7/31/08

Otter's science has been updated and a new Microsoft Word document created for those of you with older copies of the software. I consider it pretty much finished, except that as we work through the materials this year, I will likely tweak things here and there. There are also just a couple of books that don't have page listings scheduled in because I haven't received them yet.

I've really enjoyed getting emails in from those of you who are planning to use Otter's Science! For those of you who are making alternate schedules, let me know if you'd like to share and I'll post your alternative plan(s) for everyone else.

Here's a preview of some more new printables posted:

I made this pretend passport to use with CAW. The PDF has 3 pages to print out: a cover, an info page and blank pages for your country stamps. Click here to access it.

I offered to make a friend a notebooking page for her daughter. This is what was requested and here it is for everyone else! Visit our notebooking printables that feature "illustration boxes" to download it.

7/26/08

I've been busy getting ready for the up and coming school year by making some lapbook printables to go along with our study of world geography and cultures. Here's a preview of some of the printables I've made and am sharing with you:

To take a look and download them, click here. Lots more will be added over the next couple of weeks!

I recently had someone ask how I made my printables. Basically I work out of several programs. For the country and cultures lapbook I worked with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Poser, a Wacom tablet and Adobe Acrobat.
Illustrator is a vector illustration program. I used it to make graphics that have simple shapes: the flap books, the dotted lines for fold marks, the graph for the mountain heights, the tracing of my hand for the prayer book, etc. I also used it to clean up some of the clip art images that were purchased through Clipart.com (Jupiter Images).
I used Photoshop to put everything together. I arranged the graphics, drew things, erased lines, used special shape brushes and so on. I saved my creations as a high resolution gif to import into Acrobat so that they would look nice printed.
Acrobat makes the PDF files for you to download.
Poser is a 3-D program that is used to create "people". I created a child in Poser, exported a picture of the child into Illustrator and created the "blank people" template that is used for one of the cut out projects.
It probably looks very simple but it's a lot of work!

Anyway, take a look and let me know what you think. All of this work was prompted because I couldn't find a country lapbook that had graphics I like. In fact, I was very disappointed with a particular purchase I made awhile back and so, I just created my own. Please check back soon for additions that are in the works. The whole thing will be finished in just a couple of weeks.

For more info on lapbooks as well as links to lapbook freebies, please visit Jimmie's Squidoo lens!

7/18/08 Leave a comment

I made some notebooking printables for Otter and am sharing them on a new notebooking page. Here is a preview of some of them:

You can check them out and download them here.

I'm also ready to share my World Geography and Cultures curriculum I made so that my high schoolers could study the same things Otter will be while doing Winter Promises's Children Around the World program.

I've also included lots of CAW "gravy" for younger siblings. Hopefully this will help some of you who want to do Children Around the World with older and younger children.

I've got a free notebook cover for you to download too! Just scroll down on the page that is linked above.

7/16/08

Dh was out in the front yard this morning when he heard what he called "a propeller driven bomber" fly past his ear. He then noted this guy doing some bee grocery shopping and ran inside to grab his camera:

The next picture is my favorite. Look at how the edges of the wings are slightly torn. Check out all that pollen! I think the pollen from these flowers is just begging to be looked at under our microscope.

This pic is out of focus, but I like it too. The bee's little feet are totally covered in pollen. It looks like he has fuzzy boots on.

We took the boys to the wildlife refuge again recently. Here are some pictures of our adventure there:

I think this may be a racoon print. You can see the little pieces of fur inside the print. There were tons of tracks criss-crossing the dry creek/canal bed. It looked like the animals were going after the fish stranded in the shallow puddles and all of the stranded and dead crawfish. The fish that were left were amazing to watch. They were JUMPING partly out of the water to get the tons of mosquitoes floating above the surface of the water. We stopped and watched them for awhile (from the mosquito-proof safety of the car, LOL).

This tree that looks like it was in a snow storm is covered in white seed "fluff".

We almost always see pheasants running around at the refuge. It's very hard to get a picture of one because, despite the bright coloring, they have an amazing knack at getting "lost" in the ground cover very quickly. They are also very shy and skittish.

This time though we saw quite a few of them and even were treated to hearing one of them call.

The last thing we saw before leaving was this hawk. He was sitting on a fence pole and then flew off shrieking. Click here for a page of animal sounds. If you scroll down to the one for a hawk - that is just what he sounded like.

I'm going to start up a nature study with the kids using this site. Barb has created challenges with suggested activities with free nature journal notebook pages. What a wonderful resource! There is plenty of inspiration from other families who've completed the challenges and blogged about it.

I think it's so important for kids to spend time outside. It's also important to take some time to notice the details of the world around us.

