Category Archives: Homeschooling

At first I said no.

05/28/2014 Danielle Huddleston 2 Comments

After watching me take many pictures of this cute little bunny that visited our yard, my youngest asked if he could take some pictures.

I had just put the camera back in the house and sat down in the hammock.

I knew I should probably put a strap on the camera(we never use them) if he was going to walk around with it.

So I said now was not a good time.

As soon as I said it though I realized his excitement and interest made it a great time.

I did not know how interested he would be in taking pictures when it was more convenient for me.

Isn’t this one of the reasons I homeschool so that my kids can pursue something because they actually want to know more about it instead of it being the next chapter in the textbook?

So I went inside and got my backup camera ready for him to use.

I think saying not right now is okay.

My boys know that I am not there to grant their every wish.

I am just glad this time I said yes.

My oldest tends to question shots.

He deletes them and tries again.

My youngest on the other hand had only good things to say about his pictures.

I heard “got it” over and over again.

These are two of the shots he took.

I love seeing my boys learn with enjoyment.

Homeschooling

History ~Captivity, Moses, the Exodus, and Judges

05/07/2014 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

The Imagination Station “Secret of the Princes Tomb” is set at the beginning of the Israelites Slavery in Egypt.

“Tirzah” follows a young Israelite during the Exodus from Egypt and is a great read!

“Hittite Warrior” is set during the times of the judges, we have not read this one yet.

I am going to be reading it to them during the summer most likely.

I liked the “Almighty Bible’s” version of Genesis so I bought their Exodus version after we finished Tirzah and had the boys read it as a review.

It has great illustrations and I like the fact that it has more of the bible verse telling the story instead of paraphrasing.

This is the inside of the “Action Bible” it is a great bible to give your kids an overview of the whole bible but I do not like how much “interpretation” is going on.

We worked in some straight bible reading also.

Science has taken a little bit of a back seat the past couple of months but we did try to study deserts a bit to get a feel for what it would have been like to travel through.

The Magic School Bus has a book and episode called “Gets All Dried Up” that explains deserts really well.

EcoMazes is a pretty interesting book.

I bought a Safari Toob from Hobby Lobby and let the boys set up a little diorama.

They got the idea from the Magic School Bus.

I actually waited to write this post so we could do this today.

I kept putting it off but writing a post about it pushed me to get it done.

I looked up the names of everything on the site for the Toob and had them label them.

It helped me to feel like they were actually learning something.

I do not know if they did or not but I feel better.

We have not done any of the projects in this book but they have some really cool ones!

I would not mind owning this one.

We are actually done in a way with school.

We finished Friday.

That said, we are doing Math all summer.

I have decided to take a break from math this week and start up again Monday.

Anyone else doing some school work this summer?

That way I do not feel all alone…

Homeschooling

Not so Trivial Pursuit

04/28/2014 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

As a homeschool mom I am always looking for an easier way to teach my boys.

If they have no clue they are learning, even better!

I picked up three sets of Professor Noggin’s Card Games at Hobby Lobby and knew right away I wanted to use them with our Trivial Pursuit Game.

When I went to get the game I realized we have three versions of Trivial Pursuit.

Why?

I have no clue…

I decided to go ahead and just use the three colors our cards were to make things easier.

So to win you needed to get two orange(science), two pink(Human Body), and two blue(Presidents).

I asked them the easy questions and they asked me the hard questions.

They smoked me…

I found out right away that my knowledge of US Presidents is lacking.

My boys did amazing in the the science and human body catagories!

I kept saying, “Wow! Who is their teacher? She is amazing!” to my husband.

It went so well that I am going to pick up a few more card sets to add to our game.

My youngest kept bouncing up and down as we played.

He does this for any game(even cards) but I am going to take it as a sign he liked it.

Guess who won?

He got inside with all of his pieces first.

To win you get all the pieces, get in the middle, and then answer a question from any category.

Do you have a trivial pursuit game lying around(or three)?

This is a great way to have fun while learning!