God’s Eyes and Apple Eating

This morning’s handwork was making Eye of God and/or a woven spider web.  The kids enjoyed it so much they continued to make them for most of the afternoon, especially Cyan.  She has made 4 so far.  All more beautiful than the last!

This is Alex’s:

Isn’t it lovely!?! I just love how he used the blue in the midst of all these drab colors.

This afternoon was dedicated to using up the last of two laundry baskets of apples we had gotten from a dear friend.  I made batch after batch of applesauce.  And after I was done and tired of it, Cyan took over and made yet another batch.  We now have 18 quarts in the garage and more in the kitchen and still had enough left over for some for dinner tonight!

In Logan’s last workbox today was ‘make fresh apple pie with mommy’ and he just loved helping me prepare a pie for the family.  We made the whole thing from scratch and fresh apples.  No store bought dough or pie filling in this baby… Logan really honed his rolling pin skills!

With the left over dough he got to make his own little ‘pielette’. He just LOVED that!

As I put the kids to bed this evening I realized that even my ‘treat’ to myself tonight was apple:

Tis the season!

Happy FALL!!!

First day of school ~ Interviews

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Interview with Logan ~ First day of Kindergarten

“I HAVE A LOOSE TOOTH!!!!”

Favorites:

Color - Golden

Season - Winter with the snow, but wait!  Halloween!  Those are both my favorites!

Food - Pizza!  Corn chowder and mac & cheese, and tomato soup.

Animal - It’s a River Monster - an Alligator Gar - but I haven’t watched all their seasons yet so I don’t know.  Something could be cooler.

What do you want to learn about this year?

I want to learn two things - piano and ninja moves.  I already know one.  I know how to build stuff pretty well.  I didn’t say I want to learn it…  just that I know how.

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Interview with Cyan ~ First day of 6th Grade

Favorites:

Color - Peach (Like a sunset)

Season - Depends on the sun or snow.  Seriously, it depends on how much sun or snow there is.  Cuz if there’s lots of sun yu can go swimming and if there’s lots of snow you can go snowmobiling and that’s tons of fun!

Food - Potatoes

Animal - Horse

What would you like to learn this year?

More history with my friends.  I think the books “Love that Dog” and “Hate that Cat” were really good so I want to learn more about poetry and stuff like that.  I want to do singing lessons because I want to be a singer and I want to be a babysitter for dogs and children.  Like taking care of dogs.  Kinda want to learn how to make crepes because Alex doesn’t always want to do it… and pancakes!  I want to learn more about how to be in movies.  I think that would be cool. 

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Interview with Alex ~ First day of 10th Grade

Favorites:

Color - Ocean Blue

Season - Spring - I love all the colors.

Animal - felis domesticus - Cat

Food - Sliced apples and pickles

What do you want to learn this year?

I want to learn how to socialize and how to blow things up with chemicals.  I want to learn how to play the piano and how to actually draw stuff.  I want to learn basic gymnastics cuz I feel like I’d be good at it but I’d be terrified to do a flip cuz I feel like I’d break my neck!  I also want to learn to write fancy (calligraphy) and how to sing.  OH!  Walk a tightrope.  And photography.  That’s all.  Oops, I forgot, I want to learn to dance, too.

Let the school year begin!!!

5th Grade Praying Mantis Lapbook

Cyan’s Praying Mantis Lapbook has several pages added.  I used this story starter page and these worksheet pages from ABCteach.com, and then a few pages from Homeschool Bin. 

I simply stapled the pages to the center portion of the lapbook so they worked like a flip up book.

She also made this: Praying Mantis Cutout (remember to print on cardstock!)

Under the pages she had tons of mini books with information on them. 

She did nearly all of the mini books from the HomeschoolShare.com Praying Mantis Animal Study Lapbook.

She also added some pictures and captions from our own mantis hatching experience. 

My favorite part of this lapbook was a few days after it was done.  I have a few friends that we gave baby mantis to when we had ours… one of them asked if Cyan could help her kids do a lapbook that was similar.  She was able to tell them ALL about mantis, their lifecycle, what they eat, their body structure.  It was cool to hear how much she retained from doing this project!  That is my favorite part of unit studies… the kids retain SO much!

Praying Mantis Preschool Lapbook

The preschool version was simple yet every time he looks at it he can tell me all sorts of neat things about the mantis.  Here is a walkthrough of his lapbook:

This is the outside of the lapbook. All of these resources were found at HomeschoolShare.com under ‘Praying Mantis Animal Lapbook’.

When opened it has pictures from our hatching mantis babies and Logan’s captions which I wrote out under each picture.

The flap in this section has the largest and the smallest mantis fold out.

This section holds the most fold outs.  The anatomy of a mantis, complete with all sections of an insect which goes along with this song:  (To the tune of BINGO)

I am an insect in my life,

and this is what I look like,

two antennae, compound eyes,

one, two, three, four, five, six legs,

Thorax and an abdomen,

and this is what I look like!

The other flaps are what mantis eat, where mantis live,

and the life cycle of a mantis.  (All dictated by Logan, but written by me.)

THe other side has two flaps that are simply named “Fun Facts” and Logan got to add whatever he wanted in there.  We had just watched Kung Fu Panda and the video from here so this is what I got for the first one:

Lol!

Next up is Cyan’s lapbook for the mantis (5th grade) which is much more detailed, but this one was just a lot of fun!

Art on a June Afternoon

We had some friends over for a fun afternoon of learning about artistic texture.  Cyan drew Samson, our marmalade tabby cat.  She was very proud of her progress!

Workboxes 4/24

Box #1 - Getting to the last part of Bambi by Felix Salton

Box #2 - Nature Study!  Today we studied squirrels and fern fronds.

We read about Feisty the Squirrel in our Ecojournals and the illistration on the side made Logan ask questions. 

It was such a PERFECT time to ask about fern fronds that I made him put his rainboots back on come out and look at our ferns.  The fronds are different…  They do not curl quite as much as the ones in the book, but they were still really fun to look at!

Cyan found a safe spot from the rain under the eves and drew a beautiful picture of our broken cherry tree that is currently blooming.

Box #3: Into the Forest game of food chains!  Both kids thought this was fun. 

Box #4 - Bob Book #4 and he passed it with flying colors!

Box #5 - Spindle Boxes to work on numbers. 

These are self correcting so it was cool to see him figure out what he was supposed to do and correct himself.

Box #6 - Writing his name with the proper spaces and case.  This still needs some work, but he’s got his whole name down really well (readable to anyone) so I am not pushing hard… just working slowly.

Box #7 - 1 - 10 Dot to Dot.  I added a ruler so he could make better straight lines.

Box #8 - Kumon book page from First Rhyming Words

Box #9 - pattern blocks.  It’s the first one I have added that has no color coding to it.  He did GREAT although he used pieces I wouldn’t have, which actually thrilled me because he figured it out all on his own.

Box #10 - This one has no picture and I am not sure why, but it was a movie on Geography and Maps from the library.  It had a lot of new vocabulary so we will be visiting it again before I expect him to apply any of the information, but it’s good to get those mental boxes started with good info early. 

A moment with the weightless…

I just love this picture.  Of course, it’s horrible quality, and it’s on the wrong setting for the light source… but the looks on Logan’s face is completely “Logan”…  and Cyan is SO proud!  It’s just an adorable capture of a sweet moment with my two middle kiddos.