Hummingbird Lapbook Complete

I finally downloaded all my pictures off the camera today and I want to show you all what wonderful things we have been doing for the last 2/3 weeks. I haven't been able to blog much because of everyone being sick and that takes a ton of my time when I am not schooling or working OH and holiday too!

So tonight I am going to share with you our complete Hummingbird Lapbook from Homeschool Share. We love that site -- Well I love that site, they have wonderful items free to print off when you need. So this 8 weeks we have been doing a large animal unit study, this particular week we studied Hummingbirds. We got a movie from the library and done our study on the types of Hummingbirds, the locations they live, foods and plants they love and so forth. I have already posted once on the study but wanted to show the completed Lapbook from the kids! It makes the kids feel good when I post their work, Its like a homeschool teachers bulletin board. Public school teachers have a wonderful bulletin board to show the wonderful work the students do so this is my way of having that for my homeschool babies!

Kyle enjoyed learning about where the Hummingbirds lived(and I love the look on his face).

Zachary is always eager to show off his school items and to only imagine how worried I was that this one started school this year!!

Lexi loved learning about Hummingbirds, her favorite so far. She always enjoys doing a lapbook study, she enjoys showing them off when my parents come over and she loves to just get them down a week or so after we complete them to review what is inside. That makes me very happy and that's why we continue to learn threw lapbooks!

Homeschool T Shirt Sale

Hi Homeschool Momma's :)

Hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving & if you went out for deals on Black Friday, I hope you got what you went for!

I have a wonderful link to share. Every year Great Homeschool T Shirts has 2 wonderful sales on shirts, tote bags, hats, bumper stickers, etc. So guess what I got in my inbox today? A notice of their HUGE SALE!

Sale link: http://www.greathomeschooltshirts.com

We have personally bought from them 2 times in 4 years with no problem. Shirts are great quality(from our purchases) and we have also bought tote bags and they are very durable as well. I like this company because great prices and great quality. Hope you enjoy this sale! I sure do :)

Happy Thanksgiving

I just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving. Hope everyone's holiday is filled with hope, cheer and thankfulness. I have so much to be thankful for and I would like to list a few of these:

1. God - for having mercy on my soul, I am a sinner and I am thankfully a child of God
2. My children, I am thankful to be blessed enough by God to be gifted my wonderful children, I can't imagine thinking of never having them in my world.
3. My husband, God truly blessed me with a man of God even when we was so young and scared about our first child and I totally didn't understand what was going to happen, God had a plan and his plan has been wonderful and blessed.
4. Parents, I am thankful for all my parents have done for me, there have been some rough years for them and threw all of it -- it helped me to understand marriage, love, commitment and understanding.
5. House, Food, Car and all the luxury things that God has blessed me with that hasn't honestly been needed.
6. Love, Faith & Forgiveness - Without these things I would hate to understand where I would be, not only am I thankful for knowing these things but also for understanding for using them too!

I love God and my family. This week has been hard because my household has still been sick, but we have learned a lot about the history of Thanksgiving too. Kyle wrote a wonderful paper on what he has learned and I was so impressed.

Hope that everyone has a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving.

Scotch Laminating Machine - Review & Instructions

I have to say that I love my Scotch Laminate Machine. It has really came in handy the 5/6 months that I have owned it. I can't understand for the life of me why I hadn't bought one before now! It has extended the life of all my papers that I use normally and the games that I give the children. Its very worth its money(about $25 at walmart) and super easy to use!

I thought I would show you how simple it is to use with a few directions! 

First you must by the scotch thermal laminating pouches very reasonable priced.

The pouches open all but one end and you just slide your paper right in!

This is my MOH Cards that I was laminating a few weeks back...

 Next you will want to turn on your machine, there is a red power button and also a green ready button, when the machine is up to temp it will show the green light for you to begin your laminating!

Ok now time to feed our papers threw...

Simple as 1 - 2 - 3.

