two free lapbooks!

I just got the CurrClick weekly newsletter and this week's freebie is the Hands of a Child History of Sports lapbook.

Also, the Hands of a Child website posted their quarterly freebie today... the Amelia Earhart lapbook.

Fun stuff!

good clean fun!

Yesterday afternoon we got back to our study of the Iditarod and Alaska. After looking at some Inuit art sculptures online, we decided to try to make our own out of bars of Ivory soap.

Here's Alex working on his first carving...
Clara took a slightly different approach to "carving"...

Alex suffers for his art.... lol...
Look! A rabbit! :-)
Here's my polar bear...
This is Clara's. She said that it's a Buddha from the Art Institute... but I think it's this guy from the Field Museum...
Alex did a second carving, a baby polar bear for the mother polar bear I carved...
We also read this book...The Great Serum Race
This was a really amazing telling of the original race to get serum to the city of Nome. It is a picture book but the writing is amazing. It really kept me and the kids on the edge of our seats to hear what happened next. A really gripping tale.

Lance Mackey has made it to Nome so we're just looking for our mushers to make it in... but we still have lots of Alaska/Iditarod activities left to do so we'll keep on working on it all up until Spring Break and then, when we get back, we'll start a unit study on Hawaii!!! That way our trip at the end of April can be a week long field trip! :-)

homeschoolestore...

... is now...



I didn't realize that it was changing until I got my weekly newsletter from this in my inbox this morning. I've been meaning to type an email singing it's praises but hadn't gotten around to it. Perhaps today is the day to do that.

I started out just downloading their weekly freebies, specifically lapbooks. But lately, I've been venturing beyond the lapbooks. I have to say that it is an amazing resource for homeschoolers. They have all kinds of workbooks available (and so much more, but I haven't explored it all yet). I had been ordering regular printed workbooks when I placed my curriculum orders. With two kids, I would spend too much time running up and down the stairs to Jeff's office to photocopy pages on his little printer/scanner/copier combo thing. Plus it was an ink jet printer, which is not a big deal but I have gotten used to my laser printer. Now, with the workbooks I've ordered from CurrClick I just walk over to my printer and print two copies. Right now we're using the Spelling Grade 1 workbook with both kids (for Clara to learn and Alex for extra practice). I love being able to just click print when we want to use the workbook.

I have a whole wish list of stuff from there. I really want to do some learning center type things. Folder games and stuff that they can choose from and take to their seats to work on individually while I work the other one on something. I think this will be HUGE for Clara. She's two grades behind Alex so she doesn't have as much work as him. BUT she insists on being at the table with us the entire time we're working. Which is a good thing except when I'm constantly stumbling to find stuff for her to do. I'm thinking about some of these Take it to Your Seat books. I have a few "center" books that I've purchased but the thought of being able to just load the printer with paper, choose which pages to print versus standing there while the super slow copier combo thing scans and then prints just makes me happy! LOL!

Anyway... CurrClick is a great resource if you have multiple children or want/need to photocopy stuff from workbooks and have limited access to a copier.

Enjoy! Warning though... it's hard to stop once you get started! :-)

anyone want some seed cake?

Here it is...
It's sitting on my kitchen counter right now along with this sad specimen...
For the past 8 weeks Alex has been in a homeschool science class at the Notebaert Nature Museum here in Chicago. It's been a fabulous experience! It was a small class (started with 10 students, ended with nine), so there was lots of personal attention. They partnered for all of their projects, changing partners each week. So, it was good experience for them... learning to work with others.

They did all kinds of great thinking experiments... like the seed olympics. They had to study the different ways that seeds travel and then design and built their own seeds to compete in the different events. Alex stayed up way too late one night drawing prototypes... he was so excited about that project.

They also studied trees which tied in nicely with our trip last week to go maple tapping (the same mom who arranged the science class also arranged the maple tree tapping trip).

They studied soil and earthworms too.

If you're wondering about the seed cake above, they gave the kids certain materials to work with and a certain volume to end with and let them create their own "recipe" for the perfect growing medium. I can't remember all of the choices but there were pebbles, sand (I think), clay, plant material, etc. Then they planted seeds in them to see how they grew.

Like I said before, it was a fabulous experience... one I hope we get to be a part of again next year!

Yay Alex!

He just completed the second grade level book in Math-U-See today... tomorrow we start the third grade one!

maple tree tapping

... right here in the city! Who knew?

Today our homeschool group made a trip to North Park Village Nature Center to go maple tree tapping. We couldn't have had a better day for it! Although it was chilly out, it was good and sunny. We also had a fabulous guide who did an amazing job with the kids.

After selecting our maple tree, the kids took turns drilling a hole into the tree. Here's Clara drilling...
And now Alex's turn...
After the hole was drilled and cleaned out, the kids took turns hammering in the spile (that was my new word for the day... that's the fun of homeschooling, I'm learning too! LOL!).

Apparently sap runs best on a warmer sunny day after a really cold night, so today was perfect! The sap was just dripping out of the tree.

So, we all took a taste (dripped onto wrists instead of dirty hands)...

I couldn't believe how thin and watery the sap was... and as for taste, just a mildly sweet water taste.

Here's our tree, tapped, labeled and collecting sap...
After the tree tapping we continued on our nature walk. Then we came upon an area they call the story tree. It was this play structure made of fallen trees and logs. They kids seriously could have stayed there all day.

Also out on the trail the kids got to identify animal tracks and scat. AND we saw a COYOTE!!! Can you believe it? We were all amazed. Our guide said that she knew that one was supposed to be in the woods but that she had never seen it before herself.

After our walk we went back to the nature center to watch a short movie on how maple syrup is made while we ate popcorn drizzled with maple syrup and crackers with maple butter... yum!

The capper on this adventure was seeing deer on our way to the bus stop.... not just a couple but at least SEVENTEEN deer! It's not like I've never seen deer before but I just never expected to see them in the city of Chicago! The kids stalked them for, oh gosh, probably an hour... they had the time of their lives! They were all so excited and couldn't stop gushing about the experience.

I love days like today! :-)

Mush!

Things are getting pretty exciting here lately! The Iditarod officially started this past weekend so we check the status of our mushers constantly throughout the day. Current standings has Alex's musher (Gerry Willomitzer) in 3rd, our family's musher (Hugh Neff) in 7th and Clara's musher (Jennifer Freking) in 67th place. It's been fun to move our little dots along the trail.

After lunch we worked on our Iditarold stuff some more. First off was some work from our Hands of a Child Sled Dog lapbook. We learned about how dogs and mushers communicate. We had a lot of fun learning the terms mushers use to guide their dogs.

Here's Alex filling out a part of the lap book....
And Clara watching...

After the lapbook work, we sat together to read this book...Akiak by Robert J. Blake
It was such a great story! I don't know if it was just because I haven't been feeling well lately... but man, that story had me tearing up! I'm such a sap!

After the book, the kids set to work on building an igloo out of sugar cubes. I totally forgot to have something on hand to "glue" the cubes together so today they just worked on their overall design. I'll get them something to hold it all together in a day or two and then the real building will begin.


Well... that pretty much covers our school day today (well... except for our typical bookwork we did before lunch)! Hopefully we'll have more Iditarod fun before the week is over.