The week off...

We've been taking a week off of school this week. Hannah is on a feildtrip researching social studies with her Nana, Pappy, Aunt Misty, Uncle Marty and cousins. I am sure she will return from the field with lots of data...smile!

Mikayla, Autumn and I have been just hanging around doing our own thing. I've been able to really clean out their rooms and get rid of a lot of stuff since we didn't have school this week. We've also cleaned out our garage and that felt really great! I told Chad, "...we use every square inch of this house, don't we?!!!"

We are still doing quiet reading and Astronomy(this is over the telephone) this week. Monday we made homemade applesauce at Mikayla's request. That was yummy!!!

Yesterday, Chad and Mikayla went to Karate. I think it was pretty rough on them...haha...

Today we will be making Hannah welcome home sugar cookies. Mikayla has her first New Beginnings class at church tonight and she is super excited!

Tomorrow they have PE co-op so it's still been a busy week. I'll be doing laundry, grocery shopping, and getting ready for our visitors!!! So excited!!!

Next week we start off busy again with year book pictures Monday and Tuesday the pumpkin patch!!! Fun times!!!

In a rhythm

We are in school...the rhythm is set...and it's working for us.

Our typical day is Work boxes, Snack, Work boxes, Lunch, Astronomy or Galloping the Globe (alternating) two days per week, then quiet reading time. Normally we start about 9:30 break for lunch around 12:30 or 1. Then we have about an hour of free time and chore time. Then lay Autumn down for a nap and start back about 2ish. Work on Astronomy or GTG after lunch.

I've been struggling a bit with writing for the girls. I want to give them a good foundation. I've researched way too much, talked to way too many people and have figured out...I think we are doing okay. Mikayla is doing a lot of narration, copy work and dictation...which is fine. She is reading very well. She finished Mudge and Pudge today and really enjoyed it. Hannah has been doing some narration from books she is reading. We've been working on adding more detail to her paragraphs. They are patient with it even though it is a challenge for them both.

I still consider Mikayla a second grader even though she had a VERY early birthday and could still be considered a first grader if we wanted to. I guess that is why I am not pushing the writing as hard with her.

We read a lot...did I say we read a lot...we read a lot...so I hope that will begin to inspire them to write well.

This week we studied about Spain in Galloping the Globe. If fit perfectly with the American History Co-op from August and September where they studied about Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella. We read Ferdinande the Bull. I have been working with this curriculum a friend let me borrow called Teaching the Classics. It is SOOO good. It teaches how to even at their age now, to critically think about literature we read.


We just started Astronomy and are working on our notebooks in this as well. We have learned about the solar system, gravity, gravitational pull, what a constellation(a pattern of stars) is, about the stone henge and how it was used to by farmers to tell what season it was (which was very important for knowing when to grow and reap their crops), how birds know to fly south for the winter, and why God put all the planets and the stars in the sky the way He did.

We also learned about Copernicus and his theory that the planets did indeed revolve around the sun not everything revolving around the earth (LIFE LESSON here). We've learned about Galilio and how he proved Copernicus' theory with the telescope. We also touched on NASA and what they do and what the people that work there do.

Tomorrow, we are having our first co-op meeting. Every other Friday, we will be meeting to do our Astronomy projects, piano lessons, Art Appreciation, and Praise and Worship signing. I am looking forward to doing this with one of my best friends.

The days are busy. Autumn is running around and in to everything. She wants to "do school" with the girls, so she usually sits at the table with us and colors then gets down and insist on watching Baby signing time.

The girls have been using their Bible Bee curriculum to memorize Bible verses. They are doing really well. We recited them for Chad the other day and he couldn't believe what they knew. I am amazed at their ability to retain them. They ask me why we do this....I tell them these will be written on your heart forever. God will speak to you with these verses. He has a plan for hiding His words in our heart.

Tonight was our quarterly home school meeting. It was VERY organized. I was disappointed in the number of people that didn't come but we understand this is a very busy time of the year. I did enjoy getting to chat with new and old friends. We had missionaries come to speak to us. They were inspiring and will be prayed for by our family.

