This week at Homeschool EStore

The Statue of Liberty History/Literature Unit Study

The weekend & Historic Harper's Ferry

I haven't gotten anything done the past few days. Saturday was spent cleaning out our horse shoe pits (that we didn't use) and finishing the last bit of cleaning in the patio. The Randy got the brillant idea to rip out these ugly, stinky "trees" in the yard by the pits. There was nothing but thistles and thorn bushes around them. So after about 5 hours, we had his dad's truck piled way over teh cab. But it looks nicer out back now. LOL

We had my brothers & mom and Randy's mom over for cookouts on Sunday. My brothers & mom came earlier for a lunch cookout of burgers & dogs. Then Randy's mom came over about 5ish for steaks. Of course it started to rain while he was grilling, but the storm passed over quickly. We played cards all afternoon & the kids swam.

Monday we didn't do anything. Everyone was too tired. Jake didn't get out of bed until after 11am.

Yesterday we visited the Harper's Ferry Historic National Park. I will have some pictures up later. It was a nice day. Wasn't too crowded or hot. We visited the mueseums, shops and the wax museum. (That place always scared me as a kid. LOL) Amanda said it was a little disturbing. ;) Then we ended with a climb up to Jefferson Rock. We are so out of shape. LOL I wans't sure if Randy would be able to make it. He knee was hurting but he made it up. We didn't go on up to the college campus or the cemetary. So that's one place I can check off our list of local places to visit. :)

As for school work, we have a bit of science & history to finish. Then of course math is ongoing through summer. I think we can knock out most of the science this week.

This week at Homeschool EStore

Roman Numerals

Almost finished..

for the year. After 2 weeks of basically getting no work done, we managed to do some today. Both kids have about 1.5 books of Key to Fractions to complete. So they each did 4 pages of that. Then we finally started our Weather Kid Kit. So we are reading the book that comes in it, Weather Spotters Guide, first before building the tools in the kit. We'll have the book finished this week, if all goes as planned. Then we began our last unit study on the Ancients, so we are studying Ancient Greece now. And we also did one of our new maps from Knowledge Quest's Blackline Maps of World History.

Normally about this time we're about finished. So we'll be finishing up just a tad later than usual. Science and History we should be finished with by June 1st. Math we are doing all summer, mainly just the Key To Decimals books. And we'll be trying t get our Charlie and the Chocolate Factory study finished.

-- Updated to add: And I forgot, we also have the D' Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths and Study Guide from TCR we are going to be using. So that will keep us reading some over the summer. This will be our "lunchtime" activity when I make the kids come in out of the pool.

I am thinking though that we might actually continue with some science-y stuff. I have a few Kid Kits I'd like to do: Rocks & Fossils, Young Naturalists, & the Microscope.

And I was very surprised today.. Amanda, my daughter who HATES math, actually sat down and did 4 straight pages without whining, yelling, fighting. And she even finished her brother, and he only did 2 pages before stopping until later in the day. He was the one whining the whole time he sat there (like all of 25 minutes). I really think this has a lot to do with MUS. She learned a lot from us doing Epsilon this year. I am hoping that math will not be a struggle for her anymore. She only need me to explain something one time.. and that's mainly because she didn't read the directions carefully enough. LOL

Lancaster Museum of Art - Nathan Sawaya's Lego Sculptures

We really enjoyed the exhibit, I just didn't realize the museum was so tiny. :(

Philadelphia, 2007

Ben at the Franklin Institute.


Amanda and Jake with the Liberty Bell.

Hey George!!

MD Renn Fest, 2006

We love the tree peoples. :)



Jake trying on some helmets.

Pics from Williamsburg last summer (and one from Jake at Busch Gardens)

This was on the sky lift thingy. Look how his freckles burst out!

These are outside the visitor center area. The big map is neat.

Amanda and Jake playing "hoops and sticks" and a sort of lawn bowling game. Can't remember if that's what they call it or not.

Probably the closest they'll ever come to sitting at a "school table" other than our kitchen table. LOL They were coloring "wood prints" or something. (Sorry my memory is terrible, I can't remember half the names of things.. I worry a lot about how these kids are learning. Cuz I'm such a brain-dead mom most times. hehe)

More Pics - Animals at Busch Gardens last summer

Of course we had to take a picture of the bunny for Amanda.

We got to pet this guy. He was pretty neat.

The wolves were so pretty.

As were the eagles.

Misc. Pics - Tulips, chickens, and a hawk

We see this pretty hawk now and then. In this picture he was actually have dinner. Not sure what he was ripping apart.

Here is the rooster and hen my father-in-law has picked up since winter. Someone gave him the hen (although we don't know where she is. Haven't seen her in a week, so hope she is just nesting & hiding) and the rooster he picked up at a sale.

Pretty tulips.

