Chicks Coming Soon!!

This week we picked up a dozen eggs to be hatched into chicks. So far, so good.

We marked the chicks with an "X" on one side and an "O" on the other to keep up with turning them and set the incubator at 99.5 degrees. The kids are estatic.

Now I have no idea what we are going to do with these chicks once they hatch. I guess we better be building a coop. Ann, where are you? I need some help, cause I'm sure you know the best way to build a coop and what I need to be doing.

The Moore Formula

I got a question about the Moore Formula so I would like to take a minute to write a little bit about how it works.''

The Moore Formula in a nutshell says that the time student spends on academics, should equal the amount of time they spend on work and service.

There is a six point prescription for academic excellence

1. Scripture Memorization

2. Observation Skills

3. Work and Service Education

4. Building Academic Skills

5. Guided Questioning

6. The Study Buddy

In the Manual, each point in spelled out in detail.

One thing that I love about the Moore Formula is the use of schedules. They decribe what they call "anchor points". Set a time for Rising and going to bed, bath time and bed time, meals and school and fill in everything else around these major items. Be consistent but open and flexible enough to allow change.

They use unit studies and give examples of how to create them yourself. I try to create our units based on what's going on in our area. With spring around the corner, we will visiting the pond to look for tadpoles, observing birds build their nests, identifying trees etc. We will also be gardening and using it for spiritual lessons as well as physical activity.

I hope this sheds some light on this method. Feel free to ask any specific questions you may have. I am more than happy to answer them

Homeschool Snow Day

A few days ago I woke up to huge snowflakes falling outside of my window. What a beautiful sight. It doesn't snow much where we live, so I told the kids to hurry up and get bundled up so they could play in it before it all melted. They did just that and had a blast.

The kids enjoyed snowball fights with Daddy

And making miniature snowmen. :)

I incorporated learning by talking about the difference between sleet and snow, and the next day when it melted we talked about why it was easier to make snowballs out of freshly fallen snow.

It's days like this that make me extra thankful that we homeschool.

Homeschool 2009-10

I was looking at my blog and noticed that I never did post what we were working on for this school year. Of course that wouldn't be a problem if I didn't have a label at the top of my blog that says "Our Homeschool" LOL

So this year we don't have a lot of changes from last year. We are still using the

Adventist Sonlight Curriculum

Math-U-See (Beta and Zeta)

Italics Handwriting

Moore Formula (Service and Work as many hours as school)

Charlotte Mason Scripture Memory

As a part of the Moore Formula we have been a bit more intentional about working on crafts/hobbies. My daughter is learning to knit and my son is putting together model car kits.

This year my daughter enrolled in the 4-H Veterinary Science Program. It is a 5 year course that trains the students to be a certified Veterinary Assistant. After completing this program, they are then encouraged to study for 2 years to become a certified Veterinary Technician and then go on to complete program to become a Veterinarian. She is very excited and doesn't even complain when I ask her to do her assignments. :)

Field Trip to the Farm Supply Store

Today the kids and I went on a field trip to the farm supply store. We really only went to buy bird food for the Great Backyard Bird Count, but when you homeschool, all random outings become field trips. :)

My children have fallen in love with the baby chicks and spent most of their time playing with them.

This visit they begged me to bring a bunny home. I rather prefer the idea of visiting them at the store. :)The nicest surprise of all was the ferrets. One of the employees opened the cage and let them hold of few of them.

Christopher had a great time riding the John Deere and running into customers. :)

HomeSchool Agenda for 08-09

I have set our official date for school as September 15th. My daughter's birthday is September 2nd and so that gives us a whole week to enjoy the Labor Day holiday and her birthday and then another week for me to plan for school and recuperate.

This year we will be using:

Adventist Sonlight Curriculum-This curriculum uses the color coding of the Rainbow to cover all subjects

Red-Health

Orange-Math

Yellow-Music

Green-Nature

Blue-History/Geography/Prophecy

Indigo-Language

Violet-Voice

The Curriculum is Bible based and so we cover Bible everyday along with two other subjects. The lessons are made for the family and so everyone learns together.

Math U SEE-We use this as a supplement to our main curriculum. I like the math in our main curriculum because it teaches math from a Biblical perspective. I also love Math U See

Italics Handwriting- I absolutely love this handwriting program. I love the fact that the print and cursive are very closely related and follow the natural flow of the hand.

Charlotte Mason- I will be using Charlotte Mason's method's of habit training as found in Laying Down The Rails-A Charlotte Mason Habits Handbook. We also use Charlotte Mason's Scripture Memory System

Kickin It Up A Notch-Scheduling

In keeping with my Kickin' It Up A Notch Theme, I have been working on my schedule. I created "pivot points" in my schedule and then worked in everything else. One thing that I have found is that I ABSOLUTELY love having dinner early. We have dinner at 1:00 and that works well for me because dinner is out of the way and I can have my kitchen clean before the afternoon is out. Plus in the fall when I begin my workday at 3, this gives me plenty of time to finish school, have the kids fed, and then send them off to do their personalized assignments (crafting, playing, etc.)

So our pivot points look at little like this: We have breakfast at 8 am. The children rise at 7 and have personal devotion and do all of their chores (wash face, brush teeth, make bed, put away pajamas, etc). Right now we are in a test run and once we get it down then there will be penalties (having to rise 10 minutes earlier for each chore not completed) for not being done with chores by breakfast and incentives (not sure what these will be yet) for completing them all.

After breakfast we have family worship (at the breakfast table). Then we go outside to water the garden, get some exercise, explore, etc. and then come back inside to start school. After school we take another break and go outside.

Our next pivot point is Dinner at 1pm. After dinner is cleanup time and quiet time. Then crafts (this is the time that we will work on sewing and other things). 6pm is Supper or late snack (fruit, bread, popcorn, soup in the winter time, sometimes leftovers from dinner if we are really hungry) :-)

7pm is bath time, and then 8pm is Evening Family Worship and bedtime immediately after.

What does your schedule look like? Is it time for you to Kick It Up a Notch?? :-)

Heart and Trees Summer Lapbook Kit

Our lapbook kits have arrived. We ordered this one from the Heart and Trees blog. I am very pleased with the contents and look forward to putting it together next week with the kids. We will get to use the watercolor techniques we are learning plus spend time outside and add to our nature journals. You may purchase a kit from the website if you are interested. Check the right hand side bar on her page for the link.

Outdoor Challenge #19-Seed Germinator

Challenge #19 was to germinate seeds. I bought some seeds and the kids and I picked the ones we wanted to try. I picked geraniums and both of the children picked african daisies. We followed the instructions given at the PBS website and look forward to what will come of it.

Our Trip to Houston

Note: I apologize for the layout of this post. The pictures just seemed to import randomly. I'm not sure if there is an issue with Blogger.

The children and I went to Houston for a few days with the Adventurer Club to visit NASA and the aquarium. What a fun time we had.

We drove up Monday so that we could relax and be refreshed to start early Tuesday morning. Monday evening the kids swam for a little while at the pool.

One of the Moms was kind enough to let Christopher borrow her son's life vest and help him around the pool. He won't put his face under the water, but he seems to be getting more comfortable with it.

Monday night we went out to eat and had a blast. The next morning we headed to NASA and learned a wealth of information about the space program.

There was a nice inside park area the kids enjoyed and other exciting activities like bungee jumping.

After leaving NASA, we headed to Galveston to spend a few minutes on the beach. We met a family who was feeding pretzels to the birds and decided to join in with them. Having so many birds so close to my head was exciting and scary all at the same time. Is there a word for that??

The next and final day of our trip, we headed to the aquarium. I was fascinated by all the different species of underwater life, but most intrigued by the tiger. Who knew we would see a tiger at the aquarium?? I wasn't expecting that one but it was a treat indeed.

Bee Field Trip

One of the Moms in my homeschool group invited us over today to learn how honey is harvested from bees.

This is what the tray looks like when it's pulled out from the bees. And the different colored dots on this one is pollen. Different colored pollen- who knew?? Am I the only one that thought that all pollen is yellow??

We got to watch them scrape the trays (remove the wax so the honey will come out), spin it (centripetal force pulls the honey out) and strain it. Then we bought some to bring home with us. After we saw how they honey is harvested, we out into the backyard to see some of the wonderful goodies she is growing in her garden. This picture is a little fuzzy, but it's the top of a carrot. Then one of the sons pulled it up for us to better see. Stuff like this really makes me want to get my garden going!

What a lovely tomato:

We had a little fun with the chickens and the rabbit too.