Break

Wow, so it has been almost a year since my last post. We are still going strong with homeschooling. This has been our first year giving year-round school a try. It has worked really well for us. At the beginning of the year, which started in July, I didn't sit down and plan out exactly which days we would have school and which days we would take off. I have been able to be really flexible with school days and take time off when we needed it. It has ended up playing out that we have school for 8-9 weeks and then take a week off.

It is getting close to time for another break soon. We took two weeks off for Christmas and aside from the occasional day off here or there we haven't taken another week off yet. And I know it is time when my youngest asks, "Mom, when are we going to take a break from school". I have been waiting because we have been trying to decide if we are going to take a trip somewhere soon.

Last spring we were able to take an amazing trip to Arizona to visit my best friend. We didn't take time off from school for this trip because it was a learning experience the whole way. I taught about each of the states that we traveled through and we were able to visit the Grand Canyon and learn about it as well. We took our break when we came back home. It was nice to have a week to get settled back into our home life, getting caught up on laundry and getting caught up on sleep.

So I have been waiting to see if we take a big enough trip, will it be a learning trip and us need a week off after we come home. Hopefully the kids will be patient with me so we can decide where and when our next trip will be along with their break from school.

School Where?

We woke up this morning to beautiful blue sunshiny (is that even a word..lol) skies. And right after breakfast I was presented with a question. "Mom, can we do school outside?" I have to admit, I had that "uh, do we have to?" moment. It would mean that we had to lug all of our school books and materials that we needed outside to the table on our porch. But I didn't say what I thought and went with the better answer. "Uh, sure!" I'm really glad that we did because things seemed to flow pretty well. And we got a lot done. After all we have been cooped up in the house a LOT this winter. That sunshine felt amazing on my face. It is something just how rejuvenating the warmth of the sun can be.






Of course Mom must have her "Bucks".



On another note:

We did some kite flying over the weekend. It was a perfect day for it.

Fishing for nouns and verbs.

We are using the Weaver curriculum, published by Alpha Omega, this school year. We used it for half of the year a couple of years ago but got away from it for various reasons. I broke it back out of the school cabinet this year to give it another go. It is a Bible-based unit study. I really like using unit studies for the simple fact of being able to teach different age levels at the same time. You don't have to do a lot of lesson planning with this curriculum either. Every two or three weeks I sit down for a couple of hours to lesson plan for the upcoming chapter. Each chapter consists of ten to twelve lessons to be taught. One lesson each day. They cover Social Studies, Science, Language Arts and Health. Each subject is broken up into objectives. I simply go through and place sticky notes on the edges of the pages with the day number that each objective is to be taught. The more you use this curriculum the more user friendly it becomes.

You can also buy a writing supplement to this curriculum called Wisdom Words. It is a writing program that is broken down into grade levels. One of the activities in the WW is a fishing game. With my fourteen year old with DS we have to periodically review things just to keep them fresh in her noggin. So she and I created the fishing game using the fish shapes that are provided with the WW resource pages. We made copies of the fish on card stock, cut them all out (which was great practice for her fine motor skills with the cutting), punched holes in each fish and then wrote nouns and verbs on them. She chose most of the words to place on the fish.





We had fishing poles that we had made out of a pencil with a piece of yarn tied around the top and a paper clip tied to the opposite end for the fish hook.



Then we went fishing! We scattered all of the fish face down on the floor and one at a time we would catch a fish. They didn't really slide on the hooks like we had hoped so we did have to help them on the hooks.




We had made a chart on the chalkboard. One side was for nouns and the other for verbs. She was in charge of writing down each noun or verb in the correct column. The first time through the game we really had to review the difference between a noun or verb but by the second go around, it all came back to her and she was able to chose the correct column without my help. Her brother even joined us towards the end for a little fishing.




This is a great little game that you can make up using whatever you might be studying at the time. Whether it be math, language arts, grammar, science, or social studies. Anything that is hands-on is usually a big hit around my house with two very visual learners.

Groundhog Cupcakes.

In honor of Punxsutawney Phil not seeing his shadow and bringing us closer to spring we decided to make groundhog cupcakes today. I found the idea on the Family Fun website. I couldn't find the exact ingredients listed in the recipe but we improvised. And who doesn't love an excuse to have a cupcake!!!!




I was able to get these unfrosted cupcakes from our grocery stores bakery.







1. Cut a small hole in the top of the cupcake to fit an Almond Joy into.

2. Cover the cupcake with white frosting.

3. I cut a small piece of a marshmallow to make the eyes. Glue all of the candy pieces on with a dab of frosting. (If you have some chocolate frosting it might work better for gluing the pieces on the face. The white frosting showed up more than we wanted it too.)