The beat goes on....raising them up to be warrior princesses for the King!

The homeschool Caddy

After many months trying to figure out how I could make one of these...and looking at them at Hobby Lobby for $25.00, I realized...I had a gold mine in the garage: empty formula cans. So we set to work!



Step One

Step Two

Step Three



Step 4-Screw them all together



This was defineitly an afternoon activity that I needed hubby's help with....but so worth it!

Finished product:

I found this lazy susan I had from Tupperware and it sits on there perfectly! Now we can take it on and off the table as we need it.

What we've been up to these last few weeks!

I can't believe I haven't posted since May 21st. You'd think we had a few things going on...smile! We took a few weeks off, we've had too much going on between Summer Camp, visitors (had so much fun) on two different weekends, dentist appointments, VBS and just life. We started back June 1st then had to take off the very next week for VBS. The girls had a BLAST! So this week we are back on.

We are taking a break from Galloping the Globe this summer to do A child's geography...which sounds redundant but its not. A Child's Geography is more a study of Earth science. We are doing it as a co-op with my friend. We did our first week and love it. It is very Charlotte Mason"y" which I am really beginning to love. We are doing some narrating and copy work with it.

We made little Globes out of clear Christmas balls by painting the inside of the ornament blue then painting the outside green in the shapes of the ornaments. Also, they drew little globes on Shrinky Dink and we baked them then put earth colored seed beads on a stretchy necklace with our little earth picture. They turned out cute!

In chapter one, we have learned that the earth is in the shape of a sphere which in Latin means "ball". And because we are writing about the earth, we are called geographers. We also learned that our earth weighs the same as 1100 million, million, million elephants (or you could say 6 trillion, trillion kilograms...smile)

The girls also did some copy work of scriptures in their notebooks and made a "Post Card" which they will do with each chapter, writing a few things they remember about what we've talked about.


For summer we are continuing our CLE Lang Arts, Math and Reading. I have also assigned the girls summer reading books that they are working through.

This is what they are reading:
The * just means we have this at home and don't have to check it out of the library.
Hannah:

*Encyclopedia Brown

Homer Price

The Railway

*Charlotte’s Web

Alice in Wonderland

*Stuart Little

*Charlie & the Chocolate Factory

*Misty of Chincoteague

Pompeii Buried Alive

Mary Poppins

Twenty-One Balloons

*Betsy & Tacy

Keep the Lights Burning, Abby

*Socks

*The Flying Fingers Club

Mikayla

The Egg

A New Coat for Anna

The Emperor’s New Clothes

The Magic Fish

Floss

Mr. Putter & Tabby

Amelia Bedelia

The Story about Ping

Henry and Mudge

Nate the Great

A big ball of string

A fly went by

Greg’s Microscope

*If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Ruby Bridges

*Rosa Parks

*Martin Luther King

*One Fish, Two Fish

*If you give a pig a pancake

*Graduation Day is Here

*Mr. Brown can Moo

*Meatball

Hannah is still working on her first book but she is really enjoying it. Mikayla flies through hers because they are much shorter.

I compiled the list from the Sonlight catalog and the Veritas catalog for their grade level and above.

Chad and I just finished reading them Heidi and have started reading to them at night Mr. Poppers Penguins. Last night, Hannah volunteered to read a whole chapter aloud....that made me so very happy!!!

This week in Germany

We started our study in Germany this week. This will be our last country until summer is over. We have learned that Berlin is the capitol of Germany and they use the Deutscher Mark (DM) for their currency. We've learned that they speak German but their accents are different in different parts of the country.

Famous and infamous people from Germany that we've learned about so far are Handel (we listened to some of his famous music he composed and learned much about the different types of music he composed that was influenced by the places he lived) and Albert Eisenstein (famous scientist and mathematician and also a Jew (who fled from Hitler) and Hitler (who at first promised the people economy prosperity before he started his horrible assault on the Jews.)

