Best Books Learning

2012-02-06T07:00:00.000-05:00

I came across some great thought provoking articles recently that I thought I'd share. The first one is an article from Simple Homeschool's Homeschool Day in the Life series. Rachel DeMille shared one of her days, I have always wanted to peek into the windows of her homeschool among others. A couple things that really stood out for me was the excitement in sharing what she figured out with her children. Lately as Dan has been traveling and not having a true kindred friend here yet I have felt a little without. Maybe I should just get over the hump and learn to enjoy sharing more with my children. Of course it can not completely fulfill my need for adult conversation but that does not mean I can not enjoy them more! I also read another article from the DeMills about the importance of reading, both as an individual and as a family. We really adopted and made this practise our own, our youngest has thrown that off a bit in the 2 1/2 years she has been with us. I need to make this more of a priority in our day, it is so enjoyable to see everyone getting excited about a story!

I also read this story about Steve Jobs, I'm not a huge fan but I think he was good at what he did and I do want my children to find their passion! I also agree with the article that if we want our children to find their passions and desire to find things out then they need to have that time outdoors, they need to have time. What more can we truly desire for our children's education than curiosity, passion, and time for them. I truly remember going to school because it was my "job" and then coming home to enjoy my passions. It was not uncommon for me to stay up late into the night because a book had sparked the fire of my curiosity!

Teaching is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire. ~ William Butler Yeats

He ate and drank the precious words ~ his spirit grew robust ~ he knew no more that he was poor ~ nor that his frame was dust~ he dance along the dingy days and this bequest of wings was but a book ~ what liberty ~ a loosened spirit brings. ~ Emily Dickinson

2012-02-04T15:22:00.001-05:00

We are back! Thank goodness that did not last as long as I thought it might! Mostly because we did not have to replace the computer just the hard drive. Thank goodness for self learning husbands! ;)

While I was away from the computer we had a most deliciously warm day! So we did our school work quickly and headed to the nature center near our home. I am not sure there is a better way to learn than by being outside in an unstructured way! The kids threw rocks in the river, they ran and yelled. We soaked up as much vitamin D as possible and we ate outside (which I just love to do)! It was lovely!!

If you have not read Richard Louv's book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder. PLEASE DO! He has a new one out that I can't wait to get my hands on!

2012-01-30T23:33:00.003-05:00

So we are trying something new to help us get through our day. At the beginning of the year I bought Riley a student planner because he likes to know what is expected of him before he starts his day. I thought eventually he would be able to look at our schedule and look at his weekly assignments and fill in the individual days himself. It has not happened that way and in fact I realized he rarely even looks at the daily list, he jut asks me again... But I have to say it was nice to have a daily list of what we were going to get done, so I am trying out the white board. I take the weeks assignments, look at what subjects are scheduled for the day and then write every ones assignments. Jake is enjoying this as he has become a super reader, Fern really does not need a list as she does not read yet but I knew she'd feel left out so I put her right at the top. Besides it helps my brain (it needs all the help it can get)!

So we will see how this goes, maybe it will stick maybe it won't.

And a little FYI for those who are not readers of my other blog, my hard drive is fried so I will just be posting occasionally now when my husband is not traveling and such. But also the photos will suffer as the few I do share will be off of my phone...

Sorry.

Here is an interesting article about homeschooling rising!

2012-01-16T14:01:00.002-05:00

My Riley who has never enjoyed reading is today finishing the first book in the Wimpy Kid Diaries. 200 some odd pages... get this... in 2 weeks! It is not my first choice of books, but if it can give him confidence and desire in reading then well who am I to say. We all enjoy different genres.

With this new confidence it did not take too much for me to get him to read his science section on his own. I enjoy reading to my kids but it is very nice to have the ability to ask Riley to read something and then discuss it! He read a bit about what all is contained in a seed and then we talked about the amazing-ness of God's creation. So Riley and I did a little art project, it is so nice to get to paint! He is old enough now that we can paint side by side where as everyone else is still small enough that I don't actually get to sit down and paint. We decided to mix mediums, we used wax crayons and water colors. I love Riley's sun and my roots.

Now if only I could get him to write without a fight...

2012-01-04T14:55:00.003-05:00

This is Miss Fern's picture from the story we read yesterday about a screech owl, she also practiced her O & o's! I just LOVED her owl!

And Jake has been listening to Solomon Owl by Aurthur Scott Bailey (out of the Animal Stories book on the carousel on the right)! I LOVE his owl too!!

Just sharing today!

2012-01-02T17:27:00.003-05:00

Wouldn't you know it, after having a nice long holiday break Mom is sick on the Monday we were diving back in!!

That's ok, we make it though our morning studies. I did not go all out but we got some good stuff in. Riley thought he might die... SO FUN! ;)

But also we are having one of those freak, "it's Jan. 2 and 70 degrees outside!! Oh it was so good for my cold to go lie in the grass and be warmed in the sun! The kids are running around outside BAREFOOT using their imaginations and fresh air!

The picture up there is of some stone soup Fern and I made recently. She and I recently read the story and she was so excited to make it! I love stone soup and the magic involved.

How are you easing into this New Year? Any changes or tweaks?

2011-12-06T17:14:00.002-05:00

Riley and I recently started our block on Native Americans in Northern Nevada. It was slow going for a bit as we non-Nevadans tried to find information. We got excited that there was an exhibit in the airport but that was not as fruitful as hoped. But just today we found some wonderful student guides put out by the state!

This area is home to the Northern Paiute, Western Shoshone, & Washoe Tribes.
What Native Americans live in your area?

2011-11-18T22:27:00.002-05:00

How was your week? Was it productive? Oh it's Friday again... errr... Then it has been a full two weeks that we have not gotten any schooling in... Oh the sicknesses that have plagued our house these last two weeks! Oh yea and my partner in crime has been out of town the whole time! Times like this, it is hard to not freak out a little on myself. But seriously between a 10 year old who is THE WORST sick person, a babe who needed to nurse non-stop, two super kids who just sleep through sickness, and an uber sick mama well what can I expect of myself! I am still not 100% my house is still disaster-ish and now I am looking at a holiday week where we are traveling! But do you know what came out of it? We are all over our toast out (not full burn out just toasted a little), and we are all ready to dive back in! I hope it lasts though our week of traveling!!
Happy Thanksgiving! I'll be back after the holiday (and unpacking)!

2011-11-08T21:25:00.004-05:00

Seasons

I love seasons, I love all four for their unique beauty. I also love the different activities that come with each season, flowers and vegetable planting in the spring, swimming, and camping in the summer, apple picking and canning in the fall, and the slowness and coziness of winter's cold!

What about the seasons of a homeschool? For me that is a little harder. Letting go of a routine that is no longer working, reading the kids to see if they need more or less rigor in our studies, and just the change. I'm not a big one for handling change well it's hard on me, sometimes really hard. Sometimes I am not graceful about it.

This year I am trying to grow in the flexibility department. This is a must in our house, Dan travels often with just a moments notice. I am trying to learn to give us lighter flowing days when Dan comes and goes, and more studies to fill our weeks when he is gone. One thing I have not given into yet, but have really had a wonderful epiphany about this week is letting go of my public school history and realizing that we do not need to start our week on a Monday and end on a Friday. It could be a Thursday to Wednesday! Just because we don't get a good start on Monday because Dan left and we're all off or the baby is sick and I sit and nurse her all day does not mean that we have to throw out the whole week!

Learning all the time that is what I'm doing! And that is a good thing!

What are you enjoying this season (of the year, of life, or of your learning)?

2011-10-29T14:26:00.003-04:00

Well you all know we have lived in a few states, and they all have fun and weird things we have enjoyed. But I have to say Nevada has one I have never even considered but is actually a really cool thing EVERY state should do in my simple opinion!

NEVADA DAY!

What is Nevada day you ask? Well it is the day that Nevada was accepted into the Union. It is a state holiday, technically is is on Oct. 31 but they choose to have Friday off this year so we went on an adventure!

A homeschool group here planned a fun Nevada Day field trip to the Capitol. So the kids and I drove down to Carson City, it's about a 45 min drive through beautiful Washoe Valley!
We had a fun picnic, getting to know new homeschoolers and then one of the parents planned a little Nevada art project (I'll share that soon). The sun was warm and the kids ran until they could run no farther! Then we went into the Capitol building.

Leili was fast expiring, but we pressed on...

The first and second floor were open to walk through, we saw the Assembly room, Senate room, everything was just beautiful!

This is what is painted all around the ceiling of the first floor, and there are paintings of all the past governors (even the "Territorial" governors!

And my cuties (and unhappy babe) on the front steps of the capitol. It was great to learn a little bit more about this state that is our current home!!

And a couple of great articles to share! HERE and HERE!!

2011-10-07T12:22:00.002-04:00

There are many activities we do as a family that I am sometimes not sure where to post them, family blog or schooling blog! But I have to say that is one of my FAVORITE things about being a homeschooling family! I see it as our own little homeschooling family culture.

I recently took the plunge and bought the book All Year Round, I have wanted a book to learn more about and incorperate festivals in our home but I have always been afraid of picking the wrong one. Silly right! So I bought this book and got a couple ideas for Michalmas! It was a fun evening, I made this dragon out of beeswax on the candle and then at dinner we read about the war in heaven and talked about the plan of salvation and of course what Michael did. We then lit the candle and have each night for dinner since, the kids love to think about Michaels sword being the flame as it vanquishes our dragon. We also talked brefly about vanquishing our own dragons, it was a fun evening!

I have been thinking a bit about this quote from Mark Twain, "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education". And also, "... they didn’t have to wait for me to be ready to teach them something." from a recent post at Simple Homeschooling.

What thoughts do these give you?

2011-10-04T23:33:00.002-04:00

Today I bought a Children's encyclopedia. The catalyst today was Riley's interest in this crazy way mom use to have to look something up (because I did not have the internet)! The funny thing is that he has had his nose in it quite a bit of this evening, or in Encyclopedia Brown. I mentioned this to my mom and she asked if I had the old children's encyclopedia set out, I don't but I was instantly taken back to caring around the blue one. It was about gems and minerals... I love rocks.

It seemed a little funny to be a homeschooling mom of this long and to not have a current encyclopedia, but really up to now my kids were not that curious. My answer to their questions was sufficient. Now that Riley is getting the hang (and enjoyment) of reading I can see that he may really enjoy getting an answer for himself!

Last week was a review and relax week for us, Riley needed to finish a project after reading Stuart Little. I also saw the week coming, schooling has been good this year so far but it is much more intense for two reasons. 1. Riley's studies have jumped up a notch and 2. I have 3 kids with school work (that is not kindergarten)! And because of that we have gotten behind on life! Winter clothing needed to be gone through and supplemented, drawers needed rotating, and then their is the canning... It was a good week and now we are jumping back into our studies refreshed and more warmly clothed!

This week Riley has started his new book (Encyclopedia Brown), and likes it so much that he read an extra chapter tonight just because he wanted to! Stuart Little was just a tad bit too challenging for him to finish in 3 week, Encyclopedia Brown is a good reading level for him but he likes it so much I am not sure it will last 3 weeks! :) What a nice problem to have! When I was trying yo decide on a couple book choices for Riley I pulled out the book, Great Books for Boys by Kathleen Odean. My friend Cherish scored a copy for me at a library book sale a few years back and since I have no experience as a boy or what boys like to read this has been great. The funny thing about this time while looking through it was I discovered that it has a whole chapter named, encouraging your son to read. I have used this as an excellent reference but I think I may need to read the rest of it!!

I also mentioned, Home Learning Year by Year before. Well I finally bought a copy to have for myself which is especially nice since I no longer live next to a library who has it! It is another great reference for books, although it is categorized by grade level and subject.

Have a great week!

2011-09-16T19:43:00.002-04:00

T.G.I.F.!!!

And a good artical from Simple Homeschool, I know I have been traped in the "grass is always greener" thoughts! This artical really put a great spin on the subject!

2011-09-14T17:36:00.003-04:00

Today as all the kids were working on various projects during school time I thought that it would be fun to show what a *good* morning looks like! ;) We are really enjoying our new Oak Meadow materials!

