Friday, May 28, 2010

I Can Do - file folder games and paper plate fishes...

I came across a few sites about making 'File Folder Games' for toddlers. These are a great way for little one's to learn about colours, shapes, numbers, letters, animals, matching, etc... I have put together a few now - they take a bit of work & time to prepare - there is lots of printing, cutting, gluing and laminating. It's well worth the effort though and Molly will also get to use them.

I introduced Lola to her first file game last night and it was a hit. I got Noah's Animals from Christian Preschool Printables





Our May theme for 'I Can Do' was Under The Sea - Some books we have been reading are:











and At the Beach (a board book by Hinkler books)

I saw these paper plate fish on 'The Ramblings of a Crazy Woman blog' - This was such a cute but easy craft to do & they look great stuck on the wall. Lola is very proud of her fish that she painted and made.



The wonderful thing about reading home school blogs is the wonderful craft ideas and printables you can get from other home school Mum's. I love thinking of new ideas for my children to do, but just don't have the time to work on a lot of them at this time in my life. So God bless those women who have made such great resources and freely share them with other homeschool Mum's.

The Worm Farm...

This year our homeschool group split the term's up into themes and this Term's theme was 'Earth'... so last week at our homeschool meeting Dianne (A homeschool Mum) organised lots of science stations with different activities based around earth and water (Water was the theme for last term). To finish the morning off each family got to make a worm farm - simply using a large glass jar, layers of sand & soil and mesh for the top - oh and of course worms. To say Pernella was excited is an understatement!



My girl is just crazy about creepy crawlies!



These worms will be great in my vegetable garden once we get it up and running...





So this week there has been lots of observing of our new pet's, feeding them and researching about looking after worms on the internet. This weekend Pernella and Charlie are going to be making a larger worm farm using an old fish tank we have.
Don't you just love nature!

Have a look at some other entries at We Made It!!! Friday Showcase!!!
hosted by

A couple more lapbooks

In Term one we studied Ancient Rome (which is probably one of my favourite periods of history to study.) Charlie loved learning about Ancient Rome, my guess is because of all the wars, weapons, soldiers and gory ways the Romans loved to kill people for entertainment. Pernella wasn't that thrilled about Ancient Rome - she prefers studying animals, reptiles, the earth etc, etc.. I couldn't even get her enthused with how the Romans threw the Christians to the Lions - well it was something to do with animals (big grin!)

So I took a few photos of their completed lapbooks - Here's Josiah with his Ancient Rome lapbook (OK parent's bragging right's, both Charlie and Pernella got an A on this social studies project - there was a lot more involved than just doing the lapbook. The children also watched DVD's, read books, researched on the internet & read parts of the Bible about Ancient Rome also.)



This is Pernella's completed lapbook. (I couldn't find her to take a photo)


This lapbook was from Home School Share (an excellent site filled with free lapbooks that you can do)

The next lapbook the children did was on Mammals (Much more Pernella's style - we did this for science - it covered everything from mammal vocabulary, classifications, carnivores, insect eating etc, etc... I brought this from Hearts and Trees blog





This lapbook goes along nicely with the 101 documentaries on the animal world the two of them watch each month.

(Pictured is Charlie's lapbook on mammals)

Colourwheel Bouquet Art Lesson -

This was a great art lesson that I found on 'Deep Space Sparkle'
This term we are learning about Primary Colours and Secondary Colours and I thought this would be a great art lesson to start us off... We all had a lot of fun doing this - yes even I gave it ago and so did our two year old - smile...

Master Charlie's piece `~


Miss Pernella's work


And Mum's attempt (can you tell it's been ages since I've have had the chance to scrapbook so playing with any type of paper is fun)


You can see other fantastic ideas on The Ramblings of a Crazy Womans blog on We Made It!!! Friday Showcase!!!

Friday, May 21, 2010

Fruit loops and homeschooling... and it began

When my friend Tracy told me about homeschooling her children I thought she was a fruit loop... sorry Tracy – big grin! But there was something about it that caught my attention, nudged my spirit... When I first told my husband, he was having none of it and anyway I couldn’t see any possible way of doing it as it would mean giving up my job and being home full time, something that did not seem financially possible.

