I had this set from my TAC demo days but had never used it. I think it was a hostess set at some point. I got it for free but hesitated to ink it up because of all the coloring. I think it's perfect for some upcoming anniversary cards though. I made it with 2 different color schemes to try to use up those cardstock mat layers. I bought a box of what I thought were A2 size cards and envelopes but ended up being just strangely sized card fronts and envelopes. I've been trying to use them up to clean up my stash.
Details:
cardstock: DCWV (card base), Georgia Pacific (white), DCWV card front pack (mats)
patterned paper: random stack (light blue flower), Paper Studio So-So-So Sweet stack (teal)
tools: Creative Memories corner rounder, Crop-a-dile, Scor-Pal
embellishments: Making Memories eyelets
color: Palette Noir ink, Tombow markers, flesh-colored pencils
stamps: TAC Oceans of Love
Our cheap entertainment center finally bit the dust. I cried and cried... tears of joy! Ha! It was a monstrous piece that we actually picked out of our neighbor's trash at the old house. Bass wheeled it home at 6am on top of the kids' old Radio Flyer wagon. It served us well for quite a few years. It held all our media, board games, video game systems, and puzzles. We had that thing loaded up. But then it sort of started to lean, the door broke, and the toe kick piece fell off.
Ugh---the pure ugliness of it!
So as my Christmas gift, Bass got me a new TV console. It was a wicked good deal at Christmas Tree Shops on Black Friday. He actually braved the crowds to bring one home for me. It's beautiful, and I love it! The only downside is that all the stuff we had crammed onto the old shelves don't fit!
Solution #1: downsize the DVD cases
I loved the containers that Jen at iheart Organizing used in this post. I wasn't excited about having to maintain a list of DVDs that we have on-hand though. Then I found some great DVD sleeves at Staples that allow for a title at the top.
I didn't want to just get rid of the cases in case we'd want to sell them or donate them down the road so I boxed them up and put them in the attic. We have a ton of storage space up there so 2 copy paper boxes of cases isn't an issue. I got a couple of Kassett boxes at Ikea to put all of the sleeves into. One is for kid DVDs and the other is for non-kid DVDs. I printed a couple of labels on the computer to put in the holder on the front of each box.
Please note they say DVDs and Kid DVDS. I tried really hard to not have it say Adult DVDs. That could be bad.
Next up, to keep the DVDs in some sort of order, I made some dividers. I just cut cardstock from my scrapbook stash into 5" x 5.5" squares and then punched matching tabs with the Stampin' Up Bread Tab Punch. I used some rub-on letters, also from my stash, to label the tabs.
Here's what it looks like, all organized and condensed!
And here is what they look like in their new home!
I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you!
Well, we were finally hit with illness in our little school. It's definitely that time of year, and it seems like everybody has something, is getting something, or is getting over something. It wasn't too bad... just a slight fever, some sneezing, and lots of coughing but it made for a less enjoyable week. Now that the kids are on the mend, they're totally hyper! It'll be nice when they burn off that energy outside. Despite the illness, we still got all our work done (just on a modified schedule.) Here's what
we did:
Math: Same
as usual. They each had 4 days of lessons and 1 day of math games on
the computer. Cutting down the amount of skip counting and meetings Soprano has to do has helped immensely. She's improving on her skip counting and is less apt to fuss about it since we aren't doing the full meeting every day. I'm toying with not even buying the Grade 3 meeting book for next year. I'm not sure we'll need it.
Reading and Language Arts: Soprano spent two weeks on 'Chrysanthemum' from 'Across the Centuries'. She did a couple of worksheets and name activities. To finish it, she watched 'Chrysanthemum' on DVD. We have several sets of Scholastic DVDs that the kids enjoy.
She's about 3/4 done with her second Phonics book and is doing great with it. In English, she's learning about
adjectives, while spelling and handwriting are continuing well. We're up
to Xx.
Tenor continued with his 'A Reason for Handwriting C' and started his new writing workbook. He's not thrilled with the fact that he has to write but once he buckles down to actually do it, he does a good job. I think he struggles with the anticipation of having to write more than the writing itself.
