Pumpkin Fun!

Today we did all our usual school work. This afternoon since we haven't started Astronomy yet and finished up our Earth Science early this week...we made some fun 3D Art Pumpkins...now they will decorate our dining room until Thanksgiving!

Lots of good motor skills that we usually forget to work on...cutting, glueing, coloring, drawing, tracing....We had fun and it was good and messy with the glue. The middle of the pumpkin is a Kroger bag scrunched up to make it puffy.

Nothing better than handmade Art in our house!!!

Yesterday we did Line Art Leaves...

Hannah's Leaf

Mikayla's Leaf

I want to do more fun Fall things in the next few weeks!

Watercolor Relief

Fall Leaf Butterflies

Contour Fall Leaves

Books read from Summer Up til now

The girls have been reading a good bit this past summer. We instituted a 30 min a day quiet reading time. We do really well to do it about 4 times a week and sometimes even on the weekends.

There are SO MANY good books out there....I almost feel like there is not time to watch TV...although my girls may beg to differ!

Our recents books read:

Hannah:
Little Women Junior Classics- Currently reading
Anne of Green Gables-L.M. Montgomery
Betsy-TacyMaud Hart Lovelace
Charlotte's Web-E.B. White
Socks- Beverly Cleary

Mikayla:
Minnie and Moo-The Case of the Missing Jelly Donut
Father Bear Comes Home- else Holmelund Minarik
Nate the Great- Majorie Weinaman Sharmat
Mr. Putter and Tabby Make a Wish- Cynthia Rylant
The Outside Dog- Charlotte Pomerantz
Daniel's Duck
If you give a mouse a cookie-Numeroff
If you take a mouse to school- Numeroff
The Emperor's New Clothes
The Egg
The Magic Fish
A New Coat for Anna
One Fish, Two Fish
If you give a pig a pancake
Mr. Brown can Moo
Meatball- Patsy Clearmont

Chad's Been Reading to the girls:
Mr. Popper's Penguins
Encyclopedia Brown Boy Detective-Donald J. Sobol
Another Encyclopedia Brown book
The Black Stallion
Next- The Hobbit

Volcanoes

In our previous chapter of Earth Science, we studied in depth about earth quakes and volcanoes and how they came about. The girls learned about the magma under the earth and the lava that is when it comes out. They insisted on doing another volcano....so I folded under the educational teacher pressure...this will be good for them...

They have to measure out the flour and the oil and everything else for the homemade play dough...good math going on there.

They had to make sure the vinegar and baking soda were put in the bottle in the right order...there was some education happening there...smile!

Where oh Where have we been???

We've been prodding along...doing school. Is it possible to have burn out in August? I am so feeling that way. I do believe I've been putting too many irons in the fire so maybe that is why I am feeling so run down.

We have been very busy with our school days. We've kind of gotten into a bit of a rhythm with school so that part has been good. Our schedule looks like this on most days:

Get up (about 9 or so)
Breakfast
Get dressed and brush teeth (hopefully we don't zoom by this one)
Get our Work boxes and schedule strips out:
Scedule strip: 10 Min of quiet bible reading time
Scripture memory work (Charlotte Mason Style) and working on memorizing the books of the Bible. We do this together.
Start on File folder 1 (Normally Calender work-Christian Light Education-Each month we work on a different aspect of the weather. This month we are working on the 3 basic types of clouds in thy sky and recording them each day.
File Folder 2- Reading-CLE
Piano
File Folder 3- Language Arts workbooks (spelling, writing, phonics rules...ect...)
File Folder 4- Math workbooks, flashcards, speed drills
Typing
Snack
Writing (Hannah is using Writing Strands 3 (alternating with) Aeosp's fable's Rewrites. This has been interesting. Mikayla is still using Writing with Ease. I really like it and am concidering swtiching Hannah back to it.
Lunch
Break/chores (cleaning out the dishwasher)
Reading History 10 min
File Folder Game
Reading A child geography of the world (Earth Science) for about 10 min
Quiet Time Reading - 30 min

Clean up then free time.
Done by usually 3 or so...where does the day go...I guess we slept most of it away...but I LOVE not having to wake them up! They are rested and ungrumpy!

We are finishing up our last chapter in the geography book that we've been working on all summer. This last part has been about latitude and longitude....it has great explainations of it all.

We are soon to start Galloping the Globe back and Astronomy as well.

WE will be meeting weekly for co-ops with Astronomy, Art Appreciation, ASL, and Piano.
We are also in 2 other co-ops that meet monthly- American History and PE.

Busy...busy girls are we! Hannah and I started a 4-H sewing class too. This is once a month. We stay so very busy. The girls and Chad have been taking karate...we are so proud of them. They've been working hard to learn all the moves.