Fern has a goal in mind for all this red finger knitting! We found THIS great you tube video on how to use it to make a flower, but Fern has decided that we will attach our flowers to barrettes as gifts for some of her friends! Hopefully we will make the jump to regular knitting in the next couple months!
Riley is snacking on our zucchini muffins while writing out his nouns and verbs on colored cards for grammar review. Riley has really made the jump this year in his school work. It has been a tremendous blessing for him to be able to be self directing in a few subjects as I have 3 to keep up studies with this year!

Jacob our adventurer is enjoying our ant study this week for science, we saw an ant caring an oat!! Jake is a go-go-er so it is hard to get him to sit long enough to draw what we has seen. But he is a great observationist!

And sweet Leili is just doing a great job being our little one! She has been playing plenty in our little kitchen or coloring like in the last post, she is happy as long as she is with us! Today she even started repeating our morning verse with us, and she is the best candle blower-outer!!

So all in all the beginning of our year is going quite well, everyone is enjoying our learning together (for the most part) and we are settling nicely back into our rhythm! We love the crazy summer but there is something so comforting to the fall and our family rhythm!

And I have been pouring over the new Autumn Rhythm of the Home!!!

2011-09-09T23:36:00.004-04:00

Whew! We made it through the first week of school and we all survived and had some fun too! :)

After school one day we went to the lake and ended up with an impromptu science class! Jake caught this crawdad! We had some great observation, and then a little "nature" lesson... the kids caught a minnow and put it in with the crawdad... they now know how a crawdad searches, finds, and eats his dinner!
We found a random inch-worm on the beach, the little ones enjoyed watching him inch around my hand.

Today before school we learned about heat rising and wind patterns at the balloon races. It was great to get so up close and to talk to the balloonists!

And in regular schooling news we got our nature table set up and added a few new things to it!

Yeah for on the fly learning and learning at home! And yeah for our first week being great!!!

2011-09-05T17:18:00.003-04:00

Happy First Day of School!!!

It all went well and the boys blew me away with their reading! :) Happy mama!!!
And Leili was such a great helper! Seriously one of the best toddler days I've ever had!!!!
What a lovely way to start the year!

To see our fun school is starting celebration/adventure hop over to our family blog!

2011-08-26T18:45:00.005-04:00

Well it is that time of year! I finalized my planning, printed it all out, and took it over to Staples yesterday! I am such a geek, "playing school" to me as a kid was all about the planning, class was never the highlight. :) But my kids are alot more fun to learn with then Mr. Bear, my Cabbage Patch, and assorted animals were!

So whats in it this year? The first page after my lovely cover up there is THIS fun map of Nevada I found on the Nevada Tourism website, next is our weekly schedule. I have found this helps tremendously in getting through the harder times.

Next up is our family study plans for the year, this is stuff that is what we do instead of the regular "circle time".

Riley this year will be challenges but I think he is up for it!

Jake is going to love all of this!

I teetered a bit on whether Fern was ready for this content, but I think she will really dive in. And I am looking forward to doing some of these things with her that I have enjoyed before with the boys! :)

And I like to include this as cooking and food prep is a great learning opportunity that we enjoy as a family.

After all this is my weekly sheets for planning out what we will strive to accomplish!

You may have noticed I have not attached grade levels, I have never felt overly comfortable with it. One of the joys of homeschooling is being able to tailor to each child. They may be "ahead" in one subject or "behind" in another and that is OK!! Anyway I found this great article just a little bit back and thought I'd share it here!

We are using Oak Meadow again this year and are really looking forward to cracking open our new books, but there is the bit of Charlotte Mason & Thomas Jefferson Education packed in too!!

Happy First Day of Schooling!!

2011-08-12T12:04:00.002-04:00

Are you enjoying the summer sun? We are! It has been a fun but crazy summer and even though we are still enjoying it we can feel the change. The winding down. You can feel it in the early morning air, and in the anticipation of our routine. Personally I am a summer baby I really enjoy the lack of rigidity in what we have to do, but even I yearn and look forward to the return of fall and all the comfortable familiarity our routine brings.

I have spent the last few days really tweaking and fine tuning our learning plan for the year, I have been working on my new book, and searching (and finding) many of our needed books on the Goodwill shelf! I will post my pages soon, just a little more tweaking to do and then I'll print them out and have it bound!

How is your planning going?

2011-07-10T18:22:00.002-04:00

Oh my addiction to books, it is a good thing we homeschool it gives me more excuses to buy (like I needed one)!! I found a good load of books while down at my moms last week, most from a garage sale but some at the Deseret Industries. This should help fuel our summer reading craze!!
Our Oak Meadow books arrived but I have not even gotten them out of the box, mostly because of the crazy busyness of this summer, partly because it's not time to think of that stuff yet, and some lingering doubt as I find my brain thinking about curriculum and trying to listen to the spirit! :)

I've also been thinking about making another planning book, this is really a great help to me through the school year. And as dorky as I am I get all excited about what photo to choose for the new book! :) Yea total dork...

This summer we have done something we have never done before... workbooks. Yea crazy, we have never been a workbook kind of homeschool but the kids are enjoying the books and I think they are getting reinforcement where it is needed and will then hopefully not forget the skills they have gained but not be overwhelmed and burnt out for school to start. :)

We were thinking of ether starting school officially at the beginning of August because Dan *was* going to have September off so we were going to travel and camp and have some MUCH needed Dad time. But he's a pilot and the only constant is change and it looks like our September plans are out the door. We'll see, but I guess that is part of the reason we homeschool... flexibility! :)

I found this this week and thought it might be fun to do with the kids after the boys get home from scout camp. Plus we have a couple new mysteries up there in my book pile that would go along nicely!!

2011-06-04T15:07:00.002-04:00

The new Rhythm of the Home Summer Edition is up! Hooray! I have read nearly all of it as I have been spending extra time with Leili nursing through an ear infection. There is so much great stuff, I even went to the craft store and got a couple supplies to dive into new projects! There are quite a few things we will be using for summer learning! We have already enjoyed THIS (link at the end of the article) and next week Riley and I will be working on THIS (you sign up for the newsletter and get a free copy of the ezine on dandelions)!

And as you can see I was inspired by ROTH's article HERE and made the girls play-dough. I used our favorite recipe from Aunt Donna but theirs is very similar! What a fun project!

Enjoy, enjoy!!

2011-05-25T17:57:00.002-04:00

The big picture of the littlest big town.

So here is a question for you, how do you keep the "big picture" when in the daily trenches of homeschooling?

There are good days and there are bad days. There are days we are excited about learning, and days we just want to make a nest and forget about it. There are times I feel good about the educational path we have chosen, and times when I question. Overall homeschooling is good, I feel like this is what we are suppose to do as a family, what my kids need. I wish I had all the answers and alot more patience. I like to make plans but I also know plans are made to be broken in the name of doing what our family and our kids need. I long for stability, I pray for it.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to step back, look at the big picture and breath in the awe of it!

I thought THIS was an excellent article and THIS too!

2011-05-12T16:11:00.004-04:00

While I am not a big fan of all the moving around we've been doing it does lend to some great field trips we would have otherwise never seen!

Riley was recently learning about fresh water biomes, now we have a house full of beach babies with the exception of transplant Dan and our Connecticut babe so we headed over to Lake Tahoe! It is relatively close, we had to buy chains which was a little crazy (after living in New England and never needing them)! It was beautiful, the kids tasted the water to prove it was indeed "fresh" (I am hoping they did not get some weird twitching disease). We learned that most of the pines up there are Jeffery pines, but there are also Ponderosa pines! We are looking forward to going again when it is warm!

We are finishing up our Oak Meadow books with the boys (Fern still has a bit more), and then the boys and I will be working on a few things that they need extra work on, things we did not get to, and things we just plain want to do! Since getting here and s-l-o-w-l-y unpacking I threw up my hands and simplified things. If you remember when we started this year I had grand ideas for Family Studies along with our Oak Meadow, I also choose not to do a couple subjects from Oak Meadow but to incorporate those in our family time. Well I have just stuck with our Oak Meadow and so we have been actually doing and enjoying our school time as I am not so stressed and busy (aka: overwhelmed). :) When pondering about this I recently thought of the Conference talk by Elder Oaks, Good, Better, Best. All the things I want my kids to learn are good, but sanity is even better!

Oak Meadow is having their Spring Sale through the end of the month, every year I procrastinate and think I'll get a better deal on Amazon or Ebay. But really it's not that much better and lately it seems that there is less and less to find. I really do prefer to buy used books for many reasons, but with the new editions being near the same price of the old and the thought of less run around for me... I think the sale will win out for the first time. It is also nice to think of having the new books all summer to become familiar with, and just yesterday I found some of the chapter books on Riley's reading list at Goodwill for .65 cents each! 3 more to watch for!! Oh and we found this AWESOME book store this week (scroll down to the photos-just the store)!!!

2011-04-14T20:33:00.002-04:00

Well we are officially official!

Now just to remember to be official with Fern in a couple years! :) ~ I have never been a real structured P.E. curriculum kind of gal, I don't plan any. There always seems to be a little built into our other learning activities and if you know my kids they are plenty active! Up until our move here Riley was taking Jui -Jitsu and loving it too bad there is not a studio here. :( We also enjoy hiking as a family or even just going for a walk around the neighborhood. But this week we have an all new kind of P.E., the gas-is-really-expensive kind! In our effort to reduce our gas consumption and therefor cost the boys and I rode our bikes to the co-op 2 miles away and back to get a few odds and ends we needed. And then today the kids and I (and our trusty wagon) made our way to the grocery store on the corner, 1 mile away to do a little shopping, poor Fern had to walk all the way home as there was no room for her, Leili, and the groceries!! :) That is my kind of exercising, puts $ in our pocket, we get something done, & it wares out my kids!!

2011-04-06T13:38:00.002-04:00

I have all my paper work for this new state all completed and sealed in an envelope. Now to go to the post office and send it registered. Whew! Glad it will be done soon, although I will have to do more once Fern is 7.

I also figured we should get back to it, and since I had everything out doing my paperwork I started planning to get back to regular schooling Monday.

But I found a funny thing when I opened our Oak Meadow books. When I was planning last August I knew we could not buy new curriculum books, and we still had lessons to do from our last curriculum books so I just went with what I had. Well I found yesterday that we only have 4 lessons left for each of the boys! A few more for Fern as I started from the beginning of her book. So I guess the plan is to finish in the next four weeks and then to fill in and do a little extra fun learning and finish Fern up as well. Now yes that means that Riley never got to do the "4th grade" book this year but I think that I will just plan on buying the 4th grade curriculum for the fall (OH HOW NICE TO BE ABLE TO BUY THINGS WE NEED AGAIN!!), but continue to consider him in 4th this year and 5th next year. Because really does it matter?

It is encouraging and exciting to think of being finished before too long! The light at the end of the tunnel is MOST WELCOMED! And it is so exciting to think of buying school supplies!! I am such a nerd!! :)

2011-03-29T17:32:00.002-04:00

Well we have not gotten quite back to regular schooling yet, but we have been finding a little time to do a little formal learning! Riley has grumbly been working on his cursive, yes we live in a digital age why would kids need to learn cursive?? Some schools have stopped teaching it, but sorry babes in our family your not getting out of it!! I think it is still a valuable talent and so I continue to annoy my kids! :)

Jake has been VERY interested in watches and telling time lately, so the other day when I got a lovely quiet hour with Jake we sat down and he learned how to tell time! He did AMAZING and we had tons of fun together. Today we bought the coveted first watch! It helped that he LOVES to count by 5's, now he has a reason to do it all the time!

*cool clock stamp from Lakeshore, I bought it way back before Riley learned to tell time! I TOTALLY scored at Goodwill last week in the book department! I went to get some good books to donate to a kids shelter in town, but I found a few that needed to come home with me too! :) I found this set of Beatrix Potter books, they are not all there, but there are plenty of good ones! Today we read Mr. Jeremy Fisher! I love that one!! I also found The Twits by Roald Dahl, I love his writing. The boys and I finished The Twits last night, they loved it. I also found old copies of Cricket Magazine from the 70's, I think I may go back for more! Talk about making modern kids reading look like "twaddle", "twaddle", "twaddle"!! ~ Did I type "LOVE" too much today or what!? Better than hate I guess!!

