Three Piggie Opera

Thane's Kindergarten class performed the Three Piggie Opera. He played the part of a brick peddler and sang in the choir. It was totally cute.

Shakespeare...Alive and Well

Our Charter School held it's year end Extravaganza. The boys decided to display activities we did during our Shakespeare study.

In case you are wondering, yes, that is William Shakespeare posing with Nick Bottom.

This is the stage from the Globe Theater the boys and I created. This is a scene from "As You Like It".


The middle displayed a picture of Will drawn by Magnus, as well as lists of Shakespeare's plays and a timeline of his life.


This side is Thane's copywork of the famous quote, "All the world's a stage..." from "As You Like It", his picture narration from the same play, and a map of England.

This side is Magnus' writing assignment using Institute for Excellence in Writing's Style and Structure and his picture narration of "A Midsummer's Night Dream".

And lastly, a knight in shining armor upon his steed.

Summer Is Here!

We have officially started our summer schedule this week. Something I have learned about myself and the boys is that we need structure. We need to have an idea of what our day holds for us. We are going to continue "doing school", but take time off for travel, trips to the beach, park play dates, and other activities. I figured we will have roughly 10 weeks between now and the end of August to complete a few lessons and some units.

Here is the plan:

Science...We are going to be finishing up our Dinosaur Unit in a few weeks. After that, we will start our next science unit when school starts in Sept.

History...After our Dinosaur Unit is finished, we'll begin our Pirate Diary Unit. The boys are real excited about this...what boy wouldn't be!?!

Magnus...
Grammar-We've gotten a bit behind so he will be doing 2 lessons a day to finish the 2nd grade level.
Math-We are just beginning Level C. We're going to do 2 lessons a week and hope to finish C by the end of 3rd grade.
Latin-I have not been consistent with this so we are way behind. He is going to be doing 2 lessons a week in order to finish by the end of summer. Luckily it's just vocabulary and he picks up anything having to do with "words" rather quickly.
Lapbook-The boys are going to be working on a lapbook of their choice independently and Magnus has chosen to do one on Gray Wolves.

Thane...
Reading-He is doing real well. He received Hop on Pop for his birthday and he has read it, by himself, over and over. Very exciting! Anyhow, we are going to complete a lesson a day unless he gets hung up somewhere.
Phonics-He'll complete 2 pages of Explode The Code 3x a week.
Math-He will do 2 lessons a week in Level B.
Lapbook-He and I will be completing a Cooking Lapbook together. He loves to cook and told me he wants to be a chef when he grows up...or a builder!

I am going to try to continue to post about our weeks and our summer activities so be sure to stop on by! Hope you have a great summer!

A Baby No Longer

Happy 6th Birthday, Thane!

Cut From the Same Cloth?

The way that two boys from the same parents can be so different is beyond me!

If you were to have gone to the park with us the other day, this is what you would have seen...

Magnus being a Palentologist.

Thane being a monkey.


This is only a sampling of the differences between them! I receive great joy seeing their individual personalities, interests, and strengths develop. But how the two can be so opposite is something I can not fathom!

Thane's Fish Lap n' Notebook

Thane wanted to do a lapbook about fish, but he wanted to come up with it on his own. We didn't place it in the typical file folder. Instead, he glued his mini booklets onto paper and we placed them in a 3 prong folder. We did a bit of research and reading together, and this is his final creation...

This is the cover.

He was very excited to come up with his own facts to include. This one says, "Big fish eat smaller fish".

The fishbowl reads, "Fish can be pets".

The top booklet shows places where fish can be found and the one on the lower right is different defenses fish use against predators. Both of them can be found at Homeschoolshare.com.

He actually read the words on the label a fish booklet all by himself!

The blurry (sorry about that) red booklet is one that he made. Inside he wrote, "Fish swim and have gills."

He is very proud of the way it turned out and can not wait to start his cooking lapbook.

Independent Lapbook Studies

Magnus and Thane both enjoy making lapbooks. If you are not aware of what a lapbook is, check out this great squidoo lense for an explanation. We create lapbooks alongside our history and science studies together, but the boys also enjoy working on them by themselves.

Thane is almost done with his fish lapbook and I will post pictures of it soon. He really took ownership of it and it was neat to see.

Magnus began a lapbook on George Washington and needs to complete it soon. He'll be working on it the next few days.

The next ones the boys chose to work on are:
Magnus...Gray Wolves. He just finished reading White Fang by Jack London and Homeschool Share has a great Gray Wolf unit/lapbook he wants to do. We went to the library and stocked up on books for him to read to fill in the mini booklets with facts.

Thane...Cooking. Yep, he is my lil' chef. He can't really work on it by himself yet, so I will be involved, but I am going to make sure he does most of the work. We found a Cooking unit/lapbook at Homeschool Share for him to do. He'll be learning about kitchen safety, tools, and nutrition as we work through it.

