1 Quarter Down, 3 to Go

I hope you all are having a great school year!  We have managed to finish our first quarter.  This year has not been easy.  Teaching 7th grade has taken a lot more of my time and energy than I thought it would.  But, we made it past the quarter mark, so Yay! :)

If you know me or follow my blog at all, you know that I am constantly thinking of new ideas and new ways of doing things.  I have a couple of those ideas posted here.  I have changed some things since that post.  My kids help me find the flaws in my designs/plans. Hehe.  For instance, I had the months of the year in two rows up on the wall, but my 2nd grader was getting very confused of the order (especially since they were seasonally color coded), so I made them into a straight line under the date.  He is understanding that much better, but still doesn't get why winter just doesn't start in January. (It bothers me that the colors are not grouped together too Buddy.) ;)

This handy dandy Handwriting Without Tears chalkboard now is our official school countdown. Please ignore the bookshelf that it sits under that I haven't painted yet.  I have been. Teehee.

And I am typically a grammar nut.  But for the life of me, I couldn't figure out when to use lying, laying, lied, or laid.  And was layed a word?   Hence, one of the things I love about homeschooling, I seriously learn stuff right along with my kids.  So, if you were ever wondering, here it is:


To lie means rest.  To lay is to place down.  Lays, laid, and laying will have direct objects following them.

And now you know. :)

Ok, so, I love my gradebook.  Click here for a FREE Download by fivejs.  But, it doesn't break down the grades into quarters for grading / report cards.  So I made my own quarterly break down that I've attached to the end of my gradebook.  It's fairly easy to do, but time consuming.  You just have to know 4 formulas, and make a Grade Calculator page.  If you are not weighing your grades, you only have to know 1 formula & have a grade calculator page.  It's kind of a pain in the behind to describe here.  I may have to make a whole separate blog about it.   Oh, and FYI, these formulas are for Microsoft Excel only.  I'm (unfortunately) not familiar with Mac.


The history grade is N/A because we have not done history yet this quarter.  And if there is no grade, I just haven't plugged in the formulas yet.

Here are just some shots of our first quarter.


Coming partially or barely dressed is a regular thing in our school. (Not for me though! lol)



He's so proud to be reading.



Doing TT3 in 2nd grade



Another partially dressed kid doing Typing



These two goofballs are two peas in a pod



And as always, we love having this student join us twice a week.

Report Card Day!!  My eldest did not want his picture taken. :(

[And yes, I'm going to have to go back and make new report cards.  Those white spaces that should be gray are driving me crazy!!!] :)

So we celebrated all straight A's by going bowling!

Our Latest Field Trip

Mountain View Orchards

Jemison, AL

 

Here we picked the best tasting apples that we've had in a long time.

As my son says, "It's like candy, but it's healthy."

 

They were excited to go picking

very excited



I'm trying to condition her... I WILL take pictures, it's inevitable.

The first apple

Looking for that perfect apple

He found his apple in a hard to get to spot

The Golden Delicious Team

The Fuji Team

We loaded the basket pretty well



After the orchard, I had this brilliant idea.

Let's follow the brown sign on the interstate that reads,

"Brierfield Ironworks State Park"

I mean, if they have a sign for it on the interstate,

it has to be close, right?!?

Um. No!

That is incorrect.

But, we had a good time there,

and saw a part of Alabama that we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

 

Brierfield Ironworks State Park

Brierfield, AL

 

Maybe the reason the park doesn't charge much, is because their employee doesn't demand much.

 

The covered bridge.  I let my friend go first, just to make sure it would hold us. ;)

And of course, they found the playground right away!

Part of the furnace

We don't know why this is Jake's tree, and we forgot to ask.

 Info on the furnace:

He found this really cool rock while we were taking a walk.

A forced picture at the covered bridge

And doesn't that just represent the south. :)

 





New Ideas

I'm always coming up with new ideas for our school.  Our "classroom" is eight years in the making. :)  In NY we finished off half of our basement and used that as our schoolroom.  When we moved to AL, I had my husband build us a schoolroom above the foyer.  Transitioning from a 30' x 15' schoolroom to a 10' x 8' schoolroom was not an easy task.  But I am oh so thankful for my little classroom, and the husband who built it for me. :)

Because we are working in such a little space, I have to make every little square inch count.  I think I've changed the desks around 5 times this year, and we have only done 9 days of school.  I also have the issue of growing children.  When they were in PK 3, K, 2nd & 3rd, they were able to maneuver around the room just fine.  Now they're in 2nd, 4th, 6th, & 7th and there is no wiggle room. At. All.  Just Wednesday, I had to rearrange the desks, because my 4th grader and 6th grader kept bumping elbows.  My hubby told me I could use our dining room as a school room.  Which actually probably would be MUCH better since they're growing up so fast, but I'm having a hard time giving up my dining room...  We'll see.  Maybe this year will be the game changer.

Ok, onto my new ideas for this school year, and some old ideas that I just want to highlight because I think they're worth highlighting. :)

This magnetic dry erase board is perfect for All About Spelling.  It is available at Costco for only $20!!!  It came with an eraser, dry erase cleaner, and some markers too.  I don't use it for the dry erase purpose, but what a deal!!!  And the tiles don't fall off like they did with the magnetic chalkboard that I painted.  Spelling is less frustrating because of this gem!!

My 2nd grader still struggles with b and d.  Mostly in making the letters.  We use Handwriting Without Tears.  With that program, letter formation for printing is imperative for cursive.  Having this attached to his desk, has helped him greatly.

We don't use our HWT chalkboards anymore for handwriting, and I almost sold mine.  But I love them, and couldn't quite put them up for sale.  Instead I am using the one as a "Date" reminder.  The other is being used as the Teacher's Helper of the Week".  This is placed right behind the kids computer for their Math, so it also helps my 2nd grader who struggles with Days of the Week order and the Seasons.