2011-03-01T16:37:00.002-05:00

Just a quick post! We are on hiatus from school due to moving and settling, new state, new laws, new, new, new! I'll be back!

And the SPRING Rhythm of the Home is up! Hooray!!

2011-02-17T14:55:00.002-05:00

(Jake making a cloud)

This can be a hard time for most homeschoolers, cabin fever, spring fever, burn out... It is funny for me I usually feel a renewed desire to read about homeschooling and asses how things are going, whats working whats not. Then I pin Dan down for the "how's schooling going" talk, he has alluded me so far... I'll get him soon!

So things are working pretty well, Riley (always the one who has been more of a challenge to school) is getting older and I am wondering if he is needing things a little different. It is also difficult with him because he is getting older and needs more Independence and more interesting (deeper?) material, but although he reads just fine he does not enjoy it. He is also not a big fan of much writing. I know these things will come, and I am ok with letting him develop on his own terms. But how do I meet his needs in the mean time? He has no patience for me to read his assignments to him, but needs something.

Jake is awesome, he loves "reading"! And most of his assignments are fun for him to spend time with me and feel good about what he's accomplished. But boy is he a wiggly guy! It is a good thing he is not confined to a desk and chair for hours everyday!!!

Fern is SO opinionated! We have always started our school time together doing some rhymes/fingerplay/singing, but lately she has refused to do this. Not bad or anything just weird. She has also taught herself most of the lowercase alphabet, I have not introduced it and usually don't until first grade. She has her own way! :)

Leili, well she is lots of fun, but we have mostly started doing a good amount of our school work when she is sleeping! I'm sure you can imagine why. She just LOVES to do anything the big kids are doing, and they just LOVE her (except when she is stilling on their drawing stealing their crayons).

This got a little long winded, so I'll end with a couple links!

New Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is up!

Two great articles from the Thomas Jefferson Newsletter this week too!

2011-01-16T15:34:00.002-05:00

Riley painted these pictures when we were learning about our area's natural resources. He chose to paint an orange tree (he is LOVING all the local citrus), and the beach (who does not want to visit San Diego Beaches)!

2010-12-17T11:17:00.004-05:00

Yes, school does still go on even when I don't take pictures or blog! :) Leili has become a little more challenging during our times when she can not be included, like say when we are using the microscope. Leili loves to get on the table when we are working! But luckily she is also now starting to enjoy somethings that are conducive to school time, like "reading" books, and coloring. She does not color much but is happy to join us at the table and hold crayons!! :)

Next?

Science, kitchen style!

So what happens when bread gets forgotten?

Look at the up close of some of the spores on the underside of the bowl, cool hu!!
~
School is going pretty well, we have taken a week off here and there for fun on the fly kind of learning! The planning I did during the summer has worked well, and if all goes as planned we should be starting our second quarter with the new year!
~
There is the Winter Edition of Rhythm of the Home up (great stuff for Solstice, and lots of other things). And the new Oak Meadow Newsletter is up, I have not read it yet!!

2010-10-14T14:46:00.002-04:00

I have always planned on having something better to use as math manipulatives than our plastic pattern blocks but just never saw anything that clicked....until! I saw someone use wooden acorns! So I searched and finally found unfinished ones for .65 a piece, not bad. Then I painted them this week 15 green-ish, and 15 brown. They will be so much warmer in our hands then plastic (ya'll know how I feel about plastic right?!)!!

I LOVE the Oak Meadow math, they use the stories about the four gnomes like many Waldorf curriculums and acorns just fit right in with gnomes and squirrels and such!! In THIS pdf of an overview of the first grade curriculum on page 10 there is a continuation of the gnome story, introducing King Equal if your interested. And I found another mama's short explanation of the gnomes that I thought was really well written:

~
- Plus wears green, is kinda chubby, moves slowly yet is lucky at finding things, is kind-hearted and he always collects extra jewels/acorns/whatever to share with his friend Minus.

- Minus wears blue, is sorta skinny with holes in his clothes and sack - I don't think it is Waldorf but I gave him a sort of monkish, kind and holy demeanor. He constantly drops things out of his sack, but I always took the story farther - like the dropped acorn becomes the last one that a squirrel needs to feed his family of babies; or the dropped jewel ends up buying dinner for a poor family, etc.

- Times is quick and light & weightless like a flame - usually wears yellow - and he always tends to find things in groups of the same number.

- Divide wears deep red color and is very wise. He tends to help everyone divide up the jewels equally among the king's knights or divide up the acorns evenly among the squirrels - each family getting the same amount. (Remainders are fun for Minus to think of kind things to do with.)

-King or Queen Equal is your child. They get to use the acorns, the gnomes, and other things to help them find answers - at first just helping count out the manipulatives, but eventually on their own.

I think I will make some little gnomes to help us in our math too, sorry Dan another trip to the craft store!! :)

2010-09-28T18:26:00.002-04:00

Ahh, the many faces of homeschooling!

Isn't it GREAT!!!

The most recent Oak Meadow Newsletter is out, I really enjoyed the article about boredom (I could write my own story about the neighborhood ditch!), and the craft looks fun!

2010-09-17T17:11:00.004-04:00

Two weeks under our belts, only thirty four or so more to go! Whew!! Sorry I have tried 3 times to get this photo the right way to no avail, so twist your head to the side!

Here is just a little peek at the books we've been enjoying!

And finally our year on paper...

We have some really great books to help us with all this fun learning, some we own already, a couple we bought, and of course what is a homeschooler without a library card!!!
Riley is still a little bit tough to get him to read. He does well when he reads, he just does not enjoy it much yet! So right now he is working on The Boxcar Children re-done into a "graphic novel" (look it up if you have not seen one there crazy)!
Jacob is doing so well on his "word families" aka: beginning reading! And he is working so diligently on his writing that it is greatly improving!!

Sweet Fern, well many of the stories used for introducing the alphabet are the Beatrix Potter stories, Fern loves them and I love them!! Oak meadow has provided a Kindergarten story book with them all in it, but our library has those cute (and expensive) mini Potter book set. And it is just too fun to hold a cute little book, so we checked a few out!

You should be able to click on these and enlarge them to see them a bit more clearly... I am always happy to share let me know if you want any more info!!

T.G.I.F.

Happy Weekend!!

Fall Rhythm of the Home is up!!

New Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival

2010-08-20T21:51:00.002-04:00

Where are you?

We are 17 days away!

From starting our new school year!

I am still feverishly getting organized, I am working hard to keep our buying down but I do need to buy a couple books and main lesson books, guess I better get on that! :)

But here are a couple links I thought I'd share! Here is one I found off Lindafay over on Higher Up and Further In about a Great Books Curriculum, I am interested in reading this site, our college used a great books curriculum and we really liked it. Should be an interesting reading.

Also there is a new Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival up! Yea!

Hope your last days of summer lovely!

2010-07-27T22:34:00.002-04:00

How is your Fall planning going?

Easy as pie? Hard as stones?

I am somewhere in between, reading sites like THIS and of course THIS. Looking at our Oak Meadow stuff, last year was a hard year so we will not need new Oak Meadow books. Our math, beginning reading, ABC's, and language arts will be from there. Our History, literature, nature study/science, artist and composer study, & habit/character development will be mostly Charlotte Mason inspired with some mama inspiration! :)

Many of the subjects will be learned with the whole family! But I have not put any planning on paper, I am still in the brain/reading part of my planning.

For the summer we have been reading Michelangelo by Diane Stanley along with a picture of his works (the David this week), we also started the Bard of Avon also by Diane Stanley. I am planning to also begin reading The Scottish Play, (Macbeth) from Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit. I highly recommend reading LindaFay's articles on reading Shakespeare! I LOVE Shakespeare!!! I am dreaming of going HERE!

2010-06-22T19:59:00.005-04:00

Summer has just started and we have our summer nature basket started. We have a nature basket instead of a nature table these days hopefully someday it will morph back into a table. We spent the evening of the Summer Solstice at the beach where we picked up a couple new things for our basket. Yea for summer!!

On another note with all the upheaval and homelessness we are schooling through the summer as we are painfully behind, life! So hopefully we don't get too much sunny day fever and we actually do get some work done! :) So stay tuned!!

And the BEACH EDITION of the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is up! Looks like good reading!

2010-06-09T22:18:00.002-04:00

~ The Reading Mother ~

by Strickland Gillilan

I had a mother who read to me

Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea.

Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth;

"Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath.

I had a Mother who read me lays

Of ancient and gallant and golden days;

Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,

Which every boy has a right to know.

I had a Mother who read me tales

Of Gelert the hound of the hills of Wales,

True to his trust till his tragic death,

Faithfulness lent with his final breath.

I had a Mother who read me the things

That wholesome life to the boy heart brings-

Stories that stir with an upward touch.

Oh, that each mother of boys were such!

You may have tangible wealth untold;

Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.

Richer than I you can never be -

-I had a Mother who read to me.

We're reading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, what are you reading?

2010-06-03T12:58:00.002-04:00

A couple weeks ago the local library had an Family Art Day! We went not knowing what to expect, free for all art? No they had stations and a theme. The theme was Mexican Folk Art (to go with the museum exhibit), so we got to make corn husk dolls, paper flowers, and masks. The kids had tons of fun and I think it added a couple more things to our bag of tricks, we would make them again at home (the kids want to for Day of the Dead decorations). Here is Jake making his paper flower, they were beautiful! THIS set is similar to what they had for us to use,ANOTHER and HERE is directions to make your own corn husk doll!

And the new SUMMER edition of RHYTHM OF THE HOME is up!! I love to read these!! :)

2010-05-11T17:09:00.003-04:00

I know you can not see it, but Leili's shirt says, "Nature is my classroom! Homeschooling Rocks!" It was a sweet hand me down from a good friend. :)

As there are seasons in our year there are also seasons in our lives, and this season has been rough on our schooling. Don't get me wrong my kids are learning plenty just different. During times like these I am thankful for the unmindful occurrence of ending up in unschooling play groups. It helps me remember that my kids are always learning, always. So while I juggle a baby and deal with the unrest of unemployment and homelessness, I try to find comfort in knowing that this is just for a season, all too soon we will have a good rhythm and be getting a little more book learning in. Oh but as I have learned from so many cherished unschooling friends, we will leave room for the natural learning that takes place in the home. Isn't that why we homeschool?? :)

There are two Charlotte Mason Carnivals up! I can't wait to read them both!! One is a Walk in the Desert (did you see ours on our Nature Blog?), And the other Carnival Here!

2010-05-05T23:14:00.002-04:00

I have been teaching Fern many "action songs" as they are called around here this year. And one of my favorites from when I was a kid is "Popcorn Popping On The Apricot Tree", my parents even planted a couple apricot trees outside my bedroom window! So on our recent road trip to Grandma's I was blissfully reminded of this song as it seemed her whole yard was blooming!

It seems to me that kids just don't know rhymes and songs like I did. (Unless you count the Dora theme, I don't) So I have tried to be consciously teaching my kids Mother Goose rhymes and other classic children's... knowledge? Is that the right word? Anyway here is a little popcorn popping for your enjoyment!

2010-04-19T10:53:00.002-04:00

I have recently gotten a little bit creative with Riley and his school work. Don't get me wrong, I want to challenge him but I don't want to suffocate him. So I change things to pique his interest and draw him in. For example... Instead of making a list of thins that come from trees, I gave him my camera and asked him to take pictures of things that come from trees. He then drew a picture of it in his main lesson book.

And here is a fun project, after reading a story about a family moving west to homestead we got out Grandpa's Lincoln Logs and made a homestead of our own! Too bad all our little animal figures are in a box somewhere that would have been fun!!

Really I have taken to heart the TJed phrase of "love of learning not hate of learning", Riley knows how to write, he is pretty good at it but he just does not enjoy it. If I force it what will I accomplish? Not much more than squashing his enjoyment of learning and damage our relationship. He will write, he will learn to push himself. But he needs to first learn it is worth it!