4. Use a small little nonpareil as pupils for the eyes.

5. We used a small pink heart for the nose, black bats (these were in our Halloween sprinkles container), and we used chocolate chips for the ears.

6. Sprinkle some crushed Oreo around the base of the groundhog for dirt.

7. Enjoy!!! We did!





Here is the link to the recipe.
http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/groundhog-day-cupcake-685681/?cmp=SMC-FB_FFUN_[groundhog-day-cupcake]_[recipe]_[familyfun.com]

"Hearts 4 Kids"

I was driving in the car the other day. I had the radio on 91.3 HIS Radio. I heard them talking about an outreach program that they are doing right now. It is called Hearts 4 Kids. They have asked that churches, schools, or any other type of group or just indiviuals who would be willing to make Valentine's Day cards for children that are in the hospital. They will deliver them to children for you. When my children were younger they were hospitalized several times. With my oldest we visited the hospital many times in her first three years of life. It was always nice to recieve gifts from people. No matter what the gift was it helped to know that someone was thinking about you. Just a simple card that said "Get Well Soon" meant so muc.



I decided that our family would break out the craft supplies and get to work. I have set a goal of 30 cards. We began folding paper, sticking stickers, tying ribbon, and stamping stamps today and in no time we had seventeen cards done.






Here is the link to HIS Radio's website with all of the details for "Hearts 4 Kids" in case anyone else is interested. I'm going to be mailing ours so if anyone else wants to make some I can always put them in the envelope with ours.

http://www.hisradio.com/headline/hearts-4-kids

Schools In

OK, so I know it has been a bit since my last post. What a holiday season! It was nonstop with all kinds of goodness. But I think I can finally say, PHEW!!! I finally feel like our lives have gotten back to a somewhat normal schedule. I do have to admit though, all of this wonderful snow that keeps falling all around has been a big help in getting us all to slow down a bit too.
After our second week of school off for our Christmas break I decided that perhaps I needed just one more week to re coop. I wanted to get lesson planning done and some organizing of closets done too. It was of course another crazy busy week and I didn't get to any of my planning or organizing until Thursday and Friday of that week. But it happened......just when it was supposed to.
Today I have this overwhelming feeling that I am digging the year round school schedule. Monday and Tuesday this week were really awesome school days. There was no complaining from anyone and everyone really seemed to be focused. I was hoping that with 3 weeks off that perhaps everyone, including me, would be really feeling the school vibe. And it worked! WOO HOO!
Today was one of our interesting school days. We needed to make it to the grocery store. The roads in our neck of the woods were covered white with snow again. So that meant the whole family ventured out to get groceries. I haven't driven in the snow enough to be comfortable doing so. (But I have a goal to learn how to drive in it because there is obviously going to be a lot of it this winter.) We did have several other errands to run so we didn't get home until lunchtime. By the time we had lunch and a few choirs were done by us all we started school. It was about 2 o'clock by then. Even with my 14 and 11 year old this isn't the best time to be starting your school day. We were all feeling tired and not very focused. Needless to say. It was what I like to call a "necessities day". Math and reading were done and then everyone had sometime to themselves to play. Some days this is the best we can do. There is no point in trying to force school when everyone is already tired. I am just setting myself up for disaster.
Tomorrow is another day and we will tackle the things we didn't get done today then. I am looking forward to the rest of our school week. I hope it goes as well as the beginning.

Giving

As our children grow we try to train and teach them to be caring and compassionate people. Making sure that they use their manners and are kind to others. But nothing is quite as amazing as when you get to see them show one of these characteristics to you all on their own without being prompted by you.

My 11 yr old son melted my heart the other day. Ever since the day after Thanksgiving he has been trying to come up with his own money so that he could buy his own gifts to give to his family and friends. He has always loved giving gifts to others that I have bought but this year he has wanted to buy his own with his own money. And here is where he melted my heart. He received some money in the mail as a Christmas gift and the next day he was ready to go shopping because now he had more money to buy more gifts for everyone. Now you talk about a proud Momma. I was so proud of him for wanting to spend his gift that he received on others. How selfless of him. And I have to tell you that this made his Momma want to buy him just a few extra things for Christmas for him being so willing to spend his money on others.

I love this boy. He is becoming a great little man. He has also been very helpful with making lots of gifts as well. We have made a brown sugar and sesame oil body scrub and lots of bars of soap. And he is making his own Christmas cards to give to everyone. We save our Christmas cards from the previous years and then recycle the pictures and characters on them to make new cards. He does better at sending Christmas cards then I do.

You know as a stay-at-home I don't get paid money for a full time job but seeing my son be so giving it is "Priceless".