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Thanks for visiting!

Patti

A trip to the park to get in some nature

The kids still have colds and B is still moving a little slow but I really wanted to get out of the house for a little bit so I thought, it's Friday, let's go spend some time in a park with nature.  The kids seem to always enjoy doing this.  We brought all we needed to check out the nature around us.  We had the "bug looker",  binoculars,  a butterfly net,  our nature journal, paper and colored pencils, etc.  We had a nice time. I wish it was a little cooler but we did pretty well.

Brian tired very hard to catch a either a butterfly or a dragonfly but had to settle instead on a little beatle walking on the path.  It worked out fine.  :)


Little Miss J did pretty good drawing this flower for a 4 year old!  I was impressed!
We've only just started nature journaling this year.  I put everything in one binder for now.  I have divided sections for each of them and a pouch to hold stuff to draw with and to collect things with.  We'll see how it goes. I'd like to do this at least once a week if we can. We are doing KONOS Attentiveness next which is a lot of nature stuff it should be good.  Will be easier too getting out in the cooler fall/winter weather down here.

J got a scooter for her 4th birthday last month and we hadn't taken them out yet (away from the driveway in front of the house).  Today was the first of many time. I love how light and easy they are to bring along.  I get exercise too walking along with them in the park

B's Knights Lapbook

For the past few days we've been working on our knights lapbook.  This works along side our KONOS lessons and sort of puts together a lot of what we've been learning. It's great to have everything in one place!

B can take out his project and look at it over and over, remembering all of the fun things we did with this unit study and KONOS.

Lapbooks are very versatile.  You can usually find printables and information on the web for all subject, especially kids this ages.

Who doesn't enjoy cutting, and gluing.  I did help him 

cut a lot of the shapes but he did all of the

coloring/drawing, and most of the gluing for this project.  We just did a little every day this week. 

I went to a Tobin's Lab workshop at the last FPEA

 homeschool convention and she suggested that you should never try to complete a lapbook at once.  While you are working on a unit study, gather all of your activities, printouts and other stuff you want to add to your lapbook. She also suggested keeping all of the things you collect in a ziplock bag. When you are done with your unit, you then get everything out and start to build your lapbook.  This is what we did and B was really towards the end of the unit because he knew the information and was able to easily do the activities like label a castle and a knight.  

      

He is very much into medieval stuff now.  It's great  that we homeschool and the kids can really dig into a subject and stick with it.  They learn so much   more when they study things they like.  :)

This lapbook ended up being a few pages long.  I wanted to make room to add some more.  We always seem to have more to add to the lapbooks we've done.  I used 4 file folders total.

Our homemade king and queen costumes for KONOS

Today we went to my mom's house and made our basic king and queen costumes for KONOS unit Obedience.  We'll be having our medieval feast Sunday after next at a friends.  We still have lots of activities and recipes to do before then.  For the costumes went closely to how the suggest KONOS book, just some slight modifications to make it easier on us.  My mom has many lots of clothes so I just went with her ideas.  They look pretty good.  We'll take more pics once we have the crowns made.

J's neck line was a little big but my mom added a collar that helped with that.

Science Museum

We had a field trip Friday to our local Science and Discovery Museum  Fun was had by all.

Lots of hands on activities to discover.

This DC-9 plane was really neat.

The next night though we paid for our trip to the museum.  We all got sick!

KONOS Obedience - Kings and Queens, photo summary

We have really enjoying our KONOS activities so far.   KONOS is a good fit for our family.  Doing all of the great, hands on activities really keeps us into the unit.  I think they may actually remember studying Kings and Queens, even at this young age.   We've  had a tea party and made a queen cake.  We've played checkers, and they have put on skits for me in their rooms.   J has a Mega Block castle where they pretend to slay dragons and save the princess!  They have been dressing up almost daily.  

Our official first day of school!

We officially started school today.  B is now a kindergartner.  We will be using KONOS  this year.  KONOS was the first homeschool curriculum I fell in love with about 3 years back (way to early to use for my now 4 and 5 year olds). We seem to be more of a unit study family.  

I thought of going with a curriculum that was more laid out for us wi

th everything included but I'm sure we would get bored.  We love going to the library every week and picking up books on subjects we find interesting.  KONOS is one big unit study that just keeps going.  I also have a friend locally that is also doing KONOS.  This is her second year with volume 1.  We will start,  obedience, and co-op along with her family.  We live about 30 miles apart so we will only get together twice a month but that should be fine.  We can do some of the hands on stuff together and bounce ideas off each other to keep us motivated.  

For handwriting we are using Handwriting without Tears, K and Pre-K.  For phonics we are using Explode the Code 1, and A.   We'll be doing a lot of nature walks and some journaling.  I hope to start each day with Bible and reading then moving into Math-U-See and phonics.  I think well do those 3 subjects daily along with KONOS.  We'll see how it goes.  Should be fun!  

Our School Room

I've been organizing the school room all summer.   We went to Ikea a couple months back and picked up some shelves that fill an entire 8 foot long wall, top to bottom.  The shelves also have a desk option that we went with and it's PERFECT!

We can hang out in the school room most of the day and get lots done and it feels like fun! 

Our thrift store table and chairs works out well t. I turn my desk chair around often when we play games or if we are building something, etc.  

Now that the kids are older I can keep stuff like Play Doe out for them and they do a pretty good job of putting it away.  I do come across an open can or two sometimes with rock hard play doe inside.

Next to the futon are the books we read daily... we also keep the library books we have checked out there in a basket on the right.  We always have lots of those around and I find if I let the library books wonder too far, some can be hard to find when they are due.

In the middle section here, we have the printer and all things paper; lapbooks, crafts, etc.

This is my little area.  I keep my ciriculium and workbooks in this area.  Easy to grab.

Books and Curriculum

We will be using Konos this year for our main curriculum.  I'm really excited to get started!  I've been getting ready.  My favorite Konos information I've found is from Sprittibee.  She is SO organized and makes it seem possible to use Konos successfully. :) If you do a google search for Konos organization you'll find links to her blog.  We'll officially start school this year just after Labor Day. Actually, we really haven't stopped this summer we just do less and I try to make everything more fun.  B will start Kindergarten this year and J will be doing stuff along side us.  I love lapbooks and plan to do as many as we can of different subject.  Last year, Five in a Row was big for us.  We'll continue rowing some books this year as well.  I love Five in a Row.  The booksare awesome and we never mind reading them over and over.  Some, like Lentil, we've read well over 5 times.  I started off just rowing the books I could find at our local library but then ended up buying quite a few used at Amazon.com.  You can also buy lots of Five in a Row books on e-bay.  Most of the books are so good you'll want to have them in your home library.  

This summer we've been reading some good books.  B is almost 5 1/2 and is really close to reading on his own. I think he can read but lacks some confidence.  We've just discovered the Magic Tree House Series.  Here is a review from HomeschoolBuzz.com.  B and J have liked chapter books for a while now but these seem to really hold their attention.  They usually want me to read the whole book in one setting (this only takes 30 mins. or less).

A great book we checked out from the library, and love is The American Story which is  series of 100 short stories from American History.  They are short enough to hold everyone attention.  

Another book I love is Discovering Great Artists.  Each page has an artist and their story along with a project kids can do in the style of that artist.  We plan do get into some of these projects this year.  I might co-op some. It's always neat to do projects with other families.  Makes it more fun and exciting.

Playmobil Fun Park

Today we went to Playmobil Fun Park which is about 30 miles from the house.  This was the first time we've been. It's $1 to get in but then you are tempted by the store on the way out. I let the kids get one thing and they wanted take a long kits.  We met up with some friends there and stayed for more than 2 hours.  It was a perfect escape from the S. Florida sun and time to have fun with friends.

Wildlife in our neighborhood

A couple of weeks ago, while on our evening walk, we noticed woodpecker holes in a dead palm tree.  As we approached, we saw an adult woodpecker leaving the tree and I told the kids to go up to the tree and see if they hear babies.  Sure enough!  We could really hear them chirping away.  We hung around for a while looking and listening carefully.  A couple nights ago we stopped back by to check on them and my husband put his camera in the hole and took a  quick photo.  Looks like there are 2 live babies and one that didn't make it.  We'll keep an eye on the tree/nest.  I love seeing wild life and nature right in the middle our neighbor here in South Florida.