CHA FAN!

Christian Homeschool Association

I snapped this picture of Elijah this afternoon at the CHA baseball game. I'm not sure why he had a book and pencil. He must have went back to the van and got that out.

We are CHA fans so we attend all the volleyball, basketball, baseball and soccer games we can.

If you can't read Elijah's shirt it says;
PROPERTY of CHA ATHLETICS
All four of us have CHA shirts.

Goodnight Elijah and Dakota!

The boys had gone to bed, so I went to the back to tell them goodnight, when I saw them I had to come back and get my camera.

How can you get on to them for reading and writing? LOL


Elijah and I have talked about him starting a journal. He decided tonight was the night.

I think Elijah did a great job on his first entry.

He wrote...

I had a good day. Me and my Papaw cut trees for wood. We rode the four wheeler.

My family went to a baseball game. Then we went out to eat.

He drew a picture of two stick figures on a four wheeler and some trees.

Dakota is always reading so this wasn't anything unusual for him.

FIAR Notebook

This is Elijah's Five In A Row Notebook.


I used FIAR with Dakota when he was little and we loved it. Elijah and I are enjoying it also.
It is such a fun curriculum.

We have made many many lapbooks based on FIAR books. Elijah decided he wanted to make a FAIR notebook so we started working on it this year.
I'm posting some samples of pages we made for a few books. This 3 inch binder is full so there is no way I could post pictures of all the pages.

I let Elijah make a title page for the book we are reading. He can make it anyway he likes.

Ping

Lentil

I may add another post for the FIAR notebook. This book is full and I can't post all the pages, but there are some good pages in there.

Notebooking!

I've mentioned notebooking a few times and recently admitted I like notebooking more than lapbooking and Elijah does too. I've had some questions about how we notebook.

Here are Elijah's notebooks. His Timeline notebook is missing, I loaned it out to someone to look over.


Five In A Row, Bible, Language Arts, American History, Nature Journal, Geography, Creation, Math

Animals, World History, Science, Earth and Space, 50 States, Feathers, Art, Presidents, Doodles, Timeline

Elijah and I made these notebooks up this past summer. When he reads and learns about something, he makes a page on it and puts it in one of his notebooks. I was thinking these notebooks would last him several years, but some are getting full.

Over the next few weeks I plan to showcase the notebooks separately and show examples of pages in each notebook. If you have any questions about any of the notebooks, please ask.

I provide Elijah with tons of supplies he can use for notebooking. Supplies Elijah might use:
* Colored pencils, markers, crayons
* Glue sticks
* Scissors and shape scissors
* Tape
* Stickers
* Rubber stamps
* Paints
* Glitter
* Pictures
* Magazines
* Lined paper, copy paper and card stock
* Scrapbook sheets
* Stencils
* Zip lock bags to hold things
* I created some sheets with various size squares for drawing and writing. I'll make sure he has a lot of copies of these sheets.
* I have also bought several sets of notebooking pages from the internet.

Things Elijah might include in his notebooks:
* Writing - copy work, narrations and dictations
* Pictures - drawings, sketches, photos, coloring pages and clip art
* Bible verses
* Paper projects - booklets, folds
* Maps
* Diagrams and graphs
* Pressed flowers, leaves
* Worksheets
* Pages printed from the internet
* Scrapbook pages
* Lab reports
* Outlines
* Poems
* Newspaper or magazine articles

I like to use page protectors in the notebooks, but in some notebooks Elijah just 3 hole punched pages and put them in.

I would also love to see notebooks by other homeschooled children so please leave me a link.

My Little Outdoors Man!

Elijah is an outside boy all the way. He loves to be outside. He enjoys walking around with a gun looking for stuff to shoot, shooting his bow and arrow and his newest hobby is knife throwing.

I'm not sure how Elijah got interested in knife throwing, but he really enjoys it. He is now collecting knives. He already had a few big ole knives, but now he wants throwing knives and stars. A few weeks ago he did get a nice foam target from Academy Sports after this box was full of holes.


Elijah got this deer target for his birthday a couple of years ago. He has shot this deer with his gun and the bow and arrow, now he is throwing knives at it.