I started having a look into home schooling, reading some blogs, choosing some books to research & chatting with people. I began to feel that this would be something that could benefit our children; even our family but I still didn’t see how we could do it. We lived in the suburbs but eventually we wanted to move onto acreage for the children. I wanted chickens, a vegetable patch and to be a home stead wife but it did seem pie in the sky. I attended a home school conference in Brisbane with Tracy and I loved sitting and learning from these people who home schooled their children. I even met the principal of the distance education school when he came for a home visit to see Tracy and her family. I discussed it with hubby again and he also began to think that home schooling our children could be something we could maybe eventually do. I left it with God. I didn’t want to make it happen in my own strength – I couldn’t see how it could be done or how we could afford it. If this was something God wanted us to do then He would and could make it happen.

Well within a matter of months things started to happen – we found a piece of land to buy and we wanted to put an offer on it but I couldn’t find the phone number of the real estate agent so I googled vacant land in the suburb we were looking at and another piece of land in the same area popped up on the screen. I rang the agent handling the sale and she told me that she had just that minute finished putting it on the internet. Not only was this land $15,000 cheaper it was larger. We drove straight up to have a look at it and fell in love with it straight away.
It was in a small dead end road with only one neighbour to our side and right next to bush land as far as the eye could see, so quiet and a five minute drive to the beach. We decided to put our home on the market and see what would happen - it sold straight away and for the asking price. We moved in with my parents while we were building.

At this time my hubby wanted to take another direction with his career to become an electrician and he was offered an apprenticeship straight away. You know that apprentices wages are very low while they learn their trade but we felt that he should take the apprenticeship. I was very unhappy with my current job – it was long hours and I had to work every second Saturday. I was told about another job that was afternoon shift. I applied and got the position, I started work when hubby finished for the day and I was home by midnight. This then left my day’s free .... hmmmm!

It still came down to the matter of finances. We sat down and worked out that if the children came home there would be no day-care fees, no school fees or before or after school care fees which use to take up a huge chunk of our wages.
So living on a very tight budget we took the plunge (it’s amazing what meals you can cook with mince! Big grin... ) It will take another post to write down how God really looked after us during this time.

Fast forward to now, we have just started our fourth year of homeschooling and have added two more to our family. I left my job and I’m a stay at home mum now who is homeschooling, I have the vege patch and the chicken coop is in progress. We are even looking at building a school room in the near future. I just really wanted to remind myself about this journey we are on. Sometimes you don’t see God’s plan unfolding until you look back. God answered every one of my prayers in His perfect timing.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Our Molly

Just a few photos of our Molly...

Here she is just over 3 months old - she just has the biggest brown eyes ever!




Molly is wearing the same outfit that all of the other children have worn. A winnie the pooh jumpsuit ~ smile
She is just over 4 months old here



Here's Molly at 5 months old - too cute!



Beautiful

Charcoal Sketching

Our next art class for our homeschool group was charcoal sketching -

It's all in the perspective





Learning different techniques





Sitting outside and sketching nature



Pernella's finished masterpiece



Charlie's work of art

More bears, more colour's...

Here are just a few more things Lola and I have been doing...

To help her learn about colours I separated all the different coloured crayons and put them in their different shades into plastic cups and put them on a tray. She then coloured pictures from Brown Bear, Brown Bear.



I printed of this picture of a giant cupcake and Lola used different colours of glitter to decorate it. For the Brown Bear printout Lola got to use Mummy's special coffee to sprinkle over him. I laminated the glitter cupcake and coffee bear so that we could stick them up on the wall and there would be no mess.



Pernella did this activity when she was in pre-school and I kept the idea in the back of my head. I just divided a page into two and wrote down a colour in each corner and then gave Lola a heap of different coloured items for her to stick onto the right colour written on the page. She really enjoyed doing this activity.



I have started putting up her pieces of art work on the wall which she loves me doing and likes to show our visitors her 'school work'...



I made Lola this simple story book about her as she goes into the garden at night out through the blue door. It has lots of different colours in it as well as things she has to do at night like brush her teeth, put on her pj's & say her prayers. She loves being the star of her own book and it was well worth the time it took for me to make it.