Dynamic 2 Moms~Welcome~

We are just about ready to release a few more units. We have enjoyed receiving all of your comments and questions and try to answer as soon as we can.

As far as what we have been up to lately---it's all about "finalizing" the units we have "cooking"

We are almost ready to upload a few more units...We won't give away the secret for the big "biology" unit, but from that unit you will be able to make 3 or more lapbooks WITH FLAPS....yes it is BIG!!

We can tell you one will be about Daniel Boone - North American Explorer to help round out some more American history....weeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Tina...

We are so looking forward to the RenFest (Renaissance Festival) this coming week.  Now while the RenFest is actually over a month long, they host two "School Days" each year (this year it is Tuesday, Oct 27 and Wednesday, Oct 28 from 9am -4pm). Here is website in case you're interested:

www.TexRenFest.com

There are so many different activities, exhibits, contests and well, just plain neat things to see and do, that we try to go both days.  This year will be our fourth year running. 

We go in costume each year too.  This year my daughter is going as a pirate one day and a Lady the next.  Yep, night and day.  Though I will say that she will carry a sword both days.  She had my mom help make her something pretty to wear with her dress that will hold her sword.  No shy reserved female, she will be prepared to defend her own honor if necessary.

I've decided not to go in costume this year, but to carry our big camera and take tons of pics.  The dress that I usually wear is huge and heavy.  Here's a pic:

So I've decided to forgo the hoop and layers of netting this year.  So its jeans and t-shirt for me. 

We plan on cooking some Renaissance food.  Here is one of the recipes that we plan on using:

Meat Pie 

2 Pie Shells

1 1/2 lbs of cooked chicken or pork (or both)

1/2 cup meat broth (if too dry add little more)

1 1/2 cups Total of dates, raisins, chopped nuts, dried figs, grated cheese.  You decide what combination (me I'm leaving out the cheese).

1/4 tsp each of salt and pepper

1 - 2 TBS Total of any of following:  allspice, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, or nutmeg

4 egg yolks

splash of white or red wine

Combine all ingredients and place in pie shell.  Cover with second pie shell.  Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes to 1 hour.  Pastry should be golden brown and the filling set.  Pie can be served hot or cold.

Now if you lived during the Renaissance you might very well eat peacock, pheasant, partridge, titmouse, wren, lark, quail, stork, duck, goose, swan to just name a few.  But we are sticking to chicken and pork for this recipe. 

On another note, unless you were nobitlity back then,  you ate with your fingers instead of a fork, so I thought the meat pie would be fitting and easier to eat with your hands. 

Now there was a bread recipe that I planned on using, but upon reading the directions and realizing that it took an hour of stirring (yep 1 hour) I changed my mind. 

Even if you did not pre-register for "School Days", don't fret.  Tickets are $8 at the gate.  You will want to get there early since there is usually a line for folks buying tickets.  You can purchase food on site or bring your own lunch.   

Kelley

I still hadn't posted some of our pictures from our study of Africa this year. Also 

I posted some pictures from our first time around  with African history at the bottom.

This time the kids wanted to prepare a simple African feast. Caleb one of the boys in

our co-op taught us all how to make origami turtles in honor of our study of Anansi

and Turtle. A very educational "must know how" LOL..We think so anyways.

Here are the ingredients for this simple chicken and rice dish.

Chicken/Rice and Dates

• chicken thighs
• box of dates
• 1/4 cup of brown sugar
  
• can of papaya (although fresh would have been better, we didn't find any)
• red bell pepper
• onion
• 1 T. olive oil
  
• Juice of one lemon and sliced rind
  
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• instant rice (6 servings )
  

Mix together lemon, sugar, vinegar, water and dates. Pour over chicken and cook for about an hour at 400 degrees. By the way this tasted great. We were skeptical and especially the kids who are picky eaters. But the meat fell off the bone and the juice was just absolutely delicious.

The instant rice was sauteed with onion, red bell pepper, one can of chopped papaya, in olive oil along with salt and pepper to taste. Oh yes, parsely too, just a pinch.

