1,000 island, doorknobs, eagles & geometry!

Just popping in to share a few fun things we've done this week in our homeschool!

Math calls for quite a bit of geometry, this week...which is a welcome change after mega...3 digit division and multiplication! See what I mean??? See how happy Tommie looks? If everyday would find my sweet boy this jolly...it sure would make my job easier!

Instead of pushing the number 2 over the workbook pages... I had him use pretzels to shape decagons, hex, oct's and pentagons. He then had to document each angel, sides and count and draw the diagonals..which really is quite fun! I also had him use garbage bag ties and form different triangles: scalene, isosceles and equilaterals...then glue them to a piece of construction paper. (note: I had to use the talking dictionary on my sidebar to learn how to pronounce the triangles!!!!)

You might be wondering what Thousand Island salad dressing has to do with home-education? It's stuff like this that adds a little pizazz to our day! Did you know, that there are at least a 1,000 islands in the St. Laurence River and that's where the name of the salad dressing stems from? After sharing this tip...we located the St. Lawrence River on our map! I'm sure this tidbit of information will come in handy someday, if he's on WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE!

One thing I've been implementing each day this week...and it only takes 15 minutes or so...is learning the presidents in order. I picked up an inexpensive presidential workbook at our local bookstore... Tommie reads a short paragraph about the president and fills out a few questions. We also use the vintage companion book...pictured next to it, as a supplement. For my super-hands on learner...I have him write the name of the president (that he's learning about) each day, on a post-it note....then he puts them in order... it's working out nicely!

We pretty much wrapped up our unit on Henry Hudson, yesterday. And, today and tomorrow, Tommie will be doing a little unit on eagles. See the book above? It's chalked full of great facts, good pictures and lots of information! I found it at Goodwill for .50 cents. I pulled out 10 good spelling words from it: binoculars, communication, territory, etc., and he'll be using those today and tomorrow. I'm also requiring him to take notes as he reads and then write good sentences-in his own words- about the facts he's learned. This covers: science, handwriting, grammar and creative writing.

We're also impressed and using the book, "How Things Work" for science. I am totally clueless about mechanics. The truth is...I don't care one iota how things work!!! Shhhh...don't tell...I don't want Tommie to catch on!! So, I'm having Brad- at night- go through the pages with him...it's a good father-son thing! Did you know that on the inside of locks there are springs? I didn't. But, my mechanical son is just waiting for me to give him the green-light, so he can take apart one of our doorknobs. Truth is, I won't be surprised if he does.

funny sidenote: When Brad was younger, and his parents were at work...they came home to find that Brad had taken ALL THE DOORKNOBS off ALL the doors in the house.... just to see how things work.