Pixel of Ink - My Best Friend

Thank goodness for Pixel of Ink Young Edition because today I was pulling hair trying to get Levi to do his three math lessons (which took most of the day) until I was preparing for his ELA lesson and got on the Kindle to pull up a book for his reading and was checking the Pixel site for any books he might like and came upon the Star Wars books 1-8 they had up (they are free as of this post but that could change at any time) ... his obsession is now my best friend because I've promised he can read the books as long as he finishes his lessons without giving me problems.


http://youngedition.pixelofink.com/free-kindle-books-star-wars-lost-tribe-of-the-sith-series-books-1-7/

History and Art Today - Mosaics and Viking Carvings

So today we finished the mosaic that Levi drew last week... it took forever to do.. not really though took about 30 min of cutting and gluing the tiny itty bitty 1/2"x 1/2" pieces of paper on there. I now have a new-found desire to thank every teacher that ever did that kind of prep-work for any of my classes as a kid.

THANK YOU and I'm curious as to how they never lost their minds because I was ready to hand my 3yr old the scissors and tell him to cut the paper.. we'd get the same effect just none of the pieces would be uniform :-P hehe

ANY WAY - the finished product is quiet nice and my son did a pretty dang good job... I will, howsoever, NEVER be making a mosaic card to hand out ;-)

Now what we learned was that the Romans (Roman Empire Era) made mosaics on the floors of their buildings. They used bits of colored rocks to do them. The Byzantine Empire Romans though put their mosaics on walls, think the Hagia Sophia or the San Vitale, and they used colored glass so that when the sun filtered into the rooms these wonderful masterpieces lite up and dazzled the senses of any who gazed upon them.

The other thing we learned today was that the Vikings never wore horned helmets .... amazing... LOL.. I never knew this.. talk about stereotyping to the extreme... that's all you ever see in films and the operas or books n so forth.. They also were masters of woodworking.. not just the beautiful resilient ships they sailed on but in crafting some truly beautiful pieces of art. I can only imagine how many hours went into some of the pieces ( look up the Smithsonian for Viking exhibits and view the guided tour - http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/start.html )

So for the review of the Byzantine Empire Art he drew the sky scene and "we" proceeded to turn that drawing into a mosaic. For the Viking Art review he drew an overlapping design that was then turned into a snake with A LOT of persuasion by the mother figure because this simple thing turned into an hour long issue due to stubbornness ;) The son is very much like his momma.

History and Art

So at the begining of the school year we started out learning about Ancient Rome in History and now in the second semestor of Art we are studding artwork from that time period and making our own. I say we because even though Levi is the one in school I'm learning a bunch of stuff too. LOL
Anyway, last week he learned about Frescos and had to draw what he would want painted on his bedroom wall and this week he painted it.

My mom helped him with the water and the bridge so that they looked like that was what they were but on the whole he did it himself. This is supposed to be my mom's yard ;-) but she doesnt have a pond or a bridge there LOL I'm going to say this is my son's wishful thinking .

Free Reading :) Never was easier

So from the Learning Coaches group I learned recently that you could get free books for your Kindle.. well I didn't have a Kindle when they were talking about it.. I had Nook for PC from Barnes & Noble and wanted free reading material like they were talking about. So I looked at the different sites... not down-loadable books for them only for Kindle because most of the reading material came from Amazon.com as the Author's had agreed to only sell the books from Amazon.

So I looked to see if there was a way to get a free download of Kindle for my PC like I have for Nook :) C'est magnifique, there was :) Here is the site - http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000426311&tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=7442400567&ref=pd_sl_6g97entshf_b

Now.. if you have Nook (and if you don't the free download is at Barnes and Noble) they give a few freebies out... but if you go and download the Kindle for free .. WOWZA there are TONS and I do mean TONS of options... If you have the Kindle you can go to your local library (if they offer this) and check out the books that way... If you choose to go through Amazon they have lots n lots of books for free (I just downloaded like 19 LOL ) There is also this site called ereader.com and they tell you offers - http://ereadernewstoday.com/free-kindle-books-5-free-books-for-2-6-12-2/6710860/

and finally if your on FB here is a link to a group on there :) - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Books-for-Kindle/136225579732999

So, since I'm me and love to READ READ READ .. I've decided this is a godsend LOL I can read as much as I want for free and don't have to worry about late fees and not being able to get to the library on time .. really awesome for the Fri-Sun downtime when it's closed :(

AWESOME FOR ME!!!!!! YAY

Today is a Perfect Monday

So today we start out with Math, that lovely little thing that my son loves but gets frustrated with when he gets something wrong and today was the Unit review and Unit Assessment. So we did the review.. then we did some games to help him study the stuff he was having problems with ( I LOVE that he can play games to learn things BTW because it makes him think and he has to get the right solution to do the game so it's just FABULOUS!!!) and then we started the Test...... Guess what happens?
The test is online... and just as we get the finish I get logged out.... I log in.... get sent back to the log in .. . I log in again... once again I get sent back to the log in page... I log in with his account.. same thing... I enter the web address to log in ... it can't be found.. Three times I try this and then give up and start doing what pages I can off line for school work and view the Learning Coaches group on FB seeing that the whole group is having the same issues and that it is a technical issue that the school is trying to resolve..

