A friend who volunteers at a local horse ranch offered to give us a field trip so to allow us to learn about the horses as well as riding them.  I love the ranch there!  I love how beautiful and serene the hills looked.  Being out there made me appreciation the nature even more.

We toured the ranch to visit all the different horses there:

Kids brushing the horse before we saddle and ride this horse:

Giddyup!

Even this one wants to riding though she’s way too tiny!

We rewarded the horse with some yummy carrots:

It was such a fun field trip that the boys will start taking some horse riding lessons.

We are using Stories of the Great Composers for our music appreciation this year.  Two lessons in, the children are enjoying learning about the composers and their compositions.  It always warm my heart when they like what I like.  I’m really liking the book we’re using as it gives a mini biography of twelve different composers along with a famous composition they wrote (included in a CD).  In addition, each lesson includes an activity for the student to do.

Boys conducting and dancing.

Andrew really getting into the music.  He’s conducting as well as dancing to Haydn’s Surprise Symphony.  Who knew that classical music could be this fun?

Even our youngest got into the act of conducting.

The girls are playing the fiddle.

The kids have always loved doing science because to them science means doing experiments or an activity which translates into F.U.N.  Who wouldn’t like that?  Unfortunately this mama, who holds a degree in science, isn’t always consistent when it comes to teaching science.  However, today was different.  We had a lesson about cells which involved making a cell model.  We used styrofoam balls which were cut in halves to demonstrate the cross section of a cell.  We glued pieces of craft materials and candies on the ball to show different cell structures such as endoplasmic riticulum, mitochondria, ribosomes, nucleus, and lysosomes.

Kids constructing their cells:

Eating some of the “ribosomes” along the way:

Showing off their finished products:

Mandatory goofy shot:

We are using Artistic Pursuits Book 1 this year for our art curriculum.  I bought this curriculum over a year ago with the full intention of using it then, but never pulled the trigger because I was intimidated by it.  The reason isn’t because the curriculum is difficult to implement, in fact, it’s very easy to do and quite appealing as well.  I was simply intimidated by my lack of art background.  I didn’t grow up with art and had never experimented with any art mediums.  Art is such a foreign subject to me so I naturally block it out of my brain.

What I’m discovering is that my children are quite different from me.  They simply like to draw and make things.  I decided that I should really take my art curriculum out of the corner of the room and start teaching it.  I’m really enjoying it and so are the kids.  The boys did water colors for today’s lesson.

They liked it so much that they asked to do more.  Here are their creations:

Doing hard things and persevering through a difficult task do not come easy for children.  Frankly, it’s not easy for adults either.  Today, once again, one of the kids grumbled when I said, “Time to do math!”  I was met with resistance and a grumpy face.  I allowed him to work on other subjects first and then return to math at a later time.  However, when it was time to do math, he once again resisted.  I was dismayed, but I was not going to let this go.  I decided it was life lesson time, a lesson about the importance of perseverance.

Rather than simply telling him that perseverance is important and that it’s a good character trait, I decided to ask him some questions in order to draw out his thinking on the subject.

I asked him, “Suppose Daddy was assigned a project at work, but because this project would take too long and too much effort, Daddy decided that he doesn’t want to work on it.  He’ll just quit the project either right at the beginning or half way through. What do you think would happen to Daddy at work?”  I followed up with a series of questions.:

• “Would his employer still keep him if he didn’t simply quit working hard?”
• “If Daddy doesn’t work hard and persevere, would other employers want to hire him?”
• “What would happen to us if Daddy gets let go?”

From this specific example and set of subsequent questions, my boy was able to answer and come to the conclusion that perseverance is important.

I also told my son that persevering in the midst of a problem is not easy but when you develop the habit of not persevering, you’ll suffer consequences later in life.  Once a habit is developed, it’s harder to break.  If he has a habit of quitting when something gets difficult, this is how he will approach life in every aspect.  He will realize this mistake when he’s an adult but by then, it’d be lot harder to correct.  He would wish that I had taught him to persevere when he was young.  I wanted to give him a broader picture and how his lack of perseverance in doing math might possible affect his life.  After this long talk, I believe he got it and we proceeded to solve math problems.

Even though the point of our conversation was persevering through doing hard things, I still wanted to present math more palatable to him.  This is not an effort to try to cater to him, but to make it more digestible and appealing to him.  One of his complaints is that math takes too long and even after working through all 30 problems, he still needs to go back and correct the ones he missed.  I can understand that.  I decided that I would split up the problems where he would do some of them orally, some on the white board, and some on the paper instead of all of them on the paper.  We were able to do many of them orally so he only needed to do 14 problems on the paper.  He was so thrilled!  He was so excited that he told his brother about it!

Sometimes we just have to be careful how we implement the process by which our children learn perseverance.  We should be understanding and sympathetic of their struggles.  Instead of just playing hardball with them and demand that they just work on it no matter what, we should figure out how much they can handle and how much we should push so that they learn about perseverance.

Too often math is taught in isolation from the practical math we encounter day-to-day.  Of course not every math concept can be applied to our daily lives, but many do.  Our children should know that the math knowledge they obtain is something that’s real, applicable for everyday lives in shopping, cooking, etc.  You don’t need a curriculum to teach practical math.  Just look at our daily lives and see where math is required.

As I was eating lunch and browsing through the ads that just came in through the mail, it dawned on me that I can do practical math with my boy using these ads.  You see, a homeschooling mom is always teaching, even on her lunch break.  I summoned my son and told him to look at the CVS ad.  I directed him to a page where snacks are marked 10/$10.  I explained that this means that if you buy 10 of these items, you pay $10.  In such example, how much is each item?  He quickly calculated in his head and said it was $1/snack.  Yay!  First problem solved!

Then I pointed to another sale where the cereal bars are going for 2/$5.  Again, I asked how much is each item and he answered $2.50 per bar.

Then I gave him a slightly more complicated problem where pasta sauces are 4/$5.  Now he can’t calculate it as quickly in his head so I asked him for a number sentence or an equation to solve this problem.  He said to take $5 and divide it by 4, which is exactly right.  I worked with him to work out the math and figured out that each item is $1.25.

I directed him to the Parmesan cheese that’s on sale for $2.99 and posed another question for him.  If you have 3 items to buy where the first two items cost $2 each and the third one is $2.99 like this Parmesan cheese, how can you quickly calculate or estimate how much you’d have to pay?  I told him that the first two items is $4 and now we just have to add it to the third item.  Rather than trying to work out the actual $2.99, we should round it up to $3.  Now that it’s a round number, we can quickly add it to the first two items and come up with $7.  This is estimation.

Next time we’re at the store, I will also do the same thing with him, teaching him to calculate how much each item is and estimate the amount of our bill.

We had another fun history day and it involved FIRE!  We studied Daniel’s friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego who got thrown into a firey furnace because they refused to bow down to King Nebudchadnezzar.  Rather than getting killed in the furnace, God protected them.  All of them were unharmed and not even a hair was singed.  The activity associated with the lesson was burning various items.  Don’t worry, fire safety was taught way before this activity.  We also had a bowl filled with water so that we can extinguish any burnt item.  The kids had fun finding various items to burn such as paper, hair, penny, apple, rock, wheel, screw, plastic and feather.

This little girl wished she could burn something.

This girl was too scared to participate so she just sat and watched.