Graduating another one!!

Second son is graduated from high school and now I can focus on summer fun, home decor projects, his party in August, and blogging!! I'm not sure why but it was very hard for me to blog this past year. I really have no excuses but now I am feeling re-inspired to start blogging again.

My dream has finally come true! What is it you ask??? Keeping chickens! Now when I just said that you either said to yourself, "Yay!" or "Why?" Hahaha! Well, if you said, "Yay!"....stay tuned!
I can not wait to blog about them and their new coop we built!!

Here's a pic of the girls. There's seven of them.

Today, I'm getting out the summer stuff and changing the seasons around here....finally! Feels great to have summer touches around the house.

Well, back to my laundry! :-)

Highschool Health Course

I'm finally finding some time to tell you about the health course I created for J2. He completed Sonlights Human Anatomy course in middle school and Biology in eighth grade. This year he is working on Biology 2 which is all human anatomy. So I really had to pray about what I wanted to accomplish for this 1/2 credit requirement he needed. Everything seemed kind of redundant to say the least.
After some prayer, I put together a cover sheet for him to work through. I think I reprinted this 10 times!! I kept changing things!

Here is the main book list;

Body By God by Ben Lerner (portions) He has already started this book and we think some portions are more applicapable to him that others so we are skipping around.

Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations by Brett and Alex Harris

His older brother read this as well and it really impacted him.

Build Powerful Nerve Force: It Controls Your Life-Keep it Healthy by Patricia Braggs
This is my all time favorite health book! I'm hoping he loves it too.
It covers everything you would want a Christian boy or girl to know about health to take with them into adulthood. That's just my two cents though! :-)There is actually a whole series of these but this one sums it all up to me.

I then created time sheets for each book he would be reading.

I got a lot of my templates from the book, Senior High: A Home Designed Form+U=LA. All I can say about this book is....AWESOME! It has really taken a lot of the fear of high school away for me. I bought it when J1 was in tenth grade.
I'm also going to have him fill out a book review sheet from the Form+U=LA for each book he completes.

Now let's talk about driving practice. Very important! I included driving practice and the five hour course as assignments to complete. He's already taken the five hour course, so we crossed off five hours on his main time sheet.
I also made him a time sheet for driving practice.

What else is important for health and happiness now and as an adult? Wisdom! Wisdom! Wisdom! As the head of his household I want him to know that wisdom is the principal thing. So, I included a mini wisdom study. I found both sheets in the FORM+U+LA. You could use these sheets for any study though.

I also compliled some articles for him to read. Topics include; teen nutrition, the anti-inflammatory food pyramid, and what the Bible says about healing and health. Any articles you find that you think would be important for your student (of course from people you respect) could go into this section.

He also had to choose an important vitamin and food to research from the World's Healthiest Foods webstite. (Great site by the way!) He choose Vitamin D and Blackstrap Molasses.

He will also be researching some healthy snacks to create and then have the young critics in the family taste test them. :-)

And that's about it! I may add a thing here or there such as a CPR class. The great thing about creating your own class is that you can taylor everything to fit your student and his/her needs. If something you are doing is not working in the class you created just replace it with a better option.

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

Another week is complete! This week went so much better for us.... thankfully!

This week in Early American history we did an archeological dig.

Along with digging up four layers of "artifacts" you record your findings in a journal.

Here are some of their findings...

We also made pop up cards of the early settlers houses.

Both projects are from Homeschool in the Woods. They are getting excited to display all their projects at out Colonial Celebration (with Dad).

J2 studied for his Advanced Biology test with a buddy :-) Ha! Ha!

Hope you can see him in this pic. He kind of blends in with the couch. Our lizard Bolt! He was great company until he left J2 with a little present on his shoulder!

J2 also worked on his cubist art project that we found over at A Faithful Attempt.
I love the way its turning out. I will be using this project for an homeschool art class I will be teaching this spring. Love that I will have his project to show as an example.

Today, we had our first day of bowling with our group. We have done it every winter for the past 6 years now. It was nice to have some fun with friends to start our week.

Have a wonderful week!!

J2's Junior Year Curriculum Plans

This year is going to be an adjustment because J1 has graduated but is taking a Gap year (more on that later) and J2 will be schooling for the first time without his brother. All of us are trying to settle in on a new routine and way of doing things.

J2's schedule has finally taken shape! A lot of what we are doing this year will be new to the both of us so it's going to be an adventure.

Science: Apologia Advanced Biology, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Philip Yancey and The Human Anatomy Coloring book by Wyn Kapit
Also, to make my life easier, I ordered Sonlight's Advanced Biology schedule. We used it for Chemistry last year and it was a real time saver and great record keeper.

History: Ambelside Online's suggestions and plans, A History of the Twentieth Century by Martin Gilbert as a spine book. He has also started the book, Seven Men Who Rule the World From the Grave by David Breeze and Theodore Rosevelt's letters to his Children. We will be adding in Ambleside's speeches too. We are also gleening all we can from Harmony Art Mom since she has done this before and is doing it again this year with her last homeschooler. One of her suggestions was to use The Book of Centuries from Notebooking.com so I purchased it this past week.

English: Ambelside Online's suggestions and a few of my own. We will be following their poetry schedule and some suggested by Harmony Art Mom. Our first poet is Edna St. Vincent Millay. He will be reading a selection of short stories and essays. For literature, he is starting with, The Grapes of Wrath. Shakespeare this year will begin with The Merchant of Venice. We will be working through Jensen's Grammar and also doing SAT prep. I'm still working on his writing plans. (This is where I always struggle)

Health: The SAS Survival Handbook:The Ultumate Guide to Surviving in any Climate, on Land or Sea by John Wiseman, The Survivorman Series, Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris
We will be adding to this list as the year progresses.

Art Survey: I'm not sure if I will keep this exact name for this class but it will include: acting, graphic arts, stop motion/animation, and photography, J2 already spent about 60 hours as an extra in a movie called, King's Faith over the summer. He will be taking the graphic arts and photography courses through or home school co-op. He has a program he purchased for the computer animation that he will be using to complete a short film.

We are looking forward to a great year!