Today we did a very simple experiment of mixing primary colors to produce secondary colors.

These are the colors we mixed together:

yellow + red = orange

yellow + blue = green

red + blue = purple

Here are the kids getting ready for the experiment:

Let the mixing begin:

For arts and crafts today we made homemade playdough. Here is an excellent pictorial tutorial on how to make your own playdough.

Matthew helping me to stir the dough:

Coloring the dough:

I gave each child a tray to play on the floor. This is my attempt to control the potential mess. Having a tray makes the mess more manageable.  Here’s a picture of Emmie happily playing with the dough:

Andrew chopping the dough:

Matthew kneading the dough:

It’s interesting to note that most children make animals out of the play dough, but my children seem to stick to the food theme.  Andrew rolls a dough into a ball and tells me that it’s a “meatball.”  Emmie rolls her dough flat to make “pancakes.” Matthew chops his dough into lots of tiny pieces and tells me that he’s “chopping meat” like I do with a Chinese cleaver.  The children eventually “made” popsicles, corn dogs, and ice cream.

Along the food theme, Calissa thought the play dough looked pretty enough to eat - as soon as I gave her some, she popped it in her mouth! Even though it is completely safe to ingest, it sure doesn’t taste good. She was in for a shock and cried.  After I calmed her down, she refused to touch the dough again.

The children are always excited about science lessons, though we haven’t done much for a while. Today we learned about cells and how they are the building blocks for all living organisms. To demonstrate what a cell is composed of, we made a jello model.

Here are the boys with their cell model.  We used various food products, mostly candies, to model different parts of a cell.  The big marshmallow in the middle is the nucleus. Endoplasmic reticulum is made up of fruit by the foot. Lysosomes, mitochondria, and others are made of various candies.

The boys posing for the camera next to their “cell”:

Kids adding Nerds candies to make the ribosomes:

The best part of this project is eating it:

Learning how to write is not an easy task for younger children, especially for little boys who are not as coordinated or whose fine motor skills are not as developed.

In order to help my almost four-year-old son to learn to write his letters, I have him trace his letters in a pan of cornmeal instead of using standard pencil and paper. This writing technique helps him to write the letters in their proper form without requiring him to obtain fine motor skills first.  I teach him the correct strokes and sequence to the first letter of the alphabet and he is required to follow my directions.  After he can write the letter well, I let him have the cornmeal pan and he can draw or write as he pleases. This writing lesson is so much fun for my son — he looks forward to free expression after the formal lesson — and I’m very happy to combine both fun and school.

You can also make a pan of cornmeal to help your little ones to write. If you don’t have cornmeal in the house, you can also use flour or play sand.  Instead of a foil pan, you can use a cookie sheet.  The writing instrument can be the child’s index finger, a chopstick, or a closed cap pen.

Kendra at Preschoolers and Peace challenged me to a duel! Well, not really. I was very blessed to be at her house this weekend for a Homeschooling Encouragement Day that’s held twice a year by her church. During the break I noted to her how clean, organized, and visually pleasing her house was. Everything there was neat and beautiful. She chuckled and said I should really see her house on normal days because it’s not as clean and organized. We both agree that whenever we read other people’s blogs, we tend to think that other people have it all together and we’re the only ones with a messy house. So, with that, Kendra said she’ll post pictures of her house if I would agree to post some of mine. I thought she was just saying it, but I was wrong. Since I got myself involved in this challenge, I’ll let you into my house, virtually, and see our regular life.

Here are the children playing in the family room/homeschool room. Notice the mess on the rug? Just in case you don’t think this is too bad, check out the next picture.

Here’s what the other side of the room looks like. Yup, five laundry baskets on the floor and on the train table. Sad to say that these baskets have been sitting there for about a week now, waiting for me to fold and put them away. My oldest saw this picture and asked why I even took the picture. As much as he contributes to the mess in this house, he has a clean gene in his body which alerts him that this is not a pleasing picture.

This is our school table. Oh. . . did you notice another laundry basket next to the student desk? That makes six laundry baskets in the room.

(Yes, we’ve occasionally increased our inventory of laundry baskets to keep up with the backup of washed but not-yet-folded clothes!)

So, here you go, this is the reality of this homeschooling family. I’m just glad that Kendra didn’t ask me to take pictures of myself!

We made crayon hearts as a craft project for Valentine’s Day. We stick the hearts on our window as sun catchers.

Matthew shaving the crayon:

Hearts hanging on our patio window which was arranged by Matthew:

I got a box of Disney Cars character cards, stickers, and tattoos, and the children absolutely loved having all sorts of tattoos on themselves.

A few weeks ago, during Christmas week, I brought the boys into my office for a little fun. They always enjoy hanging out and playing with some of the office toys and running about. Part of the “deal” was that they first do their school work prior to playing. As I was working with them, I discovered that the big meeting room dry erase board (a.k.a. “white board”) was a great resource for doing some teaching of counting and other concepts. So I thought to myself, I should look into getting something like this for Lois to use at home for school!

Unfortunately, the average corporate-quality commercial white board of the size I see at work (classroom-sized) runs in the vicinity of $200-300!  Ouch!

So I went hunting online for ideas for cheaper white boards, and discovered an article that suggested that using “shower tile board” (~$13) from Home Depot could make for a very simple, if somewhat low-end, white board.

Inspired, we went to Home Depot and decided to go shopping. Over the course of a couple weeks, we accumulated a 4′x8′ sheet of tile board (melamine-coated particle board), a thin sheet of plywood for backing, and and a tube of Liquid Nails. For mounting on a wall, I ended up going with a “j-mold” which is typically used for hanging wall-length mirrors. Total cost, approximately $37.00. Sweet.

It has worked out beautifully. Here are photos of us putting it together, with a final photo of the white board in use.

Laying out the white board and plywood to prepare to glue them together:

Matthew helping me to squeeze Liquid Nails adhesive on the back of the tile board for attaching the plywood:

The white board (final size, 7′x4′) mounted on the family/school room wall:

Matthew doing addition on the white board: