Week #11 In Review

LANGUAGE ARTS: Grace completed lessons 4-6 in SWO-B this week, as well as lessons 115-117 in FLL. In keeping with the whole sports theme in Spelling Workout, I added a special incentive for Grace...the spelling homerun. If she spells all the list words correctly--without hesitation--during the Warm-Up Test, then she only has to complete 1-2 of the activities & she can skip the final test. It was a real winner!

READING: We began our new read-aloud book this week, Mr. Popper's Penguins. Very funny stuff! Grace is still independently reading Junie B. Jones: Boss of Lunch. She also read several other books, poems, and passages that tied into our other subjects. One of our unexpected *themes* for Monday was the wind. We had battened down the hatches in preparation for the strong windstorm predicted for the Pacific Northwest. Fortunately, we only had a few really big gusts in our little neck-o-the-woods. But we did manage to find--and read--every single poem we have about the wind.

MATH: Grace finished lessons 34-37 in Horizons 2. Still going strong! She has turned into my little Energizer Bunny of math. YAY! She even worked in some P.E. and math together. How? Simple...count how many times you hula-hoop in one try, write it down, count the next try, write it down, add the two together, then lather, rinse, & repeat.

HISTORY & SCIENCE: We read Chapter 8 ~ The Assyrians in SOTW1. Grace did her narration, coloring page, map work, and copywork. For science, we started studying penguins. The DVD of March of the Penguins just arrived from NetFlix for us to watch this coming week.

ELEMENTARY SPANISH: Grace completed lessons 8-10 from Elementary Spanish Unit 1 on UnitedStreaming. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of a letter from her new Spanish penpal. :)

OTHER: I even managed to get some *major* house cleaning & organization done, including assembling three of these cute little bookcases from IKEA: two for the playroom/learning room & one for the study. Yay me! Next week's challenge...to finish painting (living room, entryway, upstairs & downstairs hallways) before putting up the Christmas tree & decorations. Hmmm...anyone up for Christmas in July?!?!?

In closing, what do you get when you stock up on new PlayDoh? A couple of happy gals, and colors that aren't mixed...yet.

Week #10 In Review

Another week...another report. And this one is even on a (somewhat) timely basis. :) Here's the scoop:

LANGUAGE ARTS: We completed Lesson 3 in SWO-B and Lessons 112-114 in FLL. Grace started copying & illustrating the January-March pages of "The Months" by Sara Coleridge.

READING: Both Grace's independent reading & our read-alouds were a hodge-podge of books this week. We will start our next *official* read-aloud, Mr. Popper's Penguins, this coming week to coincide with our science unit on...you guessed it...penguins.

MATH: Grace is keeping a steady pace with Horizons 2. She finished Lessons 29-33 this week.

SCIENCE & HISTORY: For science, we learned all about salmon this week. Another great Magic School Bus book on this topic ~ MSB Goes Upstream: A Book About Salmon Migration. In history, we read Chapters 6-7 in SOTW1. Grace did the usual activities to go along with the chapters...narrations, map work, crosswords, word finds...but by far my favorite was creating a scrapbook page using our set of house rules. Why was this my favorite? (1) Grace is scrapbooking, and (2) we incorporated a bad pun. [tee hee] Here's our take on The Code of Hammurabi:

The Code of MOM-urabi

SPANISH: Grace watched the video for Elementary Spanish-Unit 1-Lesson 7, then completed the activity sheet & did some copywork.

OTHER: Co-op is moving right along. Grace's "Musical Theatre" class will be performing The Wizard of Oz in the spring, so it's fun to drop in & watch the early stages of rehearsal. Emma gets a kick out of it too...and loves to sing along! Not much got done this week in music & art appreciation, unless you count our attendance of "Go Diego Go! LIVE" this afternoon. It was a belated birthday festivity for the divine Miss Em. I'll close with a few pics...

Outside the Paramount Theatre before the show

A very happy three year old

Miss Gigi McGee patiently poses for the paparazzi (aka ME!)

Matthew pondering the true meaning of Diego

Weeks 8 & 9 ~ In Review

So, I didn’t get around to posting a weekly report last week. No…I wasn’t trapped under something heavy…just very busy. You can read more about it below, if you’ve got the time or inclination. If not, here’s what’s been happening at Evergreen Eclectic Academy over the past two weeks.

