So...here is a super simple way for children to make their own fossils.

I had no idea that Plaster of Paris could be so easy to work with!

(I had envisions of cement mixers, inhaling nasty white powder, and crusty rock formations on my best spatula)

However with a little prep work, None of that occurred, and we had a fantastic time making fossils!

And apparently our excavation site was somewhere in the Asian territory of a remote place called “ANIHC”

Too Cute Right?

Click Here for full Photo Instructions!

It took all of two seconds for the wee one’s to find this beauty!

(That’s a clover right?)

Now where did that little green fella’ go?

Blessings,

Valerie

A is for Adventurous,
B is for Boy,
C is for Concussion,
D is for Doctor,
E is for Emergency,
F is for Family,
G is for God,
H is for Hospital,
I is for Insurance,
J is for Jargon,
K is for “Kids do this all the time”
L is for Legalities,
M is for Medication,
N is for Nausea,
O is for “Oh My Goodness!”
P is for Prayer,
Q is for Queasy,
R is for Rest,
S is for Specialist,
T is for Treatment,
U is for Unconscious,
V is for Vomit
W is for Wake Up (Every 2 hours)
X is for X-ray (well, CT scan)
Y is for Yawn
Z is for ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! (finally!)

So…..Yeah.

I know when you have a boy, people TELL you….and they give you that LOOK…….and you PREPARE your heart……..and you PRAY for strength……..but really, somewhere deep down inside you think….”That’s not going to happen to me……All those other Mom’s just weren’t protecting their sons enough, I mean really how can they let them run in the house. (snicker) Not Me! My boys are not going to be wild, and unruly, and bruised, and bleeding, because my boys are good boys, and they sit quietly at the dinner table, and they never fall out of trees cause they won’t climb them, and the’ll never throw fits in the grocery store over the wrong kind of ice cream, cause’ we won’t eat any sugar at all….and they’ll be happy that I’m buying them organic, unpasturized goat cheese curds or they won’t eat at all.”

Not my boys.

So, Bubba is doing just fine, we didn’t even have to stay the full night in the Hospital, and there are no skull fractures, internal bleeding, or extensive swelling. PRAISE GOD! Just a little bruise on his brain and he’s been in great shape healing rapidly! It got pretty scary there for a while, but God was watching over him, and the right people were around him to take the appropriate action!

And, the kids are so thankful to be spending “Spring Break” resting, snuggling on the couch and gorging themselves on popsicles, ice cream, cartoons, and all the other amazingly wonderful things God created ;)

I, on the other hand, am thankful that I have another Milestone to chart in his baby book:

Age 4: Concussion!

(You know cause we want him to have some exciting times to look back on)

LOL. It’s amazing what a Boy MOM can handle.

Anyone else have a Baby Book filed with Adventure?

I have no excuse really.

Guess I’m just not the recuitment type.

But today I’d thought I’d share one of the bennies’ of being your child’s teacher, by giving you a little sneak peak, behind the scenes glance at one of the lovely endearing notes that I got from one of my STAR students:

Seriously?

“Because you’ve got 11 years left under my roof, and even your spell checker won’t recognize those words.”

NO….I would never say that.

But Seriously?

And you know,…..At First, I thought I’d remember this little lovely note as one of the Con’s of Homeschooling, but then I realized that I did get a little giggle out of it, so in to the Pro’s pile (and my keepsake box) it goes.

And now I wonder if anyone else gets Passive Aggressive notes instead of Apples on their desk in the morning?

Me too. Almost.

Here are a couple more owl books and owl crafts to go along with your Owl Unit Studies.

Don’t worry if you’re not learning about owls at the moment.

Just bookmark and save :)

I do….and apparently I’m not the only one.

Apparently, there is an entire book devoted to homeschooling in the car…..

CarSchooling by Diane Flynn Keith.

(I don’t have this book…but I do love herClickSchooling website!)

We do quite a bit of school in the car.

My opinion is that when you homeschool you just have to be open for the opportunities to arise and somehow you’ll squeeze all the curriculum goals in before the end of the year. I really believe that.

I have to believe that because I don’t have a magic fairy that comes in and teaches my children Art History and Global Economics….leaving me free to solve the numerous daily hassles that seem to always come up:

Like when I have to run back to the store to pick up the cheese that I forgot…

OR to pick up the cheese that the lady charged me for but didn’t put in the bag…….

OR to pick up the cheese that the lady charged me for, and put in the bag, but whirled the bag back around that stupid spinning thing at Wal-mart and hid the other half of my groceries from view leaving me to pack up three children in the pouring rain and head back to the store just so we have what we need come dinner time….which is approaching ever so quickly…..and we might as well pick up McDonnalds anyway, cause it’s too late for Chicken Parmesan anyway! Yeah.

(TOTALLY HOW I FEEL ABOUT IT)

So Moving On…….Lately we’ve been quite sick, I even lost my voice…(betcha didn’t even notice)…and we’ve been traveling alot (…..more on that later), and of course we’re just horrible “Planners” in general…..always running out of toliet paper and laundry soap at just the right time…..

All of which equals more and more of “Car Time” and less and less of school time.

So to counteract life all of these crazy issues that keep popping up, I’ve begun to think of how I can utilize this time on the road.

So I came up with this ingenious idea.

Clipboards for the Car.

Really Rocket science here folks….

Of course I had to sell it on the kids, so I let them go crazy with some Modge Podge…… and they turned them into some “Really, Super Duper Extra Special Travel Pads!” (you know……for when we want to bring along all our super cool worksheets to the dentists office)

It was like taking candy from a baby.

When they finished tearing out every worksheet within reach, and attaching them to their clipboards I knew I had a gold mine.