He started 'Misty' from 'Across the Centuries C Level 1'.
He read the first 5 chapters and did a couple worksheets on horse terminology and vocabulary. He also aced his first evaluation.
English (learning the differences between it's/its, their/they're, and you're/your) and Spelling (Rod and Staff Level 4) are
going well. I got to teach him my favorite little grammar reminder: Possessive 'its' never splits.
Electives:
Typer
Island for their typing instruction and continuing with SOS
Elementary Spanish.
They did two health worksheets: one on a fire plan for our house and one on our phone number and address. We
also talked about the PA state animal and state dog (white-tail deer and Great Dane) and how
teachers are community helpers. We got a few books about teachers from the library to help in our discussion.
Phys Ed.: We had to skip Tae Kwon Do and homeschool co-op the week they were sick. We didn't do much working out together at home either. Next week, we'll get moving again.
Bible: The past two weeks included:
Reading about Saudi Arabia, Islam, and the Kurds
Reading Matthew 16:5-18:14
Memorizing Matthew 6:33 (one of the few I actually know the verse and reference for!) and beginning to memorize The Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9b-13). We're memorizing the alternate version of the Lord's Prayer that's given in the teacher guide. That's the one that I grew up with so it's easy for me to lead the kids in it. Our printables from Mama Jenn have both versions included.
Geography:
We've traveled on to a new continent...Asia.
Things we did included:
Filling out our passports to travel to Saudi Arabia
Coloring the Saudi Arabian flag and writing down interesting facts about it. Also discussing what the saying, "There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet" means to Muslims and what it means to us as Christians.
Reading about the People and Places, and Nature, Farming, and Industry of the Middle East and reading about their language. The kids tried copying the Arabic alphabet and numbers too.
Because they were sick and we're a little low on cash, I didn't get to the store for art supplies. We decided to work on Camel lapbooks and a mini-book of Asian animals instead. We used the entire camel lapbook from Homeschool Share.
Soprano's cover
Tenor's inside, unfolded pages
Tenor's inside-fold pages
For their Asian animal books, we used the animal classification cards from Homeschool Share. I folded 3 sheets of construction paper in
half and had them glue down an animal picture and corresponding info on each page.
Illustrating notecards for gulf and sound. Week 22 was a review week for geography notecards. I had the younglings review and then take a short quiz to match words and definitions. They both got 100%! I was very impressed.
They really missed playing the geography game these past 2 weeks. I know they're looking forward to playing again next week.
Tenor's Asia pages from World Geography were Physical Features and Rivers. He's only doing 1 page per week during our Asia studies.
Science: Discussion on Man's Impact on the Environment, Endangered Species, Extinctions, Pollution, Acid Rain, and Global Warming. There were quite a few science activities these two weeks. We skipped the trash activity because we recycle all of our recyclable glass, plastic, newspaper, and glossy magazines. We also take all metal to a local salvage yard. It recycles it and gives us a little extra cash. We burn most of our paper trash in our fireplace (which is a secondary heating source for our home.) At that rate, it didn't seem as worthwhile to do the activity especially for this slightly germaphobic mama.
We did experiment with sand to show how God designed the camel's foot to work well in the desert. We did the greenhouse effect experiment with good success... the second time. The first time, I wasn't supervising the temperature recording, just the timing, and didn't realize that Soprano had opened the jar in order to read the thermometer. She didn't reclose the jar lid so all our results were skewed the first time.
Greenhouse Effect Experiment
We're 2 days into the acid rain experiment. I'm interested to see how it will turn out.
Soprano worked on a few of the Asian Animals pages from The Complete Book of Animals. She's doing 3 sheets or mini storybook per week for the 10 weeks we're studying Asia.
Other MFW:
Wee sing: Ali Baba's Farm and their absolute favorite song thus far, Zum Gali Gali
To supplement, we read other books about Middle Eastern countries and animals
and borrowed DVDs from the library.Since we're planning to continue with MFW curriculum and study history from Creation to the Ancient Greeks next year, I tried to not supplement too much about Israel. I figure we will be reading a lot about Israel next year.
We also had a field trip this week. Missions Fest, a local organization, hosts a missions-focused weekend each year. This year, they had a special children's' program, which happened to be held at our church. I took the kids for a few hours after lunch and the got to sing, learn about Thailand and Trinidad, and discover they could be missionaries 'here', 'there', and 'everywhere'. (Acts 1:8). The team that presented did a fantastic job.
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Necessity is the mother of invention. Or in this case the mother of craftiness. My linen cabinet houses our overstock of health and beauty care items. Since it's in the main bathroom, it's a convenient space to keep our current and extra heath/beauty things. There's also room to stock up if I can hit a good sale or have extra coupons. While everything is generally organized, I was finding myself thinking that I had 7 tubes of toothpaste and realizing that I actually only had the current one on-hand. You can see how this would create a potentially stinky, I mean sticky situation.
I decided that I needed an inventory to keep better track of what's in those drawers and in the 'overflow' basket. (You can see pics of the whole cabinet here.)
But if I have an inventory, I needed somewhere to put that would be cute (aka not scotch-taped to the back of the linen closet door.) Enter the mini clipboard!
I used a pack of CM paper and stickers that a former demo friend gave me. (Just to clarify she's a former demo not a former friend. LOL) I think she used to use these mini kits at home parties. Since our bathroom is a China Beach (asian seashore) kind of theme, I thought this green and blue bamboo pack would be perfect.
I cut the bamboo print paper to fit and adhered it with Mod Podge. Then I used the solid light green and after punching a scallop edge glued it to the top. (I used scrap paper all pieced and taped together to create a template to fit around the clip. Then I used my template to trace the shape on the green paper.)
I cut a strip of the reverse side (the stripe) to add a little extra to the light green and used one of the stickers just to finish it off. To create my inventory sheet, I made a table in Word and typed in most of the items that I try to keep on-hand. Then I counted 'em up and put those numbers in the first column. As we open a new bottle, I'll just update the number in the next column crossing out the first number. It's not super fancy but it'll give me an idea of what I need to watch the sales flyers for each week.
I added a pen and tucked it in by the towels on the top shelf. Perfect! No more wondering if we have another stick of deodorant hiding somewhere. That's the sweet smell of success!
At the beginning of each year, I sit down with my calendar and write in all the birthdays, anniversaries, and special occasions that I want to remember. (I have more details on the whole process in this post.)
I send a lot of cards out so I need to keep my stash well stocked. Here's a brown/aqua card that I can use for a birthday, anniversary, wedding, or whatever. I didn't put any sentiment on the front but will wait until I need to send it and then personalize the inside.
Details:
cardstock: DCWV (card base), Georgia Pacific (white)
patterned paper: DCWV Garden Party stack
tools: Creative Memories corner rounder, Crop-a-dile, Scor-Pal
embellishments: Making Memories eyelets, Unknown photo turns
stamps: TAC Love and Joy
Drop long distance
telephone service and use your cell or a pre-paid calling card.
Free Internet:
at the library or places with WiFi access.
Send e-mails instead of snail
mail. Cut out the cost of printing and postage altogether by switching
all announcements, advertising and other mailings to online.
Cut out frivolities. Sorry,
folks, but the neon file folders, colorful paperclips and heart-shaped
binder clips are going to have to go. See what else is more a perk than a
basic and, even if it seems cruel to forgo the cute little purple memo
cubes, use it up but don’t replace it.
Put your name on
the “Do Not Call” list (www.donotcall.gov
or 1.888.382.1222) (This one doesn't save money... just time and aggravation!)
Our master bedroom has a long wall that was just crying out for a gallery wall. I wanted a beach theme to go with the colors and bedding that we had, and I really wanted to incorporate a framed piece like this one.
