First Day of 2012/13

First day of school at Oak Creek Academy has come to a close; we're winding down with an episode of Star Trek Voyager!  Here is some glimpses into our day!

 One of many different "First Day of School" treats I'd

seen on Pinterest; also one of the easiest to make.

 Had seen these Cheeze its while picking up

other things for our first day.  Let the creative

juices flowing for the wording.

 Hello dollar bin at Wal-mart!  Lots of candy labeling posting

at Pinterest so it was easy to make something for candy.

 Here is most of Thing One's "new school day" loot!

He tends to get stuff in blue.

 The green version for Thing Two.

 Total impulse purchase!  Green and blue, how could I say

no to these!  Boys seemed to enjoy them too.

 Close up of shirts for physical educations!  The boys

were shocked that it didn't say Oak Creek Academy.

 Thing One's close up.  His sign says,

Oak Creek Academy

2012/13 School Year

Well Hello 7th grade

I'm ready to build a great year!

Thing Two:

Oak Creek Academy

2012/13 School Year

Watch out 4th grade ~

I'm ready to knock it out of the park!!

 Really getting tired of the photos and

ready for school.

 One more close up!

The day itself went fairly well.  They breezed through math, got through grammar and spelling (both a little shocked that we're doing formal spelling again!  Oh well kids get over it!).  Probably the best portion for both boys was mentioning it was time for Five in a Row and Beyond Five in a Row.  I didn't quite get to letting them ordering which books were first, second and so on like I'd planned, however it all worked out.  When I told Thing Two we were rowing "Roxaboxen", he was totally excited.  As always, he said it was his "favorite" and went off to get the book and manual for me.  He enjoyed doing some map work of the Southeast.  When it was Thing One's turn, I gave him a choice of the three books we had not covered in Volume Three of Beyond.  He was excited to row "Cricket in Time Square"; we read it about 5 years ago for a different curriculum and he was eager to read it again.  We spent about half an hour "exploring" some aspects of New York City.  He was excited by all this enough, he wants to write a report at the end of the week.  We'll see on this one.  Thing One even asked for more school.  UGH is all I thought, it's one day down and I already want a break (didn't sleep well last night and felt very exhausted after covering the basics).

The fall out from a crazy day and crazy school day when

no "margin" was planned for.  REALLY need to remember

that one later.  It's not such a good thing to have things stacked

that we can't clean up afterward.

The house was left as above, we got ready to zip out for Monday's therapy, briefly filled Kevin in on thoughts for dinner, and headed out.  Got home almost three hours later to a house smelling of dinner!  Thankful for a husband that likes to cook!

Feet are up, winding down, and looking forward to a better nights sleep.  Bring on day 2!!!

Beautiful Words

There are words that cross your hearing that are just beautiful.  Words spoken by a loved one, a friend, a foe, doesn't matter who, that are radiant to your soul (yes I used a thesaurus!)

Our struggling learner, looked up at me, while doing math today, and said "this math concept is easy, I think I'll do two worksheets! (while smiling and a slight giggle in his voice)"  You "go" kid, knock that math out.

I love having a front row seat to their learning when something that has been difficult becomes easy.

2 by 2 . . . .

. . . I'm not speaking of all the rain we've been getting and wondering if an Ark is being built. Today, with Thing Two, we quickly covered counting by two's. In the manual, for All Those Secrets of the World, it is suggested using marbles for counting. We have plenty - check. Quick, grab the camera, because this week seems to be more of a conversational week with some photo's for the memory. Here's what we discussed:

A group of ten marbles
and another fuzzy photo :(

The digit 10 made out of marbles.

Five groups of two. They were lined up in groups of two to count off.

Thing two rattled off the even numbers, then had to show what the odd
ones were as well.

Busy School Day

We have gotten a lot of school type things accomplished today. Some of it book related, some of it nature related, and now Thing Two is picking up a little Spanish as he plays his Diego game.

There was a lot of time spent outdoors this afternoon, too. Here are some photo highlights ~

Decided over the weekend, that we'd work a little harder
on memorizing the times tables. It's such a nice day, would be a shame
not to do some of the work outside. Had them skip count, the 3's, as I
wrote them on our drive way. Then I asked what 3 x _____ equealed.
Thing One would have to tell me and jump onto the number. We
did enough of that to hit all the numbers 1 - 10 a couple times.

While we were out doing math, I was able to
finally photograph a salamander.

Need to double check, but I think this might be a
bee hive in a tree.
Turns out this is a Burr tree, with an irregular growth,
sort of like a wart. Makes for interesting carvings.

Another item to check on ~ think this is a heron.
I was right on the heron, but to be more specific,
it's a female Great Blue Heron.

Playing in the water. Thing Two was actually running through
the water, tripped, and fell into the water (not during this photo
though, a bit later). He was soaked by the time we got home.

Thing One was having fun walking across, bare foot. Both boys
really enjoyed playing in the water. While we were in this area, I also
pointed out a bend in the river and tied it back to Higgins Bend Song & Dance.
This is such a wonderful area, I'm hoping to make it out more often,
even when we row Owl Moon. I'd love for the four of us to get out one night.

This was the first time walking through the woods that we came across
deer AND I had a camera. Very cool!

How many rocks?

How many rocks are there here?

If you had to guess, what would your answer be?

Go ahead and make a guess -

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Okay, enough of the guessing and counting, we came up with 80, ten of which are black. Black pebbles where traded in Roxaboxen. Just to further the math concepts with Thing One, I had him come up with a few math problems that equal 80. Here's our list:

40 + 40
70 + 10
40 x 2
10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 (Thing Two wanted to contribute to the list!)
4 x 20
1 x 80
6 x 16
8 x 10

We could have spent a lot of time coming up with more, but this seemed like a reasonable amount for now. We've been working on finding the factors, in Math U See, when given the product. Was pleased to see that he found them all.

Cowboy Charlie Math

We are wrapping up the final week of Cowboy Charlie and working on Math today. One of the early pages, in the book, shows Charlie day dreaming about the West while he should be doing math. In Jane Lambert's lesson "Math: It's in the Presentation" the question given to the kids is to come up with cowboy math that Charlie would have liked. Here's our take on the lesson.

1. How many buffalo do you need to pull one driver and 100 hurt horses? One buffalo can pull two horse, so you will need about 50 buffalo.
2. If Charlie and Pike road the train to Red Rock for 10 days, road the stage coach for 10 days till it went no farther, and finally road their horse to the plains for 10 days, how long did they travel? They traveled for 30 days or one month.
3. How many dogs will it take to eat one big bone in one day? (Maybe not the best question, but my 6 year old wanted a question from his favorite stuffed dog to Jip)
4. How many crackers does Charlie have to eat, so that he can use the box to draw on? In a box of Ritz, there are 3 sleeves of crackers. Each sleeve has 36 crackers. Charlie would need to eat 108 crackers to be able use the box.
   

Graphs, Graphs, Graphs

Hello everyone - as many of you know, we have been homeschooling this year. For a change, I thought I'd post some of the information Thing One needs to create a graph in math. We hope you'll participate and enjoy the activity.