Dakota has done IT again!

3 post in one night... hehe, that might make up for missing so many days.

Dakota has done IT again! What is IT? He has now started his 3rd business. That sure does sound funny to say that about an 18 year old.
He has a photography business  http://dakotamillerphotography.com/ , a web site design business and NOW......

Dakota has enjoyed art his whole life. He has taken art from many many different art teachers while growing up. He has learned a lot from those teachers and they also taught him what type of teacher he likes and doesn't like. He NEVER likes a teacher who paints on his painting or makes him do art HER way and not HIS way. I think any child who is REALLY  into art would feel the same way.

His last art teacher told him there was nothing more for her to teach him. I'm sure he will still learn things as the years go by just from experience.

Dakota has entered paintings in a lot of art contest and won many first place ribbons. He has even had art displayed at our local museum before.

Art has always been an important part of our homeschool. 

SO his 3rd business is .... Bayou Art Classes
http://www.bayouartclasses.com/
He even made himself a website. :)  He has his photography studio that can be used to hold art classes. He is very excited about starting this up. I'll be his assistant helping make sure everyone has their supplies and getting things they need while he teaches.

We are working on advertising and just getting the word out to people out in our community.

Check out his website and let us know what you think.

I'd really like to encourage homeschool moms to allow their children to pursue their interest. Don't bog them down with so much school work there is no time for exploring their interest and developing talents. You never know where these interest may lead them.  Dakota has enjoyed art his whole life, he always has a painting set up in his room that he is working on. He taught himself computer languages and web site design. He developed a love for photography a few years back and it lead him to starting his first business at the age of 16. So lighten up on the school books, you have 12 years to teach them and even with 12 years you can't teach them everything they need to know. The best you can do is to teach them how to learn on their own so they will always know how to search and learn when they need to know something.

See Ya At The Pole

This morning our homeschool group had See Ya At The Pole for prayer time. We had a great turn out and it was such a blessing to be there.

It was especially wonderful to see June there. Her son graduated last year, but she became a member of our group again this year and we are thrilled to have her join us for MNO and such things like today. I didn't know she was coming , but I was so happy to see her. June is just one of those people who is LOVED by everyone! Here she being loved on by Claire and my friend Benjamin.

Yes, I was snapping pictures during prayer. BUT I did pray!

Today was also CRAZY flip flop day! I thought everyone was so creative in decorating their flip flops.

Don't you think they were all SO cute?

Then it was Chapel time, the first part of our co-op day.

It is so wonderful to see the church so full and that's not even everyone. Some were still arriving and some were putting stuff in their class rooms or out in the hall with babies who were crying. At the WM co-op we have 78 families, I believe, and 184 kids or something like that. We also have another co-op locating across the river because our group is so big everyone can't fit in one church. And not everyone in our homeschool group is in co-op, we have many families who chose not to join co-op for whatever reason that is best for their family.

Mrs. Jon Marie led us in a worship song while Mrs. Lydia played the piano. Then one student played a song on the piano and another student recited a bible verse. They both did a really nice job.
Next Pastor Rusty gave a short devotional that I really enjoyed. I didn't snap a picture of him.

I really can not express enough how much our homeschool group means to me. We are really like a big ole family. It's great to be part of such a wonderful group.

Co-op

I haven't posted this week because we are BUSY! We took the week off from school because Elijah, and Dakota too, are busy busy busy finishing up their fair entries that they will turn in this weekend. I'll post about that when they get their stuff back in early October.

I wanted to share about our homeschool co-op. I LOVE CO-OP!  It's the best thing that happened to our homeschool group.

I love the classes I'm teaching this year.
Are You Smarter Than a 1st Grader? For 1st & 2nd grade.
Are You Smarter Than a 3rd Grader? For 3rd & 4th grade.
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? For 5th & 6th grade.
Then after lunch I have two board game classes.

Today at co-op I snapped a few pictures of my class game board that I made.

I use the same board set up for each class, the apple is velcroed on so I can just change it out for each class.

 Here is a full view of the game board. We play it like a game show. It really is so much fun and he kids really enjoy it too. All the kids say it is their favorite class.

This is the right side. I laminated a piece of paper so we can write on it with a dry erase marker to keep score.

Here in the middle I have a $1 pocket chart from Target that I slip index cards into. On one side of the card is the subject and the other side has a question and answer. My helper (another homeschool mom) and I will pull a card from the category the kids pick and read the question and if the students answer correctly they get 10 points. At the end of class we add up the points, but everyone gets a prize.

On the left side there is a clock. Sometimes they might get a math question about time and they can use this clock to show the time. I also have a dry erase board in the room where the students can work out math problems or fill in blanks on a word with missing letters.