I started with a bunch of frames that I used in our old house but didn't have a place for in our new home. I used fabric left-over from our Command Central boards to cover the picture mats the same way I did for the living room prints.
For the art I made my own beach-themed subway art. Nothing fancy, just beach words in black ink in a few different fonts.
After putting more fabric in the frames, I used my hot glue gun to attach a large shell and starfish right to the glass of two of the frames. I also framed an old greeting card my Grandmother gave me when I was a little girl. I loved the picture and kept it all these years.
So a few nails and zero money later, our beachy picture gallery is done, and I've got one more thing crossed off the to-do list.
This week's card is a music themed gift card holder. I used my new Cricut cartridge (Quarter Note) to cut a treble clef and its shadow for the front of the card. I cut a second treble clef for the inside. Lots of eyelets and a bit of Scrapper's Floss finish it off.
Details:
cardstock: DCWV (card base, treble clefs, and tag),
patterned paper: Basic Gray Motifica? and music patterned paper from my stash
tools: Cricut Quarter Note cartridge, Cricut Tags, Bags, and Boxes cartridge, Basic Gray Notch and Die tool,
Crop-a-dile, Scor-Pal, Spellbinders Nestabilities scalloped circles dies, EK Success scallop border punch
embellishments: Making Memories eyelets, Karen Foster Scrapper's Floss in black
stamps: TAC Holiday Liners
I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you! The school days are just flying by! We just spent
three weeks studying Africa with MFW, and it was over in a blink. I
also spent some time planning out their lessons for the rest of the
year, updating their report cards and portfolios after the end of our
second quarter, and thinking about next year's curriculum. Here's what
we did:
Math: Same
as usual. They each had 4 days of lessons and 1 day of math games on
the computer Soprano is extremely frustrated with having to go through the
Saxon 'meeting' part of each lesson especially the skip counting so
we're going to reduce the number of times we do the meeting each week.
We're going to cut back to one meeting per week and keep counting 4 days
but only doing half the counting on 2 of those 4 days. If she was 100%
solid with her counting, I'd cut it altogether but she still needs to
practice. She said that this compromise would work for her. We'll start
that next week. She's also been fussing about doing flashcard review
before her drills. Right now, the only way she'll do them is if I do
them with her using a foreign accent. We've had French, Kipper (from the
Nickelodeon TV show aka British), and Russian. I've only got Midwestern
U.S. and really bad Irish left. We might be in trouble.....
Getting some help from our resident math expert
Reading and Language Arts: Soprano finished 'The Tale of Peter
Rabbit' from 'Across the Centuries'
with a scarecrow activity and an evaluation. Then she read 'Amelia
Bedelia' and did a couple worksheets and some funny activities about
Amelia's mix-ups.
She's trucking through her second Phonics book
and is doing great with it. In English, she's learning about
adjectives, while spelling and handwriting are continuing well. We're up
to Vv. One of her English assignments was to make a greeting card.
Here's what she wrote: "Dear Mom, I am real glad your my teacher. I love
MFW and don't like counting. Thank you for crecting (correcting) our
work, you are soooo much fun. I love you lots."{sic} I laugh that she had to
tell me she likes our My Father's World curriculum and doesn't like her
skip counting with Math. I kind of knew that already!
Tenor continued with his 'A Reason for Handwriting C' and finished 'Writing Strands 2.'We'll start his new writing workbooks next week. He's excited to try a new approach, as am I.
He finished Homer Price from 'Across the Centuries C Level 1'.
He did everything from worksheets, to a mouse catcher diagram, a maze
activity, and drawing a cartoon. Next up is Misty of Chincoteague, one
of my favorite childhood books.
Tenor's mouse catcher
English (learning the differences between lay/lie, raise/rise, let/leave) and Spelling (Rod and Staff Level 4) are
going well.
Electives:
Typer
Island for their typing instruction and continuing with SOS
Elementary Spanish. I'm not sure what I did in SOS Spanish but I just
cannot get the computer scheduled lessons to match what I print on their
weekly logs. Oh well.... they're still getting the right amount of
lessons in each week.
