Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!  This has been a truly blessed Easter Season for us.  We started our week with Sarah singing Palm Sunday at Church for the Choir.  Then we began working on our Passion Week poster board (see previous post for instructions) -where we read the Bible passages and discussed the things that took place each day of the final week of Jesus' life.  We then made a symbol/craft of some sort to communicate something about that week to help us remember and affixed it to the square under that day/information.  Good Friday we attended a Worship Service at a friend's Church at noon.  Then we went to another friend's Church for a gallery style depiction of the Passion Week.  You walked in and the Sanctuary was dark except for the small lights that hung over each picture depicting something from each day of the Passion Week.  The final thing you came to was a large wooden cross.  Beside the cross was sheets of paper, nails and some hammers.

We were the only people there at that moment so I snapped a quick picture!

You could write any care, worry, prayer, concern -whatever - and then nail it to the cross.  So creative and cool; cathartic for anyone hurting as well.  It culminated in a gigantic picture of Jesus coming out of the tomb and the Lord's Supper that you could take before leaving.  Finally, we went to a Passover Seder but this Seder was different.  It was led by a Messianic Jew who explained all the symbolism of the Messiah, Jesus, in each aspect of the Jewish Seder.  It was very interesting.  We thoroughly enjoyed it!  Then of course today was Resurrection Sunday!  After Church we had lunch and an Easter Egg Hunt with family at Grandma's house!  It was a truly blessed week focused on what really matters!

Here is our completed poster!

Passion Week Project

I wanted a way to help my daughter really understand what the Passion Week was and how Jesus spent his last week on Earth!  So I put this project together that helps her understand it.  She was doing it with her best friend.  It's not completed (we've only got 3 days done at this posting), but I thought I'd post it free to anyone who wants to use the idea/materials.

Easter Eggs - The FUN way!!

So by now you all know I have many uses for shaving cream!  It's such a great sensory tool for kids to explore and they love it.  We made Easter Eggs with shaving cream and food coloring.  They're very simple and it's loads of fun for the kids to mess around in and the eggs come out pretty neat and each one is different.  Half of the fun is the big "reveal" the next day when they rinse them off and see what they ended up with from that big mess!

Easter Party - Resurrection Tomb Project

Today was our last official Wonderful Wednesday class!  We did an Easter Project and Party together to celebrate our completion of the CC year together!  It's been such a blessing to create this journey with these awesome women.  There has been much behind the scenes in the way of support, love extended, shared struggles and encouragement as a result of this group.  God has certainly used it to provide an enriched experience in homeschooling through our CC year.  I've watched the kids craft and create their way through tangible memory pegs with joy.  I know it has been a highlight to our weeks of school!  Truly a humbling and blessed experience.  I'm thankful to the women who jumped in on my idea and believed in me and the vision of Wonderful Wednesdays!

So onto the project!  I wanted to give the kids a hands on project for considering the burial and resurrection of Jesus.  First I thought of doing that cool pot with the three crosses that grows grass that I had seen on Pinterest several times.  It looked neat.  However, I decided it was much more cost effective and gave them more ownership in creating, to have the kids make their own "tombs" out of salt dough (using a tin can as the mold) and then bake them and paint them, adding some embellishments like moss and a cross on the back.  We also added the element of a "Jesus" using wide scoop craft sticks with our own "frankincense and myrrh" with old spices I had and gauze for the wrapping.  It was truly fun and the kids all had neat different versions to how they saw Jesus and his tomb.  I love when you give them enough information to then create something in their own style instead of just simply copying what they see.

CC Week 24 - Making World Globes

I wanted to do a final project for Wonderful Wednesdays that would help pull the final week of Science together for the kids.  I figured a world globe would be a good ending project.  Little did I know the magnitude of the project!  Now I've done some big projects this year (let us not forget making 28 volcanoes the night before WW back on Week 16!)....however, this one seemed to trump them all.  I think I underestimated the amount of time it would take and it certainly did take a lot of time!  It all started out easy enough...we got together on Tuesday (we decided it would be Terrific Tuesday!) and we paper mache'd the globes and then set them to dry till the next day.  I figured surely that would be the only piece that would require extra time and I planned for it.  Well....

