Vi Hart: Math Doodling

I LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS SITE!!!!!  ----- Vi Hart: Math Doodling:
Here is a taste of the great videos that can be found there -

Ganson Sculptures at MIT Museum

We visited the MIT Museum during their Second Friday program and had a great visit. The Ganson Sculptures had to be our favorite area - we could have watched them for hours! Here is a TEDTalk about how he was inspired and created his sculptures - 

Free Cultural Events! - Who can beat that!

This week we were oh so fortunate to be able to attend two fabulous cultural arts events for FREE!!! The first was a presentation of the Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra's Symphony of Nature. KM attend a free presentation on the 9th at the Cape Cod Conservatory that highlighted many works that were inspired by nature and went into discussions on the pieces that were presented. We were so fortunate to have gotten to participate in that class, but then to be able to follow it with an incredible trip to see the CCSO performance just made it even better!

Then on Wednesday we attended the dress rehearsal of the BLO's upcoming premiere of The Inspector. They have a great program were they allow high schoolers the opportunity to attend the dress rehearsals for free! This was our second experience attending and we hope to be able to go to many more! I suspect that the run will be a GREAT success as the kids in our group all loved it! These are the types of things that we love to do and would never be able to afford without programs like this - I mean the opera would have cost us nearly $200 for the two of us to attend! 

Weekly Update - Two for One

Last week was so hectic that I didn't get a chance to write up our weekly update. Really not a big deal since we sort of had a two for one week around here as well. This week was our local school systems vacation week so DN opted to double up on his work that he is doing here and at his house. He was really productive from the moment that he got here so it worked out well and he got all his work here done and they worked together to get the things they do cooperatively completed as well, so KM had a lighter week as well. This was very fortunate for her as she began her novel study skype class. She is working through Wuthering Heights and is feeling a bit nervous about the workload, but I think she will do just fine.

We have had lots of activities going on over the last two weeks, from free skate to library activities. KM is really enjoying working with the Teen Advisory Group at the library. She also had a great time at the comic workshop with Andy and Veronica Fish this week and the Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament. KM had lots of fun at youth group where they made really cute headbands. We also took advantage of our INCREDIBLY WARM weather, it was in the 50s most days this week, to get out and do some hiking.

We only have a few more weeks left of our winter session, so I also spent quite a bit of time trying to finalize our lesson plans for spring and I will be sure to post about those soon!


Some pics from the camera over the last two weeks -

KM's valentine's present since she LOVES bacon!

We are learning a lot from our ant hill!

Babies eating are just TOOOO CUTE!!!

SUCH FABULOUS WEATHER FOR A HIKE!!!

KM's character sketch of Young Cathy -

Professor Noggin's Card Games - Official Review

Our family has been using these games for years and they are a fun, entertaining and exciting way to learn a number of subjects in numerous categories from Science to History to Art to Geography. These fun games can take your family to the far corners of Outer Space and deep into the Ocean. You can find a complete list of titles - HERE

Each game comes with 30 cards and 1 three numbered dice - meaning a six sided die that has 1, 2, & 3 on two sides each. Each card has 6 questions - 3 easy and 3 hard - which makes it fantastic to play with the whole family regardless of the amount of knowledge individuals may have in each area. Questions come in the form of true or false, multiple choice or trivia. I truly can not say enough about these fantastic product!

Here are the titles we have on our bookshelf -

  

What I am Reading - December - Music Kid

I have been really enjoying drawing Manga characters the last few weeks. I picked this book up at the library to help me work on the eyes. I will post some of my work here soon.

Funny direction things can take

We started out with Biology and talking about fungus and KM mentioned how many different types of mushrooms she has seen out in the yard lately. I had an idea - we should gather some samples and examine the differences. Then how would each react to heat - oh hey what a great excuse to start a fire in the pit.....

Once we we had the fire going and mushrooms were "cooking" I suddenly remembered a post that I had stumbled upon last week at the hmmm...schooling mom's blog where they microwaved various types of soap...well I wondered what would happen if we put them over the fire....

