Best laid plans.....HAH!

Life is what happens when you are busy making plans....

Oh, so true!
Today was going to be all about telling and sharing pictures of our first two days of 3rd grade with you...Ahem, WAS going to be...
Instead, a virus wiped out my laptop - along with ALL of the lessons I JUST got organized -

We do have the next two days off, because DH is off from work and we will pick things back up on Friday. By then I hope to have some of the stuff back that I need and I'll share the next installment of the "Not Back to School Hop", which is a peek inside our classroom. I can however still do the MathBlaster review and giveaway because I need DH computer anyway for that. So, check back tomorrow or Thursday for that.

Right  now, I'm going to go kick "Life" in the butt.....

Curriculum Week 2011 - Not Back To School Blog Hop

Its time for a new homeschool year, we are actually starting this coming Monday, August 8th. Its also time for the Not Back To School Blog Hop from Heart of the Matter Online.

Week 1 is Curriculum week and here is what we've chosen this year for third grade for our son.

Base Comprehensive Curriculum - Learn at Home, grade 3 and Flashkids grade 3 (from B&N).
Math - Math U See Foundations (finishing up) into Gamma series. And MathBlaster Website.
Grammar - Finishing Easy Grammar Daily Guided for 2nd/3rd Grades, then starting Easy Grammar and Daily Grams 3rd and 4th Grade.
History - Story of the World - all volumes with Activity Guides, calendar/holiday led and Historical Timeline.
Reading - Finishing McGuffey's 1st Reader to be followed with McGuffey's 2nd Reader. Also, Thomas Jefferson Education Classics (TJED) and Learn at Home weekly curriculum reading (LAH).
Spelling - McGuffey's Reader's and Vocabulary/Spelling City Website.
Vocabulary - Seasonal/Monthly and LAH.
Geography - USA and World/Country studies through various sources. 
 Science - LAH and Supercharged Science website.

**For some FREE online science lessons you can use this link:
401 Science Activity Manual and Video Collection ($30 value)
http://www.sciencelearningspace.com/members/go.php?r=5556&i=l23

***Or you can order the whole thing from this link:

Try e-Science - 30-day money-back guarantee

We started both Math U See and Easy Grammar programs recently and found that they really work beautifully with the LAH and Flashkids base curriculum's. The Red Ranger also wants to learn cursive writing so we have a couple of books to start using to see how it all goes. We also have lots of supplemental materials to work with but that's for another week's blog.
I'll also be adding more on both the Mathblaster website, including a giveaway and Vocabulary/Spelling City.
Both sites offer free content for you and your children to try out. If you are interested then I'll be having that giveaway for Mathblaster, which is a full 3 month subscription coming up soon.

Next week is School Room Week in the blog hop. Have a look and join in.

I have a few pictures to share but we still are waiting on a couple of books to be delivered so here is what we have so far.

Learn At Home Series Week 1 - All Subjects

   

Join the blog hop! 

Revamping for a new year....

Again, things have been crazy. At some point I'll get this homeschooling and blogging thingy working together.....Right???
Right now I'm writing reviews for a couple of giveaways and re-doing our workbox/hanging folder system so that I can give more detailed posts on them. I'm also getting all of our 3rd grade materials together, why is it so time consuming?
Please come back and check.

Vidcasts from MIT - 150 Symposium Earth, Air, Ocean and Space: The Future of Exploration

MIT150 Symposium

Earth, Air, Ocean and Space: The Future of Exploration

A friend of mine from MIT posted on Facebook today about these video podcasts and I'm passing on some of the information so that you can view it.
Right now is a Spacevidcast with Astronauts including Buzz Aldrin here's the line up for the first one:

Here's the panel: 

* Buzz Aldrin ScD '63 - Gemini 12, Apollo 11

* Timothy J. (TJ) Creamer SM '92, Soyuz TMA-17, Expedition 22/23 

* Terry J. Hart SM '69 - STS 41-C

* Frederick H. (Rick) Hauck SM '66 - STS-7, STS-51-A, STS-26

* Byron Lichtenberg SM '75, ScD '79 - STS-9, STS-45

* Michael J. Massimino SM '88, ENG '90, ME '90, PhD '92 - STS-109, STS-125. 

Here's the link for watching it live right now http://www.spacevidcast.com/ . 

I'll post the link once they have it up for watching after the live feed later, so be sure to check back. 

The next will be on "The Future of Nuclear Fuel". Timely indeed.....

The following link will take you to the information page and you can also check the "agenda" tab for the future podcasts. 

http://mit150.mit.edu/symposia/exploration   


You might want to also check out MIT's 150th main site for lots more to use for homeschooling: 
http://mit150.mit.edu/  

And for history check this link: 
http://mit150.mit.edu/multimedia/collection/35


Remember to check back for the archived videos later.

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