Get the butter! Cuz I’m on a roll!..

Boy do I wish I had made that up on my own! 

I’m so much on a roll that I’m a day early!  For some reason I thought today was the first of February so I gathered up all my comments from January and had hubby pull a name out of a hat for the January Graphics Contest!

And the Winner is….Reen from the MommyAuctions Store “From Our Dresser to Yours…”

She posted her comments on my homeschooling blog!

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To make up for my confusion all comments made TODAY, Jan 31st, 2009 will receive 2 entries into February’s Contest. 

Thanks to everyone who visited me this past month!

(originally posted here, and cross-posted again here!)

graphics, contest

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So you think you want to get up at 5:30 am?

I’m pretty sure DoodleBug will stay in her bed this morning for as long as she possibly can stand it.  Yesterday she woke up at 5:30 and refused to go back to sleep.  (She’s normally up around 9 or so)  I’m normally up that early, up to kiss hubby on his way out the door, but I’m also very accustomed to having some quiet time to gather my thoughts, pray, drink coffee, and ask God for the patience to survive the day.  DoodleBug had interupted that and I could think of no better way to keep her occupied then to start schoolwork early!  (evil grin) 

She was excited and eagerly ate her oatmeal, dressed and brushed her teeth while I gathered her books up near the couch. 

About half way through her first subject she decided she was too tired to figure out how to spell “took”. 

We survived ‘Reading I’ and ‘Language Arts’, moved into a quick ‘Social Studies’ lesson where somehow we started talking about how some of our families ancestors were Cherokee Indians and that turned into a crying session of how much she misses the great-great-great-great grandma she never met. 

I contemplated whether to pull out my hair or hers.  I decided instead to put those books aside and move on to Mathematics… I mean how hard can 6+1 be right?

Really stinking hard apparently!

We finished with a Bible lesson that went a little something like this:

“Remember yesterday when we talked about Jacob and Esau?
yes you do…
They were Isaac’s sons remember?
and he was blind?
and Jacob tricked him?
and stole his birthright?
remember the picture of the soup?
you know!  the dot to dot you did yesterday?”

I gave up…at least for that day.

I’m grateful that it’s 7:30 am and all are still asleep….  Thanks God, I needed that.

home schooling, mathmatics, social studies, reading

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Are you having a snow day?

Oh how wonderful snow days are, simply because we don’t have them!  What better day to hunker down with hot cocoa and a math book then the day that is frozen and yucky.  We typically have “freezing rain and ice days” here, not necessarily snow days and there is no reason for my kids to keep on trucking through their studies. 

There are so many opportunities to talk about weather, different states of matter (solid-ice, liquid-rain, gas-vapor), or even take in a music or art lesson.  I simply love the idea that we can work through a snow day and take a “Sunshine Day” off instead! 

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We’re supposed to be done when?

We’re having a bit of difficulty getting back on target after the Christmas Break.  The wiggling and squirming from my “spirited” child is about to drive me bonkers.  I’m at a lost on how one can know that 2+2 = 4 one day and be totally confused on the concept of addition the very next morning.  I think I may have outsmarted her today though.  I’m sticking some cheesy dollar store addition flash cards in my apron pocket.  Want a drink? Whats the answer.  Want a snack? Whats the answer.  She’ll either learn addition or she’ll stop asking me so many questions!

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A last ditch effort to get some math in when we’re having a bad day….

Two weeks ago I was suffering from a terribly painful abscessed tooth.  On one particularly trying day we took a more creative route with our lessons.  Tader Bug desperately needed a nap and since the baby was snoozing I thought it would be a great time for mom to nap as well.  That left Doodle Bug, once again behind in her lessons, to entertain and she was not going to leave us be without a fight.  I pulled out the dominoes and some construction paper and set my evil little plan into motion.

We stacked all the dominoes face down on one side of her.  She would pick up a domino, write the numbers down with a ‘plus’ sign and then add them up on her paper.  Then she could move the domino to the other side.  When she was done, she took another page and working the dominoes back to their starting place she repeated the process with subtraction instead.   

It all worked really good until she came running into the bedroom asking…

“Momma, how do you subtract 6 from 4?”

wow, I’m so not ready for negative numbers!

home school, math, bad days, addition, subtraction

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For my twitter mommy friends!

I have just created a new twitter group!

http://twittgroups.com/group/hpyhmschool

join me here for twitter group “Happy Homeschool”

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Free Elementary Math and Spreadsheet Practice!

