It happened again.

We love books.

We have gazillions of them. I just believe that if we need to learn about Thomas Edison, we can do that so much better with a biography of his life than anything else. I want my kids surrounded by great literature. But last week something happened that just about put me over the edge. It has happened before, and it happened again.

I once again bought a book I already owned.

This experience sent me on a crazed organizational venture.

Yesterday Riley and I pulled hundreds of books off of their shelves. We separated them into piles according to subject. We had piles for Historical events and people, Artists, Animals, Science, Five in a Row, and Geography.

Some time ago, some brilliant homeschool mom gave me the idea of color-coding books. And that's what we did. On all of the books about geography- countries, states, etc. we stuck a yellow label at the bottom of the spine. We did a different color for each subject.

As we put the labels on, I quickly typed the title onto a list.

Now I have a list of every reference type book that we own. Every biography, every space book, every whale book, all of it.

I put each subject list in a page protector and I hung them all next to the shelf. At a glance I can see what we have! And I put extra labels in the page protector so I can easily stick them on new books.


Now whenever we finish a book, it gets stuck back on the shelf with it's coordinating color. You can easily glance at the books and notice if a book is in the wrong place because the color will not match the rest. Even if they happen to get mixed up, it will be a breeze to put them back where they belong.

So no more trying to search through a sea of book spines to see if we have any books on Helen Keller. Or weather.

No more reserving Five in a Row books at the library because I forgot I had it on my shelf.

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Isn't it pretty?

And it's easy enough that even a preschooler could get the books back where they belong.

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Ahhhhh...color-coding.

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Color-coding=peace.

Lentil

Riley and Cole did Lentil by Robert McCloskey for Five In A Row this week. We had fun with this book!

We learned how to whittle, like Old Sneep in the book. Garrett and Tyler joined us for that.

I surprised Riley and Cole with toy harmonicas. They had fun playing with them and we used them to learn about acoustics by comparing the sound in the room, then in the shower.

All of the illustrations in the book were done with charcoal, so we did some experimenting with charcoal and smearing.

Of course we had to have some fun with lemons, since they are a big part of the book! We had a lemon tasting. Only rule? You have to take a big bite and slurp. No wussin' out. Here's how that played out...

Again, what's with the aversion to shirts? We have them. Lots of them.

Then we made lemon slushes with our lemon juice and a LOT of sugar...

Much betta...

Man! Sideways picture. And I'm not changing it now. I'm just not.

One of the themes of this book is practicing and becoming an expert at something. Riley and Cole have wanted a recorder since last year when my niece learned to play one in school. I bought these at Walmart for $10 each. They came with a step-by-step book on how to play. They are so excited! It's going to be fun to learn.

It was a fun week of learning about geography, social studies, human relationships, elements of a story, art, music, taste buds, patriotism and sound waves and falling in love with a new book.

Our first day 2009

Today was our first day of school for the year. We had a great time, and it was so much fun to get huddled back together and spend the day focused on what our year holds.

Garrett and I started American history. We are so excited about this! We are reading biographies and working our way through important events and people, starting with Columbus.

Riley and Cole are starting Astronomy, which is going to be so much fun with the Apologia book. Lots of cool experiments and projects in there! They are also doing Lentil from Five in a Row this week.

Tyler started some "How stuff works" type science and was typing away on his computer about some discoveries he made. He is also reading a George Washington Carver biography and doing a Beyond Five in a Row unit with that.

We are all going to be doing "Around the World" together this year. We are starting with Italy, and looked at some travel books today. Tomorrow we will explore the life of Leonardo Da Vinci. We will also be reading some Michelangelo and Galileo biographies, doing some authentic Italian cooking, and studying Italian art, history, and architecture. Stay tuned for more on Italy!

And, as always, we did our diet Coke/Mentos experiment. It has become tradition to do this every year on the first day. I guess it's kinda like our version of first day fireworks or something. Honestly, I don't see the getting-doused-with-Diet-Coke thing wearing out anytime soon. Being in the middle of a huge mess just never goes out of style for these particular kids. We did it 6 times.

We don't gots to wear no shirts or shoes in our homeschool. Ain't no dress code here.

Here's what Cole wrote in his journal today. He's right. We do always "Coke experiment."

Grammy and Grandpa had a cookie made to ring in the new school year...

And because clearly we are fans of the traditions, we ended our day by meeting David at Incredible Pizza. Just like our very first year. And second year. And third year.

I seriously can not even believe I get to do this with these kids. I am so very blessed.

Bat Caves!

Our final Planet Earth field trip! We finished studying caves a while ago, but just last weekend were able to do our field trip. This one was great fun because we not only got to go with friends, but most of our extended family went as well.
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This was on property that is owned by friends of David's parents. David explored these caves as a child. David's dad grew up just down the road from the property and spent his childhood exploring them as well. We did a lot of wading through creeks to get to our destinations!

The caves were long and narrow in some places!

Here we are after getting all the way through the first cave.

To say this was not a clean field trip would be a huge understatement.

Grace's OU headlamp.

Deciding where to go next...

Taking a roasted hot dog and s'more break!

The water cave...

It was a perfect day! We saw only a few bats, which was ok with me. We had so much fun exploring and experiencing REAL caves.