They did
several health worksheets: one of first aid kits, on how to be a good
friend, and stop, drop, and roll. Do they still teach that in public
school, too? I remember stop, drop, and roll from my elementary days. We
also talked about the PA state insect (lightening bugs!) and how
veterinarians are community helpers. I also caught up on previous
community helpers by getting books from the library. I sort of slacked
off on the supplemental reading for the past few helpers we talked
about. Now we're caught up. And I discovered that I have enough
Community Helper cards to do the same thing next year for our Civics
studies.
PA's state insect --- love these little guys! They remind me of summer.
Phys Ed.:
They're really enjoying Tae Kwon Do each week and gym with our
homeschool co-op. They also love to exercise with me each day.... we've
done a lot of Zumba and some walking (Leslie Sansone tapes.) At least
they don't make fun of me huffing and puffing.
Bible: The past three weeks included:
Reading about the Riffi Berbers, Kal-Tamashaq, and Pygmies
Reading Matthew 13:31-16:4
Memorizing Matthew 6:20-21, 24-25
Reading about Mary Slessor, Samuel Morris, and David Livingstone.
I
found some notebooking sheets that I printed for the kids to write down
their thoughts about David Livingstone. You can find them at Practical Pages, Activity Village, and Homeschool Helper Online.
Geography:
We've traveled on to a whole new continent...Africa.Things we did included:
Coloring the Kenyan flag and writing down interesting facts about it.
Reading interesting facts about Kenya and reading about their language.
Playing
a popular African game, Mancala. We actually have a Mancala set so we
didn't need to make our own using the MFW instructions.
Making African animals with Play-Doh. We didn't let them dry out to be painted though.
We skipped making a mural because we made African lapbooks. I found some fantastic resources at several different websites: Hebrews 110 Kenya Lapbook; National Geographic for country cards; Homeschool Share; and Squidoo (you might have to dig through this site to find what you want.)
Tenor's front cover
Soprano's cover
Soprano's page 1 and 2
Soprano's page 1 open
Soprano's page 2 open
Soprano's and Tenor's back cover
There are also great teaching ideas at Homeschool Creations.
We watched this video on Morocco:
We also watched an Arthur episode called In My Africa on pbskids.org.
Illustrating notecards for grassland, plain, plateau, cliff, and palisade
Playing the geography game with just Africa and then adding North and South America and Europe.
To help us remember the countries in Africa, I came up with some mnemonics.
*Africa is MALE in 2 ways. #1 Mauritania, Algeria, Libya, Egypt and #2 Mali
*Niger, his little sister, Nigeria, and their friend, Chad, went to Sudan in their CAR (Central African Republic)
*DAN'S Big Zoo Makes Money To Keep Elephants Safe
Dem. Rep of Congo, Angola, Namibia, South Africa (DAN'S)
Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Madagascar (Big Zoo Makes Money)
Tenor's Africa pages from World Geography were Physical Features, Rivers, Bodies of Water, Islands, Climate, Animals, Population, Cities, Languages, and Religion.
Science: Discussion on Grassland Plants and Animals, Survival on the Grasslands, and Life Underground.
We
used the world map worksheet to color where grassland areas exist. We
somehow skipped the elephant and sweet potato activities though. Perhaps
because we were busy lapbooking.
Other MFW:
Wee sing: Tue Tue, Bebe Moke, and Kanyoni Kanja. I played music by
Miriam Makeba and other similar artists via Pandora too. Her song 'Pata
Pata' was used for a car commercial a little while ago. You can listen
to it on youtube.
Art:
We used Global Art to make the Central African decorative necklaces and
the Ilukeres (fly whisks.) Week 3 nothing in Global Art was really
speaking to me so we made African tribal masks using this tutorial that another MFW user blogged about.
Fly whisks
Tenor's tribal mask
Soprano's tribal mask
To supplement, we read other books about African countries and animals
and borrowed DVDs from the library.
We're on to another continent already. My kids are most excited about studying China in a few weeks.
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