Adventure Science Center, Nashville, TN

This summer we went to the Adventure Science Center in Nashville, Tn... We loved it!!! There was so much to do there... The exhibits were great and they have a homeschool day too...

 

The have a wing dedicated to space called "Space Chase" where you can have the chance to undergo simulated astronaut training, tour the Solar System, experience a moonwalk or find out what you weigh on another planet.

The Human Body wing is called "BodyQuest" and presents a day in the life of your body. You get to see what goes on inside you every day, how your body systems work together and how hard your body works to try to keep itself in good working order...

There is the BlueMax which is a virutal flight simulator that offers a three minute flight for two people.. It is presented by Middle Tennessee State University and MTSU Aerospace. BlueMax allows the "pilot"  to control every thing..Including all the loops, spins, and dives associated with flight...

In the Adventure Tower, you find an area filled with amazing activities, it's more than 75 feet tall with seven levels and an observation area that looks out over the whole city. You can hoist a car off the ground without effort and actually see what the hunan epidermis is like on a   larger-than-life wall of skin...

Plus for an extra admission price, you can watch visit the Planetarium and view the show... This planetarium is one of only 7 in the world and the only one outside of Japan...  

And if you present you Teacher ID, you can get a discount on admission!!!

Exploring Nature...

This summer we took some Junior Ranger classes with some homeschool friends...The Junior Ranger programs are wonderful and are offered/available in most State and National  Parks...You can find out more about the program here..

 

You can also find free curriculum, fun and games, and a guide to park Junior Ranger programs and a host of other fun and educational media created by the National Park Service here...

Great Giveaway!!

Nikki at  the "Painters 5 "  has a great  giveaway for the Homeschool Creations Curriculum Clean-Out... She is offering  AOP LifePac Science Grade 3 Teacher Guide and Set of 10 LIFEPACs...

All you have to do is leave a comment, blog about it, or subscribe to her blog feed!! So, you get 3 chances at this  awesome giveaway!!

GOOD LUCK!!

Healthcare Reform???

The 2009 Perseid Meteor Shower...

Tuesday night I set the alarm clock to go off at 2am which was the beginning of the peak time to see the meteor shower that I had been waiting for days to show the kids...Well, mother nature didn't cooperate with us and it was cloudy and proceeded to thunder-storm...

But being persistent, we set out to see what we could last night... 

                  (wish our view could have looked like this one)

                  

                         (but it looked more like this...)

And WE DID IT!!!  I now have 2 kidlets that are thrilled about seeing the meteors and looking forward to getting up this morning and learning more about them...

Even though it was not the "prime" viewing time the astronomers had suggested, it was still beautiful and a reminder of God's awesome power and greatness... They were beautiful, some were fast and fleeting and some were large and slow and seemed to glow forever...

 

Here are some resources that I have found this morning while researching for lesson plans/ideas to use today with the kidlets....

2009 Meteor Showers

 

 National Geographic

 

Astronomy for Kids   this is one of my favorite sites (use it all the time)

 

These are some books that I checked out from the library hoping to get to use them!! (had my fingers crossed )

a unit study for this can be found here

a unit study for this can be found here

 

and then this is a great book "I can be an Astronomer" by Paul Sipiera...

 

Hope you got to enjoy the beautiful show from heaven as we did!!

Have a great day and keep your eyes to the stars!!!

Book Buys!!

This year, I am budgeting monthly for homeschool purchases... So, I have been waiting to go to McKay's (our local used book store)   until the middle of the month so as I would be able to buy books if I found great prices... Here's what I came out with...I found some great book buys while out today running errands...

Here's what I got:

For 75 cents to a $1.50 each, I got Magic Tree House Research Guides for:

 Rain Forests  (Afternoon on the Amazon)

American Revolution (Revolutionary War on Wednesday)

Polar Bears and the Arctic (Polar Bears Past Bedtime)

Ancient Greece (Hour of the Olympics)

Pilgrims (Thanksgiving on Thursday)

Twisters and other Terrible Storms (Twister on Tuesday)

Knights and Castles (The Knight at Dawn)

 "Consider the Following"  by Bill Nye The Science Guy for 75 cents... (a way cool set of science questions, answers, experiments, and ideas to ponder)

"Can it Rain Cats and Dogs" questions and answers about weather by Melvin and Gilda Berger for $1.50

"The Warrior and The Moon"  spiritual stories for children of the Maasai (which I have been looking for forever!! for $2.50

and last but not least... "Great Americans, The Life and Times of" Ben Franklin and George Washington for $1 each...

So I am pretty happy with my book buys this month!!

