More Education...

I mentioned before that Chris takes the boys to the Lowe's Build and Grow workshops every other Saturday.  It's a great time for daddy-son bonding and the boys are always excited about what they get to build.  They also get patches for each workshop to sew on their Lowe's aprons.  Gabriel is usually the only one who cares about the patches and asks me to sew his on his apron each time they come home.  But recently they completed a three series workshop making a train and two train cars and each came with three different patches that fit together to make a patch train.  Anyways, Christopher wanted his sewn together, so I thought it was a great time to teach him to sew.

I'm not a great sewer and I've messed up when sewing Chris' rank on his uniforms so many times that he'd rather pay someone to do it rather than let me even try anymore.  I have a sewing machine that I did okay with, even making those mini crayon rolls once for birthday party favors, but there's something wrong with it now and I have no idea where to even begin tyring to figure out how to fix it.  So I sew the patches on the kids' Awana uniforms and Gabe's Lowe's apron by hand.  Chris does it sometimes too so I figured it was time to let Christopher try it.  He did fine, and now it's one of those things that he'll know how to do well enough to survive. 

I should write that on a list somewhere so I can check it off. 

Back to our Rome to the Reformation school work...

We learned all about Rome this school year, the fall of Rome, the Dark Ages, the Muslim conquests, and the Crusades.  Toward the latter part of all that, we learned about the feudal system, which is where castles and knights and swords come in.  It was very popular subject with my boy.

We put together a card stock castle and the boys gathered their Lego guys to have battles with it.

I love how much my boys take after my husband...this tongue-out-while-concentrating thing is from him.

We took a trip to Disney World right after this (and I took hundreds of pictures of course) and while we were there the boys and I went to the Medieval Times Dinner Show with my dad and his girl friend to see "real" knights in action.  It was really fun and we had to eat dinner with our hands and drink soup out of the bowls real authentic-like. 

Gabe wore our knight costume there...so cute!

Our pickiest eater would only eat the bread dessert.

When we got home the kids were all in to mock fighting with swords and they made these coats-of-armor (shields) for a school project. 

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Our homeschool group organized a Valentine's Day party that we went to and consumed mass amounts of sugar.  It's nice to get together to do the fun parts of public school that our kids miss out on at home. 

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We finished up our study of anatomy and physiology a few weeks ago and said goodbye to our skeleton the boys named Bob Bones.

We spent a lot of time with him and learned all about his innards.  It was a fun study and the boys got really into it.  I think this is our favorite year of science.

Especially since now we have started our Astronomy semester.  We just started our third week and the kids are really into the reading (using Apologia Astronomy) as well as the experiments.  I've been pretty good at taking pictures of that, so I'll be able to update that regularly hopefully.  We've also just started learning about the ancient far east...China, Japan, etc. 

I'll really try to remember to be more regular with blogging for these last 11 weeks of our school year!

Remember Us? An Update About our Schooling.

I really hate that I'm not updating my blog very often because we are having an awesome year of school.  I think I've mentioned this before...when I have thought of history in the past, I never would think of the word interesting.  But I am loving it as I "teach" it.  And I use that word in quotation marks because along with teaching it, I am learning it as well, right along with my kids.  I can not say enough positive things about My Father's World, and how they choose such great books to go with their curriculum.

Unfortunately I have not been taking as many pictures of our schooling as usual.  A lot of this year is mainly just reading good books and not as many projects which means pictures wouldn't be as interesting.  But I have taken a few.  Since I really haven't put many on here from this school year, I'll just do them all now, and try to give little explanations of each.

Back in October we were learning about aquaducts and bridges in ancient Rome and how strong they were because of the arch supporst under them.  We tested it out for ourselves.  Making a bridge out of a index card, we tested out how strong it was with arch supports underneath it and without.

                                  without

                                  with

Later that month, we joined some other homeschooling families at the library co-op and learned about music from some local musicians.

Leah will call pretty much anything she does "preschool", so I guess I can count the girls doing a puzzle as school. 

And on that note, Anna finding the caramel sauce could be consided learning as well.  You know, curiousity, fine motor skills, etc...

It's always fun to discover a caramel covered toddler.  :o)

Okay, we're up to November.  I guess I have a few more pictures that qualify as school than I thought.

We got together with our new homeschool group and the kids had a blast with the other children and all that there was to do at this house.  Zip lining down the tree house in a baby swing was fun, and the backyard chickens were an even bigger hit. 

This has renewed my desire for backyard chickens.  If only our HOA would allow them...

I felt super brave one day and decided to make home made Thanksgiving cards with the kids to send to our family.  It involved paint.  And my five kids. 

Then we joined our homeschool group again for a Thanksgiving potluck.  The kids did a great job making Christmas cards for deployed Air Force men and women.

December...our library co-op had another fun meeting, this time a carpentry workshop.  The boys got to cut, drill and hammer a toolbox together.  It was really neat.  Chris takes them to the Lowe's Build and Grow workshops but they only hammer there, so this was a new, fun experience for them.  And can you imagine going to the library when this was going on?  It was actually one of the librarians who led this workshop for us though!

So while I don't have a lot of pictures of our actual formal homeschooling work, it makes the fun and educational things we do outside of the formal work more noticible, and they are definately part of my children's education.  I'll have to come do some more updating later...out of time!