Let's bake!

I have never been a baker and I don't particularly care about sweets, I am a salty snack person.  Lately, however, my non-baking world has been turned around all because of History and Bible lessons.  From History, we learned about American pioneers and how they used to make butter.  The curriculum included a recipe to make our own butter with just heavy whipping cream, so we gave it a try!  All it took was a glass jar, fill it up to half way, then close the lid tightly and shake for 15 mins.  My original plan was to have each of us take turns to shake for 5 mins, but guess who ended up shaking almost all the way....

We (or I) shook it until there's no swooshing sounds from the liquid, then viola!

Just add some salt and you have fresh whipped butter!

Then from Bible lessons, we learned about Jesus is the bread of life and the curriculum provided a bread recipe called Easy Yeast Bread.  It required very few ingredients and the boys got to learn how yeast works from this.  They each took turns adding the ingredients, then kneaded the dough, watched it rise in the oven, and finally did the taste test!

They gobbled it up in a few minutes for lunch!

It's been so much fun exploring these recipes with the boys, I look forward to making more healthy baked goodies with them!

Love learning!

Wow!  Can't believe is almost the end of 5th week of school!  This 5 weeks has gone by pretty steadily and quickly.  I used the first 2 weeks to test out the schedule that works best for us.  In my past experience, trying to time everything only caused stress and take away precious teachable moments.  I was always watching the clock and rushing so that we can squeeze as much as we can, keeping up with the curriculum.  This made me very irritable and teaching wasn't as enjoyable.  This time around, I wanted to do things differently.  I split up the teaching time into morning and afternoon.  Here is my schedule:

Worship/Bible
Language Arts/Math with Ethan (Noah teaches Bethany ABCs or numbers)
Language Arts/Math with Noah (Ethan plays with Bethany)
Snack break
Play outside
Lunch
History
Spelling with Ethan

I tried to put the time for each "subject" the first 2 weeks but decided to take it out.  It only gave me stress.  Sometimes it takes longer to teach a new concept for Math or Language Arts, so why limit the time?  We've enjoyed the outside time a lot, running, climbing, riding on bikes and scooters really help the 3 kids to bond, thrive, and learn even better.  They also got more opportunities to meet new friends at the playground.

Before the school year, I was pretty nervous about teaching History because I didn't enjoy it as a kid myself, and I wasn't sure how to make it interesting. Indeed, I didn't do too well the first 2 weeks, I was sticking to reading aloud the whole text and bringing it a lot of details.  I didn't feel that the boys enjoyed it at all and was afraid they would hate History because of me.  So what did I do?  I turned to my husband for help.  He looked over the History book, and bracket out the parts he felt are important, and left out the rest.  He believes that the boys are going to learn US History at least a couple more times in their schooling years, so it's okay to just teach the basic and not include too much details.  Thanks to my husband, I got my direction back!  Since then, I have greatly reduced the amount of text, and always make sure I draw on the board to help the boys visualize the stories.  Both boys end up loving History time!  Of course, the cool crafts included in the curriculum helped a great deal too.

Another encouraging thing is that Noah has started to LOVE spelling.  He's been working on phonic blends and reading more, so his confidence grew and he's constantly trying to spell and write words and ask us to read them.  What more can a homeschooling mom ask for when your son begs you to teach him how to spell?  Ethan also love his spelling tests and are doing great with them.  He looks forward to getting perfect score and be rewarded with ipad, wii time, or candy.

Another fun we added is baking on Fridays!  I bought a stand mixer and started with boxed brownies to corn muffins, and last Friday we made peanut butter cookies!

Ethan making Native American tepee

Different Native American housing in pioneer days

School has started!

Yes, school has started this week right after Labor Day.  However, I'm taking this week slow and easy, mostly to do reviews, work out schedules, and to establish rules and discipline.  We spent our mornings doing worship, reading, and math practice.  Nice and easy.

Thinking back about summer, it was great.  We didn't focus on academics and enjoyed our time together being out in the sum, traveling to Seattle, did a couple nature camps, etc.  All these things helped each kid to grow and mature.

For Ethan, even though we didn't do academics over the summer, he actually took the initiative to write, spell, and do math on his own.  That is very encouraging for any mom to see.  He also started to take up more responsibility as a big brother, teaching Bethany right from wrong...although sometimes he gets too bossy doing so.  One thing I was hoping he would grow more this summer is endurance.  He hates being hot and sweaty, whenever we went out to the playground, he would start complaining after 10-15 mins and wanted to go home. I really hope that we can work on this area over the school year through more outside play and the gym class he's taking at Learning Vine.  Another thing would be for him to be a better listener.  He's a visual learner so whenever I read something aloud, he loses his attention after a little while.  This goes with lectures from us as well.  So I hope that he will also grow in this area over the school year.