I was shocked at the various reactions melting points! 

KM was inspired to carve some shapes out as she was prepping the samples.

So from biology to mycology to scenting the neighborhood to soap sculpting.....where will the rest of our day take us?

Try and Try and TRY until you get it!

I remember reading an article or blog post not so long ago about how much a parent really learns through home educating their children. This was not just about learning facts and figures in books or studying topics, but be aware of things that one thought they were not capable of doing and suddenly they get it. I mention this because over this past week I have had a break through - a momentous break through really!

A few years ago I taught myself to knit. I picked up the needles and book and figured it out really quickly. Shortly after this I tried to crochet, but just could not get it. I tried on several occasions and just could not get past a single chain. A few months later I decided to try to make an edging around a blanket that I made by crocheting and I figured out how to do that because I could identify where the stitches where because I had knit the portion I was now crocheting into. During that same week I tried to crochet a scarf again and just COULD NOT do it! I tried and tried and tried, but couldn't do it. Over the last few years I have picked it up several times to no avail. This past weekend I picked up an easy crochet book and was flipping through it thinking how nice it would be to make these projects. I flipped to a page with a really cute mesh shopping bag and said "Ya, know what I am gonna try again." -----

I can't tell you how many times I have said "I can knit, but I CANNOT crochet!" Well guess what I CAN now! If I had not been persistent and just given up I would never have been able to do it. Instead I kept trying and when it was the "right time" I just got it!

Finishing up Winter Session and Prepping for Spring!!!

This is our last week of our winter session and KM has continued to do really well and is truly enjoying her topics of study. As always we have tweaked and evolved things throughout the session and will continue to do so as we set forth our plans for next session. I have most of the outline planned and over the next week will be fine tuning things.

First and foremost we have both decided after a long discussion, that we need to slow down a bit. We went FULL THROTTLE through the winter and managed to not get any winter duldrums or cabin fever, however we are EXHAUSTED! I have made a last minute decision to go back to our 3 stay day routine and with all that is coming up I am feeling a NEED to really stick to it.

There are some big jobs around the house that need to be taken care of and we are hoping to address a few this weekend ~ including taking down the snow damaged pool ~ while we are all around. The spring brings different chores and household responsibilities that need to be addressed and with CJ starting a full 6 week course to get his advanced licenses, KM and I are going to have to step up and take on some of the things that we would normally leave for him to do.

As for our lesson plans we will be continuing with a majority of the programs from the fall and winter we have been doing, but have decided to tweak a few areas including -

