Category Archives: Fun School

Giant catch up post…

Posted on by justakrazymom

Ok..welcome November..dang you arrived fast! I realize I have been a really bad blogger but in my defense we have one heck of a busy schedule..between schooling, Noah working 2-3 days a week,wrestling,soccer, karate, bball times 3 kids, dance and ya know..sleeping every once in awhile..I just don’t have time nor desire to blog much right now. So I am about to post a huge overwhelming post of the last 2 weeks.. schooling and fun.. and they aren’t in chronological order..

Taejan working on the letter Cc:

Declan doing the dance he does when he needs to remember something for schooling:

And working on his research project:

Playing Boggle Jr

Helping Taejan.. he’s big into spelling and writing things right now:

Princess helping herself to some of my sweet tea:

Taejan loves taking the Boggle Jr cards and the white board and practicing his writing skills!

Declan using the Hot Dots:

Things aren’t perfect with the two cats..we still have LOTS of fights daily..but mostly cus kitten wants to play and big kitty does NOT..but they are tolerating each other better:

I “winterized” the schoolroom. We don’t have real heat out there and it’s only a 3 season room. So we don’t work out there much in the winter ( i do use a little heater but I don;t get it real warm). Between that and the fact the kids hate working at their own desks it was time to rearrange:


Ziah had her 7th birthday party.. she wanted a trick or treat party..





Instead of party bags I set up 3 trick or treat stations..it was fun!

More lessons:






Finding stuff for our Compost Jar as part of our Global Warming science unit. We are studying how recycling can help global warming and one of the projects in our lapbook is a compost jar:


Ziah got a great necklace kit from Lila and family and was enjoying making some jewelry:

The kids have been very antsy lately..we were spending too much time either stuck in the house or running around at activities..so on a very nice fall day we walked to the lake and explored for hours..they had the best time ..it was so nice to see the 3 wee ones just being NICE to each other and having fun ( Noah was at karate then home doing school work):





The day before her actual birthday Ziah had her 4 best homeschooled friends over for a Princess tea party.. Declan helped me make all the food:

Then all 3 got dressed up nice ( Noah was at work)..Taejan and Declan were the waiters btw:

All 5 girls..they had the best time!


Jadziah’s last picture as a 6 year old:

And first as a 7 year old:

The public schools had a half day so we had friends over:


The girls painted for hours…

Then we had the city’s Halloween parade with our krew of friends:
Ziah and her other half Autumn:

Hubby and I:

3 of my best girls and I:

it was COLD..smart kids:

Declan and his best peeps:



Then we had Trick or Treating with our krew of friends:





Of course we ended the Holiday weekend at my bestest friend’s house..
Noah, Ephiphani and Ashley ( notice Noah’s new glasses?? He has had glasses for 7 years but he now has to wear them all the time)

Taejan dancing:

Scott and Joni:

2 of my boys:

My friend of 30ish years Missy and her husband..they were some people from “Jersey Shore”?..I don’t watch it so I was clueless..lol:

Brian and Deb:


Taejan and Ashley:

Taejan and I:

Lots of dancing as always:

oh some random cell phone pictures..LOL.. so the hamster we bought Ziah when her other one died apparently came to us pregnant.. we discovered this about 3 weeks after we bought her when we went to clean the cage and there was 2 babies.. sadly only one lived and his name is Shayman and he lives in Declan’s room now!

We took the krew to 6Flags for Fright Fest( Noah was with us but off with his friend):

More random school stuff:

Declan and one of his best buds jake:

Our city has this downtown “fair: type thing called Third Thursday every month from May-October.. we go to most. This month the kids got to Trick or Treat. 2 of our best peeps and their kids joined us:

Well I think I am now caught up…lol.. for now!

Week 3 and 3 1/2 of schooling

Posted on by justakrazymom

We did about a week and a half of schooling in the last 2 weeks..because of out of town family here and Taejan’s birthday..

Ziah playing a phonics matching/memory game:

Some tactile play with moon sand:

Ziah’s book box:

The 3 wee ones working on their All About Me posters:



Declan working on math drills:

Ziah doing her math drills:

Taejan working on a puzzle:

and studying his letters:

Learning pallet for Ziah:

Block time for Taejan:

We saw a great rainbow

We took our lessons to karate while Noah was in class one day last week:

Noah in karate…he is testing for his next rank ( 3rd kyu) on Sunday so he is training hard:

Um.. cosmetology practice? Not real sure but they were getting along..that’s all that mattered..lol

Painting egg carton caterpillars to go with our Monarch unit ( we have 3 caterpillars in that tank and they are now in their chrysalis’)

Life cycle of a monarch sequencing cards:

This year I subscribed to Weekly Reader..the kids love them!

Taejan gathering milk weed ( or as he calls it milky way) for the then caterpillars:

Noah working on his core subjects vis Switched on Schoolhouse:

And being rather silly using the Tag system..lol

here’s our first caterpillar in it’s “J” shape right before it changes into it’s chrysalis:

Ziah got some time on the smartcycle:

Science club this month is the Water Cycle.. here we are doing a few experiments:

tomorrow we will test the water level ..one jar is closed and one being left open.

Declan had done a Water Cycle lapbook a few years ago.. so we brought it out to use as a reference:

Then I taught the younger two about the 3 forms of liquid and in the process we showed how evaporation happens ( Declan knew this so he reviewed).. here’s our solid form: an ice cube

we placed them in a pan and turned the burner on:

now we have the 2nd form: liquid

and after a few we had the third form..gas ( steam):

the kids enjoyed feeling their hands get moist as the water vapor rose up.

Declan reviewed the lapbook:

Taejan displayed that the water had indeed gone from solid, to liquid to vapor..because the pan was now empty!

The kids did some copywork..this is an area I realize I need to do daily. Declan needs some confidence in his writing skills and Ziah’s handwriting needs inprovement..badly.. I bought a few copywork ebooks from Currclick and bonus..they learn facts in the process!

We played a geography game:

Our Animal of the Week is the Giraffe:

So we did some copywork on that. I love these products..the price is beyond right ( fifty cents!) and they have multi levels in each ebook so I can make one copy of each ebook and use it for all 3 kids!:

Taejan made morning snack…muffins ( I miss muffins)

Declan doing his Singapore math:

and using the learning pallet:

One of our Chrysalis’:

Noah and Declan playing a homemade version of Jenga:

Oh we also learned ( the HARD way) what happens when soda cans are frozen… ack:


This was also an exercise in teamwork.. it took all 5 of us to clean it out, save the food we could and get it all back loaded with said food..

It’s been a great few weeks. This week will be a short week ( week 4 officially) .. we have science club day, plus we are going to a big fair on Friday..

A Day of Science

Posted on by justakrazymom

Well today was supposed to be the day of change around here..new routines, some new curic..well that was all put to an end when at 7am my washer broke ( Eric looked at it at lunch and it’s an “ez fix”..but still..days with no washer and a family of 6..ack!), then one of Declan’s Flame Gobi’s was dead. I figured Eric would be tinkering with the washer after work so I got myself and the kids ready and did our grocery shopping early..instead of while the kids were at dance. We are no sooner done and in the van when the school calls..Noah is sick..body temp was 95.6…Nurse told me all the kids with the same symptoms had the low body temp. So off we went to get him. His temp is up to 98.2 so I’m not as worried as I was.. he’s in bed..as he should be.

So that brought us to 11am.. our day was pretty much shot ( Eric comes for lunch at 11:45 and is home for the day at 2:35)..and I had told Declan he could have a day to mourn his fish. BUT I wanted to do something with the kids..we went into science mode.

First off was Borax snow flakes:The kids were not told what would happen so they had to “guess”… Taejan thought the pipe cleaners would disappear ,Ziah had no guess and Declan thought they would become fluffy.

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after not even 2 hours we have crystals!!
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Next I decided to take the lightbulb I blew up cleaning and make it educational..lol
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Then we broke out one of the Myth Buster’s science kits I got the other day..
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Up first was learning about how the gas in our bones really can predict the changes in weather…our “diver” sank and floated depending on how much air pressure there was:
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Then we grabbed the tornado connector thing I bought a few weeks ago and made lots of tornado’s. We even added rice so the kids could see what happened to objects in a tornado:
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After that one ( we only did that about 30 times..lol) we tried to blow a balloon up inside a bottle. We learned it wouldn’t work because there was already all the air the bottle could take:
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Then we learned if we put holes in the bottle the balloon would indeed blow up:
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Then the kids had fun trying to blow it up thru the holes I had put in the bottle:
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then I should them that if I blew the balloon up ,covered the holes with my finger, added water to the balloon then let go something cool would happen ( it’s at the end of the video).

After that we brought out the Dangerous Book for Boys Chemistry set:
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We made some solutions and used a 9volt battery for some cool reactions:
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Prussian Blue ( detects the presence of Iron)
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and we also dissolved copper in a test tube and then we dissolved the copper in a penny ( Declan loved all 3 of these!!)
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can ya see the copper on the paper towel?
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it wasn’t the best start of the week but we made it great don’t ya think? ( and shhhh don’t tell my kids they did a ton of school today..lol)

Games of the Week..

Posted on by justakrazymom

We have a lot of board games around here.. over 60. We LOVE to play board games, but well..sometimes life gets in the way of that..ha ha ha. Also we tend to play a few games a lot, instead of playing all the games we have. So not too long ago I decided we needed a way to make sure we #1 play games more and #2 play more of the games.

This is what I did. I spent about an hour one day taking pictures of the tops of each and every game we own, then I uploaded and resized them all to 250x250ish. Then I created a PDF file with all the pictures in 2 columns ( 7 pages of pictures mind you)..printed them all out ( black and white since I do not have a color printer). After I printed them I taped them all back to back to create double sided pictures. Then came out the ole trusty laminator. By the end of that I had a pile of picture cards showing all the board games we have.

Then I laminated a piece of paper, added some stickers ( scrap booking stuff I got months ago on Targets SUPER clearance..he he he). Now each Sunday we pick 4 games from the cards. We try for one family game, one learning game, one fun game and one preschool game. We tape the picture cards on the “Games of the Week” board, then we get those 4 games out and leave them in the living room. This has greatly increased the amount of game playing we do..which has so many benefits!

here’s the pile of game cards:

and the “games of the week” board I made:

and here is them in use:

Clothes Pin Spelling

Posted on by justakrazymom

Spelling has always been a hot topic around here. Declan is not a natural speller in any way shape or form. We’ve tried so many ways to help.. most from my school days..ya know.. write the word 3 times, write a sentence for each word, define each word, hangman..you name it..not one thing did much to help him retain the information.

Then I discovered that if Declan was DOING something while working on his spelling words the information stuck more. So we’ve done a ball toss while spelling the words one letter at a time..that helped. Then a few weeks ago I decided to try something else. I bought a bag of 100 wooden clothespins ( less than 4 dollars), sat down for about 8 minutes one night and with  red and black markers I marked the alphabet on them.

I did a capital and 3 lower case for each vowel in red and a capital and 2 lower case in black for the rest of the letters. I did a few more for each of the more common letters. Next I made 3 strips from paper and laminated them. Place it all in a box and you have a very hands on learning tool..perfect for the way my Declan learns!

We started using this a few weeks ago and thus far it’s been a huge success. On the 1st day I give Declan his spelling list and he uses that and pins to “make” each word. Then during the week he uses the pins to practice without the list in front of him.. being a very tactile experience makes this STICK for him! And bonus… Jadziah is using it too and loving it!

Here’s the tub of clothes pins:

and this is how we use it: