Blogging Break

It's so hard to do when I have this huge list of things I want to post on this blog, but I'm having to take a few weeks' break for the following reasons:

1. We are in the process of applying for permanent residency here in England, and that involves lots of paperwork and preparation. We are traveling to Cardiff (the only place we could get an appointment between now and the time our visa expires) on March 5. We want to apply in person because it can be a 6-month wait if you apply by mail. So in less than 2 weeks, we'll know whether or not we're staying in England!

2. I have company coming in this weekend, and my house needs loads of cleaning and organizing--I'm serious...certain rooms look great, but others are disasters! We don't have company often, so this is a special occasion that requires cleaning!

3. For some very odd reason, I've been having trouble with Blogger the past week. It's horribly slow and sometimes doesn't come up at all. I've not had any trouble with any other website--just Blogger. I'm getting rather fed up with it, so that's another reason I'm not really blogging at the moment. I just hope this one posts okay!

I have at least 3 blog carnivals I participate in (and a few more I'd love to join if I didn't have so much already), and I hate that I'm not joining in for a few weeks (well, I might do one if I can get blogger to work--it's one I don't have to have photos on this week, so it won't take long to do).

Also, I apologize that I haven't responded to several recent comments. Again, part of the reason is the trouble I've been having with Blogger. I'll respond as soon as I can, I promise!

Upcoming posts when I am able to get to them: Tot School, France, Netherlands, Norway, Japan, Kindergarten Moments, Earth Science topics, and Field Trips (including one to the Viking Festival in York)! I'm hoping to get to the Homeschool Hop this week if I'm able. Anyway, that's the plan. Please keep us in your prayers as we go through this application process for residency. Blessings!

What's on Our Book Rack? February

I left our winter books up for half of February. I also have included books about the country Isaac is studying (currently Japan). But for this post, I'll include my books related to Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, Pancake Day (in England), and President's Day. Unfortunately, I don't have a huge selection, as most of my books in these categories are still in storage in the USA.



I also have George Washington's Cows by David Small, but it wasn't available to put on this carousel.

Homeschool Hop #2 My Family

Kylie at Our Worldwide Classroom hosts the Homeschool Hop every week. You can read the details of the blog hop here. This week we are sharing about our families.

Here are a few pics of my husband Greg with the kids. The first is the most recent and was taken in Holland. The second is from last fall.


Greg and I have been married 10 years. We met at Bible school and married when we were in our late 20s. Greg is pretty passionate about missions and also about prayer and worship. He's also quite funny, and he's very outgoing (opposite of me). Like me, he enjoys museums, old houses, castles, gardens, picnics, and history. He loves the quiet peacefulness of the country, though where we actually live is not peaceful or quiet or country! He's a HUGE Nebraska Cornhusker football fan, having been born and raised in Nebraska and Iowa. He will actually stay up most of the night to listen to a Husker game online (since we're in England, some games don't start until 1 a.m. our time). He enjoys hiking (mountains in England and Wales), and he also enjoys running (he ran track in high school). He has a degree in English literature, though he's never had a career in that field. He's been to Mexico, Hong Kong, China, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and Netherlands, so he loves traveling too! He loves spending time with the kids--we do quite a lot as a family. Oh, and he really likes coloring and swinging on swings--he did that even before we had kids!

Isaac is 8 years old. He's a lot like his dad--very outgoing and friendly. He's also very easy-going (not really like either of us). He's been that way since birth! Isaac's favorite pastimes are drawing (pencil sketches, mostly of knights and castles and battle scenes), reading, and playing Wii. He also enjoys hot wheels, his castle and knights set, his army men and air craft carrier, his toy planes, and his toy sword. He loves the Narnia books and movies. He's very, very loving, gentle and sweet, and he adores his 2 little sisters. He's very patient with them (well, most of the time), and he's always willing to help them.

Moriah is my 5-year-old princess. She's a lot more like me. She can be quite shy until she gets to know a person, yet she can become immediate best friends with any little girl her age, even if they've just met. Moriah is pretty much a girly girl (which is not really like me at that age). She loves dresses and having her hair done up fancy. She's really into Disney princesses, but she also likes My Little Pony, Ponyville, Polly Pockets, and Littlest Pet Shop. She also loves playing Wii with Isaac, and she likes singing, dancing, and drawing. She's very sweet and cuddly, too!

Gabriela is my 2-year-old, my baby. I don't know who she's most like in personality (really, she's just her own little person), but she looks exactly like me at that age, except that she has reddish hair. She was actually born here in England. You can follow her Tot School on my blog--she loves getting to participate in school with the other two. She's very much into Dora the Explorer. She also likes dancing and bouncing (I call her Tigger). She likes to play with Moriah's little dolls, and she'll also play with Isaac's cars. She's quite petite for her age, but she's very healthy, active, and happy.