Can I just say I agree with the one LC that any day after the Superbowl should be a holiday??? I do believe that too much booze and too much food and too much celebrating or drowning of sorrows could have a very .... adverse effect on the job performance the next day ;-)

Today is off schedule but hey.. we're doing homeschooling and that means I can work around this and make him do "games" on another site for what he wasn't able to get to today and we can do trips to the library and I can make a game out of his Spelling words and let him play my Jeopardy game I created for his Viking History test review ( http://jeopardylabs.com/play/vikings-history ) :) Life is good and we can make this Monday a productive one.

Home Schooling

(This is one of his Art Projects... He decided to "sculpt" the "Flying Horse" as his choice)

Well this year I decided to home-school my eldest son who was entering the 2nd grade. We chose to go with http://www.k12.com/ and with them use Nevada Virtual Academy. I'm still very happy that we did this and I've seen a vast improvement with him in personality and knowledge. His self confidence has returned and he's vastly improved in his math and reading skills.
I can't say enough about this school and it's curriculum and I absolutely adore his teacher because she actually cares about each of her students and is helping me to improve and work on the things he's struggling with and turns any bad thing into a good so that he doesn't feel like he failed but that he's improving because my son has this issue of "it must be perfect and if I get one wrong I've failed".
I have to admit that a month into it I started doubting my decision to do this because of the intense curriculum and the amount of time it takes with each subject to give him the full understanding of each thing plus the Science and Art projects but I made a mental list of pros n cons and since the pros of staying with it out-weighed the cons by a massive percentage I stuck with it and seeing the grades and the improvement in my son within just one quarter I know I made the right choice for my child.
I'm pretty sure he'll never be an artist but I am glad he is getting the knowledge of the basics and he can tell you what a landscape vs. seascape is.. realistic vs. abstract and with certain paintings he can tell you who the artist is and a couple of things about that artist ( although I must say that I didn't think he was getting any of that into his brain but he's surprised me).
I'm pretty sure that he'll never be an archaeologist but he can tell you how the Roman Empire was started (according to legend), when the Western Roman Empire Fell and who the last of the Roman Emperors was... How the Byzantine Empire was started and which Barbarian tribes went where and how England got it's name.
I'm pretty sure he'll never be a musician but he is learning the different pitches and rhythms and beats and is able to find a lot of the repeating patterns within classical musical pieces.
I'm pretty sure he'll never be a Grammar Snob but hey.. he's doing better in grammar then I ever did and learning what a digraph, trigraph and blends are as well as spotting the different parts of a sentences and fixing them. He's also written three essays within the first quarter starting with the ideas or word web and going through the various drafts until reaching the final product.
I'm pretty sure I never did any of this in second grade and for him being able to do his essay's basically all on his own with little to no instruction from me is wonderful. The things he is learning in the other subjects I'm amazed with and he's learning wonderful lessons that he'll need to know when he's in High School and in College.

Thanksgiving @ my Sister's in Vegas

Well our Thanksgiving dinner was held the day before, 23rd of Nov. It started out normal but at a red light that we were stopped at we got rear-ended while in my mom's Toyota. Luckly it seems that I'm the only one that suffered from it, I'm guessing since I was kinda turned talking to mom and telling the boys to settle down ... I think everytime I drive with both boys in the car I'm telling one to stop antaganizing the other... ahhh the joys of being a mom >.<
So when we got to my Sister's and Bro-in-Law's apartment we had a great amazing dinner and watched Cars 2. The boy's loved it and it is a cute movie but Kye, being in dog mode most of the night and only ate cottage cheese for dinner lol, decided to engage in a barking match with Mooey (Karlene's little min pin) right next to Pat's feet lol.. it was a little scary cuz I wasn't sure if he would get bit on the nose but soooo funny because they were both barking at each other in sync and neither backing down. OI if i had only gotten pic.s or that on vid LOL
I hope every one had a great Thanksgiving :)