Homeschool Highlights

This was a week filled with a lot of science and health activities.

We decided to try our hand at a couple of activities I had found and posted onto Pinterest. We made models of both the spine and human blood.

To make the spine all you need is a pool noodle and some thick ponytail holders.
I cut the pool noodle into about 2" pieces with a bread knife to make our vertebrae (24).

Then use a length of rope or cord to string on alternate noodle pieces (vertebrae) and pony tail holders (disks).

Then tie off the end. That's it!!! Easy peasy lemon squeezy!! Don't you love projects like that?!!

You can find the link to where I found this idea here.

For the blood, here are our suplies.....

BTW...the bags are filled with cheerios with red food coloring added to them.
We filled up our jar with water and added the yellow food coloring. I guess this is how blood looks like without the red blood cells added.

Next add your "red blood cells".

Then add your white blood cells (mini marshmellows and your platelets (purple pom poms) and Viola!! You have human blood! EEEEEWWWWW!

You can find a link to where I found this idea here.
I spent a good portion of the week creating a high school health course for J2. A half credit of health is required to graduate where we live. Since J2 is already taking Advanced Biology (which is all human anatomy)and we can't count any of that towards his health credit I had to really think about what J2 needs in this course. I sat down and asked myself the question, "What do I want J2 to learn before he graduates high school next year that he will take with him for the rest of his life?"

So I created, "Living in Divine Health" for him.

I'll share all the details with you in a later post. Hopefully mid week.

Hope you enjoyed your week!!

Homeschool Highlights

After making a Valentine Pinterest board and becoming inspired, we decided to do a couple of simple crafts.

First thing we tried was Picasso's Rose Period Hearts from The Painted Paper. The simplicity of this project really leaves a lot of room to focus on creativity! Love that! I even tried a few!

And our Valentine pretzel buttons from g*rated did not last long!!!

I am loving having "visual files" I can pull up at any time. I am a visual learner so Pinterest is perfect for me!

We started a lot of new books this week.

B and J3 are reading Squanto and are really enjoying it. I don't have to beg them to read their assigned chapters. :-)

J3 wrote his first report on his favorite subject......reptiles!! We worked on every step together and he got through it with minor frustration. He seemed very happy with the way it turned out. I let his do the whole thing on Microsoft Word to make it easier. He does not mind writing if we take out the "handwriting" component of it.

My high schooler J2 started the book, The Choosen and The Diary of a Young Girl this week. He wrapped up WW1 by filling out a "War Report". This is a form I got right out of the book, Senior High: A Home-Designed Form+U+La by Barbara Edtl Shelton.

Oh! I almost forgot! We had one day in which we got dumped on with a tremendous amount of snow! We have had a pretty green winter this year, which is almost unheard of around where we lived. My oldest commented that maybe all the snow we were supposed to get was saved up for this one day. Anyhoo, B and J3 had to take time out of their regularly scheduled school day (hahaha) to enjoy it.

It's wonderful that home schooling allow us to take advantage of these opportunities because as quick as it came is as quick as it went. We now have green grass again. (You won't hear me complaining about it though!)

Have a great week!!!

Homeschool Highlights

I didn't have time to post our highlights last week due to a pinched nerve in my neck. Starting to finally feel like myself again. Yaaaay!
I have just a few highlights to share from the last couple weeks.

We are wrapping up our lessons on Southwest Indians and we made an Adobe village diorama along with a map of where all the different Native American groups lived.

All of these projects came from the Scolastic book, Southwest Indians - Easy Make and Learn Projects.

We also tried our hand at stenciling some colonial boxes to display at our colonial celebration. B really enjoyed this project.

We also recieved this book that we had oredered from Amazon...

We were so excited to get started that of course we tried the first couple of lessons on getting to know your brush. We are definately going to enjoy this book!

J2 finished reading, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Grapes of Wrath this week. I ordered both movies on Netflix. So far we have watched, All Quiet on the Western Front together. Two words....not good. The movie was so bad that it was hard to focus on anything that was going on. On a positive note, J2 was having to narrarate to J1 and I everything that was going on or how it really happeded in the book. Mission Accomplished!! (by accident) Got to love when that happens! :-)

Have a great week!