Christian Heritage Art Program

We just started using the Christian Heritage Art Appreciation program from Catholic Heritage Curriculum. This is art appreciation and study from a Catholic perspective covering the breadth of art history. The program has eight levels, each level divided into 6 time periods. We are using the program with out TORCH co-op, the younger five kids using level 1 and the older five using level 3.



Both levels start withh prehistoric art. Level 1 focused on cave paintings. After the kids watched the video with examples and age-appropriate discussion of cave paintings, they painted on crinkled brown paper bags to simulate cave walls.





Level 3 focused on Native American art and geometric shapes. They too used crinkled brown paper bags, but they made stencils of geometric shapes which they used to make designs. The program is enjoyable, informative, and easy to use and I particularly like using it in a small co-op setting.

Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival

Welcome to the February edition of the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival! Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, President's Day, and importantly the start of Lent--February is a full month, and so is our carnival!

Ritsumei presents an entry after my own heart, Vinegar! posted at Baby Steps.

Becky presents Rain, With An Occasional Cool and Cloudy Break posted at Wide Open Campus. That bottom picture is just wonderful!

Angie presents Winter Outdoor Hour:Nature Close To Home-Cattails posted at TheOneThing. What fun!

Angie also presents great skill building in #5 Handicrafts/ Life Skills Challenge also posted at TheOneThing.

Angie's been hoppin' and she also presents Fun Friday and Why I Home School posted at TheOneThing. Why do you homeschool? "Why wouldn't you," I say!

Pamela presents Not Kidding... posted at Blah, Blah, Blog. I can see why she's Not Kidding anymore!

Deana presents Make-Your-Own Word Family Review Cards posted at The Frugal Homeschooling Mom. She writes, "Here’s a simple, cheap way to practice rhyming words and word families with your preschooler. It’s also a great way to review phonics. Don’t go out and buy word family review cards at the homeschooling supply store or teacher’s store! It’s so easy to make them yourself." I agree!

On my other blog, I started Journey North Mystery Class project. It's not too late to start as we've only done the first week! Journey North Mystery Class Preparation posted on At Home Science.

Anyone who hosts blog carnivals knows you get a lot of spam. Though this next entry falls into that, it actually has a lot of fun printables for kids so I thought I would include it. Car Color-by-Number Mosaic posted at Printables for Kids. At least it's not a "Top 10 sites for..." whatever site!

Our blog carnival creator, Cherylinma, presents Spaghetti Trestle Bridge posted at Talking to Myself - Homeschool Blogger. Looks like a must try book!

Rachel presents Tips for Moms, Activities for kids by Quirky Mommas » Blog Archive » Using M&Ms to Graph with your Preschooler posted at quirkymomma.com. This is colorful and tasty. It will have your kids asking to do math, lol!

Brenda, now at her new web site, presents Creative Photography posted at Brenda. This is a really great project to do.

This next submission is from DreamBox Learning math program, but it is a homeschooling company and the blog post was about math field trips--two things you don't typically put together! Tracy Beach presents Math Learning Field Trip Ideas for Homeschoolers posted at Math Learning, Fun & Education Blog : Dreambox Learning.

Finally, I have submitted my post about our recent History Fair posted at Science Of Relations.

Enjoy the carnival--I certainly have.

F. N. Monjo History Books

I love library books sales and I have been to many since adopting a Charlotte Mason educational philosophy. I am no children's literature expert so I rely on a lot of Internet sources for suggestions. I don't stick to those lists, though, especially for non-fiction. I take risks on those 25 to fifty cent books that, judging by the cover, may be good.

Recently I happen to come across several books by F. N. Monjo. I first picked up Vicksburg Veteran, but I have not read it because we have not covered the Civil War yet (later this year.) Later I picked up Me and Willie and Pa, and The One Bad Thing About Father. They all look really good, but I have yet to read them.

Now we are studying the Industrial Revolution. As I mentioned, Ds#2 researched Slater's Mill, so when I saw the book by Monjo during a library search I borrowed it--and I read it.

What a fabulous historical fiction account of Samuel Slater coming to Pawtucket to rebuild Moses Brown's mill! Into the story Monjo worked in Rhode Island's reluctance to ratify the Constitution, positive descriptions of Quakers, every day life during that time, and, of course, the building of the mill. This author is wonderful for elementary students!

His books are fairly common and several have paperback reprints, so they are easy enough to pick up on the used book market for a reasonable price. You can probably get them through your library, too.

History Fair

This year we are not part of a large co-op, and it has been such a blessing for me given the fluctuations my life is going through right now. We belong to a small, 3-family, 11-child (from 7 months to 11 years) TORCH co-op that we really enjoy. I am leading the older 5 in the Journey North Mystery Class for science.

We are part of what I call a homeschooling enrichment group with many of the families from the former large co-op, and we get together for various activities and classes. The most recent was our History Fair. We reserved the large, beautiful room at the library, set up tables, put up our displays, and invited families and friends to come see what their homeschooled relations were up to.

Ds#1 has been fascinated with the Interstate Highway System so he jumped right into that project. Ds#2 really loved the recent Bales to Bolts program that our enrichment group went on in Lowell mills. He decided to compare Slater's Mill in Pawtucket, RI to the one built by Lowell in Waltham, MA and by his partners later in Lowell, MA.

We had 13 displays in all and a good amount of visitors. In two more months we'll do it again, only this time the theme will be science instead of history.

Invisible Woman

This speaks for itself. Thank you, Lord, for seeing.

Bookmarking Learning Sites for the Kids

I bookmark a lot of really great web sites to enhance our homeschooling. The problem is that the kids share a computer while I use my laptop, so when I find a great site on my laptop, I bookmark it in Delicious and then I forget about it. When one has computer time, I am getting another set up for something and teaching the third so I don't have time right then to hunt for sites.

I have come up with a solution using Google Bookmarks. The kids' browser's homepage is set to iGoogle, a customizable page. In iGoogle I've put the Google Bookmarks gadget in the upper left side so the kids can easily see it. I have bookmarks labeled by subject, so they can just change the drop-down list to get a set of links for a specific subject.

You can also set the browser homepage to Google Bookmarks. Sort the list by label to see them grouped by subject.

Now I can say, "For the next 20 minutes pick a Language Arts link to play." The kids are now actually using the many links I have found to help reinforce what they have learned without me having to hunt for them!

BTW, at the bottom of the Google Bookmarks page is a button you can drag to your toolbar that lets you bookmark a website you are viewing. Now that makes it really easy!

Ancient Egypt

We finished up through Unit 4 of Connecting with History (well, we read a lot about ancient Egypt even if we have to catch up a bit on the other cultures of the time.



I picked up an ancient Egypt pack from a used book sale a year or two ago that looked intact and we finally put it to use. It contained all the parts to make a Tutankhamun mask. I started out using white glue but that was very slow going waiting for it to dry. Then I discovered the advantage of a hot glue gun.





I didn't quite finish the mask but I got enough of it done so the kids could wear it. Between the mask and the Jim Weiss stories, they were inspired one day.




They called me upstairs to show me the discovery of an unknown Egyptian tomb they had discovered.