2010-04-17T21:05:00.002-04:00

If you remember the post a little bit past, the "ah ha" post I said that I needed to learn a few lessons, yea well sometimes I have to be reminded. :)

Our lives right now is like riding a roller coaster, fun, scary, wanting to go home... , all experienced day by day or even hour by hour. So an all in one, less books to be homeless with, mom does not have too much brain power kind of curriculum is right for us. But part of my learning was that we should never be a slave to a curriculum or philosophy, ever. So there are things I leave out, there are things I add in, and in truth if life was "normal" I would add or change a few more things. And I can see the hand of the Lord in us knowing this was right for this year, the Lord saw this year coming before we did as always! I enjoy reading other mom's homeschooling blogs to learn, get ideas, and even to just feel "normal"! But I just don't think I could label us as "Waldorf" or "Charlotte Mason" or "TJed", I pick and choose, we are us! I think there are a few labels I might use, nature based, holistic, and gentle are a couple that pop into mind. And you know the couple of mama's who have been inspiring and who I look up to did not have a label, or even a "THIS is the perfect way" because really part of being a homeschooling parent is really about doing what is right for our family and our kids. Isn't that what why we choose homeschooling in the first place?

Anyway, the latest Charlotte Mason Carnival is up, good stuff!! And there is a post about sibling fighting over at Parent Passageway, definitely we are needing this! And look at this fun Montessori catalog!!

Ta-ta for now!!

2010-03-10T19:08:00.002-05:00

Jake and I have been working on word families!

We have done; AD, AG, AN, AP, AR, AT, AW, AY, & ED! Generally we draw a simple picture from our short story in our main lesson book then write the letter combination and the words from our story. But on AW day I surprised Jake and we played pin the tail on the donkey! There was a donkey in our story that said hee, HAW. I cut out tails and wrote on them our other AW words, saw, law, caw (what the crow says), & haw. He had such a fun time playing this with me, then he pasted the tails in his main lesson book and we will put one of these photos in there too! This chalk board was one a family friend made for my dad and my uncle when they where kids, I use to draw on it with my sister at my grandma's house when I was little, and now my kids have been enjoying drawing on it!

Jake loved using my handkerchief as a blindfold, I think only kids think it is fun to be blindfolded! :) Dan and I were discussing that this is a much more gentle and just plain better way to start on the reading learning than what we ended up doing with Riley. Jake does not even realize we are learning the foundation for reading, we are just doing word families!! :)

2009-11-28T11:21:00.003-05:00

A couple weeks ago Fern and I where exploring the letter E. So we made some animal ears together, here is my cutie!! Miss. Bunny
Miss. Bear

Miss. Silly Bean!

2009-10-25T10:15:00.002-04:00

Sometimes you just need a different view, you know what I mean? A few years ago I stumbled upon something good, but I did not know how good. I needed a different view to really know how good it was. To get that different view I had to kick a few rocks and bump my head a few times. Also the pleading, praying, fasting, seeking, and searching needed to be done. And thankfully that different view came. I had always known, it just wasn't the right time yet. And so after all the trying and failing we are succeeding and really enjoying it! It is the right time.

I have always been pulled towards the Waldorf schooling, but did not know how to make it fit our lives and our faith. The last few years have given me that, and so we have returned to using the Oak Meadow Curriculum this year and it feels so right, like coming home and snuggling under a warm blanket. Of course there are still stones and growing pains, getting use to schooling with a new babe on my hip or at my breast is... exciting. :) As is blocking out life and it's stresses. But it is right, and it is so nice for everything to come together! Finally! :)

So things may be a little different around here, there are a few new links, but it is still just us enjoying each other and learning as we go!

And if you have not had enough of me, there are a few more of my ramblings in the newest Oak Meadow Newsletter, page 5. :)

2009-07-26T19:26:00.002-04:00

Our summer science has been pretty hands on lately, how about yours? Fern with her woolly bear caterpillar!
The boys have caught 3 salamanders which we kept for a few days each and then returned to the "mud pit"!
~
The kids also got to learn a bit about the human body too as we welcomed the arrival of our new little girl. They were really fascinated with the umbilical cord and placenta, the midwife took the time with the kids and let them touch the placenta and umbilical cord and explained all about it. They thought it was great, but I will not gross out the faint at heart and post the pictures! :)
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I hope everyone is enjoying their summer, we are! I am getting things ready for the new school year so watch for that soon! Also it is not too late to sign up for the homeschool BOOK-IT program, it is FREE!!!

2009-05-09T17:11:00.002-04:00

BOOKS GLORIOUS BOOKS! (sing to the tune of food glorious food from Oliver!)

Today was the big library sale in the neighboring town, and I got some good finds! Unfortunately only 2 on my school "needs" list, but still lots of fun! :) I got 38 books and one VHS for $39.50. Not bad.

A couple great finds where for Dan, his stack is up at the top starting with Jonathon Livingston Seagull, under that are three black covered boos, they are all old German book, one a dictionary from 1958, and a grammar book (he loves German grammar), and then an old text book. He was stoked and I got a few big kisses for those!

I got all but two out of the Little House series, a few classics for me, some fun books to try to tantalize Riley with (Super Fudge, Ramona the Brave, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory), and a few to put away for later!

All and all I'd call it a success! :)

2009-05-03T19:20:00.002-04:00

Do you remember pattern block from kindergarten? I always LOVED them, so a few years ago I splurged and bought some nice wood ones from Lakeshore. Then when I was at my sister in laws house she pulled out cool pattern block picture cards for the kids to use, they were really neat. So I went home and looked into buying some, they were a little pricey so I did an Internet search and found a cool mom who had made her own (sorry I have lost the link) to print out of free. I laminated them and they have been great! I have them saved on my computer so if you want them just email me and I'll send them as an attachment!

Well Riley has out grown the pictures for the most part, but he still loves to use the blocks. So here is his most recent creations... his photography too... This is the Star Wars Millennium Falcon...

and an X wing Fighter with R2-D2 in the back!

2009-04-20T15:55:00.002-04:00

I saw THIS great idea over at Soule Mama, and so here is our "Spring Books". The kids think it is tons of fun, the same old books seem new in the box and I picked up a couple new books too! Do you have any favorite spring themed books on your shelves?

2009-04-15T15:50:00.001-04:00

We took a trip to the State Capital today!And taught our children to protest!

Read about it and see more pictures on our OTHER blog!

2009-03-24T15:38:00.002-04:00

Well Jake and I got a little time together, with out anyone else! Amazing hu!So Jake "read" me Make Way For Ducklings, he did really well!
Then Jake painted Mr. Mallard, he was so excited that I knew how to make green even though we were out of green paint! It is nice to be super mom occasionally! :)

The for lunch he got to have a picnic inside and listen to a couple of his audio books, he LOVES these!!

All in all Jake and I were able to spend some quality time together and even do some fun "school work", I love school work like this!!

So that was a few quality hours in the life of my sweet 5 year old!

2009-02-07T13:01:00.002-05:00

What a winter we have had (and are still having)! With temperatures in the teens quite a bit it is just too cold to go out at all. This has severely limited our nature study as you can see over at our nature blog, but the other impact is just the SEVERE cabin fever so bad that you just don't want to do anything! The thought of sitting down and doing a math page has not tempted any of us. Mostly our chapter book reading (we just finished The Secret Garden and have jumped into Prince Caspian from the Narnia series!), art/drawing time (We are LOVING our new art supplies from here, I wish I had some too!), and music time (although not our composer study, I never did get a CD and the kids are wanting "rock" music, lately being the Muppet Show sound track, so maybe I should call this P.E. instead because all the dancing gets our blood pumping!) :) So how do we get the math in?Riley is all about cooking these days so during our last trip to the library he asked the librarian if they had children's cookbooks! This book has been his favorite so far, Pretend Soup and other real recipes! So his math and science and such have been coming from cooking up a storm! Here are some blueberry pancakes he made for us, very yummy although we will have to quadruple the batch next time! Now that will be quite the math lesson!!

What is your schooling looking like this season?

2009-01-29T11:20:00.005-05:00

We enjoyed learning about China and celebrating the Chinese New Year! The kids loved finding out about there animal and were excited that the new babe will be born in the year of the ox! :)
This was a great book we found at our library, it is put out by the Boston Children's Museum which is suppose to be fantastic! We have also been reading The Story about Ping, and we found this old VHS tape at the library and had a blast watching it!

So Sunday night we had our New Years Eve feast! We had dumplings which represent gold bars and prosperity!

This was our prosperity platter (little fingers had already gotten into it) and I forgot to pull the tangerine and honey dew melon out to put on there! Opps! Starting on the left and going clockwise, dried black mission figs, dried pineapple, dried dragon fruit, dried edame, dried pomelo, and the center are multi grain crackers with soy sauce!

Sorry I forgot to get a picture until we had dug in!! Here are our noodles and veggies, you eat noodles on New Years for a long life! I'd hate to have rice that night! :)

The next day we enjoyed a bit more fun!

We were awaiting guests so we had the front door decorated!

We made lamps Sunday night after dinner and hung them up!

Then with our friends we watched a dragon dance video and them made our own dragons! Riley's on top, then Jake's, then Fern's! You tube has some great dragon dance videos! :)

Here is our own for your enjoyment, and yes Riley is my ham!

2009-01-04T19:21:00.004-05:00

So while my Dad was here last month I asked him one day to read this book to Riley, we found it at our library and was pleasantly surprised at the great illustrations and even the explanation was pretty good! BUT, there was a reason I asked Daddy to read this to him! In the middle of the book while reading about wiring a light switch and all, Grandpa jumps up and says where is a screw driver!?!
And then the science lesson moved to taking apart my house!! This really helped Riley understand what the book was talking about and he and Grandpa have built an awesome memory too! THIS IS WHAT HOMESCHOOLING IS ALL ABOUT!!! And even better I stalked them a got a photo so Riley will always have it! :)
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I am sure you all have noticed but I have our new artist, composer, and scripture memory up on the side bar. Just a couple notes about all of it, I have since found (much to my dismay) that the pictures are not good enough quality to print out, so if you were going to use them you will have to wait and I will search the internet for better quality ones. So sad because it is a big time taker and I thought I was done with it! :( Second, if anyone near or far has a recording of Ravel (does not have to be the one pictured) and wouldn't mind ether making me a copy or letting me make a copy I would greatly appreciate it! :) CD is preferable but cassette is just fine too! :) And third for those of you who are not LDS, I am sure you have no clue what scriptures we are using! :) We are using The Doctrine and Covenants which is latter-day, or modern revelation. Mostly received through the latter-day prophet Joseph Smith, but also from a couple other latter-day prophets. You can read more about it HERE and HERE! :)
I hope the new year brings new fun and incite to your homeschool!

*Pictures have been fixed for the artist study! :)

2008-12-06T09:07:00.004-05:00

"Electricity, e-lec-tricity!"

Do you remember that song from School House Rock?

We started our new science study with an experiment! Riley said, "what are you going to electrocute me?" and I said "YEP"!! :) So we made electricity!
This is like a battery, you have the lemon which is your acid then in one slit you put a nickle and the other slit you put a penny, your metal. You then put wires in with their ends exposed and then touch both of the other exposed ends on your tongue. It is just a little bit of a tingle, not a large jolt! :) But Riley LOVES electricity (always has) and he is so excited to play with it more!! :) I was bummed our library does not have the "Read and Find Out Science" book about electricity, or the DK eyewitness book about it ether! BUMMER!! :) But Grandma bought us the Usborne Science Activities Books and there are some fun experiments to do!! :)
I'll take more pictures of electrocuting Riley to share!! :)

2008-12-03T11:24:00.003-05:00

Well with November ending we were able to do some Book-It awards!! Fern and Jake got their second star for their buttons (plus a little prize), and Riley achieved his goal of reading 15 pages during November. So he received a star for his button and a pizza certificate! He is so excited, but is waiting to redeem it until Grandpa is here next week to go with him!
For Jake we are reading this book, we are having a fun time learning about cranberries! One picture of an activity is over on the Nature Blog! Also our friend Carrie and Christopher had fun with this book last week, here is her blog post!

2008-10-29T14:55:00.005-04:00

On Monday we took a GREAT field trip! We went to Plymouth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts! We have been learning about the Mayflower and the Pilgrims, and Plymouth for a couple months now, this trip was a great cap to wrap it all up with!

