Australia's Outback

I'm behind again! But we've been so busy getting ready for the Kid's 1st Ever Christmas Cantata that I really haven't had any time to blog. Plus I get discouraged because I think I'm the only one who reads this blog and even though I want this as a virtual yearbook for us, it's not enough motivation to get me to slow down and do it!
 Anyways! We studied Australia before we took off for our Christmas Cantata/Thanksgiving break. I really enjoyed this country because we were able to look at a lot of things on the Great Barrier Reef. I've wanted to visit this reef for 10 years now so it's somewhere nice to study ;-) I wanted the kids to watch Crocodile Dundee but Netflix doesn't have it in their instant que..can you believe that?
 So for Australia we made their flag, made Aborignie Bark Paintings, watched videos online from National Geographic and then a video on Netflix from them. Read from our Living World Encyclopedia and Living World books. Listened to music from our Children Around The World CD and then we were able to go to the Outback Steakhouse in Branson! We actually went to the bar not the restaurant because the restaurant just didn't have much that appealed to us and their alligator tail was more expensive which was weird. We sat on the top floor at the bar and we were the only ones up there so we played some pool and enjoyed trying the food. Ben was the only one who liked the alligator... I had tried it in Florida and it was fine there but not so great here in Missouri. It must have been much fresher there ;-)

 In the end Asher really like the Kangaroos and Alligators from Australia and Aybrin liked the Great Corral Reef and the Alligators. I think they both thought it was cool that some kids did their school by communicating with a teacher over a radio! It's a neat and diverse country.

Fun School Week 8

We started off this week by preparing our barn for our Christmas Cantata. We were going to do it all outside and have big bonfires going, until we practiced outside and realized how noisy the highway is and how small the kids voices are. The inside of the barn needed a lot of work. We had to move the storage stuff, get rid of the groundhogs (which were never trapped but hopefully they're gone), fill up the groundhog holes, level the floor, spread the hay and put up old tin. You would fall through the floor because of the groundhog holes so we HAD to have it fixed. I love family though. After church we all got together and got it done! Now we're going to work on getting chairs, heaters, decorations and plastic for the windows and we should be good. So much to do, so little time! It's only a month away! If you don't know about it and want to know, just email me and I'll give you the details. We're hoping for a big crowd and would love to have all the friends and family possible.

Then we studied Christopher Columbus for Columbus Day. The kids made these cool books and we went over the story, did mazes, puzzles, that sort of thing. 

 We've slowed down on Asher's letters and I've been trying to review what we've learned instead. I just don't think he's completely ready yet. Maybe in a few months. We're still trying but doing lots of review. So here's the ABC puzzle he worked on one day.

 More Christopher Columbus work!

 This is our science experiment. We were studying Canada and how cold it gets there. We cut out feathers and put oil on one of them to show how the birds make oil naturally and it helps water run off of them instead of soaking in and making the bird really cold. It was neat.

 Then we were blessed to see this amazing rainbow. It's the biggest one I've ever seen. We could actually see both ends of it which was SOOOO awesome! It was raining and Ben said "You want to go look for rainbows?" So we trouped outside, turned around and found this awesome one! There is a faint double rainbow beside it which was really hard to see, but I've heard that means a harsh winter. We saw one like that last year and as you know, our winter was really harsh last year. I hope it's wrong!

Alrighty I'm almost caught up! Whohoo! It's only taken me 5 hours (literally)! Then tonight I'll have to post week 9 and I'll be good to go!

Fun School Week 7

 When we finish up a country we are eating a meal from that country. A Mexican Fiesta it is! This was an easy country for us. First off, we just visited Mexico this past summer and secondly we eat tacos all the time! We really like Mexican food! We didn't want tacos though so we did quesadillas, chicken taquitos and churros! YUMO!

 We made a quick pinata from a grocery sack. I wish I would've gotten a picture of it so you could have seen it but here are part of the kids breaking the pinata.

We've been really enjoying the outdoors. Here's a picture of Asher checking out our tomatillos. They really took off this year! We made roasted tomatillo salsa which was superb!

The boys also have been picking up walnuts. We had two big totes full and got $5.20 whohoo! LOL! There's a ton more to pick up so I'm hoping they do it soon. 

 Ben has been working on our silly hot tub for 2 weeks now. UGH. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon!

 The boys grew carrots for the first time this year. They're both heirloom seeds, Asher's is suppose to be round and fat while Aybrin's is long.

 I also downloaded this Spanish color game to help with our Spanish.

 Mapping Canada! So we went from the US, punched our passport in Mexico and then headed north to Canada.

Fun School Week 6

I hardly have any pictures from this week. Jonna had my camera! We made elephant shapes from the letter "e" and did lots of fun things. Oh well. Here is what I do have. The boys made a "rocket ship" out of linking logs for their gerbils:

 We were blessed to see this hot air balloon outside of our house! We even watched it landing. The boys were outside jumping on the trampoline and started yelling for us to come outside. I'm so glad they were out there. We watched it until it was landed on the other side of the hill, 10 minutes tops. We would have missed it if they weren't outside.

We also did an egg experiment to go with the letter "e". We wanted to see if the egg would float in water. We recorded our results. Then we hypothesised about whether it would float if we added salt. It did!

