Tag Archives: summer school

Hot Air Balloons

June 5 is the anniversary of the first hot air balloon flight (1783). Last year as part of summer school calendar studies Z, J, and I decided to learn everything we could about hot air balloons.

Fantastic Resource and Activity List! https://www.franw.com/2014/06/hot-air-balloons.html

We made this lapbook from

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/hot_air.php

and added a few of our own ideas.

Our library had a few children’s books about hot air balloons. These two were our favorites.

Here is a link to a cute craft idea we tried, of course we had to use batman action figures in the basket instead of the child picture http://www.dltk-holidays.com/summer/mballoon.html

We thought this video from the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta was fascinating!

betty jo

Our Homeschooling Week May 20-24

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I do not think I have ever looked forward to a Monday like I did this week. Our weekend was too full of activity and by Monday morning I was thankful for the fun times but more thankful to just be staying home for the next few days.

Friday night was our homeschooling support groups Prom Alternative. Group photos, dinner out, then a private party with dancing, Wii games, costume trunk photo booth, and ice cream bar.

Saturday afternoon was the first public performance for Silver Lining, our homeschool color guard team.

Sunday night was another homeschool group activity. SALT – Saved, Anointed, Loved, Transformed, (creative ministries troop), performed at a local church who was hosting a meal and service for a homeless shelter.

Much of my family’s time has been spent praying for Ian. He is a boy from our neighborhood who was violently attacked at a public school playground that is just a block away from our house. He had some brain hemorrhaging and swelling issues as a result of the beating and had to be air lifted to Vanderbilt Hospital. Miraculously, he is on the road to a complete recovery.

We attended a prayer meeting at the school playground at 4:00 Thursday. It was so good to gather with our neighbors for a time of prayer for our community, public schools, Ian, and the boys who attacked him. Thanks to social media, we were able to reach brothers and sisters in Christ with our prayer requests and many agreed to stop what they were doing at 4:00 and join with us in prayer.

We had lovely weather for being out in the yard this week. We have enjoyed watching our homeschool garden project grow.

Both the tomato and pepper plants have bloomed.

Our homeschool summer schooling focused on reading through a huge stack of library books as the start of it’s summer reading challenge. We also did a mini unit study of turtles in tribute to World Turtle Day (May 23).

Here are the links to this week’s blog posts:

Our homeschool prom: Night of the Living Teens https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/05/19/night-of-the-living-teens/

Homeschool Creative Ministries: SALT https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/05/20/salt/

About our neighbor’s boy: Ian https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/05/22/ian/

Homeschool garden science project: Watching Our Garden Grow https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/05/23/watching-our-garden-grow/

Turtle mini unit study: World Turtle Day https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/05/23/world-turtle-day/

As of now I don’t have much on the planner for the upcoming week except for another library trip, Church history notebooking, and the biggest homeschooling support group’s party of the year, Graduation and Achievement Night.

I hope you had a good week, and that this next week is even better.

betty jo

World Turtle Day

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According to my special days calendar, May 23 is World Turtle Day! I have found some great free resource links to follow as we learn about turtles in our homeschool!

Lapbook from here http://www.homeschoolshare.com/turtles.php

Much about turtles, conservation, rescue, and more here http://www.seaturtleinc.org/

More cool turtle stuff here http://www.conserveturtles.org/turtletides.php

Look inside a turtle’s shell! http://boredomtherapy.com/inside-tortoise-shell/

List with photos of different types of turtles with quick facts https://animalsake.com/different-types-of-turtles

Turtle myths and legends http://www.ancientpages.com/2015/08/29/myths-legends-reveal-ancient-turtle-worship-linked-creation-world/

Children’s Bible Ministry lesson with a turtle theme http://www.bibleline.org/turtles.html

Something challenging for an art project. Origami instructions https://www.freekidscrafts.com/origami-turtle/

Learn to draw 4 different turtles https://www.wikihow.com/Draw-a-Turtle

Rock painting tutorial https://garden.org/thread/view/3659/Turtle-Rock-Paint-Project-Tutorial/

Turtle jokes https://www.jokesbykids.com/turtle/

“What kind of jokes do turtles tell? SHELL-arious ones!”