Geocaching

Ok so we ordered a GPS unit from Dell (they had a 15% off sale). This is the unit we bought (I am STILL waiting on it to be shipped though), Magellan eXplorist 210 GPS And I have been reading the info at the Geocaching site. And this weekend I think we'll go to Borders and pick up a book or 2. The Dummies books should be just my speed. ;)

So now, I just hope dh's knee heals quickly so he can go exploring with us. I think it'll be fun. There is so much in our area that our kids have never seen.. our fault (dh and I) not the kids. My mom always had us off in the woods & mountains, hiking & camping. (She was a much better parent in this aspect.. but that's a whole other ball wax there. hehe)

So anyways, this is one of our plans for the summer. Funds will be limited.. so we were looking for free/low cost things to do. Romping through the woods is one of them! :)

Our plan for next year: '07 - '08

Ok here is a "rough draft" of what we'll be doing/using for next year. I am sure I'll be adding/changing this over the summer. :)

Math - MUS Zeta & Pre-Algebra; Key To books (decimals & percents, whatever we didn't finish over the summer)
Lang. Arts - Tales from Shakespeare (Not sure if Jake will want to do this, so he may just do some other book studies) & other books from our book list below
Science - Biology, Physics, and maybe Chemistry - Lots of hands-on stuff (not using any textbooks for these, but will most likely use some of Janice VanCleave's books & of course Usborne)
History - Beautiful Feet's Medieval History & Knowledge Quest's Blackline Maps of World History
Art - Discovering Great Artists and Art History
Might possibly doing some history of music.. not sure yet.

Book List:
A Wrinkle in Time
The Chronicles of Narnia
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
The Great Gatsby
Jane Eyre
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Hobbit
Great American Short Stories
The Old Man and the Sea
Emma
A Tale of Two Cities
The Time Machine
Animal Farm

Not sure how many we'll get through.. but there are on the list of potential reading material.

So that's what I've come up with so far. I will update when needed. LOL

Early morning....

OK any other day my kids do not crawl out of bed before 9am. Well Jake woke this am at 6:30am!! I was awake (I usually get up between 6-7). But I like to spend the early morning hours alone. I play on the 'net/computer, have my coffee, and enjoy the peacefulness.

We let him use his money left from Christmas & taxes (yes we give the kids a bit to spend from the taxes) and he bought an XBOX 360 Elite package. He still owes us a fair amount, but he has his Spongebob GBA for sale on eBay. So that money goes to pay off his debt. LOL Anyways, he is just so darn excited that he just couldn't wait to wake up. BUT!!! He is on a time limit due to the fact he is too addicted to electronics and won't do anything else. So in other words, he woke early for nothing.. as he isn't allowed on yet.

Then Amanda wakes early also! She woke about 8am. *sigh*

Now they are yelling about spelunking. Calling the cat this. Wanting to change our answering machine message to "Thank you for calling, but I am out spelunking!"

Then they are laughing and telling the cat "Teddy are you a parking ticket? Cuz you got FINE written all over you!"

Lord help me.. I am not sure I'll survive the day! :D

Where does the time go?

I am getting terrible about posting on my blog. :( But its mainly because I am so boring there is nothing much to post about. hehe Well I am boring but the kids aren't.

We were supposed to have our math book finished last week, but didn't get that far. So we'll be finished by tomorrow. We have 2 tests left, a unit test which will be done today and a final test that they'll take tomorrow. I allow them to be "open book" tests so that they can look back to be sure they are doing a problem correct.

I was going to go on to the next book in MUS (Zeta) but decided not to. If we would have finished back in March like I wanted to then yeah I would. But things happen and we just didn't get as far as quickly as I had planned. So I decided that for the remained of the "school year" and through-out summer we're going to work through some more Key To books. They have about 1.5 books on fractions that they'll be able to finish by the end of this month just about. Then we'll go on to decimals. Amanda of course was not pleased when I told her my plans.. but when I suggested we start another big book instead, she mellowed out. LOL So check back in the fall and see how well things went. LOL

The weather has been fabulous here, not too how not to cool. We've been outside a lot. Yesterday was park day. So several of us met up there. Amanda wasn't feeling so great so for awhile she just sat and was bored. Then she went off to swing with Jake. They ended up with 2 of the other kids making a very nice fort. I didn't have my camera, so didn't get a picture of it. Maybe I should walk up today and see if it is still up. It was very neat how they were making the walls with all the sticks they found. None of the kids really wanted to leave it. LOL

I am so terrible about bringing my camera when we go places. I think I need to attach it to myself permanently.. so I will always be ready to take pictures. :) Amanda has been begging for her own camera. So Dell had a coupon for 15% off so we bought her the Sony Cyber Shot DSC-S700. She really likes it and has been snapping pictures like a maniac. So then of course we had to get Jake something, so he got a new DS Lite and car kit.

So that's about it for what we've been up to. Hope everyone is enjoying the Spring weather! :)