Buttons and Board Games?

What do these two items have in common .... Buttons and Board Games? Well first off, what sort of buttons come to mind when you think of buttons? Just your plain old flat 2 or 4 eye button found on your shirt in various colors right? Well, lets think of Buttons in a different light... telephones, flowers, animals, tea cups, oh my ! Yes ! Buttons in character and Novelty shapes are what I am referring to for the sake of this blog post.

So I got to thinking about buttons and board games and how the two could work together, mesh and inter-mingle and I came up with a brilliant idea. My girls are needing a creative way to incorporate  writing in to our home school. So I thought I would pick up some novelty buttons (not an easy feat mind you to find them cheaply in the numbers I wanted) , create a drawstring cloth bag from my sewing stash and a set of fun rules and VOILA ! We have a homemade home school creative writing game.

I took to Etsy for my search for the buttons and here is what I have come up with ... 3 different sets of 50 buttons for a total of 150 buttons to start with.

Now for the tentative rules ! I would like to incorporate one dice which you would roll to see who goes first. That player then rolls the dice 2x pulling that number of buttons (needing at least 5 buttons  minimum)  from the bag, without looking. The player must then be creative  as possible and tell a story using the buttons they pulled. They can write it or tell it. But they must use each button pulled from the bag.

Our buttons are on their way and we will play the game and tweak it and then I will rewrite then in a pdf to share here. So how does it sound so far? Any suggestions?

Term 1 Completed ! and I found New curriculum ...

Wow ! I can not believe that 6 weeks has come and gone by so quickly ! We started our first term on July 1st and now we are on break number 1. As you know or may not know, we are homeschooling year round this year with 6 weeks on 1 week off blocks, the entire months of December and June we are taking off. And though this term was a bit rocky to start, it ended quite well. The girls will be finishing up a few things when we return from break next week and finish out the month and then starting September we are starting fresh with  an entire new curriculum.

I recently came across a feed on Facebook about BYL and ad no idea what people were referring to. So I delved into it further and found out BYL stands for Build Your Library curriculum.  I picked up both grades 6 and 7 and started picking up books for both, joined several of their Facebook groups but then thought about it and after the suggestion of some fellow BYL moms decided to start both girls with BYL 6. I thought that it would be best to give both girls the history background this year and then go in to the geography next year.  So what is BYL you ask ?  Here is a brief description taken from the BYL  website :

       "Have you been looking for a literature based homeschool curriculum that is secular? How about a way to incorporate narration, copywork, dictation and memory work into your child’s education? Or art study that ties into history? What about a secular science that is mostly literature based in the elementary years? Well, you have come to the right place! Welcome to Build Your Library Curriculum!"

So we are super excited to start BYL. We are changing the science though and will be using Sassafras Science-Anatomy, and we will be complementing our studies with a writing program by Susan Bauer-Writing with Skill.  And for Social Studies we have decided to change it up and go with Social Studies through Art.  The girls will also continue their journaling, spelling, handwriting, occupational education, health and  language arts as before. It will be a lot busier, a bit more work than before but I have confidence that they can do this and will like it more as  they love to read and BYL is literary based.  I will let you know how it goes after we begin.

Starting Fresh, Starting New, JULY 1st FIRST DAY of SCHOOL !

I love the first day of school and this year we are opting for a Year round homeschool year ! So on July st we started back Brand spanking New !! Yay homeschool Fraunfelder Girls !! Our Schedule is pretty darn exciting too. We are on a 6 week on 1 week off , 4 day a week schedule with Fridays for catch up and Family Night and Field Trips. We are also taking off December and June, yes, the entire month ! (yay ! the girls are most excited about this) We also have a very big year ahead of us as we are planning to move across country to be near our family for more support due to my illnesses and pain and so the girls can grow up near their Fraunfelder Grandparents out West. So a big adventure is not far off. So moving will be an exciting reward , an adventurous homeschooling, educational experience for the girls. As we are going to try and see as much as we can while on the road.

Because we will be moving to a new state, we are following that state's way of homeschooling now and have 11 courses to study this year. Those courses are :

Health
Occupational Education
Writing
Language Arts
Science
Social Studies
History
Math
Spelling
Art and Music Appreciation
Reading


I will list our curriculum for this year and a few reviews of each as we have some pretty exciting curriculum we are using such as Excel Math,  Bravewriter and America: The Story of Us (DVD Series from the History Channel).

We are excited about this school year and where it will take us as our new journey in to our 5th year just began. I look forward to all of our new adventures it brings.

Easter baskets and traditions ....

What are your Easter traditions with your children and family? Do you meet up for big family gatherings and have dinners? Do you hunt for Easter eggs in the yard? Does the Easter bunny visit your home and leave goodies behind in baskets filled with Easter grass and eggs? Once upon a time I knew 2 little girls that were so excited that the Easter bunny was coming here for a visit. Well, that tradition has long since past and this will be the first year that tails of the Easter bunny will be a thing of the past :( Now, they still want an Easter basket filled with goodies and gifts, lol, but as far as who delivered them, that is questionable. So I decided to do gifts this year instead. Gifts that would be useful for school or educational minded. For starters, I picked out something fun. The girls love mad libs and I found the cutest mad lib (click on images to be redirected) books on Amazon that are right up their alley for my pug and cat lover in mind.

Next, I found adult coloring books that were of interest for my tweenagers : Sherlock for my Sherlock fan and Pugs once more for my Pug-fanatic fan ... and gel pens for coloring.

 

Then I picked up Science Experiment kits for Science class and of course kitchen (Mess) fun. :)

 

Last but not least, I chose to go with science experiment books.

 

I will also fill a few eggs with jellybeans, because what's Easter without jellybeans. LOL. But this year I decided to go with gifts because it's also Ella's birthday that day too. Ella will also receive her few Birthday gifts on her birthday but I wanted to do something a bit different this year and do something a bit fun too as the girls are older now. 

We will also go to my parent's house for dinner and Ella has requested a coconut cheesecake and chocolate dipped strawberries for dessert. Yum. 

So what are your plans for Easter? 

 

 

Otis !

Meet the newest addition to our family, Otis, the basset hound. I just wanted to share with you all because I am so very proud of our newest addition . We just adopted him 3 days ago and he is the sweetest, cutest most gentle dog in the world. Six months ago, we lost our beloved Snickers. He passed away and we were all very heart broken and needed to fill that missing void in our lives. And we it was just luck that we came across the post for Otis. So we called up and it was like fate brought us to him. So we quickly drove the hour and a half to Mississippi and met with his owner and that was that, he was then ours. So here he is, Otis. Isn't he just a doll? We think so :) .

Winner of the Mom's Fun-Schooling Handbook !

We have a WINNER !

 

CONGRATULATIONS to ..... Kirsten DeWitt. 

Thank you to all that participated in my first ever giveaway. Your comments were  all very interesting and endearing. Keep following the blog and the facebook group as I will be having another Thinking Tree Book giveaway in the upcoming week. :) 

 

Thinking Tree Mom's Night Books Have arrived and a GIVEAWAY on the blog !!

The Thinking Tree books for my Mom's Night Out have arrived !! YAY !! I am totally excited. Now to plan for the homeschool Mom's Night Out. I have a few ideas floating around but I haven't put my finger on one yet.

But now for what I really came here to post. For all of you that follow me and and then some. I would like to give  one lucky person a copy of the :

Mom's Fun-Schooling Handbook: Flip to Fun-Schooling - An Idea Book & Coloring Journal for Homeschooling Moms

It is currently on SALE right now on Amazon for a super super low price while the family is out of the country traveling and visiting the Homeschool Convention in South Carolina. So You can purchase a copy or two or three :) or try your hand at wining your very own here.  All you have to do is leave a comment below by answering the following question and fill out a few other things on the rafflecopter:

What is your favorite fun thing to in your homeschool? 

 A winner will be announced on Friday, March 4th. via the blog and the Facebook Group.

a Rafflecopter giveaway