Each class has different cards, I have a box for each grade to keep them all separate.  You can see behind the box on the board there are cards with a ? on them. These are mystery cards. They don't really fall under a subject and can be about anything. One card today asked how many hours a day does a cat nap? The kids love the mystery cards.
This is my favorite mystery card....
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?
The answer ...4.
It doesn't matter what you call the tail it's still not a leg! LOL

And here is Elijah standing by the board this morning before co-op started. I don't know if you can read Elijah's T-shirt, it says  "this is my dress shirt" and there is a tie painted on the shirt behind the words. THAT is SO Elijah!

Great Day of School

Here are a couple of pictures of Elijah doing school today.


He wrote the days of the week in order and then used the cards from our Learning Center to check his spelling. He missed 3 so here he was writing those over correctly.


Elijah doing his math, Teaching Textbooks, with Pedro asleep laying in his lap. The joys of homeschooling! I really love that Elijah can do his math and love on our crazy dog at the same time.

Table Time Learning Center

We have something we do in the mornings that we call Table Time, even though we don't always do it at the table, sometimes it is from the couch or could even be while lying in bed.

Basically it is where we go over skills, such as months of the year, days of the week and how to spell those and some flash cards and some quiz question from different subjects, Bible verse, states, presidents and other quick things like that.

Today we are using our new learning center as our Table Time Center.

That probably looks like a lot of stuff, but really it doesn't take long to go through it. It's hands on and  kind of fun and it's information Elijah needs to learn. Learning this way is quick and easy and the information really does stick by doing just a little each day.

On this side we have some multiplication flash cards, continents, days of the week, two math word problem cards each having 3 problems, presidents, months of the year, states and Bible verse that I stuck in the bottom pocket after the picture was taken.

In the middle we have 6 spelling cards, 4 vocabulary cards, 4 space cards, 4 geography cards, 3 science quiz cards, 3 history quiz cards (each with 3 questions on each card), 4 landmarks of the world cards. A globe showing the 7 continents and a map showing the 50 states.

I also have a magnifying glass with Velcro stuck to the board that can be used when the board is a science center.

On this side of the center we have a container clipped to the top to put cards in as we finish with them, a chart showing numbers and how to spell them, a dry erase board, a reminder card about telling time. a hundreds board, a card showing math symbols and telling what they mean, a money chart and a multiplication chart.
There is also a calculator clipped to the side of the board.

On the table we have a small stack of flash cards that we go through each day and a pointer stick for Elijah to use as he is telling me about stuff in the learning center. He already knows the answer to these flash cards, but I keep going through them anyway. It only takes a few minutes to go through that stack of cards.

So that is how we used our Learning Center today. I have a small box I keep our Table Time stuff in so it is kept all together and easy to change up or add new items.

Pretty much what we are doing for school these days is Table Time, Teaching Textbooks math on the computer, and then work on our unit study or lapbook.

I have a lot of ideas for using the center so check back to see how we change it up.

Elijah's Learning Center

I made Elijah a learning center that I am so excited about. It can be changed up to whatever subject we are working on. I'll be making some post to show different ways we use the center.

In the pictures below the board was set up with spelling information and a few spelling cards.

I bought the pocket chart in the middle from Target for $1 and I made the blue pocket chart myself. Elijah can use the small white board to write spelling words on. Everything is attached with Velcro. The board is a science project tri fold board that I covered with felt.

We went over a couple of rules and then looked at those 6 spelling words.

The possibilities are endless with our learning center. Everything is attached with Velcro so it can be moved around and changed up according to subject and material I have. Think mini bulletin board set that is interactive for your child. = FUN LEARNING!

Dinosaurs #6

Elijah making salt dough to make dinosaur fossils.

Salt dough recipe is
1 cup flour
1 cup salt
1/2 cup warm water

Mixing the dough up.

Gotta get your hands in it to really mix it up.

Making a dinosaur fossil.

Elijah with his tray of fossils. He did some of footprints, heads, bones, skin, and even spikes.

We are still waiting for the fossils to dry so Elijah can paint them. This was a fun project!

Dinosaurs #5

We also had a dinosaur egg. You place the egg in water and wait for it to hatch.

After a couple of days we had a baby dinosaur.

Dinosaurs #4

I got Elijah a dinosaur egg where you have to chisel, dig and scrape to find a dinosaur.

He dug and dug on that egg for hours. It wasn't easy.

Really working hard.

All busted up. All that work only to find some tiny tiny dinosaur bones that wouldn't hold together to make a skeleton.

Dinosaurs #3

Elijah decided to put his Dinosaur stuff in his animal notebook instead of making a lapbook.

On this page you can see the dinosaur on the outside of the fold and when you open it there is a description of that dinosaur. There are lots of booklets and folds on the notebook pages.

The orange pages below show meat eaters and the yellow pages show plant eaters.

I have more dinosaur post coming up. We did a lot with this unit.