Adding on to our house.... A CHICKEN COOP

Join us on our newest journey... raising and caring for Free-range, inner-city chickens ;)

Here's the Coop ...

Meet the Ladies...

Our first Egg... 

 
All in the past 24 hours. I can't see what the future holds for this adventure! :)

Math Caps ~ For Re-purpose-ful Math-time FuN!

Another simple, and virtually cost free, homeschooling manipulative. Saw this idea floating around in the Pintrest world, but couldn't track down it's original source. Still, I put it to use with my own little twist...

First - Collect water bottle caps 

Second - Write Numbers and Math symbols on them with permanent marker (I recommend AT LEAST 3 of each number 0-9 and 2 of each symbol - X = /and +)

Third - Find re-purpose-able container to store them in

Fourth - Put them to good use!

Easy enough, Right?!

Yes, that IS my mulleted child in CAMO!!! :oP

We are using them for simple math (addition, subtraction, multiplication) with my 1st and 2nd graders. They even did some more complicated, multi-step problems. 

Another benefit to homeschooling... no shoes, no shirt.. NO PROBLEM! :-D

For my K4 daughter (Princess Serenity) I was having her count objects (cheerios) to add up to the # presented to her. Quickly realized that this skill was beneath her level, so we started learning to ADD!  :-D She did GREAT! Used a silicone muffin pan to keep things neat-n-tidy for her. 

This new manipulative even traveled with us to the Dr's office, and the church this week. The little container I have them stored in drops nicely in our cinch-sack (Little educational bag we haul around) or diaper bag to take on-the-go! PLUS if they git lost/ruined... NO WORRIES. I can just make more for FREE!!! LOVE <3 <3 <3 This!

Working on a series of making Homeschool manipulatives on a very small or ZERO budget. Still to come...
 
Colored Rice 
Eye Spy Bottles 
Sensory Boxes
Domino Math
CandyLand Counting
Morning Board (for the basics)
Story prompt sticks
Home made Fingerpaints
Easy make Playdough
and MORE!

How do you help your wee-ones understand what's going on?

Everyone needs to be able to relate... even if that someone is only two.

My sweet little girl (River, age 2) fell from the pew during worship service this past Sunday. She's not usually much of a complainer so when she threw such a fuss, I knew something was wrong. Now, to figure out what... Everyone that had witnessed the fall said that she hit her head. Naturally, that's where I focused my attention.  She was crying so hard that she couldn't tell me what was wrong. Was she just shook up, or hurt?  I wasn't sure. Eventually she let me know that her 'foot' hurt. Come to find out [after a couple hours, and a trip to the ER] she had broken her little leg. 

http://www.facebook.com/PaldinosPhotos

 

http://www.facebook.com/PaldinosPhotos

The tears that came when the pain set in, broke my heart.  She would be herself. Then, as the ibuprofen wore off, she would change. She'd cry, and whine, and kick and squirm. She was so uncomfortable.  All I could do is comfort her and treat her with the pain relievers to try and dull the pain.

On top of the pain, I could tell that she was scared.  What IS this thing on my leg, mom? "Take It OFF, Mommy. I don't want it! I want it OFF" she kept saying.  How do you comfort someone so little through something like that?  Here's how I helped my 2 year old feel more secure about the cast on her leg. . .

http://www.facebook.com/PaldinosPhotos

Her grandma had sent her a new baby doll to help busy her as she recouped.  The day after it came in the mail, River was having a hard time coping when her medicine would wear off. Each time, I would sit with her and play, talk, or sing to her to keep her mind off of the pain. Mid morning, she and I sat down and 'doctored' her baby. We gave it a 'band-aid' just like she has.  First the 'sock'... then the padding... finally the colorful [coban] outside. (I wish I had though to do this BEFORE we went to the Orthopedic doctor. She would have better understood what was going to happen to her.) She stopped pulling at her cast. Stopped asking to have it taken off.  Now, every-time she starts to be bothered by it, she just asks for her baby, and comforts her the way that she wants comforted. She is turning into such an caring little momma and doing a great job of teaching mommy just what she needs in order to feel better.  For now she still hasn't stopped crying out in pain every few hours, but she is coping with the discomfort and unfamiliarity of having her leg casted much better.

http://www.facebook.com/PaldinosPhotos

 I love when I have the opportunity to allow my blessings to take the lead and show me what they desire from me.  I take comfort when they are able to 'show' me what they need, when they might now know the words to tell me.  I pray that you will never have to see your little one through a painful time, but if you do... I HIGHLY recommend giving them a way to relate to what's going on, and if they are too little to communicate effectively, give them an outlet to show you what they're feeling.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Friday Family FuN Days... ABC Style!

We decided to change up our Friday Family Fun days. (This means we ALL spend our entire Fridays with EACH OTHER... doing something "Fun" together.) To keep with the spirit of 'un-schooling' our way through the summer, we decided to give each Friday a letter theme.  Friday numero uno was a 'P' themed day. We thought of a couple of 'P' things to do & eat for our Family Fun Friday....

Our day started with our Breakfast: PoPtarts, Pitted Prunes, and Pink milk.

We geared up and headed out to the Park to Play. . . 

Photos Courtesy of the Hubs @Paldinos Paldinos Photos (Bill Paldino)

 

and have a Picnic of Pretzels, PePPeroni, Pickles, PePPer jack, Provolone, Peaches, and Peanut butter oreos.

 Then on to the ool we went! (notice, no 'P' in that Pool... we told the kids to keep it that way ;o)

For Dinner:  Pizza. . . 

and PoP!

  

We topped off the evening with a movie and PoPcorn!  

But wait, we can't forget about a phonetical Phinish to our Phriday Phamily Phun:

 Push PoPs!

 Stay Tuned for week 2's 'B' Theme and our 'S' themed week 3!

My life, UN-EDITED... Cranky mornings (problem solved!)

What do you do when your day starts out like this...

CRANKY Kiddos!  I took these pictures all within an hour of each other one morning! O.o

Those days, in my house, everyone just needs one of these...

YAY for NaP TiMe!!!

Problem solved!

There are those lovely HaPpY faces! <3 #Blessed!

 

Sunday's 10 minute Children's Church Lesson.

I only had 10 minutes left before service was over.  There goes my plans for the morning.  I had a lesson with coordinating craft, snack and game planned, but plans changed.  We spent some time performing our VBS songs for the church, then watching a slideshow from the fun-filled week.  Now we only had 10 minutes to fit in a lesson and make it something worth coming back to.  I had an idea.  Got out the Parachute and chose a story. NOAH's ARK!  I had each of my 11 kids that morning grab a handle of our parachute.  And gave them these simple instructions:

• When I say the word 'boat', you raise the parachute as high as you can. 
• When I say the word 'Flood', you flap the parachute as fast as you can.
• When I say the word 'Rainbow', we're all going to walk in a big circle with the parachute
• When I say the word 'Noah', lower the parachute as low as you can

Then we gave it a little practice run."NOAH" "FLOOD" "RAINBOW" "BOAT" And threw in a beach ball just for fun!

Stock picture from VBS (front left is Serenity (my 3 y/o daughter) & in the gray shirt on the right, is Obadiah (my 5 y/o son)

I began... "NOAH (down down) heard from God. God told him that there was going to be a great FLOOD (ruffle ruffle) and that he wanted NOAH (Down down down) to build a very big BOAT (Up up and away)".... you get the idea.  I went through the whole story, making sure to use our key words as often as possible.  The kids LOVED it, and it insured that they were paying attention to what I was saying.  Once Noah got the animals all on board, we all boarded the 'Boat' too.

Then the story continued.  I wish I had gotten video of it, but I didn't this time. This was a definite WIN, and I will be using our parachute to tell more stories in the future!

