Shake for Sara Rose

Tonight Dakota and I went and got a shake for Sara's sake.

We are praising God for the good reports Jarrod has been posting about baby Sara Rose.
http://sararoseh.blogspot.com/

Please continue to keep the Hawthorne family in your prayers.

Formula update

Praising God that Elijah's formula and formula bags did come as the DME company said. Thanks for all the prayers. This may be a monthly prayer request.

Rice Crispy Sushi

Today the kids and I tried to make candy sushi.

Ours did not turn out like this....


I bought ingredients to make it safe as possible for Elijah.


Elijah thought it was looking pretty gross at this point and he kept saying he was not going to eat it.


So ours did not turn out like the picture above, but I bet outs tasted better! wink wink

This was quick and fun. You can google rice crispy sushi to find a recipe to give this a try.

By the way, Elijah did eat 3 so he must have liked them.

Winner!

Congratulations MyDogsRule you have won a copy of The Relaxed Home School by Mary Hood.

Send me your mailing address and I'll get this book in the mail to you.

Thanks for playing.

Summer School Plans

We pretty much school year round, taking off whenever we need to, for whatever reason might come up. So don't feel sorry for my kids for doing school in the summer, they were playing while your kids were doing school. LOL We like to take off in the fall and spring when the weather is nice.

Anyone else doing school this summer?

I asked Elijah what he wanted to learn about this summer and this is his list.
Inventors
Detectives
Pirates
Astronomy
Night of the Museum
Louisiana
Natural History
I'm adding a math camp week to his list.

All his ideas sound fun to me. I'd like to add in a field trip for the Louisiana study and the Natural History study.

I think we will start with Night of the Museum. That sounds fun!
Check back to see how our units are going.

Dakota is working through the Algebra Life of Fred book for review trying to bring up his math scores on the ACT. He also has a photography unit that he will be doing this summer and he has a painting that he is working on. Plus Dakota created our homeschool group websites and he has a lot of work on the homeschooling section to get done and updating the choir and sports sections. He is almost finished with the co-op section. So he does have a lot to keep him busy.

And if that isn't enough to keep Dakota busy, I've asked him to take short videos of all the lapbooks he and Elijah have created and add them to my blog. So be sure to check back for videos of lapbooks and pictures of notebooks over the next few weeks.

I'd love to hear what interesting things your homeschool is doing this summer. Leave me a link to your blog so I can come visit.

Who's Ya Daddy!

Since Jody works on the weekends we celebrated Father's day today. We got him 4 movies and a clock with blue numbers. Yes, he had a clock that worked just fine, but it had red numbers and I remembered a while back he mentioned he wanted a clock with blue numbers. So he now has blue numbers.

We planned to take Jody out to eat anywhere he wanted to go and spend the evening geocaching.

Our first stop was a familiar place for us.



The boys found the cache. Elijah took a screwdriver and left a pez dispenser.


Then we headed off to eat. Jody chose Lone Star. Not my favorite, but it wasn't my day. It was good today though.
Then we headed off to find another cache. The boys found this one, but we couldn't get it open.
Jody decided we would go buy a hammer to help get this top off, but the store we went to only had screw drivers.

Jody's enjoying playing with his GPS.

Elijah got the cache box for us and brought it to the van.

Jody was able to use the screw drivers and get the top off.

There were several goodies in the bag.
Elijah chose a medal and left a pez dispenser.


Jody signed the book.

Then we rode over to the river to look around. The water is so high and most definitely out of it's bank.


Our next cache said it was at the intersection of eleven magnolia and eight oak. This has to be trees.

We found 8 oak trees.....

and 11 magnolia trees that would form a right angle if they touched, but we didn't find a cache.

The guys looked all around with no luck.


Then we headed off to find the eternal flame.

They were not able to find a cache here either. It was too many thron bushes and really high grass.


We had a good day spending time with Jody.

Happy Father's day Jody! We appreciate you!

A little Sunday fishing!

I know it's Sunday and Father's Day, but Jody sleeps on Sunday so we try to fit in some afternoon school. It's too hot to do anything else anyway.

So this afternoon Elijah did a little fishing. Sight word fishing. He has a fishing pole with a magnet on the end of the string and I have a bunch of fish with sight words wrote on them and then a paper clip on em.

