We updated the front yard for the spring and we have new babies!

It was time to clean up the front yard and get ready for the warmer weather.  We started by cleaning out the front flower bed and replaced the hostas with bark. It is too hot for the hostas to survive there without the shade of the tree. I still need to get some colorful annuals for the big pots, but here is what it looks like now:

We have a new wreath over our front door and I added some yellow and salmon colored flowers to pick up the colors from our bench pads. 

The top looks a little smooshed because in the few weeks it’s been there, we noticed that a house finch couple decided that it was time to make a nest so I didn’t want to hurt it.

That’s when I noticed that we have a house finch family living on our front door. (Fortunately they didn’t drown or get blown away in our lovely spring thunderstorm last night!)

As we decided to move to the back yard and work there, we saw more lovely things like these:

Yellow Iris

Purple Iris

Columbine

And, lest we forget:

The baby kittens we found hidden behind our kiddie swimming pool leaning against the wall.  HorseyBug was in seventh heaven.  These little guys got moved by their mama last night in the storm and we aren’t sure where they are now but they are cute!

A Visual 12 Year Plan

I have been using the SCM book called Planning Your Charlotte Mason Education for the last few years to individually plan for each child’s needs and streamline our course of studies in our family.  In this book, Sonya Shafer has us do an evaluation of all the various subjects that we can teach and rate them according to our desires to include them in our children’s education. Next she has a subjects/year graph that you fill out according to your rating chart – paying strict attention to what you are required to teach in your state as well.

I did that. I had a plan of subjects I was going to teach from Kindergarten to 12th Grade. It was a great feeling!

It is amazing what a broad feast of ideas you can place before your children with a basic plan!  ;)

This year, as I have continued to organize our library , full of books from kind friends who share their materials as they outgrow them, and and take advantage of curriculum sales and to accumulate the books that I have researched and decided would fit our family’s needs, I realized that it is so easy to buy the same type of thing over and over if I am not careful. 

I decided that I could make a large version of my 12 Year Plan and hang it on the wall by my library or computer desk where I can see at a glance what materials I have already got for each subject! It is so helpful to me now.  

I only wish that I had thought of this sooner.   

Supplies Needed:

2 – 20″x30″ foam boards

Packing tape

Pencil

Yard Stick

Sharpies in 8 colors package

Post-It Note Roll (white color)

Large flat surface (tabletop or floor)

To Make:

Step 1:  Tape the two long sides (30″) of the boards together in the back only (after you finish making the grid lines you will wrap the tape in the front for stability).  The board will now measure 30″x 40″. The 30″ side is the top.

Step 2:  Decide how many rows you need for subjects and how many columns you will need for your years. I made 26 rows and 14 columns. 

Step 3:  I decided I wanted to title my board, so I laid my board on table (so it wouldn’t bend as I moved it about). Then on top of my board (30″ side) I measured down 2″  on both ends and using my pencil, drew my line.

Step 4:  Time for the grid.  I decided the I wanted to be able to use Post-It Notes in my boxes as I adjusted the materials to fit our needs, so I made the rolls large enough to hold a 1″ post it note roll – the advantage of the roll is that I can cut the Post-It to the right length every time!

On the left side of my board I started measuring from my line and marked 26  1 1/4″ intervals.  Then I  marked it on the right sides of the boards.  Next, I drew my lines in across the board.

Step 5:  Now it is time for the columns.  I needed 14 columns.  On the top line I measured over 4″ once for my subjects.  Then I measured the other 13 Year lines at 2 inches.  I did the same thing on the bottom line.  Lining up my measurements, I marked the lines from the top line to the bottom line.

(I left empty spaces above and below my lines. )

Step 6:  Now I went back over it with my black sharpie so it is straight, tidy and permanent.

Step 7: I penciled in my title (Heritage Haven Academy Curriculum Plan) and then traced that with my blue sharpie.

