Sometimes the Old is Made New Again

Dear Readers,

Over the months I haven't been such a great blogger. Sometimes life takes over and some things get put aside for later. I am hoping to get back into blogging this summer, but hopefully this fall again.

In thinking about this, I have decided to return to Our Side of the Mountain. Despite creating this new blog as a way to reflect the changes happening in our lives, Our Side has always been my "blog home".

Please continue reading over there.

Jessy

It's Summertime!

Weekly Wrap-up: It's arrived!

EVERYDAY LIFE

Spring arrived this week! Ah-maz-ing! With warmer days, the snow melted fast creating a new 'pond' right where our driveway used to be...and I found out that Sam's rubber boots no longer fit by the dripping wet, winter boots lined up in the foyer. (What 9-year-old can resist a big ol' puddle to wade in.) But I'll take it! There's nothing quite like opening windows, even briefly, to let fresh air flow through the house after being shut up for months.

Even 'the girls' got to stretch those wings. Olive and Opal, the ducks, went swimming in the frigid brook, and Ony, Speckles, Musty, Sassy, Lil' Rhodie, Rhodie, Ava, Nutmeg, Butterfly, and Amber found the only patch of visible brown grass to scratch up. They rewarded us with finally laying eggs again.

But oh my! the road is a muddy mess. I'm going to need an alignment!

Total Bag Count: 14

MENU
✿ Hamburgers & Pasta and Veggie Salad ✿
✿ Scrambled Eggs, Hickory Smoked Bacon, Fresh Pineapple & Biscuits ✿
✿ Spaghetti with Ground Chicken Meat Sauce & Steamed Green Beans✿
✿ Marinated Beef Strips with Broccoli & Baked Fries ✿
✿ Boston Cream Pie Ice Box Cake ✿

SCHOOL SNIPPETS
Sam does "van school" while Cati is at Jazz and Concert Band and her clarinet lessons. I keep most of his work in a binder, slipping Easy Grammar inside and his current reading book. (I keep pencils and a hand sharpener in the van.) Do you ever do school-on-the-road?

Cati wrote Name Poems and Word Patterns poems this week. She's getting close to finishing up her study of basic 'formula' poetry. (I'd share the unit with you, but it's something I have from my student teaching in 1998 and it was OLD then.) She's also only 12 lessons away from finishing up Saxon 76.

In U.S. History we watched NROC on WWI and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR and The New Deal. We skipped art study this week and spent more time outside...and began to 'spring clean'.

At STEM school, Jake switched his Physics research topic from 4D to antimatter, continued to build a steam-powered power plant, focusing on the turbines, commuted projectiles for Math to get a ball into a basket without practicing, and "learned the things he hasn't" in Astronomy. (I'm not sure what that means!)

BOOKS
Mom- Seeing A Large Cat by Elizabeth Peters
Cati - The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Sam - Invisible Stanley by Jeff Brown 

PEOPLE & PLACES
✿ Jazz and Concert Band & Clarinet Lesson (Cati) ✿
✿ Cub Scouts (Sam & Jake) ✿
✿ Wayback Wednesday at Movie Theatre: Back to the Future (All) ✿
✿ Boy Scout Camping (Jake) ✿

FAVORITES

I got a chuckle out of this Lego Pain Scale from Facebook. Those of you with Lego enthusiatists will understand all too well.

ON THE 'NET

How to Have a Perfectly Clean House
50 Best Unschooling/Self-directed Learning Posts in 2013

As always, special thanks to these weekly wrap-ups:

Weekly Wrap-up: Dreaming of Spring

EVERYDAY LIFE

But I'm ready to start planning our garden and buying our seeds. I've been pondering creating another raised bed from concrete blocks. The kids have BIG gardening ambitions, but the 24x16 garden last year was a flop when we got busy with summer; we could only keep up with the 12x6 raised bed. Square Foot Gardening is much more reasonable (and enjoyable) for us.

Photo Credit

I've been knitting up dish cloths all week. They're quick, useful things! (Find instructions here.) I love the earthy colors I chose to knit them up in. I'm still pondering what to create next, but I might try a reusable mesh bag for groceries or library trips or the lake this summer. It requires CROCHETING and I haven't attempted that. You Tube!

Total Bag Count: 6

I'm about 14 bags behind on the Declutter Challenge. In my defense, I did start a year ago throwing out and donating unused items, and it's really just too cold to tackle the garage which REALLY needs a purge-and-organize.

Photo Credit

MENU
✿ Scrambled Eggs with Broccoli and Jack Cheese & Blueberry Pancakes with Maple Syrup ✿
✿ Beef Au Jus Sandwiches on Homemade Herbed Bread & Steamed Carrots and Peaches ✿
✿ Cheese Pizza & Fresh Strawberries ✿
✿ Chicken Cordon Bleu & Herbed Biscuits and Peas ✿

SCHOOL SNIPPETS
Sam has discovered that reading isn't so bad! He's rereading the Flat Stanley series, but I'm just pleased as punch that he seems to be ENJOYING it! He's moving along in Horizons Math 2, working on his understanding of place value, time and regrouping.  We started body systems in Life Science this week.

Cati is reluctantly continuing her Daily Grams. She's finding the whole thing monotonous and boring so I'm tempted to drop it, but she doesn't want to BEGIN anything else. It's too early in the year to discontinue a whole subject! She's already completed her year of Life Science and is almost there with Saxon Math 76. 

They watched vidoes on the 1870-1900s in American History, learning about economic changes and social upheaval during the 'Gilded Age' and Teddy Rooveselt, and solved some mysteries in Art Fraud Detective: Spot the Difference, Solve the Crime!, studying paintings by Pieter de Hooch, Hendrick ter Brugghen and Marinus van Reymerswaele.

In STEM school, Jake printed out his finished 3D plans for a steam-powered 'power plant' (to run a Lego train set), solved quadratic equations, learned quantum physics, and continued his (mostly) winning streak in Chess.

BOOKS
Mom - The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin & Seeing a Large Cat by Elizabeth Peters
Cati - The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Sam - Flat Stanley & Invisible Stanley by Jeff Brown

PEOPLE & PLACES
✿ Concert Band & Clarinet Lesson (Cati) ✿ 
✿ Boy, Girl & Cub Scouts (All) ✿  
✿  Garage & Dunkin Donuts ✿ 

FAVORITES
I have this big, old TV in my bedroom. Would you believe that with the proper connections the XBOX will connect to it and play my "Big Bang Theory" DVDs? The kiddos aren't thrilled with my 'borrowing' the XBOX though.

Photo Credit

As always, special thanks to these weekly wrap-ups:

Weekly Wrap-up: One Step at a Time

Cabin Fever. :sigh:

With winter lingering on, I couldn't wait to get outside anymore. I downloaded this awesome app for my Smartphone called Runkeeper. It uses GPS to map where and distance, and includes pace and an estimation of how many calories burned. I logged in 6.08 miles of walking the last 1 1/2 weeks. Considering I had to deal with an achy leg due to neurological testing, icy roads, and messy weather, I'm happy with that. I even dragged the kids and dogs along! Seeing those miles add up is a great incentive!

Have you read The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin? Awesome!

School Snippets

• Jake is building a steam-powered 'power plant' that will run a Lego train, gave a presentation in Social Studies, and is studying Mars for another oral and computer presentation
• Cati and Sam studied Quinten Massys and Raphael in Art Fraud Detectives: Spot the Differences, Solve the Crime!
• Both went swimming (in a heated pool)
• Cati played clarinet in a band concert
• Cati read The Fellowship of the Ring, and Sam read The Magic Finger and started Flat Stanley (again)
• Cati wrote terse verses for poetry and worked on her collection of inspirational sayings 
• Sam spend HOURS building and redesigning a Lego boat, then added a Technics motor and made it RC, and tested it in the bathtub for speed and maneuverability 
• Sam worked on time (minutes), fact families, place value, and word problems  

Cati and I finished our 2nd knitted scarves. What do you think?

