A New Sunflower...

Blooms in the sunflower garden! The moulan rouge variety is just splendid. I'm only sorry that the other one disappeared. We'd planted them symmetrically but somehow the counterpart on the opposite side vanished. So, we planted an autumn variety that I'm anxious to see. More blooms are on the way.

This was taken last Sunday (August 21, 2011) just before we left for the week and more blooms were on the way on this same plant. The only thing that isn't so fun is that this flower has lost its petals and just now the new blooms are ready. Ok...so maybe Hurricane Irene had something to do with the loss of petals. Maybe.

We have another variety in bloom this week and I took the pictures to share with you. This has been a fun project. The 4-H educators are coming to see our garden sometime soon. They are measuring for the tallest plants, but we didn't plant until Father's Day so I don't know why they are bothering! However, they insist that with the growing season being somewhat dismal this year, you never know what will qualify as a giant. We especially didn't plant the giant variety because with such a late planting date I didn't think we'd see it to the harvest before the frost.

Our Mammoth Grays are showing signs of forming flowers and they are the tallest we have. More pictures coming soon!

Getting Ready

Before we left on this most recent camping trip, I was doing some hoeing out and finally I put away last year's school work. I think I read on a blog within the last day or so that others walk away from it all at the end of the year only to come back and deal later on. That was me this year! Sometimes I do it right away. This year...not so much.

I got to use my new ProClick which, in agreement with others, is absolutely uh-mazing! I can totally see where the notion of, "I must find more to bind" comes from!

I emptied the math journals and bound them up and stored them away in a labeled container (a reusable grocery bag did the track for all of our 2010-2011 work!).

My new super tool- the ProClick by GBC

What a mess! Since I don't change out activities day to day in these workboxes, they get messy AND you can see we lack discipline in using all the boxes- my kids like to stuff all their work on the top row. They are just a lot to keep after with four kids and more of a relaxed homeschooling environment.

At our house they gather dust and "stuff" accumulates behind them. Have a ever mentioned that my kids target practice with their Nerf guns on our maps there? They have an elaborate system involving different point values of the various states. As you can imagine...behind these racks on the floor were copious amounts of foam darts and legos and fake coins and beads and buttons and...

Though we have started school slowly this year (as is typical), we are scheduled to begin in earnest tomorrow. I still have my work cut out for me this evening! I did get E12's books set up, but I need to find a balance with those workboxes. They are my nemesis. There. I said it. I simply need to face the fact that when it all comes down, they do not serve our style of homeschooling well. At this point, they are a place where we store our school work when we aren't using it and since I have little option to change that, I'm working with what I have. I am experimenting with using only the rack without the boxes for a few subjects so that the notebook/book will lay flat on the rack. It might be easier for the kids to maintain. Once I've got it figured out, I will share with you all. But something needs to change!

More on the start of school and the plans for the other kids as I finish them. I'm looking forward to a good start for our new school year!

How the States Got Their Shapes

We are home from another camping trip! I scheduled one post for our time away and then had trouble getting things in order for a post upon our return! We camped up on Lake Ontario at Fair Haven Beach State Park- a family favorite and it began and ended with severe weather including a "close" miss on an F2 tornado (which we would have certainly crossed paths with had we not delayed our departure that day and some too- close for- comfort lightning)! In between we had the earthquake and now we are wrapping up our wild weather week with a grazing from Hurricane Irene.  I have some great nature study to share with you from this trip. Look for it soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you a book and accompanying TV show on the History Channel that maybe you have not seen. It's called How the States Got Their Shapes and it's based on the book with the same name by Mark Stein. The show was a special we caught one time while channel surfing and they ended up turning it into a series. This is a gem of a show! Run now to set your DVRs for this one. All of our kids enjoy it and the host, Brian Unger is pretty funny.

Since they keep quoting the author on the show, I finally sought to get the book at the library. So far E12 has read it and loved it and R11 is working on it now.

We record this show regularly now (along with the Price Is Right...don't ask!) and we love to watch it as a family. We learn lots of tidbits about the states and how they ended up with the borders they have. Some of them will surprise you!

8th Grade 2011-2012

This year we are embarking on 8th grade with E12. 8th grade! Do you all realize how dangerously close to high school that is?

The mainstay of E12's education this year will be WinterPromise's The Quest for the Middle Ages for Jr/Sr High. He is excited to begin this study in conjunction with his work in Falconry. We'll also be doing some beginning Latin as a family for our foreign language. We'll also being doing some art and music appreciation through WinterPromise and Harmony Fine Arts- together as a family.

As I just posted about, E12 will doing the One Year Adventure Novel this year.

WinterPromise: The Quest for the Middle Ages for Jr/Sr High has a whole stack of fun books that we'll get to know quite well. I'm excited about the church history portion of the program.

We'll also be doing WinterPromise: Human Body and Forensics along with Quest for the Middle Ages.

He will continue with Algebra I which he began in March and we'll throw some Life of Fred in there as well.

E12 is our first FIAR graduate. He's always done unit studies on various topics and books. So, I really wanted to keep the feel of reading many books (but not texts) on a topic and doing projects and really digging in. This will test our resolve I think because we are used to switching gears now and then throughout the year. However, I think it will really be quite engaging.

One Year Adventure Novel

For English this year E12 is doing the One Year Adventure Novel. He has been super excited to get started and kept asking all summer if we could just start already. We began this week and so far he loves it. If you click the link and watch the introductory video, E12 is the perfect kid for this program. He has lots of ideas, but begins to wash out part way through his story. The program is designed to develop the outline of your story for the first semester and in the second semester you construct your novel. At the end you can share your novel on the website.

The first task is to watch the video segment for the day, read from the text book called The Compass, and then do exercises from the workbook called The Map. At least so far...part way through we'll begin work on the novel rather than doing the workbook which is the outline of the novel. Each of The Map exercises requires a teacher evaluation based on a rubric. There are also weekly quizzes.

Some days we get to read excerpts from other adventure novels.

I am going through the process with E12 so we can evaluate each others work. Seeing the instruction and going through the process will help me to be a better sounding board for our new author.

This was an assignment on point of view- switching points of view is no good. Our novels will be in the first person.

So far we are enjoying it a lot. The program's author and instructor is interesting to watch and the video segments are pretty compelling. I'm excited to see how E12's novel shapes up with some direction. We hope to revisit the One Year Adventure Novel again in 10th or 11th grade to see how his writing matures.

Sewing Camp Day 2 (cont)

The girls picked out great fabrics and they enjoyed learning how to connect the fabric and make the tiers of their skirt.

R11 is sewing her strip together

Remember all those long strips she sewed together? This was after she cut them down (the picture above is her making them into a circle). Each of these will be a tier in the skirt.

The girls had to do some math to figure out the length of the new strips- how their hips measured and then 1.5 times that to allow for a nice ruffle.

Our school table makes a great place to have lots of sewing machines. We don't have a ton of space so be encouraged! If I can do this in 1400 sq feet with 14 people, you can do it at your house!

This is going to be a great skirt- just look at those fun colors!

One camper chose to start and finish her bag. She was sick during the last camp day. Great job!

So, our next camp day is Monday the 29th and we have one scheduled for later in the week on the first if we have things to finish up or we want to do a project in a day. This has been great. The girls have had a lot of fun and without too much effort, we've been able to replicate the sewing school experience with little expense. I would definitely do it again. In fact, I'm considering a once a month afternoon. Hopefully, we'll see some takers.

Sewing Camp Day 2

We had our second day of sewing camp on Monday. We had 14 people here- 3 moms, 5 campers, and a bunch of brothers- and a little sister. The girls were working on a patchwork tiered skirt. First they needed to cut their fabric into strips and then they sewed the strips together.

Some strips were 2.5 inches and some were longer. We left it up to the girls.

After sewing the strips together, the girls cut those into strips that will make the layers of the skirt.

There were all kinds of great fabric. I really like this batik design. This will be a great skirt!

As is R11's trademark, she chose a turquoise and aqua theme.

They even ironed successfully...R11 has written a Code of Conduct (which I will have to share!) and she wants to add, "Never mess with an iron." to it based on an early ironing incident at her sewing school.

Our next date is scheduled for August 29th.We'll work on the skirts again and see if we can't finish them up. I have another set of pictures to share...for some reason Blogger won't let me add them here. So, I give up! Two posts it is.

Sunflower Garden Update #2 and #3

I keep forgetting to update you all on our sunflower garden so I'm going to do it all at once here. We planted them on Father's Day and they've been doing well since then. We've been careful to water them and nothing is around to hinder them from getting sun.

This was as of July 31st- getting bigger!

This week we saw our first bloom!

They were planted fairly symmetrically so this one is the partner on the other side. Not sure which variety...we need to go back and look at our map!

As tall as I9 and taller than J6

We are excited to see the flowers bloom! And they look great around the mailbox. What's not to love? We have some other varieties getting closer to coming out. I'm excited to see the moulon rouge flowers which are next I think. We only have one left as the other disappeared the first week. We replanted it with an autumn bouquet, but it will be a little later since we started it later. The two seed varieties have some more growing to do yet. We'll keep you posted.

T-Shirt Refashion: American Girl Style

Busy with another project today, R11 refashioned a t-shirt for her dolls. I gave her an old MOPS t- shirt and she surprised me by making it into a tank top for her dolls. There are tons of ways to remake an old t-shirt so hang on to them and see what happens!

Kirsten is wearing a refashioned t-shirt tank featuring the 2006 MOPS theme logo.

Zone 15 is a vintage term for MOPS in NY State. We are now Area 22 NY and New England.

Our designer decided to go with something a little different in the back using her book as a guide.

Here we have the addition of two seams (one got turned around on her- oops!) and a tie back design.