You can see he has a little metal squirrel target too. He has a long string tied to it so when he is far back and shoots it over he can pull the string to stand it back up again.

Not a killing shot, but he did hit it.

Nature Walk

A few weeks ago the boys and I took a little nature walk down the road, just to get out of the house and to see what we might find.

We didn't find anything interesting, but we did enjoy walking and talking.

I really like this pictures of my boys.


Four cats and a dog had to walk along with us. They pretty much walked in a line like this all way. I thought it was interesting to see the animals walk in such a line. When we would stop they would stop.



Right down the road from us is a watering hole. We stopped there to throw rocks in the water.
One day my mom took a picture of an alligator in this watering hole! I keep my eyes open!

If you live in town, but want to get out for a nature walk, give us a call and come explore with us. We live inside the Ouachita Wildlife Refuge.

Enchanted Learning dot com

If you have ever wondered if Enchanted Learning . com is worth the $20.00 a year, let me reassure you it IS!

I used Enchanted Learning when it was free for pages for Dakota. I wondered why anyone would buy curriculum when all that was free on the Internet.

A few years later.... they have added so much more to Enchanted Learning, but now charge $20 a year. $20 for a whole year of curriculum - How cheap is that!
All subjects for only $20.

I print from Enchanted Learning weekly if not daily. I have my home page set to their What's New page and every couple of days new pages will appear and I print them if it is something Elijah can use.

Last night I spent a couple of hours on Enchanted Learning printing money worksheets for Elijah's math notebook.

In the last week I've also printed some phonics worksheets and a ton of pages about birds and butterflies.

Enchanted Learning is a great place for notebooking pages.

Mom's Night Out

Last night we had our homeschool group MNO. A fun time was had by all.
We usually meet at someones home each month, but once a year we head out to a restaurant.
I was so happy to hear we were meeting at Olive Garden! YUMMY! It was a small group of us, but just the right size to enjoy visiting with.

Here are a few pictures we snapped.

Dakota's Photography

Today on the way home from the doctor's visit we noticed how pretty the fields and sky were. So we came home and put Elijah to bed then Dakota and I took a ride so he could shoot some pictures. (Jody was home with Elijah.)

These were all taken from the van window, so I guess you can say we were doing some drive by shootings. Dakota was telling me to pull up or back up and I told him he could get out of the van and walk to get the shots he wanted. LOL

God's world is so beautiful!

Change of plans

No school for us today!

Elijah woke up during the night sick and got in the bed with me. I do not sleep well with him in the bed with me.

This morning he was feeling pretty bad and just wanted to stay in bed. I looked in his mouth with a flashlight to see if his throat was red. I can never tell because all mouths and throats look red to me. I could see puss pockets on his tonsils.

Elijah has had strep throat 6 times since last April so I knew he needed to be checked. So I called and we headed to the doctor.

They did the swab and it was positive for strep. This means shots or antibiotics through IV for Elijah. :( We chose shots.
He got a shot today and has to go back Tuesday and Wednesday for shots. 3 shots should knock it out.

He is still feeling really bad. Please pray it passes quickly and no one else here gets sick.

What's in Monday's workboxes?

Yes, I'm still talking about the workboxes!

Here is the website where you can read more about this system Sue Patrick .
I will warn you, her book is way too school at home. You all know I am not a school at home person, but this system can work for both, relaxed and school at home folks. This is just a system and you can tailor it to fit your needs.



Sue Patrick also suggest you put Velcro numbers on the boxes with numerals 1-12 placed on them so the child can remove the number when they are done with that box. That is just overkill to me. Okay if you have a child learning numbers 1-12 I can see doing that.
Elijah needs practice reading words so I wrote the number words out on rockets and taped them on with packaging tape. I have Elijah to put the items away when he finishes a box so he knows to move on to the next box with something in it. We do work from 1 to 12 in that order.
Sometimes I place something hands on in every other box.

1. math workbook

2. reading rods

3. writing workbook

4. landmark flashcards

5. pyramid library book and paper for notebook pages

6. word workbook

7. creative pattern game - logic

8. computer game

9. book to read

10. worksheet from enchantedlearning

11. make your own calendar project

12. Egypt scratch and sketch book

I think putting something fun in box 12 is very visual for Elijah.