She started another scarf, peach and cream striped this time, and I'm going to make some dishclothes. I'm using this You Tube video tutorial for the dishclothes. Again, for beginners.

I've joined a decluttering challenge called "40 Bags in 40 Days" here. She has some useful printables if you're up for some simplifying. I'm not sure I'll get to 40 bags as I've been doing this for a year, but there's always stuff that can go, right? TBC (Total Bag Count): 3

Instead of buying pre-packaged bars for my oldest son's school snacks, I made Jordan Marsh Muffins this week. You can find the recipe here at Cooks.com. I made blueberry, raspberry and strawberry muffins from berries we or my Mom picked last season and froze, and omitted the sprinkle of sugar on top. Perfect for snacking!

Photo Credit

As always, special thanks to these weekly wrap-ups:

 

Weekly Wrap-up: Fazzled and Fried, But Plodding Creatively On

Life. It keeps this Mama busy...and away from her blog for a few months. That, and I fried the motherboard on my trusty laptop. :sigh:  I'm 'around', doing all those everyday oh-so-important activities that keep kids happy, healthy and learning, a home running (almost) smoothly, and a Mama (ME!) sane and grounded.

Despite ushering in 2014 with an icky "belly bug", my hope is that 2014 will be a year of strengthened family connections, new adventures and friends, and lots of silliness. Because silliness IS really, really important. I know I'm a little behind on New Year's resolutions, but there you go.

We're back at school, very much easing into the last half of our year. Some mornings are pretty darn rough getting up! Fortunately, at least for my homeschoolers, fuzzy PJs are acceptable school uniforms. For Mama, too!

Unfortunately Jake must still get dressed and head off to school (which means I have to tumble out of bed and get him to the bus stop even if I'm still in those PJs), but it continues to be so worth it for him!

Snippets from his Quarter Thus Far:

• made a speaker with a piece of metal taped over a paper cup• 
• made a battery using a zinc- and copper-covered nails and a lemon 
• made a lever to lift 9oz of water with 3oz of water using mechanical advantage 
• started exploring Trigonometry 
• started looking at different telescopes for Astronomy 
• learned the constellations and zodiac 
• explored electricity principles

Cati has finished her Life Science for the year! Go, C! She's 30 or so lessons from completing Math, but she's hit the part in the text that is more challenging and has slowed down. And there's her Easy Grammar, Spelling Power, Poetry unit, and American History that she's still plugging away at. What's wonderful is that her attitude towards school is much improved this year! I just wish it would rub off on her younger brother...

...as he's prodding through his short, "core only" days with a chip on his shoulder. :sigh: Isn't there always one? (or is it just in my homeschool?)

Snippets from Homeschooling

Cati 

• read The Hobbit and watched the movie
• had Jazz and Concert band practice
• wrote a Limerick
• learned to commute equivalent fractions, used a compass, found Pi, completed ratio word problems, found the perimeter of complex shapes, and solved proportion problems
• knitted a scarf

Sam

• started reading the My Weird School series with Ms. Todd is Odd!
• reviewed time, multiple digit addition with regrouping, worked on skip counting 7s and 8s
• learned articles and antonyms and reviewed capitalization, punctuation, sentence combining, verbs, and adjectives
• reviewed address, months and days
• completed a notebook page on food chains, consumers and producers and herbivores, carnivores and omnivores
• built a RC truck from a Lego Technic kit

Have you see those plastic band Rainbow Loom bracelets? The band bracelet CRAZE has descended upon our house! (Shhh! I'll admit it; I made one...or two...OK, 3.) Check out Ashley and Steph's You Tube videos here for good tutorials (especially if you're like us and get TOTALLY lost trying to follow the instructions included in the kit). We've run out of bands, but I've got some waiting on my Amazon cart.