Chelly, Caleb's mom also made dessert . Yum yum.

This is Date Chewies and Date and Banana Bars.

Date Chewies have the while confection sugar on them.

Here is an oasis they did....

Sugar Cube pyramid too...

Rose,

How exciting! You are right--do not be afraid.

You are not doing anything illegal. Enjoy your homeschooling. You are a residence of Texas from what you told me and you are subject to their state laws.

Be sure you are taking FULL advantage of all the info on the website. It is a VERY deep website meaning some of the information you get you would not think you would click to go there.

They have told me they are going revamp their site soon to make more tabs.

Look at this link.

http://www.thsc.org/Getting_Started/CPS.asp

Read all the way to the bottom...there is an article of what constitutes "child endangerment" from the CPS and it certainly is NOT homeschooling...lol.

Read here about "going about: during the day..

http://www.thsc.org/FAQ/default.asp#questions

And read hear about "traveling" which is all you are doing.

http://www.thsc.org/Getting_Started/TravelFlexibility.asp

You will do great!! Become a member of THSC and stay connected.

Tina

Our family has a permenant residence in TX. Daddy is a pipeliner,

and we are now traveling with the work. We are in Louisiana at this

point in time. Could the state or truent officers give us trouble?

We are still under TX homeschooling laws right? Just wondering if 

you had any answers for me. I will be paying my dues to THSC soon.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Rose

Is there a difference imho? Absolutely! You know this is the time of the year most of us are getting started. Maybe, we are just now starting to see that  what we have been using for the past couple of weeks may not be as "perfect' as we thought when we bought it. But let me share some tidbits I have learned along the way.

• If public school is not working, why do we want to come home and set up our day like their routine?
• If we are choosing the same curriculum, following the same schedule and implementing the same routine--then we are only "changing geographic" locations. Who wants to do that? We need/want to feel "homeschool freedom."
• Really there is nothing wrong with using "boxed" curriculum because curriculum doesn't really "teach" anything.
• By using a boxed curriculum though we want to be sure that we are the "masters" and it is a "tool' or "slave". By giving ourselves permission to skip over and tear parts that we don't need we show that we recognize the fact we are teaching a child.
• Boxed curriculum can be refreshing to those that do not how to lesson plan.
• However, we do want to be sure that we are "tweaking" it to fit our needs and not following it "blindly" as if by "doing all that we check off" our kids will never be behind.

Behind who? Behind what? As long as I have been homeschooling I have been "trying" to find them...ROFL ROFL

The simple truth is that unless a child has some learning problem, behind just does not exist. We are just "where" we are at. This does not mean that we don't have goals or objectives in homeschooling, it just means we leave the comparisons off with other homeschooling families.

All the comparisons do is to rob us of peace of mind.

Too, "modesty" is a virtue that should be sought by many more. Modesty means "to recognized our limits". NOBODY has all the answers to everything and will cover EVERYTHING in their homeschooling. But we can teach our kids the tools to get any knowledge they seek in their lives.

How is that bad? It is not--it is a virtue I wish to cultivate in my children.

Since we like to homeschool during the summer and don't really go "back to school" on Aug 24 when a lot of ps do here in Texas AND when some new homeschoolers do too,

 we like to do a few more projects during the summer. One thing we did during the

 summer  was a co-op with one other family on ancient history. 

We studied about  ancient Crete and Greece and then did a few hands

 on projects. When we  studied about Crete, we learned about volcanoes

 as well. One of our pictures  is of lava rock. We erupted a volcano 

that was made by the other homeschool mom and the kids 

(with our help toward the end ...lol) carved a Greek ship 

from ice cream. Both of these ideas came from Story of the World and 

I can't really post their description as I feel that would be copyright 

infringement and we respect that. But I can post our pictures

 and showed what we used.

Canned icing

Toothpicks

Wooden Screwers

Frozen block of vanill ice cream

Whipped topping with blue dye

We must of messed up every scooper,

 knife, spoon and fork ...LOL but had a great time!