Once our story was over, we even had a couple minutes to play a 2 by 2 animal game with the parachute.  I assigned them each an animal (By pairs, of course) and as I called on their animal, they crawled, hopped, slithered, or walked underneath the parachute to where the other 'animal' of their kind had come from. Swapping spots with them. 

Another stock photo from VBS.  The beauty in the striped shirt is my daughter, Theorie (10)

This is my 2 year old, River.

This story and game, worked with my vastly varying group of children on Sunday morning (ages 2-12) They all came away from it excited to spread the word of GOD to their family and friends as they left my classroom for the week ahead.  I will make disciples of them yet! :o)

Are Your Kids Bored, Whiny & Restless? Tell them to TAKE A HIKE!. . . Literally!

Started our morning out getting our math done.  The kids were having a hard time focusing, I wasn't that interested in making them, and the sunshine outside looked Oh-So-Inviting.

So, I did what any good homeschool mom would do... told the kids to put their books away and forget about today's work.  I pulled out our binoculars, compasses, journals, and magnifying glasses; put the kiddos shoes on their feet, and we headed out!

We were headed on a nature walk. Hiking through the acres surrounding our house; recording and discussing all of our observations.  

We talked about the senses, what we "see" "hear" "smell" and "feel" while we're exploring. Well, we DIDN'T go around tasting the things we ran across, but you get the idea.

We saw lots of things of nature: from woodpeckers, to bugs, from lizards to flowers. We also saw quite a few things of man as well. 

We discussed cardinal direction and learned to use a compass. This was a first for my youngest 5 (ages 6 and under). They got to hold and use compasses themselves too. We also talked about remembering where you are headed and what direction you came from when you're out in nature.

We looked at things from afar using our binoculars, and took a closer look at things with our magnifying glasses.

We observed lots of things from shapes (like the circular shape of the litter, sphere of the berries) to color (the yellow of flowers, red of the berries, orange of the fungus, green of pine needles and brown-ish-tan bark) to size and position. 

 

We discussed boundaries (when you can and CAN'T leave the yard, street safety, and how important it is to pay attention to what's happening around you when you're outside (especially near the road).



 

While we were out there, in the great wide outdoors, we checked on our "compost pile" (I use that term Verrrrry loosely) and found that the wild animals have apparently been enjoying all of our uneaten fruits and veggies :)

There are many other things we talked and learned about while we were out there, too.  Nature itself is a learning experience and an excellent opportunity to show your little blessings just how AWESOME our BIG GOD is.  

Experimenting with Naked Eggs - Reverse Osmosis

We've made our naked eggs and even begun the process of osmosis with one of them. Now for something TOTALLY BIZARRE!  We're going to make 2 of our eggs shrink by the process of reverse osmosis. 

What you will need:

• 2 Naked eggs
• 2 containers
• Corn Syrup
• Measuring Tape
• Primary Balance
• 24 hours time

Another simple process for this naked egg experiment...

First... Measure and weigh your naked eggs to get a starting size

Then place an egg in each container and cover with corn syrup

Soak 24 hours

Take your shriveled egg out of the corn syrup and re-weigh/measure (making sure to record your measurements).

What did we observe?  The water moved through the membrane of the egg to the outside of the egg in an effort to equalize the water on the inside and outside of the egg membrane. Because of this, the egg shriveled up.

You wanna know some thing COOL? Put the egg in some water (or better yet, colored water) to watch it 're-inflate'! It TOTALLY WORKS! We made our eggs green and red. ENJOY this additional fun with NAKED EGGS! 

One Blessed Momma

GOD has blessed me greatly!

I <3 being a MOMMY! 

Experimenting with Naked Eggs - Osmosis

Okay, we made naked eggs.... now what???

We did a few different things with our (4) naked eggs. Observed osmosis, reverse osmosis, and durability of the egg membrane.  How, you ask... Let me talk you through these experiments one at a time.

To observe osmosis:

We measured our first egg (call it our BLUE egg), height and girth using a measuring tape

Next, we weighed it, using our primary balance and our cm gram cubes.

