American Heritage Girls Week #4

This was technically the 4^th Tuesday of the month which means the girls don't have a meeting. However, Carly's leader decided they needed more time to finish their fair projects. Since Carly's birthday was the day before the meeting, we carried cupcakes for the girls' to eat. Carly worked on her project as well as began a String Art craft.

Tina went to the church to help her friend clean the nursery toys. She earns service hours for doing it. The rest of the girls stayed with me and Chris until it was time to pick the other two up.

American Heritage Girls Week #3

The girls just finished up Week #3 of American Heritage Girls. Their Tuesday meeting was held at the park so that the girls could practice for the Groundbreaking Ceremony they are participating in. There was also a drawing held for a prize of all the girls who attended the meeting. Tina won the drawing and received a notebook inscribed by the worship leader.

On Friday, the girls participated in the Groundbreaking Ceremony for the Carolina Field of Honor. They sang America, The Beautiful and God Bless America at the beginning of the ceremony. The girls then helped clean up after the veterans at the picnic attending before they ate. The girls all did a wonderful job and represented the organization well.

 

5 of my girls (Tina is also in the picture in the red shirt; the blonde girl is not my child).

L to R: Chey, Court, Carly, Caitie, Charlee

 

 

The girls lining up to walk onto the field. 

Members of the Patriot Guard (holding the flags).

 

 

The girls getting ready to sing.

 

 

Connor at the ceremony. 

Lowe's Build & Grow Clinic #1: Classic Fire Truck

We went to Lowe's on Saturday morning to participate in the monthly Build & Grow clinic. This month the project was building a classic firetruck. All of the kids except Tina participated. So, 6 kids were building and it was me, Chris, and Tina helping them. They even got a cute little patch. They wore their basic AHG uniform since they had an event to go to immediately after.

 

The patch

   

The finished project (this was Chey's).

    

From left to right: Court, Chey, Carly, Charlee, and Caitie

 

 

CJ (and part of Court; he didn't want to be in the pic with them)

American Heritage Girls Weeks #1 & 2

Last spring I began debating about putting the girls in American Heritage Girls. After much debate, we decided to register them. We took them to the Ice Cream Social hosted by the troop and did the registration. The girls also earned their first badge:

 

At their first meeting, they put together hygiene bags to pass out to kids at a Fest the following week. They also began to learn about AHG and the badges they would be working on. Chey and Court are at the lowest level and their primary focus is the Eliza Shirley Badge. They are learning the basics about AHG. The others are working on their Joining Award. They are learning the Oath and Creed. Tina's group is working on the Cake Decorating Badge. She is excited for this one. Carly's group is working on the Creative Crafts Badge. As a part of this, she is entering a necklace into a local fair for judging. Caitie and Charlee's group are working on the Social Skills and Etiquette Badge. 

Court and Chey (far right in the pale blue shirts) putting together the hygiene bags.

At their second meeting, they worked more on their badges. They have also been rehearsing for the War Memorial Ceremony they are participating in. Chey and Court made tambourines. Carly is making duct tape jewelry as part of her job (her fair entry is beaded jewelry. Picture will be posted when we attend the fair). On Saturday, they attended the Festival at a local elementary school. They played as well as handed out the bags to the kids who attended. 

From left to right: Caitie, Charlee, Court, Chey, Tina, and Carly

 

Meanwhile, all CJ did was run and play.

 

 

2013 - 2014 Curriculum

We are going to spend the summer reviewing basic concepts and doing other fun activities. In July, I will be homeschooling a 9th grader, 6th grader, two 3rd graders, two 1st graders, and a preschooler. Normally I create our entire curriculum myself. However, due to homeschooling seven kids as well as being in college myself I no longer have the time to create it all. This year I will be using some online classes as well as pre-made curriculum.

Crystina

Crystina will be my 9th grader. We are beginning to work on the high school transcript this year. For her courses she will be taking:

Art Appreciation and Techniques

English Composition I

Ancient Civilizations

Beginning Algebra

Spanish

Introduction to Molecular and Cellular Biology

Driver's Education

Health and Physical Education

All of these except for the Driver's Education are free. 

Carolyn

Carolyn will be my 6th grader. I could not find a math curriculum that I liked so for now, her math will be created by me. I will be using Easy Peasy for everything else. The Easy Peasy Math used Khan Academy which is Common Core aligned. I am against Common Core, so there's that. Otherwise, the rest will be from Easy Peasy.

