10 Principles every Homeschool Mom should Remember

I was really excited to see an article in the  August 1014 Ensign ( an LDS church magazine) about learning at home. The article is titled "Home the Heart of Learning". It is mostly talking about how we need to make sure gospel principles are being taught at home and that the lessons in church are in support of that. At the end of the article is a list of 10 principles every teacher should know as pertaining to teaching gospel lessons at church. I was inspired to tweak it a bit to give guidance to us homeschool teachers. You can read the original list and article here.

#7 "Keep Lessons Alive"
Here we are having an indoor picnic and a read-aloud,
 when the weather was un-cooperative for an outdoor one.

10 Principles every Homeschool Mom should Remember

1. Council with The Lord. Ask Him how He would have you organize and teach in your homeschool. Go to Him with specific questions. Both for the family and each individual. Keep a Notebook near by to write down the inspiration you receive.

2. Be led by the Spirit. Don't let schedules and lesson plans that have already been noted get in the way of the powerful teaching that can come from the Spirit. Let Him guide your day.

3. Teach children not lessons. "Put the little minds of children out of your thoughts. Children have just as big minds as we have."-Charlotte Mason

4. Focus on gospel principles and core subjects. Everything else will fall into place as needed or when interest spikes. 

5. Pick out one or two key topics to focus your lessons on. Many small meals are easier to digest then an all-you-can-eat buffet. "Be faithful in the little by little, day by day approach of reading from great books."-Karen Andreola (A Charlotte Mason Comapanion)

6. Learn as many subjects as possible together as a family. Less prep for mom, more learning for kids.

7. Keep lessons alive with hands-on projects, acting out or dressing the parts, read aloud exciting stories, create memorable note booking pages. Turn your dining room table into a tent on a rainy day to liven things up!

8. Find ways to tie in gospel truths to the other subjects of study wherever possible. Science is full of Gods amazing creations, History is packed full of life lessons and God -fearing heroes. There can always be something found to bring it all back to Him.

9. Create a house of order. This doesn't mean sparkling toilets and a perfectly regulated day set to alarms. Simply, have a routine and a plan for the day with Christ in the center of it and do your best to carry it out. "Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up." -A.A. Milne

10. Don't dismiss the importance of life's every day lessons. Achedemics are important, but how well have you prepared your child for a life of success if he can do trigonometry but doesn't know how to wash a load of laundry or fix a flat tire? So much is taught on a day to day basis just by involving your kids in the needs of the household. A great little book about teaching kids how to help out is called: From Pampered to Productive by Debbie Bowen. I found mine for my Nook here.

"The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." -C.S. Lewis

Happy Day!

For more information on The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints you can go to www.mormon.org

I wore my PAJAMAS ALL DAY!

Yep. I sure did.

And a funny thing happened...

A delicious breakfast of muffins and fruit was served.....
                  The kiddos did their chores...........
                                            We started our lessons relatively on time................
                                                                               

THEN

We received a surprise delivery from someone who cares about us! All of the kiddos were given new tied twin bed-sized fleece blankets! What a treat! Even soon-to-arrive-baby boy got one! We are so blessed to have wonderful people in our lives!

After all of THAT excitement we....

                             Continued doing lessons....and I thought about getting dressed, but didn't.

 The preschoolers at our house watched Sesame Street.

At break time everyone went outside for awhile.

                      They have really been into trying to get their bikes in working condition now that the weather has begun to warm.

After the wee break we kept plugging on..finishing up some spelling, writing assignments, and independent reading. 

LUNCH

Brought another surprise to our day.....

A very windy, fast moving, LARGE hail storm! It took us all by surprise...especially the two outside playing! We watched for awhile and hoped that this time there would not be any damage like the last surprise wind storm (fallen trees, missing shingles etc.). 

We were blessed and it passed quickly. Our power only flickered.

As we ate our lunch of Mac & Cheese with a hotdog we began watching a PBS special about Martin Luther on Netflix. He is one of our history topics this week. Once I was finished eating I decided to mix up a quick batch of cookies to appease a craving I have been having for coconut. I used a recipe I found the other day from Allrecipes.com called Cocunut Oatmeal Cookies II. They turned out to be just what I needed! Although I do wish that I had the white chocolate chips it called for, but our regular chocolate chips did the job just fine!

And yes, I was STILL in my pajamas with no inclination to change. At 31 weeks prego comfort trumps everything else! But just in case you are wondering here is a picture of me on a day I WAS wearing clothes:

Nonetheless, I feel our day was VERY productive despite the fact that I stayed in my PJ's all the live long day. The afternoon continued on with various activities of interest for the kiddos and some "teacher" work for me. I have a few projects up my sleeve I am trying to accomplish so that things will run smoothly as baby time arrives! A dinner of pork chops found it's way into the oven, my son caught his ride from the neighbor to his Cub Scout meeting, the girls and I cleaned up from dinner, and I am finishing this post that began as dinner was cooking.

The girls have now joined me in pajamas.

I am really grateful that I have reached a point of comfort in our homeschooling journey to be relaxed AND productive at the same time! 

Happy (pajama) Day!

Mini-Farm Project

Just a quick update so you can see what is happening besides our regular school lessons.

We have begun some new projects to broaden our learning experiences and get us involved with the community. To document our project I have created a new page tab labeled: Mini-Farm Project. Here is a brief snippet of what is on there so far:

We are so excited to finally have a home and a property where we can raise some animals! What a great learning opportunity for us all! I grew up around dairy farms and all sorts of animals but never had the responsibility of raising them myself. My Hubby grew up with all sorts, and raised sheep for 4-H. This will be a first time experience for our kiddos. They have only seen farm animals from a distance or at the fair.