I set the timer for 15 minutes and told him to catch and read as many fish as he could before the timer went off.


Sometimes he got lucky and caught more than one fish at a time.


He caught and read 58 fish and he got all the words correct. I knew he would know these words so it was kind of a way to review.


There were still a bunch of fish left on the floor after the 15 minutes were up, so next time we play this, we will start with that group so he gets a review of them also.

Our Nature Shelf

We have a little shelf where we collect nature things. Dakota hates this shelf because he hates the skulls.
I started collecting skulls a few years back and we have a few interesting ones.

Okay, I'm not really that warped, it's all about the science.

This is our biggest skull.

Watch out world, Elijah's blogging!

Elijah wants a facebook REAL bad. I said no because the rules say you have to be 13. Am I correct on that? I've never went and read for that info, but I think I heard someone say that one time. I know there are many kids from our homeschool group that have a facebook and they are not 13, but I believe that is the rule. Every time Elijah notices one of these kids make comments on mine or Dakota's facebook he says "What? J is not 13!" LOL

So after learning he is not getting a facebook for another 3 1/2 years he asked if he could have a blog. Hmmmm he would have to think, write and type and spell Hmmmmm I think this is a good idea. I'm not using it as school, but it sure is good practice. But I did make sure he understood this is HIS thing, not something else for me to do. For him to have a blog he has to know how to do everything himself.

So he and Dakota got to work setting up Elijah a blog. Dakota taught him how to make new post, upload pictures and publish, edit and all that he needed to know to work his blog. Even how to add pets. He learned quickly and is now uploading pictures and making post all on his own.

When I woke up this morning Elijah was waiting to go outside with his camera. He'll be snapping pictures of everything and blogging about it. I expect there will be lots of pictures of our pets and his Lego creations.

He is anciently waiting on some comments and watching his counter go up. If you have time stop by and give him a shout out.

Jedi Boy

If your kids have a blog, leave him the link so he can visit them.

Name this picture!

Do you want to win a copy of The Relaxed Home School by Mary Hood?




I've never done a give a way on my blog before, but I thought this would be fun.

Name this picture. Come up with a catchy caption for this photo and leave me a comment.

On Monday we will put all the names from the comments in a drawing and see who wins. I will then post the winner and ask them to email me their mailing address so I can send their book to them.

About the picture: Our homeschool group uses a church for co-op and this is in one of the rooms. We got the biggest kick out of this and had fun making jokes about it.

So come on and leave me a comment, you may win!

Science Fun

It is so HOT, we are miserable. You may remember last year we did a little experiment to see if it was hot enough to fry an egg. This summer Elijah and I are reading Exploring Creation with Astronomy and about to start chapter two on the sun so I came up with a little project to kick off the sun chapter.

We decided to melt crayons. We wanted to find out the hottest spot outside.
First we had to peel crayons, that's harder than it sounds. We sprayed our muffin tins with cooking spray and filled them up with crayon pieces.







We placed one pan on top of our dirty van.

One pan went inside the dirty van.


One pan went on the swing set.

The last pan was placed on the hot black trampoline.

Which would you think would melt first? I figured the inside the van, Elijah thought on the trampoline and Dakota said on top of the van.



The kids went and checked on the crayons every 10 minutes to see which pan started melting first. The pan inside the van on the dashboard was the first to even start melting.

The other pans were slow to melt or didn't melt all the way. The next day we put all the pans in the van so they would all melt.


Now we have crayon patties. These will be good for doing crayon rubbings and other art projects.


This was a fun little experiment. It was a good example of why you don't leave kids or pets in the car.

Do you have any sun experiments to share with us?

CurrClick Live Classes

I love buying homeschool units from CurrClick. It's so easy and you instantly have your order sent right to your inbox, download it and your ready to go.
I find the units to be very reasonably priced. The best thing of all is no shipping fees or waiting for your order!




Click on this logo to check out everything CurrClick has to offer.


I noticed something new at CurrClick about live classes a few months back, but I didn't pay attention to what they were. Heather over at Blog She Wrote wrote a little review on these live classes that peaked my interest to find out more information. I found out some of the live classes are anytime classes, you don't have to be home at a certain time and day to do the classes. That's good because we like to do night school.

There are some good prices on many of the Live Classes being offered.

