Our School Room

We just moved here at the end of March so this is a new school room for us. This is the first time we've had one in the basement. The other times our school room was the bonus room on our second floor. I'm a little worried that it will be cold in the basement in the winter, especially since we live in Minnesota. We do have a small heater in our school room so hopefully it will help keep it warm. I do really like not having to worry about the walls being angled like in our past rooms. I feel like I have so much more wall space now.



Here is most of the room looking from the stairs.

 

This is on the left side coming down the stairs. There is a line for hanging up the kids' art, an easel, and a small table that the girls like to use when they're drawing. The red containers have art supplies. The letters at the top of the wall say "Every child is an artist."
The door goes into the playroom, which we are still unpacking and is a big mess.

 

To the right of the stairs are bookcases that hold our curriculum, with a different subject on each shelf. The white shelf holds the printer, and there are different types of paper in the drawers.

 

This is a reading area for the kids. These shelves have picture and chapter books.

 

Next to that is a computer. The map above it has stickers for each state we've visited.

 

The windows look out to our backyard.
Under these windows is our timeline. We aren't using the whole thing right now. In history, we've gotten to the 1800s so I have the timeline starting in the late 1500s and going to the present.

 

We do a lot of reading aloud so I always try to have a couch in our school room.
We've had this table for a few years now. I couldn't find one as big as I wanted so my husband made this one. It has shelves underneath for storing supplies.
I painted a lazy susan blue and added small pails to hold pencils, glue sticks, crayons, colored pencils, etc.

 

The wood cabinets hold craft supplies. The shelves under the maps hold most of our everyday things. On the left side of the picture are drawers for all our math supplies. The colored drawers are the kids' workboxes, one for Colin and one that the girls share (5 drawers for each of them).

 

I saw this idea a couple years ago and started collecting letters for it. We never really had the extra wall for it before though. While unpacking, I was surprised to find we had all the letters except I (for some reason we also had an extra R, 2 extra Os, and 2 extra Qs). My 10 year old made an I from craft popsicle sticks and painted some of the letters. I covered some with scrapbook paper.

 

I wanted to somehow incorporate into the room places we've been. I hung some of our postcards on this board. Hopefully I'll be able to find more of the postcards we've collected to add.

 

Now I just need to do some baby proofing. I'm hoping we can do the majority of our work while my almost 7 month old naps. She doesn't always sleep well though so I can't count on that and need to get it done before she becomes more mobile. I plan to find a space to have a basket of toys for her. I think I'm going to get a high chair for that room so she can be at the same height as everyone else. She can use the tray to play with toys, and for snacks once she's eating finger foods.

What's Been Happening Around Here

I keep meaning to stay caught up on this blog and then before I know it lots of time has passed. It's just been such a busy time and I feel like I don't have time for a lot of things. I really want to start getting back to normal here though. I've started so many posts and then not had the time to finish them.

So what's been taking so much of my time?

For starters, my sweet new baby, Sophie. She is 6 months old now. It's been quite an adjustment to have a little one again. My other kids are 13, 10, and 8 so it's been a while since we had a baby. She had reflux, which caused her to have some bad days, but she's doing much better now. She's never really been a difficult baby. She's actually very happy most of the time and is almost always smiling. However, she doesn't sleep well. She doesn't usually go to sleep until around midnight. Then she still wakes up every 2 to 3 hours at night. I have to say after 6 months of that, I'm so tired and have trouble finding the energy to do everything I want. She also doesn't sleep much during the day. Sometimes she has good days with 2 naps, but not very often. I feel lucky if she has one good nap. Many days the only sleep she gets is falling asleep on me while she's nursing, which means I don't get much time to do anything and can't really type.




Sophie in the middle of a clap, one of her favorite things to do right now.

My 10 year old took this picture. Didn't she do a great job?

 

I mentioned that we moved in March. It was a big move, about 1200 miles. Moving is always difficult with unpacking and organizing. Moving to a new place means you also need to learn where everything is and how to get around. Being homeschoolers adds more to that because I have to research the homeschool laws of this new state, search for homeschool groups, try to find classes and fun things for the kids, and get us out to try to meet new friends. Luckily, homeschooling seems to be very popular here and I've found a lot of activities for us.

Minneapolis

We're mostly on break from school. The kids are all doing some math practice. Colin is still doing Exploring Creation with General Science. I didn't make daily assignments for him and thought he would finish if he just did a little each day. I think he did very little some days though so he still has a couple modules to get through. We've also been reading The Little House on the Prairie series and doing Prairie Primer. The girls have really enjoyed it. I'm so glad because I loved the books when I was little. We've been trying to take advantage of living near some of the Little House sites. Last month we visited Walnut Grove, MN. Hopefully I can write about that soon. We plan to visit De Smet, SD this month.

Walnut Grove

I've been trying to work on school planning for next year. The girls (5th & 3rd grade) will be doing mostly the same thing as last year, just moving up to the next level. Colin's (8th grade) school planning is taking more of my time. I'm feeling a little anxious that this is his last year before high school and want to be sure that we get everything in that is needed. I want him to be pretty independent, but feel that he still needs me to give him quite a bit of direction.

Anyway, I'm sure we'll all settle into a routine soon.

Our Last 3 Weeks

We spent the last 2 weeks traveling.

Three weeks ago we did regular school and finished reading Little House on the Prairie. We also read lots of books about the states we were going to visit, marked them all on a map, and looked at the maps of each state.

We were gone for 13 days. We drove over 3000 miles and saw 8 other states besides the one where we live. We just moved to Minnesota in March and haven't seen very much of this side of the country so we decided to go on a road trip. We went through Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota. Seven of those were new states for us. Some highlights of what we saw were Rocky Mountain National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Mount Rushmore. It was an awesome trip. We loved seeing new places. My 4 month old even did really well. I'm sure she'd be happy to not have to see her car seat for a while though. I'll write more about the different places we saw soon.




Rocky Mountain National Park

Here is our approximate route:

 

Below are the states Colin (13) and I have visited. Caleigh (10) has been to all of these except Michigan. Molly (8) has been to all of these except Michigan and Alabama.

 

The map below shows the states Sophie has been to. She's quite a traveler for a 4 month old.

 

Our Week: 4/6-4/10

We had a good week. We had a couple cool days, but also some nice spring days. The kids were happy to get lots of time outside. Sophie seems to like going for walks in her stroller.

Everyone did their own regular school work. We continued reading The Little House on the Prairie. We also read some books about people moving west.



We visited Sea Life Aquarium at the Mall of America.

 

Sophie was very interested in what was going on above her head as we walked through the tunnels.

 

The kids have been seeing lots of animals in our yard. So far we've seen a rabbit, two deer, a raccoon, ducks, squirrels, and lots of birds. This week the kids saw these birds on our deck and these ducks in our yard. The girls are hoping to see some babies soon.

 

 

We went to a fun class with a homeschool group we recently joined. They learned about habitats, ecosystems, and made their own terrariums. I'm so happy they liked the class. As soon as Molly came out she asked me when there was another class they could go to. I've already signed them up for the next 3 months.

 

Our Week: 4/22-4/26

I made more progress in the school room last weekend than I expected. I still need to organize all the craft stuff and hang stuff on the walls, but most of the books are put away. I was excited that it was good enough to do school in there and hoped to get back to a full schedule this week. Then I woke up Monday morning with a sore throat and earache. That sickness stuck around all week feeling like strep, then the flu, and now like a regular cold. Luckily, no one else has gotten it, and I'm finally starting to feel better. So we didn't get back to our full schedule, but we were able to add a few things in.

The girls had been doing review sheets and Life of Fred for math, but went back to their regular RightStart Math lessons this week. They also started doing grammar and spelling again.

Colin added logic in with what he'd already been doing. He finished Module 9 in General Science.

We finished reading Litle House in the Big Woods and doing the activities in The Prairie Primer.

We also read a few chapters in A History of US, but my voice wouldn't allow me to do as many as I had planned.



Sophie turned 3 months old this week.

This week started with more snow. On Wednesday, we went to a park to meet with some people from a homeschool group we've joined. I was probably too sick to be out and the wind made it way too cold, but I wanted the kids to be able to meet some other kids and we needed to get out of the house. Happily, the end of the week turned out to be great. Friday was in the 70s and just beautiful. Colin had a hockey game that evening so I found a park near the rink and we went there to walk the trails and let the kids play for a while before the game. We had great weather over the weekend too. At least it's looking a little more like spring out there. We did still see some snow on the ground in the shady areas today when we went for a walk. It looks like we'll only get another day or two of it before it gets a lot colder for a few days.