I honestly can say this machine is well worth its money. I have 3 children that I am schooling now and I need my items to be durable. So I am glad I choose a great machine at a great price to make my items last threw all my children! Hope you Enjoyed!

Writing Improvements -- WOOHOO

Well I just have to take a moment and brag about how wonderful the kids are doing in writing. They have improved so much in our 15 weeks of school so far, Its just amazing what a little more effort will produce!

Last year I wasn't a stickler for schedule, I will totally be honest here, because maybe I can help you understand that for us to help our children we have to try our best too. I feel like I was lacking in having a routine down for the kids last year, In February that changed for me, there are reasons but I would like to skip right over to my point please :) I wasn't being consistent with teaching writing and I was also in the dark as to where and how to start. So I thought copy work was alright so I would just print some copy work off and I guess I was thinking after enough of that they would get it..... NOPE..... Wrong.

So I went on a search and found this wonderful video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k36RvLJ5LIc

This single video has helped me teach my children writing skills and for FREE, YES FREE! I wasn't trying to find something free I was just trying to find something that made sense so that I could make sense when teaching it to my kids. I am thankful that God helped me find this link because Lexi(7) and Zac(5) are doing very pretty handwriting because of me finding that video. I need the confidence in something that I was lacking and afraid I would make a mistake on, but after prayer I found what I was searching for.

Lexi & Zac have a certain time period everyday in their workboxes that we do writing. The workboxes have been fantastic as well, God really has blessed our homeschooling this year, he heard my cries and provided exactly the skills I needed to continue in raising my children for him and me still being sane lol... Hey its alright God has a sense of humor! Writing time is enjoyable for them and they are learning alot. I used the video to go threw and make key cards of what to say and then I started teaching from there, Its took us about 1 month to go threw and learn all our ABC's and we have since moved on to writing words or just practicing still with Zac his ABC's.

(You can see their lips moving, that's because they are saying the steps out loud as they write there letter.)

Hope you enjoy this and hope that you can see that being consistent with what you teach and being confident about it to will help you and your children!

Animal Study

Hi All, been very busy and trying to catch up on my blogging. As many of you all know we have been very sick the last week so finally seeing some improvements I thought while the kids was having Quite Time I would try to get some things posted, I am not a fan of being behind!

So this 8 weeks we are learning about Animals, everything about them! Trying to go threw and learn how to categorize animals into groups(mammals, amphibians) and learning what locations they can live as well. We are really enjoying this project so far and hope that it helps us learn all about the wonderful things God placed on this earth for us to enjoy! We are using no actual publisher, I am just piecing this together a week or so in advance. We are using Lapbooks, Living Books, Encyclopedias, Videos and much more! Homeschool Share is a wonderful site for all neat things! I love them so much there! We are doing many printables and we have also made a folder for each of us names our "Animal Study" folder, the kids are filing all the papers and activities inside and of course they decorated the outside of the folders with what else... Animals!

This is what my board looks like at the end of each day ~ LOL you can at least tell we are learning each day! The kids like to take turns erasing the mess! Hey as long as they are having fun its alright by me!!

SICK SICK SICK

Well this week has not went as planned(which we all understand). My smallest 2 children are not well and on top of that neither is hubby. He had to miss school yesterday because he couldn't even muster up enough strength to get ready, I think he has the (drum roll please) flu!!!! Just sick about it, he wasn't feeling much better today but he had to go to his lab class, so maybe they will just send him home... And of course everyone can't be sick without me, I have an ear infection and its horrible! I am only a baby when it comes to my throat and ears! So please pray for our family, this week we all need to recover from our sickness because next week is Thanksgiving!

This week we have gotten our Math lessons finished and our Hummingbird Lapbook complete as well! We have only done one Mystery of History lesson this week so hopefully things will pic up, but with everyone(except Kyle) not feeling well its very hard to get motivated! But there has been lots of story time and cuddles on the couch this week, so maybe that's a plus!

