Happy New Year. I am going to try to post more now that I'm done with nursing school. I will start by posting a new contest
Good luck! What is your new year's resolution?

Time for the monthly giveaway

If you haven't checked out the Secular home-school community you should! It's a great support group. Because of them I have found great resources such as Growing with Grammar. Every month the Secular homeschool has a giveaway. This month you can win win any of the books from the JacKris series. I am hoping to win the Soaring with Vocabulary. You can win as well by visiting the Secular homeschool giveaway page and commenting. Good luck!!!

Where should I begin teaching history?

It is hard to teach history to a five and seven year old. I have so many history books. One of my favorites thus far is A Child's History of the World.. I also have a few DK, Time, and various history books geared towards children. For now I have decided to just introduce the concept of history using Connect the Thoughts curriculum. I am also trying to present history with engaging stories. A Child's History of the World is perfect for this. We kicked off our history lesson with a family time line.



We began with their grandparents. We will continue to build upon our timeline so they can see that history is always in the making. As we begin with US and world history they can relate current historical events to their family story.

We continue our measurement unit and learned about temperature. Ice water and ice both measure 40 degrees Fahrenheit. I would have thought that ice would be 32. Our freezer was about 27. We even took the temperature outside, but this particular food thermometer only goes up to 80 degrees. Being in Texas, the gauge was far to the right. I plan on getting a cooking thermometer that has Celsius and Fahrenheit so we can play with temperature more.

Trip to the museum

Today's math lesson was measuring volume. We counted how many cups equal a quart and a pint. We also used this worksheet. I poured the given amount in a pot and then the kids used a measuring cup to see how many cups of water was inside the pot. I was hoping they would be able to determine how many cups just by looking at the worksheet, but they didn't seem to grasp the concept until we executed it.



Once a month, our local museum offers a free admission. They have activities, a tour, and story time. We didn't make it in time for the tour, so we walked around ourselves. The kids had a scavenger hunt. They had to find their favorites. BoBo said his favorite animal was an armadillo. I didn't think that he would find one, but lo and behold we found one!



Today's activity was making bubble print. They really enjoyed it. I think we will try it again sometime soon.



I found a new favorite piece. It is called Nature or Abundance. I love all the colors. MiMi's favorite food is fruit so she enjoyed it as well. My favorite part is the picture of a mother nursing her child.

How tall am I?

One of the many advantages of homeschooling is that we can be as flexible as we need with our schedule. The kids took a bit of a break while I prepared for finals. Now that I have much more time on my hands during my summer break, I can focus more on homeschooling. Today we began our "semester." Today they learned about living vs nonliving. They categorized animals into different groups. I will make a game out of it this week. I'm trying to make math more fun. We were unsuccessful with Right Start Math. So this year I'm ditching the curriculum and trying to just play with math. Today we learned about measuring. We traced their outlines and measured them in inches, Jenga Blocks, square tiles, Mimi's feet, Bobo's feet, and my feet. Then we graphed the data. With this lesson, they took away the smaller the measure of the unit, the bigger the measurement. We will continue to explore measurement this week.

Science Giveaway

Secular Homeschool is having their monthly giveaway. This time it's Science Fusion! I think the kids will love this! You can enter here.