We have been studying Spanish for the last few years and have been blessed to own
Rosetta Stone.  It is a wonderful program that fully immerses you in the language by reading, hearing, and typing.  It is easy enough even for my 6 year old to associate the pictures with the given words.  However, as with any language learning, I wanted to bring our Spanish experience beyond “computer time” with the Rosetta Stone program.  I came up with a VERY simple way to incorporate language learning throughout the day.  I simply use Post-It notes throughout the schoolroom and house with the Spanish words for specific items.  It is exactly the same as labeling items for early readers of English.  I have labeled windows, doors, pencils, bookshelves, desks, washer and dryer, tables, chairs, etc., etc.  When I ask the kids to get a paper and pencil, I try to say “consiga un papel y el lápiz” instead.  When they are labeled, it’s easy for the kids and I to remember!  FreeTranslation.com is a great site for converting English to many other languages and very easy to do!

We officially embarked on another glorious year in the Hansen Homeschool on Monday!  I was ready, as were the kids (in my opinion).  They were desperately needing something to DO…know what I mean?  So, after a couple weeks of planning and messing with schedules, I have come up with a loose plan.

Social Studies: We are finishing up Time Travelers: The American Revolution by Homeschool in the Woods.  This is a wonderful unit study that I would highly recommend.  We supplement with lots of library books, episodes of Liberty’s Kids from Netflix, and Lessons from History-Art Part.  I also throw in the study of various countries related to whichever artist or musician we are currently studying, plenty of map work, and GeoScribe lessons.  My son has also specifically requested a unit study on Vikings, so we may fit that in before we advance to the 19th century.

Science: We have been using (for the last year plus) Considering God’s Creation.  I like it very much, but do supplement quite extensively.  This is MY subject, so it is easy for me to add to the lessons on the fly.  We are studying scientific classification, which is a bit of review from our previous study of Carolus Linnaeus last year.  After a couple more classes of vertebrates, we will delve into anatomy and physiology.  This will be interesting since it is my absolute favorite subject, but my son has bemoaned “I’m going to faint a lot this year!”  I will have to be wary of how in depth I get with him around!

Art: All three of my kids are avid artists.  They spend a good amount of their own free time every day drawing.  This being so, my art instruction is pretty relaxed.  What we spend our time in school doing is biographies of famous artists and studies of their major works of art.  This can and does spill over into other subjects as we study their countries and cultures as well.  A great book that kick started us on this is Discovering Great Artists.  You learn about the artist, his techniques, and try to imitate their style.  Great book.  Next up will be Thomas Gainsborough.

Music: Since daddy is a musician, it will fall to him to teach piano, guitar, harmonica, and/or drums as needed.  We also use our church songbook and learn a new song each week, singing it nightly as a family.  Since daddy is also a recording engineer, I have been nudging (strongly) to have him record the girls singing and work with them to perfect the songs.  Finally, we study classical musicians in the same way that we study artists, getting in about one each month (sometimes more).  We listen to their music throughout the month, learn about their lives, countries, cultures, and influences.  Next up is Franz Schubert.

Bible:  We read the bible every morning.  It is a good time to have the kids stand individually and read aloud as well.  I have found this helps them greatly with public speaking.  We have been reading through the New Testament.  This year we have joined a Community Bible Study group that meets once a week with homework to be completed through the week.  They have a class specifically for the homeschool kids and one for me as well!  The kids have also joined AWANAS for the first time and have started their own prayer journals.

Life Skills: My goal is to have each of the older kids be able to prepare one of our common weekly meals on their own by the end of the semester.  Micah is working on tacos and Hailey on spaghetti.  This will include planning, shopping, prep, cooking, and serving.  This is, of course, in addition to their standard chores and everyday helping/learning that comes with being a homeschooled kid!

Math: We use Math U See.  Although I have come close to considering a different curriculum in the past, I am now seeing the benefits of a strong foundation.  We will be sticking with MUS.  I have them in Beta, Gamma, and Delta this year.  We will also supplement with online drills, Addition the Fun Way, Times Alive, Mathmania, Calculadder, Math Mammoth, wrap ups, and lots of games.

Language Arts

Grammar: We use Easy Grammarand love it.  Simple to use, easy to understand, and the kids are doing well.

Spelling: We have struggled a LOT with this subject and although we do address it in their daily writing, I was not seeing improvement.  We tried several different programs with no great success.  I am currently using Sequential Spelling and feel it is the best fit.  No more tears and frustration!  I am seeing slow but steady improvement in their free writing with this program as well, so we’ll keep with it this year.  We also have a vocabulary word of the week with periodic review of these words in crosswords and flashcards.  These are words they come across in their reading and wonder what they mean; big words like portentous and epiphany.

