WHOA! No, We Have NOT Given Up Homeschooling :)

Holy cow! So not having an internet connection at home has resulted in my lack of making time to get to the library and update this blog. So hold onto your hats because you're about to take a fast-paced trip through our last month of homeschooling...

EPCOT...
Let's start with my mom's visit to Florida during her April vacation break. I took her to Epcot as a belated birthday gift for their annual Garden Festival. We had SO MUCH FUN! Big shout out to my hubby for taking care of the kiddos for the day so we could be kid-less. I took some GREAT photos! Unfortunately, you won't be able to see any of them because my phone crashed a few weeks ago and I lost ALL of my pictures and videos. So sad :( So you will just have to take my word for it that it was a blast and that my mom and I about peed our pants at the end of the "Spaceship Earth" ride. I am so mad that the video for it is gone. BOOOO!!!!!

*On a side note: My husband kept reminding me that I needed to update iCloud. One of the few times he has been right ;) WHOOPS!

OUR LIFE IN THE WORLD OF MATH...
Connor is still working through the math book I ordered for him. Really he's blowing through the math book I ordered for him. He has been working on shapes and learning the differences between 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes. Enjoy these little photos of my budding architect...

LEARNING ABOUT OUR HOME STATE OF FLORIDA...
We have moved on from learning the states in our country to learning about individual states. Each day we would read an excerpt from a book about Florida and then fill in our Florida map. I've had him practice using symbols and a key to complete his map. No pics yet, but I'll post one of his finished product.

BLOWING A LID OFF OF SCIENCE...
Boy have we been having a good time in science! I'm pretty sure I won't be hearing from my kiddos that science is boring. We, of course, continue to take advantage of our library programs. Check out this little assortment of pics and videos from the last Super Science Monday program at the library...

Hot and cold water separating/mixing.

Candle vapor catching on fire.

Liquid using heat from hands to move through the tube.

It's a tough day of school when it has to end with fresh cotton candy :)

We've moved on to learning about sun, moon and stars. We've gotten to look through telescopes, study constellations and some of the stories behind them, learned about the planets, talked about gravity, watched videos on eating and going to the bathroom in space, amongst so many other things. It has been SO AWESOME! I found space food in the expo hall at the homeschooling conference I attended (discussed subsequently) and the kids just loved getting to eat dehydrated ice cream. At one point Connor held the ice cream in the air in front of him and said, "Look mom! It's floating!" So cute! Lack of gravity is such a fun thing to experience ;)

Connor has also taken a HUGE interest in insects. We look for worms on our daily walks. One day we collected the ones we saw that were still alive and put them in a jar to use for fishing later in the day for Family Home Evening. 

By the way, worms left in a jar for the day do NOT have a very pleasant odor. YUCK! Perhaps it was the smell that scared off all the fish because we were completely unsuccessful on our fishing excursion

 :(

READING AND SPELLING...

One of Connor's weak spots is in reading comprehension. He knows a lot of words and can pronounce most words he comes across, but he can't always tell you what he read about. We've been working on reading skills. I've also been using the box of phonics materials my sister sent to me to help him with spelling and blends and so-on. Here's Connor spelling words...

I love finding ways to incorporate manipulatives in our lessons. Especially for my little gremlin because he can't sit still ;)

We've also been reading through the Book of Mormon. We talk about our favorite parts of each story and talk about how Heavenly Father's eternal plan for each of us. What precious moments I get to share with my little ones!

PETS GALORE!

So every once in a while I come up with some CRAZY idea that my husband is kind enough to go along with. This time I decided I wanted a dog for Mother's Day. So off to the "pet store" (the Largo SPCA) we went to find the perfect four-legged friend. We came home with a 10-month old terrier mix we named "Harley."She is her mother's dog for sure! She just LOVES me to death. So far, she's crate trained, doing pretty well with housebreaking, plays fetch, knows "sit" and "lay down" and loves to eat the marigolds in my garden. 

But we still love our LUNA!

Tired yet? Almost done...

FLORIDA PARENT-EDUCATOR ASSOCIATION (FPEA) ANNUAL HOMESCHOOLING CONFERENCE IN ORLANDO, FL

Shout out number two to my hubby for watching all three kiddos for a full 48 hours so that I could attend the homeschool conference in Orlando, FL. What a GREAT weekend! My neighbor, Tammy, whose oldest son will be ready for kindergarten in the fall, came with me and we just had a BLAST! Nor had we had such a full night's sleep in nearly 5 years and 6 years, respectively.

*Double side-note: Two more shout outs to Tammy's husband, Jim, and my dad for watching kids and getting us a hotel room, respectively. Couldn't have done it without you guys either!

First of all, you would NOT believe the number of families who were in attendance. The event was super family-friendly, and I have NEVER attended a teaching conference where the inclusion of prayer, God and Jesus Christ were talked about. How REFRESHING!

Second of all, you would NOT believe the number of vendors and homeschooling resources there are out there! It took us two days, in between sessions, to get through the whole expo hall. Check it out...

I actually took this picture for my zombie-loving gremlin. The store was near our hotel.

This company reprints out-of-print books. I took this picture for my hubby.

So many quotes hit me as good reminders during the conference, but perhaps none as much as this one.

Yep, that's right. I got to pet a gator! They're pretty soft. 

Tammy and I cannot WAIT to go again next year. This time we plan to take our hubbies. They would have had just as much fun as we did!

LAST BUT NOT LEAST...MEMORIAL DAY

What kind of a homeschooling mom would I be if I neglected to teach my kids about our most important holidays. We began our Memorial Day celebration last night as our church presented, "Preserve Us a Nation." What a great reminder of the sacrifices those leaders and soldiers who came before us made in order for us to be free. 

We began today's festivities by watching this short video I found which discussed the history of Memorial Day:

http://www.history.com/topics/memorial-day-history/videos#history-of-memorial-day

http://www.history.com/topics/memorial-day-history/videos#a-memorial-day-tribute

Some friends of us were kind enough to invite us to the YMCA pool party, where we got to celebrate by eating hot dogs and watermelon...

Bryn got her first taste at swimming. (Literally, she was trying to eat the water.)

Then it was back to the serious stuff. We returned home and finished making pinwheels to put on Grandpa Lehman's grave. Both of Jason's grandfather's served in the armed forces. We wanted to commemorate their service by saying "thank you."

And of course since we were in Bradenton, we had to stop at our favorite custard shop!

And a big thanks to my in-laws for letting me ignore everyone for an hour while I updated this blog. 

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!!!!

Me too, Bryn. Me too.

Thursday, April 17th "Half" Day

So one of the biggest arguments against homeschooling is the "lack of socialization" that kids get. Well, today we proved that wrong! We probably had a little TOO MUCH socialization :/ . We actually didn't get to a specific reading, writing, or science lesson today. WHOOPS!

Here's what we DID get done...

Connor's first piano lesson!! Thanks Alaina!

Where are the states? He's doing really well!

Amelia's first attempt at scissors. Scary!

Connor taking his chapters 1 & 2 test. He only got 1 wrong. Way to go!!!

"Mommy and the Beanstalk" By Connor Rice

Last week I posted about a story Connor had written, but I kept forgetting to bring his notebook with me to the library so that I could type it on the blog. Well, without further ado...

"Mommy and the Beanstalk"

   Once upon a time there were two people named Connor and Amelia. They loved their rabbit named Luna. And one day Momma gave Luna away for five magic apples. And then she planted the magic apples. And then it grew into an applestalk. Then momma climbed up the beanstalk (not a typo) with everbody. With everybody we found a giant fish. And it had Papaw's gold and Mimi got the gold back. Then they killed the fish giant. Then they lived happily ever after.

The End

Wednesday, April 17th "Experiment FAIL!"

I had Connor take a chapter test in math and he got a 100%! So excited for him. Tomorrow I will give him a chapter 1 and 2 review test. Moving along and building up his portfolio!

We went to the library again today for story time. Here is Amelia doing her little "Hokey Pokey" dance:

So in science I tried to do another magnet experiment, but this one didn't work AT ALL! BOO! I think I have to get a different magnet, so we are going to try again another day. Poor Connor was pretty dejected.

In art we sculpted shapes out of our modeling clay and we talked about what it means for something to be 2-dimensional verses 3-dimensional.