All 3 of my children were born c-section, and all 3 were born during my 30s. Oh, and all 3 have different color hair! : ) I feel very blessed to have such a loving husband and sweet children! Well, I guess that's it. I'll probably think of more later that I should have added!

Tot School--Valentine's Day Theme

This week we did Valentine's Day stuff and the letter E. I probably won't post next week for 2 reasons. First of all, we're now on half-term break. In England, they have a week off school this week, and even though we homeschool, we try to take the same holidays off. That's okay with me...I needed this break! Secondly, we're getting ready to apply for permanent residency in the UK, and there's a lot of paperwork to gather. Despite the break, things are going to be busy as we get everything together and get this taken care of asap before our visa runs out. Hopefully everything will go well and we'll get accepted. Plus, we're busy cleaning and organizing the house. If you've noticed the backgrounds of my photos the past month or so, you will see lots of clutter everywhere--piles of papers, piles of laundry, etc. So, maybe my holiday isn't going to be such a holiday after all! Anyway, I may be taking a break on blogging until we get our residency sorted...hopefully.

1. Valentine Matching Box--I made this myself out of a box (which I partially wrapped) Valentine stickers, and craft sticks...also using a knife and my laminator. I put 2 of every kind of sticker (12 sets in all) on a piece of paper and laminated it. I cut the stickers apart and put one set on craft sticks and the matching set under slits I cut into the box. I wasn't sure if Gabriela would be able to do it, because it's not very clear which slit goes with which picture. However, she figured it out very quickly. We did this activity every day this past week, and she even got it out over the weekend.


2. Letter E Trays--I tried hiding the letter E's inside all sorts of containers. Some she opened easily, and others I had to help her with. She enjoyed finding them, though! Also she colored an E, stamped the letter E, and made play-dough Es.



3. Valentines--Colors and Sizes. We talked about which was the biggest heart, medium-size, and smallest. We also talked about colors. Then I helped her paste them together in size order.


4. Valentine stickers: After pasting the 3 hearts together, Gabriela had fun putting stickers on it. This was also a confidence-builder for her, because she kept saying, "I can't do it!" Then suddenly she would get it, and she was so happy.


5. Bingo Dauber Valentine: Using a red bingo dabber (the ones I have are called dabbers, not daubers...anyway) and a heart pattern I got from DLTK, Gabriela dotted each circle...sort of. I helped her with the first few to show her what to do. She understood that she was to hit the circles only, but she wanted to color them, not dot them. By the way, DLTK has more bingo dauber Valentine pages besides this one.


6. More Bingo Dabbing/Daubing: When Gabriela used the stickers, I took off the backing to make it easier for her to peel off the stickers (an idea I've seen on several blogs). I put the backing on a piece of construction paper and let her dab the spaces. She actually enjoyed this and worked on it very intently. However, she still tried a few times to color with the dabber instead of just dotting it, or else she pushed it really hard instead of lightly. I guess we'll just have to practice--at least she enjoys it!


7. Real Life Skills--Unloading the dishwasher...yeah, a 2-year-old...and she even unloads some of the breakable things (I let her do the bowls, but I rescued the glasses and large plates before she got to them). She loves doing this! Sometimes she tries to help Isaac and Moriah when they unload, but this particular time she was helping her daddy. We do monitor her while she does this, and we take out the sharp knives first! Basically, she just takes out the items, one at a time, and hands them to her daddy to put away. When she got to the plastic cups, though, she stacked them all before handing them to Greg.


Here's a cute video of Gabriela helping. The quality isn't the best on our indoor videos...we need a new camera!


And shutting the dishwasher when she was all done!


8. Letter E Matching


9. Rice spooning--I dyed some rice pink and used it for spooning...or maybe it was more like scooping. We had this cute red scooper that come in an oatmeal container. We tried different things to scoop it out of and into, and at the end she just used her hands to play with it. The red container she's pouring the rice into is from a container of mince pies we had around Christmas!


10. Playing with her little dolls:


11. Playing with her Dora playground set:


12. Watching Dora (again) with her sister...Greg had brought in the car seats, and the girls thought it would be cool to sit in them while watching the DVD. It was nearly naptime at this point, hence the yawn.


13. Pasting Valentines. I cut out hearts of all different sizes and helped Gabriela paste them onto paper.


14. Pooh's Valentine--I read this to Gabriela, and she enjoyed looking through it several times on her own.


15. Cutting out Valentine cookies!


DE-WISH-USH!


I'll leave you with more funny faces from my Funny Valentine! (This could be a weekly thing...)


Check out 1+1+1=1 for more Tot School links from other bloggers.

Will Someone Please Set Up a Geography Blog Carnival?