Foreign Language: We will continue to use Rosetta Stone for Latin American Spanish and English from the Roots Up for Latin and Greek root words.

Reading: We will read, read, read, and read!  Each kid has a novel they are working on at all times.  We take 30 minutes during schooltime, but they also read in their free time and always at bedtime.  I always have a book I read aloud to them while they illustrate pictures for it as I read.  I am currently reading Redwall.  The older two read aloud during bible time and my youngest reads library books aloud to me as well as books from the online resource Reading A-Z which has evaluations available.

Writing: We will write whenever we can.  I incorporate it into all our other studies.  For example, if we are studying the Revolutionary War, I will read aloud about Nathan Hale then ask them to write me a paragraph about him.  They always know they will write a rough draft, I will correct it with editing notation, and then they will write a final draft.  We do this for anything I want them to write about:  reptiles, Mozart, Japan, etc.  Each of them has a reading log in which they write about whatever book they finish during their individual reading.  On days that I do not have a writing plan, they write in journals.  Usually these are fictional stories.  I also have them write book reports on stories I read aloud.  I try to make these fun.  For example:  after The Tale of Despereaux they wrote different sections of their book reports on the arms, legs, and body of their favorite character, then decorated the face to look like them.  Finally, we do plenty of copywork along with our various unit studies.

And of course we will do each and every one of these planned activities every single day….HA!!  In reality, I will allow it to be very fluid, with group work in the morning hours and individual work following that.  If we can get even a decent percentage of what I have planned done within a month, I will be happy.

My mom sent me this little sayaing the other day.  It was told to her by my great aunt in the 1960’s.  I thought it was fun.  I’m going to see if my kids can come up with some as well.  See what your kids can do!

Where can a man find a cap for his knee,

Or a key for the lock of his hair?

Can his eyes be called an academy,

Because there are pupils there?

In the crown of his head, what gems are found?

Who travels the bridge of his nose?

Can he use, when shingling the roof of his mouth,

The nails on the end of his toes?

Can the crook of his arm be sent to jail?

If so, what did it do?

How does he sharpen his shoulder blades?

I’ll be hanged if I know, do you?

Our kids absolutely adore the I Spy book series from Scholastic. They will literally spend hours pouring over the books to find the items listed. A while ago, they moved up from just reading the books to making books of their own. They would draw pictures embedded within pictures and lists of what to find. They compiled these into books to challenge the family. The other day, they surprised me by setting up a 3-D “real life” I Spy puzzle using toys and household items arranged inside a Barbie castle in my daughters’ room. I was very impressed by their creativity, not only with setting up the puzzle scene, but with the rhymes they wrote as well (all on their own, mind you). They wrote things such as:

“I spy a horse, a tack, a miniature bed,
And two golden crowns of kings long dead.”

If you and your children do not know these books, I encourage you to take a look at them. Your local library surely should have some in stock. Ours is a very small-town library and even they have a large selection, including first readers for the littlest ones. If you do not find them in your library, or would just like to own some yourself (we have quite a sampling ourselves), you will find an enormous selection HERE on Amazon.

Once you are familiar with the series and are ready to try building a puzzle of your own, I suggest you visit Homemade I Spy on the Scholastic website. They give you ideas, suggestions, and instructions on making your own puzzles and writing the rhymes to go along with them. The entire I Spy website is wonderful for free downloads, printables, and online games for the avid I Spy connoisseur. I believe our next project will be taking digital pictures of the kids’ puzzles, printing them out, adding the rhymes for finding items, and combine them all into a more “professional” looking I Spy book. So many things you could do! Have Fun!

Summer time is a great time for your kids to play “Treasure Hunt.”  They may want to dress up like pirates and read some stories of pirate lore to make it more fun.  This will also give them some summertime practice in writing simple poems.

1.       Choose who will be burying the treasure.  The parent may want to do this first to show the kids how it could be done.

2.       Choose the treasure and bury it – while no one is looking, of course!  It can truly be buried, or just hidden in an unsuspecting place.  It’s fun if you have a chest, either real or one the kids help make from a shoe box and decorated with “jewels.”  The treasure can be something simple – an apple, a candy bar, a small toy, or coins.  Make sure there is one for each hunter.

3.       Choose the path to follow to the treasure, keeping in mind landmarks the hunter will need to find.

4.       For each landmark, write a simple rhyming poem telling the hunter where to find the next clue.  For instance, “By the next tree, you will find me.”  Or, “Take 15 steps to the right.  There you will find the site.”

