Take me out to the ball game

What could be better on a perfect summer night than to go to a baseball game with my three men? There was popcorn, lots of noise, a beautiful sunset and my husband actually caught a ball!

Look at those beautiful smiles!

Z-Man pretending that HE caught the ball.

A perfect summer night. Life is good.

Finding the humor in artist and composer study

As I was going over the artists and composers plans, I saw that last time I posted about our art and music plans, I left out a few really great resources we're planning to use. I did link to the Classics for Kids site, which is wonderful, but I would be terribly remiss if I didn't mention some CD's we've all enjoyed in the car for over a year now:

There are now four volumes (I just this minute found out about number four - that's going on my wish list!) We have the first three and they are really funny. Check out the lyrics to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony here. No, really, do. I'll wait.

Funny, huh? Now if that doesn't get a reluctant kid interested in classical music, what will?

Maybe these - author Mike Venezia has written a whole slew of books covering artists, composers and presidents in his own amusing style.

And as I looked up pictures of these for you, I just discovered they've added inventors and scientists to this series! How grand to live in the information age!

While we're on the subject of humorous books about artists and composers, be sure to check these out:

Now these are just plain quirky and no one loves quirky more than I, but you may need to edit a little if you don't want to explain cirrhosis of the liver and, ahem...worse. For that reason, they'll be read-alouds here. But you can't beat this for getting a kid's attention:

"As a young music teacher, Bach was out walking one night when six of his own students attacked him. They wanted an apology. Bach had called one of them a 'nanny-goat bassoonist' - someone who makes a bassoon sound like a goat. But Bach wouldn't take it back; he drew a knife in self-defense. Luckily, the fight was broken up before anyone was really hurt."

Who knew?

At the other end of the spectrum is this book, which uses primary sources to shed light on each composer's relationship with God. These are wonderful, inspiring stories that you will definitely not hear in public school.

And last, but definitely not least, a wonderful blog I've been following for quite some time: Harmony Art Mom. Love it! Scroll way down on the right hand side bar for lists of artists and composers. She keeps everything very simple - Charlotte Mason style. Lots of great stuff!

The number of the day

When you accidentally hit upon a way to get the house tidied up, teach the pre-schooler to count and introduce multiplication to your third grader all at once, you just have to share it.

I came up with the idea of the number of the day yesterday and I'll be honest with you - I had only one motive and that was to get some help picking up the clutter that had somehow exploded in our home. The number was five and we each picked up five things in each room that was suffering from excess clutter. Before we got out of the kitchen, Little Man could count to five and really understood what he was doing - you know, not just pointing at one object and saying, "three, four, five." For some reason, it just stuck this time. Excellent! Then it occurred to me to ask Z-Man, "if there are three of us and we each pick up five things, how many is that? How would you write it on the white board?"

Today our number was three. Z-Man was in favor of that, thinking that it meant less work. Much to his chagrin, we did "sets" of three, as in, "pick up three sets of three things from the floor in your room. How many is that? What if I pick up three sets of three too? How could you illustrate that on the white board? What are two ways to write that equation?"

Oh yes, we know how to have fun here. Don't try to stop us.

Science around the world - biomes

Of all the fun things we'll be doing in our Around the World studies this year, I think I'm most excited about our science. The main, year-long portion of our study will be animals of the world and world biomes and habitats. So, we'll study the rain forest in Brazil, grasslands in Africa, coniferous forests in Canada, tundra in Russia, deserts in the Middle East - you get the idea.

I was so pleased to find this book:

Janice VanCleave's Science Around the World: Activities on Biomes from Pole to Pole

It's packed with experiments that illustrate the properties of each biome - relative humidity in the rainforest, evaporation in the desert, etc.

Look at these excellent, interactive "virtual labs" - exploring deciduous forest, hot desert, grassland, Antarctic ocean shore and freshwater lake ecosystems. There are more virtual labs here, including some dissections. These are for older students, but I think we will still enjoy them.

We'll also be using this Usborne book which covers mountains, jungles and deserts with lots of wonderful information and pictures:

Now THIS book I really like. I found it at the homeschool convention and I'm excited to use it because it is written from a very christian perspective. So many books sing the praises of creation without a word about the Creator! Not this one:

Z-Man and I will have to work through it slowly together as the language is advanced for a third grader, but I think it lays such an excellent biblical foundation for earth science that it's well worth it.

In addition to experiments from the first book, we'll probably do one or more of these printable shoebox dioramas. There's one for wetland, desert and rainforest.

We may also tackle this rainforest mural from Jan Brett's site. A pretty ambitious project, but maybe if we pace ourselves... and invite people over to color with us! Any takers?

This page (or lens?) on Squidoo has more rainforest information/resources/activities than you could use in a year, including lapbook material. How is one to choose?

And we may make a little desert terrarium with plastic creatures as found in this free Desert/Rainforest unit study from Homeschool in the Woods.

Some lovely rainforest books for pre-schoolers:

The Over in the Jungle series also has Over in the Arctic and Over in the Ocean. The Sleeping Bear Press book series also has an ocean book:

Our ocean study will be a little longer than the other habitats and coincide with our study of Australia, Japan and the Pacific Islands.

Check out this great ocean lapbook for pre-schoolers!

I'll post lots more on each biome as we get to it.

And then there are the animals! But that's another post...

Speaking of Pre-School Work Boxes

You really have to go check out these pre-school activity bag ideas with free printables to go with them. Really. In fact, this blog (Walking by the Way) has a plethora of wonderful pre-K and early elementary ideas. All brought to you by the same talented homeschool mom who is responsible for the Homeschool Share site. Wow! Now there is someone who is very busy being a blessing to others! Thank you, Ami!!

And the winner is...

Christy! Congratulations! You won the U.S. geography books! I'll send an email for shipping info.

Thank you so much to everyone who visited my blog during the giveaway. It was so much fun to see new comments every morning that I may just have to participate in another one!

Pre-School Work Boxes!

Since Little Man feels the need to do things that Z-Man is doing, he has his very own set of work boxes!

Here are some of the things he finds in them:

He loves pages from Kumon books:

• books on tape
• puzzles - Noah's ark, a fishing puzzle, this alphabet puzzle:

• a paint with water book
• games (Goodnight Moon is the current favorite)
• books to read with Mom
• animal matching cards from Jan Brett
• a box of foam shapes to sort and make designs with
• Leap Frog magnetic letters:

• an ABC sticker book
• this great letter activity from Carissa's blog
• strips of construction paper and scissors to cut them into a million pieces
• toys for water play in the sink
• measuring devices and small trucks for play in his "flice" (a flat rubbermaid box of rice - kind of like an indoor sand box)
• trampoline time
• educational and Bible memory videos
• magnetic animals
• French words to practice (this was actually his idea and he loves it)

We'll also be doing pre-school activity bags from a wonderful swap! We have 20 bags, each with a unique activity, from matching to fishing! I think he's really going to enjoy them.

Of course, Little Man will also be participating in our around the world travels and I hope to do more Bible memory work with him. And, starting this year, we'll be doing a lot more with the alphabet - I'll keep you posted on that.