Whimsy Wednesday: Halloween Minute to Win It Games

We are kind of big game fans in this house.  Well, at least 3 out of 4 of us are, lol.  When we were still in 4H each week the kids would play a new Minute to Win It game as a sort of Ice Breaker.  The kids really loved these games and it really helped them learn teamwork and getting to know each other.  Click the link to go to the source of the games, let me know which ones you tried and if you loved them or not.  The image is from the source link.



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Twitter Share Tuesday

Come join in.  You can use any blog post, from any platform you blog on.  No offensive, or violent content, please.  It does not have to be homeschool related.  See the rules below, and post your link.

1.  Post a blog post, not your whole blog, one post you would like others to share.  Share it in the comments.  If you share a blog post you must share the other blog posts in the comments.

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4.  This post is active until midnight tonight Eastern Standard Time.

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6.  Have fun!

Halloween Fun!

This is the first year that neither of my kids were young enough to Trick or Treat. Yes, that is a rule of mine, and most people don't agree, but hey I am not one to care much. So, this year we planned on handing out candy to all the little munchkins. We had a ball getting ready, carving and painting pumpkins, messing with props, and just having fun.

It was an interesting evening. It was quite warm, and the mosquitoes came out right after dark. They were biting like crazy. I couldn't find any bug spray, but I had read the mouthwash works. So, in the house I went to apply mouthwash. I took some out for the kids, and as I was applying it to DJ, a huge frog, ok huge to me, jumped off the roof onto my chest, and partially on my face. Needless to say we all had a good laugh, and the mouthwash ended up in my hair, and the frog, well he got a free ride to the other side of the yard. There were lots of little cuties, but I do know that I do not need as much candy as I bought. Will keep that in mind for next year. How was your Halloween? Got any funny stories? Share them here.

Caitlin, and I have a few projects for her History class, that hopefully we will be getting to soon. She is studying the fur trade right now, and needs to make a journal from the Lewis and Clark chapter. This week for Science, she will be starting some country research, and then closer to Thanksgiving, a Christmas Around the World series. She is writing at least three days a week, so some of these lessons could end up on her blog. She is currently doing letter topics, for writing. We are enjoying, The Yearling. Our first quarter ends the week of Thanksgiving, so I still have time before I have to stress about catching up on grading, lol.

DJ continues with all his studies, and is progressing quite nicely. Guitar, Marine Ecology, and Youth Band are going awesome, plus our regular 4H group. He volunteered twice this month at Camp Kerusso, and that has been such a blessing for him, and them.

Earth Kids Meeting: Mediterranean Monk Seal and Making Water Colors

Well all my pictures would not load again, but you will get the idea. When we do Earth Kids, we have two teens, and then two younger kids. So I try to do an experiment one month, and then an art project, or craft the next month. This month was both an experiment, and an art project. DJ picked the Mediterranean Monk Seal, as the marine topic. You will find links below, to learn about them and repeat the project too.

2 days before the meeting, we collected some flowers of different colors. We already had some daisies that we had bought, and put in a vase. So we saved a couple of them. They were already colored enhanced, so they were very vibrant. There was blue, purple and green. Then I got a hot pink Azalea and a light pink Camelia, from my garden, and one yellow rose bud, also from my garden. We had no orange, those roses had not opened yet. Then we crushed them up a little, using a rolling pin, put them in a zip lock bag with hot water, and let them sit until the meeting. Each child was supposed to guess which color they thought would be the most vibrant. Two picked the blue, one green, and one purple. You can see from the paintings that the blue definitely one. Of interest, the hot pink Azalea actually turned an orange color, very pretty, but definitely not pink. The light pink Camelia, released no color what so ever, and the water was clear. The green, and purple, though they looked very vibrant in the bag, were not so vibrant on paper, and the yellow rose bud was a very pale yellow.

All in all, a fun activity, and good learning experience for all. We also discussed who would have used this to paint and went over vocabulary terms in the reading.

The kids don't know it yet, but I am picking the topic next month.  We will be going to Cedar Key and we will study the Horseshoe Crab, and then do an experiment on properties of sand.

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/pinnipeds/mediterraneanmonkseal.htm

Migraine on Monday, and Celery Experiment

Our celery experiment is complete. As you can see from the images the leaves did in fact turn pink, not red though, but pink. The stalk however did not change color, as I was lead to believe they would. I think a darker color, like blue, would have stuck out more, the pink was very faint. But, the kids did get to learn through, a hands on lesson, how plants get nutrients from their roots to their leaves. The second part of the experiment, I won't know if it worked, until the other family lets me know how it went. I will report on that later.

Yesterday, I had a terrible migraine, so there was no school. Today, was a normal and full day of school. Tomorrow, if it doesn't rain, we will have Run Club and school, plus church later in the evening.

Starting next year, this blog will again take on a record keeping mood. My son will be in High School, and rather than losing papers, or discs, I can record everything I need right here, and it will never get lost. I will of course continue to blog about all our fun stuff, and my daughter will be in fifth grade, so there is lots to talk about there.

Heart Pizzas For Valentines Day

Today, we had a non Valentines Day party. What does that mean? No paper Valentines were exchanged. Rather everyone brought a treat to share, and the kids had a ball playing at the park while us moms got some much needed mommy time. Caitlin and I made these heart shaped pizzas with just pizza dough, sauce and mozzarella cheese. The pizza dough was actually quite easy to mold into a heart, and I will try this for other holidays too. Everyone loves pizza. We watched a full week of the Olympics, and the kids really enjoyed it. Even though the Olympics will not be over, we need to get back to a more structured school week next week. We will again try to get to Poe Springs next week, and Earth Kids is also next week. Biofuels is almost over, and I guess DJ liked it. They won't be doing it again next year, so that was kind of disappointing.

When my husband got home from work, we tried a new Italian restaurant near to us, the O Sole Mio, and we are hooked. The service was amazing, and the food just awesome. We will definitely add them to our favorites.

Olympics and Yard Work

This week is a kind of fun week for us.  Because we are trying to be sure and watch our athletes in the Olympics, and activities outside of the house, we have decided to mix things up a bit.  There will be very little traditional style learning this week.  For example, today the kids made their valentines for their grandparents, and wrote their monthly letters.  In case you are wondering what I am talking about, I decided as a part of random acts of kindness, they would write their grandparents a letter each month.  This serves another purpose as well, practicing writing skills for my fourth grader.  I am really pushing the writing this year for her.  To me she still has a long way to go, but has improved so much.  She only has two more letters on her friend list, and then monthly letters to grandparents.  So, I will be looking for some new writing prompts for her.  On the plus side her spelling has improved immensely. 

Then we watched some Snowboarding and Freestyle Skiing.  Caitlin's skiier made it through, but we didn't get to see that yet, and DJ's snowboarders were not in the slope style, but we did get to watch a young man named Sage, from the USA take the gold in that event.  How exciting! 

Then, after lunch, we were outdoors doing yard work.  The lawnmower would not start, so I planted some of the flowers I bought last Friday.  My new tire garden is coming along, I need four more tires, and they need to be painted.  We got some raking done, and picking up sticks and garbage blown around from this nasty Winter.  A lot of my plants were damaged this Winter, it has been so cold.  They have been trimmed back and are already starting to come back, bigger and better I hope.  I planted Peonies, Bleeding Hearts, and some fruit bushes today. 

Caitlin, and I, painted the cabinet nobs in the kitchen black, added a nice touch, and I started working on her special birthday plates.  I will share those later.

Last week we started the Virtual Tour of the United States, with Alaska.  I need to find some info on the Exxon Valdez spill for them to ponder.  If you want to add the tour to your Geography lessons, you can follow along on my Pinterest board.  This is actually to go along with our popsicle stick game to learn the states and the capitols.  We continue our other History work as well.

I have not yet decided for tomorrow, but will probably be similar to today.

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.

Halloween Books for Kids

We finished off another awesome week of homeschooling. The kids are racking up miles for the 5 Points of Life Relay for Kids, and should have the paper filled up soon. I work this weekend, and next week is another busy week with Archery, 4H, Earth Kids, Church and of course Run Club. Anyone who says homeschooled children are not socialized apparently do not know what they are talking about. We are plenty socialized, good socialization not nonsense socialization. Below are some Halloween theme books your kiddos might enjoy reading. The first one appears to be free, so enjoy it while it is. Be sure to check the price before you complete check out. I have been nailed a couple of times with posts that offer free books, but not all are free and I did not pay attention. Some are worth paying for too, though. We love The Berenstein Bears, well at least my youngest does. My son prefers the scary stories. Remember that at the bottom of this blog is my Amazon Homeschool Store.  Look there for all your textbook, workbook and craft needs.  I will be scouring around for Halloween apps this weekend to share.

Learning the States the Fun Way

I saw on Pinterest where another homeschool mom made a sight word game using popsicle sticks. I was just talking to a friend the other day about Geography, the states, capitals and other generalized topics. I had stated how I felt we were ignoring learning the states and capitals, mainly because it is so boring. I have tons of popsicle sticks lying around. Mostly because we do a lot of crafts. I was going to throw them away, but then I decided to make a stick game with them. So, today, and this was way more time consuming than I expected, I took on the task of writing on 50 popsicle sticks. On one side I wrote the state and the abbv. for that state. On the other side, I wrote the year it became a state and the capital. Then I placed them in a clean pizza sauce jar with 50 states written on it. You can see the results in the image. Since we have a states wall map they will have to find the state and the capital. We probably won't start this until after the Christmas holiday. If I can squeeze it in sooner I will. You could do this daily, or weekly, however you want. It is a great memorization tool. You could do this for multiplication, skip counting, sight words, spelling, etc. Be creative with it. If your child is having a hard time learning something, or is just bored to death, try something different and new. That is the beauty of homeschooling. And popsicle sticks are cheap and you could recycle the container. Matter of fact you could go into a lesson about recycling at the beginning of using your new jar game. Huh think of that.