And finally notebooking pages with ocean animals including turtles from here https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Ocean-Animal-Themed-Writing-Paper-FREEBIE-1213370

It looks like we’ve got science, language arts, computer lab, art, and fun covered for our homeschool summer school today (actually a few days worth of resources)!

betty jo

Almost Finished

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According to the Kentucky statutes governing homeschooling, we are finished with what is required of us!

“Required Days of Instruction:

185 days, which must include the equivalent of 175 six (6) hour instructional days and 10 non-instructional (teacher) days. Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 158.070 and 158.080.

Required Subjects: Include reading, writing, spelling, grammar, history, mathematics, and civics. Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 158.080.”

However, we have not finished with our Middle Ages/ Renaissance unit studies, nor have we reached a stopping place with our math and spelling courses. So our current homeschooling will be continuing for a few more weeks, but without any pressure or stress. We are transitioning to the “AT LEAST ONE THING” schedule.

For now and throughout the summer I will only require my kids to do only one educational lesson a day. They may choose math, spelling/grammar, unit study, or an arts related project to work on Monday through Thursday. The rest of their day can be spent reading, watching movies, playing outside, and a little bit of video gaming. In the next few weeks we will be including youth camp, two Vacation Bible Schools, our library’s summer program, and community service projects with their daily learning choices. When we are done with our Middle Ages/Renaissance unit study, we will start working on a new one, Music.

Last year, we were able to add twelve complete school days to our records by sticking with our “AT LEAST ONE THING” a day schedule. I hope we can do that again this summer. It was wonderful having twelve days recorded at the start of our school year. It was also nice to be able to take a few extra days off during the school year without feeling that we would be falling behind schedule.

This freed up schedule is even better for me than it is my kids. I need some extra time to complete our homeschool records and scholarship reports. I also have not completely organized our summer school music unit study, not to mention the American History unit studies for the 2013-2014 school year. And, I would love to just sit back and read a book or two.

Since Monday was our first day of being finished with our regular homeschooling schedule, I thought we should do something special to celebrate. I asked the kids what they wanted to do. They wanted to go to the library. (I’m thinking my kids might be nerds.) They also asked for pizza. So pizza at the library’s garden it was.

(My two teenagers were there, too, they just did not want to be photographed this time.)

Click here to link to view homeschooling laws for any US state http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp

I had the opportunity for a free download last year for homeschool records, planners, and report forms. This offer is no longer available but a few free sample pages are available here http://momstoolbelt.com/homeschool-planner-student-assignment-book-pages

For more about our summer school Music unit study click here https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/05/06/homeschool-of-rock/

betty jo

Homeschool of Rock

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Psalm 98:4^“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music;”

We are within days of having completed our state’s yearly required 185 days of education. However, this means very little, because we continue learning throughout the summer months just not all day long every day. We did not include instruments or composers during our middle ages unit studies because we had decided to learn more about music during our summer school session and they would fit in nicely there. But the kids and I were wanting our music studies to cover more than just the middle ages.

For the past few weeks I’ve been collecting “music” resources to use for summer school studies. We’ll be including composer biographies, theory, appreciation, instrument recognition, reading notes, and different styles of music in our lessons. It’s shaping up to be a good study, but I was thinking it needed a little something more. The kids thought Jack Black’s movie, School of Rock, would add some fun and I agreed. I love that movie.

Oh, but I was wanting even more. A friend of mine recently shared this link on Facebook. I was WOWED! This was exactly what our upcoming music studies need.

Watching this made me realize how we can easily incorporate culture, geography, and technology into our summer music studies.

I am anxious to watch this on a bigger screen and listen on better speakers than my laptop has. But, I’ll wait until our summer school begins and view them with my kids.

For the complete playlist of Playing For Change music videos