Finally made it to the Teacher's Store

It might be my last trip for a few years. Maybe forever.
Why?
Because the local Teacher's Store caters mainly to the Elementary sect now.
We searched for an hour to find enough stuff for my 11th-grader. We ended up finding a few things in the clearance sections (spread throughout the store--including upstairs where there is NO air conditioning). We worked for that discount, I'm tellin' ya.
It's a sad, sad thought that I won't be going back and fingering through all that neat, schooly stuff.
My 6th-grader will be working on the same stuff he did last year. Sadly, he decided he didn't need to do school last year...and didn't. So I'm ordering replacements for the few workbooks that he wrote in and he's doing it all again--and then some. Yeah, you guessed it. Welcome to puberty, child.
OH! This year's fun item from the Teacher's Store was.....drum roll please...PENCILS. Pencils of all things! But, that's all they wanted. The 11th grader got one that says, "My Teacher thinks I'm SPECIAL!" ....which cracks me up--and did him, too. The 6th grader got one with his favorite critter...frogs. And for my graduate I got a West Virginia pencil . We live in Ohio.
So...what's new with you? I want to visit my folks this weekend...but it's filling up fast, so that might not happen.

Graduating Class of 2009

The graduation was last Saturday. It went well. Katherine felt special, which was everything I wanted for her. She didn't wear a traditional cap and gown. Everyone who knows us well knows that we aren't very traditional.

Instead she wore a sash and headband (with a cap and crown attached). Both said, "Princess Grad".

I'm surprised that nobody has put out a webpage with ideas and suggestions on hosting a homeschool graduation. For those of us doing it for the first time, it's intimidating. In the end we decided to do our own thing. I wrote a speech. Her father presented her with the diploma. Then she gave a speech.

A friend grabbed my camera and took pictures, otherwise I wouldn't have any.

*I* forgot to take any pictures! Can you believe it? That was my only regret from the day...that I didn't get any pictures of the guests. After everyone ate (of *course* I fed them all), the teens got a game of softball together and played outside in the heat and humidity. We older folks stayed in air-conditioned comfort and talked. :^) I'm so glad I put on all the invitations to "dress casual." I think everyone was comfortable, therefore we all had a good time.

We are so blessed. I just can't say that enough. We are blessed with friends, with family, with fincances and support. I could go on and on....but I won't. Thanks for reading.

Symmetry Art

Four years ago we did some symmetry math which lead to symmetry art. I know it was four years ago because I found this picture in with the pictures of my 16-year-old son's 12th birthday party. I'm so good at sorting out and labeling my photos. Not.

Anyway, check out what we did:

Basically you find a picture that shows symmetry (or draw your own),

get two pieces of contrasting construction paper,

cut one in half and draw half your design on it,

cut it out and paste the positive and negative halves on the full sheet of construction paper.

Pretty cool, huh?

Volcano fun

I love looking back through my old photos. (Remember? They were lost for a while.) I enjoy seeing the vacations we took and the normal every-day stuff we did that I thought was interesting enough to snap a few pictures. A couple of days ago I shared pictures of a project that my youngest enjoyed doing. I'm gonna show you some more that I found.
A couple of years ago (when Timothy was going through his spiked hair phase) I found a unit study on volcanoes. It had several suggestions...but the ones that caught my eye used play clay. {wink} You know what I'm talking about without me having to mention a name brand. We had tubs and tubs of it. Since I had two teenagers and a pre-teen in the house, it was just going to waste. So we dug it out and he started making volcanoes.
First he made a couple of models of what he thought volcanoes look like.

Then we moved to the kitchen...cuz things were about to get messy. I took the tray out of the microwave (because it had a raised edge to catch any spills) and cut a plastic bathroom cup down to about an inch tall. I put some baking soda in the bottom of the cup and put vinegar into four other cups. Timothy selected four colors of play clay and we tinted the vinegar to match. The idea is to make the volcano errupt, then put clay everywhere that the "lava" went...building it up as you go. Here we've done white and green. It's not a fast project because you have to sop up all the vinegar before you can put the clay down.

Pour in the blue vinegar...

...mentally map where it spread,

sop it up and...

...put down the lava.

Repeat with red.


And here we have a finished volcano model.
We had a lot of fun. We ended up cutting it in half and looking at all the layers. Somehow, I failed to get a picture of that. My oldest was watching me select the photos yesterday and asked to see that picture--Huny, it doesn't exist. She couldn't believe it. {sigh} It's true, I'm not perfect.
Oh well...let me know how it goes if you decide to make one.

Learning can be fun!

Over the years I've used a lot of free resources from the library and the internet. One of our favorite printable learning pages are from the LearningPage website: http://www.learningpage.com/free_pages/home.html
Sign up as a member and you're on your way to some exciting adventures.
Here is Timothy working on a mural. For bugs. I printed 15 pages for the mural. He colored them, cut the borders off and we tacked them on the wall. Then he colored all the bugs, cut them out, tacked them on the mural...

...then pretended to be afraid.



They have fact sheets and K-2 themed math, science and language sheets.

He's still talking about the dinosaur one. And the ocean one. And he loved learning to read with the Tommy Tales. Check them out.