Still lots of ice on the lake, but at least some of it is melting

Kids playing at park

They loved this slide that goes down to the beach.

Our Week: 4/15-4/19

We continued doing a shortened version of school this week. The sink in our school room backed up and made a mess so I haven't made any progress in there. I'm hoping I can get some more unpacking done this weekend and get it organized to at least find some more of the books we need to get back to doing all our subjects.

In A History of US, we're still reading about people moving west. We also read about Texas becoming independent.

Colin is reading about DNA in General Science.

We've done a few days of the Download 'n Go study, Prairie Pioneers.

We read six more chapters of Little House in the Big Woods and used The Prairie Primer for comprehension questions, discussion, and activity ideas. Some of the things we learned about this week were maple syrup, animal tracks, cheese making, honey and bees, yellow jackets, and harvesting grain.

We seem to be having the winter that won't end. The kids are loving it since they've spent most of their winters in NC, where a few inches of snow a year is as much as they could hope for. We got a lot of snow Thursday and probably ended up with about 10 inches. To go along with snow, we read some books about snow, made snowmen from cake balls, and made our own snowglobes.

I sure hope some spring weather shows up soon so we can get out and explore our new area more. I'm glad the kids are having fun with the snow though.


Having a brother that can pull you around is always a good thing.















For now, Sophie prefers seeing the snow from inside the house.

Our Week: 4/8-4/12

We're still trying to get back into our regular homeschool routine. Just as we were adjusting to having an infant during school, we moved. Unpacking, organizing, nursing a baby a lot, and trying to keep up with all the regular household things like laundry and cooking haven't made it easy to get planning and school work accomplished. I have started unpacking the school room, but it's a huge mess right now. I feel like we'll do better with school once I get that room done.

Everyone is doing math everyday. We're reading at least a chapter each day from A History of US. Colin has continued doing Apologia's General Science on his own. We've also started reading The Little House on the Prairie (LHOP) series and we're using The Prairie Primer for activities to go along with it. I've meant to read them to the kids for a long time, but just never got to it. I'm excited that we're finally doing it. The timing is actually working out since we're living in Minnesota now close to the settings for lots of the books. We're planning a trip to Walnut Grove this summer.

Most of our week looked like this with lots of snow.



Our backyard

I'm really hoping it starts looking more like spring soon. I've found lots of places here that I would like for us to be able to get out and explore. I guess I can't complain too much since the winter in NC wasn't too cold and we had only seen an inch of snow there. It's been 6 years since we lived somewhere with lots of snow though so we just aren't used to dealing with it anymore. The snow actually went along with our LHOP studies this week though. It was snowing here while we read about all the snow Laura had on Christmas. We also got to make molasses on snow candy like they do in the book.

I have some more pictures of last week's activities, but they go along with The Prairie Primer so I plan to put them all in a post talking about just that.

Here is a picture of my baby girl just because I think she's so cute. I can't believe how much she's grown and that she's already 12 weeks old.

Where has the time gone?

I can't believe how much time has gone by since I've posted anything. So much has happened since then and we've been so busy.

The biggest change is a new addition to our family. Our sweet baby girl was born in January. We are all so in love with her.




The next big change is that we moved to Minnesota a few weeks ago. It was a big move because it's far from where we lived (NC) and a place we aren't too familiar with. We all flew here for a few days in October to look around, but that was the only time the kids and I had been anywhere near here.

A young baby and lots of unpacking are keeping me busy, but I'm going to try to get back to posting here. I like keeping a record of the things we're doing. We have plans for a lot of exciting things over the next few months so I want to write about them. I also think I'll try to post highlights from the months I haven't posted.

Last two weeks of September

We got so busy that I didn't have a chance to write a wrap-up for last week so I'm going to put both weeks here. We decided at the last minute to go to Tennessee to see my cousin and her family while they were visiting there. We hadn't seen them in over a year so it was nice to catch up and the kids had a great time with their little cousin.

History

 

 

Our first SOTW chapter was about China. We read that other countries wanted to trade with them, but their emperor Chi'en-lung didn't think they needed anything from others and made the other countries follow lots of restrictions. Then we learned that the British started sending opium to China and continued doing so even after the emperor ordered them to stop.

The next week we read about Napoleon Bonaparte, his battles, and how he came to be the ruler of France.

We also learned about the Louisana Purchase.