OK, now for something that's not school!

Although we did learn a ton on this excursion, I'm not putting it as part of our school. I'm getting bored with only posting school stuff (grins). 

When we were first looking at buying this house the word "alpacas" sprang to mind. I have no idea why. Maybe I'm being led? Let me tell you, I've never seen alpacas in person, in my life. I had never read a book on alpacas. So why would this interest me out of the blue? Maybe it's God? I don't have a clue! So I went to the library and could only find one book and it was on Llamas not Alpacas. I read it anyway. Then through the SHEM home school group, I found out about Alpaca Days. So we took off to find alpacas a year after the thought of alpacas was planted in my head. I didn't know what we would think about them. I thought maybe we'd get there and they'd be ugly and messy so the thought would be smashed. The opposite happened. We drove up and I said "Oh my goodness. They're SOOOO cute!" They're also a lot smaller than I thought, Aybrin's about as tall as them, so they're not scary. They're very gentle and not messy. They're awesome, as are the people who own the farm. Now we want two!

After we drove out to see the alpacas, we went ahead to the Fair Grove craft fair. We go to this and the Ozark craft fair every year because they are the best ;-) It was a great day. What beats sunshine and family?

Fun School Week 5

Here we are in fun school week 5. I'm only 4 weeks behind now! The tree the boys are climbing in these pictures has now turned a yellowish/orange! Sa la vie. 

The was Asher's first time climbing a really big tree! September 2011. He also fell head first out of the said tree. Then he decided to try again and succeeded. I'm telling you, the boy has the toughest head ever! And determination. What a great combination. He'll need that in life for sure.

Aybrin has been climbing trees for about 3 years now. This is one of his favorite things to do outside. 

They found a bird's nest while they were up there, no birds though. Climbing trees is an awesome nature study experience! The view is spectacular I'm sure.

I spy two cute boys. Can you find them?

We did some more candy corn math during Aybrin's math drill time.

Here is Asher working on his "C" stuff. In  the top picture he's putting the caterpillars in order smallest to largest. You can also see the page where he circles all the "c"s in the story. Below he is designing his craft with cotton balls. I love the look on his face! He's made that look twice now for the blog and he usually doesn't have that face so it's awesome that I got it on camera!

Our "c" crafts... crabs and camillions.

We are studying different countries for our main curriculum this year. We were so excited because Dodo Fisher was performing "A walk through Jerusalem" in Branson. The day of the show we even had to find Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Judea on the globe. God just worked all of this out! He sung songs from Jerusalem and then he even started this line of dancing that we were apart of, of course! It was just really neat. I love homeschooling because we can do things like this to go along with what we're studying. If they were in public schools I wouldn't have know to take them to this show and I would've worried about them being out too late.

More letter C stuff. Aybrin is reading Asher the Hungry Caterpillar and Asher has to sequence the story by stringing the pictures. At the end it all goes into the cocoon or chrysalis (a paper bag). It goes behind my back. Then when he gets a bag back the stuff inside is replaced with a butterfly. I thought it sounded cool but Asher was too smart for it. He kept saying "I know the other bag is behind your back!"

Some caramel apples pre diet. Jonna said she had some in California dipped in caramel, then white chocolate,then sprinkled with cinnamon. We tried it. They were really good! They're home made too instead of $6 an apple!

 This last picture shows the kids filling out their passports. They have these passports so we can visit other countries throughout our school year. It's neat too because they have real passports and had to use them when we visited Mexico this year so they understood what they were and the importance of them. They'll get a country sticker for each new country we visit. It's also a great time to brush up on their address and birthdays.

Fun School Week 4

I am SO behind on posting. We're currently working on week 7 and I haven't even posted week 4 on here! Sorry. We went to a wedding for my cousin the weekend of this week so it's just thrown me for a loop. My usual blogging time was instead spent getting us all ready for a wedding then traveling to and from the wedding. But I digress. On to week 4...

 We studied the letter B again this week. Here's Asher's collage letter with beans.

 We played our "Going on a Bear Hunt" game for math one day.

 We made butterflies out of lower case b's.

Aybrin was able to use these candy corns for his math drills. Can you tell I'm in the mood for fall?

For cake decorating class Grandma Russell taught the kids how to make clown cupcakes. It was a lot of fun! Even if my house was so hot that the icing kept melting!

 Covering letters with the foamies.

 For our big art activity of the week the kids made Native American shields. We're studying the United States this week so it was neat to make these. They added feathers and drew pictures of crosses and other symbols that they associated with God's protection.

 We made the United States flag from construction paper and a sponge that we cut into a star shape. I was going to sew all the flags and make them really neat, but decided at the last minute to go with construction paper. Why you ask? Because I have the construction paper and it will actually get done this way! See... I know my limits ;-)

 Aybrin was able to make this neat robot which picks up a box he made.

 Asher did patterning with Thanksgiving themed foamies.

I think that wraps up what I've taken pictures of. We also did a lot of science, english, spelling, math and reading but they're not as fun to take pictures of. Well I have to go see the Oswald Aybrin just drew. He's an aspiring artist ;-)