Movie, Liger, Garbage, Kenpo

These are the days...

(((Movie Making)))

Here's the movie we made with our neighborhood friends. John did a great job. The kids can't get enough of it and it was so much fun to get together with (most) everyone who was in the movie and watch the smiles on all their faces and hear their laughter as we watched it together for the first time.

(((Museum)))

We visited the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum and found the variety of animals to be amazing! Here were some of our favorites:

Tyra was most excited about the wolves.

Ethan was most excited about the Liger.

Cedric was most excited about the Rhinocerous...and later a mini model train he saw.



(((Earth Day)))

For Earth Day we decided to pick up garbage along the Jordan River. There was SO much junk to pick up. Mostly garbage like beer bottles, cigarrette boxes, or even tobacco containers. We learned some neat lessons that day about taking care of our bodies and the earth.



We picked up 5 grocery bags of filthy garbage! It felt so good and the place looked much better after we'd gone through it.

(((Greece)))

We're still learning about Ancient Greece and this week we focused on the Greek myths. Hercules was our favorite. It nice to hear the real myth instead of knowing the Disnsey version and it opens up great conversations.

(((Japanese Festival)))

We enjoyed the Japanese culture immensley...


we watched Kenpo sword practices,



and saw beautiful Japanese flower arrangements.

(((EXTRA)))

Warm days are the best. The kids were surprised with a beautiful tray of food while they were busy playing outside.

Loving It

"All children are born artists." -Picasso
"...the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up." Ken Robinson.

>>>Greece<<<

We went on a historical art tour titled "American Dreams" at the BYU Museum of Art this week. It was really enjoyable. I could have stayed there all day. The paintings were beautiful.

It just so happend that the first oil painting of the tour was one of Greek women during ancient Greece. We were excited to have such a coincidence occur. (Explanation is in the last blog entry).

I was really impressed with the comments the kids were giving. Especially Tyra when she spoke of freeing the slaves or Martin Luther Kings dream.

We were looking at an oil painting of an eagle that flew before a sky layered in colors and stars when Tyra said, "To me, the sky seems to represent the American flag." Way to go Ty!

>>>Aesop's Fables<<<

We've been reading and learning from Aesop's Fables. I have been so impressed with how well the kids understand the moral lessons in his fables. The ones we covered this week were:

The Frogs and the Well
The Tortoise and the Hare
The Three Bulls and the Lion
The Brother and Sister
The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg


Lessons of Wisdom learned:

"We should be happy with what we have." -Tyra
"We should keep on going and going." -Ethan
"Think and look before we do something." -Tyra
"Sticking together gives us strength - so bad doesn't win." -Ethan

>>>Party<<<

John had a night out with his friends friday night so we had a night out with ourselves by having a popcorn and movie party. We began to watch the movie Dinosaur but because it was scaring Cedric we watched Hercules instead...the kids were excited to point out Greek things we've been learning about like the Greek goddesses (in the movie) who wore the Greek apparel just like the painting we saw at the art museum.

>>>Garden<<<

Our garden has been put on hold until Monday (cross my fingers) as we intermingle it with the lesson of self sufficiency for FHE. I overheard Ethan telling his friend Elaine about our garden. He was out in the back yard walking through the squares (they aren't filled in yet) saying, "...these are going to be the kids' gardens. These are the families." As he walked across the bags filled with compost he said, "...and this is the dirt. We have to use COW POOP!" I just loved his enthusiastic explanation of it all.

>>>Extra<<<

Our "Handbook of Nature" came from Barnes and Noble today. We're excited and we'll be posting our Green Hour Challenge entries starting next week.

Here's something nature-like for now. This is a poem we read before bedtime earlier this week...

"Talents Differ"

Laura E. Richards

"What are you doing there, Robin a Bobbin,

Under my window, out in the blue?"

"Building my nest, O Little One, Pretty One,

Doing the thing that you cannot do!"

"What are you doing now, Robin a Bobbin,

Under my window, out in the blue?"

"Brooding my eggs, O Little One, Pretty One,

Doing the thing that you cannot do!"

"What are you doing there, Robin a Bobbin,

Under my window, out in the blue?"

"Feeding my nestlings, Little One, Pretty One,

Doing the thing that you cannot do!"

"And what are you doing, pray, Little One, Pretty One,

What are you doing, tell me now true?"

"Sewing my patchwork, Robin a Bobbin,

Doing the thing that you cannot do!"

The Lehi library had their annual book sale last thursday. John was at school and had the car so my mom came over and watched the kids so I could take advantage of the opportunity. I only spent $30 on 16 movies and 15 books - what a deal! It was like Christmas for the kids when I came home with those being the contents of a large box.

I think that sums up the bigger things of the week for us...

We have felt wonderfully satisfied with our family life. Lately I feel like shouting from the rooftops, "Homeschooling is incredible!"

What can I say, we love it!

First Turning - "the High"

There's been a lot going on around here. I'll attempt to do a brief summary...(but, first, this is a photo of Ethan taking in the contents of a book as he's sitting in his basket of books)

We recently did a homeschool "re-construction". It's necessary every now and then. Usually the "pre-construction" time periods are painful for me - nothing productive is really happening and excitement for learning has become close to extinct.

But, it's much like the theory about the cycles of life considered "turnings" from the book The Fourth Turning. The first turning being the "High", the second turning being the "Awakening", the third turning being the "Unraveling", and the fourth turning being the "Crisis". We just came out of the fourth turning and are now, once again, in the first turning - the "high". And boy are we ever! We are loving the opportunities homeschooling provides!

Along with doing our regular reading, writing, and math we are focusing much of our learning on History! Isn't it wonderful? For the next couple months or so we're learning about ancient to present

Greece

How could there be a couple months worth of learning about Greece? We realized how many neat things came from there! We'll be covering:

Aesop's Fables
Alexander the Great
Greek construction and buildings
Greek Gods
Greek Philosopher's
Olympics
Spartan Army

How fun is that? ...Well, I think it's exciting! Here's something else we'll be doing -

Green Hour Challenge!

It's made up of a set of 9 assignments and there's a fabulous book titled, "Handbook of Nature Study" we will be pulling a wonderful amount of information from throughout the assignments.

We'll spend time outdoors observing what we see, finding things we're interested in to focus on and do further investigating on. I'll be posting our entries on this blog.

We'll be observing, sketching, brainstorming, describing, and memorizing...and we get to do all of this enjoying and learning from the beautiful world Heavenly Father blessed us with - it'll be great!

Free Friday!

Friday's will be our reading day. We'll read any (or all) learning and fun books Tyra and Ethan chose from the library earlier in the week without having to write about what they learned from it...so, no strings attached. :) We'll focus a lot on poems and will work on writing our own as well.

We'll be checking out poems written by teens at the Sandy Library this month.

Along with all of this we'll be working on our garden thanks to SFG! The kids each have their own little 2x2 garden where they chose to plant things such as watermelon, lettuce, carrots, beets, and collard! I can't wait to see the results.

I'll be posting the photos from our big activity we're doing today which is

Movie Making

Tyra and Ethan's friends will be coming over and they'll create the story to and act in their very own movie...I hope they dress up! :) John will be recording and editing it and I will be....assisting wherever needed. The results will be posted soon.
All I can say, is there are so many wonderful, fun, and exciting things to enjoy and learn about and that's just what we're doing!

I've detached myself from the internet...I found it to be addicting and mind numbing. It reminds me of Elder Ballards talk to young mothers and the suggestion he gave to stay away from things that numb the mind such as the TV or the internet. He is SO right!

So, interestingly enough, even though I've started a whole new blog I'm cutting back, big time, on my computer time and only stopping by once every couple days or less - to do what I need to do (and stop by everyone's blogs every now and then). My other blog might just go to pots - and this one, being our homeschooling journal, will be tapped into most often.

Our New Blog

I decided to start a blog dedicated to our home school happenings. We've been sick for a couple weeks now which took us out of our normal way of things. But we're getting back in the jist of things. Here's a look -

We just started having Tyra read to Cedric (and Camilla) while I help Ethan with his reading. It's a good thing for everyone - Tyra reads, Cedric loves to be read to, and it keeps them busy to let Ethan and I work together on his reading.





Tyra and Ethans reading lessons















We enjoy playing games together. This is a photo of John and the kids playing Trouble. Other games we like to play are: Life, Zingo, math card games, Uno, Mensch Argere Disch Nicht, Cagola, and the classic - Candyland.








We've had a lot of time to read while we've been sick. Bridge to Terabithia and The Moffats along with a handful of Junie B books were ones we read during our two week flu epidemic. Bridge to Terabithia was probably my favorite one, although I would recommend scribbling out the innapropriate words before handing the book over to a child to read. Something about taking away a persons only good thing in life is absolutely heart wrenching to me.

More homeschooling adventures to come...