I’m always looking for fun new ways to “feed” my bugs the information they need to learn.  For one whole semester, Doodlebug has been fascinated with the ‘Speed Drills’ that come in her Christian Light Curriculum Math books.  All of a sudden she has forgotten how to write, or how to read, or maybe it was how to add 1 plus 1 but either way she is adamant that she can NOT do this anymore.  This means only one thing, she’s bored.  I saw it coming, way back at Thanksgiving when she started writing her numbers backwards or going back and connecting them claiming to be writing in cursive.  She was getting bored then and now it is officially just too boring for her.  So momma is going to spice it up a bit. 

We’re going to feed her the same information, the same drills, in a new way.  Last night I created a practice spreadsheet. 

It’s so fun!  She can just type the answer into the green box and immediately she’ll know if she has answered it correctly!  SOOO, since I’m not the only one with child in need of a change, I’ve uploaded the xls file for you!  Click on the image above, or go to our “Free From Me” page.  Most Excel spreadsheets can be opened in OpenOffice, but if it doesn’t work for you just let me know and I’ll try to convert it for you!

There are four quizzes, with 15 problems on each quiz.  The formula cells have been protected so little fingers can’t get “type happy”. 

Please let me know what you think!  Have fun and happy schooling!

**  it’s 14 degrees this morning, and they closed the local school not because of snow, but because they didn’t want underdressed children to get frostbite standing at the bus stops…don’t tell Doodlebug but she’s going to have school anyway!  LOL   I *heart* homeschooling!**

math, spreadsheet, homeschooling, free

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A lesson in tooth decay….the hard way.

This mom is having a mouthful of dental issues.  Next week, I’ll be having an abscessed tooth removed.  In the meantime, Momma Taderdoodles is more than willing to remind her children how incredibly painful this is, to have a hole in your tooth, to have it be all infected, and on and on and on.  (quietly giggles)

Can anyone guess how many times my girls have brushed their teeth in the past couple of days?  I still can’t get either of them to use their fancy blue stuff that tells them where the plaque is but their brushing, and that is what is important.

I started remembering those times in school when the dentist would come visit.  He’d pass out those red tablets, and we would all get a new toothbrush.  Being a homeschooling family, we don’t have a dentist coming to visit for a fun school day.  I don’t see dental appointments as the same thing, definitely not as much fun.

I went looking today for a few fun websites to play on, for worksheets to print out and some other fun avenues to help my kids learn a little bit about what’s happening in mommy’s mouth and their own.

Crest had a cool “eggsperiment”

so did HealthyTeeth.org (not to mention a really cute animated graphic of a tooth brushing itself   )

Dentistry.com has some fun games (can you say Whack a Molar)

MouthPower.org, with the National Museum of Dentistry has an amazingly packed site in English and Spanish! Tons of stuff for teachers too!

and it was fun playing “To Tell the Tooth” from ADA.org!

Take a moment to try a new subject! Make a day out of exploring your teeth!

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What’s so hard about music?

Apparently I was wrong.. you do NOT have to know HOW to play the
instrument in order to have a music class about the instrument !

See, I took a different route today with class… instead of our curriculum’s books we did some other things from one of my ‘big book of
stuff they need to know’ and we did riddles and did math with popcorn
and then I stumbled upon the page on musical instruments and their
families…

so we did a little percussion with Tader Bug’s cheesy $10 wanna be drum
set she got for her birthday, and shook some beans up in one of my
tiny canning jars to make fake maracas, and we talked about how mommy
and daddy’s guitars are from the string family and mommy’s violin is
too (neither of which can I play worth a hookie) and we tried to
understand how a piano is string BUT mommy’s is electric (yeah, i fell
into that one)

BUT then we got to the wind section and I figured the noise was done…
OH NO… DoodleBug remembered that Dad had bought a used clarinet at the
yard sale and we just HAD to take it out and see how it worked….
ummm.. yeah.. Mr. B played that when was like nine… I play piano…
sort of, not clarinet..

Well, we spent almost an hour making the oddest sounds come out of that
thing! We learned the difference between humming, singing, and blowing
air (since only the later will actually produce a pleasant sound out of
that thing)

All in all, to not really be able to play any instrument worth a dern
we managed to have a pretty fun and education day out of it all….

only one problem… DoodleBug wants castanets for her birthday….

music, funny, homeschooling

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