7-15-08

For those of you learning or teaching art, check out these wonderful poster style tutorials! Makes sure to preview the guides on drawing people, there may be some images inappropriate for some students. Cedarseed's free tutorials and guides cover a variety of subjects: emotions and facial expressions, basic animal anatomy, drawing the horse, a 3 part drawing birds series, drawing cats, Asian dragons tutorial, arabesque, color theory in a nutshell and more.

If you have a kid interested in computers s/he may enjoy Scratch:

"Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design."

You can download it for free. I'm going to let Otter use give it a try during our short "summer vacation".

Here is another fun summer thing kids (or grown-ups) may enjoy: Fontstruct. Using simple tools in the free online editor, you can make your own font. How cool is that?

7-11-08

Check out http://www.scribd.com/ for tons of printables. I put in a search for homeschool and came up with lots of great things! Here is a page that has terrific animal e-books with notebooking pages. I wish I would have found these when I was doing WinterPromise's Animals & Their Worlds program!

7-6-08

If you have a preteen or a teen...the following video is so great... I'm including a link for it in our world geography and cultures curriculum.

7-2-08

I've added some new printables in preparation for the upcoming school year:

Here is a copy of Otter's schedule with two motivational verses about doing a good job: Proverbs 6: 6-8 and 1 Corinthians 10:31. I made some ants to decorate the schedule and match the "theme".
The top half of the schedule is for school work and the lower half is for chores. You can download the Word document and change the text I've got entered in, or you can download a PDF chart that is blank and write things in. The blank schedule for girls is exactly the same as the one for boys, except it has a pink color scheme.

School Schedule and Chore Chart (Word document you can edit)

Blank Chore Chart / School Schedule (PDF - for a boy)

Blank Chore Chart / School Schedule (PDF - for a girl)

I will be adding some school and chore charts more appropriate for older kids' soon. I'll also be sharing my "how to do a chore" lists soon. These are step-by-step lists I created to teach and assist my children in doing household tasks properly.

Speaking of chores...

We've been using a fun, free site called Handipoints for the last couple of weeks. You set up a chore chart online and your kids earn points for chores, school work and other activities you want to encourage. You can also have points taken awary for negative behaviors. Points can "buy" clothes and furniture for a cat your child can take around a virtual house and town to play. There are also "stamps" to collect in a virtual stamp book. Kids can interact with other kids but only with prescripted phrases so there is no free chatting. I've read that it's very similar to the Webkinz site (I wouldn't know because we don't have any webkinz).
We don't allow our kids to spend too much time on the Internet, but Otter has really been enjoying Handipoints and asking for more chores to do so he can earn additional items. I thought I would mention it in case any of you would like to check it out! I can't complain that every day Otter is running around to do all his chores so he can check them off online!

Here are some other things I've come across recently:

Storyline Online - Listen to and look at the pages of stories read out loud by "famous" actors and actresses.

Free books online by G.A. Henty

Bringing up Learners free ancient history curriculum - I love finds like this! It looks like she is also working on a medieval level.

6-27-08

I hope you all have a safe and happy 4th of July next week! This is a pic of dh having some fun with sparklers last year. ;-)

What's new on the site:

I've added a downloadable PDF supply list to Otter's Elementary Science (thanks Wanda for the idea).

I've also updated a few pages. I added a little blurb about Thinkwell math on our math comparison page and a bunch of this and that here and there including some additions to Otter's science like some linked web activities and some book scheduling.

I recently received an email asking when I'll be done making Otter's science. I'm shooting for the end of July so I can start using it myself in August. If you'd like to be on a list of people who are emailed when it's finished, let me know.

Besides all that, I'm testing a new widget thingy that will let you all leave comments. That way I know someone is reading our blog!

P.S. Recently I tried to make some major changes using SSI on the site and it didn't work like I planned, so some of the site pages might be messed up until I can fix them. I uploaded an older version (back up) of the entire site so a few new things might be missing too. I'll be working on fixing it all this week and hopefully by this weekend it will be all fixed.

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6-23-08

I've got a few new printables up:

You can also find these printables on our science printables page.

In other news.......

Mom and dad had a pretty cool weekend. The kids were away, but who says grown ups can't homeschool themselves every once and awhile. ;-)

We were guests at a fly-in out at Eagle Field where a small part of Indiana Jones was recently filmed. All sorts of neat people were visiting this historical hangar for a dinner/dance - some of them decked out in 1940's clothing. We enjoyed a wonderful meal, WW2 airplanes, old vehicles and even got to hear some first hand accounts from some World War II veterans. I'll let the pictures below "tell" more about our wonderful time.

This building was in the most recent Indiana Jones movie! It was featured in the part of the film where Indie is flying in the plane and the journey is shown on a map. It's supposed to be a little airport in Peru (?) and was featured in the movie with chickens running in front of it.

These handbills were "props" used for the movie and are still pasted to the building.

We were treated to a few rare summertime raindrops and a spectacular sunset.

You can see the rest of the pictures we (mostly dh) took here.

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