We read EVERY book our library had on the subjects, here are some of our favorites; Sarah Morton's Day, Samuel Eaton's Day, If you sailed on the Mayflower, On the Mayflower, & Colonial Farm. The first two (although older) are pictures from the Plantation.First we went to the Wamponog village, we saw a boat being made by burning out the inside.

Here were a few finished ones that were in the lake.

The kids were very excited to see the lodge, there was a Native American woman in there answering questions.

Here are the kids in another smaller lodge sitting on the beds (minus the furs to make them comfortable)!

Then we headed over to the English village.

First we walked through the artisan building, we saw this mad doing traditional wood working, and potters re-creating original pieces.

The potters made this jug that was used for watering, there was a hole on the top you would put your thumb over, and then raise your thumb when you wanted the water to come out. They had them for sale but they were pricey, but so COOL!

Here is some of the original potter they have to look at!

Then we headed into the village. In the English village everyone stays in character all of the time, to them it is 1627. And they go about working, but are always happy to answer questions!

Fern loved the little cradle, once they were out of the cradle or mom and dad's bed they had to sleep on the floor on a straw mattress.

In the center of the village the men were working on a new store house. So we watched them work and they explained how they build buildings.

The boys were all fascinated my these little gun powder holders on a leather strap they would wear across their chest.

Then we spied this woman repairing a wall with a mud mixture.

She explained the whole thing for us and we got to watch her for a little bit.

Here is one of the standard size houses, they were small, and dark inside. There was one house which was larger, but most where about this size.

Here is the village from the top of the common house, downstairs was the meeting room for Sunday services and court proceedings. Upstairs was like a lookout room with cannons.

They had just a few livestock, two cows, some goats, and a couple sheep (not the wool kind but the food kind). They really did not produce any of their material needs except food, everything was brought from England.

And the other cow!

After the plantation we headed down to the water front, we had been there before but we thought it rounded out the visit! Here is the Mayflower II, we went on it last time so we did not this time. Here are some pictures from then.
And here is The Rock! Plymouth Rock!

And here is the shelter the rock is in, it was built in the 20 or 30's.

We had a great time and would highly recommend it, the plantation was a little pricey to get into, but well worth it, especially after all we did in preparation for our trip!

2008-10-18T14:19:00.002-04:00

I just had to share this, it is inscribed at the top of the room in our library where the Rotunda is, (see my post on my other blog!). I found the source on the internet after wondering where it came from, I LOVE this!!

A Book

by Emily Dickinson

~
He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!

2008-10-16T12:30:00.002-04:00

I just finished a GREAT book! Big surprise it is historical fiction, I LOVE historical fiction! I started reading this book because I was interested in James Town, and because I never get up to the "adult" section of our library so I read some of the "older" kid books I find downstairs! :) It is a Nutmeg Award Nominee for 2009 in the 4-6th grade category, so I figured it would be a bit too old for Riley, but after finishing it today I think he would really enjoy it! This is a book worthy of our home library by my definition, a family classic because I would read it again! So when there are lots of funds for books this will be one we get!
The author has a website where she has made available a study guide for the book, I would put the study guide closer to the 6th grade level than the 4th, but there are also some great links at the bottom that I think could be useful to many age groups!
So if you are looking for a great adventure, and a great story (and you visit the children's library more than the adult) then I would highly recommend Blood on the River James Town 1607.

2008-10-15T18:04:00.001-04:00

Isn't Core Phase GREAT!

2008-10-02T16:07:00.002-04:00

Well yesterday, being October 1st was the kick-off for the Book-it program. We decided to have a Book-it party!! I asked all the kids to pick out their favorite book, we wore book-it pins (thanks to ebay!), had balloons and jello!! What a party! :)
So with our favorite books I had each of the kids come up in turn and tell us the name of the book and then why it was their favorite book. I choose My Antonia, because it is a pioneer story and the author (Willa Cather) is so descriptive in her writing that I can see a perfect picture in my head. Riley chose the Color Kittens, because he liked learning about mixing colors to make other colors. Jake chose Dinosaurumpus because the T-rex is nice in the story (he always gets such a bad wrap)! And Fern chose The Gingerbread Man (illustrated by Richard Scarry) because she likes the fox who eats the gingerbread man! :)

We then made our own books, they were interesting, but Riley is not finished yet!

As a fun surprise I bought the #2 in the Magic Tree House series and we read 1 chapter before our cherry jello with cherries in it! :)

We also got our tracking sheets all ready and hung up!

They thought we did not have school time today just a party, little do they know just how much we did! :)

2008-09-05T19:02:00.002-04:00

BOOK-IT!!! Yes I was in elementary school during the 80's, and I LOVED BOOK-IT! It is probably one of the very few good memories I have from school during that time. Mostly because I read so many books that I could regularly take my whole family out to the local Pizza Hut and feed everyone! :)

So when I snooped around the BOOK-IT site and found out that they include homeschoolers in the program I jumped! So I signed us up, Riley is the only one eligible this year, and today I got our information in the mail! I got a pamphlet with all the information and also a "Reader Roster", and then the "Reading Award Certificates"! I was a bit sad that there is no longer a "button" to wear, and am now racking my brain to figure out a way to get one, or make one. But what a great program and I am so excited to get to get Riley excited about reading! And it can grow with his ability's! You can set goals by how many pages, books or minutes a week!

Also fun they have free printables; logs, calendars, certificates, and what I think is really neat different ways for a child to "narrate" on paper! This sheet is what I think we will use this year, he can dray pictures and write a little!

There is also a program for Preschool kids that runs for 6 weeks in the Spring!

So what are you reading! :)

2008-09-02T14:54:00.002-04:00

One very nice thing you can do when homeschooling... ...go to your first day of school with bare feet or slippers!

Here is my Kindergartner, preschooler, and 2nd grader today, our first day of school!

2008-08-21T12:08:00.002-04:00

You know I use to do this all for fun when I was little, my Daddy was a public school teacher and would bring me home lots of "scrap paper". I would organize my school stuff and set up school in front of my big chalk board with Mr. Bear, mommy doll, baby beans, and a few other choice "friends". Too bad I did not find school so interesting or inspiring. Last year I organized all of my needed school papers into a 3 ring binder, I continued to add papers throughout the year. Not only was it my calender and book list but I also kept upcoming activities for Riley and Jake in there. This year I choose to take my plans for each of the kids, plus a calender, book lists, blank paper, and my weekly plans/next week pages (see below), put them all together and have them bound. It was only $2.00 at Staples and I even got a nice cover and backing to it! Isn't it pretty! :) I will keep any upcoming activity pages in a separate folder.
So this is the page I created to keep my mind in order a bit! :) So each week I can write in what our goals to get accomplished are plus anything I would like to do with the kids specifically (ie: go to the library, go apple picking, read Johnny Appleseed before going apple picking, etc).
On the back of the weekly page so that if you have the book opened it is on the left, I have created a space to keep my self ready for the up coming week. This way hopefully when I sit down with Fern & Jake to paint I do not find that we are out of purple or green, or if Riley and I are going out to observe the changing colors for our nature books, we have room in our books!

Riley is really chomping at the bit to start in to all the fun for the new school year but I have not been able to get the books we need to start, so we wait! :) Soon I hope we will be ready! :)

2008-07-30T08:32:00.002-04:00

Ok so I have been planning and reading and now I have our year planned out primarily. So I thought I'd share my plan, because I am just that kind of girl! Please forgive my cheese way of sharing but I like things to be in order and I have not found a way to put a document here on blogger! :) If you have any questions please do ask, and please feel free to use these plans for your own children but please do not make money off of them, I'm not! :)

Here is Riley's year in a nut shell, I do not have all the books we will be using on here but if your interested I do have them! :)

Here is my Super Man - Jake's year! I am thinking about letting him choose the letter we study instead of going in order. He knows all his letters so it will be more about their sound and words that start with them. The books are just some good titles, we will be getting library books on top of them! :) Here is a site I am getting some of our "fun" ideas for in the last column!

And Miss Fern's! This is the same plan I wrote out for Riley when he was three, we used it in the little co-op we had in Calif. I just tweaked it a little, CT, instead of CA and the field trips of course. For January I had on there to go to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, but that is quite a trip in addition San Diego in January is a beautiful time to go, but I am doubting January in Connecticut as a good time to go to the zoo, we will see!

So there is it, it is nice to have a plan, now just to enjoy it! :)

2008-06-13T16:12:00.003-04:00

Just a little book review for you all (or y'all if your in the South)! I requested this book back in January from another library in our system, I finally got it at the beginning of this month. January, June... they both start with J's at least! :)
Anyway, it is an awesome book! In quite a bit of my TJed reading the Hirsch's Core Knowledge Series is recommended often, but I found it not at all the speed, content or organization that I liked. But I still wanted a year by year idea of appropriate study. This is just my speed, with the content we are already enjoying and it is organized just as my mama brain desires! Each "chapter" is a grade level starting at preschool, then it is broken up into Math, Science, World History, American History, etc... So for American history for 1st grade it wound give highlights to cover within the period your studying, Columbus's voyage, Sir Walter Raleigh, Pocahontas, etc... So I found it well organized in that respect, with content it had great book ideas to go with different topics along with websites with free resources. I LOVE free!! :) It also included a heading for P.E. who does not love P.E.!! So for 1st grade it had throw and catch a ball, and skip with out falling as a couple recommendations. It is just nice to know developmentally what we should work on.
We keep it pretty mellow on the academics around here, but I do try to have a little something interesting to do together and this is a great resource! It is now high on my priorities list of books to get!!

On the school front, we have been on vacation and soon will be off to visit Grandma so our learning has been on the fly and O-SO-FUN!! What beats learning on an beach in the Caribbean!!

**A fun new site I found www.mywonderfulworld.org . They have some fun printables, including geography car games!!

2008-05-02T14:31:00.002-04:00

Yea, Jake finally gets to do one of the planned books!!

This is one of our favorite books, enough that I bought it when Riley read it. Too bad it is completely MIA!! Thankfully a friend had requested it from another library and I was able to check it out before it was sent back. Here is the fun book, The Big Green Pocketbook, by Candice Ransom.
Today after reading the book we made a shape picture like the gal's shirt, here they are on the fridge (Fern did one too)! And then we went to the jewelers and looked at the pretty rings and got a new battery for my watch! Yea!!

All in all we had a fun day, and now we are off to go grocery shopping!

What did you do today??

2008-04-28T09:57:00.003-04:00

Legos: one of the greatest learning tools ever made!!!

Last week out of A Child's History of the World we read Ch.21-All the Way Around the World in China. And then we also use the Usborne Ancient World, and they had a great picture of The Great Wall of China.

So.... Riley built the wall! And then took the picture all by himself!
Here is the Ancient World page about the great wall.

For his timeline picture for this lesson I think we will print out this picture of his Lego wall, I think he will really like that!!

On other fronts, I have to get going on figuring out what I am planning for Jake this next school year as he will officially be "Kindergarten Age"!! But he is still a young guy and so we will be taking it easy. But he LOVES letters and can not wait to read, so I am thinking we may end up diving into that later in the year. I have a couple GREAT sites for that, I will share later. But for today you get free sites about kindergarten! I was compiling this list for a friend who is just getting her feet wet in this crazy (but great) endeavor of homeschooling and thought it was a great list to share here. These are all sites I have had in my "schooling" bookmarks for a while, but they are all great! :) Hope they are helpful, and PLEASE if you have any other FREE kindergarten sites post them in the comments for all of us!!

ambleside online - scroll down and there is a list of great books (lots of them)!
Brightly Beaming - They have different curriculum's for different ages (scroll down to see them all).
LDS Home Education Association - Their philosophy.
Simply Charlotte Mason - Really neat compilation of information.
Trivium Pursuit - 10 things to do with your child before age 10.
Homeschool Share - Under unit studies they have a similar set up as the FIAR, and it is FREE!!
Higher Up & Further In - A GREAT mama who has written down all her curriculum and shares it for free. I used her 1st grade for Riley this year with minor tweaks! :)

*Here is another!!

Best Homeschooling.org - A good comprehensive list of fun (& therefor learning) activities to do! :)

2008-04-25T16:58:00.002-04:00

For not being readers it is sure hard to get them to put the books down! :)

This is what I had last night at bed time, each of them with a flashlight and a pile of books! It does not get much better than that!!

Other than that we are just going about our usual business. Riley is still enjoying his math pages, the other day Jake surprised me with Riley's math page. There were several rows of 7 "things" like 7 watermelons, mice, etc., then it would say you have 7, cross out 3 what do you have left? Riley went through and did them all, on the last one he did the problem by saying it out loud, as he got to the "what's left" part Jake said the CORRECT answer. With out counting! So I tried a few others, he would look at the pictures but was not counting and he knew all the answers! It was weird! :)

Jake has had the short end of the schooling stick so to say, we have not been able to get the book for BFIAR for almost 2 months, our library system just does not have them! This week I was excited because I owned the book we were to use, and then of course it is no where to be found! POOF disappeared! :) Oh well we read tons of books anyway, but we have been lagging on the fun art activities he enjoys. Things have just been crazy and the house too so it is hard for me to pull out mess, ya know!

Anyway enough of my rambling, I just loved the picture, I wish it had turned out a bit better, but oh well you get the idea! :)

2008-04-09T10:23:00.002-04:00

Left to his own devices...

or what my airplane crazy kid did! Riley decided that he would invent an airplane engine, so here are his diagrams.
Lots of plans!
He poured over these for days!!
Then I gave him an empty cracker box and scissors! He made this model all by himself, he designed two different engines and so made a model of each that way we could all see! :)
He has been very proud of this work, and he should be! :)

When Dan got home from his trip he was dully impressed, then he and Riley went onto the Internet and found actual diagrams of a propeller, V8, and jet engines. Dan printed them up for Riley and he has had quite a treasured "book" of information! :)

Two completely airplane crazed boys in my house, I pray for Riley's future wife and I hope you are all praying for Dan's wife. I may go (completely) crazy yet!!

2008-03-31T19:55:00.002-04:00

We started this book for our poetry study last week, it is GREAT! I love haiku's in general, but these are fun and beautiful plus the illustrations are wonderful! The kids are enjoying them quite a bit too, Riley thinks they are quite funny little poems! And so I HIGHLY recommend it!!Here's a sneak peek!!

A blade of grass

pushes through cement

Hello, world.

Riley is memorizing this one!

And here is our picture for the week by Friedrick Edwin Church, it is of course of Natural Bridge in Virginia. A place near and dear to our hearts of course!! :)

So there is your peek of our week! :)

2008-03-13T18:23:00.002-04:00

Opera.

Well of course I love the opera... that I know; Evita, Le Miserables, Martin Guerre, the usual. But the word was still a bit scary. So when I put on the schedule to study opera for our music study the last six weeks I was a bit apprehensive and Dan thought I was down right insane! But have no fear just throw something in there that Dan DOES like, the German language! :)

So we have been listening to Mozart's The Magic Flute, and then this week I rented a stage production of the show from Netflix. We all sat down to watch it and everyone watched it (well Fern fell asleep it was long). And then the next morning the boys begged to watch it again! So we did, this mama knows when to say yes! :) The fun part was to see the boys recognizing some of the German words they knew! So it was a successful six weeks of music, we also read the book The Pet of the Met which was a ton of fun and talked a bit about The Magic Flute!

The version we rented was good, but what is up with the Egyptian thing?

2008-03-06T12:55:00.003-05:00

P.E. at Home!!

So sorry this is sideways, I always seem to forget about that! :)

I can remember my Grandma M. Making these for my sister and I, I always loved them! So I thought I'd give it a try, so Grandpa M. mailed us a box of empty coffee cans and we had some fun. My rope was a bit too thin, but it worked. Riley has continued to practise "Like Leo the Lightning bug" and has gotten really good at it!

But here is Jake and Riley on their first attempts!

2008-02-05T15:55:00.000-05:00

Well after reading Cherish's fun post on Children's Lit. I have been thinking of great books I have enjoyed, and then today we got an Amazon box & Barnes and Noble box!!! We got two books by Robert McCloskey one of our favorite authors, who can dispute Kippling's worth, and then a new one to try, I love Haikus!!

Some books I grew up loving were, Island of the Blue Dolphin by Scott O'Dell, The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop, Bridge to Terabithia by Kathrine Paterson, The Indian in the Cuboard by Lynne Reid Banks, Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, not to mention the Little House series or any Ramona books I could get! There are so many I could not possibly find them all unless I was back in Mrs. Cofferer's library!

Here is the inside cover of my copy of The Castle in the Attic, I won it (I think for reading so many books!) from Mrs. Coffer my Elementry school librarian who always wore slippers!

Here is what she wrote on the inside, it was like having a superstars autograph!!

If only every little one thought their librarian was a superstar!!

2008-02-02T10:14:00.000-05:00

For our nature study this 6 weeks we are learning about rocks and minerals. I have always LOVED rocks, yea I am a bit weird, anyway I had quite a rock collection but I can not find it! I think I packed it in a box when I went away to college but I have not seen it since. Most of my boxes of that sort are stored at my dad's and since we are too far away to go just for a rock collection (although I do not need half so good a reason) we had to start from scratch.

So we went over to the Rolling Brook Nature Center and in the gift shop they had "grab bags" of rocks. I use to love to get grab bags of rocks from the rock guy at our weekly street fair growing up! So it was fun to share Riley's excitement and remember the sweetness of it! Riley and I have been working on identifying them, some I am familiar with but some are throwing me for a loop!! Here is what we have so far! :)

2008-01-22T19:30:00.000-05:00

We are still tweaking and reassessing, but I thought I'd share a couple sites I have found recently and also a good article I just read yesterday!

Links: http://ayli.org/
http://www.livingmath.net
Article; The Nation Comes from the Nursery
I thought there was another, maybe I'll find it and edit it in later, or not! :)

And the good article I read yesterday, I even got Dan to read it and we got to chat a bit about it today!!

The Quick Fix Temptation
By Diann Jeppson
Thomas Jefferson Education is a set of principles. Principles take time and sacrifice
and faith to apply. The quick fix is so tempting, but there isn't a principle-based
quick fix. Especially for the idea of inspire, not require. I think of it as a chess
game. I have a certain set of moves that I can make. I can ignore. I can bribe. I
can threaten. I can beg, cajole and lay on the guilt trips. Or I can inspire. Each
has its consequences.
The big question is: What is the end result we want to achieve? For me, it is
to teach my children how to use freedom. This means I must accept the risks
associated with allowing them this privilege. It also means that relationship is king.
In an adversarial environment, TJEd will simply not work. But it is worth the
significant effort to get our relationships with our children square, so we can move
forward with our studies. It is surely not a destination, but a profoundly important
process and a daily practice.
Because you are reading this newsletter, I would venture to say that you are
experiencing a powerful desire to re-birth a new season in your family. Having
walked that path before, I offer you some caring mentorship. If you find yourself in
a place of significant pain in your relationships with your children, I want you to do
something that will likely be extremely difficult.
1. For a short season of time, stop trying to do academics with your children. For a
couple of months focus only on your relationships. Pray constantly for charity. Play
with them, hold them, listen to them, forgive them, pray about them and with them.
Sing, go places, do things they enjoy. Your job during the next couple of months is
to create an easy, open, relaxed feeling between you and them.
2. Give up the quick fix plan. If you decide to do TJEd, prepare to dig in and do it
with all of your heart. Don't do it as an experiment. Really do it. Forget yourself.
Forget what detractors say. Trust the process and let the process work in you. I
understand that it is hard to be patient when you are experiencing pain and anxiety.
You will gain confidence as you consistently move forward, so hang in there!
Your change will be from the inside out. You stand at the crossroads of new birth—
the birth of new lives, new hearts, new minds, new courage. Know that we care very
much about your success as you raise a generation of leaders in YOUR home!
Activity Review
1. Spend the next month or two concentrating on nurturing your relationships with
your children.

Reprinted from “The Inspirer Newsletter,” a free e-zine designed to inspire and reinspire
parent mentors engaging in Thomas Jefferson Education.
http://www.homefires.ws

2008-01-09T11:01:00.000-05:00

What a Package!

Look at this fun assortment of homeschooling "stuff" put together by the editors of this fun new online magazine The Heart of the Matter. It is a care package to get through the post holiday blahs (is that a word?). I am hoping to be the ecstatic recipient of this, but seeing as there are a ton of HSing mamas having the blahs I will hold back my excitement until the drawing. But I have to say that the paint can with magnetic numbers is completely the coolest thing I have seen lately, that may even keep my little ragamuffins engaged long enough for me to get a math lesson in with my 1st grader!

I would also suggest you check out the premiere edition of the magazine, I am looking forward to
reading all the great articles!!

Have a great day!

2008-01-08T13:07:00.000-05:00

Don't you just love getting books in the mail!! Here are a couple new things we got for Term 2!!

We have actually had quite a blissful first two days of our term. I have been striving to not make it "school" at home. I have seeked out advice from mamas I look up to and I have been rereading some of my Thomas Jefferson Education publications. There are also a few new articles on the TJed.org site and I found an yahoo group with some great experience being shared!
Today we read our world history chapter, it was on Greek gods. We found Greece on the map, talked about the things Dad saw when he was there this summer, and also made some popsical stick Greek gods. I found some good illustrations for the 12 members who live on Mt. Olympus, I'd be happy to share if you want it, but I will have to email them to you so just ask!! Even Jake enjoyed part of our lesson!
We also read our new book Pet of the Met, it was great! Everyone enjoyed it and we are now wishing that we could go to a children's matinee of the Magic Flute! We listened to our new CD's of Mozart's opera Die Zauberflote (yes the o should have umlauts over it, just imagine them). We decided to buy The Magic Flute in its original German since it is the language we are working on.
I know I am looking forward to Friday when we get to start The Tree in the Trail, it is about the Santa Fe Trail!

How is the New Year going in your homeschool?

2008-01-03T10:35:00.000-05:00

For a little mind exercise for the mamas!!

A new article over at the Common Room may make you say "wow", but not the good kind!

2007-12-28T20:43:00.000-05:00

First Term Exams are done!!!

Yea, now to get ready for the new term. My poor black ink cartridge is just not up to it, I am hoping a little $$ is magically found in our budget through divine means so that I can wear out my printer some more!! (I would use my budget but I have already spent some of my food money on books!!) We may be eating beans and rice but we will be enlightened!! :) Ha Ha!

Riley did well on his exams, it sounds like my poor little 6 year old was whittling through pencils for hours on end doesn't it?! No worries, they were mostly all oral, he put the timeline pictures he has drawn throughout the term in order, told me a couple of Aesop's Fables, found the Tigress and Euphrates rivers on our world map, recited Robert Lewis Stevenson's poem; Time to rise, and did well on word problems in math. Over all he did well, we have been able to realize we need to concentrate on certain things when we study geography and world history, and that swords, ships, and Indians make all the details not so memorable in American History! :)
The picture up top is the first stanza in Riley's poem, (his is the 2nd, & 4th lines) He can write very nicely when he tries, he is even getting down the space between words most of the time!
Over all we are happy with the curriculum we have gleaned and tweaked from Lindafay, what a blessing to have experienced mama's willing to share and mentor! We have lost that too much these days in our society. Now to start in again with zeal, as we have no trips or major holidays coming up, although we will have to plan a little break for February when Grandpa comes to visit!! :) I am hoping to find a way to integrate it all into our lives more, to really enjoy and learn from it.
Any ideas are welcome and very much appreciated! Have a great New Year!

2007-12-21T17:30:00.000-05:00

Math & Science all in one lesson!!

2007-12-19T15:30:00.000-05:00

Wow, did you think you were at the wrong blog?? I know it is completely different, but I like it! :)

On a non-school-day note, I have also added a little banner over on the side for Ron Paul, I find his Homeschooling philosophy engaging, along with his desire to uphold the constitution. I hope you will take a minuet and read his views on homeschooling and really consider who you are voting for and what it means for our children, now and in the times to come.

2007-12-08T16:09:00.001-05:00

AAAAAAA, term 1 is ending, term 1 is ending!!!!!