Visit to the art museum

The guys and I went to visit Masur Museum for some art inspiration.

http://masurmuseum.org/about.php

We had a good visit and saw some neat art, but it was nothing to inspire us to come home and break out the paints.

There were a lot of abstract metal sculptures. We don't have any metal laying around the house to create with.


This was very neat, but we don't have any large blocks of wood and we don't even have a chainsaw. This picture was carved with a chainsaw.



These are very interesting.

These were simple. We didn't come home and try to recreate these because I don't like flowers and I'm tried of flower art.

I have some thoughts on this art that I'd rather not share. There was a whole room of huge pictures that I could not relate to.

I just read on the website that the museum has civil rights movement photography on display right now. I want to swing by this week and let the boys see that. Dakota loves photography and Elijah and I were just talking about black history in February.

I'm not a schedule person....

Even though I'm not a schedule person I have to be able to keep up with activities or appointments for everyone.
I made this big poster several years ago, had it laminated and hung it in our kitchen.

Under each day of the week there is a column for each of the four of us. Each of our names are in a different color and I have a marker for each color. Usually when an activity/appointment comes up for someone I use their color marker to write in. If it is something that we will all go to I just grab a marker and write it big across the 4 squares.

I have a calendar with big squares at my desk and I fill that in as appointments are made then on Saturday I take my calendar to the kitchen and update our big board.

This helps me look at our week and see how I need to plan. It helps the kids see what we have going on and to be able to see they are busy and we can't double book. It also lets Jody see what his family is up to all week.


Here is a shot of the full board. Sorry about the glare.


Sunday and Monday

Sunday Jody will be sleeping. The kids and I will go to church then come home for some school.
Jody works nights so I need to be here and have him something to eat before he heads off to work.

Notice Monday is our only day to stay home, that is if something doesn't come up.
Like this Monday I'm going to call and see if I can get in to see the doctor sometime that day.



Tuesday and Wednesday

Tuesday Elijah has his Literacy class at the college and I'm going to Mom's Night Out at Olive Garden! Dakota thinks he has yearbook meeting on Tuesday but he hasn't emailed anyone to find out.

Wednesday we have co-op and at 8 pm we will all gather around the TV so we can become more confused while watching LOST.




Thursday, Friday and Saturday

Thursday Jody works days. The kids and I have co-op, then both boys have choir, then Elijah has college. Jody will meet up with us when college is over and we are going to Family Fun Night with our homeschool group.

Friday Jody will work days. I didn't put bowling on the schedule because I know I will be wearing down by Friday and will be glad to have some time at home. The kids will need to do some school work anyway. Elijah has soccer practice that evening at 5.

Saturday Jody will sleep and head out to work in the late evening for graveyard shift. It's a normal school day for me and the kids. I usually do housework and wash clothes on Saturday.
Dakota's choir group will sing on TV at a telethon that night.

It is hard for us to do things on Saturday and Sundays. I need to get some housework done on those days and have Jody something to eat when he wakes up.

On the very end there is a space for notes. We jot phone numbers down in that area.

Now you know how I keep up with where everyone needs to be through the week.

What's in Saturday's boxes

I know it is hard for some to understand Saturday is a normal school day for us. Jody is sleeping because he works graveyard so we might as well do school. BUT if something cool comes up we will ditch school and go have fun!

I'm still loving the workbox system. Elijah has gotten more done because of the boxes. And not just more school work, but educational things that I think are important for him that I wasn't getting around to doing with him before the boxes.

Today's boxes. I only filled 10 boxes for today so Elijah can get outside and play today.

1. math book
2. sight word flash cards
3. Egypt book and a page for notebooking
4. two phonics worksheets
5. a magazine, scissors, glue sticks and paper (notebooking)
6. writing workbook
7. reading rods
8. book to read
9. skills workbook
10. days of the week to put in order in pocket chart

Winter Formal

Backing up to post some pictures of Dakota from the Winter Formal our homeschool group had in January.

Before Dakota went to Winter Formal we went to the Ouachita River and I took some pictures of him. It was a VERY cold evening, but I got some really nice shots.
Here are my two favorite pictures.