Our Field Trip

Today, the boys and I went with some other families from our charter school to the California Aerospace Museum. I gotta tell ya...if you live anywhere near Sacramento, this place it worth the trip.

They have roughly 30 military planes, that have flown in combat, parked in a large lot for you to view and touch. We were very fortunate to have Roger as our Docent. He flew one of the planes on the lot, during the Korean War. He told stories of how his best friend died due to a failed evacuation from a cockpit and how the soldiers called one of the planes a "flying casket" because of it being unable to glide if one of the engines failed.

A very sobering moment for me was being able to climb inside a plane that flew during WWII and completed 3 drops of troops during the DDay Invasion in Normandy. It was eerie as I tried to put myself in their place. I just couldn't imagine the fear and rush of adrenalin those boys must have felt. The markings on the side show that it flew 3 DDay drops, 2 medical missions, and several supply missions.

A picture of the nose art.

Magnus flying the plane.

This helicopter was used during the Vietnam War (maybe it was the Korean) to rescue downed pilots.

Each helicopter would also have four of these planes near it to provide cover. In this picture the wings are folded up to show the bombs.

Magnus inside the helicopter.

This plane flew in Desert Storm. I didn't get a picture of it (the gun that is), but Roger said this plane was basically built around the Gatling gun that was positioned in the nose. It's bullets pierced the amour of tanks like a knife slicing butter.


If you click on the picture you can see the particular things this pilot took out during his missions.

This was Thane's favorite. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he has a couple of the National Guard Lego sets.

Remember Top Gun? Well, this is the "Tomcat" that Tom Cruise "flew" in the movie.

I took this next picture for all of my conservative friends who miss Ronald Reagan...you know who you are ;0) At one time, this was his private jet when he was governor of CA.
Within the "museum" part of the building, there are several exhibits featuring jet engines and pilot gear. Fortunately, NASA had a traveling space exhibit on display. We got to view an actual moon rock and touch a meteorite as well as a rock from Mars. They also had special scales that read your weight on the earth, on the moon, and on Mars. It was pretty cool.

This is Magnus' weight on the moon.

Magnus exercising like the astronauts do in space. This thing spun around really fast too!

Oh, and did you know that the universe was formed 13 million years ago from a BANG? Whatever. I don't know...maybe God said "Bang" as the heavens and earths were created.

Anyhow, it was a great day and I can't wait to take my dad there when he comes to visit.

My Poor Thane

Well, I took Thane to the doctor today. He has been running a fever since Thursday and coughing consistently for the past three days. For those of you who do not know our medical history with him, I'll just tell you he has asthma and has been in and out of the hospital since he was born. So when he gets to coughing, we brace ourselves. Turns out he was wheezing a bit so they gave him a breathing treatment. I didn't like it. I don't like it. This was his first treatment in two years.

Why, you ask? When we lived in TN we were blessed by a man name Dr. Tom. He is a chiropractor. He viewed his practice as a ministry and therefore gave us a huge discount. He just wanted to see people well and healthy. Our entire family began seeing him in Jan. of 2007. We all started seeing benefits to the treatments right away. The one who benefited the most was Thane. Thane was taking 6 daily medications, sometimes in 4 hour intervals. By March of 2007 he was down to one. A few months later, he stopped taking that one. He (and all of us) were medication and sickness free for almost two years!

Fast forward to now...Magnus was sick all last week, Thane is wheezing, and Collin and I are feeling "old" again. We are kind of stuck between and rock and a hard place...we can't afford the outrageous prices of the "voo-doo" doctors here but yet we can't afford not to afford them. Why oh why can't insurance cover preventive care instead of the medications? Ugh!

Okay...rant over.

Reading Revisited

Thane is the second kid I have started homeschooling, but the first one I have had to teach to read. I started going through The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading with Magnus when he was in Kindergarten, but I think we got through only the first few lessons. He taught himself and was reading The Chronicles Of Narnia and the Hobbit in first grade. Thane's and Magnus' strengths are in different areas and you would recognize that within the first 1/2 an hour of meeting them.

I started Sing, Spell, Read, and Write at the beginning of this year. I like the program. I like the multi-sensoryness (Yep, I just made that up!) of it. The songs are great, but I don't think Thane is an auditory learner. In fact, I think he may have some issues with that, but that is for another post. There are some things about the program that I don't understand. Why do they introduce blends (st, gl, pr, ect.) within the beginning readers without having taught them in the program first? Anyhow, I noticed Thane looking at the pictures to try to guess what the words are. For example...the sentences were, "Bill has a red pen. Sam has a red pen. Sally has a tan pen." There was a picture of them all sitting at a table holding their colored pens. Well, he read it, "Bill has a red pen. Sam has a red pen. Sally has a yellow pen." Her pen looked more yellow than tan in the picture. I'm scratching my head because "tan" is a lot easier to read than "yellow" is.