• Science - After some dissection of the Spectrum Science Workbook we both felt like the last few chapters were so disconnected in their content that it was too chopped up and KM didn't really want to finish it. On top of this KM has been very Science focused over the last two years, doing multiple programs at a time, so we decided to back off a bit. She will finish up the next few issues of Scholastic's Science World and will be doing the Environmental Study - see below - that she had planned on doing over the summer during the spring instead. I think this will tie in nicely to our gardening and landscaping plans as well.
• Math - She will be completing the Straight Forward Math Series Algebra Book 2 this week and will begin Book 3 after the break. She is moving very smoothly through this series and really seems to be retaining the information well. 
• Social Science - 
• History - KM has completed Volume 3 of Story of the World and has just begun Volume 4. It seems to be just as intriguing to her although the style is a bit different in this volume than in the ones before. She has been a bit stumped on the outlining portion, but I think with continued practice this will improve. As she is moving through this program at a more advanced rate and completing two to three chapters a week, I will not be requiring that she complete all the outlines and we will be  doing far less of the activities as well. I have, however, chosen to incorporate more of the Brain Pop! videos into the the history areas to hopefully bring a bit more life into it. 
• Current Events - This is an area that we have been a bit lacking in lately and CJ feels we should put a bit more energy into. KM does read Youngzine each week, but I stumbled across the CNN Student News and I think this will be a great resource! 
• Art - I went back and forth in this area recently. We tried a Great Course series from the library, but it was more than a bit DRY! KM is always working on different projects and crafts, but she also likes well done documentaries and shows having to do with art. So after some poking around online, I landed on Netflix and found this rather intriguing looking PBS series called Art 21 which we can stream live through the ROKU and/or the Wii onto the big screen! There are also free downloadable educator's guides to give some extra insight and ideas on how to use the program in an educational setting! We are both looking forward to utilizing this resource.
• Environmental Study - We had planned on working through this unit study over the summer, but as I mentioned earlier our plans changed a bit! We will be reading the Cartoon Guide to the Environment and going through the Our Fragile Environment Unit on BrainPop. We will also be watching documentaries that will correlate with each weeks topics. 
• Music - This is another area that we tend to focus a lot on around here. KM is more than halfway through the Annenberg Media course Exploring the World of Music and is thoroughly enjoying it. She will continue with and hopes to complete Piano Adventures Lesson Book, Level 2A by the end of this next session. She has been doing incredibly well considering she is self teaching and neither CJ nor I have any instrumental talent! She also continues to utilize the Wii with Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero, as well as a multitude of Sing It games that she has acquired. There has been talk of wanting to take drum lessons next year, but she is wavering as to whether she wants a traditional drum kit or an electronic one. 
• Literature - KM has picked two pieces to focus on this session Old Yeller and Wright 3. For Old Yeller we will take advantage of this online resource, as well as doing a movie comparison. For Wright 3 we will be using this guide put out by Library Sparks. 
• P.E. - Ice skating was fabulous over the winter and KM really took to it! For the spring the kids will be finishing up their bowling league and we will go back to Basketball and Tennis as the weather permits. When the weather is against us we will be using the Wii Sports Resort and Just Dance to get our sweat on! We have also decided to start incorporating more family fitness activities like hiking, bike riding and roller blading on the weekends when DN is here. These are things that we used to do regularly when KM was little, but have just moved away from over the last few years. 

Will you be changing things up for the spring? What kinds of fun activities does your family have planned?

I will be updating the Current Curriculum & Schedule page soon!

Getting ready for Valentine's Day

 The Littles came over on Friday and we did a simplified version of these great Heart Suncatchers for Valentine's Day!

Creative Use of Waiting Time

A few weeks back, we got to the movies a bit early and it was TOTALLY EMPTY, so KM decided to have a wee bit of fun, with Bunny Fu Fu

An A-Mazing Project

For the summer we decided to pick and choose some different art projects from a book that I had gotten awhile back -

Here was this weeks pick -

Another MOS Trip

We tend to stay away from museums and such during the summer because we are just NOT big on crowds and as I have mentioned before, often feel spoiled because it is generally so quiet when we go during the school year, but I decided that we needed to brave it before my passes ran out and the kids needed something extra to do this week!

We specifically went to see the Whale Exhibit and Omni Film as part of KM's ocean film study she is doing over the summer and although I couldn't take any pictures of those two things, I did take some of others. I have to say that I really like taking just the older kids to the museum, as it allowed me to not have to count heads as often and be able to enjoy the exhibits myself as well as pointing things out to the kids along the way. I can't believe after all the times we have been to this museum there were still things that I hadn't noticed before, some were new and some were not, but here are some of my favorite shots -

Meet the Masters - Joan Miro

KM was intrigued by this weeks artist Joan Miro and thinks that she may try some of the techniques at a later time, but right now our schedule is a bit PACKED, which has left little to no time for extra things like artwork at the moment. She did try a few sketches using the overlapping shapes and lines, but has become such a perfectionist that she only wants her pieces to be shown when she feels they are complete so I will be sure to post them if/when she decides it is okay to do so! I want to make sure she knows that I am respecting her privacy and only using things that she feels comfortable showing!

Meet the Masters - Wyeth

We completed Unit 2 of the Meet the Masters this afternoon with a unit on the Wyeth family of artists. KM enjoyed many of these pieces of art, but her favorite was one of the more peaceful ones by Andrew -

KM picked up on the loneliness in the other paintings and couldn't really feel connected, but this one was very calming to her. KM loves to draw hills, valleys, trees and flowers so this project was right up her alley...