I signed Elijah up for a Space class this morning. It was only $3.99. This will be a nice addition to our astonomy unit we are doing.


This is an Anytime, Anywhere class! The materials/videos will be available each week starting June 29 - July 20! A 4 Week Jammed-Packed Class!

4 weeks of class for ONLY $3.99! AND it's a unit you didn't have to prepare, only get online and print off the worksheets and watch the videos. I'm excited about this and I know Elijah will love it!

This class needs 30 students by June 22 for the class to happen. If you have a young one interested in space go check out this class.

If you decide to join any of the live classes at CurrClick please let us know about your experience.

Why does it have to be this hard?

This is a prayer request and a long story to explain why this is a prayer request.

I feel like every month it is such a battle to get Elijah's formula. The DME company always says it is Medicaid and Medicaid will say it is the DME's fault. I really don't care who's fault it is, just send my child's formula BEFORE he runs out.

Back in April I was going through this battle and the DME company said they were waiting on the doctor's office. They said they faxed the papers to the doctor. Just so happen I was on my way to the doctor's office. Once I was at the doctor's office I asked about it and they said there was not a fax. The doctor got so mad, so we called the DME right there in the patient room on my cell phone.

They sent the fax to the office, but said it would be 6 weeks before approval and formula was sent. I went crazy on them and they finally agreed to send some formula.

Then at the end of May the DME company gave me the same run a round saying they haven't recieved approval. I called back and forth between Medicaid and the DME all day trying to figure out what was going on. Turns out the DME just sent in the paper work a few days before again saying it would be six weeks to get approval. I was fit to be tied! What had they done between April 9 and May 20?

I get so crazy mad at these people, this is my child's life they are playing with. I finally talked to someone at the DME and told them if formula wasn't delivered to my house the next day I was calling the newspaper and TV stations and see about getting a story on how they won't send a tube fed child's formula. Why do I have to say such crazy things like that to get action?
Formula did arrive the next day.

I waited a few days and called them back and asked if I should go a head and get start working on getting June's formula. They assured me it would come. Here we are, June 17 and no formula yet!

I called them today and left a message. Tomorrow I will be on the phone all day trying to get formula. Please pray this maddness stops soon. Elijah is tube fed, he needs to be fed every day, all month long and again the next month, so why doesn't his formula come at the same time every month?

Thank you for taking the time to pray.

Crazy Machines

Anyone know of more computer games like this one?
Elijah has this one game and he loves it. I'd like to find him more games like this. It keeps him busy for HOURS.

Please let me know about other games like this.

Thanks

Elijah's Candy Shop and More

Elijah's candy store opened today so I'm eating candy for the sake of math.



I don't know why some of my pictures I take in the dinning room turn out so yellow, not all do.

When I told Elijah about the idea of him opening a candy store in our dinning room he got so excited and was ready to work on it right away. He really ran with the idea and didn't need much help at all. He knows he has full access to all my scrapbooking stuff so he ran got the stencils and got busy.

Here's Elijah using the stencils to write the name of his store.




Then he used markers to color in the letters.


Next he drew some candy packs and we printed some candy pictures from the internet.


He cut out the candy packs he drew and colored.


Glued his pictures on his board.


Today Dakota and I went to Dollar Tree and bought some candy for us to buy from Elijah's store.
And some safe candy for Elijah.
I priced the candy because I wanted the prices to be amounts that would give Elijah good practice with making change.

After I priced all the candy, I went off to talk to Jody and Dakota while Elijah set up his store.
I told Jody and Dakota when they buy candy to pay with money to where Elijah will have to give change back.

Here's Elijah so proud of his candy shop store.


The paper squares are pretend items for sale and the price is printed on the square. I printed these from homeschool launch.

Here's another yellow picture! Those big candy bars are $8.35!
The Cow Tails are my favorite and they are .70 cents. I marked the candy any where from .02 cents to $8.35.

I gave Elijah real change and some paper bills that I bought at Dollar Tree.


The first customer of the day!

This is the box of money me, Jody and Dakota use to buy with from Elijah's store.


Here's Mr. Shop Keepers money.

We have all taken turns buying from Elijah and working with him on making change. After the three of us had a go with him, I asked him if being a shop keeper was hard work. He said "It's a lot of math!" LOL