5.       Hide each clue at the appropriate landmark.  The last clue tells where the treasure is hidden.

6.       Give the first clue to the hunters and see if they can find the treasure.

After the hunt, what could be better than a cool, refreshing glass of homemade lemonade!  Try this simple recipe.

Lemonade

2 lemons

¾ cup sugar (can also use Splenda if you are watching sugar consumption)

Water

1.       Wash the lemons.  Squeeze the juice from the 2 lemons.  If you want a tarter flavor, you can grate some of the rind to add to the lemonade or just add slices of lemon.

2.       Pour the juice into a 2 quart pitcher.  Add the sugar (or Splenda) and stir well until sugar is dissolved.

3.       Add cold water and some ice cubes, stirring to combine the flavors.  Pour into iced glasses and enjoy!

For some extra information, here’s a paper treasure chest that you can print out (cardstock would be best), color, and put together.  And here’s a great site on how to write a limerick, taking you step by step.  You can even make a whole day of it ending with a family movie night watching The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie!  Have fun!

Man, it’s been crazy here for the last 2 months!

In mid May Shelly’s parents came to visit for a couple weeks or so. These kindly folks love to do stuff. I was dragged to all kinds of wonderful places. Have you ever been to the Carnton Plantation in Franklin, TN? If not, plan a trip right now! What a beautiful place. Everything about the tour was amazing… until the last room that we visited, which was upstairs. Let me back up a minute and remind you that the area surrounding the Carnton House was the site of the “five bloodiest hours of the Civil War” in the Battle of Franklin – where almost 10,000 soldiers died! The very large mansion – home of John and Carrie (The Widow of The South) McGavock – was perfectly suited to serve as a field hospital. In fact (if memory serves) there were over 300 wounded and dying men in the house at any given time. Naturally there were copious amounts of blood being spilled on the floor, and our tour guide made sure to point out all the 200+ year old stains in every room. Now, our boy doesn’t like blood. Neither does his dad, but I’m old enough to block out things that I don’t want to hear about. Well, he did well enough until the final room upstairs which houses amazing glass cases of the surgical equipment used at the time. Tools that conjured up pretty disgusting images in my mind, so I walked out of the room and into the 2nd floor landing (casually, of course) to view some nice, non-medical furniture and art. When the group came out behind me I used the opportunity to gather our two daughters and stand by Grammy & Poppy. A few moments later as I realized that my wife and son were nowhere to be seen the tour guide looked toward the room and down, and asked “Is he alright?” As I made a b-line for the room I hear my wife answer “He fainted.” The boy was out cold! Literally and figuratively. Cold as a cucumber, friends. After we got him revived and up and walking I took him outside to get some fresh air, and took the opportunity to tell my own stories about passing out in similar nasty situations. I also used that as the perfect situation to let him know that if he’s seeing and hearing things that he doesn’t like to walk out! I did. As a side note my wife loves that medical stuff.

Carnton Plantation

Another great couple of places that we visited were in Huntsville, Alabama (my family’s first time visiting that state)- The  Constitution Village and Early Works Children’s Museum. The Constitution Village is comprised of an historically and archeologically accurate reconstruction of the village as it existed in the 1820’s. All built on the original footings! A fascinating visit for a family such as ours with a great affinity for American history.

Constitution Village Gardens

After the village we walked to the Huntsville Town Square to eat at a Greek restaurant that was recommend by our tour guide. Pretty good Mediterranean food! Then it was off to the Early Works Children’s Museum, a wonderful “hands on” type of museum. Those seem to be a relatively new phenomenon. When I was a kid we weren’t even allowed to breath on things in the museum, much less touch them. This museum was right up the alley for our kids.  Completely hands-on play in a log cabin, an 1800’s general store, a entire riverboat, and much more.  A great day! Once we got back Bedford County, TN (God’s country) we stopped in at 50’s & Fiddles for my favorite Root beer Malt! Mmm-mmm. These two – no, three places also need to be placed on your immediate to-do lists.