Week 24 - Hand Motions for Science

Sarah and I had made up hand motions for this week's Science to make it easier to remember...

Happy PI (3.14) Day!

Today was PI (3.14) Day!  So....we had to celebrate by heading down to Pie Bird Restaurant in Raleigh because they were celebrating this very educational day by offering pie slices for $3.14 each!  It was an educational field trip - don't you agree?

Memory Review Party #2 for our CC Community

Timeline Limbo!

My wonderful Director took a chance on my idea to have two Foundation's Community wide "Review Parties" this year.  We scheduled one in the beginning 12 weeks of our year and the second was scheduled to occur toward the end of our second 12 weeks. The idea was to build relationships among parents and children within our Foundation's Community while encouraging them in their pursuit of Foundation's memory work.  I also wanted the kids to see practicing memory work can be fun - hopefully encouraging the kids to work hard at home!  We had a good turn out in spite of the many busy athletic schedules and the fact that it was a nice day which we hadn't seen as of late!  One third of the Foundation's Community was present to participate!

Finishing Well - Week 24 - 1st Proof

Today we did our 1st proof for Memory Master.  My daughter did super - she nailed it all.  It's what we've been working towards all year...being able to recite from memory:

161 Events and people in a chronological timeline
44 US Presidents
24 History sentences that correspond with the timeline giving it more depth
120 Locations and geographic features in Africa, Europe and the Old World
24 Science facts related to geology and life sciences
5 Latin noun endings for both the singular and plural declensions
52 Prepositions, 23 Helping verbs and 12 Linking verbs
Multiplication tables up to 15x15, common squares and cubes, as well as basic geometry formulas and unit conversions

That's over 400 pieces of information -being able to recall it out of order as I ask in random fashion the various information, skipping around in weeks and subjects.  That's the idea of mastery - she can recall it at any given point you ask it.  It's amazing to watch an 8 year old recite things you can't yourself remember!  It's humbling too!  It gives new meaning to that show "Do you know more than a fifth grader?"  I'm certain after today that I don't - not even a third grader actually...LOL!  It also made me so thankful that I homeschool.  My daughter's education is so much more enriched, memorable, hands on and deeper than mine was growing up.  I feel so thankful and blessed to be able to do this for my children.

One of the last things we did this week was to complete our Pin Maps we started in the beginning of the year!  We also completed our travels in our passport book as we "boarded" our last imaginary plane ride to the last Country of the year.  We have enjoyed our Pin Maps this year!  It's been so very much fun for us to board our imaginary planes and travel through imaginary customs with our passports and watch our Pin Map grow and come to life.

Week 23 - Cloud Types!!

What child doesn't love puff paint, cotton balls and using their imaginations?  This was our rendition of cloud types for week 23...

We started our project with a quick exercise of observing the clouds outside and figuring out what type they were.  As it so happened today, we had some really great clouds as a weather system moved out this morning from our area.  We observed out the window and used this to help guide the kids to the right cloud type   http://wvscience.org/clouds/Cloud_Key.pdf

Teaching the Orchestra - Week 20 - Tutoring CC

I thought I'd share what I came up with for teaching the Orchestra for this next few weeks as a Tutor.  I wanted to make a visual presentation of the information we are going to be learning in class for the kids.  So, I made a science board of the Orchestra for class.  All of the information has come from CC Connected and you can search there to find them, with the exception of the pictures of Handel, Bach and Mozart which I got from here:

http://www.thatresourcesite.com/printables_for_homeschoolers_timelines_composers.htm

and the My Musical Instruments Book I used is here:

http://www.tlsbooks.com/mymusicalinstrumentbook.pdf