Journey to Excellence

Dawson started a new unit on Oceanography with is study of the Age of Exploration. He suggested that we go to the Oklahoma Aquarium. Because it is mucho expensive, we squeezed in a quick trip on Tuesday because it was the last Homeschool Day of the school year and the price was greatly reduced. We had planned to go to an educational class that afternoon about Oklahoma Aquatics, but Pizza Hut was calling our names so we did that instead. For me, a fish is a fish is a fish. Perhaps if we were doing a fish study I would be more interested. But for some reason aquariums have never interested me much. Dawson and Brynne enjoyed it, though. Brynne observed every single exhibit and wanted to know what everything was. Of course her favorite was Nemo . Dawson was the only one brave enough to touch things and feed the turtles. We did learn a few things, like: All clown fish start out as males and when their one female dies, a male transforms into a female; Male seahorses carry the ba...

Well, this one is late! We had such a beautiful weekend here this weekend that we spent it outdoors doing gardening and yard projects. I didn't have my usual day of sitting in my chair, catching up on DVR'd shows while planning lessons, inputting grades and posting my wrap-up. I am starting this week feeling behind! While Dawson is working on some vocabulary cards for our new read, Swiss Family Robinson , I thought I'd work on my wrap-up. Dawson ~ 8th Grade We finished up our unit on The Middle Ages last week, and that usually means watching some videos and doing some cooking. We watched King Arthur and Tristan and Isolde and Dawson cooked spaghetti with garlic and herbs and herb tomato crostini for our family for dinner on Thursday night. He took lots of tests to finish the unit, two language arts review tests and his Science test. I typically prepare a study guide for Dawson on his units and then a pretty difficult test. This science one was over plant scien...

A new hobby of Brynne's is finding things that are shaped like the state of Oklahoma. She cracks me up with what she comes up with! And she always amazes me that she really did find something. A piece of farm equipment we saw while on our way to our airport field trip. Blurry pic, but I was driving. A small piece of bark washed up on the beach in Pensacola. This girl is a scream. Really, just spend a day with her and you'll be amazed.

Every other Friday Brynne and I go grocery shopping. I am one that makes a very specific list based on a very specific menu with a very specific amount of money. We go to Aldi and then the Walmart Supercenter. Brynne loves to go to the grocery store and she is a huge help. I came across these cool downloads at Reading Rockets ~ Grocery Store Activity Sheets . I am definitely going to take a couple of these with us on our next trip to the store (this Friday.) She will love them!

Wow. This school year is all but over! I can't believe it! Between now and the end of the school year, we will be doing the following: Dawson ~ 8th Grade Exploration Period, focusing on Swiss Family Robinson (for 17 days of school) Renaissance and Restoration periods, until the last day of school, with an end-of-school trip to The Renaissance Festival . Lots of pre-algebra, language arts reviews, typing, spanish and science units going along with the above-units. Brynne ~ 1st Grade Our last week of For the Birds , with focus book The Perfect Nest . Three week of Easter studies. Since Earth Day falls the Friday before Easter, we will study Earth Day the last week of April with some really fun books and activities. We will spend April 30th making May Baskets to deliver to Brynne's friends, in cognito, on May 1st. The Month of May ~ a study on the Milly-Molly-Mandy series. We will be doing a couple of weeks of study on both Time and Money and will also be focusing...

We had a great week this week! I think we have finally hit our stride. Pretty good considering we are three quarters of the way through our school year, huh? We have tweaked and changed and come up with a schedule that works pretty good. I think we are all happy with it! Our schedule is working great for us. And it's not at all how I set out to do school when we started this journey. It's amazing how much I have changed in this process so far. Dawson ~ 8th Grade Things were seeming a little stale in Dawson's studies of The Middle Ages , so I made sure he had some other activities to do this week. He drew a Cartoon castle . He made garlic chive cream cheese spread and dill veggie dip, using fresh herbs . We studied the Black Plague , and I wanted to demonstrate it to him. I found a simulated game, but tweaked it a bit. I drew a map including five cities our character traveled in Adam of the Road . I then took 50 lima beans and put them in a lunch sack. On 15 ...

Our For the Birds study has been more than fun and educational ... it has set the pace for how we will do studies from here on out. We have found that the best way to learn for us is to take a Focus Book and build our lessons from it. We only have one more book to complete our series. Then we will be moving on to a three-week series on Easter. To see the entire series of For the Birds lessons, you can go here . Next week we will read and do activities based on the book The Perfect Nest written by Catherine Friend and illustrated by John Manders. And here are the activities we will be doing ... * Making an edible nest . Thanks, Stacey, for the great idea! * Making a beautiful nest by making a small yarn bowl and adding blown eggs. * Providing nest balls for our feathered friends. We will use old onion and apple bags, fill them with yarn, cotton, string, scraps of fabric, etc., and hang them outside for the birds to use in building their nests. * Watching a live eagle...