I am so pleased to find more blogs with amazingly brilliant geography ideas! I dearly wish that someone would start a geography blog carnival. I LOVE geography (it's my favorite subject), and I would love to participate in something like that, where bloggers share their geography lessons and links and ideas! I would do it, only I don't feel I have enough followers to do a carnival--I'm a fairly new blogger (I don't even know how to set up a carnival). Does anyone know of one that already exists? Anyway, here are a few more blogs I ran across that have some wonderful ideas for geography studies:
Joyful Mommy and Joyful Child
Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns
What DID we do all day? (look here to read about continent boxes--so cool!)
The Adventures of Bear

I mentioned these two in my last post:
Homeschool Creations
Not Before 7 Teaches

These blogs have activities for tots through lower elementary level, and they also have lots of links for neat resources for studying different countries. Now, all these blogs just need to get together in a blog carnival for geography, somebody, pleassssssssssseeeeeeeeeee! : )

Geography: Australia

I am SOOO far behind in posting Isaac's geography! We spend at least 2 weeks on a country, doing various activities and reading books. So far this year, I've posted about our studies of the United Kingdom (2nd link here), Turkey (2nd link here), Saudi Arabia, and New Zealand. Today I'm writing about our Australia studies, which we did several weeks ago. Since then we've also studied France, Netherlands, and Norway. For history this year, Isaac is using The Story of the World: Middle Ages. For geography, I've selected countries that we're studying in history. Netherlands is the only exception here--I decided to throw Netherlands into our studies after we took a trip there after Christmas! Right now we're studying Japan--for 3 weeks (way too much material on Japan to cram into 2 weeks)! So if you're interested in what we're doing for geography, those are the countries you have to look forward to in my future posts. In case you're new to my blog, Isaac is my 3rd-grader, but these activities could be modified for just about any grade level.

I get a lot of great geography ideas from Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations. She even has some printables you can use, so check out her blog if you want some fun activities for geography! Another blog that has some super cool geography ideas is Not Before 7 Teaches. In fact, she has one on Japan which I think I need to check out again ASAP!

Okay, here's what we did for Australia:

Weeks 9-10
Country: Australia

Week 1
Monday:
Locate Australia on world map and globe.
Read about Australia in the Pocket Atlas and the Family Picture Atlas
Flag sticker in our passport/stamp date
Capital, large cities, water borders
Listen to the Australia Song (from Geography Songs CD)

Tuesday:
Australia Song
Discuss government and currency
Flag page to color

Map page:
Label each of the 6 states and 1 major territory of Australia.
Lightly color each state/territory a different color.
Locate and label the capitals of each state/territory.
Find the capital of Australia. Put a star where it should go, and label it.
Locate and label the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Tasman Sea, the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Great Australian Bight, the Timor Sea, the Arafura Sea, and the Coral Sea.
Lightly color the area around Australia blue.
Locate and label the Great Barrier Reef. Show the area with a purple line.


Wednesday:
Australia Song
Geography from A to Z: continent, continental divide, desert, barrier reef, grassland, tropical forest, gulf
Climate
Children Just Like Me, p. 76-77
CJLM page (from Homeschool Creations)


Thursday:
Review Australia Song
Discuss Aborigine culture (see websites here , here, and here)
Discuss the didgeridoo and listen to it on youtube


DLTK didgeridoo craft (need several tp tubes or wrapping paper tube)

Here's Isaac playing his "didgeridoo":


Friday:
Review Australia Song
Read Around the World in 80 Tales, p. 166 “Boomerang”
Boomerang video clip on youtube:

Design your own boomerang page (DLTK)

Read Peoples of the World, p. 69, 72-73


Week 2
Monday:
Review Australia Song
Discuss animals indigenous to Australia
Watch youtube videos on Australian animals

This one has sea lions, koalas and kangaroos (and maybe wallabies), but embedding was disabled, so here's the link: Kangaroo Island

Label page with Australian animals: Dingo, Emu, Duck-billed Platypus, Echidna, Koala, Kangaroo, Kookaburra, Sugar Glider, Wombat (from Enchanted Learning)


Tuesday:
Review Australia Song
Read Look What Came From Australia
Paint picture of kangaroo

Draw-Write-Now page on kangaroo


Wednesday:
Review Australia Song
Read book Outback Adventure: Australian Holiday
Discuss landmarks: Sydney Opera House, Uluru (Ayer's Rock)
Color page of koala

DLTK Koala toilet paper tube craft

Draw-Write-Now page on koala


Thursday:
Review Australia Song
Notebook page (form is from Homeschool Creations)

Color page of platypus

Draw-Write-Now page on platypus


Friday:
Review Australia Song
Make and eat Anzac biscuits (DLTK has several yummy-sounding Australian recipes)


(I burned the first batch...)
Australian slang quiz (I made this up using words from this website. I don't recommend letting your child browse through the list, however...you will find many of the terms/definitions inappropriate for little eyes. I just used it to make up a short quiz of my own.)