I know, not very many pictures today, but I was really tired and so we moved through our subjects really slowly. But when I got up this morning, Connor informed me that he had already gotten dressed, made his bed and brushed his teeth. He absolutely LOVES homeschooling. It is so much fun for all of us. For the first time, I feel like a REAL mom. I am 100% in charge of teaching my kids and I take the responsibility very seriously.

On a side note....I met two more homeschooling moms today at the library. It is like an underground club you didn't know existed, but once you become a part of it, you can pick out the other members in an instant. What an amazing network!

Tuesday, April 16th- "Magnetism" continued...

I promise we do other things besides science in our homeschool lessons...

But for today's experiment, the kids put on a "puppet" show using magnets, paper dolls and a shoebox.

I also worked with Connor on sentences today, helping him to understand that capital letters are special. You don't have to use them with every word :)

For Spanish we played a memory/matching game. He's doing really well with his colors.

For social studies, we are still practicing our "United States" song and learning where all of the states in the United States are. Our goal is to have the song memorized by the time my mom comes into town on Saturday so that the kids can sing it to her. I can't wait to post the video of that one!

Another SUPER cool thing we got to look at today was a hornet's nest that Jason pulled out of our bird feeder. What was particularly awesome about it was that it still had the larvae inside. So, too bad for the larvae, but we enjoyed dissecting it! Check out our pictures...

If you look closely at the larva in the middle, you can see the eyes are already formed. It was the one that looked the most like a hornet.

In this picture, you can actually see the various stages of larvae. The two on the bottom are much less developed than the ones above them. The one at the very top had two eyes forming. You can already see the body formation in the upper right larva. Close up, you could see its wings starting to form along with little legs. All in all, pretty cool!

Monday, April 15th- "Magnetism"

On Sunday morning before church, Connor discovered that magnets can stick to things. Aiming to capitalize on his excitement for the new said discovery, I decided we would study magnets this week in science.

(Our supplies)

(She might not like everything we do, but Amelia NEVER misses a day of science experiments!)

Look at that face! Is it any wonder why I LOVE homeschooling? Look what I would be missing out on every day!

We worked on colors some more in Spanish and I had him complete a timeline for the Book of Mormon stories we've read so far. Believe it or not, creating and understanding the use of timelines is one of his kindergarten benchmarks.

But the special treat of the day was for Family Home Evening. The library held an event called, "Wonders of Nature," and we had front-row seats! There are a lot of videos below, so since I know all of you missed it, you can enjoy our fun!

When I said front-row seats, I meant it. Here is Jason and I almost getting attacked by a hawk. The presenter actually joked that Jason would be getting a new hair style that night!

(Opossum)

Flying squirrel! Except it doesn't fly, it glides. So really it should be called a "gliding squirrel."

(At least that is what we were told ;) )

I can't remember which type of bird these are, but they were pretty smart. He had them trained to wait until he told them to fly to him and then they opened their cage and away they went. Wish I had my children so well trained :p

What WAS awesome about these birds was that the presenter talked about camouflage- a term we had discussed JUST that afternoon when we read a book about Tiger Sharks. Once again, accidental reinforcement of a concept!

This next sequence of videos is SO awesome! This parrot was so cool!

Then there was the squirrel...our presenter's favorite animal. I wish Papa had been there to set this guy straight!

And then there was this crazy bird...

Connor's favorite part was the talking parrot. Amelia's favorite part was the Flying Squirrel. I think Jason's favorite part was leaving with all of his hair!

'

Friday, April 12th

We had sort of a low-key learning day today. Of course, I say that, but I'm pretty sure Connor wouldn't say the same thing. He worked really hard today on breaking down wholes twice. Poor guy. It really is a pretty difficult concept for him. So I introduced the "thinking cap" to him. Now he asks to wear it every time I ask him a question.

So here he is trying to break down whole numbers:

Can't  you tell just how excited he was to do this exercise :) I'm telling you...pure torture! Later in the day I had him practice a couple more and he got them. He is such a smart kid!


The library had a "Motion Commotion" activity today. It's really more for Amelia's age group, but Connor partially participated. Here's Amelia doing "I'm a Little Teapot."

After viewing our attempts at the parachute experiment, my sister suggested that we launch them off of our staircase. This worked SO much better! We talked about gravity some more and experiment with throwing the dough off the staircase without the parachute. Boy did it flatten!

We ended the day with some painting. They are becoming quite the little artists!