Valentine's Day gift from hubby!

 I have been doing school in the living room since it is the most baby proof room for Caleb to play in while we school. I seen a coffee table made on Pintrest using wooden crates that we purchased at Home Depot. So even though he has a broken hand he stubbornly decided to make me it for Valentines Day. It is a wonder gift and holds my school books and Bibles we use daily. I love it!  It these little things that make my day easier as a homeschooling mama.

Biblioplan Cool History worksheets

      We are doing Biblioplan this year for everyone. Last year my high school students did Biblioplan and the elementary did Mystery of History. I am excited because we are also doing a coop along with other Christ centered families doing Biblioplan together. I will post about that tomorrow.
      We completed our first week. I am preparing for next week sitting outside. We are doing the Cool History worksheets on Fridays at home to review all that we have learned doing the week.I like doing the worksheets together.This helps me as mom see what they did learned. This also saves me time of checking papers. They each take turns reading the question. We discuss it together and then fill out the worksheet. So what I am doing to prepare for next week is highlighting the answers in my book since with Bibliopan elementary you pick and choose what you want them to learn in the textbook. High school students have to read everything and they answer their worksheets on their own they do not sit with me since they have essays etc. to write. So this is going to help me make sure I cover that section for our Friday Cool history worksheets. This is also giving me a quick view on what we are going to learn which is fun. I find most of it interesting so we will cover as much as we can but if life throws a curve ball at me like a teething fussy baby etc. I can at least make sure we cover the material in the Cool History worksheets.

Here is a picture of us working on our art homework for coop. They are painting the cover and back  of their lap book they will work on all year at coop. We brought in some stones from outside to study and look at the colors and texture of the rocks that would of been used to build castles.

Ancient History games and figures

I purchased some games and a famous figure book for our Ancient history lessons using Mystery of History. They are great for review and to see how much they have learned.I purchased the figures too. You can use them for lap books etc. I am going to place the colored ones on the wall for review of important figures.

Nehemiah cut out Nebakinezzar 2 since we are studying him now.

Wisdom Booklet 37-Determination~Character Quality.

   We have began WB 37. I am behind in blogging about our WB. 

We have been working on our Wisdom Worksheet. We completed the Wisdom Quiz, & Meditation Worksheet. Our Character focus for this WB is determination. Determination ~ purposing to accomplish God's goals in God's time regardless of the opposition. We are getting ready to study Daniel & Nehemiah in history  who are great examples of this and I can't wait to for them to see this character trait in history etc. as we work through the WB37.

      We are spending our entire week studying this character and looking for it in every day life as well as in all our subjects. We completed the character quality worksheet studying the word, looking at antonyms, synonyms, Bible characters who demonstrated and did not show determination. We also were challenged with how can we show determination. 

     I have decided to set aside our botany study for the week and do the character sketches of animals that show determination in the Character Sketches (the book volume 1 click here). We will also be studying those in the Bible who had determination for Bible time.This is what we will be studying.

Today we learned about the cecropia moth . We looked at how present struggles are essential for future achievement.I copied the picture of the moth in the Character Sketch coloring book and we made a mini-book of the life cycle of the moth, I also purchased on ebay some eggs we can raise and release. They are from our state so we are also learning PA wildlife. I can't wait to get them fun..fun! We have raised Monarch buttlerflies so this will be differant. They eat maple leaves & apple tree leaves so getting food will be easy.

Here is a link to pictures I used to make this mini-booklet. click here for pictures.

They then had to relate the moth to the character quality in the mini-booklet. We glued everything in their WB notebook.

Mystery of History organizing with Post It Tabs

I have blogged about Post It Tabs before but I wanted to show how useful they are for Mystery of History. As you can see from the picture I can easily use them to check maps, pretests, and quizzes. I also have a quick reference to reading the Bible and choose books for read Aloud and the students to read. I use these tabs on everything. I love using the tabs and bookmarks!!!

God King ( MOH & Biblioplan ) Read Alouds

We just finished our book the God King by Joanne Williamson and I really enjoyed it. It was a recommended read aloud by Biblioplan and it went well with our history study. We will do a book report on it on Monday. I like that it goes with our history and includes Bible history. The end of the book the author explains what was fact and what was fiction in the book which I liked so they were not confused. This ends our study on the Assyrian empire and next week we will start studying the Babylonians. This book was good in learning about the Assyrians and also good for Egyptian history as it really looked at how the Egyptians thought their pharohs were gods. This is a great way to reflect on how Moses when stood before pharoh it was the battle of God and the pharoh.Of course there is only one true God who was in control . 

   So the next book we will read aloud is Daniel , Out of the Mouth of  Lions that is also recommended by Biblioplan but for a student reader .I am going to read it as a read aloud. 

Mystery of History timeline- Wall of Fame

I started off the school year by making a timeline book that each child had their own. We were not keeping up with that since it required me printing out and all of them doing a timeline. I did love the individuality and the ability to add more to the timeline but it wasn't getting done so I purchased the sewing board from Amazon and made a timeline like the author recommended .

I choose my own colors for the duck tape for the timeline. An easy way to add the figures is to just lay them out and use clear packing in tape to place them on the timeline. I then use a permant marker to add the dates. 

I am using the free timeline figures you can find on Pinterest or on my past post when we did the timeline books. We review the time period then they each color the figures. I am having the kids color Bible history titles orange and history yellow. 

This timeline folds up nice and is smaller than a science board so it's easy to keep if you are limited in space. I did use white contact paper to cover it. You can still see the lines through the contact paper but I like that to use to place my time lines on. Others have used marble patterns etc. if I ever have a large wall for a big timeline I would purchase the Konos timeline. This time line meets my needs and is working great.

  I like doing the map work and timeline review before we take our weekly review quiz. This seems to help them remember it all and put it together more than I did in school learning history. The more I use MOH the more it proves to be a good choice for our family.