Carschooling...

Today, I had some errands to do, so we took advantage of the opportunity to do some "carschooling" ...

 

Each child has their own 'lap tray'. They provide a hard surface for coloring/school activities and a flat surface when eating in the car that I got for $2 each at the Family Dollar Store...

 

Then we started out... I had packed a CD of classical kids music and a DVD of the Magic School Bus in Space... (hoping to kickstart the kids into excitement over the Meteor shower)

 

The kids completed their math sheets, each completed their HWOT assignment, moving on to sentences for DD and a daily gram sheet for DS... Then they worked on their notebook assignments for Mesopotameia and colored their sheets while listening to the classical music...

 

On the way home, they watched the Magic School Bus video... and ate their snacks (which I had also packed) and drank water from stainless steel water bottles that I got from Walgreens which were on sale for 3/$10 ... I'd like to get away from using plastic, mainly for our health since alot of studies have been coming out lately showing that plastic water bottles can leach harmful chemicals into your water when they are heated or washed...

 

We had a great trip and we still got school completed!!!

Making Butter...

We've been using raw milk for several months now... The milk we've been using comes from Jersey cows and has a very high cream content... I decided to finally use the cream and try my hand at making butter... I had made butter before using the Mason Jar method, but it took too much of my time and I didn't like the results...So I went looking for "OTHER" methods...

 

I asked my friends over at the HomeschoolShare forums if any of them made butter and got a great idea from one of the wonderful ladies to use my KitchenAid stand mixer...(they are a wonderful group of ladies for ideas, activities, or just a shoulder for support) ... It worked great and in less than 20 minutes, (without me doing anything) I had butter...

Here's how I made mine:

Butter

Ingredients

2 cups heavy cream (at a temperature between 60 and 68°F)

a 1/4 tsp. of salt (optional)

1. Place cream in the clean, cool bowl of your stand mixer...Mix on medium speed (I set mine on 4 using the wire whisk attachment) ...

2. Basically, you begin by making whipped cream.... Once the cream is in the stiff-peak stage, slow the mixing down a little (I set mine to 2) ... The cream will now start to clump in the bowl...

3. What you have in the bowl will quickly turn from creamy white to buttery yellow...After a short while, the buttermilk will begin to separate from the butter fat....

4. Pour off the buttermilk...rinse the remaining buttermilk from the solid bits, by pouring cold water over the butter, and squeeze and knead... Repeat until the water runs clear..

5. The Finished Product!!!

Our first family opera experience...

Last night I took the kids to see an encore presentation of the Metropolitan Opera performing Mozart's "The Magic Flute"  on the big screen... It was a fabulous performance!!! It was done in English and had subtitles so the kids could understand the story behind the singing...The kids loved the costumes and the huge puppets, and stage backdrops were wonderful... We went with some homeschool friends and had a great time... The kids enjoyed the performance and it was a great way to introduce them to opera in the comfort of the move theatre...

Prince Tamino and the Dancing Bears...

Sarastro at the temple..

Papagano and a swan...

HomeschoolFreebie!! Great for those field trips!!

Today's great Homeschool Freebie of the Day is one that most of us can use as we try and make the most of our limited home education time by suppling educational field trips for our children and homeschool groups... This great resource explains how we can plan, and participate in great "GROUP" field trips that will leave the kids excited and wanting to learn more, providing leadership and planning which makes a success instead of just playtime... and another biggie is it has ideas like group discounts and others as ways to save money...

You can find this great FREEBIE here...

August Book Bag from Teacher Book Bags

I have been chosen as a reviewer for Teacher Book Bags... I like their products and look forward to the opportunity to review them and share what I think with them and others about each product..

For the lst few weeks, I have been reviewing the August Book Bag 2009 (1st-3rd grades)...

It is really a great product... Each book bag offers something different for that particular month or season... They are a great way to add more to your monthly / thematic studies or to add something new to workbox systems... focuses on six main areas. First, you and your child will explore seasonal adaptations and the reason for seasons. In the math section, there is practice graphing and place value skills. Incorporating a seasonal theme, you play games to practice short vowel words and punctuation usage...Gail Gibbons is the selected author/illustrator of the month... then an investigation into the seasons with studying the art element of color...Handriting practice and copywork skills reflects on "monthly" character trait: truthfulness.

The graphics are excellent... The literature selections are right on target for the age group  and my 6yo daughter and my 9yo son are thoroughly enjoying  them... and I must say that Gail Gibbons is one of our favorite authors, so seeing her in the spotlight is also great...
The information on the animals is concise and informative... And as you can tell, I am truly loving the World Explorer section... My daughter loves the Teddy Bear math (scoring big points in her  rating system)... All in all, a tremendous value and well worth the price for all  that is included...   

These can be purchased from Currclick or from the Teacher Book Bag site directly (where you can find other great book bag products also)...

Ok.. Week 1~ Day 3 of FULL-TIME school!!

It's been good and bad...

We've almost completed the Ice Cream Unit we started the last week of July (which happened to be National Ice Cream month) and we have also started our composer studies...

Most of our time has been great... The hurdles that we have been working on for the past couple of weeks getting into our full schedule have been tackled and some new ideas have come my way to fix the problem spots...

First, my DD HATES MUS... I thought it would be great for her, a perfect fit... Well, apparently, I was WRONG!!  So, after several days of trying it and listening to her finally cry, I decided to try some old Abeka 1 math worksheets I had that my son had never completed ... and she is in heaven...Loves it...so, I am gonna be doing that and also supplement with the fun stuff from Hooked on Math and Family Math(which we used some last year and they both love) Both of which I got for some real deals last yeat.... I gave $25 for the HOM at a clearance sale (much cheaper than the $150 price on the website) and less than $5 (including shipping) from Amazon on Family Math...

Next on our fix-it list.... We are not going to be able to accomplish "EVERYTHING EVERYDAY" .... So I worked on a schedule yesterday (which I will post a little later after a few tweaks) in which we divide up several items (like history, science, and geography)  ...Also this year, I am dividing up my history and science by semester... I like use unit studies so, I pick and choose info from living books, science books, textbooks, and other sources to meet our needs on the topic we are studing... I try as much as possible to use a chronological approach (more for my sanity) and the kids each have a book of centuries they are putting together, using a 3 ring binder....

So wish me luck and HAPPY LEARNING!!!

Our New Year Is About To Begin!!

Yes, it is that time again... and after a VERY busy summer we are heading back to school in the morning...

My plan for this year is much more relaxed and easy... I am of course really not much of  planner, but went into more detail this year than normal with hopes of easing the stress and increasing the fun...

I also let the kids choose several fun 1 week units to do this year... (around the 2 week plans I made) and of course there are always the "rabbit trails" which take us all over the spectrum...

My plan starts with our schedule.. We basically did a "school year" round plan this past year and it worked well for us as we were able to take off frequently and did light work (very light) during the summer... (and we still were able to take the month of July off for FUN) .. So this year, I am expounding on that schedule and going with a 4 week on and 1 week off schedule...This will allow me the needed time to order library books, gather supplies for science experiments and CLEAN THE HOUSE!! (need I mention catch up on the laundry? )

We love living books, so we are doing several short unit studies with lots of rabbit trails I am sure...Some of my favorite places for finding resources for these are:

 Homeschool Share

Homeschool Helper

Easy Fun School

The Homeschool Mom

I will be posting several other sites throughout the year as I use them in my plans and units...

Here's  rundown of the various other curricula I am using for the kiddos:

Tommy:

Horizons Math 4

Rod&Staff LA 3

Spectrum Spelling (he loves it)

Various reading materials (living books, Junior Great Books, and CLP Nature Readers)

Latins Not So Tough

HWOT

Libby:

Math-u-See (Foundations)

First Language Lessons

Spectrum Spelling

Hooked on Phonics and various readers

HWOT

I am combining science, history, art, and music into our group studies and hope to introduce some Spanish once a week (that's a maybe, we'll see where it goes idea)

I am going to be using information and ideas from SOTW, Galloping the Globe, Apologia Astronomy, FIAR (Vol1-3) and the Explorer's Bible Study this year in many of our units... I like to pick and choose where to go and follow my own path, so I find it easier to pull out things that go along with what we are wanting to do at that time...

I also have started making out my meal plans again, only this time, I am planning for the full 4 weeks, which should make things much run smoother in the kitchen...

On my shopping list this year, I ordered several great games and am really looking forward to the chance to incorporate them into our year... 

I bought Banagrams for spelling and LA

 

This is a great game from Highlights..It helps kids expand their knowledge of world geography. Each player is an agent on a top secret mission. Be the first to collect a correct set of data cards by answering geography questions and then reveal the suspect, the place and the missing item to successfully complete the mission and win!

The third game I ordered was this..It's called Map Tangle and it like a "Geography Twister"... We've already played with this one and the kids love it!!

Since Electricity was on the plan this year, I ordered these 2...Tommy is gonna have a blast with these...

Well, this is a brief rundown from the school on the "Windy Hill"... We are looking forward to a great year!!