Sunday, September 28, 2008

Sketch Tuesday - 'Something Brown'

Sketch Tuesday - September 23, 2008
'Something Brown'

This week's Sketch Tuesday was to sketch something brown. I was reading through scripture this morning and this particular verse reminded me of Barb from Harmony Art Mom who puts these together for us every week.
"...Pursue faith and love and peace, and enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts." ~2Timothy 2:22 NLT

I have never met Barb in person - only via our blogs and emails, however, I feel a certain kinship with her because we have such similar views on our children, homeschooling, nature and more. I also feel a total appreciation for what she does. When we consider how incredibly busy our weeks and days are as homeschooling moms and wives and friends ~ how amazing that she finds the time to put out these 'Sketch Tuesdays' along with thier slide shows weekly. And of course, her 'Outdoor Hour Challenges' to help the rest of us with our planning and with new and fresh ideas. I just thank her from the bottom of my heart. I know I have said it before, but if you haven't tried her blogs - by all means- do so NOW! :) They are a lot of fun ~ and very little work on our part. On Tuesdays, I recieve an email (I'm a subscriber to her blog) that gives the subject of the week's sketch and provide it to my children along with their sketch supplies and away they go! Then I simply email them to Barb and she puts together a slideshow of ALL of the children's works.

HERE is last week's slideshow.

My children get a big 'kick' out of seeing their own sketches on the computer and then we have fun looking at the sketches from other children on the slide show. It's fun to look at the ideas the other participants came up with and also the ages of the other kids. My children love to see a drawing that they really 'take' to and find out the artist is their age! :) It's a lot of fun and for those that struggle with fitting in art and drawing - here's a SIMPLE but FUN way to add it in to your plans. :) I simply block the time off for it every week KNOWING I'll fit it in because the kids want to be in the slideshow and Barb's done all the work of the ideas for us! I really encourage you to give it a try if you haven't. You can see my children's sketches for this week above.

Alyssa - as girly as she is was moved to draw a leaf and dirt (the first sketch on the right)~ then she looked outside and remembered that my husband was tearing down our old front porch and replacing it and suddenly (being the handygirl around here who LOVES watching my husband work) she was so excited to draw one of the wooden chairs from the front and a piece of lumber! :)



Briana - my little gardener - sketched (the second sketch down to the left) a robin feeding worms to her babies. Brown worms being fed to robin babies in a brown nest in a tree with brown bark!! :)

And Chance - my little extreme sports guy (he does motorcross, skateboarding, BMX biking, and tae kwon do/ kickboxing and sparring) - decided to draw a brown 'Tony Hawk' hat (above to the right).
This is always fun to talk about with the "well, aren't your kids unsocialized" type questions since all three of my children are very active in sports, homeschool & church activities, and hobbies ~ but that's another blog! ha ha ! :) Enjoy your day!

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Roses, Roses, Roses,

My Rose Garden












How I adore my roses! As the cooler air is coming I was sad that I would not be enjoying their sweet fragrance and soft flowers much longer, however, they seem to be thriving in our mild fall weather so I took a walk out to check on them. As I mentioned earlier- we've been a bit under the weather so this is the most neglected my roses have ever been. I was amazed that they were still holding their beauty as they were so I thought I'd share. I was dissapointed that the HNS did not have a lesson on them so this is mostly a photo walk.


Tuesday, September 23, 2008

WINNERS!! Homeschool Closet Giveaway!!

The Results are In!!!

The kids have picked numbers for the winners of our first Homeschool Nature Study giveaway! I have tried to contact everyone by email to let them know of their wins, however, not everyone included thier email in the comments and I wasn't able to retrieve them from Blogger.

If you are a winner and listed below PLEASE email me at tburchell97@cox.net with your mailing address so I can get your prizes out to you! :) It will ship media mail so patience :). Thanks again for joining in to everyone and I hope you will visit us soon. We may be starting giveaways monthly :)!

Winners!:

Shelf 1 - - MODERATOR-Biz3Kid

Shelf 2 - anna

Shelf 3- wilda

Shelf 4 - melissa

Thanks for all who participated!

"...Pursue faith and love and peasce, and enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts." ~2 Timothy 2:22 NLT

Monday, September 22, 2008

Pumpkin Prayer Idea :)

Pumpkin Prayer

Christians seem to have different opinions on whether to celebrate Halloween or not. Everyone should have the right to do as they think is BEST for THEIR family. We happen to attend a church that has a special night for the kids AT the church rather than "trick or treating". They normally have a moon bounce indoors for the kids, games, and a potluck dinner where we can all fellowship and celebrate a new season.

The Bible speaks frequently of seasons and autumn (the planting season) -

Ecclesiastes 3:1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every
purpose under the heaven:
Ecclesiastes 3:2 A time to be born, and a time to
die; a timeto plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

Our church follows up our activities with a "trunk or treat" in which we all decorate our car trunks seasonally (not scary) and the kids can walk around to the trunks (the cars are parked in a large circle in the parking lot away from the road) and obtain candy and pencils and other goodies. My children have great fun at it and we will continue to join in.

HOWEVER ~ I understand so many Christians decision to skip the creepy, scary, death ridden fiasco Halloween has become. I am not surprised that so many choose to keep their children from it all. I simply trust in the fellowship of the other parents in our church to make it worshipping of a new SEASON.

With that said :) - the reason I blogged this, this morning was to pass along a CUTE little pumpking prayer that was passed to me through an email this morning. The email arrives from a website Sunday School Lesson Plans.

My thoughts (and reason for the long explanation above lol :) are that even if you do not celebrate Halloween, you can use the activity below for baking pumpkin anything. Clean the seeds and pulp for pies or cookies. The rest of the activity can be solely focused on our Lord and the pumpkin disposed of afterwards if you wish - instead of displayed as a "jack o' lantern". I just thought the ideas was so cute I had to share! I hope you find a way to enjoy it! :)

Here's a great little "Pumpkin Prayer" activity you can use with your Sunday School aswe transition into October:

Dear God,
As I carve my pumpkin, help me say this prayer:
Open my mind so I can learn about You; (Cut the top of the pumpkin)
Take away all my sin and forgive me for the wrong things I do; (Clean out the inside)
Open my eyes so Your Love I will see; (Cut eyes shaped like hearts)
I'm sorry for turning up my nose to all You've given me; (Cut a nose in the shape of the cross)
Open my ears so Your Word I will hear; (Cut ears shaped like the Bible)
Open my mouth so I can tell others You're near; (Cut mouth in the shape of a fish)
Let Your Light shine in all I say and do! Amen. (Place a candle and light)





Monday, September 15, 2008

Is it giveaway time or what?!?


Wow! It must be catching! I was checking on the comments on my blog about my giveaways and came across this new giveaway by blogmamma. You can find this contest at the link here. It's for a nice crayola scrapbooking kit. My twin girls would love it :). Win or not- its great to see so many giving bloggers and homeschooling moms helping each other out! :) So thanks to everyone - and thanks to everyone for entering my contest as well! I didn't find out about it until a bit late so you can still enter mine until the 19th! :)

Outdoor Hour Challenge #30 - Weeds & Seeds

Outdoor Hour Challenge - #30 - Weeds & Seeds
(This post was actually typed up several days ago but just now being completed and published) :)
I was excited about this challenge because it fit us so well. We've had so many things going on and also been down with a "cold bug" so we've really missed our outdoor time. We are so use to having it almost daily. The Lord really set it up nice for us today. The weather couldn't have been better. A nice, balmy day but with a cool breeze blowing. It was amazing and so refreshing to be BACK in our gardens.

"The heavens are telling the glory of
God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.," ~Psalm 19:1 NRSV
Charlotte Mason wrote (volume 1, page 43):

"For we are an overwrought generation, running to nerves as a
cabbage runs to seed; and every hour spent in the open is a clear gain, tending to the increase of brain power and bodily vigour, and to the lengthening of life itself. They who know what it is to have fevered skin and throbbing brain deliciously soothed by the cool touch of the air are inclined to make a new rule of life, Never be within doors when you can rightly be without."

This held so true for us today :). AND our flower gardens, having been neglected the past two weeks - had PLENTY of weeds for us to study AND plenty of SEEDS to harvest as I have not been outside "dead heading" them as normal! :) What a blessing to have a nature study challenge that worked SO well in our life at the moment! It was such a good fit, in fact, I decided to break this challenge into 3 seperate lessons on 3 seperate days. So bear with me as I take you through our study of this wonderful challenge!

We started out by having the kids look around the yard and gardens for plants/flowers that they thought were weeds. I had them bring their "collection" of weeds to me.

We sorted through them at our outdoor pation table.
This was the collection of weeds my son picked up. My daughters both picked several dandelions.

I had read the HNS pages 512-514 as Barb suggested.
On page 512 of the HNS, Miss Comstock gives a definition of a weed:

"A weed is a plant growing where we wish something else to grow, and a plant may, therefore, be a weed in some locations and not in others."


I wanted to ensure the children really understood this concept. My first example of this was with the dandelions. My daughters adore them! What little girl has not spent time in her childhood blowing on their seed spheres? I explained that they were a weed and quite a ferocious one but that they may not be a weed to THEM.

I continued talking to them about other plants that may be a weed to others but not to them or vice versa. The first plant that came to mind was our glorious morning glories! We looked at our morning glories and discussed why we love them so:

1 - They grow FAST!

2- They are a vine that climbs - which WE were actually looking for to cover our fence.
3- We didn't have to worry about them spreading wildly because we spend so much time in our garden that we had the time to "train" them to grow where we wanted.

4- Their huge colorful flowers of several colors that greet us every morning with delight.

I then brought their attention to the fact that the very same characteristics we love about them may be the characteristic that make others despise them and consider them weeds! They couldn't imagine this so we went to look at our neighbor's yard.

Their yard is neat, well cared for. They created a very smart landscape design. Since they do not prefer to spend a lot of their outdoor time caring for their plants, they chose more of a shrub type landscape. They chose plants that rarely needed watering or pruning. They do not have any flowers whatsover - no color at all other than the few berries and such from the evergreens. It suits them. It is nice looking - very well "manicured".

I asked the children if they thought our neighbors would be happy with a morning glory in their yard. The children thought for a moment and agreed they would not. It was like an A-HA moment!! :) You know those when it's like, "OH!!! I understand!" :) We LOVE color and flowers and climbers and spending our outdoor time (and indoor actually) tending to our gardens, plants, flowers, animals, all of God's beautiful creation! But I have several dear friends that told me I was absolutely MAD when I allowed the girls to plant morning glory sees throughout my rose garden right under the fence! :) It's worked wonders - we Love it. But my friends will complain about those pestering weeds (morning glories) that are choking out their little shrubs! :)

We returned to looking at plants that were weeds in OUR yard. This vine to the left is a vine that my kids KNOW is a weed. l am constantly fighting this weed. I have not identified it but we have "studied" it so to speak all summer. It appears to be in every one of the older garden beds that were here before. When I created a "rose bed" near this little fence/flower bed type area I had no idea what issues these little vines create!

One of my 5yo daughter's suprised me by saying, "Mom, this is the weed that takes the roses' water!" I was impressed :) This vine is fast and vigorous- it quickly wraps itself around the plants and chokes them out. It completely covered a mature azalea bush and killed it when we first moved in.

On page 512 of the HNS it says:
"A weed may crowd out our cultivated plants, by
stealing the moisture and nourishment in th soil which they should have; or it may shade them out by putting out broad leaves and shutting off their sunlight."


It seems no matter how often I weed - this vine continuously comes back. We have been watching and fighting it all summer. The only sure help we've found is to ensure when we pull these weeds we get ALL of the root and to be incredibly persistent in trying to tackle them. I have found the only relief is to tackle them daily. I showed the kids how to pull the vines so that they would be able to pull up the root with it. They thought it would be much easier than it is and I giggled as (especially my son) was surprised at the strength of these tiny plants!!
HNS page 513 ~

"Each weed has its own way of winning in the struggle with our crops, and it behooves us to find that way as soon as possible
in order to circumvent it."

They can become difficult to get the full root once they are even slightly established

Here they are showing me what they were able pull up. They were so happy when they were finally able to get "some root."

We spoke about why I try to at least do a quick weeding each day. How it is SO much easier to pull up a young weed than a weed that even has established for a short time. I showed them the differences and allowed them to try both young weeds and the more established and they quickly realized what I meant! For this reason- we talked about HNS page 513 "Especially, every one who plants a garden should know how the weeds look when young, for seedlings of all kinds are delicate and easy to kill before their roots are well established."

Afterwards - I also browse through the Lesson section of the book and choose a few questions to discuss with my children. I never do them all and I do it all orally and very casually as we discuss our nature study from the day. For this time outdoors, I had chosen some discussion questions from Lesson 135 on page 513 in the HNS.

1- Why do we call a plant a weed? (When it grows where the gardener wants something else to grow) Is a weed a weed wherever it grows? (No) How did this weed plant itself where it is growing? (The dandelions are from seed speres that are blown by wind, children, other things. The vines seem to make their way from roots established years ago and we have yet to "get them all")

2- Where did they find their weeds? (in the lawn for the dandelions and in the rose garden for the vines) By what agency was its seed brought and dropped? (We talked about the different ways seeds travel - birds, wind, people, squirrels, etc. A great book to read about this is The Usborne First Book of Nature. We take it slow - only a 2 page layout per day but its colorful and informative and my children seem to really like it. If you want to supplement - I would recommend this book.)

3- Why must we study the habits of a weed before we know how to fight it? (Each weed has its own way of taking over our beloved gardens so we must study it in order to defeat it)

The children created their nature journal pages and sketches.

HNS p. 512~ "(God) is the great farmer. Continually (He) sows and reaps, making all the forces of the universe the plants' tools and helpers; the sun's rays, wind, rain and snow, insects and birds, animals small and great, even to the humble burrowing worms of the earth..."

Sketch Tuesday - Something with a Door




Sketch Tuesday- Something with a Door

This week's Sketch Tuesday was to sketch "Something with a Door." For those of you who aren't familiar with Sketch Tuesday- you're missing out! :) Barb at Harmony Arts Mom puts up an "assignment" once a week. It's something like, "back to school supplies" or "something with a door" or "something hot." The children then sketch, draw, paint, etc whatever comes to THIER mind when they think of the "assignment." She usually puts out a new "assignment" on Tuesdays (hence Sketch TUESDAY lol) and posts up on a slideshow the sketches from the participants from the week before. It's great fun to see what my children come up with each week. They often surprise me and it gives them a creative outlet. Once my 5 yo daughter drew a bowl of chilli for the "something hot" week and this week for "something with a door" my son surprised me by drawing a trap door spider and its habitat. The children also enjoy watching the slide shows. Not only do they get excited about seeing their own artwork on Barb's slides- but they LOVE looking at other homeschoolers drawings. They think it's interesting to see what the other children came up with and seem to "connect" with the others through this project. It's a lot of fun and they look forward to their new assignments each Tuesday. So for this past week - "Something with a Door" here are my childrens sketches. I will upload them to Barb's site so she can add them to tomorrow's slideshow. We look forward to our new assignment tomorrow. Thanks Barb!!


Alyssa - a closet - 5 yo








Briana - a home - 5 yo









Chance - a trap door spider - 7 yo

Homeschool Closet Giveaway


Welcome to my Homeschool Closet Giveaway--

Acts 20:35b
— “[T]he Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’

Valerie at Little Blots had this great idea for Homeschool Closet Giveaway (click the graphic to the right for her link) and I just LOVE It! What a generous and amazing idea!!

I realize we are about a week behind the other giveaways- but think of it as a "2nd chance to win." :) :)

Listed below are the "shelves" I have to giveaway. Simply leave a comment on my blog with which shelves you are interested in and I will draw a winner this Friday, September 19th.

While you're here, check out some of my free schedules, forms, ideas and other homeschooling "helps." As well as our nature studies which really are the heart of my blog! :)

Shelf 1: Gently used set of Bob Jones Kindergarten "Beginnings" paper books. These were given to me by a dear friend that uses the BJU program. We school based on the Charlotte Mason method so we do not use BJU - however - they are still cute little readers for your younger student. My girls enjoyed "practicing" with the readers even though we do not use the program. As I said, they are gently used, some have the child's name written on the back in the certificate spot but otherwise GREAT condition ;).



This set includes 32 full-color readers which correlate with K5 Beginnings.
In all of the twelve page readers, you'll find one selection each of Bible
accounts, family stories, information books, and literature selections. The
"Reading Guide" in each reader gives parents advice on how to help beginning readers.


Shelf 2: Another BJU set that was passed along to me. The BJU 1st grade readers set. These are in GREAT, gently used condition. These are nice readers as well, even if you do not use the BJU program.


The six Student Texts contain a variety of colorfully illustrated stories, poems, plays, and articles.
A - Colors Glowing
B - Feathers, Fins, and Fur
C - Helping Hands
D - A Day to Remember
E - Hear the Music
F - Treasures to Keep

Shelf 3: Gently used (no marks or any bends) - "The Mudpies Activity Book- Recipes for Invention" by Nancy Blakey. Kids age 2-12.






Shelf 4: Set of 3 science readers. This shelf includes a prior library book, "Experiments with Animal Behavior" by Ovid K Wong; Scholastic "Butterflies" book (very simple, easy book- great for prek - k); Hello Reader! Level 4, "Armies of Ants" by Walter Retan. I will mention on the "Armies of Ants" book- there are mentions of "hundreds of thousands of years ago". Just a warning. You can easily skip over this part but I wanted to ensure it was pointed out.


So those are my 4 shelves for this week. I think this is such an amazing idea that we may continue it once a week or so. We have so many books laying around and its wonderful to be able to pass them along when we're finished! I think this is such a blessing!

Please comment before midnight on 9/19/08 and I will email the winners letting them know they've won. My son has a sparring tournament on Saturday so please bear with me as I get the emails out this weekend. :) Good luck!

In His Name,

Tiffany

Romans 12:13 — “Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”