Step 8:  In the first row under my title, I labeled my columns. The first one says Subjects. The second starts as Yr. K, the third one is Yr. 1, and so on through Yr. 12.

Step 9:  I wrote all my subjects in the 4″ line in green sharpie.  I tried to group all components of subjects together – for example:  History, Book of Centuries, and Geography were one after another.  Language Arts comprises Reading/Literature, Handwriting, Spelling, Composition, and Grammar.

Step 10: The Fun Part!

Transfer over the entire paper grid from Planning Your CM Education, marking X’s for each year you plan to teach the subject.  That is your basic plan.

This next part is where the “saving me time and money” comes in:

As I decide what I will use to teach that subject, cut off a piece of the Post-It note, write the name on the Post-It and place in it in the appropriate year.

(Note: my board is not complete yet, but I have most of it ready to be placed on there; for example we are using Math U See for our math, etc.)

Viola! A Visual 12 Year Plan!!

Do you have any tips or ideas that you use to keep yourself organized with planning? Leave a comment!   

Our Preschool “Room”

I meant to publish this weeks ago, but haven’t had a chance. So now that this school year is almost over, I will finally share how we managed preschool this year!

This is our school wall in our house.  It has changed a bit since we moved in – we’ve repainted and added a timeline, cleaned them up to add the new preschool manipulatives (see picture below) and other smaller things.

As many of you know, I have two set of kiddos several years apart. One set is preschool and the other is middle school. This wall is aimed at the middle school aged kids and works great!

I wanted my younger girls to have something that made them feel like they were special and that learning with a real schedule was important for them too.

I had purchased the Letter of the Week download from Confessions of a Homeschooler and printed all the fun cute alphabet letters, numbers, shapes, colors etc.   I wanted to hang them up, but as you can tell, there is no room.

 I knew that we were going to use the coffee table and some small chairs for preschool while the oldest worked on their independent subjects.

So how to get those in a room format for the little kids without taking over our living room???

After a bit of thought, I remembered an old tri-fold foam display board we had in the basement.

Here’s our preschool board:

We have circle time with this board, saying the pledge, reviewing the alphabet, numbers, color and shape of the week, seasons, days of the week, and a weather chart.

I simply pull this out of the school supply closet every morning, gather the daily supplies for our fun activities, and we sit around the coffee table and have a great time learning and laughing and reading. When we are done, I can fold up the board and put it away and the supplies go back on the school room shelves.

These are the shelves in the school bookcases that hold most of my preschool supplies/manipulatives. This makes grabbing supplies on a moment’s notice so simple.  I have other activities like playdough, wooden blocks, tangrams, and nature study table items stored with other like supplies, and those are in tubs on shelves in easy reach too. The books are in easy access places all over the house.

The fun part of this is that I can have school where ever I feel like it.  The board has become a signal to the girls that it is time for school, making it even easier to involve them in other learning activities  around the kitchen table, too – which is  one of  the best part of homeschooling, after all – the togetherness!

JitterBug’s Big Week: New Hair Style and 2nd Place at the Pinewood Derby

The title says it all! Here’s the new hair cut:

And the back – I must say that I finally have a teenager.  She now spends time in the bathroom doing all that girly stuff with hair goop and blowdryers…

It looks super cute on her!

And she and her dad made a Ferrari for her Pinewood Derby car.  She took second place! Pretty exciting!

Dad had fun, too!  The car even has a windshield.

Magical Creatures Art Challenge

Our Creative Art Challenge #5 is based on this picture named The Golden Fish by Paul Klee.

Mr. Klee was born in Switzerland in 1879. He was a gifted violinist who could have been professional, but he chose art instead.  He lived and worked in Germany until the 1930′s when the Nazi’s came to power.  In the Nazi’s mindset, modern art was “degenerate” or corrupt and Mr. Klee was forced to return to Switzerland. There he fell ill with a rare disease and died in 1940.

Mr. Klee thought art should be about ideas, beliefs, and feelings. His paintings are filled with strange symbols and fragments designed to suggest other magical worlds.