This was me yesterday when I realized in the short fundage of getting school supplies last summer I only finished shopping for term 1, SO I am now going through list and finding what more I need! :)

Things are going pretty well, we are learning that the routine we started with needs a little tweaking. So I have been searching out other families routines, one of our big problems is that we don't get all the family subjects done first. So when there is something left to do it gets done with who ever is available instead of everyone! So that is one tweak. Also I just don't think we are enjoying the "lifestyle" the way we should, most days Riley's question is "am I done yet", Jake is another story, he loves getting the extra time and reading good books! :) We are also now getting into the horrid stage where there are some days when Fern does not take a nap, so leaving some school activities for "nap time" just does not work! Another tweak is the need to make more of an effort to have quiet time. And on my own personal tweaking, I NEED to put a renewed effort into getting up before my kids. It is hard with an early bird who has been known to get up for the day a 6am, I could get up at 6am but I would need a little time before I could nicely deal with a morning person!! :)

How does your family's routine work?

As our term is winding down, and Christmas is quickly upon us I will be around a little less! But I look forward to starting the New Year, the new term, and making new friends!!

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

2007-11-13T14:51:00.000-05:00

Can you tell I am a visual learner? I love the written word, but I usually "get it" better if I have never seen it by seeing it first! :) So I have a slew of pictures from our school fun last week, and a special video from today! Last week Jake and I were reading Katy-No-Pocket. It is a great book for learning about different animals. This is a picture of Jake the Kangaroo, with his pockets full of animal friends!

Here is Kangaroo Jake hopping around the house, sorry it is sideways, It is just going to have to stay that way!!
Here is a handicraft we did last week together. We made Fleece scarves! Very useful because the boys did not have one and fun because we made them. I got the idea from Me and My Girl, I had to simplify a little bit for our babes, but they LOVED it! Here they are wearing theirs and showing the gigantic one they made for Dad. They also made one for a friend who's birthday was last Fri. and they were quite happy to give him a gift they made even with all the other light it up, making noise kind of toys that he received!
They were Oh so excited to have camo fleece, and I was oh so happy it was on the clearance table!!

Now we have been in this school year for 7 weeks, and every time I told Riley we were going to learn to read he would turn off. If I even touched the book "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" he would grone. It was awful!

So I thankfully decided to try another way. And I offered Riley 2 options, learn to read with a few short words and then work on a Little Bear book off my shelf, or learn a few words and read from the Book of Mormon. He choose Little Bear, so we did two of Lindafay's lessons today.. a MIRACLE!!!!! Watch!

2007-11-06T14:52:00.000-05:00

Well today we started our Composer Study for the next 6 weeks, The Ballet! Now this was not a foreign concept to my children. The Orchestra was more so. They have been indoctrinated from the beginning, ballet is... life. You see long before I was their Mama, I was a dancer. I breathed dancing, I danced when I was not dancing! So this is great to share with my kids!

My kids know what the Nutcracker is, I first saw it when my mom took me when I was 5, and that is when I started collecting nutcrackers. But this year I will share it with them. This is the CD we have, it is the COMPLETE Nutcracker, not the "best of" that is most available. I would rather they make their very own best of!

But before we started listening to it this morning I introduced them to ballet the dance by showing them a dancer EVERY little boy should see, Mikhail Baryshnikov! There are no other words to add, all you have to say is Baryshnikov... that is it! I highly suggest going to youtube and watching any of the Baryshnikov clips you can! I could spend hours doing this and still want more.

Then I thought it would be great for them to have an object to hold to better understand, so I pulled out my old toe shoes from my days on pointe. They were so excited and interested, and by the end they had talked me into them, literally! They were impressed I was taller than Daddy when up on toe! :) And Jake has spent the rest of the day asking me to put them back on and dance for him. Maybe I will have my own little Baryshnikov!
Don't look too closely, I did not tie them correctly, and my feet are not as pretty as they were before years of dancing! :) And my back foot is not turned out! But it was a great object lesson and I hope they enjoy it as much as they enjoyed Peter and the Wolf!

Now if you will please excuse me as I Pirouette my way to bed!

2007-11-05T12:31:00.001-05:00

Oh my where have I been, well we took a fall break for our trim to Calif. and then we got home and fought the stomach flu for almost a whole week, so finally today we are getting back into the swing of school. I was sad to abruptly stop the nice rhythm we had started and now we are tiring to jump back in!

For Jake we are working on Katy-No-Pocket still, we just never got to start it, let alone finish it! :) We are also doing the letters K and W.

With Riley we are in our 7th week of term 1. We are on lessons 17,18, & 19 in our Abeka Math, Ch. 7 in A Child's History of the World & Ancient World p. 12-13, Ch 5 in This Country of Ours, Ch. 15-16 in Paddle to the Sea, We are reading As You Like It for our Shakespeare study, Our new Artist for this 6 weeks is Rembrandt, our composer study is learning about the ballet, we will be listening to the Nutcracker and I am hoping to find a performance to go to as the holidays approach, plus the various stories, fables, poems, and such. Oh and for our Nature Study we are concentrating on the Heavens for this next 6 weeks.

The scripture we are working on memorizing as a family is Moses7:18 "And the lord called his people Zion,because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them."

Yesterday just for fun we read a book I remembered as a kid, that I found in the library. Stone Soup by Marcia Brown

This of course lead the boys to wanting stone soup for dinner! So we got out our soup stone and made soup. It was a lentil and wild rice soup, but the kids ate 3 bowls each! Riley kept telling me how magical the stone must be to make such good soup. I wonder if I could put the stone in every dinner? Maybe I could put it in Borscht and then Dan would eat it!! (He gages just at the word) So here is our fun read book recommendation for the day!! If you read it with your kids please let us know how you liked it and how your soup turned out!

2007-10-11T12:24:00.000-04:00

This is the 6th week of our school year, we are finishing up our first artist; John William Waterhouse, at the end of our study of the orchestra, and mammals! I need to get on the ball and get the last bit of fun in! We are going to go see a friends horse and learn about what they do to take care of it, a large mammal we do not get to be around often!

With Jake we got a little ahead and I am trying to pull back a bit, so he has had a less structured week. The next two weeks will be short on school time as we are having a small hiatus for a family wedding and fun!

I am hoping to start on Jake's new book Katy-no-pocket before we leave so that hopefully we can go to the Zoo and see some of the animals we have been learning about! I think we will take his animal classification cards and see who we can find! :)

Riley is still enjoying his math the most, but has developed quite a delight in the Aesop Fables, he even did our Family Home Evening using one of the stories from last week. It was about a family of boys who quarreled constantly, the father then took a bundle of sticks and asked them to break them, they could not, but when he asked them to break it one stick at a time they could he then told them that alone their enemies would overcome them, but if the we're united they would be strong. So Riley found many sticks in the back yard and we broke sticks. It was fun!

Hopefully as we get back from our trip and the weather drives us inside for the majority of our day we will be able to get more into our studies and I pray constantly that they will engage Riley!

What have you been up to this week?

2007-09-29T12:52:00.000-04:00

Our fun field trip last week was a day spent at the Roaring Brook Nature Center. After all the WONDERFUL post during the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival (see previous post), we just felt like being outside! They had a nice little 2 room exhibit to walk through, it is so interesting seeing all the different animals that I didn't grow up seeing or that the boys have been around ether. We also got to go on a great walk/hike on their trails. We ended up near the brook, and had two boys thoroughly enjoying tiring not to get wet, they were quite unsuccessful! :) We also scored some great photos of plants, bugs, and animals to put up on our new nature blog, Never be within doors...

We just finished our third week of "school", Riley is doing ok, he loves his math and is very good at it, he is now writing addition equations. He does not enjoy writing, and has some interesting excuses. He is enjoying quite a bit of our readings, especially Paddle to the Sea.

Jake is ahead of schedule because he is always wanting MORE! :) Plus he is quite observant, so as we are working on recognizing the alphabet, I am finding out that he basically knows all of them. We were at a ball field today and with a stick in the dirt he was writing T's and telling us that it is a T, we have not even covered T's and I have not had him writing at all! It is just weird to change gears, I never imagined there could be so much difference in 3 (almost4) year old knowledge.

And Fern well, she is enjoying getting up on the table and sitting or laying on whatever it is that we are working on, I think she is related to my recently late cat Angel! :)

2007-09-15T17:10:00.000-04:00

Jacci over at The Educational Life has risen to the task of starting a Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival. So as this is the first, with the topic of "The Great Outdoors", I thought I would try my hand and hope that maybe someone could glean from me a bit of help, as I have gleaned from other Mama's who have so generously shared their knowledge and experiences. So here we go!

One of our families favorite ways to make a normal day a bit more exciting is to eat meals outside. Before our move from Southern California last year it was a year around activity. Now we have had to curb it during part of the year. :) Of all the "investments" we have made none have been so thoroughly enjoyable as our picnic table. We have enjoyed our family, friends, good food, and great memories there.

In Vol. 1 of the Charlotte Mason Home Educating series it says, " Never be within doors when you can rightly be without." I think I may hang this over our door! She continues, " Besides the gain of an hour or two in the open air, there is this to be considered: meals taken al fresco are usually joyous..." I know ours are, it is just hard to be grumpy when enjoying a simple meal in the open air!

Being outdoors throughout the day leads to deeper reflection, Charlotte continues, "... here is the mother's opportunity to train the seeing eye, the hearing ear, and to drop seeds of truth into the open soul of the child, which shall germinate, blossom, and bear fruit... there is much to be got by perching in a tree or nesting in heather..." I know that in all the "education" I received there was none so sweet and so imprinted on my mind as the solitary hours spent throughout our yard, but especially in my tree.

But why? Why should we enjoy the open air? Why did our Creator create it for us? "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Genesis 1:31 KJV. For us to enjoy, learn, and see His hand in it all.

I am not saying this is the easiest thing for me, even with my love of the outdoors, but it is wonderful to hear from another that a day spent entirely out of doors is no more wasted than a day spent deep in a great library!

As my children are still mostly in the wonderful "quiet growing time" we are just now dabbling in the enjoyment of Nature Studies, my Riley (6) and I have started nature journals during the last month. In vol. 1 we read, " As soon as he is able to keep it himself, a nature-diary is a source of delight to a child." I started one to help set the example, I could not have guessed how much enjoyment I myself would reap. Riley still struggles with putting much effort into it, but he is happy with his journal so what more can I ask (for now) ! :)

A page of mine on the left, Riley's on the right.

As we dive further into the wonderful out of doors I hope Riley, and eventually Jake and Fern will learn as much about themselves as they learn about the world around them.

2007-09-13T14:43:00.000-04:00

So this week we started Blueberries For Sal, Jake has enjoyed this book. It really became cool when he got to go "blueberry picking" the other day. It was raining all day so we did it indoors. Since I had planned out books out I knew this one would come just after blueberries were gone, so a few weeks ago we bought some at the farmers market and froze them!Here is our blueberry bush waiting to be found! Jake was so excited to "pick" the blueberries! I had to hold Fern and shoo Riley away! But Jake did share a few. What a nice boy!
Jake was so proud of his blueberries and he LOVED the little bucket! :)

Today we worked on a bit of botany, but Jake didn't know it! I photo copied a page out of the book (they are great illustrations!) that had both blueberry bushes and a few pine trees in it. So we went outside and looked at our blueberry bush and the pine tree that hangs into our yard from the neighbors. We talked about them and then pasted a blueberry leaf and a sprig of pine onto the picture. Jake really enjoyed the glue!

I enjoyed BFIAR with Riley and again it is a tone of fun with Jake. Jake enjoys it even more than Riley did I think, plus I enjoy the time I get to spend with Jake. I would recommend this program to anyone!

2007-09-11T12:27:00.000-04:00

We had a great American History field trip yesterday!!

The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island were amazing! And all the better to get to share it with our kids!

2007-09-07T20:54:00.001-04:00

We made it through our first week of school!! And we are all still smiling and looking forward to next week, I consider that a great miracle! We have been truly blessed!!

As wonders never cease, Riley is truly Grandpa M.'s grandson! When given the option of reading a story or doing a math lesson first he consistently chose the math! American History was his toughest this week, it was a long reading, but it ended well after a few animal crackers! Geography also went over well, it is a fun story that grabs Riley's adventurer side! Fables, and scripture stories did well also. It took Riley a bit to warm up to scripture memory, but today he read it with me. All in all it was good.

