Night Of The Moonjellies

This week Sept. 2-4 we are continuing or sea life journey by rowing "Night of the Moonjellies" by Mark Shasta. During Social Studies we will learn the states that make up New England and discuss where they got the name, "New England". We will place our story disk on the New England states and discover what part of the USA they are located. For Language arts we will contrast the two words frenzy and peaceful and find examples of these in our story. Our vocabulary words are; marina, pier, and moonjellies. We will make a list and add to it with each reading of the story of the many food items served in the story by the sea. For art we will discuss and look for examples of how the illustrator, also Mark Shasta, uses different shades of blue to show dark and light in his pictures. During our FIAR math study we will learn about money and the different denominations of US currency and coins. Our Bible lesson will be on responsibility and how God expects us to do all things as unto HIM. Our Science study will be on jelly fish, of course. We will read several books on jelly fish and discuss the many fascinating facts about these jellies. We will make a "life at the sea" flap book that describes the things that we can experience by the sea when using our 5 senses. For this we will also read, "The Sea Shore Noisy Book" to give us more ideas. This should be another fascinating week of sea life discovery! The picture above is from last weeks study on "Nico's Octopus" where we had school, "under the sea"!

My $12 Find!

This past Sat. I went with my sister in law and BFF, Stacy to yard sales. This was the find. An antique floor lamp for $12. It was in the garage at one of the sales we went to and we were unsure if it was even for sale, but Stacy, the bargain hunter, asked the man about it for herself. She had just bought another one recently and decided she did not need another one. I told her if she didn't want it I did. So that was it! It was mine! My favorite flower is a tulip and now I have one that will never wilt! It gives off the most beautiful ambient glow! Yeah me!!

I have the Net again!

Last Wed. our Internet went out! I had just said the Sunday before that I could not live a week without the computer. What I should have said was I could not live without the Internet! I had no idea how much I use it! Tonight out Internet company came out and got us up and running in a short time! YEA!! My family is all so excited we each are surfing at the same time! We are blessed to have such awesome technology at our finger tips!

Our Latest Family Members

Today we received an email from my neighbor

to ask if we wanted 2 beta fish. Luke was so excited, so of course we accepted. Here they are, aren't they a couple of beauties? We decided as a family to name the "dark" one Anakin and the orange one Obiwan. We we will call them Anie and Obi for short. They are a unique presence there on our coffee table. Thank you Ms. Donna for or for our fun surprise.

"Nico's Octopus" by Caroline Pitcher and Nilesh Mistry

This is the title we will explore this week. (Aug.25-29, 2008) The story takes place in Greece. We will locate Greece on the map and discuss the customs of this unique place. Our science study will be on the octopus, what else? We will discuss the many fascinating traits of this animal and it's classification. We will discuss the animals amazing creator and how His design gives the octopus may ways of defense. We will also explore the sacrifice and commitment of the octopus mother and draw parallels between them and human mothers. We have National Geographic's "Deep Sea Dive" dvd which we will view over and over again! LOL! For our Math studies we will learn about the prefix "octo" and some of it's uses. We will also discuss odd and even numbers and color an octopus to enhance this lesson. We will also continue lesson 10 from our Math U See curriculum. For our snack and art we will make an octopus out of marshmallows, pretzels, and gel icing for the eyes.(both cute & yummy). (see picture above)

Mary Anne the Steam Shovel

Today we continued our studies with "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel". We began our day on the deck because it was such a perfect morning. The weather was beautiful. We enjoyed listening to the book on CD with bag pipe and symphony music in the background. Luke discovered a dot to dot of Mary Anne on the CD jacket cover, so I made a copy and he completed it. After that he wanted to color the Mary Anne from the dot to dot. He completed picture with a drawing of Mike Mulligan at her side. Luke even illustrated dirt coming from her mouth and a large hole in the ground that the old steam engine had dug. Next, we moved our lesson from the table to the sandbox and played with our very own Mary Anne, even though she wasn't the color red. Luke created one story after another with Mike, a lego man in overalls, and his trusty steam shovel. He constructed roads, cellars, canals, and more. As we played we were able to discuss many aspects of the story like how Mike took great care of Mary Anne and how she was able to keep on working despite being old. We discussed how God wants us to take care of the things he gives us. We also thought about how even when things grow old they are still useful and God still has a plan for them, just like when Mary Anne was used at the end of the story as a furnace instead of being thrown away with all the other steam engines.
We continued our studies with a geography lesson; learning the cardinal signs of the map, North, East, South, West. Luke completed a map of the imaginary town from our story, Popperville.
It was such a joy to be with Luke this morning and watch him learn to love learning! We were in God's creation learning and taking in our very own beautiful back yard. As we played we saw a flock of geese fly overhead and we speculated on where they were headed. We also saw a monarch butterfly and wanted it to land so we could get a picture of it. There was a fairly good sized lizard with a blue tail that ran up the wall as we dug through the sand toys. It was just a banner day at our little school of one! Perhaps the greatest fun of all was watching our crazy dog Sarah run as fast as she could through the yard with her big goofy grin!! We pretended she was Mary Anne and was digging and working as fast as she could and she seemed to play along running faster and faster as we cheered!! This was a great day of love, laughter, and learning!! Thank you Lord for this awesome opportunity! May we have many more days like this one! We are still enjoying k5 in our cozies!

Blessings from above

Today I worked at the out patient clinic here in Easley. God chose to remind me throughout the day how blessed our family was in September of last year. I treated several patients with major injuries leaving them in severe pain and disability after car and motorcycle accidents. I felt it was God's way of gently reminding me of His mercy and grace throughout Travis' devistating car crash and through the past 10 months. I want to praise the Lord today for a husband who can still work, live, and laugh after what could have been a fatal incident. Thank you Lord for his healing and for showing me today your awesome power once again!