LANGUAGE ARTS: Our switch from SWR to Spelling Workout is going well. We’ve completed the first two weeks of SWO-B…discussing spelling rules & phonograms (from SWR) as we go along. FLL is also going smoothly. When we reached lesson #111—the first reading of FLL’s adaptation of “The Year” by Sara Coleridge—it was fun to find several different versions of the poem and compare the differences from one to the other. In the end, I had Grace choose which version she wanted to memorize. It was not the one in FLL, but rather the *original* by Sara Coleridge. Grace will begin memorizing it next week, as well as creating her own illustrated book of the poem.

READING: We started—and finished—a new read-aloud over the past two weeks. Let me just say that if you’ve never read Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield, you are missing out. It is a fabulous book! For independent reading, Grace chose several Halloween-themed selections. She also finished her first Junie B. Jones chapter book…and then promptly chose another one to read. And, no...these photos are not in the least bit staged. Would I ever do such a thing?!? And would my dear daughter so graciously agree?!?

MATH: Still moving along in Horizons 2, and I’m quite pleased to report that Grace’s interest in math has increased with her understanding of it. YAY!!! Those who know me well will understand (& appreciate) this next statement…those who don’t may think I’m a little strange. (OK…let’s be honest…even those who know me well will think I’m strange.) I am absolutely, positively ecstatic that Grace actually does math for fun…on her own…without any prodding by me. She makes up her own math problems and then works them. She asks me to make up problems for her. She asks to do extra one-minute timed drills. She was even working math problems today while shopping at IKEA. Here's one of her *for fun* sheets:

HISTORY & SCIENCE: We worked through chapters 4 & 5 in SOTW1—Ancient Egyptian pyramids and the first Sumerian king—and finished our study of bats. We did lots of fun reading & watched some good UnitedStreaming videos too.

SPANISH: We did a couple of lessons from Elementary Spanish, including some activity sheets & copywork. Sidenote: I know I still haven’t posted on our eclectic Spanish plan…{hanging my head in shame}…it’s coming…soon-ish.

And that sums up another [bi]weekly report. I'll leave you with a photo of the newest 3-year-old in our house—along with proud big sis—taken on a cool fall day here in the Pacific Northwest. Happy fall, y'all!

I'm still here!

Things have been a bit on the busy side for the past week or so. We celebrated Miss Emma's birthday last weekend. She turned the big 3...which meant she really got into the whole birthday thing this year. We also had Halloween festivities, co-op, swimming...and we spent yesterday afternoon at the Creating Keepsakes scrapbook convention. I do think I enjoyed that much more than the girls did. :) Plus, I spent my *free* time this week working like mad to finish up a "First Year" scrapbook gift for a baby shower today. Whew! So...short story long...I haven't had time to blog this week. [gasp] I'll try to get my weekly report for the last 2 weeks posted tomorrow, but I'll leave you with a peek at the album I made.


Baby Girl Album - pgs. 1-10

Baby Girl Album - pgs. 11-20

Baby Girl Album - pgs. 21-30

Credits: Created using Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0. "Girly Without the Pink" digital kit by Shabby Princess. Various digital frames, overlays, & brushes by Katie Pertiet, Anna Aspnes, Nancie Rowe Janitz, Michelle Coleman, Rhonna Farrer, Jackie Eckles, & Heather Ann Melzer. Sketches & templates by Becky Fleck, Angie Briggs & Michelle Coleman. Fonts used - AL Sandra & Linenstroke.

Week #7 In Review

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but this school year is just zipping along. I'm truly amazed that we have finished seven weeks of homeschooling. What did we accomplish in week #7? Here's the rundown:

LANGUAGE ARTS: We did SWR quite differently this week. I gave the Section G words to Grace in an oral pre-test, then we just focused on the missed words during the week--with a final test on Friday. As much as I love the methodology of SWR, it has become a huge burden on us timewise. After much contemplation, next week we'll be making a change in our spelling curriculum. We spent Friday afternoon at our local homeschool bookstore pouring over all the other spelling choices that are in workbook format. You know...easy pick-up-and-go type programs. I narrowed down the choices & had Grace look over them. And the winner is...{insert drum roll here}...Spelling Workout. The parts of SWR that I will continue using are the phonogram cards & spelling rules. Those are like spelling gold!