Today we are going to be learning about Kings and Castles. Next week the plan is to listen to some Beethoven and learn about him as well as learning about Gutenberg.

Chad has been reading the girls- Heidi and they have thouroughly enjoyed it.

We will begin next studies in the next few weeks of A child's geography (this is more of an earth science study) with a friend of ours. We hope to finish this in 11 weeks.

We will pick back up galloping in the Fall with a little bit less intensity since we will be adding a formal science and I want to add History in consistently. I figure 2 days a week with science, 2 days a week with Galloping and 2 days a week History reading (reading History on one day with science and one day with Galloping.

We shall see...
My goal for this coming year is to work 4 days a week with the girls for 6 weeks at a time (one week off). That gives us 7 sessions with a total of 10 weeks off for the year. I will also count co-op days so that may increase our school days..because indeed co-ops are learning...smile!

Our co-ops next year will include American History (once a month) PE (once a month) and Music theory, Piano, ASL, Art, Science (Apologia Astronmy) (I think this will either be every week or every 2 weeks) and whatever we do with 4-H. Busy days ahead!!!

Italy

Isn't it crazy how our kids are so different. I have one (the oldest) of course, who is pretty much independent in learning. I can give her a list of things she needs to do and she can tackle it with some help here and there. I have another one (the middle) that I have to watch at all times to make sure she stays on task. I wish this wasn't so frustrating but it so clashes with my independent nature. She is creative and an out-of-the box thinker so I try really hard not to squelch that in my need for her to be independent. The youngest...well she is just busy right now...I wonder if she will take on an older child style since she is so far apart from the middle one. Who knows...only time will tell.


We've been studying Italy this week. Just the basics mostly. We have highlighted some famous people from Italy. Today we read a good bit of a book about Leonardo da Vinci. I am sure he would have fit right into the Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling...not by choice but just by the mere fate of his growing up. He traveled the country of Italy from relative to relative until finally his father realized he needed to be trained in some sort of vocation. I thought it great of his father (among thinking not so great of him for not putting his love and devotion into his son) that he saw the talent Leonardo had and found him an apprentice to study under.

Who knew that from this meager beginning Itatly would bring us one of the most famous artist of the Renaissance and of all time. I did not realize that Leonardo was not just an artist but a studier of life and that many of the drawings we have used in the medical field are from him because of the way he paid attention to fine details of life.

Anyhow, today we studied about Leonardo's interest in birds and aerodynamic and the way things fly. We made parachutes as a little activity to help re-reinforce what he studied.

Where does the time go?

What happened to the time...? We have been off school for a week. The girls have had co-ops and classes this past week. Last Tuesday they went to a recycling co-op where they learned so much about the types of recycling and how to take care of the world God gave us. Wednesday, the had art class where they made these really cute candy dishes out of clay pots. Thursday they had PE co-op and learned about Tennis. They had fun at that one and even came home a little scraped up...smile!

Mikayla was suppose to do her oral report on her famous athlete. She chose Shawn Johnson, a famous Olympic gymnast. Hannah ended up doing it for her though since Mikayla hurt herself. I felt sad because she worked so hard on it...but that is alright.

Today we went to the Natural Science Museum. The girls had a blast. We picnicked afterward then went to visit Chad at work. The girls were so excited to see again where he worked. Chad loves to show his girls off.

We haven't done any galloping this week. We will begin that again next week. I believe we will be studying Italy. The girls had a great time in our study in France. We learned a good bit.

Today since we went on our field trip we just did 30 min of silent reading and a math drill sheet. This just means we will do school on Friday which is no big deal.

TGIF

This week was crazy indeed. We received our new curriculum from CLE and started it the very same morning we opened the box. That night, I dug into the Teacher's Manuals and things started making more sense. The girls seem to really like it. I am flying through some of the beginning Light Units because the girls know a good bit of it but I don't want them to miss something they may need later on. I chose to do Reading, Math and Language Arts with them. Right now, we are still getting the hang of it but I think the girls are really enjoying it.

