All American History Out Loud

The weather was absolutely beautiful today and since my children were stuck inside all day yesterday because it was raining and I was in bed sick, we HAD to get outside today.  But we also had to do school so I came up with a fun, creative way to allow both.  We have a speaker that we can plug a microphone into so we took it outside and I read aloud to them from our All American History book while they played.  You may be thinking that they weren’t really listening so it was a total waste of time. WRONG!  They answered every question I asked about the lesson.

I had a lot of fun…so much in fact that  my 15 year old son told me that I was having “too much fun” and then he took my microphone away.  Party pooper! Anyway, it just goes to show you that school CAN be fun and I promise you that if you make it memorable, they will…well, remember it! I love making memories with my kids and sharing them with you to encourage you to do the same.

Please post links to YOUR blog posts about how you are making learning fun!

 

Visiting The Dignity Memorial Wall

After church we went to see the traveling Dignity Memorial Wall that I posted about coming to Memphis a couple of weeks ago. Even though is was 100 degrees outside, I really wanted my kids to see it.  They may not look exactly happy in the picture because they were very hot standing on the black walkway in front of a black wall but they really did enjoy it. The volunteers who were there did a great job of making sure people were safe in the heat.  They had shuttle service from the parking area to the space where they wall was.  Our shuttle driver was an elderly gentleman who was very nice and he told me about how he transports cancer patients to their treatments during the week and he also serves as an escort to take WWII vets on trips.  That was so inspirational.  He may never know this but he really blessed me with his servant’s heart.  The spirit of everyone out there was just so sweet.  I don’t know if it was because of the meaning behind why we were there or what but I was just really impressed with how kind and compassionate everyone was to each other even in 100 degree weather.

If you would like to find out if the traveling wall is coming to your area, you can check the schedule here.

I would love for you to share this with your friends but please do so by sharing the link. Do not copy and paste MY content onto your site without giving me credit with a link. That is considered stealing and is wrong.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Disclaimer: Yes, this post may contain affiliate links. I love connecting you to the great deals and information that I find but I still have to make sure my bills get paid so I sometimes use links that I make a little money off of.  Thanks for supporting me so I can keep connecting you to these great things!

Coon Creek Members’ Day

If you are a member of the Pink Palace, they have a special dig coming up at Coon Creek.  Click on the image for more information on the event and on how to become a member.

Perfect Timing

I had planned on “sleeping in” this morning and getting up at 6:30 to get the crockpot started for dinner since I knew I would be gone all day but was awakened by the sound of heavy rain at 5. If you read last night’s post, you know I was up after midnight so that means I slept less than 5 hours.  Yes, I am very tired tonight!  It is not even 9:30 and I am ready for bed.

I spent the whole day working The Mystery of History booth at the Midsouth Homeschool Convention and really enjoyed it. I love talking to people about this great history curriculum that I have used for a few years.  Not only did I get to enjoy introducing MOH to homeschool families, I was able to spend time with Linda & Ashley Hobar and their friend Tara (now MY friend too!) The energy and knowledge of this group of ladies inspired me.

I didn’t really explore the exhibit hall much but did visit a few booths.   I did pop in to see the team of HomeLife Academy, my umbrella school.  My Usborne Rep, Cyndi Bothwell was near them so I stopped to see if she had anything new…she did, I made a wish list.  I got my Home School Enrichment Magazine subscription  & Home School Legal Advantage membership renewed and stopped to chat with one of the Suarez children who was working at The Old Schoolhouse Magazine’s booth…I didn’t have to renew that one because I have already done it! I did talk to a lady who was trying to decide if she needed to subscribe.  I told her why I love TOS…I hope she subscribed after I left.  I noticed the Queen Homeschool Supplies booth near ours and since I just received my catalog in the mail the other day, I wanted to go over and have a peek at some of the products I was curious about. I met Sandi Queen and she introduced me to Life of Fred, a unique new math curriculum.The books looked interesting. I think I would like to try it and see if it is something that will work for my kids.

All in all, even though I didn’t attend any workshops or explore many booths,  I left there feeling motivated to do a better job of teaching my kids.  I am glad the convention was earlier than years past.  It was perfect timing for me.

Lessons with LEGOS

Yes, dear friends, you can teach with LEGOS.  I can hear you now…”But Christie, those are JUST TOYS!”  HA HA!!  That’s what YOU think but they are SO much more!  Consider them educational tools that just happen to be FUN!

My sons LOVE LEGOS.  They look forward to getting their LEGO magazines in the mail and looking through them to see what’s new.  The youngest, age 10, has a lot of sets on his Christmas list…Hint hint grandparents! Well, they are listed as one of the “Best Gifts for Visual and Tactile Learners” so who am I to complain!?

Today my boys built The Tower of London out of LEGOS.  They learned about it a few weeks ago in their history lesson. I didn’t come up with this idea just so you know…It was one of the activities recommended in Illuminations, which I LOVE and will post more about later!

Since my boys love their LEGOS so much and I am always looking for ways to teach them that are fun, I did some exploring today to see what other lessons we could do with LEGOS and found these sites:

http://www.marshall.edu/LEGO/plans.html

http://www.lessonplanet.com/search?keywords=lego&media=lesson

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/frugal_homeschooler/82936

Note to self, get more LEGOS!

The Mystery of History

When I was growing up I don’t remember exactly being excited about what I was learning in my history classes except for when we did things like make butter and build little log houses…I must be a hands on learner huh?  Anyway, all of the other things we did were kind of…well, boring.  I like to read but some of those history books were not interesting.

Do you want your children to LOVE history?  Mine do!  Why?  Because of what we use.  We are a family that uses The Mystery of History and not only are my children learning so much, I am too!

The author, Linda Hobar, writes the lessons in a way that keeps your attention and makes it interesting.  She writes it like she is talking to you.  You can really “hear” her speaking to you about the lessons.

In the past few years, we have gone through Volumes I and II which took us from Creation to The Middle Ages. Right now, the kids and I are working through Volume III, The Renaissance, Reformation, and Growth of Nations.  Each volume is “supposed”  to be completed in a year but I have too much fun learning about the topics that I tend to take a little (ok, a lot!) longer.  I like to take whatever subject we are learning about and explore more.  I will get books from the library, find movies & websites about the topic and let the kids really dig into it.

I look forward to sharing with you some of the great activities we will get to do by studying this volume.  Be sure to check the Mystery of History Facebook page to keep up with where Linda is as she writes the next volume.

Back to School

Yesterday we started our new school year! The oldest is now in the 9th grade, middle child is in the 7th and youngest is in the 4th…where has the time gone? It doesn’t feel like I have been homeschooling my children that long! I enjoy it SO much because we are learning and exploring together.
The kids decided that they really enjoyed doing the lapbooks last year but they wanted to put all of their work into more of a scrapbook type book this year so that is what they are doing. They are currently working on pages to show what they learned from reading The Apple and The Arrow. It was a book recommendation for what we had been studying in The Mystery of History Volume II at the end of last school year. I wanted to do a review of some of last year’s topics to get us back into “school mode” so I chose this. Most of the printables activities were found at Homeschool Share

The picture shows the kids working on their projects.

Did I mention that I LOVE homeschooling??