FLL is moving along nicely now that we've fast-forwarded to the second half of the book. Our lessons this week focused on the state of being verbs. I've still got the chant stuck in my brain:

am [clap]
is [clap]
are, was, were [clap]
be [clap]
being [clap]
been [clap clap]

CHARACTER: Since manners are so important, we continued this week with house rule #6--show respect to others by using good manners. Here are a couple of good reads we picked up at the library:

And since we're on the subject of good manners, we finished thank-you notes from Grace's birthday & mailed them out at the beginning of the week. Here is the young author in action...searching for just the right words, then putting pen(cil) to paper.


READING: Grace's reading confidence, fluency, accuracy, speed, etc. is increasing every week!!! This week she continued reading Junie B. Jones to herself and read the first three chapters of M&M and the Halloween Monster aloud to me. We finished our read-aloud of Bridge to Terabithia, and one of Grace's copywork passages was from the book:


MATH: We have made it through Lesson #20 in Horizons 2. For Grace, math is best done as our first subject...lying on the kitchen floor...in her gown. :)



SPANISH: We did our fourth lesson from the Elementary Spanish video program, and Grace completed the activity sheet. We also played Spanish Bingo--including Emma. Lots of fun!

HISTORY & SCIENCE: We read the first half of Ch. 4 in SOTW1...Ancient Egyptian Mummies. We didn't finish the second half of the chapter, because we got so "wrapped up" in our studies. (Man, do I love a bad pun!) To continue with a Halloween theme, in life science we started learning about bats. Of course, you can't study bats without reading Stellaluna.

Throw in co-op and our continuing composer/artist studies from Ambleside Online, mix well, and that's a wrap. (Sorry...couldn't resist one more mummy pun.) Thanks for stopping by. No scrapbook pages to share this week, but be sure to read the post below about Digital Scrappin'.

Digital Scrappin' 101

How do you get started in digital scrapbooking? And what do you do to get your completed layout from screen to album? I've had inquiries like these a time or two, so I thought I'd formally address this in--what else--a blog post.

First, a little background info about me...I started scrapbooking traditionally (i.e., paper, scissors, glue stick) when Grace was about 6 months old. It was a painfully slow process for several reasons, namely:

1. Grace was only 6 months old. :)
2. I am extremely terribly immensely remarkably quite indecisive.

#1 meant that I had very little time to spend on scrapbooking.

#2 meant that I spent most of that precious time trying to decide on the perfect placement of every photo & embellishment.

In this case, 1 + 2 = very few completed layouts. Not that any of this stopped me from snapping 1000's of photos...literally.

Fast forward to Christmas 2003...or, as I like to call it: If You Give a Mom a Digital Camera. We treated ourselves to our very first digital camera. Digital camera=photos on computer. This led to "I'm printing them out anyway, so why don't I add a little here & a little there." And then, "Oh...what's this crazy new thing called digital scrapbooking all about?" Once I dipped my toes in the water, I quickly decided (yep, quickly) to jump in with both feet. And I haven't looked back since. Not once. Why? Here's another handy list:

1. Set-up & clean-up takes only as long as opening & closing my laptop.
2. No sharp objects lying about tempting those little munchkins.
3. No unfinished layouts lying about either that the aforementioned munchkins might decide to "help" with.
4. If I don't have that perfect shade of pink paper to coordinate with my dd's outfit in the photo, no problem. I can shop online at midnight or make it myself.
5. Remember that problem I have with indecisiveness? Let's just say that CTRL-Z (undo) is my best friend.
   
6. Digital layouts are easy to share. I can print multiple copies...one for Nana, one for Mamaw, and one for me. Plus, I can e-mail them to Matthew at work, my sister in Memphis, Kristi & Keith in Texas (you get the idea) or share them on my blog. :)

So...what kind of software should you choose? First, think about how much time you want to invest in learning a new program. {I hear all the homeschoolers out there laughing maniacally at this statement. Time? For me? To learn something new?} There are many software choices that range from super easy drag-and-drop, print-and-done types to the high learning-curve graphics-editing behemoth that is Adobe Photoshop CS3. I personally use CS3's little brother Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0. The learning curve is not quite as high as CS3...and neither is the price.