Hope all of you are doing wonderful and have a great week!

Wonderful Deals

Last week my husband found something that made me so excited! He had to take the children to there dentist appointment last week and while in the next town he stopped by to take the kids into Goodwill. We enjoy stopping in there every time we are near because you never know what you will find inside! Upon there trip Kevin found some wonderful items to go along with our Mystery of History Study! They was $2.00 each and that's just wonderful for what they are! I have never seen them before but inside they have the neatest little activities to build! It goes so wonderful with our MOH I just was shocked! Kyle(10) told his dad that they was learning all of those things and so Kevin bought them all. So for a total of $8.00 I had some wonderfully new, hands on, fun ways to learn all our new items that we are discovering in MOH!

If you have never been inside a Goodwill, You really should go. We have found some wonderful new items before and even still wonderful used items! We homeschool on a very tight budget so little things like this really help make our homeschool year! Not much money to spend since they was used but individual price was on average $19.99 each!!! So needless to say even if I would of seen them new, I wouldn't of spent that money on them! I appreciate my husband always looking for things to benefit our education for our children!

I love you honey!!

Week 13

This is our week 13. This week will be the same as all others just with different lesson plans or on different lessons progressing slowly! We are going to concentrate on All About Spelling & Mystery of History more this week for a few reasons, one they are our favorite and two I feel as I haven't been able to devote enough time on them as I would like, so I am going to correct that this week. This week we are also starting our lapbook study on Hummingbirds! This is going to be so fun for us because every Spring/Summer we have a lot of Hummingbirds flock to our feeders! We enjoy sitting on our porch and just watch them! We are using the Zoobooks issue of Hummingbirds along with a lapbook study from homeschool share!

Update on the kids and the progress they are making:

Kyle - He is improving so much on his writing! I couldn't imagine that he would already improve this much and it not even our half way point! I am very proud of him for this! He has great writing skills but hasn't really applied them, he is creative and has a great imagination for writing and it makes this momma very proud to say he is doing wonderful on this! I also am very proud of him on his reading interest FINALLY -- Hallelujah!! I was afraid to push him into it although I honestly had tried many times, well this year at the start I told him 3 things I really needed to see improvement in and we agreed that he would try well wow is he trying! I am overly joyed by his involvement this year! He is a wonderful boy!

Alexis - She loves to read and could read all day long! She reads between 4 - 7 books daily! Her favorite place to read is on my bed or on the couch! I get so tickled at her because she always has a book in her hand... Unlike her brother! LOL -- but she enjoys her spelling also, she is totally opposite that her brother Kyle. She enjoys talking over things in her school and does great in writing! She is a delight, she will do anything you ask her, she is the best helper anyone could ask for!

Zachary - This one had me worried all summer long that's for sure, this is his first year and he is doing wonderful! I am very proud of him for all he is learning so far! His favorite thing is writing and math. I think he has very pretty handwriting so far and that's wonderful because hes only 5 lol... He enjoys thinking hes a big boy too! He struggles with his ABC's and doing wonderful with his numbers! He is the class clown! He can always make me laugh!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A good friend asked me last week what would be my favorite change or publisher this year. After long thought I can answer with so clearly -- MY WORKBOXES!! I don't know where I would be with out those little boxes this year! I honestly don't know! I was so very stressed over adding Zac into our school routine this summer and then hearing Sue Patrick on the TOS Expo was a dream come true! I immediately could tell those boxes would work for us! One thing I was a little worried about after the first couple weeks was if the new would wear off and the work wouldn't get done and I can honestly say NO that's not what happens! The boxes are wonderful for my children and for myself! They benefit a lot from us using them and I am so much more focused on tasks and prepared! I get to the things I would always have to leave out -- and of course that was the fun things -- so I give all my credit for a great year so far to God for having heard my problems and found me an answer! I am very pleased in our school year this year more so than any other!!