Then we place it in water that we had tented blue with 5 drops of food coloring (again in our ghetto up-cycled containers) 

We waited 24 hours and re weighed and measured. Of course writing down all of our measurements as we went. 

What did we observe?  Well, the egg not only grew in size and weight (due to the process of osmosis) but also absorbed the blue coloring of the water turning our egg blue. 

 We used this lesson to do MANY subjects for our day.  We learned about the process of osmosis for Science. We looked up, and defined, the Vocabulary words: Osmosis, membrane, absorb, Primary Balance, girth, height, process, observe, and experiment.  We measured and weighed the egg for Math (recording our facts) We began an outline for our up-coming science essays (Science AND Language Arts). We even drew pictures of the process for Art class.  

If you think this was cool, JUST WAIT!  In my next blog post, I will talk you through the "How To"s of reverse osmosis!  SUPER BIZARRE and COOL!

NAKED eggs!

NAKED???  You read that right!  Our week-long science lesson was the making of/experimenting on Naked Eggs.  What IS a naked egg, you ask.  Well... a naked egg is an egg (in it's raw form) where the shell has been removed leaving only the membrane holding in the contents of the egg (whites and yolk).  Very cool?  I think YES!  You have GOT to try this at least once.  Here's your how-to...

What you will need...

• An egg
• Vinegar enough to soak an egg in twice.
• A container
• 48 hours time

Let's get started. Stay with me through the whole 5 steps that follow  ;-)  ...

Put egg in container and add enough vinegar to cover egg

Wait 24 hours

Wipe the white "slime" (yes, that IS the technical name) off of the egg

 Soak in fresh vinegar for another 24 hours. 

TA DA!  You have a NAKED EGG!

 

We took our naked eggs and turned them into a whole week worth of experimenting (see next posts on Naked Egg FuN 1, 2 & 3)

Shrink it (see next post), bounce it, roll it, squish it. But keep in mind it WILL be messy and it WILL break!

"Eye Spy" Bottles for Phonics and Preschool FuN!!!

Now, let's put some of that Colored Rice to good use. The first thing I did with mine was make a couple of "Eye Spy" bottles. These can make for great activities for busying you littler munchkins. They're even great for on-the-go schooling. Make them in any theme you'd like. I went with a "phonics" theme for my 1st two so that we could work on beginning sounds with my Pre-K and Kinder-aged kiddos. 

What You'll Need:

• Colored Rice (see blog-post on making your own)

• A Large mouthed bottle (I used a Gatorade bottle)

• An idea (see list below of some ideas my big kids and I came up with)

• Small objects to fit you theme or even random ones (must fit through mouth of bottle)

• A camera 

• Lid

• Super Glue (if you have small ones who might choke on small objects if the bottle were to be opened)

The letter "L"

Here's where to start... Gather up as many small objects as you'd like to use in you "Eye Spy" bottle. My bigger kids LOVED helping with this part.

Lay them out and take a picture of them. 

Fill your bottle 2/3 of the way full with your colored rice.

Add your small objects

Secure lid

ShAkE it up

The Letter "B"

Print the picture of your small objects. If you don't want to print it you could just pull it up on your computer and have them do it there. (I photo edit mine to include the 'names' of the objects)

Hand it to your little one and let them try and "Spy" all of the objects pictured. Encourage them to shake, roll, tip and turn the bottle to uncover all the hidden treasures. 

 Having trouble coming up with Ideas to fill you "Eye Spy" bottles?  This list is just a FEW of the MANY themes you could do...

• Beginning sounds (like my example)
• Holiday (CHRISTmas, Easter, Fourth of July...)
• Color (all green objects...)
• Pirates
• Shapes
• Ocean
• Animals
• Seasons
• Bugs
• Building (nail, nut, bolt, screw, etc)
• Candy
• Money
• Shells
• Rocks (different types or colors/shape/sizes)
• Game pieces
• Numbers
• Randomness
• Kitchen items
• Jewelry
• Food (Barbie, doll house, or littlest petshop style)

Have LOTS of FuN with these!!!