The second t-shirt refashioning book- this one is less fashion and more accessories and stuff

Kirsten makes a great model.

The original- warning some of these are just plain ugly and some could never be worn modestly, but there a few really cute designs worth trying!

Clearly, she is on a creative streak! I've been bouncing around several ideas around for her school year, but we are going to start with our American Girl units again. You have to strike while the iron is hot and she won't be 11 and in love with her dolls forever- sniff. I have some special things planned which I'll be happy to share very soon. To toss out one hint...I9 will be joining the studies which will include an American Girl and some American Boy studies as well. It's still coming together, but it will be memorable!

Life of Fred Elementary

For those of you who don't know, there are some new Fred books available- for kids not ready for Fractions! So far we've purchased Apples and Butterflies, but I can see we'll be adding Cats and Dogs very quickly. J6 cannot put it down! He reads to me from it daily and we have been having such a good time with it. Yes, school is getting underway here whether I'm ready or not! Isn't that what happens when new school books arrive?

J6 loves Fred. LOVE it when he reads and laughs. Priceless.

J6 has been reading away and telling us all about deciduous trees and teeth and Archimedes the mathematician. His first grade math is off to a fantastic start. I'm finalizing plans and getting things in order to begin a new year in earnest. I'll share soon what the plan is for everyone.

Quilting Math

So, the quilting continued today at our house and it provided a great opportunity for some math. R11 does her math best in the context of her sewing. I am going to have to give serious thought to this in the next few weeks- how I can incorporate more intentionally on my part some projects that would illustrate some concepts for her. She and I9 worked hard and completed all the squares. I didn't get photos of the two signature squares because they were just finished up, but I can assure you they will stand out. Stay tuned on that!

We wanted to calculate the size of the finished quilt- length and width and area- don't you love that square?

Initial calculations complete with a sketch of the quilt- I can keep R11 on task if it's something she needs for her sewing. My job now is to figure on how much of what her new concepts need to be can be wrapped up in sewing fun. Ideas welcome! She's in 6th grade.

In the end, she decided to get a better idea if her math was correct by laying out the quilt squares. Then I suggested she work on her quilt layout while she had it all on the floor. This would take some time so...

...since I couldn't put my hands on Little Women I offered to read to her from Team of Rivals.

You know...that "little" book about Abraham Lincoln. We really enjoyed it! It talks about so many people we encountered during our big unit on the Civil War that we have plenty of prior knowledge. For example, when the book said that Abraham Lincoln would sit in William Seward's home with his legs stretched out toward the fireplace telling stories, we could imagine it having been to William Seward's home in Auburn, NY! It might take us forever, but we will press on. We talked also about the primary resources that Ms. Kearns used to write her book and how that gave a different picture of the President than other biographies. This one is worth the effort!

The book mentioned that President Lincoln was the "shrewdest and canniest of them all" (referring to his rivals for the Republican nomination that year). Well, we knew what uncanny was so we decided to look up canny. Franklin speller to the rescue- for novelty. It means...smart.

To encompass the imperfections in her quilt, the duo is planning to do a sashing between the squares. She was getting a good look and then she took a picture of the final arrangement which includes well placed signature squares!

Slowly and steadily we ease ourselves back into a school routine! Cleverly disguised as sewing and reading aloud, I have begun some review. Seriously though, I love all the projects going around here and I love a good read aloud! I was particularly struck, while reading the book, that the political climate and concern at that time was not all that different from today. Tensions were high and the issue of slavery had been brewing for years. If you read today's headlines, this book depicts a similar demeanor. I thought that was interesting considering we tend to long for simpler times. I think that maybe politics are rarely that simple.

Quilt Project

R11 and I9 have been busy most of today working on some quilt squares. They are making a quilt from fabric scraps and having the best time working together. Apparently, if I9 helps out with the grunt work on this quilt (he's been pressing seams and helping with design decisions as far as I can tell), then she will help him to make a ammunition pouch for his Nerf darts. Win/win.

Sewing away on the world's messiest surface! R11's crafts knows no bounds...just ask Dan!

Our sewing pal Mrs. R picked this free booklet up for us. I think it inspired this latest endeavor.

Some of the finished squares...aren't they fun? This is going to be a funky quilt!

They've been using this as one resource- it has a lot of good tips and instructions.

Pressing open the seams...

Pressing out the front...How do you like that color combo?

This is a seam allowance guide...with directions on how to use it!

They are beginning work on the signature square...only they ran out of fabric. They will need to begin again.

What could be better than a brother-sister pair working together on a project? I've seen R11 make a lot of quilt squares. Let's see if she can put this together! To that end, I have some math ideas on this quilt that we will work out tomorrow. Sewing provides tons of opportunities for living math projects. She will be calculating the finished size of the quilt given the dimensions and number of each square while allowing for seam allowances once the quilt is complete. This comes at a perfect time because I really need to hit it for the planning in the next couple of weeks. It's almost go time!