Where did June GO?

Wow where did the month go? Well here is the short version.......Sunday Nights we had passing league, three camps, one week at boys state in Marshall. Lifting 5 days a week. And yes the boys were at football camp in Duluth during the flood. Hard to believe Tabor will be a sophomore in college, Tanner will be a senior and Dalton is going to be a sophomore this fall! With the boys getting older my desire to spend four nights a week in gym watching sports my kids were not in......it was time for a change. So a great opportunity came to me back in the business world. Kinda nice to be getting paid by a private company for a regular day job and not a public school pay rate. Looking forward to July.....spending time at the lake and drivers training with Dalton.

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!

Intentional Summer 2012

With our children getting older, more social and just down right busy we are finding it more difficult to have quality family time.  So we had a family meeting and decided to be intentional about it.  We brainstormed fun family activities, made a list and are planning some fun family time.

Shay has her first job and is working 35 hours a week. We are realizing that we could only have 2 more years with her home (she wants to go to BYU).  She is quite "friend" focused and wants to spend all spare time with her buddies.

Derek is busy with swim team, weight class, and lifeguard training.  If he's home he either wants to read or play computer games.

At least Kevin and Kinsey still like to hang out with Mom and Dad....sometimes.

Here are a few pictures of what we've been able to do so far...we're determined enjoy these years!!

 Took a day trip to Payson and hiked the Natural Bridge.  Here it is behind us.  We didn't plan on it being cold..afterall, it's been in the 100's.  The kids resorted to hiking wrapped in blankets from the car..

 Isn't this some beautiful scenery?  Hard to believe it looks like this not that far from Mesa.  It was a fun day, good exercise and great company:)

This week we drove to our local peach farm.  We Spent the morning picking 18 lbs of peaches, tasting

all things peach in the bakery and deciding what to make when we got home.

We decided on fruit leather, peach butter, and 6 pints of canned peach cobbler filling....YUM!

We have lots more fun things planned.  If you have fun ideas that your family loves to do together leave a comment....I'd love to hear.

 

Happy Birthday Tanner!

Today Tanner turned 17!  Tanner has just completed his Jr year in high school and thanks to college in the classroom he has completed Econ, Bio and college English!  Tanner has a busy summer planned, next Sunday he travels to Marshall for Boys State.  A couple of camps for Football and Wrestling and boom the month of June is gone.  Tanner will be working behind the plate for several youth baseball games and has another job working at the car wash.