I wish I could take credit for this awesome gradebook.  I can't.  But I love it!!  I went to a workshop earlier this summer where the leader shared this with us.  My version of excel is older, so everything wasn't able to transfer, but I know enough about excel to be able to fix those problems. To get this gradebook, click FREE Download.

 

I used to make separate "to do" checklists for my kids.  But I didn't have the time to do that this past summer while I was prepping.  So I made 4 extra copies of my weekly schedule and cut out each day, and stapled them in order.  This obviously is Courtney's, so I highlighted everything she has to do for the day.  She x's them off as she gets them done.  And when she's finished, she rips the top one off, and the next day's is on top.  They love this!!  I don't know why, but they do.  I'll take it! :)

My 2nd grader is still using Sonlight's 2nd Grade Reader Schedule, but my other kids are not.  Even though most of these are Sonlight books. :)  Again, crazy summer, so I didn't have time to make an individual reading list for them.  So I grabbed about 15 books from our personal library for them to pick to read.  The only requirement (besides being able to tell me about what they read that day) is reading at least 1 chapter a day.  They really like this, because they get to choose the book and I don't tell them what they HAVE to read.  And there are enough choices and reading levels to satisfy my diverse reading level students.  Oh, and I use Sonlight's Read-A-Louds from K-3 as my 4th - 7th graders' readers.

I used to print out the entire school year's schedule and put it in a binder, with 20,000 other papers that I swore I needed. (20,000 MAY be an exaggeration) ;) Well, my tiny school room won't allow for that.  I've done it before.  But my binder was constantly getting bumped into and dropping on the floor, or pages getting ripped out, etc.  Also, because I have some OCD issues, I hated having specifics scheduled, but not do them.  For example: My 7th grader I scheduled for him to do pages 1-5, but he could only do pages 1-3 that day.  Unless I played a game of 'catch up', my whole binder would be off page-wise for that subject.  Now I print just one page of the schedule at a time (even though I have the whole thing already done on my computer), and highlight as they complete each subject.  By printing just one week at a time, this allows me to change any page numbers for the next week, and so on without wasting paper and my time. :)  Oh, and I have it on a clipboard hanging off of a pushpin on the wall to free up the little table space that I have (which is basically only big enough to fit my laptop and a mouse).

I don't know if you'll find these things helpful.  But it works for me!  And if it gives you a foundation to do something better for you and your schoolroom, then I've succeeded. I love seeing and hearing about what other people have done.  It gives me ideas for my schoolroom.  My timeline was given to me by a dear homeschooling friend.  It's an awesome idea.  The shower curtain wire was purchased from IKEA.

I have it hanging under my bookshelf that runs across the top of our schoolroom wall.  It could also be attached to the wall if you'd like.  I use paperclips to hold the events. And a 'chip clip' to separate BC from AD.   It's very easy to slide everything off to the side and out of the way.

For my elementary math manipulative ideas that I still use click on the link.

So there it is.  All my ideas for this year (and years past).  I'm sure I'll come up with more ideas throughout the school year and torture you with a whole new post. ;)

Cell Science

We are studying Human Anatomy and Physiology.  Do you know the difference?  Yeah, we didn't either at the beginning of our study.  Anatomy is the study of the human body, the organs, and where they are located.  Physiology is the study of how the body and its organs work.

We studied many famous scientists from ages past: Hippocrates and Aristotle of Greece, Galen of Rome, Vesalius, Leeuwenhock, and Hooke of Europe to name a few.  And then we learned about the Egyptians and their belief that they needed to preserve a body because that person would need it in the afterlife.  Mummification, that's what our first science project was.  Mummification.  The goal: to mummify an apple.

This science experiment did not go to plan, but we did learn something.  Just not about mummification. ;)

Apples peeled, and one all ready to be preserved.  Day 1
Apple on the left: Control Apple / Apple on the right: Mummified Apple

Ready to see what will happen.  Excited to see a preserved apple.

Day 8: The Control Apple: dehydrated, but not rotten

Day 8: Mummified Apple: Squishy, dehydrated, and leathery

A shot of the mummified apple taken further back

So the best we could figure out, because I in fact ate one of these apples fresh, and it had a nasty taste, is that they were sprayed or injected with something to preserve them.  Which tells us, that if it does not decompose outside of the body in an 80* house, how hard do you think it is for our body to process it and actually get any nutritional value out of it.

It did not rot.

Isn't our food supposed to rot if left out?

It's really sad when the fruit flies in the house won't even touch it.

It reminded me of a McDonald's apple piece we accidentally left in the car for a week in over 100* outdoor temps. 

When we found it, it looked like the day we got it.

That's not food.

That's gross!

So the lesson we learned was not about mummification,

But why we shouldn't eat foods that have been preserved.

Good lesson none the less.

:)

 

But they were super disappointed in the mummification results.

We will try this again, but ask a friend for his apples from his tree.

We had some fun activities that we did throughout the last two weeks.

My shirtless one making a cell mini book

They all turned their cell mini books to their favorite part - Mitochondria, Golgi body, DNA, and the Lysosome

Then they made bodies and taped their heads to the top.  We'll be using these throughout the year to place organs on it.

And I think the kids most favorite part of the whole science unit . . .  Making an edible cell.

Adding M&M's (mitochondria) to their cytoplasm (jello & knox)

Skittles for Lysosomes & Smarties for Golgi Bodies

The fruit roll up was the Endoplasmic Reticulum, with Nerds as the Ribosomes

And the sprinkles were the centrioles.  Oh yeah, and a big ole Sour Patch for the Nucleus.

Flip them over on a plate, and wha-la!  You have yourself an edible cell.

Sugar rush . . . here we come!!