Ancient Art

Biology

Ancient History

English - 6

Health and Physical Education

Math (Designed by me)

Caitlyn and Charlotte

Caitlyn and Charlotte are my twin 3rd graders. Their curriculum will also be from Easy Peasy. 

Ancient Art

Zoology

Ancient History

Math - 3

English - 3

Health and Physical Education

Cheyenne and Courtney

Cheyenne and Courtney are my twin 1st graders. Honestly, they lucked out. They learn so much just by watching and listening to the older ones. All of their curriculum will also be from Easy Peasy.

Ancient Art 

Zoology

Ancient History

Math - 1

English - 1

Health and Physical Education

Connor

Connor is my 3 year old. I will be working on the Getting Ready 1 curriculum from Easy Peasy with him. This is actually for a 4 year old so I don't know how it's going to turn out. 

I will be combining some of the younger kids for classes. For example, Ancient Art. Five of the kids are taking it, so it will all be done together. However, each child will do the assignments for their grade level. We are also doing smaller units on U.S. Geography and the U.S. Presidents.

I was skeptical when I first heard about Easy Peasy months ago. I never desired a "boxed curriculum". Hopefully I will be pleased with it because it sure is a time saver!

Well, hello....

I am HORRIBLE at blogging. I have learned this. For some reason, I never have any time to blog on any of my blogs. I thought about combining my blogs but quickly shot the idea down. I love that each blog has a different audience and that readers do not have to sort through posts to find the genre they are interested in. So, I am going to attempt {please don't hold me to it} to blog more frequently.

We recently {well 2 months ago} took a trip back home to Louisiana. I will be sharing some pictures from that as well as projects and activities the kids did in relation to the trip. We did a lot of fun activities on vacation! We saw Monster Jam truck show, met Darren Sproles from the New Orleans Saints, went to a New Orleans Hornets game, visited the zoo and aquarium, walked the French Quarter and more. Of course, we lived in Louisiana for awhile, but visiting New Orleans never gets old or boring!

Here's to hoping to seeing you much more frequently!

All About Mammals

For the past week and a half, Caitie and Charlee have been studying mammals. They learned the basic characteristics of mammals such as they have fur and they give live birth to their young versus eggs. They were each given the chance to select one mammal and prepare a poster about that mammal. Caitie chose cats and Charlee chose giraffes.

It's hard to see the posters in the picture. Each girl found a real picture of their animal online. They also were able to find a blank picture and color it to their liking. For each animal, they researched the animal's physical description, habitat, enemies, protection methods, where it would be located in the world, the name for male, female and baby, other animal relatives, diet and interesting facts. Caitie learned that the domestic cat was the most popular pet in the world and that there were over 500 million of them. Charlee was shocked to learn that the giraffe had 4 stomachs. Charlee was also lucky enough that she could find a map labeling the places giraffes could be found. 

The girls will be using this project idea for each of the animal classes. 

Home School Group Meet and Greet Brunch {Plus a couple of Pinterest Links}

Today we went to the Home School Group Meet and Greet Brunch at our local park. For my brunch contributions, I took:

Sausage Cheese Puffs

Source: plainchicken.com via Crystal on Pinterest

Pumpkin Coffee Cake

Source: sixsistersstuff.com via Crystal on Pinterest

I also took Blueberry Muffins. 

The kids had a blast! We spent 4 hours there with the other families. Tina, Carly, Caitie and Charlee all made friends and were running around with them. Chey and Monkey preferred to stay alone although they did run around other kids and such. CJ was devastated. His Tina was ignoring him to play with other people. He tried all the time getting her attention as she ran by. He would point to himself and shout out "Nina! I right here! I right here!" Then look defeated as she continued on. He also has the "Mine" theory going on. I guess it's because at home, the girls have their toys and he has his and his alone. We need to work on this. I didn't get to snap too many pictures because I was busy chasing CJ around and watching him slide - over and over and over again. I did manage to get these two, one of Monkey and one of CJ as they were drawing with sidewalk chalk. This was before he decided to color his entire body BLUE with the chalk. 

Monkey

 

CJ

The Sweet or Salty Taste Test

Chey and Monkey are learning about The 5 Senses. In honor of the sense of taste, we held a mini taste test party to see if snacks were sweet or salty. I allowed Caitie and Charlee to do this assignment with them even though this is not their current lesson.

For this project, I provided the following snacks:

• Applesauce
• Pretzel Sticks
• Potato Chips
• Fruit Snacks
• Peanuts
• Apple Slices

As the girls tasted each snack, they had to decide if it was sweet or salty. Once decided, they checked the appropriate box on their paper. 

Here is the link to the check off paper if you use the exact snacks from above. This is one project the girls thoroughly enjoyed!

The Start of the 2012-2013 School Year

I never seemed to have time to keep up with this blog. However, I am going to start trying to be better about it. I plan to use this blog as a way to keep family and friends updated on the kids' year.

This year we have:

- Tina -- 8th grade
- Carly -- 5th grade

- Caitie and Charlee -- 1st grade (this is the grade they would be in if they were registered in school; they do a    mix of 1st and 2nd grade work)

- Chey -- Kindergarten

- Monkey -- Pre K (even though she and Chey are twins, Monkey is a little behind. However, she does the same concepts with her sister)

- CJ -- Pre K2 (I invented a grade for him. He's 2 so all we work on is letter recognition, numbers, basic counting, shapes, and colors for now)

Our school year started on September 4th. I am currently working on our week in review post.

Crafts....

The kids were completely devastated that we missed the Build and Grow Workshop at Lowe's one week. Charlee was even in tears! So, in an effort to make amends with them, we bought them some crafts to work on at home. I know they weren't the same as using a hammer to build something, but we tried. Tina and Carly did them as well, but I never got a picture of them. Yet, anyway.

On Day #1 we took foam circles and decorated them with foam shapes.

Caitie:

Charlee:

Cheyenne:

Courtney:

On Day #2, we were supposed to be making animal key chains out of beads. Well, ditsy Mommy here couldn't figure them out. So, we made the animal shapes on foam circles.

Caitie (Kitten):

Charlee (LadyBug):

Cheyenne (Bunny):

Courtney (Monkey):

On Day #3, we made key chains out of beads. Caitie and Charlee made {close to} identical ones. And on Day #4, we made name bracelets.

Caitie:

Charlee:

Cheyenne:

Courtney:

Update on Us

I have not been keeping up with this blog like I should have been.

I have only have 1 post on this blog since I changed over from my other blog. I no longer have access to that blog which is another story altogether.

We changed the name of our home school. We were formerly "The Swarmer Academy". The name has changed to "Bayou Excellence Academy".

We now have 7 "enrollees". Well, still technically only 4 but 3 that will be coming into school soon. They are:


Tina, age 12, grade 6
Carly, age 7 (8 in September), grade 3
Caitie, age 4 (5 in October), grade PreK
Charlee, age 4 (5 in October), grade PreK
Chey, age 2 (3 in October)
Monkey (Courtney), age 2 (3 in October)
CJ (our only son has arrived!), age 5 months


With the newest addition to the family, we have changed our mascot and school colors. We decided that the Unicorn was an appropriate mascot when we were an all girl school. Now that we have a boy around, we took a new vote. The kids decided to honor our new home in Louisiana and selected the ALLIGATOR. Our colors had formerly been pink, baby blue and pale purple. The kids have decided to honor their new favorite holiday of Mardi Gras and selected purple, gold and green. I must say, at least they have made it easy to dress and decorate for anything!

I do have some pictures of where we did some "experiments" at the Gulf shore back in April. I guess I will post them soon.

I am currently planning out the school year for 2010-2011. I know that in reality I will never manage to stick to it, but I want at least a guideline of what needs to get accomplished.

Till then.......

INTRODUCTION

Hello and welcome to the official blog of The Swarmer Academy! We are a private home school that specializes in independant thinking and learning. We have a staff of 2 and an enrollment of 6; almost 7. Our staff consists of Chris, the "princiPAL" and Crystal, the "teacher". The staff also takes turns as bus driver and it has been known for the "principal" to be outside participating in physical education activities with the girls. Our students are Tina (11; 5/6th grade), Carly (7; 2nd grade), Caitie (4; pre-k 4), Charlee (4; pre-k 4), Chey-Chey (2) and Court(2). Baby Boy will be arriving in March.

We don't have a set curriculum. We do alot of "crafts" through learning rather than worksheets. We are beginning to start doing lapbooks. I think these are great visual ways of learning rather than looking at a school book and memorizing its contents.

The girls took a vote (with the youngest 2 using smiles as "yays") and our official mascot is the unicorn and school colors are pink, baby blue and purple. The man of the house thinks it's "girly". I asked him what did he expect from a house of girls?? LOL I think the mascot and colors may be changing soon.

That's us in a nutshell and this is where all our school progress will be posted.