While all these exciting adventures were taking place my dad and I had to undertake a major construction project! My In-Laws purchased the kids a serious fort/swing-set building (for lack of better words). We had been looking around at the various options, and I’ll tell you what – they aren’t giving those things away! Added to the price is, or course installation costs. My dad being the incredibly industrious person that he is convinced me that we could save hundreds of dollars by building it ourselves. I’m not too shabby with tools myself, so I agreed. We settled on the best overall set and went to work! It took us about a week with all the family site seeing trips and rain days, but it came out better than I could have hoped for! We even made some improvement modifications. This thing is rock-solid and fastened hard to the ground. Perfect for our monkeys. In fact, they may not even be able to destroy it. My Mother In-Law was convinced that the project was too much for us, and tried to talk us into hiring some folks to put it together. So, I did (admittedly) get some satisfaction from pointing out that she stopped just shy of telling us flat-out that we couldn’t do it. She denied it and we all had a good laugh. As a side note we also put up a new pool (that my wife’s folks also bought) for the Summer. Its hard enough getting the kids to leave the house for any reason; now with Disneyland in our backyard its that much harder!

Since the folks left we’ve also been involved in the Middle-Tennessee Music and Dance Camp as well as two different V.B.S.s which were all a ton of fun. We’re getting ready for church camp coming up next.  We’ll post some pictures of our fun happenings on the Community Refrigerator for you to enjoy.   Hope y’all’s Summer is going well. Feel free to leave comment below. Everyone likes that! And remember to invite your friends to join us on Homemade Homeschoolers.

For more information on the Battle of Franklin, there’s a great 2-CD set by Dr. James Dobson from Focus on the Family Radio Broadcast called Remembering the Battle of Franklin.

To find a living history museum near you, try America’s Living History which focuses on the period before the 1840s westward movement and features 300 of the nation’s best living history parks, historic sites and museums.

Till next time – Michael

Boy oh boy, we have had a full house!  As Michael had updated a short while ago, we have had friends (Jason, Chloe, and Jake) staying with us as “refugees” from New Orleans.  Their home made it through Hurricane Gustav with minor damage, thank the Lord.  They were set to leave when Hurricane Ike showed up!  This one is a very large storm, so even getting hit by the outskirts of it is going to be a bumpy ride.  Finally, on Tuesday, it appeared that Ike would mostly bypass New Orleans, so they headed home.  We were truly sad to see them go.  We have even renamed their evacuation as their “evacation” and look forward to hurricane season next year!  We enjoyed them so much.  (Lesson Plans 4 Teachers has some great links to lessons on hurricanes and Enchanted Learning has fun printables related to hurricanes as well.)

Homemade Homeschoolers is all about finding creative ways to enrich our children’s education on the homeschooling journey.  So, while our friends were here, I jumped on an opportunity!  Chloe is an artist by trade and I requested that she teach art to the kids while she was here.  She was happy to do so, and we had so much fun in the process.  For one lesson, she used the color wheel to teach primary, secondary, and complimentary colors, shading and tones.  The kids also had fun with a project at the end of the lesson.

Color Wheel Lesson for elementary grades:

• First, draw a large circle for each child (we used rolled art paper, but any large paper or poster board would work as well) and divide the circle into wedges labeled 1 through 6 (like a pie).
• Begin with wedge number 1 and have the child paint it red.  Tempera paints are the most “child friendly” type to use in these projects.  Follow with painting wedge 3 yellow and painting wedge 5 blue.  These are the primary colors.  Have the child write out the primary colors on the paper margin and dab those colors next to the names.
• For the secondary colors, have the child mix the colors used in the bordering wedges.  For example, wedge 2 would mix red from wedge 1 with yellow from wedge 3, then paint wedge 2 with the resulting orange.  Do this for wedges 4 and 6, painting them green and purple.  *Have the child do the mixing on a separate palette (we use paper plates), this is a fun part of the learning process.*  Write out the secondary colors on the margin of the paper and dab the colors next to the names as well.
• Next, explain complimentary colors as the colors opposite each other on the color wheel.  For example, yellow would be complimentary to purple, orange to blue, and red to green.  Also indicate these on the margin of the paper with dabs of those colors as visual reminders.  In this way, the child has a study guide made by themselves that can hang in an area they visit often.

Finished Color Wheel Project

Lesson on Shading and Tones:

• Shading is changing the color you start with by adding either the lighter or darker primary color next in line on the color wheel.  Take a strip of paper and color one rectangle in a primary color (ex: red).  Next, add a drop of an adjacent primary color (ex: yellow to go lighter or blue to go darker).  Mix on a pallete and paint a rectangle of this new color next to the first rectangle.  Continue by adding drops of the second color to the initial mixture and painting rectangles after mixed.  You will end up with a visual gradient of shading either going darker or lighter dependent upon the colors you use.
• To change the color tone you will follow this same procedure, except you will add drops of white for lighter tones and drops of black for darker tones.  You will end up with a visual gradient of lighter or darker tones of the original color.

