It's February already?!: January 28 - February 3

Love to observe nature with kids? How about winter birds? Consider participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count February 17-20th! It only takes a few minutes each day to observe, identify and count birds in your backyard and then record the findings on-line. GBBC is a GREAT opportunity to learn about our native feathered friends! Check out the details there!

In My Life This Week
"The usual". ((shrug)) Nothing exciting. School. Housework. Shoveling. Words with Friends. I like "the usual" though! It's MUCH better than "upheaval"!

Whatcha Makin'!
How about some ORANGE CREAMSICLE FUDGE? Sounds pretty good, huh? Hop over to Clever Homemaking for the recipe! Its super-duper easy! Sugar Maple made our batch! And THIS candy is a recipe box keeper!

Now I'm sure you noticed that our batch of ORANGE creamsicle fudge isn't, well, ORANGE. Maple and I searched and searched, but couldn't find our red and yellow food coloring. We found blue and green, but not the colors we needed. So, white fudge it was! LOL It still tasted yummy!

Oh, and next time we're thinking DARK CHOCOLATE instead of white...

Homeschool Happenings
Balsam Fir discovered his The Ultimate Paper Airplane Book from Christmas over the weekend and was busy folding planes to fly down the stairs. He discovered that accurate folds and "center of balance" make for more CONTROLLED flights. (A few planes had to be rescued from the shelf halfway up the staircase with the broom.)

Folding paper airplanes is AWESOME fine motor
practice for Balsam Fir

And Sugar Maple drew LOTS of cartoon characters using Draw 50 Famous Cartoons. It's been kind of fun to see Debuty Dog, the Flintstones and Yogi Bear again!

Yogi Bear and Boo Boo

But I think I need more white computer paper now. ((wink))

I rediscovered my box of helpers from my public school teaching days. (My student teacher mentor advised me to ALWAYS snag copies of worksheets from any substitute or teaching experiences for my own to-be-used-later files.) I slipped a touch counting sheet into Balsam Fir's work binder and a practice sheet to help him remember his odds and evens using a die. It's SUCH a POSITIVE to declutter and find something useful, but forgotten!

Touch counting sheet for tactile
learning. Touch dots to count. Those
dots with circles count twice...and
the dots inside 9 count after counting
dots twice. Great for adding!

Odds and evens chart...but I had to add the O...
but this is from Bills Teaching Notes

Balsam Fir practicing his odds and evens by rolling dice
and adding them up

Oh, and I found some CUTE little writing process cards on Pinterest! I printed them out on cardstock, cut them out and slipped them into a business card plastic sheet holder for Sugar Maple. We've been doing less and less of Saxon Grammar and Writing and more and more of "real life" writing such as pen pal letters and her own stories. She can flip the cards over for a little inspiration as she works through the writing process!

Writing process cards slipped into baseball card sleeves
page 

First writing process card up with others flipped over 

What did Mr. Middle School do this week? Well, he wrapped up his US map labeling. (Click here for free outline and historical maps!) And he started A History of US. He prodded along in Saxon Algebra 1/2 and Grammar and Writing. He wrote an expository essay on "How to Paint the Exterior of a House". He really didn't enjoy it all that much since he thinks the topics are, well, "lame", but he's also learning that sometimes you just have to do things. ((shrug)) And in Prentice Hall Earth Science he's learning about nuclear, renewable and fossil fuels, filling out several pages in his REALLY cool notebook.

World Petroleum Reserves Chart

Oil Refinement/Evaporation Rates Chart

Helpful Homeschool Hint and Favorite Resource of the Week
Free hundreds chart color-by-number pages from Lil' Country Kindergarten! There's pages for holidays including Ground Hog's Day and Valentine's. Perfect for younger kids learning to count and recognize numbers to 100 and read color words. Visit Lil' Country Kindergarten for yours here!

Balsam Fir with his Cat in the Hat 100s Chart

Off the Bookshelf
My lil' Balsam Fir read The Cat in the Hat! The length of it was doting for him the first time so we returned it to the library unread, but he's slowly, but steadily working his way through it! Woot!

Sugar Maple continues to read the OLDER, ORIGINAL Nancy Drew collection at the library and from Nannie. Most of them are from the 1960s! And White Pine is working through the Honor Harrington series by David Weber from Blue Spruce's bookcase. I'm QUITE behind on updating their reading lists!

And our read alouds this week focused once again on WINTER.

Here, There and Everywhere!
❄ Cub Scouts ❄ Boy Scouts ❄ Basketball ❄ Boy Scout Klondike Derby ❄ Clarinet ❄ Day at the Farm ❄ T_, S_, C_, and X popped over ❄ Pine hung out at C_'s ❄

A Photo, Video, Link, or Quote to Share
This little ditty was going around Facebook this past weekend and gave me a few chuckles.

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