The 14 Days of Homeschool

Someone shared this with me and I thought it would be nice to post:

The 14 days of Homeschooling

The 14 days of Homeschooling (sung to The 12 Days of Christmas)

On the first day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “Can you homeschool legally?”

On the second day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “Are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”

On the third day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “Do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”

On the fourth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “What about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”

On the fifth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “YOU ARE SO STRANGE! What about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”

On the sixth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “How long will you homeschool, YOU ARE S0 STRANGE, what about P.E. , do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”

On the seventh day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “Look at what they’re missing, how long will you homeschool, YOU ARE SO STRANGE!, what about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, do you homeschool legally?”

On the eighth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “Why do you do this, look at what they’re missing, how long will you homeschool, YOU ARE SO STRANGE, what about P.E. do you give them tests, are they socialized, do you homeschool legally?”

On the ninth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “They’ll miss the prom, why do you do this, look at what they’re missing, how long will you homeschool, YOU ARE SO STRANGE!, what about P.E. do you give them tests, are they socialized, do you homeschool legally?”

On the tenth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “What about graduation, they’ll miss the prom, why do you do this, look at what they’re missing, how long will you homeschool, YOU ARE SO STRANGE!, what about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”

On the eleventh day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “I could never do that, what about graduation, they’ll miss the prom, why do you do this, look at what they’re missing, how long will you homeschool, YOU ARE SO STRANGE, what about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”

On the twelfth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “Can they go to college, I could never do that, what about graduation, they’ll miss the prom, why do you do this, look at what they’re missing, how long will you homeschool, YOU ARE SO STRANGE, What about P.E., do you give them tests, are they socialized, can you homeschool legally?”

On the thirteenth day of homeschool I thoughtfully replied: “They Can go to college, yes you can do this, they can have graduation, we don’t like the prom, we do it cuz we like it, they are missing nothing, we’ll homeschool forever, WE ARE NOT STRANGE!, We give them P.E., and we give them tests, they are socialized, AND WE HOMESCHOOL LEGALLY!

On the fourteenth day of homeschool my neighbor said to me, “How can I get started, why didn’t you tell me, where do I buy curriculum, when is the next conference, WILL PEOPLE THINK WE’RE STRANGE? I think we can do this, if you will help us, we’ll join a sports team, and we’ll homeschool legally.

Declaration of Independence

Today we watched, "Liberty's Kids" and is helping us to conclude this last chapter of Volume 2, so we can move on to Volume 3 of Weaver in January. One more week and we'll be finished. Here's some pics of the kids looking at our Declaration of Independence from Williamsburg. The kids later attempted to write with quill pens. They did pretty good. 

If you plan to teach about the Revolutionary War, I would highly suggest "Liberty's Kids" videos. I was able to purchase them from Amazon for a total of $11-that's including shipping. One was only $1.99! The kids love them and my three year old asked to watch it again!

 

 

Sounding the Shofar

Today, our Bible Lesson wasabout the sounding of the shofar: And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece shalt thou make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps.

(Numbers 10:3)

And when they shall blow with them, all the assembly shall assemble themselves to thee at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

(Numbers 10:4)

And if they blow but with one trumpet, then the princes, which are heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee.

(Numbers 10:5)

When ye blow an alarm, then the camps that lie on the east parts shall go forward.

(Numbers 10:6)

When ye blow an alarm the second time, then the camps that lie on the south side shall take their journey: they shall blow an alarm for their journeys.

(Numbers 10:7)

But when the congregation is to be gathered together, ye shall blow, but ye shall not sound an alarm.

(Numbers 10:8)

And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow with the trumpets; and they shall be to you for an ordinance for ever throughout your generations.

(Numbers 10:9)

And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the LORD your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies.

(Numbers 10:10)

 

To hear the sounding of a shofar:

http://www.holidays.net/highholydays/shofar.htm

 

    

    

 

 

  

Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; that they may be to you for a memorial before your God: I am the LORD your God.

 

(Numbers 10:1)

(Numbers 10:2)

High Priests

Here are the kids dressed as a High Priest of Israel. A friend at church made it from felt. She did a great job!

 

 

 

I am excited!

I have a new camara and I finally

 have learned how to put pics on here!

My mom just got back from Israel and bought me a treasure

 I asked for- a shofar!

I love it, now if I can just learn how to blow it...I am so happy!

                         

Tabernacle/High Priest Lapbook

This is why I haven't had the opportunity to blog-we have been working hard on this last chapter of Volume 2 of Weaver. I plan to start Volume 3 in January.

 

Here is a email I sent out to some groups:

 

Wow, after about 6 weeks we have finally finished our Tabernacle/High Priest and Ten Commandments Lap books. We worked sooooooo hard. I didn't have enough room in the house to build the Tabernacle suggested in Weaver, so we did a lap book instead, which was a nice alternative, although I look forward to building it the next time around.

 

Pics of both lap books are in the Pictures section.

 

We used two legal size file folders so we would have enough room to put the furniture of the Tabernacle inside. I spray painted the outsides with gold paint, then went back over them again with glitter paint.

I used to do the same lap book for each of my children, just to get into it and adjust, but starting with the Tabernacle Lap book, I based the lap book on their ages. My kindergartner's lap book has pop up furniture- which he really loved. I thought it would be hard to make, but it wasn't! My 5th grader's furniture covered what each piece of furniture represented and my 6th grader's furniture covered the typology of Jesus with New Testament Scriptures.

On top of the Holy and Most Holy place, we glued three types of fabric to illustrate the three coverings on the Tabernacle. The last layer is beautiful gold material, although in the Bible it is red, blue and purple. (I did not find those colors in Walmart :)) My point was to show the children that on the outside the Tabernacle looked very ugly, but on the side it was beautiful, just like the church. From a worldly perspective, Christianity looks dull and boring, but once inside, it is the total opposite. In front of the Ark of the Covenant, I braided together red, blue and purple cross stitching floss to represent the veil.

Inside the next section is the High Priest Section. On the first flap, it is a picture of the Robe. My children colored the picture from the Resource section. In the middle is the Breastplate with the names of twelve tribes, decorated with little gems from Walmart. The Urim and Thummin are inside the Breastplate. On the last flap are pictures of little High Priest : ) A friend of mine loaned me the outfit she made from felt.

I made a game up -kinda. I named it "The Golden Calf". Basically it's played like the game Old Maid. Just like you don't want to be last one left with Old Maid, with our game, you don't want to be left with Golden Calf. Also, the cards can be played with as a matching memory game. I copied and pasted pictures from a website  (http://home.earthlink.net/~theoson/Index.html) and re-sized them in Print Master, then covered them with sheet lamination.

For archives sake I am going to put the websites that were used:

 

 For the Tabernacle Lapbook:

 

 High Priest on Cover with the Ark of the Covenant:

 http://www.wesleyan.org/Media/MarketingManager/22_The_Tabernacle_Color_2.gif

 

Furniture of the Tabernacle:

http://sewhttkr.home.comcast.net/bibleWS/bibleWS/30_tabernacle.htm

 

Ark of the Covenant on Cover:

http://www.mapmasterz.com/artsamples.html

 

For the Ten Commandments: We used pics so my 5 year old could memorize, since he is learning to read.

http://gardenofpraise.com/mempeg2.htm

 

   

 

 

    

 

    

 

 

I am so overdue for a post!

We have been so busy homeschool wise! We have been on more field trips and doing a lot of experiments. Here's some pics:

 

Kids in Williamsburg, VA

 

 

Williamsburg part 2

I'm back- finally! Our trip to Williamsburg was sooo much fun. The heat index was 100 but we made the best of it and had a lot of water and plenty of free refills. Since Williamsburg is only about an hour and half away from where my in-laws live, we decided to go while on vacation in Virginia. I didn't expect so many people to be there, but it was still nice. My oldest son, who is my hands on learner, really got into it.

I went to the site online before we left and I knew the first thing I wanted to buy were the colonial hats for my sons. I never said anything to them about it. When ds saw the hats he said, "Mommy, can you pllleeeaaasssseee buy us a hat?" I smiled and bought three. You can see ds & ds enjoyed theirs. My daughter and I decided that we would make our hats when we returned home as part of home ec. The boys also talked me into buying them small wooden muskets. They tried to get the long guns, but I had to consider my sanity. I could see them once we got home- either hitting each other with them or knocking something over in the house. But they were content with what I got them.

We ate at Chowning's Tavern for lunch. Pretty good food. We mainly stayed on the Duke of Glouster Street. After being in the heat, we were so glad that the buildings were air conditioned. We also walked Nicholson Street. When they say you can't see it all in one day- they really meant it.

Williamsburg

Well- we finally made it to Colonial Williamsburg and loved every minute of it!