Finished Shading Project

Art Project using Primary and Secondary Colors:

• Have children choose a partner.  On a large sheet of paper, each child will trace their partner’s head and shoulders.  They will then paint the features of their partner on the paper.  (For a solitary child, you can trace them and they will paint themselves.)  The only rule is this:  they can use only the primary and secondary colors on the color wheel (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple) and they must use each color at least once.  They can paint seriously or have fun using their imaginations!

For more pictures of our lesson and the kids’ finished artwork, visit our new HMHS Community Refrigerator!  Feel free to add your own pictures as well.

This is very basic art and color theory, but my kids had never had lessons in it before and I know this is true for many other homeschoolers as well.  We had lots of fun and the results are hanging in the schoolroom for reference.  I think using the opportunity of Chloe being here with us turned out to be a great idea.  We all need to think of people we have contact with that may have talents they can share with our children.  Approach them and request a time for them to teach you something new, or swap times with another homeschool mom or dad!

To discuss more about Art and learning opportunities, please visit the Homemade Homeschoolers Forum.

Went to the homeschool parents meeting a few evenings ago and now I’m all pumped up for the year ahead! Tons of topic ideas are spinning. I like to focus on a topic each week (or sometimes for two weeks). This week we are talking about sharing (any guesses why I picked this one?). Each week we pull scripture about our topic and dig out some related craft projects from our Bible activity books. On Monday we talked about the little boy who shared his bread and fish and how Jesus used it to share lunch with the entire crowd. We also (very creatively) incorporate our science lessons into our theme. Since we are learning about plants and how they grow this week, Grandma is going to share a clipping from one of her plants with us that we will plant in some soil and attempt to nurture and grow. Then, on Friday we will make thank you cards to Grandma for sharing with us, getting in a bit of art and creative writing too. We take field trips every Friday. Sometimes we’ll simply head to the to the park and other times we’ll travel out of town for an exciting new adventure. This week we will picnic at the park and each of the boys will have just one part (ingredient) of lunch in their sacks and will hopefully realize that we will all need to share. We go to the library each week as well and seek out books about our topic that we read throughout the week. And when possible, our math and reading/writing work and our vocabulary words incorporate bits of our theme too.

This last month I planned each week of August in advance. Last week we discussed babies and since our science lessons were on animals we incorporated lessons and projects on baby animals too. The highlights of last weeks topic include visiting the hospital nursery (where our newest addition will soon be born) and learning about how we use animals for food (we made our own butter), clothes and work. Planning the month in advance worked out great, so I think I’ll take some time this weekend to plan out all of September. I created a topic planning worksheet, a field trip planner and a weekly lesson plan to help me with my curriculum planning, which you are welcome to download for personal use.

Tiffanie

To discuss more about Creative Schooling, please visit the Homemade Homeschoolers Forum.

Homeschooling, I am finding, can involve a lot of spending. We pay for curriculum and everything that goes along with it. Every school supply, every manipulative, every poster and science project and field trip and printed handout and book… you get the point. To keep expenses reasonably within our budget, I have become pretty darn creative. Most of what we use for manipulatives, science experiments and the such are items gathered from various locations in our home. (Oh, the things you can do with your dishes, or canned goods, or collection of DVD’s – which are great for reading exercises, creative storytelling and alphabetizing.) We keep shoe boxes, milk jugs and assorted plastic containers for random projects and various uses. Blocks and legos make great alternatives to buying another $20 dollar pack of linking cubes and having the kids help to create their own flash cards (for all that we use flash cards for) is not only a lesson in itself, but can be a lot of fun. Using their toys as visual props or to act out scenes and scenarios is amusing and helps my kidos to better remember what it is that I’m saying. Hands on learning and real life experiences don’t always have to mean an expensive trip to the museum or science center. All we have to do is travel to the kitchen and bake some cookies (I prefer oatmeal) to learn about the metric system, solids, liquids and gases or following directions. And the laundry room… it holds great lessons on color sorting, counting and size comparison (and what could be better than learning and laundry)! An exploration of the back yard is full of hands on science (be sure to schedule in enough time to finish these lessons with a bath) and the internet provides unlimited access to anywhere in the world. Using the computer, hats, scarfs and other items for dress up along with our imaginations, we can go where ever we want and learn all sorts of interesting things when we get there. Not only is making use of the supplies and resources in our home cost efficient, but it’s a ton of fun for the kids and often times they don’t even realize they’re “doing school”.

For more information on Tiffanie.