Other websites:
Quiz about Australia (I didn't use the quiz with Isaac, but the questions helped me come up with topic ideas for study)
Time for Kids
Coloring.ws has lots of coloring sheets for several different countries, including Australia.



This is my first time linking up to the Geography/History blog carnival at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn. Check it out!

The Homeschool Hop #1--Getting to Know You

Kylie at Our Worldwide Classroom is hosting a new blog hop, and the first theme is getting to know you, so I decided to hop along! You can read the details of the blog hop here. Please click on that link and read about it, because Kylie explains it better than I can! You can read about how the MckLinky blog hop works here. You can read about this week's theme (and read Kylie's post) here! Hopefully this all makes sense...it's all new to me!

Getting to Know Me:

I'm supposed to put a picture on of myself. Wow, I was sure I had some recent ones, but I discovered that in most of my recent pics, I'm either in a group or wearing sunglasses! I delete the terrible pics of myself, which takes care of the largest percentage of them. This one is from last May--sorry it's the best I could do!


What can I say? I'm 38, married 10 years, mother of 3 awesome kids, homeschool teacher, former elementary teacher, missionary living in the UK, from Missouri, and I'm short (barely 5'2"). I spend most of my time homeschooling (what else?), and I spend more time than my husband likes me to on facebook and blogger. I love to travel, and I've seen quite a bit of England and Wales, a bit of Scotland, and I've been to Switzerland (10th anniversary trip) and Netherlands (via France and Belgium). I also love photography and wish for a better camera and photography lessons. I like cats, but I don't have any (I did in America). I love to find good deals at yard sales and charity shops. I also enjoy antique malls, used-book stores, and small town auctions. I love playing games, anything from Scrabble to Wii to Yoville, but I'm not any good at sports. I like museums, sheep dog trials, IMAX, picnics, castles, gardens, mountains, camping, Hello Kitty, and Silver Dollar City (in Branson). I'm addicted to buttery popcorn, homemade chocolate chip cookies, garlic bread, garden-fresh tomatoes, and Willy Wonka candy (but not on the same plate). I'm a fan of Jane Austen, C.S. Lewis, and Tolkien, whether book or movie. I like history, geography, weather, and rocks. The Lake District in England is one my most favorite places to be. Though I enjoy England, I'm actually quite homesick at the moment and can't wait until our next visit to my tiny hometown in the Ozarks. I have a giraffe collection. I'm crazy about children's books, and I dream of writing someday. I regularly watch Andy Griffith reruns on our DVD collection. This is a very random sort of post! Hope I'm not boring anybody! I enjoy the life God gave me, and I feel very blessed! Anything else you want to know, just ask!

Tot School, Week 16: Pet Week

Although we didn't do Valentine stuff last week, I wanted to post some pics of my "Funny Little Valentine" right here:


I only just now discovered that I can make collages on photobucket! Silly me. The only tricky thing is getting the sizes right.

Okay, now on to Tot School!
Our theme this week was Pets and also the letter D.

1. Letter D Match


2. Alphabet book


3. Winnie-the-Pooh Learning toy--Gabriela likes this toy, but I have 2 things I don't like about it. The first is that it teaches letter sounds differently than I teach them. For instance, I teach the "m" sound as "mmm", and this game teaches it as "muh." The second is that, being a toy purchased in England, it calls the letter Z "zed." Okay, well, I guess that can't be helped since we live in England!


4. Pet Puzzle


5. This Little Piggy--This wasn't planned...Gabriela just decided to play "This Little Piggy" by herself while waiting for her next tray.


6. Cat Match and Dog Match--I created these last year for Moriah's pet unit. Gabriela seemed to enjoy it, and she does really well with matching.


7. Cat and Dog Sort--She didn't really sort them...she just played with them and put them in the muffin tins (or ice cube trays on a different day).



8. Coloring pets.


9. Looking at pet books.


10. Animal magnets. She noticed that a few of the magnets were also in her pets puzzle--the dog and the rabbit--exactly the same!


11. Letter D Tray


12. Stamping D, Coloring D, and Playdough D



13. D is for Dora (Dora stickers--this was her first time using stickers; Dora DVD--this was her zillionth time watching this...)


14. Winnie the Pooh house--a favorite


15. Trampoline--because of the weather, she hasn't been on the trampoline in awhile. She used to absolutely loved it, but today she hated it and was scared. So she didn't stay long.


16. Feeding herself--she's progressing very well and eating better too!


That's all for this week!

For more Tot School posts, visit Carisa's page at 1+1+1=1.