Friday, December 29, 2017

Planning for High School and Beyond



I have been searching the internet for some extras for Joey and Brayden.  I wanted to share some programs that I found (Not all links are free.):

Home Economics 
Home and Economics with Howcast
High School Home Economics with Plain and Not So Plain
Creative Living Skills from Glencoe
An Old Fashioned Education
Cooking/Food Safety
Cleaning
Teaching Your Child to Clean with FREE Homeschool Deals
Chore Cards from Five J’s
Lessons from Clorox
Printable Chore ChartHome Cleaning with Pinterest
Gardening

Kids Gardening
My First GardenGardening for Kids, Fun and Inspiring Ideas
Sewing and other Needle Crafts
Crafts and Fabric LinksSewing Book, Lessons for beginners
Online Video Lessons by Craftsy
Easy Sewing Projects for Kids
History of Fashion and Design Tutorials
Share your designs on DIY!
Crothet Lessons with Craftyminx
Managing Money
Practical Money Skills Lessons,  Resources,  and GamesVisual Economics for Kinder-2nd grade
Hands-on Banking for All ages
Checkbook LessonsMoney Instructor, “a reality based personal finance course for young adults”
Financial Literacy for High School
Consumer Math Worksheets
Economics Lessons for Elementary to High School
Family Online Links for Economic
High School Financial Planning Program
Nutrition
Social Media and Technology
Other Life Skills


Friday, December 22, 2017

Cacao Beans, Layers of the Ocean, & Grandma Comes Home...



After two weeks in the hospital, mom got to come home.  She tires easily, but she's glad to be home!!

I'm still struggling health-wise.  I can't get into the specialist until the end of February.  So I'm just living with my issues and hope for the best with flare-ups.  I will have to make some adjustments to try to keep myself mentally on track.  That's one of the biggest hurdles...keeping my brain on track.  I rather used to the pain, so even though that is frustrating, I'll survive.  I'm in the process of drastically cutting back on some of our outside activities.

Here's how our week went...

Science

The girls and I are continuing going through our Oceans Unit study.  This week we discussed the Layers of the Ocean, and printed this set of animals to create posters.  Layers of the ocean printables





We also learned about coral reefs...we had examples we brought home from Florida a couple years ago.  So we pulled these out and examined them.





Geography

Our geography studies has us continuing to visit and travel around Central America.  This week we visited Mexico and Panama.

We learned about chocolate/cocoa and it's importance in Mexican history...


They studied the ancient ways of making the Mayan/Aztec chocolate drink.




We ordered whole cacao beans...


Roasted them...our whole house smelled like brownies baking.


Had to peel them

Grind them

Then made mayan hot cocoa.  The girls did not like it.  They decided buying cocoa powder from the store is much easier.


Watched this geography video:



Our Mexico meal was Oven Chimichangas...a favorite


Panama

Panama Canal - How Stuff Works


Welcome to Panama

We had papaya and mangoes with our lunch that day.  I taught them how to peel the fruit. Lydia is my only tropical fruit kiddo.  The others didn't enjoy the tropical fruit...it was sad.




This is the sheet I make for each country we study.  It singles out specific geographical and tourist spots in each country.  I also print flags for them to color and print extra information that we read through.  We keep all these papers in their World Geography notebook broken down with tabs for each country.



Some of our book resources this week...



Math

This week Lydia's math ran a lot smoother.  We did a lot of review with fractions and solving simple equations.  She still struggles, and I'm not sure why.  Today she struggled with remembering mixed fractions, which we reviewed and she seemed to have down.  She can find the improper fraction from the mixed number, but not the reverse of that.  So we'll be practicing that more this next week.


A friend recommended this book for me to use alongside.  I added it to help explain with visual pictures.


