills playing dice and card games, and board games like Life and Othello.

Literature

We finished Pilgrim's Progress and they both promptly asked to start reading it again.  We will, but we will probably wait for our full schedule to start up again in the Fall.  They have both been excited about checking books out from the library - Star Wars series, Bionicles series, a few more of the Warriors series and a couple Chronicles of Narnia books for A, and Magic Tree House & other easy-reads for N.  They've also listened to:

Swiss Family Robinson

Pollyanna

Johnny Tremain

Alice in Wonderland (BBC Radio edition)

Thimble Summer

The Sign of the Beaver

The Cricket in Times Square

Half-Magic

And some old favorites too- 

The Lord of the Rings (BBC Radio edition)

Gone Away Lake & Return to Gone Away

Pinocchio

Tales from the Odyssey

The Wind in the Willows (BBC Radio edition)

Homer Price

The BBC Radio editions are actors acting out the books, so the story is somewhat abridged and my kids think they are harder to understand and follow, so we'll be getting the unabridged version from now on.  

 History, Art, & Music

I was going to keep doing this through the summer, however I decided to be realistic and knew we wouldn't really want to do a lot in the summer.  So when we reached the end of week 12 in the Harmony Fine Arts program and it was also the end of the Egyptian Art section I decided to stop us there.  We also stopped The Story of the World: Ancient Times at chapter 12.  We will pick them both back up in the Fall.  History is one subject that has greatly improved this year - the kids are more interested now that I've found resources and methods that work with their learning styles and attention spans.

Science

We finished Exploring Creation with Astronomy- the last couple chapters were about Stars and NASA.  We watched Endeavor launch and a number of the mission videos and interviews.  We also watched the landing of one of Russia's ships, which was a great way for the kids to compare the differences with the space shuttles. To finish up our Astronomy studies we went to Clark Planetarium for a morning.  The kids had a great time trying out all the exhibits.  We will also be watching the launch of Atlantis this coming week. 

Nature Study

We have been doing our nature study these month - I haven't been very good at blogging about it.  I did get a few posts in May - Bird Study, Mammal Study, & Wildflowers/Hike.  I don't think I will be posting June's - it too hard to catch up sometimes!

 So what are we doing for the Summer?

We are going to continue with our Devotionals, Math, Handwriting, & Literature.  We also have a summer science focus - this year its rocks & minerals.  We've been growing crystals, cracking geodes, and learning about the rock cycle.  Examining and testing our rock sets and creating our own rock collections. We did a hike to Mt. Timpanogos cave where we say stalactites, stalagmites, and many other formations. We have all enjoyed reading library books with a "rock" theme, though not necessarily non-fiction books, for example The Blue Stone, A Gift From the Sea, Elizabeti's Doll, Rocks in His Head, and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble.  I am also planning some fun rock crafts - rock pets will be one. We don't do all subjects, every day, but on days when we are going to be home and don't have much going on.  Its really better for all of us to have some structure. 

We've been on lots of hikes, swimming, biking, playing in the sandbox, going to parks, jumping on the trampoline, watching birds, catching bugs, and eating lots of Popsicles.  We are potty-training the 3 year old with the usual mixed success :) and our baby turned 1 and is learning to walk.  We are using our 4 year old's necessary doctor appointments and MRI's as learning experiences for our older kids, who are curious and concerned and sometimes think they are being left out. 

It's summer and lovely!! We hope you are having a good time too!

Summer Series #10 Grasshoppers, Crickets, & Katydids

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Summer Series #10 - Grasshoppers, Crickets, & Katydids

A couple weeks ago we looked through our field guides and discussed these insects. Then we spent the last couple weeks searching for one of them! We finally succeeded in finding this grasshopper on our sunflowers. We put him in a jar to take a closer look at him and then let him go. Some of the other bugs we found while we were searching:

Stink Bugs

Praying Mantis' are everywhere in our neighborhood

We also found this mystery beetle we haven't identified yet.

During our outside time we have also listened for these insect calls. The kids have been really excited to hear a sound they recognize and follow it to see if they can find the insect making the noise.

Summer Series #8 Moths

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Summer Series #8 - Moths

After looking through our field guides at several kinds of moths and having a brief discussion about them, my kids worked on their nature journals. My kids decided to create their own wing patterns for the moths they drew. We had a couple dead moths to examine up close.
A's Journal-

N's journal-

We looked back at a past journal entry where we had discussed the moth's anatomy and life cycle.

And we spent a couple evenings watching moths outside - flying around lights and flowers in our yard.

Summer Series #5 - Owls

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Summer Series - #5 Owls

We have been very fortunate to have several owl experiences very close to our home over the last year and a half. In Spring of 2009 we found an owl nest less than half a mile from our home. We often walked there to check up on the nestlings, occasionally catch sight of the parents, and after the nestlings had left, we ventured under the tree to collect owl pellets to dissect. Here is a link to a follow up study we did on owls earlier this year when we were hopeful we would be able to observe them again: Nature Study Follow-Up. Unfortunately, we did not find the new nest for the owls and haven't seen them this year.

In April of this year we visited the Thanksgiving Point Gardens and a guide pointed out the above Great Horned Owl nesting on the side of a waterfall. When I recently placed my order for science supplies from Home Science Tools I added a couple owl pellets so my order would qualify for free shipping :). The kids dissected them this week.