It was extremely educational. My oldest son kept telling me thank you the entire time we were there! My husband was excited and would often leave me behind.

I will update more and tell all tomorrow.

Jamestown

Wow! I hadn't realizd how long it had been since I had last written something.

After decorating at a wedding for a dear friend of mine and celebrating my 14th wedding anniversary, the time really did fly.

Later on this week, we will be taking a mini vacation to Jamestown and possibly Williamsburg, Virginia. Thankfully its an hour away from the area my husband grew up in and my in-laws are still there. I am very excited because this is an answered prayer. Last year, I read through our curriculum and saw that we would be covering Colonial America. I prayed and told the Lord I really would love to be able to take my family on a mini vacation. I didn't know where the money would come from, but the desire never decreased. Amazingly, over the last couple of months, my small business of decorating has picked up, and I now have a enough money for our little vacation- I can even buy trinkets and stay in a hotel over night!!!

"Behold, I am the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for me?"

I can answer and say, NOOOOO! There is nothing to hard for the Lord!

Hail Storm

Last week, we had a serious hail storm hit in our area. I had never seen anything like it before! Earlier in the school year we had a lesson about the ten plagues of Egypt, so it was very interesting for all of us to see and imagine how it would be for the Egyptians along with the hail mixed with fire.

My husband was at church at the time of the storm and our van has some dents and dings, but thankfully none of our windows broke.

Here are some pics. My sons and I gathered some of the hail to put here on the blog. I was amazed at the different shapes of hail and I have included a pic of my favorite one.

    

 

 

    

 

 

Right Now

Well, I have decided to basically end our school year in the chapter we are in with the Weaver and continue for a month or two concentrating on finishing up lapbooks that never got finished. I think it will be a nice review of our school year. And I would like for dd to finish up her math book along with ds. I told them the end of the year schedule and they were happy. It's as follows:

• 
  
  Bible lesson review
  
  


• 
  
  Handwriting Without Tears- purchased at the homeschool convention last month. I didn't want to wait for the next year.
  
  


• 
  
  Math
  
  


• 
  
  Wisdom Words - it's a language arts program by the Weaver author. I want them with a fresh start next school year in this program.
  
  


• 
  
  Spelling- I bought new books with a different format than we had used previously. The kids like it a wwwwhhhhhhooooolllllleeeee lot better than what we had been using.
  
  


• 
  
  
  
  

 

Tomorrow I will post pics of hail we collected after a serious hail storm. I have never seen anything like it!

 

Pic of Dresden Wheel Pattern

Grandma's Quilt

      This is my first entry and I would like to dedicate it to my ~Grandmother~

I have been homeschooling my children for three years now and I enjoy every minute of it. God told me to do it and He has supplied every need with each step we take in this journey.

I would like to share this story with you:

For the month of February I decided we should cover Black History. I went to the library and borrowed some books as usual. I was looking for a particular book called "Sweet Sarah and the Freedom Quilt". In this story Clara has a quilt that is really a map of the Underground Railroad. Each patch represents a part of the escape route. I thought that would be pretty neat to cover since we have two quilts in the house that my 85 year old great aunt had made. I noticed next to that book was another one and I basically grabbed it because it looked like it would go along with the lesson. It stayed on my shelf for about two weeks until I took it down to read it to the children. The name of this book was "The Patchwork Quilt" as I read the book it became very interesting. I found out later it was the children's version of the book "Hidden In Plain View". The adult version talked of the secret slave codes that were hidden in quilts during slavery.

The quilts were to look as if they were airing out, but it was a message to the other slaves. As I looked at the patterns, one looked strangely familiar.

As I began to look further into the two books, I was very surprised to discover that pattern in the book was the pattern on one of the quilts my great aunt had made!  It is called the Dresden Wheel- it was used to alert other slaves that the one who hung it out to "air" were about to make a journey on the Underground Railroad and their help would be needed to gather extra food and supplies and a cover for them to make this journey.

The Dresden Wheel was from a pattern for china made in Germany. And it also represented Dresden, Ohio- a stop on the Underground Railroad.

The beautiful part of my story is that my Grandmother passed away 3 years ago on a hot day on June 15th. She had her front door and back door opened as if she were hot, but she had that Dresden Quilt over her. We believe she was letting us know that she was about to take her journey from earth to glory and she was ready to go.

 

Here is a website I used for info and it has many different links:

http://www2.lhric.org/pocantico/tubman/tubman.html