 

 

 

 

Science

 

 

The girls have been working on chapter 2 in Zoology 2, learning about whales. They did experiments about echolocation and to see why ocean water doesn't freeze as quickly as other water. They made paper bag whales (directions found here) and a toothed whale for their ocean boxes.

 

 

Caleigh's whale                           Colin's whale

Molly's whale

Whale books we read

 

 

Colin has been doing module 2 of Apologia General Science about scientific inquiry. He did some experiments to see how weight affects the speed at which objects fall. He started working on the study guide questions to prepare for his test this coming week.

 

 

 

 

 

Art

 

 



We did a lesson in Artistic Pursuits about seeing lines. The kids drew a model of an animal following the curves of the lines they saw while looking at the object. 

 

 

 

Colin's moose

Molly's giraffe

Caleigh's sea lion

 

Field Trips

 

 

We ended up doing quite a bit of traveling over the last 2 weeks. We went to Richmond, VA for Colin's hockey games. While we were there, we got to visit Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown Settlement, and Yorktown Victory Center. The kids liked Jamestown the best and loved checking out the ships there.

 

Last week when we went to Tennessee, we took the kids hiking on some trails in the Smoky Mountains.



We're having a GIRL!!

Last week, we all went to have my ultrasound to see the baby. The kids were so excited. The girls have had a ton of questions and were thrilled that they would see the baby and hear the heartbeat. We found out that we're having a girl! I think the kids were very surprised because they've all seemed sure it was a boy. It took them a little time to get used to, but I think they are good with a girl now.

I think having a girl when we already have two older girls is going to get expensive. We went shopping over the weekend and the girls wanted to get the baby all kinds of clothes. I can see they are all about cute and not practical. I think it will be like they have a doll to dress up. They're so excited about picking all the baby stuff. We got rid of everything years ago so I guess they'll have a lot of chances to choose stuff. They're also working on names.

 

Our Week: 9/10-9/14

I'm still surprised with how well we've all adjusted back to school. We're still not starting as early as I would like, but it's getting earlier. Everyone got used to sleeping in later while I was dealing with the tiredness and sickness of pregnancy. I'm still dealing with some sickness, but it's mostly just nausea and has gotten much better. 
The weather was great this week and I wish we had gotten out to enjoy it more. Looks like next week is going to be nice too so I really want to try to get us all outside more.

History

 

 

We ended up getting in a lot of history this week.

We started by reading more about Catherine the Great and learning how she became the empress of Russia. Then we read about the steam engine being used in Britain and how that increased the demand for coal. We also read about Eli Whitney's cotton gin and how he made standardization popular by making interchangeable parts for guns.

 

We finished the week by reviewing a little about the Jamestown settlement, the Battle of Yorktown, and what life was like in Williamsburg during Colonial times to prepare for a trip next week to visit those places.



We made our own cotton gin to help them understand how it worked.

 

Science



We finished the first chapter of Zoology 1.
The girls did a couple of experiments.

The first used a balloon and soda bottle to demonstrate how lungs react when a person dives into the deep ocean.

 

 

The second experiment was to find out if hot or cold water is heavier. This one was a little difficult
 for the girls to see. You were supposed to color the cold and hot water different colors. When the water came out of the cup into the bowl, they should have been able to see where it went, but it was really hard to see. It worked a little better when we tried leaving the water in the bowl clear and only coloring the water in the cup.

 

For General Science, Colin did an experiment that showed two chemical reactions occurring.

 

The girls were very excited when they saw the balloon suddenly blow up.

 

Art

 

This week's lesson from Artistic Pursuits was about form. We read about what form is, looked at a picture to discuss if it had form, and then made animals with form.

 



Molly's cow

Caleigh's dragon

Colin's dog

 

 

Other News

 

 

We drove two hours to go to an apple orchard Sunday. It was a beautiful day and we all had a good time. The kids picked 40 lbs of apples. We had a picnic lunch there, petted and fed some animals, and bought lots of goodies. The only bad thing was that we had car trouble right after leaving there. Luckily, we made it home, but the car wasn't going any farther. We had to have it towed and ended up getting a new transmission, which caused some rearranging earlier in the week with only one car.
 

 

Colin had hockey practice Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings. We drove to Richmond, VA today for his first games of the season tomorrow and Sunday. We're planning to get in some history field trips while we're here.