We have found that life in general and school in particular is harder when Riley has been playing with neighborhood friends. I think I have com to the conclusion that Riley is too young, and that our friends need to be chosen more wisely, But it is hard when they are playing outside to avoid the problems. I have been praying fervently over this and hope for some good vibes on the matter.

Jake has had a great time with Jesse Bear this week, I think he will be sad at first next week to move on to another book, but it is a good one, Blueberries for Sal. One of my favorites! I think Jake's favorite this week was the Jesse Bear paper doll I made. Every day since I pulled it out he has talked about it to Dad when he calls! Today he and I made two new outfits, a snow suit and a rain outfit. Jake loved dressing Jesse Bear in his new outfits! Our letters for the week were A & J, he loved the big A out of green paper that he then got to put apple stickers all over, and the jet plane coloring page went over well!

Jake asked most mornings if it was time for his school yet! Too cute! I am glad he is growing and learning, but I do miss my little cuddle bunny. But tonight I am just wishing he would go to bed, I am tired!! :)

I hope you enjoyed our first week review!!

2007-09-04T20:22:00.000-04:00

YEA! The First Day of School!!Here are the boys on the door step after we had put the flag out and said the Pledge of Allegiance. They were a little bummed to go back inside after. :)
Fern needed to be apart too!

School went well, we kept it light for the first day. Riley and I did his world history lesson, introduced our first picture for our artist study, it is John Waterhouse's The Orange Gatherers, Then we put our calender up, did our weather log, and worked on our first scripture to memorize.

With Jake we read our book for the week, Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? and then Jake colored an alligator picture. Our letters for the week are A & J.

We were lucky today, Dad was around to keep Fern occupied a bit, but he has left tonight, so we will see how the rest of our week goes, we may have to move school time to Fern's nap time, we will see! :)

2007-09-01T10:55:00.000-04:00

Here we are the Saturday before the first day of school!! Our first official day of preschool & first grade is Tuesday the 4th! Yesterday I went to the library and checked out a book I needed for Riley and found out the one I wanted for Jake is out of print and our library system does not have it. :( There are a couple things I am still missing, but for the most part we are set to go! I hope Riley jumps in, that he does not get the attitude he is prone to get. I guess on;y time will tell, but I have been saying my fair share of prayers each day that it will be good. That and I have quite a bit of faith in the new school year blessings Dan will give Monday night at FHE. So until an update on our first days of school I bit you adue!

2007-08-18T09:02:00.000-04:00

As summer is winding down and starting school is fast aproching Lindafay at Higher Up and Further in started a What we did last summer topic. So here we go!

Our summer has been full of fun and family, wild animals and far off places, our backyard and exciting adventures!

We have played with Dad nearly all summer, visited Grandpa, Aunt Mary, Ryan, & Novella (and got lucky that grandma was visiting them too)! We saw lions, gorillas, and flamingos with Aunt Mary, Grandma, & Novella. We saw old engines working hard with Grandpa, and just enjoyed them all!

We read all summer, all together! We visited Minnesota & NIHM, California & Narnia, and of course Connecticut & Ellwood City all from our own cozy home!

We planted a garden and reaped the rewards, we rebuilt the tree house becoming construction workers, found bugs & toads, made fire & cooked dinner, and then enjoyed the lightning bugs!

We visited the planetarium at the children's museum, the lighthouse at the beach, and the farmer's market on the green!

It has been a full fun summer, we have enjoyed learning on the fly and now are all looking forward to the new school year that will bring us lots of new adventures!

So what did you do this summer?

The first zuccini, followed by MANY more!

Dad with the crew at the San Diego Wild Animal Park!

2007-08-14T13:18:00.000-04:00

Since I have used BFIAR before, I have not been spending as much time getting things ready for Jake. But I have been doing a little, and I am really excited to share these great books with him!! Our first book is Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear. I used this pattern of the bare bear to make a paper doll that I laminated, I also made clothing like in the book and laminated it. Then I put sticky velcro dots on them so that the clothes can be "put on". I think Jake will enjoy dressing his bear along with the story!

I am also thankful for this fun resource I found, another mama did all the work for me!! :) There is this neat activity to do with most of the books (not Jesse Bear though) it is called animal classification. Well this mama made these great cards to go with the animals from the books, I only with she had a blank template so that I could make more of the cards, I could make one, it is just easier when some things are already done.

So there is where I am at with that, I still have not picked out what activities we will do for Jesse Bear but I made a nice page to help me schedule it. If you want it email me and I can send it! :)

Here is the doll I made, with his undies velcroed on! then his bubble bath, his read shirt and blue pants, blue pjs, and blanket. Cute bear hu, I was glad to find one so cute!

2007-08-07T21:15:00.000-04:00

I have not posted recently because we are playing lots and getting ready for the new school year to start! But we have of course been regularly going to the library this summer (it IS air conditioned!) and reading alot of great books. We have been really good about keeping a chapter book going as a family. We just finished Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM, it was great. This week we were playing play doh and Riley used the mouse cookie cutter and then exclaimed, "look I made Mrs. Frisby", it was great! And then a kind of yukky neat, Dan and the kids were in the "hiking area" and found a mouse that was "almost dead". :I So the boys wanted me to come see it, I declined but they told me it looked like one of Mrs. Frisbys children. Gross, but I am glad they made the connection.

Tonight we started a new book, The Magicians Nephew. It is the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. (not the first he wrote of the series, but the one he intended to be read first.) And as I finished the first chapter and closed the book Riley was practically in tears, he was flailing on the bed wanting me to read more so that he could find out what happens! IT WAS GREAT!!!! He was so excited and wanted it SO much!

This has all made me understand more why Charlotte Mason suggested that books be read slowly and savored. Mrs. Frisby became real to him, he was in the story, he will remember it. Maybe not all of it, he is just 6, but he will remember! And although it is so hard to say, "no extra chapter tonight" when he is begging, I mean he is not begging for candy or anything!! I am thankful to know that he is being able to savor this great literature! She said:

"We hear of 'three books a week' as a usual thing and rather a matter of pride. But this, again, comes of our tendency to depreciate knowledge, and to lose sight of its alimentary character. If we perceive that knowledge, like bread, is necessary food, we see also that it must be taken in set portions, fitly combined, duly served, and at due intervals, in order to induce the digestive processes without which, knowledge, like meat, gives us labour rather than strength." (vol. 5 of CM's educ. volumes)

Also qouted over at Higher Up and Further In! :)

Someday I will splurge and buy the set of Charlotte Mason writings, but for now I read bits here for free. :)

2007-08-02T21:11:00.001-04:00

I just read this on Higher Up and Further In, and I had to share. What a great story, can you imagine a mother's joy to hear her child fighting Satan with words of scripture!!!

Why Should Children Memorize Scripture?
My seven-year old daughter and I are reading Pilgrim’s Progress together this year. Yesterday, we came to the part when Christian fought Apollyon. My three-year old son listened in attentively because the duel had swords in it and that particular word, ‘sword’ is the love of his life right now. He couldn't help himself and picked up his sword (which is attached to his belt at all hours of the day ) and began fighting the imaginary monster with a passion.A moment of inspiration came to me and I quickly grabbed my pretend darts and shouted out a lie to them, “God doesn’t love you!”Dear Daughter grabbed a nearby toy sword and responded with a sounding blow upon my head while shouting aloud, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him shall not die but have eternal life!”I, Apollyon, threw another dart, “Your brother is being mean so you should not share your toys with him.”She paused for only a moment, “A gentle answer turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs it up!” --while raising her shield.I was thrilled that she caught on to the game so quickly. Dart after dart I threw, and she would respond with verses that she had memorized. My dear little son parroted her words and used his sword upon the wicked fiend as well. Finally, ‘Apollyon’ gave up, wounded and flew away.Sometimes we need to be reminded why we are teaching our children to memorize the Word of God. Sometimes our children need to be reminded as well.
Posted by lindafay

2007-07-10T14:53:00.001-04:00

Wow two days in a row!! :) First to see an update of our garden you'll have to check out this post on my other blog.
And second, today I got the next LDSHEA newsletter with reasons #5a & 5b of why LDS families should homeschool. And I have to say they are "meaty" there is no hiding on this one, I thought they were great and I enjoyed all the prophetic quotes! They are a bit long, but hang in there! I have read the book they reference By Jack Monnett, " Revealed Educational Principles and the Public Schools ", It was good, a bit of a dry read at times, but also full of fire and amazing history. It puts a whole new spin on LDS HSing. :) I hope you will take the time and read them!!

2007-07-09T19:55:00.000-04:00

Well we have been busy having summer! We have been outdoors alot, we have been to the Children's Museum in Hartford a couple times, and we have just been enjoying Dan as his airplane is still broken! :)

I have ordered or bought most of my books for the fall, I have not started on "supplies" yet, I tried last week and of course they only had one and I needed more, so they said to come back this week. So I am now stalking the mailman daily hoping for more books!! I received two of our books today, Aesop's Fables and a little book of a couple fairy tales, but I think it may be the wrong book. :( I will have to see.

Last week Lindafay at Higher Up and Further In had a great post about their nature study. I was struck with an "ahha" when I read it, and will now be studying a topic, instead of all crazy here and there. Plus the book she mentioned "Pets in a Jar" looked so good that I ordered it too!! :) And then today she had a great post about "lesson plans", I have always enjoyed a certain amount of planning, but recently met another HSing mama and she is mostly only HSing her oldest, as the others are little, and she made comments that all she does outside of teaching is learning/reading/planning for the teaching. I was blown away and kind of felt bad for her, and that I should share with her that she does not have to do it like that. You know that feeling like when you think you should share the Gospel with someone, but your nervous. I didn't share, but maybe I will, I wish I could just email her the post, but that might seem rude don't you think?

With Dan being home since the end of May and maybe home for another 3-4 weeks, we have been flying by the seat of our pants, gone is the comforting rhythm that we naturally fall into when he is away. And I have been thinking about that alot, and feeling the need to let our rhythm overtake the craziness. We just need to indoctrinate Dan and get him to follow a little more. Maybe I would be less of a slacker, and actually get something done! :) So I am hoping to have the strength and will to do this, pray for me!! :)

2007-06-26T16:24:00.000-04:00

Yea, I have been MIA for almost the whole month! I have been working on our 1st grade curriculum, I have it all planned, now I have to get it all ready! :) But now I can enlist Dan's help so there will be plenty of delegating. :) Here is the quick overview for grades 1-3, it is based on Lindafay's at Higher Up and Further In, she has been heaven sent! And for Jake we are going to do the Before Five in a Row! :)

Math
Abeka 1
Abeka
Abeka

World History
Ancients, creation-400AD.
Medieval, Early Renaissance, 400-1600
Late Renaissance/Early Modern, 1600-1910

American History
Exploring America, Colonies
Explorers - Pilgrims 1629

Revolutionary War
Colonial Times1629-Revolutionary War1776

Focus on Pioneers, Civil War, Indians
Revolution1776 - WWI 1917

Geography
Ancient World & Early America
Early Europe & Early America
World & America

Science
Nature Study/ Read & find out
Nature Study
Nature Study

Beg. Read
Grammar
Spelling
Teach your Child to Read in 100 easy lessons

Narration
Oral
Oral
Oral

Copy Work
From our reading
From our reading
From our reading

Poetry
1 a week
1 a week
1 a week

Shakespeare
Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare
Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare
Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare or Tales from Shakespeare

Literature
Family –chapter books
Family – chapter books
Family & personal reading

Artist Study
1 artist per 6 weeks
1 artist per 6 weeks
1 artist per 6 weeks

Composer Study
1 composer per 6 weeks
1 composer per 6 weeks
1 composer per 6 weeks

Foreign Language
Hearing, vocabulary
Hearing

Hymn Study
Family
Family
Family

Scripture Study
Daily – family – Old Testament
Daily – family – New Testament
Daily – family & personal

Scripture Memory
As a family, until all have memorized
As a family until all have memorized
As a family until all have memorized

Character Development
As a family - A Child's Book of Character Building –Book 1
As a family - A Child's Book of Character Building – 1 or 2
As a family - A Child's Book of Character Building

This is really pretty on my colorful table I whipped up in word, but I can not get it on here, I hope you can decipher it!