First Day of School 2014-2015

Daddy started his new job the same day that we started school. So a whole new schedule for everyone. So far it's been fantastic!

Schoolwork

Silas has started art lessons with our friend, Jeff. 

Jeff is a local artist who even has a sculpture on display at the Ozark Botanical Gardens!

He's been teaching Silas primary and secondary colors, and the color wheel.

We also have been having fun with some of the projects for his history curriculum.

They had to build a cutaway of a Roman road using sand, gravel, concrete (or like-substance) and flat stones.

I don't know how I made it through my childhood without Plaster of Paris (our concrete-like substance)! It's been the basis for some of the funnest projects we've done.  (i.e. molds of nuts to imitate fossils, molds of his teeth, making our own seals for letters, and this project, making a road like the Romans.)

It's the Appian Way!

Start of a New School Year

Silas started second grade this year.  We changed up his curriculum and schedule, too.

Eli started Preschool. It was time for him to learn to sit still and do desk work, especially since Silas now does some of his school in the morning while Eli is still awake.

They are both doing great so far, though it's still only the second week. Eli's already advancing in memory work but doesn't seem to grasp the concept of letters, yet. That's okay we'll keep working on it. Silas is doing really well adjusting to his new curriculum. We switched his core subjects from teacher-directed to self-directed. This means he has to set his own goals and learn new concepts mainly through his worktexts. I come in to supplement the teaching when he needs help. He has two subjects, though, that are very teacher-directed and hands on for me. Science and History. We continued Answers in Genesis' science curriculum and changed history to Story of the World. So far we love it.

Those petraglyphs I saw in New Mexico in August came in handy for history. He's studying nomads and the first farmers and one of his history projects was to make cave drawings. I  thought he did pretty well.

So far we've had a great start to the school year. We're taking a pretty relaxed approach to it, with some parts of the schedule set in stone and others not. I hope it continues to work out well for the family's overall schedule.

Crystal Bridges

We recently had a school field trip to Crystal Bridges to see the Norman Rockwell exhibit and we got to take Grandma and Grandpa with us. 

Cameras weren't allowed in the Rockwell exhibit, but we went and had lunch and came back to see the rest of the museum, which does allow photography. 

We went to a seafood place off the square in Bentonville for lunch.  It was a good choice.

Silas with George Washington.

I wonder what Eli thought of the exhibit?

Snow outside! Momma with her boys.

Eli did pretty well while went around all the exhibits, although I did wish for a stroller once or twice.

Daddy with his boys.

Silas with Rosie the Riveter.

We ended up at a bookstore (one of our favorite places) afterwards.  It was a really nice day and a blessing to share it with Grandma and Grandpa.

Making Fossils

Silas is studying rocks in science.  We did this experiment when he learned about fossils and sedimentary rocks.

Eli helped too, by adding cars to the picture.

It's a frequent thing he does.  Everything's better with some toy cars, right?

We got a couple of small toys and nuts and put a thin layer of petroleum jelly on them.  Then we made impressions of them in modeling clay (that's the red and orange stuff you see).  Next we poured some Plaster of Paris into the molds.  Then we went off to church while the plaster dried.

They both love getting to do this type of stuff.

Silas looking at his molds.

When we got back from church it was all dry.  I couldn't get a great picture because of the lighting but this is a 'fossil' of a knight army man.  We could see his shield, helmet and sword really well.

So proud of their creations.  Silas thought it was great and showed off his real fossil to his daddy the next day.

Eli was proud of his little acorn fossil.

First Day of First Grade

Silas started first grade this week!

My awesome five-year-old was so excited to start school because it's "so much fun."

At his new desk area, working on math (which is his favorite).

We start school in the afternoons now.  Since Christian works evenings and is home in the mornings, we decided to make mornings family time and afternoons school time.  It works for now because Eli is asleep and the house is quiet.  

He's trying not to laugh in this photo.  He didn't like his picture being taken.  

This school year is going to be a lot more structured than last year's kindergarten.  He has several more subjects and a lot more work. One of the things that was nice about last year was it was so flexible.  And yet, in the end the flexibility became annoying because it wasn't as high of a priority as it needed to be.  So other things always took precedence, which meant we had to cram in several lessons in one day or find a few minutes to finish up his work. I'm glad we started out slowly and didn't make kindergarten this huge overwhelming venture for him, but I'm ready to make it more 'professional'.  I want school and learning to be fun and exciting for him, but it also needs to be serious and purposeful.  My goal for kindergarten was to ease into homeschooling and instill a love for learning.  Hopefully this year we can combine those two things with the ability to work hard and try his best.  It's only been three days but so far things are going smoothly.

