Meant To Teach

My youngest daughter learns so differently from my oldest daughter. With my oldest daughter, she's never had a problem with spelling. She can look at a word one or two times and know how to spell it by the end of the week...without even hardly practicing. Its crazy! That's also why she is in a homeschool spelling bee the middle of this coming month. But as for my youngest daughter, she learns differently. Spelling is not her strong point. I can't just have her write words x amount of times. She doesn't get it that way. She just copies and moves on without even remembering how to spell the word. She's more of an auditory learner. She has to constantly spell the word out loud. Word searches work good for her, because she is having to FIND the word. For instance, when she is looking for the word "snow". She is constantly saying the spelling out loud..."S", "N", "O", "W". And she continues to do this until she finds th...

We've had fun this month with Christmas...and we're not through yet! We've been doing lots of activities such as mapping out the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, to making a pretend budget and going through ads for the girls to get things as Christmas gifts, to learning about what a census is. And ofcourse, we can't forget making ornaments! So far, we completed a Nativity lapbook (the girls love lapbooks) and The Christmas Day Kitten lapbook. Below is a picture of my oldest going through magazines and ads for her pretend "Christmas Shopping" and making sure she stays within her $200 budget. And who can forget Christmas traditions...this week we'll be doing a Gingerbread lapbook and A Legend of the Candy Cane Lapbook !

My eight year old has discovered the truth about Santa. "He's not REAL!" is what she keeps arguing with my six year old. This morning, Ashlyn, my youngest and I were up all alone in the house and she came to sit on my lap and just flat out asked me, "Is he real, Mommy?" We didn't want to force this question from her, because we've wanted to let her have her childhood and pretend. Well, when she came up and asked it - I had no choice to tell her the truth. And this is what I told her... "His name was Nicholas, and we call him St. Nicholas, because saint means someone who belongs to God, just like we do. In St. Nicholas' town there were many poor children. They didn't have enough food, clothes, or toys. St. Nicholas used his money to buy food, clothes, and toys for the poor children. He didn't want them to be embarrassed by his gifts, so he gave secretly." "St. Nicholas also told everyone about Jesus and how much God loved...

As an adult, I've gathered so much myself from teaching my own kids about Thanksgiving. I think that growing up, we have just taken it for granted. But it really is amazing to me, learning about the pilgrims and realizing that they came to this country so they could have the freedom to worship God. WOW! How we take that for granted! Yet, today - its disappointing that not enough people want to worship God. Our country truly was founded on Christianity. Somewhere along the way and through the years - it seems we have lost that. Now, we can't even say Christmas in a store! The first Thanksgiving, after half of the pilgrims had died from sickness, the other half had the chance to go back to England and they chose not to. They, instead, chose to stay here and thank God for their blessings! What a great group of amazing people. If only we had more "William Bradfords" today! Over the last month, we've learned about pioneers from Spain, England, Holland, and France. I...

This week and next week, we are learning about Native Americans. So far we've covered the Woodland Indians and the Plains Indians. We've had fun so far learning about the different kinds of houses for Indians...such as wigwams, longhouses, etc., along with learning about wampum and warshields. We even went to the Red Clay Pow Wow and found someone with wampum earrings on and the girls got to see what wampum really looks like and the man told us that the shell that it comes from was cut under water. He told us about wampum being used as money for the Indians as well. We finished up the lesson on Indians with doing Hopi hairstyles and making Navajo fry bread. Learning about Indians was much more interesting than I remember as a little kid! This is our Indian Lapbook. The girls made a key and mapped out where the different kinds of Indians lived.

The shortest verse in the Bible is "Jesus Wept." A lot of us already know that. But what does it mean? We know the story. Its when Jesus came to the tomb of his friend, Lazurus. Even though Jesus knew in a matter of seconds that He was going to raise Lazurus from the dead...He stood at the tomb with Mary and Martha and He wept. Why would He cry for that? Why would He cry when He knew He could fix everything? He was crying because He felt the pain of what Lazurus' sisters were going through. He cried because the fear that Lazurus must have felt right before he was dying. He cried because of all the pain that everyone felt. He felt that pain, too. Jesus wept. Jesus cried! I believe He did it to show us that God knows our pain, shares our pain. Every tear we cry - He knows it. Why? He loves us. The depth of His love is so much that I don't think I can even understand. I often think of my husband's love for me and his children and my love for him and my children. ...

She was a little slower than Kylee (only two weeks to be exact), but she's two years younger. My 6 year old learned her states! We took the girls to Pinstrikes to celebrate. We were celebrating that Ashlyn learned her states and Kylee learned her states and capitals! Yet again, I am a proud mommy!