They weren't as enthusiastic about these as the first ones we did, in fact they were a little more squeemish about it this time around. But they did become more enthusiastic as they went along and discovered the many types of bones. I am always amazed at how many bones fit in these tiny pellets. We also took a few different occasions to discuss from memory characteristics of owls - how they nest, what they eat, that they are nocturnal, and so on. I am always amazed by how much my kids remember! We enjoyed reviewing these wonderful birds!

I am amzed at how many challenges we've been able to catch up on this month! I didn't want to miss any! I'm so grateful for Barb and her blog, Handbook of Nature Study! Thank you! Thank you!

Summer Series #4 - Bats & Hearing

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Summer Series - #4 Bats & Hearing

We didn't have any sucess observing any bats in the wild the last couple weeks. The kids did see some fruit bats at our zoo last month.

We didn't have any luck seeing bats in our neighborhood so we made a couple evening trips to a local park with a pond and small forested area. We didn't have any luck there either, though we did have lots of fun feeding the ducks :), and playing and running in the trees.
We watched the YouTube video about bats from the challenge and the Planet Earth: Caves dvd, which has a segment about Deer Cave, bats, and more bat guano than you even want to think about. I also gave the kids this Bat Life Cycle page from kidzone.

Summer Series #3 - Summer Weather

Outdoor Hour Challenges - Summer Series - #3 Summer Weather Observations

We wanted to follow up with our Shadow Stick observations from the Spring Series Challenge #2. I meant to have the kids do this in June, but I was 9 months pregnant and it didn't happen. Before we started we talked about whether they thought the shadows would be in the same place or not. They predicted they would be different.

Watching the sunrise:

For their journal pages we talked about trying to draw the skyline as much like the real one as they could. They decided to try it a few times before doing one in their journals.

N's journal page-
A's journal page

We observed the sunset on an outing to a local park

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.

Surprising Backyard Visitor

Outdoor Hour Challenge #1

When my husband and kids told me we had a chipmunk on our deck I didn't quite believe them. After all, with 4 kids, a dog, and neighbor kids coming and going all day long, I couldn't imagine when a chipmunk would feel safe enough to venture onto our deck. But yesterday afternoon I was able to watch him running around, eating leftover bird seeds, hiding under the barbecue when the kids were out, scaling the walls of our houseto get away from kids, and so on. He is a Least Chipmunk, and it was pretty amazing watching him.

Here is a video of his escape from our deck- Olivia and Dade were watching with me. I was amazed Dade didn't go crazy barking at the chipmunk.

Summer Plans

Many people have been asking me if we do school in the summer, and the answer is yes, though not as extensively as during the school year. We have taken a couple weeks off, but are ready to get started again. Here are some of our summer plans:

We will continue to do Math, mostly because we have a few chapters left to finish off, but also so we don't have to do any major reviewing in the Fall.

The kids usually read in some way every day so I won't be requiring anything more for this.

I try to have a story playing in the car so they don't bug me about watching a movie when we are driving down the street and so they don't fight with each other-- sometimes it works. We are listening to The Black Stallion right now.

We will continue our Composer Study and Artist Study. We are currently doing Johann Sebastian Bach and Claude Monet, and these are pretty easy-- listening, looking, and reading a few books.

We will continue our Nature Study following The Handbook of Nature Study challenges, but also learning about things we discover on our own.

Our major summer project will be reading The Chronicles of Narnia. We have read some before, but we are going to be reading them all, in the order that C.S. Lewis wanted them to be read, as opposed to the order they were written or published in:

The Magician's Nephew

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Horse and His Boy

Prince Caspian

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Silver Chair

The Last Battle

This is according to Beyond the Wardrobe: The Official Guide to Narnia by E.J. Kirk, which we grabbed at the library this past week. There are TONS of online websites, resources, activities, projects associated with the books and the movies, but I want to keep things simple. We will be doing a poster-size timeline, and I suspect that I'm the one who will be primarily interested in this-- nerd that I am--I want to see the big picture. There are several websites that have already done this, so I won't have to do any research other than flexing my Google-muscles.

I'm also thinking we will do maps with the books, maybe just one big one for us to mark where events take place or the routes traveled, but it depends on what I can find. By searching through Yahoo!Images I have found maps for Narnia, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and the Silver Chair, but so far I haven't found a single map with it all together. I'll probably just mush it all together somehow. And we'll do some narrating- the kids retelling me the part of the story they have just heard- Who's, What's, Where's, When's and Why's.

Here are some useful links:

This Old Schoolhouse Unit Study

Home School Mom Resources

Coloring Pages

Activity Pages

Walden Media- search "Narnia Educator's Guide"

Fan Sites:

The Lions Call

Narnia Fans

The kids will also be doing a summer camp at the Wheeler Historic Farm, 1/2 a day for a week.

And OF COURSE lots of time outdoors- doing yard work, playing at the parks, swimming in the pool, running around the neighborhood, digging in the dirt, slipping on the slip-n-slide, making mud pies, chasing birds and dogs, and whatever else they can think of (such as trading pokemon cards with their friends)!!!!!