I knew I had to share…..because I’m gonna milk this on as long as I can.

Homeschooling in the Car rocks.

In fact I now have a school bag dedicated especially for stuff to bring in the car.

I also keep a spelling list in my center console……

Next to my iPhone…….which is jam packed with every educational “AP” I can find (lest the kids have a moments rest from learning)

But the point is that I wanted to stop the, “It’s to hard to write when the cars moving, and the pencil pokes through the paper and my leg and it hurts… and brother is leaning on me and I can’t focus on my math………….” whining in the car.

And these clipboards are going to help. I just know it.

If you’re unfamiliar with Modge Podge, I posted a tutorial of how how we made these clipboards on our main site.

Anyone else have a Handy Tip for Carschooling?

I have been dreaming this up for weeks!

Okay, probably months, but I hesitate to let you know what a slacker I am.

SO LOOK!

Freaking Awesome right?

Besides looking so colorful and linguistic (which of course appeases ever nerve in my homeschool body) these actually make up a fun educational game as well:

Total Score, I know!

So you play by rolling the dice and making words from the letters and word endings that you get.

For every word you can make, you get one point.

You can make these with as many letter blocks, and word ending blocks as you like depending on your child’s ability level. (We used 9 blocks total)

You can snag the wooden blocks at the craft store for about 50 cents a pop.

I put full instructions for how to make this game on our main site here!

I even found this cool wooden crate to store it in from the Dollar Tree!
What a Freaking Awesome Day!

How can we learn about owls without dissecting some Owl puke?

I know right….we’d be kicked out of the Homeschool Co-op if we tried to pull a stunt like that!

(snicker)

Actually, we didn’t dissect “real” owl puke, we used the synthetic stuff.

We learned just as much about the dietary needs of owls, and I didn’t have to scream at my children for rubbing their eyes while dissecting.

Though I did startle the boy when I noticed him putting the bird beak in his mouth…..totally freaky

(Don’t worry…..I made him puke it up……like an owl…….there is no need to call CPS)

Anyway, I made a printable book to go along with the Owl Pellet Dissection, and it’s now up on the site with photo instructions for how to dissect your own owl pellet.

(Thrilling stuff isn’t it)

Trust me, the kids love it.

Recently my 4 year old son (Bubba) has been showing interest and readiness to learn at a higher level then I’ve been presenting to him. I’m really excited to see the changes over the past few months:

He will sit for extended periods of time
He can hold a pencil the correct way most of the time without help
He knows his letters and the sounds they make
He is writing his name and other short words
He is beginning to recognize common words (Thanks Starfall!)
He is showing an interest in having “HIS OWN” school books (instead of sharing with Sissy)

I’m really excited because he has been such an “Energetic” little scout, and it’s been really hard to even attempt to lead any type of learning experience that required “FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS”

SIGH.

But I see that we are coming around the bend, and my little Preschooler just might be ready for some more one-on-one instructional learning.

Thus, I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks RE-Arranging my LIFE Homeschool schedule to fit him in a bit more, and of course researching curriculum choices that I could use for both children. I haven’t got it all just perfect yet (do we ever) but here are a couple of new additions to our Homeschool Curriculum that I wanted to share:

The Complete Book of Science:

I love this book not only because it is in full color (total score for entertainment factor) but it has 12 different sections that provide hands on learning alongside worksheets and reproducible charts and diagrams. One of the first topics we started with this book was “Our Human Body” and we made these life size representations of our organs, bones, and muscles. You can imagine that both kiddos were giggly excited to do this. (Now, we’re learning about Rocks and Minerals) You can read sample pages here….

Family Math:

I saw this book at a thrift store (after I read that a friend picked it up at a thrift store) and decided to give it a shot. I mean $2 is worth a shot right? Totally worth it. I love this book already, it has transformed Math time at our house in a matter of days. Both of my kids love the hands on activities, and they love learning alongside eachother when an activity fits both their ability levels. The best part about this book is that it tells you very clearly, what ages each activity is for, and then it has pictures and additional ideas for how to explore the concepts with each child. Here is Bubba playing one of the sorting and counting games:

Teaching Children ART:

Okay, I know…we don’t really need books to teach children art do we? Aside from subscribing to Art Projects for Kids, I’ve been using this book to make sure that the kiddos recieve some sort of formal traning on Art (you know like color theory and all that technical stuff) So far we’ve done a couple of lessons as a family, and both children have been very interested. Here are some photos of them learning about line (horizontal, vertical, and diagonal)

And for Geography…..Did you see? I won the 6 month Subscription to Little Passports, and should be receiving some fantastic learning materials soon! I can’t wait, so stay tuned for photos of those!

I’ve added all of our new books and resources to our Homeschool Curriculum page, in case you’re interested in what we’re using for the other topics too!

Okay, so I’m not really sure what category these little guys are going to fall under, because we made them with rose petals in the shape of hearts…and they look like Spring trees, but Valentine’s Day is not exactly in Spring per-se’ …..so for now we’re just calling them Valentine Trees.

Whatever.

They’re really easy, and they are like a keepsake because you can use them with your children’s handprints…..(Imagine a full bulletin board of these!) I got the Rose Petals at the Dollar Tree.

Here’s the Scoop:

And in other “Lovey News”

there is a little girl out there who will be recieving 10 inches of the most beautiful brown hair I’ve ever seen (Okay I’m partial).
Sissy (6) eventually convinced me to let her cut her hair to chin length, and while I’m partial to long hair on little girls, It was the “No-Tangles” argument that finally won me over and sealed the deal. (Serious, I’m not the only one that gets screamed at during hair brushing time am I?)