Changing curriculum

We started hs last yr. I just didn't send my boys back to school after summer. Austin was in 5, Colin in 4th and Conner in 3rd. I was the typical first yr hs mom I worried about doing it all and missing something and leaving the dreaded gaps. So we signed up with k-12. We were pretty excited when we got our packages until we opened them all and the boys looked at the stack of books with big eyes probably thinking I had completly lost my mind if I thought we would complete all this in one yr. During this time we put our house on the market and there was the constant cleaning and leaving to show our property. This set us back and to this day I don't know how we finised it all.

So this yr originally I wanted to do it on our own, but caved to half time when it was offered. I kept art which the boys love and Language Arts as I thought it is a good program. Although I still think k-12 is a good program we are still way too stressed about getting it all done. There are alot of components in my view that could be merged. So we will finish the yr out but that's it. NO more. It is too stressful for us and doesn't work with my family.

So now I must hunt down a good grammer program for my boys that doesn't have endless writting. We tried Easy Grammer for a bit and we didnt get it so I thought we could give it another go and if it still didnt work I would have a backup plan B,C and D. So a-huntin I will go to find the program I think will work for us.
Wish me luck.

Our Trip to Denver

Going to Denver takes us 2 hours, minimum. As it is always such a drive I generally make it worth my while. So I packed our day in figuring I would play things by ear as we go to see if everything still fits. Here is our Itenirary

6:00 Get up and ready. Pack the Car

7:00 Leave for denver

8:00 Stop in Castle Rock for breakfast

9:00 Arrive in Denver and go to the Skatepark

11:15 Go to the mint, find parking

11:45 Be at the mint

12:00 tour of the Mint

12:30 tour over, head for the gift shop

1:00 Go back to the skatepark for a picnic lunch

1:30 Go to the Aquarium

3:00-3:30 Leave for home so we avoid rush hour in denver

4:ish Castle Rock Shops for a bit of browsing

5:ish Colorado Springs, Get some dinner

6:00 Time to go home

7:00 FINALLY home

The trip to the skatepark was a smashing success. This park is huge and a skateboarder's dream (at least to me but hey I don't have the slightest clue about skateboarding). The kids played here for about a couple of hours. Austin especially loves this as he is the skatboarder in the family.

Here come my handsome boys (yes I most certainly am biased, and proud of it :))

Austin practicing his "Olley"(yesh, I hope I spelled that right)

My babies in one big "bowl", honeslty it looked like a dry pool to me. But again I know nothing aobut skatboarding

Finally we make it to the Mint. You are not allowed to take pictures otherwise I would have happily supplied them. But we learned alot and were able to see alot of the things we had been learning aobut in our unit study on Money. Our tour guide was funny in a corny sort of way, but it was at least not boring. We also learned that in our study we were missing a "working Mint". It was West Point and deals with mostly gold and stuff. We did buy some stuff in the gift shop and then headed back to the skatepark for our picnic lunch. Then it was off to the aquarium.

The Outside

This was cute. Conner can be such a sweet and humourous child, when he's not busy being evil. (sigh)

The tanks are huge and alot curve along the cieling a bit.

This was after the Flash flood display. Austin said: Mom what is a flash flood? so we watched and I said that is a flash flood its alot of water that comes all at once and creates a flood in a flash. I felt a bit silly but he honestly didnt know and so it was a good learning moment, among lots this day.

This lady was so sweet and talked to the boys for almost a half hour. We learned about eels, and sharks and tanks and how much room you need to sustain them and boy the list goes on. And my boys listened attentively the whole time. I was so proud.

These jelly fish were brand new and pretty much the last exhibit. We watched the sharks get fed, this happens on Monday, wedensday and friday. It takes 24 hours for sharks to digest their food. The boys loved how they attacked the "kill" and tried ripping the fish appart. One even came up close to show us his food.

Our day was very filled and I am exhausted. We will spend some time tomorrow on what we did and what we learned and such. We had a great day.

Fore

Watch out Tiger Woods! Kidding (smile). Last summer we went to put put or miniature golf place, I can never remember which is which. The whole family enjoyed a fun afternoon and Conner discovered he was better than anyone else. So since then he has been in love with golf. For christmas we bought him a golf set. I found it at a thrift store for an incredibly great price. The golf bag looked in great condition, the clubs werent bad but then again I am NO expert on what a golf club is supposed to look like. A few weeks ago he took his set out to the side of the house and set up. The houses are far apart there so he's fairly safe.

He also wore his new hat. He has really gotten into hats as well. This is such a good thing because for christmas we were stumped. Here is Conner's Practice session.



Setting up
Practice swing
This is the real thing.
The crowd goes quiet as Conner attemps another hole in one..

Getting some more balls
Setting up his next tee.
Smiling for me, well sort of anyway. He is 9 and apparently that age is required to make goofy faces at the camera.
Look at that form Ladies and Gentlemen.

Conner was out there for at least an hour. Chris said he would take him for an 18 hole golf game. I am curious if he will like it. It wont be like a put put place. We will see if he still likes golf after that.