If you look closely The Golden Fish reflects those symbols.

This painting was created by using both oil paints and watercolors.  The watercolors are see through, which make the oils that much more vivid.

Our Challenge: Create our own Magical Creatures using oil pastels and watercolor paints.

What we used:

Supplies Needed:

Watercolor paper

Watercolor paint and brushes

Water

Pencil (if desired)

Oil Pastels

What We Did:

1. Lightly drew pictures and designs with our pencils.

2. Thickly color the pictures and designs with the oil pastels.

3. Mix watercolor paint with water and paint in on the oil pastel picture.

4. Wait for it to dry.

Results are fun and will vary according to your oil pastel and watercolor thickness.

Here is BittyBug and JuneBug showing off their pictures:

Here are JitterBug’s and HorseyBug’s:

Clown Collage a la Picasso

I’ve never really connected with Pablo Picasso’s work, so wasn’t sure about this week’s Creative Art challenge. After reading a bit about him and some of his works, I can better appreciate his genius. I still wouldn’t decorate my house around one of his paintings but they are interesting once you know what experience he was sharing in his artworks.  This week’s painting was this one:

Punchinello with a Guitar, 1920

(Photo by WikiPaintings)

Once I understood that this is Punchinello – as in Mr. Punch of the “Punch & Judy” show fame with a guitar, I  could see it and appreciate it since I DO know about Punch and Judy.  Interesting how connections are made from seemingly unrelated bits of information, isn’t it?

Our Creative Art challenge: Make a clown collage to place on a scene that you painted.  (Like Punch is coming out from the curtains in the picture above). 

This project was a lot of fun. The possibilities for this style of artwork are limited only to your imagination (and possibly the scraps of paper or fabrics in your art closet!)

What we used:

Watercolor paper

Watercolor paint in tubes

Water and mixing trays

Watercolor brushes

Painter’s or masking tape

Paper scraps in all colors

Glue sticks

How we did it:

1. Try taping your paper down with painter’s tape.  (We didn’t do that and we wish we had!)

2. Paint a stage or background for your clown.  Let it dry.

3. Cut different shapes out of paper, foil, fabric, etc. that have lots of different patterns and textures.

We cut:

2 long triangles for legs

two medium triangles for arms

4 small triangles for hands and feet

a small half circle for a face,

a large half circle for a hat

a cone shape for the top of the hat

an uneven 4 sided shape for a body

a ruff for the clown outfit

shapes for juggling (if desired)

4. Glue pieces onto the dry painted stages.  Be creative and expressive!  JitterBug suprised me! She painted a tightrope and spotlight and then glued her clown “performing” on it.  Check it out:

JitterBug’s Clown Collage

Here are the other girls pictures:

HorseyBug’s Clown Collage

JuneBug’s Clown Collage

BittyBug’s Clown Collage

Yippie! Time to make Homemade Strawberry Freezer Jam!

Ahhh! Spring begins the delightful toil of putting up food storage for the year. Last year we had so much Strawberry Freezer jam that I didn’t make any.

During the winter we made a dent in it (we shared a bunch with some friends – so we didn’t actually eat that much, lol) , so this year I got to make 19 1/2 pints of Strawberry Freezer Jam.

I started making the less sugar version about 4-5 years ago and prefer it to the more sugary version I had eaten until then.

When the berries go on sale (usually 4 pounds for $6), I buy 20 pounds just for jam. Since I use less sugar, the recipe calls for more berries.  The berries this year were perfect!! Don’t they look good??

Now that the jam is done, I bought some more berries to wash and clean. I will slice them and place in freezer bags for smoothies all year long. We eat smoothies a lot in the summer as “ice cream” or just for part of our lunch.  This is a great way to stretch our budget and still have “fresh” fruits and veggies all year.

Sometimes I surprise the kiddos and make a vanilla sheet cake and we have our version of a Strawberry Shortcake dessert.