Tori's First Break

Alright, I have one older child that is familiar with the term "break a leg" because he enjoys acting and may actually pursue a career in it one day.  My 18 month old on the other hand learned the term quite literally about a week ago when her sweet older brother, Gabe was holding her and accidentally fell.  Somehow I don't think she was wanting to pursue an acting career at the time.  

Poor little gal, I had no idea it was broken until the following day since it happened at night and I put her to bed after consoling her.  It was when i put her down in the morning that I quickly realized what had happened.  Poor thing fell straight to the ground, she couldn't put an ounce of pressure on that leg.  Dang, I felt horrible that she suffered all night with that pain and I didn't have a clue.  It's times like these I really wish they would come out of the birth canal talking.  :-( In any case, I took her to a new local children's hospital that I absolutely fell in love with that day.  They diagnosed her with a broken tibia and splinted her.  They don't believe in casting the first week in Louisville, so let's just say it has been a VERY long week (hence the Facebook countdown, so sorry for the confusion, Britt!! LOL)

The kids loved the mini door sized just for them.  Tori loved their version of kid wheelchairs.  Allan ended up picking one up for the house for her as well, hehe!

It's now been a week and they are ready to cast my little diva.  So off we go to the Children's Orthopedic Doctor today and this is what we ended up with.  

The splint comes off...

Waterproof Liner...

On goes the hot pink layer...

Adding the Diva's sparkles

adding the finishing touches!

End result...for my little punk princess!

Her fashionable and function-able (waterproof) cast! :-)

Dang this thing is HEAVY!!  We'll see how well she lugs this thing around. I sure hope she can figure it out, my back can't handle all the lifting anymore! 

The good news:  Doc thinks this will be a quick heal --- 3-5 weeks instead of the initial 6-8 weeks we were told by the ER doc.  :-)

**Fingers crossed** 

Homeschool Human Skeleton Unit Study...Dem Bones, Dem Bones!

Okay, well we didn't really intend for our Homeschool to be based on unit studies, but after how wonderfully our 50 states study went, I realized rather quickly that this was the way to go with my group.  So here we are in October and I am thinking of nothing more than HALLOWEEN!  Yes, many of you know that it is my favorite time of year.  I met my husband at a Halloween convention,  mind you!  So naturally our unit studies this month will revolve around this fun time of year!  The first week we decided to theme it SKELETONS so we learned all about the bones in our body.  I first begin my units by searching Google for any and all ideas for my topic and then printouts, art project, math studies, etc. Then I search all the kids bookcases for books relating to the subject (yes, we have a lot of books...so far, we haven't had to go to the library!) We did wonderful, we found our Dr. Frankenstein's Human Body book (my oldest LOVES this book!) 

as well as our Usborne Human Body book.  Both had alot of information about bones.


  Next, we headed  for the dollar store and bought two class mascots (a small, plastic skeleton and a large cardboard skeleton).  We played lots of games online regarding the human skeleton and found all the numerical points to remember about the bones in our body, (12 ribs on each side=24, 33 vertebrae in our spine, 206 bones in out body by adulthood about 270 as a baby, etc.) we focused on those numbers alot for math pieces.  We learned all the names of the bones (both common and scientific) and Logan was really good at remembering the scientific names as well as the common while Cayleigh & Gabe were able to focus mainly on the common names at their age and learning level (example...mandible=jawbone, patella=kneecap). At the end of the week, we played a game to see if they could name every bone on our class mascot, "Bucky"...I was going to award the one who knew the most a prize, but to my delight, they all knew at least the common name for all of them!  They were ALL winners!!

We made a Human Bones Lapbook.  This is a great way I can keep/showcase each of the kids work on each unit. I can give out various assignments on our  subject and at the end of the unit, we compile, organize and assemble our favorite handouts into our lapbook. Some of the information we find is best to print, cut and paste (especially for the younger kids to get involved) while others are artistic representations altogether.  Many things my oldest son has found he likes to type up himself and print and cut as he really likes to type.  It doesn't bother me much as long as it's a good mix of print, type and art from all my kids.  Even the typing and printing enhances their computer skills.

I love lapbooks because they fold up neatly and can be placed on a bookshelf. They don't always work for every unit as we used a 3 ring binder for our 50 states unit and made laminated pages for each state (2 sided) with state flag, flower, bird, capitals, etc. on one side and the state quarter with interesting facts on the other)...that would have been WAY TOO BIG for a lapbook.  The idea for us is to have some kind of "take-away" for each unit.  It will likely grow into much more in the future, but lapbooks are fun, easy and small.  There are also lapbook kits that can be found online if you don't feel like braving one yourself.  We may start offering these ourselves when we find the time and energy to do so (free, of course).  We can also use them as a review tool when we want to review a particular subject or perhaps delve deeper into that topic.  Here are some photos of our hard work :)

Oh, and I can't forget the ever promised photo of what fun Tori found herself in this week while we were busy learning, LOL......

Not sure if she passed or failed on this one...LOL!  What do you think??