I've been learning something new, too! To knit! My Mom taught me a weave or box-knit pattern and I created my first scarf in "ocean" blues and greens (that Cati and Sam are claiming ownership to). I've started a sparkly white cell pattern scarf for myself. I'll share a photo with you next time, when I have a little more to show. I'm hoping to have it completed by...next winter. ::wink::

Oh, and if you want to see the video How To and make your very own cell pattern scarf, watch this! Trust me - it's for beginners!

All this crafting and schooling doesn't leave much time for cooking. Perhaps next week I'll have a recipe to share with you. Did you create anything amazing in the kitchen this past week?

 As always, special thanks to these weekly wrap-ups:

 

Review: Girls of American History - Literature and Unit Study Guides for American Girl Books

Have you seen The American Girls Collection of historical fiction books for kids? It's been a FAVORITE of my Cati for years. I wouldn't be surprised if she's read through the series 3, 4 or 5 times. So, when Justine Gamble from Girls of American History: A Multi-Sensory Curriculum wanted product reviewers, we signed up for Addy!

"...Read it, Hear it, See it, Write it, and Do it.." - Justine Gamble from Girls of American History

What We Reviewed

Girls of American History Curriculum Unit 5: The Civil War - A Literature Guide and Unit Study for Addy, An American Girl - Time Period 1864

Published by Justine Gamble 2012

Individual Literature Studies $7.95 / Full Set $72.00 (prices subject to change)
Free Samples Available Here

Quick Peek
• Multi-sensory Approach to Learning
• Using Popular Literature
• Suggested Weekly Schedule
• Required and Suggested Reading List
• Field Trip and Craft Lists
• Templates
• On-line Additional Resources

Planning and Preparing

The first thing I did was download the 17 page literature and study guide, print it and slip the pages into a plastic report cover. I recommend these covers as they keep print-outs protected during use and are inexpensive to purchase and reuse.

I used the Overview of Content to gather books (from the library) and arts and crafts supplies. There were also additional resource and reading lists, suggested field trips (none in our area), and a weekly plans and schedule graph. All handy, quick resources to plan your unit study!

A lapbook was suggested to go along with the multi-sensory study, and, as ALWAYS, I downloaded from my favorite lapbook resource on-line. And because Cati doesn't enjoy the cutting-out-and-folding-mini-books part of lapbooks, I did that for her (while watching TV in the evenings). There were also suggestions for craft activities, which we already had 2 kits of.

What We Did

Everything was placed in a handy-dandy plastic basket, and Cati independently worked on the study during her leisure times. As a 6th grader, she was ready to "spread her wings" and take charge of some of her learning...and this literature study was easy enough for her to follow and implement with only a minimum amount of guidance from me. We made a schedule together - one book and one section of the lapbook per week. Definitely doable with her core classes, heavy band schedule, and scouting commitments!

She worked on these studies several times a week, sometimes skipping a few weeks as life happened. It was easy for her to pick-up where she left off and continue on. We borrowed the required reading books from our library, so no purchase was necessary. (Since this is a popular series of books, most libraries should have copies available.)  She's looking forward to completing her study with the Emancipation Party suggested in the study guide. It includes recipe suggestions and time-period games.

What We Didn't Do

Follow the weekly plans and schedule graph. Although a wonderful resource for planning your studies, Cati opted to work at her own pace, reading additional books, watching You Tube videos, doing additional crafts. Definitely a curriculum that can be tweaked to fit whatever your learners' needs and interest take them! 

She hasn't finished the unit study at this time. She's completed a number of weeks, but sometimes studies take longer than planned when following interests. Learning shoudn't be rushed! Fortunately, Girls of American History can be done both as a main history study AND as a supplemental study over different lengths of time.