Now...how do you actually go about creating your first layout? Instead of reinventing the wheel by giving you all the nitty-gritty details of my workflow, I'll point you in the direction of some great tutorials:

• The Shabby Shoppe ~ Good "how to create your first layout" tutorials for CS2/CS3/PSE, including a *video* tutorial.
• Two Peas in a Bucket ~ Another good "how to get started" tutorial.
• Scrapbook Bytes ~ Even more tutorials.

Next...free digital kits (paper, embellishments & the like) to get you hooked started:

• Shabby Princess ~ The *free* side of The Shabby Shoppe.
• Two Peas in a Bucket ~ Freebies.

Plus...some good layout galleries for inspiration:

• Scrapbook Bytes
• Two Peas in a Bucket
• Digi Shop Talk

And...now that you've become a digi-addict...some great places to shop:

• Designer Digitals
• ScrapArtist
• Shabby Miss Jenn
• The Shabby Shoppe
• Jen Wilson Designs
• Heather Ann Designs
• Digital Design Essentials

Whew! Now on to printing. I like convenience. That means I print everything at home on my Epson Stylus Photo R220 printer using primarily either Epson Matte Paper Heavyweight or Epson Semigloss Scrapbook Paper. I scrap square sizes (8.5x8.5; 8x8; 6x6) & rectangular sizes (8.5x11 or 11x8.5). Still want to scrap 12x12? Check out Costco's photo center, if you have one nearby. And while I did start out scrapping 12x12, I really don't miss it now. Plus, the smaller sizes are easier for the kiddos to hold while looking through them. And you don't have to make them wear protective gloves & handle the scrapbook like it's a fine piece of your great-grandmother's china because it's the only copy you have. While re-printing a damaged layout might be inconvenient, it's definitely not disastrous.

So, that's my *summary* of the hows & whys of digital scrapbooking. Congratulations! You made it to the end of this rather lengthy post. For that, I'll give you my best Paul Harvey impression. Remember If You Give a Mom a Digital Camera? And now, for the rest of the story...

When we bought our first digital camera, we went with a middle-of-the-road Canon PowerShot (point & shoot) because "we didn't need anything too big or fancy." Famous last words. Since then I've upgraded...twice.

Happy scrappin'!!!

Week #6 In Review

Fall is one of my favorite times of year. It's also one of those times of the year that seems to just fly by. And that was before we started homeschooling. This week was no exception. However, despite several distractions...beautiful weather, Emma's impending cold, and a mid-week "date" night...we managed to get quite a bit done. Here are the highlights:

LANGUAGE ARTS: This week in SWR we concentrated on reviewing the 70 phonograms, as well as a few key spelling rules. We picked back up in FLL with the second half of the book, which has a much better pace, IMHO. For fun, we added in some Schoolhouse Rock to review all those parts of speech. Our main selection for copywork & memorization was "Table Manners" (aka "The Goops") by Gelett Burgess. This also tied in nicely with our CHARACTER lesson.

READING: We're still working through Bridge to Terabithia as our read-aloud. Grace's independent reading consisted of Owl at Home, Young Cam Jansen & the Zoo Note Mystery, and...drum roll please...her FIRST EVER READ-TO-HERSELF CHAPTER BOOK. It's a Junie B. Jones book that she picked out on our last library visit. I'm sure Charlotte Mason would consider it twaddle, but I'm tickled that she finally wants to read something all by herself...to herself. I just had her give me a summary of each chapter as she finished it, then one night she read a chapter to me...just so I could see how she's doing. Two thumbs up!

MATH: Grace completed four lessons in Horizons 2. And since we are working on skip-counting by 3's, we watched...you guessed it...Schoolhouse Rock's "3 is a Magic Number." Ahhh...good times...

CHARACTER: House rule #6--show respect to others by using good manners. See LA discussion above...love those Goops!

SPANISH: We did a combination of UnitedStreaming's Elementary Spanish (unit1, lesson3) and Spanish for Children (lesson1). I know...I know...I still need to post our Spanish plan. It's on my to-do list. :)

Add in a co-op day and some beautiful, sunny days in the Pacific Northwest, and you've got a full week. In closing, here are some photos taken at our trip to the pumpkin patch today. Thanks for stopping by!




Credits: Created in Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0. Templates by Jen Caputo & Heather Roselli. "Cherrywood Farm" digital kit by Shabby Miss Jenn. Staples by Amber Clegg. Fonts used--Shalimar Swash & Linenstroke.