Fresh Water!

We are still wrapping up our Planet Earth studies. We wanted to wait until it was really warm to go to Turner Falls, a 70 foot natural water fall in the Arbuckle Mountains, to end our Fresh Water study. It was fun!

I never claimed to be above bribery

It's just a fact. Reading makes you smart. Another fact? With all the free time in the summer, so much reading could be done that brains could start to expand to the point of oozing out of ears. That's what we are going for here. Seriously, it's really important to me that they are reading.

Everyone got off to a great start at the beginning of summer, but then things kinda started winding down and reading started tapering off a bit. So I decided to start a reward system.

For 1 chapter book or 100 pages, you can treat yourself to some delicious mini candy bars, or have a party in your mouth with these pop rocks.

For the bargain price of 2 chapter books, or 200 pages, you can be the proud owner of some adorable mini notepads, some refreshing gum, an assortment of wacky jelly bellies, or a roll of endless-potential-duct tape.

How about 3 books or 300 pages? Refresh yourself with a FUZE, or indulge in some Hazelnut Piroulines. Or how about a trendy notebook or some thrilling party poppers? Douse your friends and coworkers with this ca-RAZY silly string, or hide in a closet and eat this jumbo Symphony bar. ...oh wait, that's me.

And if you are a saver? For 5 chapter books or 500 pages, you could be the proud owner of a lovely hibiscus tote, a cuddly plush shark, a set of artist brushes, or a clip-on LED spotlight. Also in here are certificates for a one-on-one trip to starbucks or for ice cream.

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Do I have to bribe my kids?

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No, they like to read.

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Is it worth the cost of prizes to light a fire under them and get them to voluntarily read in their free time, increasing their reading levels over the summer?

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Of course.

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Is it really obnoxious when people ask themselves questions and then answer them?

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Absolutely.

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Have a great summer.

End of the year

Every summer when we finish our school year, we have an open house for our grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. We put out some of the kids' favorite projects from the year. Everyone looks at all we've done, we have a slide show of our pictures, Cole recounts to the group every second of every detail of every day, then we eat dessert. It's a fun wrap-up to our year!

Olympic Day!

If you don't do Homeschool Olympic Day, you should! It's so much fun. Put it on your plan for next year. Click here to find out more about it.

A little science on the fly

On a recent long lunch at the lake with our friends, we came across some unexpected science.

Yikes.

Immediately Cole was requesting that our next study be on snakes. Gulp. So we went to the library and checked out lots of snake books. We have been learning so much about snakes (sorry Grammy)! We found books with tons of amazing photos and interesting information. Each day we have read a book or two, reviewed fun new facts, discussed new vocabulary words we find in the books, and just for fun, made crafts I found by googling "snake crafts."

These were made from a paper plate.

These were made from old ties, stuffing, and coat hangers.

Then today we came upon more unexpected science. Apparently a bird or something grabbed a perch out of our pond and lost him as he flew away. The kids found the newly dead perch on the shore and wanted to dissect it.

And because I was off my game due to the stifling humidity, I couldn't come up with a reason why we shouldn't participate in this smelly activity, so we dug in. (I know, dug in, that was good, right?)

We investigated his mouth and how it expands, we propped it open and looked at the tongue and all of the teeth. We did some in depth eye exploration *shudder*. We neatly sliced the side of him open and found his air bladder. The air bladder is the pocket that allows the fish to be buoyant (among other things). And no, I certainly did not know this until today. And we marveled once again at God's creativity.

It was definitely gross. But fun! And it ended in a big water hose fight. You can't beat that.

This is the kind of natural learning that sticks with you!

More on writing

One of my favorite ways to teach writing/grammar is by letting my kids have their own blogs. We are fairly new at it and I pretty much allow them to write about whatever they want. I don’t edit or make suggestions on content because I feel like the more they own the writing, the more they will get out of it. I want this to be something they desire to do for fun. I don’t always correct spelling in the beginning, but as they mature in their writing, we discuss correct spelling more.

Yesterday with blogging we were able to discuss and practice writing directions, contractions, when to spell out number words, compound words, and capitalizing brand names. And it was all done in a natural way just from what they had chosen to write about. No worksheets that will be forgotten tomorrow, but real learning that meant something to them because it improved their creation.

The novelty of blogging encourages their writing. It’s fun to add pictures and to see the work appear on their own page instantly, knowing friends and family will be reading it soon. The feedback they receive makes it worth the effort! They love to get comments. And the thought of publishing for other people provides just enough awareness to make them a little more conscious of how they are writing. It’s a great tool! It’s fun and free and is only available to those who are invited to view the blog. I think it's also going to be a great keepsake for them.

On that scary grammar subject...

I've had several questions recently about what we use to teach grammar. We don't use a formal grammar program at this point and I don't predict we ever will. We learn grammar and sentence structure through reading and writing. The more they read, the more natural it is for them to form sentences and use words correctly. This spills over into their writing as well.

Instead of having a two day lesson on, say, quotation marks, we instead point them out each time we notice them as we read. From early on we discuss when to use them and what they mean in passing conversation. This method seems to stick with them a lot better than if we sat down and had a one-time formal lesson on it.

I've found that if I will just let them write, they will present themselves with every grammar lesson in existence. Riley has been writing a story called "Meet Riley, American Girl." I let her type her little heart out with no suggestions or guidance from me. After she got all of her thoughts on the screen, I broke her story into small segments for us to edit together. We will be doing a couple of paragraphs a day, which I copy and paste into another document so it doesn't look so long and intimidating.

During this process we are naturally able to learn and review many aspects of language. She has a lot of dialogue in her story, so today we were able to review where to use quotation marks, and we learned how to use capitalization and punctuation with the quotation marks.

She had a couple of different tenses, so we discussed keeping our stories in one tense only. Same thing with writing in first person only if that is what you chose in the beginning.

Also today we learned about using commas when listing.

And we learned about when to spell out a number and when to use the numeral (I had to call David to be 100% sure on this one. You don't have to be a language arts master to be able to teach great writing, you just have to be able to find the answer).

All of these lessons presented themselves in just a couple of paragraphs of her own creative writing. And the kicker was when she later went on to work on another story, she was correctly using the new information she gained today. Score!

I do the same thing with my older kids, except more in depth. This technique may not be neatly packaged in a checklist form, but it stays with them. It works!