Thanksgiving Placemants

We wove some Thanksgiving placemats for our Dinner decorations. Brittany had decorated the house while Kaedra was in the hospital. She had put up loops of Thanksgiving colors in a chain. It was very pretty. She has bunch of paper leftover that she had already cut into pieces, so we used that for our placemats. It might just have been the easiest craft ever!

Thanksgiving Craft

Ethan has one too, but tore it off and refused to wear it. Oh well. :-(

Election Lapbook Pictures

We got our election lapbooks from this wonderful site. I am so grateful to her for making this wonderful lapbook! It was a breeze to use, it looks great and I didn't have to think! WOOHOO!!!

They both have this as the cover (but we put it on the back)


Here are pics from Emily's book:



(we folded up her electoral map and put it under the map index card)

Here is Brittany's:




as you can see, Brittany has a lot more in her book. The blue vocabulary book at the top middle is taped in so it made it's own page, you can move it back and forth. She also has her map in the index card pocket and has a venn diagram (comparing and contrasting McCain and Obama) behind her candidates.

Insect Identification Fun

This morning Ethan was screaming at Kaedra's window. Despite what you may think, this is a pretty rare occurrence, so I went to see what was wrong. There was a large bug on the inside of the screen. Apparently it was really bothering Ethan. Emily said he yelled at it a lot yesterday, too.



So, being the good homeschool mommy that I am, we got a jar and collected it and tried to find it on the internet. My friend was supposed to send me an identification page about a week ago, but, being the busy homeschool mommy she is, she had forgotten. I quickly emailed her and my homeschool group to see if anyone had any good sites.

She started sending me sites right away (because she sits at her computer just waiting for my emails, y'know) About the third of fourth email she sent, my bug was on the FRONT PAGE!! Hallelujah!!! Not only that, but my bug was THE BUG OF THE MONTH!!!! What a treat! I mean, how much better could we get than that?

Now, it gets even better!! My friend, the same above mentioned friend, found the same bug (well probably a different individual bug, but the same kind), across town in her yard about a week ago! How cool is that! We both found this same, extremely weird bug!

So, here is a good pic of the bug. The scientific name is Arilus cristatus. And the common name is "Wheel Bug" a type of assassin bug. We will be adding this guy to our nature notebooks!

And, for your identification pleasure (and so I can find them all later) here are a list of identification sites that I found and my friend sent me:

Bug Guide
What's that Bug
Insect Identification
Insect Identifier

Craft from "One of THOSE days"

One of "those" days

Today was one of those days. No no. Not THOSE days where you wonder why you ever thought of homeschooling...the other kind. The kind where you get to the end of the day and say, "WOW! Why can't all our days be like this?!"

What was so wonderful? Well, we got it all done, for one. And included in that was 3 (count em....1-2-3) craft projects!! WOOHOO!! Pretty good for a mom who usually hates, abhors, can't stand shies away from that stuff! We made an oiled paper window, a few bows and arrows and some cool sun catchers. I will post pictures tomorrow.

Also, we didn't have any tears. Wait, did I say "did not?" That might be an exaggeration.

Okay, we had few tears.

But I'll take that.

That and a day with 3 crafts can make this mom darn proud.

First Day Back!

Today is our first day back at school. I realize it is only 10:18, but we are doing really good! I am excited. :-) I have a REALLY enthusiastic crowd this morning and I am very enthusiastic myself! We are doing some new things, revamping some old things, trying a new schedule, and buckling down a little harder. More memorization, more tests, more writing. I have only a year and a half to get Brittany ready for High School and I want her to be REALLY ready. And Emily isn't reading yet, so I really want to work on that.

Okay, off to get more done!

Brittany's Crystal Palace

Brittany started history today and is studying Victorian England. She learned about the crystal palace and she created one today: