Pix of our backyard

The compromise we made by moving into this neighborhood is that we can look out our back windows and see this--and pretend we are in some open space.

Week 2 of no Sonlight (May 28 -June 2nd 2012)

Our week--without Sonlight still.  I am adjusting fine.  I think I could just about go solo at this point; but I just love my IG!  Monday was Memorial Day so we didn't get book stuff done; but Dd did get a lot of learning in. Dh took Dd fishing and she got 2 fish!  I stayed home this time; so no pictures.  She made a wonderful  Memorial Day lunch for us- baked cod; and salt-baked potatoes.  There are pictures below on the next post of her creations.  This week she also made cookie bars with a friend on a play date; and then made cookie bars again on Friday.  I am thinking she is in a cookie mood! LOL!  As a family we worked HARD on our gardens on Monday to finish up our projects.  We went through the big delivery of mulch that had been delivered--it is all gone!

Dh is reading The Wind in the Willows to Dd in the evenings.  He had never read this story, so he is enjoying it as much as we are.  Dd and I have read that story over and over as it is one of our favorites.

Our lessons in a nutshell:

Bible:
Who Is God? by Apologia
James MacDonald:Walk in the Word: 1 Samuel: Lessons from King Saul's Life




Music:
Praise and Worship CD: Amazing Grace was our song for the week
Piano-daily

Math:
Math U See: Delta: 18 F
Teaching Textbooks: lesson 97,98,99, and Quiz 14

Science:
SL Science 3: Week 20 & 21
Stereo Microscope--viewed the slides she made at the Children's Museum
DVD: Bill Nye the Science Guy: "Digestion" 

Language Arts:
AAS-Step 17 and reviews (step 13 & the 1-1-1 Rule especially reviewed)
First Language Lessons-Lesson 33
Writing With Ease-Week 21
IEW-Lesson 9: The Lion and the Mouse--all the drafts and the final paper completed.  Dd made a "book" for the story with a coloring on the cover of Kaya (American Girl).

DD Reader's: 
Dear America-Patsy a Freed Girl by Joyce Hansen (finished)
Dear America-A Picture of Freedom-The Diary of Clotee, a Slave Girl 1859 by Patricia C. McKissack--(in process)

    



Sonlight's Book of Time:
we finally got ALL the Core 3/D pictures cut and glued in!!!! Yay!


Read Aloud:
(*besides The Wind in the Willows)
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner

Story of the World- Vol 3. by Susan Wise Bauer pages 229-247



BrainPop and BrainPop, Jr. --daily

Flashcards:
English From The Roots Up: Greek/Latin flashcards

Audio Book:
Star Wars: Phantom Menace: Episode 1

Activities:
Biked Tues, Wed.,Thurs, and long one on Friday (I walked Sophie).  One playdate; one library visit, one turn fishing, coloring, drawing, knitting, piano, baking, and lots of gardening.

Memorial Day Weekend

• Click on "May 15" (on the side bar) to see updated garden pix as the summer goes on you can see how our garden is growing!  Dd made/baked Breaded Cod.  She did a fantastic job making us lunch.  Dh made the salad to go along with Dd's meal.  The lettuce is from our garden!

Food, Flowers, Fun and Gardening! Our Memorial Weekend:

Dd made this Salt Potato dish from a recipe she saw on a cooking show--amazing!

Dh "smoked" these wonderful pork ribs for hours (slowly) in the grill-all I can say is "WOW"

"What I do?"

...

Week 1 May 21-25 2012

Still no IG (Instructors Guide) from Sonlight; so we are doing electives and waiting for our new IG to arrive.  We had a super busy week!  Wednesday was the Children's Museum, bank and library--Thursday I sold some duplicate books at the Plainfield Christian Church's Homeschool Sale from 9am-2:30pm--Friday we did our lessons early so we could go swimming with friends.  I was ready for some adult interaction after such a busy week.  We fit in our lessons around all our activities.

Bible:
Who Am I?  by Apologia





Art/Music:
Praise & Worship cd
Piano each day
Candle making set (see pix below)
Gardening, gardening, and watering

Math:
MUS this week (no LOF or TT) 17F-18E

Science:
SL Science 3--Week 16, 17, 18, & 19

Language Arts:
Explode the Code: pg's 100-104
Spelling: AAS -review pages from beginning of book
IEW: Story Sequence/Lesson 8/The Princess and the Pea: 3 paragraphs, editing , rough draft, another rough draft, and 2 "final drafts"

Read Aloud: (this was highly recommended in IEW  by Steve Pudewa)

Politically Correct, the Ultimate Storybook: Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, Once upon a More Enlightened Time, and Politically Correct Holiday Stories by James Finn Garner

Reader:

I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly: The Diary of Patsy, a Freed Girl, Mars Bluff, South Carolina 1865 (Dear America Series) by Joyce Hansen

 Some of the books Dd has been reading-she went retro into her old bookshelves:
 "Give My Regrets to Broadway- a Chet Gecko Mystery" by Bruce Hale
 

"The Dusk Fairy" by Keith Faulkner
"The Pet Avengers"
"Bone-number 8: Treasure Hunters" by Jeff Smith
"Tinkerbell & the Great Fairy Rescue"
American Girl: "Oh Brother, ...Oh, Sister..."
American Girl: "Party Secrets.."
"The Lion King, Junior Graphic Novel"
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Heroes in a Half-Shell"
Berenstain Bears: "Go Out for the Team", "And the Week at Grandma's", "Visit the Dentist", "Mama's New Job"
Marvel Adventures: "Thor and the Avengers", &"Spider man and Avengers"
"Rosetta's Daring Day" by Lisa Papademetriou
"The Odyssey" graphic novel by Gareth Hinds--we saw this at the Children's Museum's "Info Zone" and requested it from our library.



 Children's Museum visit from Wednesday.  We jumped through hoops to make it in time for the last class (3:30pm) of the Science Lab "Build a Cell".  We've done this class before; but this time we had the teacher all to ourselves.  She sat at our table and spent 30 minutes with us explaining all about the plant and animal cells.  We (I) had a blast!  Then we finished our Science Port projects and quickly returned home.

We already miss Payton Manning.

Making a cell model: animal and plant
at the Science Lab

Fran Balkwill's science books are great! 

The circle on the left is an animal cell; the rectangle on the left is a plant cell

This is Dd's animal cell

We learned how each cell has a specific job to do--be it a eye cell or a heart cell that beats; they all have a spefic job that they HAVE to do.

Finished project.  We first made circular animal cells; then turned them into plant cells by changing their shape to square/rectangles and adding in a few more ingredients

Plants
at the Science Port

Planting the seeds

Dd made a planter with seeds inside into a necklace - one for her and she made one for me

Dd made two slides for us to take home and look at in our stereo microscope

A quick pix on our way out; showing the new things we made to take home with us.

The WATERWORKS area has always been one of Dd's favorite stops (and it is beside the science labs) at the Children's Museum

Giz gave Dd a kit to make her own candles.  It isn't exactly like the real candle making kit we did from Hands and Hearts; but Dd sure did have fun!

....

SL-Core D- Week 36 (Week 72 on Core D) Core D May 14-18th, 2012

Can you believe we have made it to the LAST week of Core D!!!!!  72 weeks of it! Wow!  We had a good week.  We went to the Children's Museum on Wed. and Fri. Dh took the day off so we could plant our garden--or get part of our garden planted.  We worked hard.  We also went to the library.

Besides the normal IG work we had to do we also fit in some electives.

Bible:
"Who Is God?" by Apologia
Nighttime family bible study was on the book of Revelations

Math:
Math U See "Delta": 16F, 17 A, B, C, D, E
Life of Fred "Cats": Chapters 16-19--finished this book
Families--wrote & said "7 Family" this week

Science (SL) 3: 
Week 13, 14, & 15
and Children's Museum lab on cloning African Violets
Planted our family garden  Dd helped with live plants and planting the seeds too.

Dd planting Cilantro

IEW:
we started a new section-Story Sequence (I think that is what it is called).  Our story was "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" which Dd changed that to "The Bird Who Called Hawk".  It was very hard for Dd to get back into the swing; but we did complete the work.  Dd typed up the final draft on my laptop which was her idea; and I was glad for her to do that.

Art/life daily-
Knitting &Piano daily.  Mon-Thur typing on her typewritter.  Mon-Fri Brainpop & BrainPop, Jr.

Dd's Readers and fun books:

Troubles for Cecile (American Girl) (American Girls Collection) by Denise Lewis Patrick and Christine Kornacki

The Runaways Revenge: John Newton (Trailblazer Books #18) by Dave and Neta Jackson

 

Here she is reading "The Runaway's Revenge" with Sophie

 

 I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly: The Diary of Patsy, a Freed Girl, Mars Bluff, South Carolina 1865 (Dear America Series) by Joyce Hansen

 

 fun:

The Race Across America (Geronimo Stilton, No. 37) by Geronimo Stilton

Children's Museum May 17, 2012

We went to the Children's Museum again this week; but with another hs family that we are friends with.  We did another science lab experiment- on CLONING.  We learned a lot and made a clone of an African Violet.  We got to bring home our little clone to keep and grow on our own.  Enjoy a few pictures from our visit!

Glass Sculpture by Dale Chihuly--he visited my undergraduate college when I went there (Kansas City Art Institute); so it is great seeing his work.

Send In The Clones: at the Science Lab

"Send In The CLones" : This is our Science Project for the day at the Children's MuseumMeet the African Violet.  With one leaf and stem it can totally grow a new plant!  That is amazing.  There are a few living things that do this--ex. potatoes, tulips, bulbs, apple trees and banana's go through this procedure a lot.  The banana's we eat are "seedless" so they have to be specially reproduced by cutting of a nodule from their root system to grow a new plant/tree.  First we picked a plant, then the leaf with the longest stem.  Then we cut of our leaf with long stem and picked out our growing medium-this sponge like brown square you see on the tray.

Then we placed the long stem into the hole in the middle of the planting medium.

Then we saturated the brown square/sponge with water.

Then we placed them in ziplock bags for the trip home.

Water Clock Presentation

We saw a good presentation by a "plumber".  He told us how the Water Clock works.He brought out a poster of a toliet to show how the siphon works--can you see the white poster on the blue bars in front of the clock?

Here he is with a plunger, discussing the way the water system works.

Wilbur Wright's Flying Presentation

He gave a great "performance" and stayed in character the whole time.  There was a lot of great detail and he took questions after his 'show'.  Very interesting!  Our CM's focus right now is on "Flight Adventures" so there are numerous stations to learn about flying.

More Lego Land Pictures for my friends in Virginia-

I removed the pix to make more space for my blog...hope you saw them while they were here!

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