Happy Thanksgiving Bread Cornucopia and Sales

Happy Thanksgiving, one day late, lol. I just didn't have time yesterday to get a blog post done. I hope you all had a wonderful day. We did, it truly was great. My husband had to do a structure fire in the wee hours of Thanksgiving morning. Thank goodness they were able to save the home with only minimal damage done. Everyone at church on Wednesday was having cold symptoms, so the whole house got sanitized with bleach two days in a row in preparation for Thanksgiving company. It was freezing here, 25 degrees, so baking the turkey for six hours was nice for a change. My mom and some very special friends joined us this year, for Thanksgiving dinner. Craig asked me to make a Cornucopia made of bread. Um, never did that before, lol. I was supposed to use refrigerated bread sticks, but apparently they are popular and three different stores had none. So, I used crescent rolls and it came out just fine. The recipe said this was easy, I would not qualify it as easy. It was very time consuming, but it did look nice on the table.

My 25 Days of sales even starts today. So, hop over to my craft blog, and follow so you don't miss anything. Today, you can get an Amethyst ring for only 10 dollars. Go to Melissas Jewelry and Gems, to follow along. A new item, marked down at least 50% every day.

Tom Turkey Candle Just In Time For Thanksgiving!

I did not intend to paint a Turkey, but I had this big jar already cleaned with two coats of blue paint on it. So, I went ahead and painted Tom Turkey on one side. The other side is just as cute, but I won't share that side until after Thanksgiving. This will be a candle and part of my Thanksgiving Day table.

Breaking Traditions!

This was my weekend off, and we had no plans, believe it or not. It was so beautiful yesterday, in the eighties. I got a ton of yard work done, dogs washed and even sat in the sun for a bit. Today it is like 50 and windy, ugh! If the weather stays as predicted, this will be the coldest Thanksgiving week since we have been here in Florida. Usually it is hot, humid and baking the turkey is torture. This year might be much different.

Last year, my husband bought a new Christmas tree, a huge one. I mean huge. It is so tall the top can not accommodate a topper. But, I did get to display all my ornaments this year, none got left off. I have a second small tree, that was my angel tree, it now has the advent calendar on it, which I will share in another post, it isn't quite finished yet. For as long as I can remember, starting when I was a kid, the Christmas tree went up Thanksgiving night. My husband and I have continued the tradition, until this year. He asked me if we could put it up early, yesterday. I really didn't want to, but you know what it worked out nicely. No one was over stuffed, tired, grumpy or wanting to watch football. Everyone participated and you can see the beautiful results below. Maybe breaking traditions is OK after all.

We are on Thanksgiving break all this next week.  We will be doing Run Club Monday, cleaning and food shopping on Wednesday.

Like My Facebook Page and I Will Give Something Away

When my Facebook fan page hits 300 likes I will start a give away.  One lucky winner will get to choose an item from my new, shiny Ecrater store.  I am still adding items to it, but have over 40 items listed there.  To like my page, just click the highlighted link, then like the page.  Obviously you have to be on Facebook to like my page.  Come on now, don't dilly dally the sooner the better.  Also, starting on Black Friday, I will be doing 25 Days of Christmas, with a new deal every day.  You won't want to miss it. 

Thanksgiving Turkey Fun Art Project

Today for History, we had some creative Turkey fun projects. I found on a free writing prompt website, the idea to write about convincing people not to eat turkey for Thanksgiving. I added to the project by having both kids draw a turkey in disguise. Caitlin drew a skirt and top on hers with shoes, and DJ made his all black with some funny sayings as film critics on the feathers. His will be posted to his blog, when he has completed and uploaded the writing portion of his assignment. Caitlin is still working on her writing assignment which was to write a Thanksgiving Day story, with a menu to go with it. You can use this turkey coloring page template, to start your turkey disguise. The original idea for this came from a Pinterest board, but when I tried to print her project, it would not print or open.  Both kids got everything they needed to get done today, so tomorrow we are doing Run Club, rained again today, and then off to my mom's for Caitlin to sew her fair project.  So no textbook stuff, but still learning. 