Summer Fun Kids' Projects

I intended this summer to be full of reading with Five-In-A-Row, but my library card expired and I haven't felt like paying for a new one yet (because we live so far out, we don't qualify for the free membership). Instead this summer has so far been filled with science and art projects.

This was a simple, cheap and fun thing to do.  We took an empty cleaning bottle (or a 2L bottle would work) and I let Silas drill a couple dozen holes in it.  Then we simply duck taped it to the garden hose, and voila!  We made a sprinkler!  

We have sturdier and more interesting sprinklers, but sometimes it's fun to take a piece of trash and make it worth something.

Note to self:  next time make sure the garden hose is dry before wrapping it with duck tape.  

As promised, an update to our ivory soap experiment.  This is Eli playing in the bath with it. He loved it (although it's obviously not tear-free and he did get it in his eyes).

 I was a little worried it would stain his skin because of the food coloring, but the soap washed it right off.  I did have a blue ring around my bathtub, but it just gave me motivation to actually clean the tub.

We've been doing a lot of art projects.  This was a birthday banner for a family friend.  Silas did an excellent job painting in the letters.  For Eli, I painted a bunch of glue onto the right side and let him stick all sorts of things on it: feathers, confetti, sequins. 

Our latest project was cloud dough.  A mixture of flour and baby oil, it's intended for sensory play for toddlers.

And this toddler had loads of fun with it.  It's kind of like wet sand, in that you can mold and form it into things.  And as it's been too hot to really enjoy the sand box, this was a good substitute.

I was glad that I put a tablecloth underneath the box.  I just took it outside and shook it off.  The dough made some mess, but most of these projects do.  Or should I say, Eli made a mess.  It wasn't the dough's fault that he couldn't keep it in the box (i.e. see picture below of Silas with bits in his hair).

Silas has issues with getting his hands dirty but he loved this one because the dough is really soft and smelled like babies (clean babies...). 

This was a fun experiment that was easy and cheap to make.  The boys played with it for about 45 minutes, but they could have gone on longer if I let them.

I'm sure we'll be doing more things before the summer's over.  Although I am getting excited about starting my new job as a first grade teacher...of one.

Alice in Modeling Clay

I've been reading Alice in Wonderland to Silas.  It's a weird book!  His favorite part so far is where the Mad Hatter recounts his version of 'Twinkle, Twinkle' and the Queen yells, "He's murdering Time!"  He thought that was great.  So we decided to make the King and Queen, the Cheshire Cat, and Alice out of modeling Clay: 

That's my version of Alice on the left.

This was Silas' version of Alice.

Science Day

The boys and I had two science experiments this week.  The first was 'Gloop' or 'Flubber.'  It's really simple - equal parts school glue and liquid starch.  Once mixed together, it makes this soft silly putty that can be colored, marked on, stretched, cut, etc.  

Eli loved this stuff.  I got out the old markers and let him color on it.  

 He went to town.  He was stretching and pulling it.  He somehow managed to get it in his hair, too.  Thankfully it came out pretty easily in the bath.

Eli lasted a lot longer than Silas with this stuff, amazingly.

It was a great opportunity to try out the desk area in the newly renovated office.

Silas liked cutting it up, mostly because it's a little gooey and he has issues with dirty hands.

Here's the stuff.  I didn't have much school glue so I couldn't make a large quantity, but it was enough for an afternoon of play.

After that we did an experiment with Ivory soap.  I forgot to take pictures of the best part, however.  Put one bar of Ivory soap in the microwave for one minute and it will start to explode into a big cloud.  It's pretty cool.  After it cooled off, the boys were able to play with it a bit, and basically get soap flakes everywhere.  After they got as much fun out of the soap cloud as they could, I put it in the food processor with a little bit of water and mixed it back together.  Then I gave each boy half and let them put a bit of food coloring in it.  

Then we made molds out of my cookie cutters.  It's soap, so I didn't worry too much about what effect it would have on the cutters.  Now that they're dry again, we'll use them in the bath tonight.  I'll have to take pictures of it for an update.