We could only work on it for a few minutes at a

time before we had to stick it back into the

freezer to freeze again.

If you live close to the Bryan/College Station area, I will be speaking to new homeschoolers about how to choose curriculum.

 Bring the kids, bring dad and bring a friend! You will receive a free outline.

 Date: Thursday September  3

Place: Cici's Pizza, College Station

Time: 11:00 a.m.

Tina

Rose, they are making some "upgrades" on this free site...and ha ha you know how that is suppose to "improve" things...LOL

But as "owner" it won't allow me to "reply" right now..LOL only post a new entry.

So I didn't want to wait on the upgrade since I had time now to answer you.

But thank you Rose....that is a much better pic. of your "routine". There is nothing worse than trying to help a fellow homeschooler and end up stressing them more than being helpful,kwim?

I think your plan is "extremely" doable. You just need to set "realistic" expectations that need to be set to the "beat and rhythm" of your little guy.

Too, you need to embrace your younger two children's learning style and the need to "move".

This can be accomplished by the "hands on" activity in the SOTW. So it will keep your focus on history like you want but too allow for their interruption and movement.

I do/did find in using SOTW that when I did consistent map study,etc..that geography is not such a huge issue as far as "locating areas" so I was able to expand geography with SOTW by using the books recommended to cover more background and cultural difference---make sense?

In otherwords if we didn't do anything else because of interruptions, we read and did our maps. That kept us on track and then we added more history/geography as we could.

Too, your kids are so young, you still have time to focus on "language roots",etc.. I did the same thing when I started using WTM but realized I like what Greg Harris says about learning.

So I have found a balance over the years by tweaking WTM and not following it exactly. Even SWB says she doesn't follow all of it exactly. I do like rigorous academics but I favor some of the Charlotte Mason approach as well. Coincidentally, Charlotte Mason is viewed as classical as well, but less emphasis on "language arts". I feel there should be a balance. 

But read here about  "delight directed studies". I cannot stress their value enough in learning. This is what I often recommend to my moms who have children that are soooo exhausted from the public school method of "cram and jam" info, only to have it flee out of their minds after a test. So one goal should be to have our children "own" the information, not just recite it.

Also, keep your "goal" of unit studies in mind----this allows your children to "enjoy" it and sparks interest for more instead of it always being "labor intensive". Knowledge comes with an enjoyment of what we are learning.

There are a few unit study planners I like, here is one that I use because it asks quetions to prompt you along instead of having lots of "blank lines".

Also as far as a timeline, I started doing things differently there too. 

I now use a 3 ring binder that is loose leaf and print the timeline on cardstock so we can add to the binder year after year. We might want one period to be longer.

It still allows us to take it out of the binder, lay it on the floor in the hallway or go across the whole house, and keep it there as long as we like to get our visual picture and then pick it back up, put it in the binder, and put back on the shelf to store neatly.

My need to have things organized dictates this....LOL

Too, we like the idea of coming back year after year as the kids grow to add in other interesting details.

Just my .02 cents..

I have "forms' too on that that I am going to upload soon. They are timeline forms that follow the WTM.

Do what is best for you but you will change things over the years.

Lastly, with your oldest child being math inclined and your middle needing to move---just pay attention to your math as far as seeing if that is working or not.

Like I said before Saxon is good, it has been around for such a long time and everyone feels comfortable...but countries like Singapore that far out do us as far as math use programs that are mastery.

My oldest is math inclined and loves Video Text and Math U See because he likes the concept being clearly explained and he "gets" it and does not need the constant review and repition of Saxon.

MUS helps those that need to do hands on as well. That is my second guy who is not math inclined. He needs to "touch and see" it to have that "ah ha" moment.

Hope that helps..everything looks great!

Tina

This is way beyond great! I just wanted to say this is my very favorite

place to be. Your graphics are spectacular, you two are so sweet, and 

your information can be used with all ages. Please, please, please...

know that your time and advice is very appreciated. Thank you for

having such open giving hearts.

Rose