Minecraft Mayflower, Ancient Greece Theater Mask, and Greek Dinner

I told you this week was going to be full of all kinds of fun things. Today, Caitlin made a Greek Theater Mask, of her own design and liking. You can see the results below. She also had to make a Greek meal. She chose lemon chicken, Greek salad, rice with vegetables. She put the chicken in the crockpot with minced garlic, some butter and olive oil. Then she squeezed two lemons into the crockpot, chopped the onions and green peppers and put them on top. Cooked on low for three hours. Served over cooked rice with the veggies from the crockpot over the rice. Then a Greek Salad, minus the Feta Cheese, no one seems to like it much. We just used regular Cheddar Cheese. At the end of the day, I saw a very cute idea for Minecraft players. I told each kid they had to make a Mayflower ship on Minecraft, and DJ has to make the Plymouth Rock settlement as well. Caitlin got right to work on hers, and after about two hours, her boat was finished. You can see the results below. DJ has not started his yet, and since it is a fun activity, I didn't set a deadline date. It can be worked on during slower days, though. For the rest of the week, for History, the kids will be doing a lot of Thanksgiving themes. I got some really cool things to share.

Thanksgiving and Dinosaurs

We have next week off for Thanksgiving break.  So, we need to get a lot done this week to stay up to date.  Our Run Club has moved to Mon and Wed at 1, but today we were rained out.  We have 4H this evening.  Caitlin will be doing more Dinosaur reading and activities, this week, along with more history on Greece.  She has decided to make a theater mask, and a Greek style dinner for her hands on projects.  We will not be using Feta cheese though, no one seems to like it much.  She will be making a simple Greek Salad, and Lemon Chicken served over rice and sauteed veggies.  There will be a lot of art work, with her dinosaur research.  I will add links and info as we go.  DJ is continuing to learn about the Middle Ages, and the Atmosphere.  I have not decided yet what hands on activity he will do next.  However, we have decided he is too busy to write his book on his free time, so I will be incorporating it into his school days.  He is beginning to read, A Separate Peace, and if you click here you will find a study guide to go with the book.  We will be using it.  If you want to read A Separate Peace online, click the second link. 

First Quarter Report Cards are Done!

Yesterday, I worked on report cards for the first quarter.  A lot of DJ's grades are done online, and I just have to record them.  Caitlin's, however, still need to be graded manually and recorded.  After I get everything in line I can figure out averages.  I did not scan them, because their full names are on the report and well you know you can't be too careful with their privacy.  So, you will just have to read it below.  Thank goodness I can type, and you don't  have to try and make out my handwriting.  They both did awesome, by the way, and the first ten weeks were a success.  DJ was contacted to join a Bio Mass 4H group, which will be during school hours, so if he tries it and likes it, we will have to do some adjustments to be sure he gets enough hours for credits.  Even though I don't have to do that until high school, we are adjusting and practicing this year in preparation for next year.  At this time we have opted not to do a Health class this year.  They did First Aid last year, and we are active, so this year we have opted not to focus on it much. 


Caitlin 4th Grade 1st Quarter Report Card

Science:  99
History:  93
Language Arts:  78
Math:  83
Spelling/Vocab:  84

Even though Caitlin only has a C in Language Arts, this is a massive improvement for her.  Creative Writing and the rules that come with it, are not natural to her like her brother, and she has struggled with it.  Likewise her Spelling has been amazingly good, but she needs to work on her Vocabulary.  Her overall grade is an 87 and I certainly can not complain about that.

DJ 8th Grade 1st Quarter Report Card

Science:  85
History:  89
Language Arts:  83
Math:  87
Spelling/Vocab:  93

DJ has awesome Creative Writing skills, as well as Reading, however the rules of Grammar continue to bore him and make it a challenge for him to pay attention to it.  Science is his favorite subject, but he is studying Atmosphere and Weather, apparently not as exciting to him as it is to me.  I am super pleased with his Math grade, and it has been a much more pleasant Math year so far.  He is still doing the challenging Algebra type work, but in a much more relaxing way.  His overall grade, believe it or not, is also an 87. 

Happy Veteran's Day and A Sale!