Our Penguin Lapbook/Unit study

We finished our Penguin Unit study. I am so proud of the boys. They did very well. I learned something along the way, pre-cutting and pre-folding saves time during school and lets my boys learn more with the added benefits of no whining about having to cut and fold. They hate this and I swear you would think I killed them. Here are some shots of what we did.

The Front cover of Colin's Penguin Lapbook

The Lapbook open to the first page. I had to make extensions on both the top and bottom and it worked liek a charm. We have penguin pictures in the middle. Vocabulary on the right side.

The bottom extension pulled open. At the top is the food chain of penguins. What is a penguin? mini book and egg facts mini books at the bottom.

This is the top extension open and partial picture of whats underneath We have 'where do penguins live' mini book. Illustrasion of penguin anatomy- labeled

This is the main folder and what is underneath all the extensions. We have several mini books. Some of them are 'what I learned about penguins', 'penguin life cycle', antartica facts' and penguin eggs.

This is the penguin lapbook open with all extensions. The following are some of the mini books up close and open. They wehre really neat.

We labeled parts of the world with the corresponding number to where penguins live.

Here are some different types of penguins and pictures of them. We had all of them and their names. I never knew there were so many. I honestly thought they just had one kind. Apparently I am wrong and there are 17 types.
this neat little book gives facts on what is a fish, mammal and bird. Then asks what category a penguin falls into.

A bird of course.
This is the cutest little book. I actually was able to use some cross stitch floss to bind together and form an actual little book .
the front cover of it. The boys will be working on their "Penguin Adventure" stories for the remainder of the week. I hope to post them when they are done.
Still empty, it even has spots for pictures.
Some other basic questions on penguins like do penguins have fur? No they have feathers. The mini book giving facts the boys learned along the way. I was amazed at what they remembered. I loved that Conner used three of our spelling words , the hard ones.

He used regurgitate and tobogganing.

Fun with Clay

For art today colin made a self portrait and conner made his cat. I joined in on the fun. I really have always enjoyed anything artsy so this was great. I too made our cat. Conner actually joined in after colin was done and I started to make something. I think he didnt want to miss out. What a great way to get him to do some art. He also ended up having a good time.
I took some pictures.











Colin hard at work painting his clay self.









He told me that the pants are different because they have different colors on each side. What an imagination :-)









Here are all of our finished products. Conner's is to the right. Mine is in front.
Im sure if I had started to paint mine Conner would have joined in this activity as well. There's always something isnt there.
















Conner so proud of his art. This is his cat turtle. We've posted pics of him before.

Weaving

Colin does and art project where he learns to weave. He really enjoyed this activity. Colin really likes art and does retain alot of the information. He loves using the word " texture" when applied to art or cooking. It's so cute.


Our cat, Turtle really likes this project too. I think Colin had an even better time when his buddy came to help him with the string.

This picture is so cute and had me laughing so hard. It's actually the main reason for posting all this. Colin asks at this point " So mom why do girls like doing this so much? and "How do you get the string in that small hole?" Should I get out my cross stitch stuff and let him try putting the string in those teeny holes??(snicker, I love being evil)

" Yeah, I finally got it." He absolutley insisted on doing this himself. It was a proud moment on his part and mine. Way to go Colin.

During the weaving we discussed looms and indian art( that was what the lessson was based on)we even checked out some looms online....who knows his b-day is coming up (in april).

What are my limits?

We are on Day 7 of our Penguing Lapbook. Today we are discussing different penguins and I had put together pictures and basic facts concerning penguins. Some of our mini books were pre-done thanks to some wonderful moms (sigh, I will learn to do this eventually, mabey when they are grown). The ones I had only covered six penguins. In a moment of inspiration I located pictures of the other penguin types and the basic facts like where they live, how tall they are and how much they weight. Unfortunatley this meant we needed to make the mini books . Now up to this point I had precut and folded just about all the books. This took some time during which I was glad that I had taken the effort to do this so we could concentrate more on learnning about penguins than making the mini books.
So this is how it went.
Me: We have to make mini books for the rest of the pictures and then put the basic facts about each penguin in each book.
Boys: Graon
Conner: (big round eyes) We have to cut?? (Groan some more and of cours a hint of eye rolling.)Why do we have to cut?
Colin starts happily cutting without another word.
Conner throws up his hand states: I cant do this, How are we supposed to do this.
Me: (mildly irritated, I mean they didnt appreicate that I precut everything else) Fine, I will help you.
We cut and fold and tape.
Colin still no fussing (sigh, why cant they all behave like this?)
Conner get another sheet of paper and so I start to help colin since he is being so pleasant.
Conner actually say ( actually chukkling now about it, not at the time) Why are you folding for him? Mom I need your help, I cant do this.

The point is Conner is very lazy and I am completley unsure of how to fix this. The other point is I was frustrated and saw that I made something fun into something that was alot of work. I felt like I had destroyed Conner wanting to learn about penguins. The Penguin book was his idea.
I now know it works much better when I predo alot of the cutting and folding as it leaves more time for learning. It leaves the frustration out of our day as well.