For Noah, he is still bouncy as ever.  I'm glad I signed him up for the nature camp this summer, he was not very good at classroom etiquette last year so this camp helped him to grow in this area.  He also grew in the love of reading bible stories, he's been begging me to read the whole children's bible to him this past few days and I was glad to do so!  He has been struggling to get along with Bethany, constantly picking fights with her, even though she's only 3.  I'm hoping they'll both learn to get along and understand each other better this year.

As for Bethany, it's been amazing seeing her language skills advanced so much this past few months.  She can even say "parallegram" and "tyrannosaurus". However, it's also been hard to discipline her, she is a very stubborn girl.  She struggles in the area of nagging, and I mean, constantly nagging...for food!  You have terrible two's and three's are trying!

We will start next week with full curriculum and schedule, so hopefully we'll manage and have fun at the same time!

Prepping for school because summer is almost OVER!

I can't believe that summer will be over in a few weeks!  I can feel the pressure simply by going to Walmart yesterday...seeing the parents frantically getting school supplies at the last minute.  Although I won't be starting until after Labor Day, I still feel pressure to prepare for the school year ahead of time so I won't be rushing the last minute.  As a homeschooler, not only I have to get all the supplies ready (including potential art supplies for projects), I also need to look over the whole curriculum, throw away old papers, store away old books, etc.  Arghhh!

This year we are continuing with My Father's World curriculum - 2nd grade for the boys.  What I like about MFW is the multi-age teaching it provides so I don't have to get separate curriculum for each child.  Also, starting in the 2nd grade level, the curriculum set doesn't include Language Art and Math.  This design allows parents to get level-appropriate books since some kids might have advanced skills in these particular subjects or some might need more help.  Ethan is technically going into 1st grade but his reading skills is about 3rd grade and can already spell some basic words on his own.  However, there are other Language Arts skills that he needs to learn, so I bought the suggested 2nd grade level Language Art books from the curriculum.  While looking through the curriculum, I did have a frantic moment because of the addition of History this year...thinking of how to fit it all in the schedule.  However, this curriculum is designed for 2nd grade or 3rd grader so I might just spread it over to next year, depending on how well he gets the concepts.  Knowing this, I feel less stressed. Also, a good mom friend reminded me that it's not about how much you teach but how much they learned.  So I will take it slow and have fun with each subject....hopefully!

The boys will also do enrichment class at park district and Learning Vine, both will have gym this year.  Hopefully they will grow in their sportsmanship skills while building up their bodies.

Vet Video #2

Another video of the Tigger surgery.

One of the best times we had during last school year

I've been meaning to post this for a while now.  Over the school year, one of the events we had was having a veterinarian friend Angel came to talk to our co-op. Angel was amazing.  She has the most gentle manner and soothing voice but was still able to hold the attention of all the kids.  We were all amazed at how attentive the kids were when she talked.

Angel introduced the occupation of veterinarian to the kids, explaining what a vet does, how to become one, the types of animals they treat, etc.  She brought in real animal x-rays showing the type of injuries they had.  Angel also taught the kids about dog bite prevention, and performed teddy bear surgery on the stuffed animals each family brought.  She used really surgical instruments!

Here's the video of Ethan and Noah during their Tigger surgery.

Summer break = free play!

It's been a month into our summer break...what have we done?  Originally I had big plans to do 3 days of school each week teaching about animals, body, telling time, etc., however, things didn't work out the way I planned.  I ended up signing the boys up for nature camp.  Noah gets to spend 2 hours each day for a week learning about woodlands, grasslands, and wetlands and explore nature.  Ethan gets a week of all-day camp to do hiking, fishing, canoeing, biking, and even learn survival skills.  

Today was Noah's first day of camp, he was able to share in details of the story book they read in camp, as well as making new friends.  He told me about a mean boy who didn't want Noah to be near him, but Noah was able to peacefully resolved the conflict without getting into any fights.  I told him I was very proud of him and it's a sign of his growth and maturity.

Our friend shared this article "Why Free Play is the Best Summer School", after reading this, I feel more encouraged to just let the kids play all summer and not worry too much about academics.  I still keep up with reading everyday and math problems every other day though.  I do believe summer months are the best time to work on their characters and behaviors rather than academics.  It's also the best time to train them up on doing house chores, and learn how to be "bored".  Right now the boys need to work on getting along with their little sister, who can be very sensitive at times.  I believe letting them do free play is the best way to encourage them to figure out how to get along peacefully.  

Here's the article.

http://m.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/for-better-school-results-clear-the-schedule-and-let-kids-play/373144/