Our First Month of School!!!!

       Our first month of school!!! It was busy busy and no time was had for weekly reviews so I am doing a monthly one! Starting school, field trips,spirit week and Wonderland week along with everything else made this a full month it seems! We started our school with our party of course. More party pics here.  

                                    Friends, food and ice cream!!!!

In math Fox has worked up to lesson 5 in the math u see epsilon. We both agree fractions are NO FUN at all. Skyler is slowly reaching the end of the gamma book. Poor kiddos math is not their greatest strength. You can for sure tell they are mine. 

In history we started out with the beginnings of the civil war and will just work our way forward. We are using a mix of books, videos, notebooking and lapbooks. 

Labeling the different areas of the states during the civil war. 

 Copying some quotes from some great men during that time! Great way to throw in that cursive practice, yes I am a "cursive" believer. 

Working on some lapbooking pieces for our civil war study. I am mostly using the dynamic moms unit. Of course Fox is mostly enjoying this as it is about war!


To go along with our Civil War study we visited Dudley Farms reconstruction era.  The Reconstruction Era event is an immersion into history, during which visitors encounter living historians from 1868.  These living historians portray the reconstruction era, and tell the story of Florida’s post-antebellum and post war.  Were foreign immigrants competed with ex-soldiers looking for jobs; cattlemen tried to rebuild their herds; scalawags tried to make a profit off the suffering of others.  Take a walk back in time to see a part of Florida’s past.

It was an amazing trip! My kids loved it. It is very authentic and enjoyable. You truly felt as if you were stepping back in time. Granted we haven't worked our way up to the reconstruction you gotta go where the field trips are happening! 

This guy was a cow hunter. You can see him on the other side of the horse. He was hunting cows!! 

This is the Dudley family. They are the family who originally started the farm and ran it. Dudley Farm is an early pioneer farm established before the Civil War. Currently it covers 325 of the original 640 acres that were operated by the Dudley family for three generations. An authentic working farm, the homestead consists of eighteen buildings. These are restored - NOT recreated - and include the family farmhouse with original furnishings, an 1880's kitchen outbuilding, a general store and post office, and a cane syrup complex. This is truly a wonderful place. 

This is the dining area it is part of the kitchen outbuilding. Did you know why kitchens were built separately? It was because in the event of a fire the whole house would not burn. I never knew that! 

This was of course a favorite for Fox. He has this crazed obsession with all things checkers or chess. This is in the old General Store and obviously hand carved. He begged to take it home LOL As if they would sell it! I as usual took a billion pictures but of course you cannot post them all on a blog but I have a link to way more woohoo!!! 

In geography we are covering South America and using the rain forest for science. Skyler really enjoys the continent box for South America we have been putting together. She constantly is playing with the animals. 

They both like the music instruments. 

Skyler is also using the Enchanted Homeschooling Moms Journey Into The World Of Folktales geography.  She is only doing some of the activities like the passport and the postcard making. 

Of course she has to have her own Princess Daisy Dog. She has made a magic car for all the characters from this curriculum. 

We celebrated national cream filled doughnut day!!!!

We made rain forest rubber when we learned about products from the rain forest 

It was messy and fun!!

We learned about bromeliads and planted a pineapple. 

We also made a rain forest garden.

 These ideas came from this site.

We made rain forest cookies and they were amazing!!!

We learned about Henri Rousseau who painted jungle scenes. He had never even been to a jungle but he still painted them. The kids did their own paintings using leaves from our yards to make imprints on their papers. 

Here is Skylers

And here is Little Mans. 

Fox is not really into art. He is either in a mood to take all day or get done in five minutes!

Since we are studying South America we had a lunch day with food from that continent for home school spirit week. 

Skyler also did crazy clothes day!

We also had Wonderland Week at our local library. Skyler enjoyed that. On Monday they did photo day and different activities for the rest of the week. Make a crazy hat, writing workshop, making gloves, origami, watching the movie having a mad hatter party etc. She really enjoyed it!!

We also started a new system for lunch. Lunch items are divided into bins and every morning they pick one from each bin and lunch aggravation is over!!! It has been working so far most days LOL. While I took a billion pictures of our first month of school I can't blog them all. So here is a link for way way more!!! 

We also took one more field trip this month. Sweet Pete's . It is candy shop. Chocolate comes from cocoa beans and cocoa beans come from the rain forest.We learned how to turn chocolate into candy bars!! We also did some candy science. The kids got to make their own bars and wrappers as well.  It was even more fun since Damian got to go too!! 

We also met lot's of new friends!!!!

I of course have many pictures of this day!!! See way more!!!  That is about it for the first month. I have decided I will never ever do another monthly post! Too hard to fit everything in and remember what we all did!!! Hope everyone else is off to a great school year!!!!!