International Observe the Moon Night 2013

A few weeks ago, while searching for something else, I came upon the International Observe the Moon Night webpage. I was intrigued as to what it was, and checked it out. I found I could make my own event, in my own backyard, and have some fun doing it. I created it for our local Homeschool group. So, tomorrow night, October the 12 it will take place. It will be beautiful weather here in FL for such an activity, cool and clear. They have a ton of activities you can choose from to learn all about the moon, crafts and other activities. I have decided on a moon phases painting craft, moon pizzas, and of course viewing the moon. If you do not have a powerful telescope, we do not, there are a few apps to help you view the moon up close. I downloaded the constellation finder and the moon map. I wish they had made the event on the night of the full moon, but oh well it will still be a blast. I was contacted by a local reporter, about our event, and we were in an article featuring the Moon event. The kids were so excited. I hope to get some cool pictures to share on Sunday. Be sure to check the website for all their awesome educational activities. Next week, for school, we will be doing some of them for Science, just to learn more about the Moon.

First Grade Homeschool Supplemental Curriculum

This is a post for a friend who is just beginning to homeschool.  Since I remember how overwhelming it was, when I began, I decided to help her on her way.  I titled this as supplemental because she already has some books, and workbooks, and needed some fun ways to teach.  I have to say the younger years, up to say grade 5, are fun to teach and fun for the kids to learn.  Or at least it should be.  The new Common Core standards, which I am not saying I am against, really put a lot of strain on kids to learn harder material a lot younger.  I think this is going to be a failed process, because not all kids can learn harder material at such a young age. 

Renee, when you look at the first link, it is just a basic curriculum for first grade.  Click on each subject to see what Eric would generally learn for that grade. Don't worry about all the other stuff on the page, for now.    You can add or delete as you see fit.  The links provided are some of the best, and I have used myself.  There are tons more, but can be overwhelming to decide.  History and Science, in first grade, is not as important as say Reading, Writing and Math, but can add some fun to the school day.  If you have Netflix, Liberty Kids, and The Magic School Bus can both be viewed on there.  Kids love these series, and learn so much from just watching the show.

http://homeschooling.about.com/cs/learning/p/course1.htm
http://www.a-z-worksheets.com/first-grade-writing.html
http://www.greatschools.org/worksheets/first-grade/writing/
http://www.funbrain.com/FBSearch.php?Grade=1
http://www.columbia.k12.fl.us/TechLab/roll/online_games1.htm
http://www.jumpstart.com/parents/activities/grade-based-activities/1st-grade-activities
http://www.abcya.com/first_grade_computers.htm
http://www.libertyskids.com/parentsteachers.html

How Hotwheels Cars Became A Science Project

My 8 yr old son, got some money for Christmas. Last week he decided to spend the remainder of it, and bought some Hotwheels cars. Two of specific importance were color changers. According to the package, they change colors in warm water, and cool water. Neat right? Well not so fast. They changed very easily in the warm water, but when we tried to change them back poof nothing. So of course he was not happy, since he felt like he had been jipped. Me and my natural obsessive self, figured there must be some secret we were not aware of. I visited the official website to see if there were better instructions. Imagine that, there were not any. Matter of fact the commercial clip they have available, clearly shows the cars changing with just a squirt of water. There was no email address, that would be too easy, and the message boards had a few similar questions that of course were unanswered. So I posted the question, on one of the forums I belong to, to see if anyone else had kids with these seemingly useless toys. While I waited for my flood of answers to come in, I continued to think, and wonder what the magic was. I only got 4 responses, 2 were just as curious, and the other two suggested maybe the water was not cold enough. Ah Ha, so we put the car in the freezer for 10 seconds and bingo, it was back to its original color. But wait, it quickly turned back to the warm color. Ok so now we are starting to put two, two together. It is all based on the room temperature as to what color it is. So that if it is warm in the house, the car will change to the warm temperature color, no water really needed. If it is chilly in the house, the car will adapt to the cold color. Of course it would have to be really cold in the house for that to happen. So we got thinking, and experimenting some more. I asked DJ what other things can produce heat, to turn the car to the warm temperature. Of course the first thing he thought was the microwave. While that would be true, that is not what I meant. I told him to think again, about Science and what things naturally produce heat. He said Friction, makes heat. So he began to rub the car with his hands, and bingo it changed to the warm color. Then I told him to put in his armpits, to see what happens. Same result, but the car only changed color partially as the heat was not even across the car. Dj discovered that cupping the car in both hands also worked, as did breathing on it. So you see a simple 3 dollar car, can turn into a Science experiment.