So, I have decided to blow the dust off of The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. One of the things I did not like about the program was it's lack of bling. However, I think the plainness of it all is exactly what Thane needs. I think I am going to try it by itself for awhile and then maybe bring some of SSRW back in for funsy. Or, maybe I will finally break out the Happy Phonics and actually get something out of the 9 hours I spent cutting it all out!

School Starts...again!

School started back up for our household. It's always difficult to get back into the swing of things. Collin is on break when we are so we get to enjoy his company more without the distractions of his classes. This quarter, he is taking three seminars that each require a 20 page paper due in 10 weeks. That is going to be a lot of work for him. The boys and I dove right into our studies today but not without a little attitude being displayed...and not from me! No biggie though. The behavior changed and we had a fulfilling day!

We decided to take advantage of the great resource we have and sign the boys up for more classes that our charter school is offering this semester. Magnus will be taking a science class discussing plants (which means I can skip that part in our NOEO curriculum and concentrate more on animals!), a computer class that is suppose to enhance creativity, and a drawing class. We are very excited about the drawing class. This is an area we see potential and I am glad he will be receiving instruction from someone who knows what they are doing. Thane will continue working through the alphabet in his kindergarten class. Both boys will also be taking a music appreciation class using the Themes to Remember curriculum and a PE class. Each class is only one day a week for an hour with the exception of Thanes' Kindergarten class that is 2 1/2 hours. However, our school's new building isn't quite finished yet so their classes will not start for a couple more weeks...bummer.

I had grand plans to evaluate our progress and curriculum choices over the break, but none of it happened. I had hoped to work through the DVD series and workbook of Teaching the Classics...didn't happen. I wanted to plan out the rest of our science for the year...didn't happen. I wanted to look at how I am implementing TOG and do a little bit more planning...didn't happen. I wanted to create a reading list for Magnus and make sure that "twaddle" has no place in our home...didn't happen. I wanted to plan out and implement our Picture Study...didn't happen. But, it's alright. I'll find time to do that soon...I think. In the mean time, we are just going to continue doing what we are doing...learning, loving, and living.

Overheard through the bedroom door...

The setting...Thane is singing at the top of his lungs and Magnus is annoyed by this.

Magnus...Thane, if you stop singing now, when you are young, I will make you famous when you are older.

Thane...How?

Magnus...Because I am going to be a Producer and you are gong to be a Songmaker.

Thane...What's a Songmaker?

Magnus...Someone who writes songs and then sings them. I will make you famous. You will have a corvette and someone will drive you around and you'll sit in the back like this (if only I could see what he was doing!). You'll live in a big house, have video games and servants.

Thane...But I will be shy.

Magnus...It's okay. The police will protect you from all of the people. People will be waiting for you when you walk into restraunts and when you walk back out but the police will be on either side of you doing this (again, I can only imagine!). People will try to touch you because they will think it's an honor because you will be so famous! So, stop singing now!

Wordless Wednesday...a bit early...and little wordy!

(These were taken only a few days apart!)

Things To Do: First Day of School...check!

It's official...I am teaching a Kindergartner and a 2nd Grader.

Let me tell you, the day started a little rocky with one of my students giving me some attitude. Not the way I wanted to begin a new school year. I allowed a "do over" and things went on more smoothly.

(Do I need to tell you who the class clown is?)

We started the day with history. This is our first year using Tapestry of Grace (which will combine history, literature, geography, and some church history for us this year) and I am fully aware of the "four week" fog most people experience as they try to implement it for the first time. But, I have a question...since I am doing each "week" in two weeks, does that mean I will have 8 weeks of fog? Anyhow, we are studying the Middle Ages this year (yeah!) so we read a bit about the Fall of the Roman Empire and Attila the Hun attacking Rome. We also got out the atlas so we could see the area we are going to be working on this year. Then they spent some time creating a notebook cover for their binders. They spent a lot of time doing this. They like crafty type stuff.


On to math...Magnus is finishing up level B of Right Start. We are behind due to starting it mid-year last year, but we'll get caught up.
Thane is starting Level A this year and is very excited about dong math this year.

Language Arts was next...Magnus completed a lesson in his Growing with Grammar book, reviewed spelling rules with me, and did three pages in ETC learning about compound words. Thane started Sing, Spell, Read, and Write today. He worked on some pages that asked him to pick which one is different and to follow instructions. He also worked in his Get Ready for the Code book (we are finishing it up from last year).

In the afternoon, we headed to our charter school for Magnus' first science class. They are going to be learning about the different ecosystems as well as most of the animal groups. Looks like they will be covering a lot of material before Christmas break. After class, he told me he has already made a new friend. I am so thankful to have the chance for them to be in a safe classroom setting with other homeschoolers.

All in all, I think it was a productive day. I jumped in with both feet and didn't drown!