Home Ec

This week in Home Ec, the kids were to prepare dinner.  So I picked out a couple easy dinner recipes and added them to our dinner rotation.  The boys worked together, although I should have made them do individual...lol.  That would've helped me out a lot...lol

The boys made bubble pizza.  This recipe is close to what they made.  It's a recipe in my mind...lol.  I had the boys add garlic powder and parmesan cheese to the biscuit pieces and stir them around, before they added the pizza sauce and cheese.  They only added cheese this time because they can never agree on toppings.





The first day of winter is almost here, so we're pulling out our snowmen and snowflakes and packing up our fall decorations.  The girls found some wooden snowmen figures to paint at Hobby Lobby.  





I gave in and we went to see Star Wars on Friday am.  The boys and Lydia were dying to see it.  Caty and I on the other hand were not so excited (we are not Star Wars fans).  But in the end, we all enjoyed it.  I was surprised at the amount of jokes in it.


We got a few inches of snow finally, and Caty missed sledding last year.  So she begged and begged and begged.  After the movie and running errands, I took the girls to a local hill to go sledding.  Caty forgot how much walking there is.  She cracked me up.




This week the girls covered more of Ancient Rome and their army in their history, including the life of Jesus.  So I decided it was a good idea for all of us to watch The Bible mini-series that aired on network television a couple years ago.  It's streaming on Netflix right now.  It was great review for the girls, since it covers most of what they have studied in their history so far this year.  The boys we had great discussions and reminders about our Bible studies.  We also were able to have wonderful discussions about contradictions in the movie and the actual Biblical record.

During one episode, there was a lot of battles, and Caty was a little scared, so she started working on a mosiac kit we have had for years.  She could listen to what was going on, but not see it.


This week, I started Brayden in his Personal Finance program.  This week he learned about why it's important to track your money and also about checking accounts.  He learned how to write checks and balance his checkbook over a couple month period.


Caty has been hinting for a sticker program ... for rewards.  I filled the coffee table with prizes and we are getting started next week.


Friday night I was partying hard....Lesson planning for January.  We have one more week of school this month and then start back up the first week of January.  I read a science unit I bought from Currclick and thought I got both the student and teacher pages.  So I decided to wite-out the answers instead of buying both units...lol.


Joey is almost finished reading Silas Marner.  He's struggling, but making it through with the help of Cliff Notes and his literature program.  Next week he'll get to watch the movie after finishing the book.

That's our week...Hope everyone had a wonderful one too!!

Linking up with other Mom's at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
  
Weekly Wrap-Up



Sunday, December 17, 2017

Latest Addition to our Art Supplies!!



We were so excited to get a chance to review Magic Stix - 12 pack from The Pencil Grip, Inc.

We received the Magic Stix Washable Markers - 12 pack set ($9.99).  The colors are bright and you can do both a broad and fine line with them. They are excellent for school projects and fun coloring!!

But the one detail that set apart Magic Stix from all other markers is their guarantee.   Magic Stix are guaranteed that they will NOT dry out for 7 days if you leave the cap off!!  How many times have we had to throw away markers because of this reason?!?! 

Well, I had a huge issue with my experiment of the Magic Stix guarantee.  My son kept finding my experiment area and replacing the caps...lol.  😂😂  Any other time he would not even replace marker caps.  But I did manage to leave the cap off for several hours, including a full day before he found the new area I was leaving the markers.  Every time I started to color with them, it was as if I just took the cap off.  I was amazed!!

You can see below where I was using them after being left open for several hours.


The red was left out overnight with the cap off...still colored fine the next day.


The girls liked using the Magic Stix for their science posters.  Caty said they wrote smoothly and she was able to make fine lines.


Lydia used a combination of both the Magic Stix markers and of course our favorite, Thin Stix to make her poster.  (The brown area she colored in with Kwik Stix - Thin Stix.)


We LOVE Magic Stix markers.  Our new favorite brand.  We will be purchasing a larger set, so that the girls can stop fighting over them.  I highly recommend adding these to your homeschool supplies.  They are affordably priced and see how few markers you will have to replace!!

Magic Stix markers make a great gift idea!!!  Add them to your wish list today!!!