Happy Veteran's Day to all who have served.  We can never thank you enough.  I opened a new Ecrater store.  New as in I don't sell there.  I had been selling on Etsy and Ebay.  I will continue with an occasional Ebay auction, but have decided to try Ecrater, a completely free marketplace sponsored by Google.  I only have nine items in the store, it takes a long time to get everything listed, but I am having a 25% off sale.  The sale ends at 9 PM Eastern time tonight.  You have a few options to purchase.  You can checkout the item on Ecrater, not sure how their cart looks, so if there is a place for a code put Vets13, and then I will reimburse you the 25% off.  Or, you can contact me at melissaruede@yahoo.com, or on my Facebook page, then I can mark the item down for you and you can buy it.  I have a Paypal merchant account, and have had it for over ten years.  So, you can feel safe buying from me.  This is the link to my Ecrater store, just click it. 

Digging For Fossils at Alfred A Ring Park

On Friday our Earth Kids group went digging for fossils at Alfred A Ring Park in Gainesville. The kids of course love all the field trips we get to do, but this one was especially neat. Florida used to not be a land mass, it was under the ocean. Then millions of years ago, when whatever happened, happened, Florida rose out of the ocean to become a peninsula. All the sea creatures that had died and been buried at sea, now can be found by digging for them in several fossil digging areas in Florida. There are very strict rules for digging for fossils. The most important being if it is state owned water, you can not keep vertebrates other than shark teeth, and you can not keep human artifacts such as pottery or flints. Hogtown Creek is not state owned water, so we didn't have to worry about that. We did not find an plant fossils, at least I didn't. The kids were mostly seeking shark teeth so they might have put them back. I found lots of shells, and one big shark tooth. I found a ton of manta ray teeth or jaw bone, since they don't really have teeth. I had one jaw bone that fell apart before I got it home or got a picture of it. I found some really neat rocks as well. The two that I liked the most, was a white one with blue specks, kind of looks like Medusa Quartz if anyone is familiar with that, and the other was mostly blue with tiny white specks on it. Alfred A Park is a lovely little park, with picnic area, small playground, clean bathroom facilities and hiking trails. I believe we will be going back just to hike in the near future. I have other pics, but on the other computer. This was a most enjoyable field trip, and the weather was perfect. We have collected shells from other trips as well.  When we get enough and the time we will be doing various crafts with them, including wind chimes and jewelry.

Painting the Bluejay and JOY Hand Painted Christmas Gift Bag

We usually do Art Class on Monday evenings, but this week it was done on Tuesday. This week was Caitlin's turn to pick the bird, and she picked the Bluejay, a truly beautiful bird. DJ and Caitlin both decided to do colored pencil drawings this time, and I did mine in acrylic paints. If you go back, to two years ago, when we first started you will see the amazing progress we have made. Next week we are painting the Turkey, and then the kids are taking a break for a bit. I have not decided how long yet, but I want to get some more painted gift bags done for the holidays and birds are not necessarily on my mind for that. The bag below is my second gift bag. This one is JOY with Baby Jesus and his parents in the O. I really am pleased with the way it came out. If you are interested in any of my bags you can visit my Etsy store.

We had Run Club today, and then continued with our testing for the week. What do you think of our Art work?

NIV Living Bible and End of First Quarter Homeschool

Do you like to win things? I love to win things, though it does not happen very often. I won this beautiful NIV Kid's Living Bible, on Zonderkidz on Facebook. As a side note, I did not win because I agreed to do a blog post. After I learned I won, I offered to share the Bible here on my blog. You can visit their Facebook page, and win something too. They are giving away books very often. This will actually be a gift for my 9 yr old for Christmas. It is too young for my 13 yr old, so I am still hunting for a beautiful boy's Bible. For many years, I didn't teach from a Biblical perspective, and I still don't as far as basic subjects. But we joined a local church this past year, that has a wonderful children's program, and they have now shown more interest, so we have added Bible lessons to our school work. We have been using CK12.com for Math and Science online textbook. Today, he used Quizlet for the first time, to review and test himself. This is a website that is great to study with and use for test practice.

We are in our tenth week of school, end of the first quarter, and we are testing all week. Caitlin is basically just doing Math and Writing challenges, but DJ is testing all week on material he has learned in the first nine weeks. Below are the websites I am using to test him. I also made a writing and special History final exam. I will share those later.

http://reviewgamezone.com/game-list.php?id=27&name=Wind,%20Air%20Pressure%20and%20Atmosphere
http://www.softschools.com/quizzes/language_arts/
http://quizlet.com/4379075/middle-ages-quiz-1-flash-cards/#
http://quizlet.com/27682644/english-first-quarter-exam-eighth-grade-flash-cards/