Our Thoughts

Girls of American History is suggested for grades 2-6. Being in 6th grade, Cati found the unit study suggestions and work too simple. She's read the books before and are below her ability level; each one takes her about about 45 minutes to read. She wanted "more" from Girls of American History, but fortunately it's an easy guide to tweak, adding more detailed, in-dept work from other sources. Our suggested grade levels are advanced 1st - average 4th.

Otherwise, Girls of American History are a go-to for students who love the American Girl series of historical fiction! Super easy to print-out, implement and use, and can be changed up in a variety of ways to meet individual learners. You can focus on a specific girl and period of time, or get the 12 unit set, a complete study of American history that can be finished in two school years.

For more information, click on the following links:

Website

FAQ

Testimonials 

Order

 Disclosure: A Great Balancing Act was given a PDF download of the Girls of American History Unit 5 The Civil War literature study and subscriber access on-line for our honest review. All thoughts are our own.

Over the Long Weekend and Short Week

I was SUPER excited that we had NOTHING scheduled Friday through Monday. When does that happen? Never! I guess I'm a homebody at heart, and enjoy having days at home to catch up on projects, spend time with the kids...and, yes, sleep in a little.

Over the weekend Jake's best buddy T__ stayed with us. Can I tell you how AWESOME his kid is? He spent HOURS cleaning and organizing Sam's bedroom, just because. (Even I haven't been brave enough to tackle that!) He and Jake moved some household things into storage, fixed the back door, and finished winterizing the flock run. I'm grateful to have handy teenage boys around to help tackle projects!

Our Wellies are not longer chicks. They're beautiful brown hens with golden heads and red combs and wattles. They're laying teeny, speckled-tan eggs now.

Having the boys around gave ME time to plan meals, shop for this week's groceries and get some quick snacks and meals pulled together for the week.

● Breakfast: Oatmeal with Different Fixings, Egg, Turkey Bacon and Cheddar Breakfast Sandwiches, Cold Cereal with Skim Milk and Fruit

● Lunch: PB and J or Turkey and Cheese Sandwiches with Fruit and Veggies, Leftovers

● Dinner: Soft Beefy Cheddar Tacos with Mixed Greens and Rice, Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole with Broccoli, Chef Salad, Homemade Cheese Pizza with Herbed Crust

● Snacks: Fresh Fruit and Veggie Sticks, Hard-boiled Eggs, Nonfat Greek Yogurt, Wild Maine Berry Muffins, Air-popped popcorn

● Dessert: Almond-Orange Cake, Chocolate No Bake Cookies, Frozen Non-Fat Yogurt

Jake also had Tuesday off from B__ A__, so both his week and our homeschool week were short ones. A much needed recoup (for me) around here! A friend even came over with her daughter for hot mint chocolate, cookies, Skip-Bo, and Rummikub one rainy afternoon.

Jake received his first grades. They're not like other public school grades as they're based on projects goals, personal improvement, community involvement, understanding of the material, non-tested, cooperative teamwork...and ongoing. (Low scores are only an indication that the project is "in progress".) I'm pleased with his effort even if they weren't all 4s, the highest "grades"!

Homeschool? Well, we completed 2 1/2 days this week. Cati started a Life Science Experiment on the effects of fertilizers on fish tank water. (Special thanks to Sam's tropical fish for the water samples.) We already know what THAT effect will be, but it'll be interesting to see anyway, right? Sam flew through MUS lesson 13 on measurement (inches).  The boy who can wield a tape measure knows his inches! We skipped on through to lesson 14. Both read, reluctantly completed some grammar, and studied spelling words, and we even watched some NROC U.S. History videos about the War of 1812. (See my free resources tab for the NROC link.)

People and Places

● Clarinet Lesson and Concert Band (C) ● Boy Scout Court of Honor (J) ● 

Something to Share

As ALWAYS, linking up to these WONDERFUL blogs: