Prairie Scraps

Don't you love a snow day?  We homeschool, and we still get excited about snow days from school.  Don't ask me why, because we still have school on snow days!  But, there really is a thing of wonder when it snows enough to cancel everything!  What do you do for snow days?

As you may have already guessed from my previous article, 5 Reasons to NOT use Standardized Tests in Your Homeschool, I'm not a huge fan of testing my kids at all. It's not that I don't think that tests have a valid place in homeschool, I think in some instances, you should put your child through the process of testing. But I'm here to say that testing, especially Standardized Tests, are not the tell all for your child's knowledge and understanding. Here are 5 Ways to Know that Your Homeschool Works Ask your child questions after presenting the subject.  Can the give you important details about the subject back, in their own words?  Are they able to tell others about what they are studying?  I often "set" my children up.  When we see a friend or family member, I'll ask them to tell them about what we have been studying.  If they're at a loss for words, I'll prompt them.  For example, I'll say: "What war are we studying?" ...

Last week our area homeschool group parents got into a discussion about testing.  Many parents in our area, have paid money every year for their kids to have Independent Standardized tests.  I have taken a different approach for checking where my kids are at, and making sure that they are understanding what I'm teaching.  In fact, a part of me really doesn't like the standardized tests at all!  Here are some of the reasons why I think they are NOT effective (all my opinions): Many homeschool children aren't having formal testing done regularly, so testing once a year is not going to really test their abilities as a student, as much as test their ability to test. Most public school systems are teaching towards the test. As a homeschooler, you can't compete with this, or even dream of considering the test results to be fairly representing your children, good or bad.  Weeks (and maybe even months) before the testing in the public schools, the teacher...

 My very sweet 17 year old daughter saw a ruffled tree skirt at a friend's house and decided that she had to make me one for a Christmas gift this week.  A little background on this first.  My daughter was a reluctant participant in sewing in 4-H for 6 long years!  She is not very detail oriented, so it was a struggle for both of us to get projects done right for the fair each year.  She was more than happy to be finished with that project, and hasn't had an interest in sewing since. Well, this project was quite the project.  She found all the material herself, and even tried to find ruffles she could sew onto this skirt all over town.  When she came up with a dead end on ruffles (she knew she couldn't make her own ruffles), she found bias tape instead!  I personally think that she's a genius!  I've seen these ruffled skirts and love them, but this actually makes my skirt special! Mr. Right even got involved and tried to print the let...

Last week was a big week around our town -  it was Homecoming Week.  As a part of homecoming week, the athletes in football, volleyball, and cross country, do a Big Brother, Little Sister Exchange.  The volleyball players pick one of the football player's names out to give some school spirit to for the week.  Although we homeschool, my kids have played on the high school teams at the public school, so this has been a fun week for them for the past few years!  The school assigns my kids a locker to use for the week so that it can be used for a drop off place.    As a homeschool, I have to say this has been a really great experience for my kids to not only bond with their teammates, but also feel like they are a part of the community.  My kids go to all the after school event during homecoming, including bonfires, cookouts, and even ride in the parade with their graduating class.   The week begins with decorating each others l...

On the way home from town at 1pm today, we saw this horizontal rainbow above the mountain!  I'm not exactly sure what it is, but after doing a bunch of searching online, have settled with Wikipedia's version of it: (See the entire article Here)  A circumhorizontal arc is an optical phenomenon - an ice-halo formed by the refraction of sun- or moonlight in plate-shaped ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere, typically in cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. In its full form, the arc has the appearance of a large, brightly spectrum-coloured band running parallel to the horizon, located below the Sun or Moon. The distance below the Sun or Moon is twice as far as the common 22-degree halo . Red is the uppermost colour. Often, when the halo-forming cloud is small or patchy, only fragments of the arc are seen. As with all halos, it can be caused by the Sun as well as (but much more rarely) by the Moon. [ 1 ]     So, although the rainbow looks curved, it was straigh...

My firstborn is about to graduate this Sunday! Because we homeschool, this is creating a few weeks with a ton of work and getting ready for the graduation ceremony and the party!  But I have to say doing the crafting is my favorite part!   There are four boys in our area that are graduating together, so we are having their graduation in one of the family's barn (not animal barn, but really, an extra space for people gathering barn!)  It's a beautiful location and a beautiful barn, so we feel extremely blessed to be a part of this ceremony and party!   We decided to make the most of the country feel and have burlap and country accents.  I offered to make burlap pennants for each of the boys, spelling their names, for the card tables, and then also a big GRADUATION banner for the gate out of burlap.  I happened to have four extra pennants, so decided to make one with 2015 on it for another accent.    Their color is navy blue, so I...

Our unit study on the United States continues. We studied the 2nd state, Pennsylvania as a review 2 weeks ago, but didn't do any of the recipes. We studied it last fall and made pretzels, so we skipped that part of it this time around. This week we are working on New Jersey.  Last night for dinner we had Italian Submarine Sandwiches.  These are also known as hoagies in Pennsylvania. Instead of making our own version of sandwiches, I followed the recipe, onions and all. Since a couple of people in my family don't like onions I knew it was taking a chance, but all but one ate it so I think we faired well.

I have been offline for quite some time because my laptop has crashed and my internet connection is spotty at best.  So rather than go through the frustration of getting shut down all the time, I've been avoiding.  Sorry, about that, but I'm going to give it a try on a new laptop.  Besides that, we have a very exciting unit study that we are working on right now.   We are working on a unit study of all the states in the United States, one-by-one. I've gathered books and information from all over and then to add to that, I've been on Facebook asking people from different states to send a postcard to my kids.   I got a blank template to use for each state.  I just copied 50 for each of my kids. I got a lot of ideas off of several websites.  The main place I got ideas from were from the 50 States Notebook Website. And then just gathered what I wanted to use. We will use this same template for every state. We are doing the states in orde...

I've been the coordinator for our Mothers Of Preschoolers (MOPS) group this year, and we don't have many leaders, so I have been doing the Craft projects.  I thought I would share our craft this last week.  Our topic was on depression (I know, a depressing topic!), so to keep little ones busy while at appointments or car rides, we made busy bags for the car. I found these cinching backpack bags at the Dollar Store: There were two different designs, the other one had a beach ball on it.  You could use as small rubbermaid or a book bag too, but I was looking for something that was cheap. We made 3 different activities to put into the bag.  The first is a popsicle stick puzzle that I got from  HERE at Tot School.   This only required popsicle sticks and different colored Sharpies to make.  One of my personal favorite activity to make for my kids are the I Spy bottles.  What you need for this project are: Empty Water Bottles...

Call me sick, but I love everything about the first day of school!  Even as an adult and homeschooling parent, I still love that first day of school.  When the first school supplies start to arrive in the stores, I just to go through the aisle and smell all the supplies and check them out!  So, here we are again, at the beginning of the school year!  After I come down from the high of smelling all the supplies and new books, I have the business of getting that first day started.  Of course, I didn't get ready until the night before (by waiting until the night before, it prolongs the fact that summer is over already). I have to say, as my oldest two children worked away at their computers and I was helping my two middle children with experiments for science class (pictured above), and the baby is running around trying to get everyone to play, it was a great moment in life!  I love to homeschool, mostly, because I love to be with my kids all day as...

Our Little Monkeys is offering a Free download HERE for tots.  You have to sign up for an account, but there is no cost.  I just love to snag free Preschool activities like this and make them into Activity Bags for my youngest kids!  It gives them more variety in their daily activities and reinforces what they are learning!   Here's an Easter Printable for First Graders that is Free.  Click HERE for this math printable.  It seems like there are a lot of freebies out there for preschoolers, but with a 2nd Grader in the house, I'm always looking to give him appropriate activities too. Another great homeschool activity books are Lapbooks.  I found this Resurrection Lapbook HERE. I am using a combination of these to put together Lapbooks for both of my kids.  I will post a picture soon of how they work out for us.  I'm actually using a combination, so that I can cater to the abilities of my kids that are 2 years apart.