We had a packed homeschool meeting last night. It was jam packed with information for the upcoming year. I am excited about the co-op for the girls next year. We will be doing a 2 year American History study. Hopefully, we will conclude the trip with a trip to Washington DC.

We've been studying Russia lightly this week. We made pretzels yesterday...the girls had so much fun!

Busy girls we have been...

We finished up our study on Israel. It was very interesting. We learned the capital of Israel, their language, population and what kind of language they speak. Mikayla was very intrigued to learn that in their language the read from right to left. She has tried it with several of their books. We talked about Abraham, Jacob, Joesph and Jesus...as important figures from Israel. We colored the Israeli flag. This finished our study of Asia. We study some of the main countries of China, Japan, S. Korea, India, and Israel. Our next continent is Europe. We will begin that in about two weeks. We took off of Galloping this week to do focus on more of our science.

In science, we have been studying the second day of creation-God created the air. We have been talking about air, air pressure and will be talking more about the wind, the clouds and the weather.

The girls have been doing a good job focusing on their studies. I have started including Hannah in our phonics study so that we will make sure nothing gets left out of that area.

The girls just finished up their season of Upwards Cheerleading and Basketball. They had so much fun! Mikayla finally made her first goal in the last two minutes of the game last Saturday. It was the perfect ending to a great season! Hannah has been talking about playing basketball next year.

We will be beginning softball in a few weeks. Chad and I will be coaching the girls team this year.

I am including some pictures of the girls.

We made an abacus out of popcicle sticks, pony beads, and skewers.









It is beautiful right now outside. It has hard to believe its February already.

I am already in pursuit of planning next years curriculum. It makes me crazy to think about planning this all again...just because I am such a researcher about it all...smile!





The girls have been practicing their piano everyday...and I guess Autumn thinks she needs to practice as well.

She is our little cutie pie and makes everyday...an adventure!

To School...to School...off to School we go!

Well, we took three weeks off! Ah, Home School! We can pick our vacation days!!!! I decided that since the two weeks we took off for Christmas were so jam packed with Holiday events, we just needed some down time and I needed to plan what we are doing next!

We have been reading a little bit and doing somethings here and there like beginning a science curriculum.

I have begun reading them The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread. I saw the advertisement on TV that the movie was coming out and thought that maybe I could read it to them and they could see the difference between a well written book and a movie of the book. We shall see. I really love Kate Dicamillo. She wrote because of Winn Dixie and several other great books! We are reading it at night before they go to bed.

Our next geography study will be in India. I have spent several days this past week getting everything we need to begin. I planned to begin it this coming week but then realized the girls are going to be super busy with their co-ops and new play practice that they will be in this spring. So, we will begin that the week after next.

My plan is to get the rest of our schooling started though...back to the grindstone.

I have been trying to weigh the curriculumn that we are using now, to start planning for next year. Trying to figure out what is working and what is not is a huge struggle. In some ways, I feel like I am holding Hannah back, so I will hopefully be able to give her some more challenging things to do this spring and summer.

You know...I love homeschooling...it's been hard with everything we've had to endure this last year, but I know it's worth it. I have an awesome homeschool group that I am involved with that is so supportive. I have been blessed with great friends who are on this journey with me and I am so thankful.

Chad and I have had our own struggles trying to make this all work, but we have found some common ground and are committed to being role models for our children. We want the best for them in every way possible, so to that end we are fixing things that need fixing and changing things that need changing and just trying our best to love each other through it all. God has had His hand on us and I am very humbled that He keeps us in His care always.

So...on to the next half of the school year! Hope you enjoy the ride with us!

Hannah's Report

The girls are in a PE co-op....this year they asked all the kids to do a report on a famous athlete. Hannah chose Lindsay Davenport. Chad and her worked on it for several days. We thought she did a great job! Here is a picture of her with her poster presentation.