Classical Conversations - Week 14

Well, we are just cruising through the second semester! We had such a good week for week 14! I had a dad who came and really helped to keep some of my more rambunctious kids focused! That always helps a tutor out! There is so much material to get through each week and the parents can be such a big help with keeping the kids paying attention so the tutor can focus on presenting the material and helping the kids play games to memorize their week's material! Yay for parent involvement! I will have to say, at first I was nervous about having to teach in front of parents, but now I see the value of having parents in the room and helping with things (especially with my baby who has had to be in there a lot!). I am so grateful for the parents I have had this year!
My class seemed a little more subdued this week and less hyper so they participated better in class! We had some fun games and it seemed like the kids were really learning their stuff! And everyone got a sticker on their reward chart and got to pick out of the treasure box this week!
So, let me share what we did this week!

Week 14

Timeline: learned new motions and sang the Timeline song

History Sentence: learned hand motions and sang with the song

Geography: plastic fish/dinosaurs to find new geography on big maps, tracing with dry erase marker, gluing stamps to their passports

Latin: played Marco Polo again since the kids enjoyed it so much last week; one kid is blindfolded and says "nominative" while 2 other kids "hide" in the room and echo "subject" while the first kid tries to find them (and of course I help the blindfolded one so they don't run into things!)

English: first three helping verbs (do, does, did). Said it faster and faster and then I would put my finger over my mouth (which is what we do to get quiet) and the kids all would do it really fast. We would say do, does, did faster and faster again and then I would try to "catch" kids by putting my finger over my mouth and seeing if anyone kept saying them. They loved this!

Science: 3 kinds of rocks, used a book, explained what they were and had them repeat after me several times

Math: Linear Equivalents, handed out a worksheet from CC connected, brought in a ruler for a reference point, said the equivalents and had them repeat, also used my foot as a reference point (just to help them remember it)

When we had some extra time, I had the kids in two teams and when I said "go" each team had to put timeline cards in order (one team had last week's cards, one team had this week's cards) and the first team to do that had to run and hit the bell.

Grammar Review: The kids were in two teams sitting on opposite sides of the room with a bell on a chair in the middle. Each team would have one kid's turn at a time, and I would ask the question and they had to run and ring the bell first to answer the question. If they rang the bell and didn't answer correctly, the other team had a chance to answer for 2 points instead of one. I was trying to prevent this young age from just running the fastest to ring the bell but not really knowing the answer. It was fun and got their energy out, and they also didn't seem bored like with other review games. 

So, that was our week 14! And as always, leave comments if you have questions, suggestions, or anything else on your mind!!

Classical Conversations Week 13

Well, it has certainly been busy around here and I didn't even get around to doing a blog post about week 12! I can't even remember that far back so I think we will just skip that one and get right to week 13, shall we?
It was so nice to have those 2 months off from CC, as we needed to breath a little, celebrate the holidays, and just rest with family. After all the celebrating was done, of course!! But now, we are back to the grind again, and we are on the way towards the finish line! We are now more than halfway done!
This past week was kind of a crazy week. The kids were all pumped up about being back. I know Maddy was so excited and couldn't wait to go back. This created some craziness in the classroom, but hopefully they had fun while learning the concepts from week 13! And each week, there are highs and lows, things that worked and things that didn't, and with this being my first year, it is all a learning process for me. This week I learned that games that are individual (meaning that each child has their own turn, and they go in order) do not really work. The kids get bored waiting for their turn, and when my attention is on the person whose turn it is, it is hard to keep the others paying attention and waiting for their turn. I get that. And I definitely learned that after this week's review game. So when you get to that part, remember my mistake! If I had some older kids it might have gone better, but for the young ones, it is hard to keep them still and quiet waiting for their turn!
So this is what we did this week:

Timeline: went over new motions, sang the Timeline song on the cd
History Sentence: did hand motions to go along with the song on the cd
Latin: played "Marco Polo" with the noun cases, one person was blindfolded and would say, "Nominative" while two others hid somewhere (easily accessible) and would say "Subject" and I would lead the blindfolded one until they found them, and so on.
Geography: used plastic car or dinosaur to find Western Africa, traced new geography, glued a stamp in their passports
English: Hands on knees and kind of bounced while saying "A Helping verb helps another verb assert action (made an action pose), being (both hands out, face up), or existence (stand pencil straight.)
Math: Liquid Equivalents: Printed out a sheet for each child with the info on it, and brought in examples of a cup, a pint, a quart, and a gallon.
Science: Used a printed sheet showing the 6 parts of the earth to be memorized, said and repeated them. Tried to get them to memorize core, mantle, and crust together, and then hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere and explained what those meant.

Science Experiment: Just used what was provided for the experiment.
Fine Arts: Giotto, printed off some of his artwork from CC connected.

Presentations: Impromptu. I made up different subjects so I could hear about everyone's Christmas break, but the kids all pretty much wanted to talk about their favorite present that they got, so I let them! 

Grammar Review:
Brought in huge hopscotch squares and let each child roll the dice. Each number represented a subject (except Timeline, since we kind of review that when we sing the song), and after they answered the question they just did the hopscotch. It wasn't my best grammar review game by any means!!

Hope this helps you for Week 13!!

This Time of Year

Well, we have officially been on our CC break for almost 3 weeks! It has been such a nice break and a back-to-normal of homeschooling and taking care of the house and kids! Well, in addition to all the holiday hustle and bustle that is now upon us! We are a little late in our decorating this year; we have been so busy, and honestly, it is a little hard to get in the Christmas spirit when it is 75 degrees outside and we can wear shorts and short sleeved shirts to go outside! But, nonetheless, it is great playing weather for the kids!

Judah doing crafts at our church Holiday decorating party!

Judah is about to turn 3 years old on Christmas Eve! I can't believe how fast time flies! He is such a joy to our family, and I can't believe how fast he is growing up! He is my snuggler and sweet, calm one and is just a delight! We are going to have a small birthday party for him, his first friend birthday party, themed around his puppy pillow pet which he adores. I can't wait to see the look on his face when he sees his cake that will look like his pillow pet! Of course made by his very talented Aunt Lydia!!

First Thanksgiving!

My sister, Briana and I

The Thanksgiving spread

Tad and his sibs on Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving was good! It was fun to have my sister, Briana, and her family come visit from Colorado! They spent Thanksgiving with us at Tad's parents house, and we got to do some other fun stuff with them while they were here!
We have a few more weeks of school and then a 2 week Christmas break, which will be nice! I'm sure it will all go by so fast! And Ruth is about to have her first Christmas! She is getting so big! Well, not really big, persay! She is only 15 pounds at 9 months! She is only in the 3rd percentile for her weight! Both of my other kids had teeth by now and were crawling. But Ruth is taking her sweet time! She is pulling halfway up, and is so close to crawling. She does some kind of scoot thing while she is sitting up which helps her get around some.
Maddy has been sick a lot lately. I'm gonna do some research as to how to boost her immune system because I don't think it's normal how much she has been sick. She has had 3 rounds of the stomach flu (all of which didn't last very long at all), and now she just came down with a nasty cold with a fever, sore throat, and incessant coughing. I'm not sure what's going on with her, but I'm planning on pumping her full of vitamins and healthy food to try to build up her immune system. Any suggestions please leave in the comment section below!
Maddy is also about to have her first ballet recital! Last week, they performed in a nursing home, and I really look forward to seeing their full routine in their Christmas performance! She will actually be done with her ballet, tap, and jazz class after her recital. It wasn't her favorite class and she is actually anxious to get back to swim lessons! So I will savor this recital! I will try to post pictures if I can!
I have really been trying to lose weight during this eating season. Eating is my biggest downfall, and I haven't done so well in that department. But I have really stepped up my workouts, and have tried to vary them so that I can confuse the muscle groups and keep them guessing! A lot of times, I get stuck in a routine of doing the same workouts, and I really want to work different areas and also not get bored!

Tad, carving the turkey on Thanksgiving!

Tad has been working with his clients at work, and also doing some odd jobs for his parents and our pastor. He is running a 50 mile trail race with some good friends from Moody in the spring in Arizona, so he is training some for that right now. He has gotten in really good shape over the last few months!

 

So that's our most recent update! Sorry I haven't been too regular on this here blog! Sometimes I feel more inspired to write and other times I feel like I don't know what to share! So this post was kind of jumbled! But that's where we are at! If you are still reading this long-winded post, Happy Holidays to you and your family!!

Corn Souffle

image credit

 This is one of my all-time favorite recipes and things to eat! I had it all growing up, as my grandma Crandall used to make it for lots of family functions. When I got married and started cooking, I just had to get the recipe! This corn souffle becomes everyone's favorite when they try it! This year, for Thanksgiving, I was going to try a new recipe for a corn souffle with cheese and bacon that I found in a magazine, but my sister-in-law wanted to be sure that I was going to make my corn souffle! So I just decided to make my tried and true recipe that is oh-so-good! It came from an old church cookbook, and though the ingredients will make you wince because of their lack of nutrition, you are allowed to make this recipe for special functions and you will not get penalized!! And it is seriously the easiest thing to throw together and then let it cook for an hour and a half! Let this be your new Thanksgiving side! I promise you will not be disappointed!!

Corn Souffle
Leroy Community Chapel Church Cookbook
Recipe via Kathy Keeney

2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 can whole corn, drained
1 can creamed corn
1 cup sour cream
1 cup melted butter (2 sticks)
1 pkg. Jiffy cornbread mix
salt and pepper to taste

1. Stir together the eggs, whole corn, creamed corn, sour cream, and butter.
2. Add the package of cornbread mix. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix all ingredients together.
3. Pour into a buttered casserole dish and bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours.

So easy, and so amazing! Try it this Thanksgiving!
So sorry for stealing the picture from Flickr; every time I make this dish I forget to take a picture of it! It goes fast!

Family Holidays!

Briana and her family in Branson

I'm so excited that my sister and her family are coming to visit for Thanksgiving! We haven't gotten too many visitors since we moved to Oklahoma, and I was so happy when she said they wanted to spend Thanksgiving with family! So we will all venture over to Tad's family's house for a big feast! I can't wait! And it just so happens that Tad is off work on Thanksgiving and the day after, so it works out perfect! We saw my sister and her family this past summer in Branson for our family vacation, but it will be nice to get the cousins together (our kids only actual cousins!) again and show them all where we live! I warned them there isn't much to do in our town, but they are looking forward to just spending time with family! I always have to throw that disclaimer in there, especially after everyone was used to visiting us in Chicago where there were so many fun things to do! All you have here is us in Oklahoma!

The cousins!

 I'm still in the middle of planning my part of the menu for Thanksgiving! I pretty much had everything picked out, and then I realized that I was making a lot of fun extras and not really helping with the traditional sides. Then my mother-in-law told me that she wasn't going to assign me ANYTHING since I will have family in town. Well, if you know anything about me, you know I just LOVE to cook and I look forward to Thanksgiving especially because it is so fun to make so much stuff. So anyways, I know I am going to make Pioneer Woman's pecan pie, as usual. And I think I will make my homemade applesauce. I still need to figure out which traditional sides I should help make. I just love cooking outside the box, and making different, exotic, yummy tasting things but Tad's family isn't used to anything like that, so I have to stick to traditional things. But that's okay!

Homemade applesauce!

We are just getting over being sick, and got a little "fall break" from school, if you will, so it's nice to have a little bit of extra time to get things done. The stomach flu is making its way through our family right now, and I'm wondering who it's gonna hit next! But it's a really fast bug! Hopefully everyone will be better by Thanksgiving!

What are you making for Thanksgiving? Any fun new websites, recipes, or ideas you could share! Please share in the comments section!

Classical Conversations - Weeks 10 and 11

Well, I am playing a bit of catchup! Again, I got busy this week (and sick) and didn't get a blog post out for week 10 so I will do a double post this week for weeks 10 and 11! Forgive me! I cannot believe we are nearing the end of the semester of CC! We are almost halfway through Cycle 1! It seems like just a few weeks ago that it was summer and I was anticipating the start of the year! Where did the time go?
Well, we have had some fun, creative grammar review games in the last couple of weeks, and I really like mixing it up so the kids are always doing something new. I'm excited to share those with you! I am now preparing for week 12, and then we have our long holiday break. I am planning our holiday party during snack time and I'm excited to send my kids home with some little take home goodies and a craft that they can do at home over the break! I just wanted to throw something fun in there and I'm sad that I won't see them close to Christmas, so I wanted to send them home with a little gift from their CC tutor! So here is what we did for weeks 10 and 11:

Timeline: learned new cards and hand motions
History Sentence: Heian Empire and Byzantine Empire: used hand motions to go along with the songs.
Geography: Used their big maps to find the new geography and color, underline, or trace it with a dry erase marker, they always get to glue their passport stamp onto their own passport for that empire.
Latin: For review of 4th Declension, they played musical "worm" which is essentially musical chairs just set up in a worm formation. I never take a chair out so they can all play each time. But there is one chair missing initially. For the intro to the 5th declension, I always use the clip art sheets off CC connected that has pictures representing each sound. Then they can take these home for practice.
English: learn new hand motions, practice the whole preposition song to the tune of Yankee Doodle, which is what our campus is doing.
Math: I always find worksheets off CC connected and we turn the song on and they point with their finger and follow along on their sheet. (squares and cubes)
Science: Leaves and leaf parts: I was using a binder from another tutor, and she had pictures of each leaf printed out, so we used those and I made up simple hand motions from looking at each picture to remember them. Parts of a flower: showed them the acronym (which is how I remember it, but they might be too little) and then we used a picture off CC connected with labeled parts and I had them circle each part we were learning, and then below that they could draw a picture of a flower and try to draw the specific parts we just learned, which were in the picture above.

Grammar Review: Human Tic-Tac-To, used tape to make the board on our floor, they were divided into 2 teams, each person from each team had a chance to answer a question, and they would stand on the board holding papers with X's or O's.
Candyland: I have heard so many tutors say they use this game! I used the review cards that are printed by CC, and divided up the kids by 2's and there were 2 kids to 1 game piece. Whatever color they landed on there was a corresponding color of review matching cards and we would either review it or they would have to tell me about it. It worked quite well! 

And as always, they have sticker books that they get to put stickers in periodically in class if they are good, and they have sticker charts, and if they are good throughout that class, they get a sticker on their chart, and every other week we have a treasure box for whoever gets both stickers. I have had to take some people's stickers away, but not without ample warnings, and they usually were much better the next week!

Any questions, comments, suggestions, please comment below! I have learned much from you!

Life Around Here

 Well, life has been pretty crazy around here. We have been extremely busy! I must say, this is the busiest I have been as a mommy! We are doing Classical Conversation once a week (a classical, Christian homeschool education) and I am a tutor (which is the teacher of the class, they like to reserve the title "teacher" for the parent who directs their child's education), Maddy is taking ballet/tap/jazz class once a week, we have church, worship team, and many other things that fill up our schedule! And of course, we are enjoying being close to family who we can share all our adventures with!

Tad, Judah and Ruth hanging out at the park!

 Our weather is like the Ohio summers I am used to, so there are still lots of days we spend our afternoons outside or take evening walks on the path behind our house. We usually do that when Tad is working a double and we need to get out of the house!

 This is Ruth with her Aunt Lydia! She works at a salon and a bakery and goes to school, but in her "free time" she comes over and visits us, and we love it! I think they love Aunt Lydia more than they love me! And sometimes she brings the kids yummy stuff from the bakery! I seriously don't know what we will do without her next year when she goes off to college!

 It is fun being near family, and sometimes we get to go a little bit outside of our town and see extended family. On this particular day, we were invited to Tad's uncle's house to help build onto their house, and for a birthday party! It was so much fun to see family and the kids had a blast!

 Pops (Tad's dad) got a Spyder motorcycle and the kids were playing around on it. He even let Tad and I take it for a spin around the neighborhood; it was pretty fun! I can't wait until Tad can get his motorcycle fixed! We still have plenty of warm days left!

Ruthie is eating solid food 3 times a day now. Hmmmm. She must not like this one. But she is adorable! And she does like a lot of the baby food we feed her! She is probably my least picky baby eater out of the three!

Cute as a button! She looks like a little "who!" Her hair always seems to be in a mo-hawk. I can't figure out if her hair naturally does that, or if someone (AKA Tad) always puts her hair like that. Anyways...
Just a little bit of what we are doing around here! We have Classical Conversations for 2 more weeks and then we are off until around mid-January! So that will be a nice break and hopefully I can get some more things done and not feel as crazy busy as I am right now! I'm looking forward to the holidays, and we are excited to get our Thankful Tree going like we did last year! Hope this finds you all well!