This month, we are celebrating fall. We'll be doing tons of different topics ranging from bats, owls, and ofcourse, pumpkins. This week will be full of fall activities and crafts and even cooking! We already started our first day off with a fall scavenger hunt, making a "Fall Tree" with ornaments, and cooking homemade applesauce. The girls had so much fun today, that we didn't even get finished with "school" until 4:30 - but I didn't get a single complaint (we didn't even wake up until 9:30...so I guess they shouldn't complain). Besides, it doesn't seem like school when you are having fun! Enjoy some of our pictures below. I'll probably add more to my blog ( www.meanttoteach.blogspot.com )by the end of the week. EASY HOMEMADE APPLESAUCE 4 apples - peeled, cored and chopped 3/4 cup water 1/4 cup white sugar 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon Directions In a saucepan, combine apples, water, sugar, and cinnamon. Cover, and cook ...

Ahhhhhh!!! That's all I heard after I downloaded the sound meter app on my phone. The girls wanted to make their screams get up to as much decibels as they could on the meter. Can you tell we are learning about sound this week? We've learned all about sound waves and how sound travels. Oh and ofcourse, the measurement of sound. We did some music fun, too. We made music with water and glasses. Each of the glasses had a different tone when hit with a spoon. The glass with the most water had the lowest pitch while the glass with the least water had the highest pitch. The girls understood that the vibrations are made when you hit the glass, this creates sound waves which travel through the water. More water means slower vibrations and a deeper tone. But we aren't done yet...by the end of the week - Chris has a customer that is an audiologist and hopefully going to let the girls come and peak around and learn stuff in their office. Let's not also forget about plugging Helen...

The girls have had fun with this!! Ashlyn is more than halfway there, but Kylee learned them in a week in alphabetical order. I'm, ofcourse, a proud mommy! I must tell you that this comes from a song called "The 50 states that rhyme." When we were listening to the song, it was to the tune of Turkey in the Straw. Here are the lyrics, in case, you want to give it a try: Alabama, and Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas California, Colorado, Co-nnecticut and more Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho Illinois, Indi-a-na, I-o-wa ...35 to go... Kansas, and Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine Maryland, Massachusetts and good old Michigan Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, and Montana Nebraska's 27, number 28's Nevada Next, New Hampshire, and New Jersey, and way down, New Mexico There's New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, now let's see Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee Texas and there's Utah, Vermont, I...

Well, the past couple of days, we've been learning about matter and the three states of matter (Solid, Liquid, and Gas). We sang a little song to the tune of "Wheels on the Bus." The girls loved it and it can be quite catchy! It goes like this... The three states of matter are solid, liquid, gas, Solid, liquid, gas; Solid, liquid, gas. The three states of matter are solid, liquid, gas, All day long. The floor is a solid; you can jump up and down, Jump up and down; Jump up and down. The floor is a solid; you can jump up and down, All day long. Water is a liquid you can drink right down, Drink right down, Drink right down. Water is a liquid you can drink right down All day long. Air is a gas you can breathe right in, Breathe right in; Breathe right in. Air is a gas you can breathe right in, All day long. The three states of matter are solid, liquid, gas, Solid, liquid, gas; Solid, liquid, gas. The three states of matter are solid, liquid, gas, All d...

So we did it...our first lapbook. My oldest daughter loved it! She loved the time we spent together doing it and she loved the artsy part of making it her own. She designed a beautiful cover for her lapbook, too. For vocabulary she learned about "echolation" and a "pod". For spelling, she learned words that have the "ph" sound. You can also see that she did a bar graph comparing dolphins to other whales. She did the anatomy of a dolphin and so much more this week. We've really had fun with this! Lapbooking will certainly be a family favorite. We also put a small one together for my youngest. She had fun with it as well.

I know what you are thinking...lapbooks have been around. Well, I had always heard about them but never knew HOW to do them and where to find what to put on the folders. WELL, I found the site www.homeschoolshare.com and I am in heaven!! I think my oldest daughter will love doing these!!! She can't stand doing "book work". She gets bored too easily and I may have just hit the jackpot. I guess I'll let you know next week how it turns out. She's such an artsy girl, I think this will be right up her alley! We are going on vacation in a month or so...so guess what we are studying for science before we go. ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THE OCEAN!! So our unit for next week is DOLPHINS!! Do you ever get that feeling of once you found something that you can't wait to start!! I wish we'd start it today, but I told the girls they could have the day off. I know I'm a nut, but its just so exciting!!