Our purpose for beginning a small animal farm is to: help us become more self-reliant and to teach our kiddos valuable lessons and skills needed for a fruitful and productive life.



Click on the new page tab to find out more about this project!
Happy Day!

A Time and a Season

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven

-Ecclesiastes 3:1

Spring is in the air!  

It is another beautiful day at our house! 

I have been praying and seeking diligently for some time now, about our next year's course we should take. I have needed to take into consideration a few things:

• All of my kiddos are ready for me to encourage them to take on more challenging work
• We have embarked on our dream to have a small animal farm (we now have chickens, and plan on goats in the future). This means that we will have other projects to focus some of our time on. Including:
• 4-H....we have begun participating in 4-H projects and are very excited for all that this program has to offer us!
• Scouting- Ephraim has officially joined the Cub Scout program, so he (we) will have additional projects and meetings to attend.
• Gardening/Canning.....we WILL be doing our very first at our house this year.
• A possible addition to our family......yes we are beginning to think: baby

All of these things are going to require more TIME of one particular person in our family...can you guess who? ME 

So I have been desiring to find a curriculum guide that COMBINES as much as possible together, that gives me a lesson plan (that is easily adapted when wanted), and covers our age levels of at least 7 years to 11, with emphasis on being able to challenge the oldest to strive harder and higher. I wanted all of our reading, writing, vocabulary, spelling, to be inter-linked with our History lessons. I wanted it to follow our CM (Charolette Mason) style of doing things with living books and short lessons. I wanted more time to create fun games and projects to support our lessons and to be able to give some devoted time to preschoolers.

Is this even possible?

A couple weeks ago after putting the kids to bed. I was sitting on the computer doing internet searches for Literature-based curriculum. I found a lot of great things...but a lot of them required me to make the book list and plan out the unit studies. I would love to be able to sit down and do that...one of my favorite things is to come up with our lesson plans and find exciting new ways to learn. But based on my above list, I feel my time is better spent teaching and not planning. I want to be able to have fun with the kiddos, not spend hours on the computer researching or creating. 

And then I stumbled upon this:

I watched the several introductory videos on the site, and as I did a warm sensation spread throughout me. I thought: This is it! But then my brain said: Hold on...you need to research this more, there is nothing worse than getting something that doesn't work for you family. 

The hour was growing late and my eyes were bleary so I forced myself to pin it and wait for the next day to read more. When I got the chance the next day, I sat down and opened my homeschool pin board to find the link to the website. There I found someone had made a comment: We are in our 5 year of TOG and we love it!  I immediately replied asking her questions. She responded promptly telling me about the age range of her kids and that her 16 yo was graduating this year. That was all I needed to inspire me to dig deeper. 

This is what I found:

• The creator was a homeschool mom (and dad) of 6
• It was created because she wanted a way to spend more time teaching and less time planning, and she wanted her children to be instructed in the most important lessons of all...CHRIST.
• The company put 3 weeks of lesson plans and other resources on their site for FREE for us to explore and try out before purchase.
• The Core of the program is History taken from 4 divisions of World History. (The same way we already began doing it this year..with The story of the World history program.) Starting with Ancient Times. It also has a strong focus of tying history into events taken from the Bible.
• Each Year contains 4 units, which can be purchased separately, which makes it easy to start at anytime with in your other course of study. 
• There is a print, digital, or combination of program material.
• Each lesson plan contains lessons from elementary through Highschool levels, which are broke up into levels and not grades. They are: lower grammar, upper grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric
• There is great flexibility of levels being taught and it is supper easy to give a student a challenging assignment from a level above without changing their whole lesson level. And it works the same for giving an easier assignment to a student who is struggling in a certain area like writing or reading, without messing up the other lessons.
• The only areas of study it doesn't cover is Math, Science, and any specialties like foreign languages or Music studies. There is even play scripts so you can put on a play just as a family or in a co-op (oh yeah, it has lots of info on how to use it in a co-op).
• There are lots of hands on projects available to do.
• The book list consists of books that are easily found on the internet or at the library. They also have a book store where you can go to purchase the books on the list if you don't want to shop around or borrow.

Are you loving it yet?

I am!

This program is truly an answer to my prayers!

So I ordered a couple Units from Year 1 which fits in with our current study of Ancient Times for us to begin right away and test out to see if it works for us and if it will work for us for our whole year program.

I have received the package and poured over the material this week....so far I think it looks great! We will begin to implement the program next week.

If you would like more info go to their site: http://www.tapestryofgrace.com/explore/

I was not invited to give this review and I did not receive anything for it. I simply liked what I saw and wanted to share my opinion. If there was anything in my notes that was not accurate..I apologize and please let me know so that I can correct it. 

I will try to give an updated review after we have used the program for a week or two.

Happy Day!

one word: LAUNDRY

Awhile back I purchased this sign to put on my laundry room door because I just couldn't resist it:

This inspired me to get busy and get the Kiddos doing their OWN laundry and to put everyone on a schedule. So over the break that is exactly what we have done:

I assigned everyone a day and we are now on our second week of success with only having hills instead of mountains of laundry. You've heard this from Hilary Weeks right?

If you feel inspired too....here are some posters I created to help you (us) out.

Laundry

Happy Day!

Welcome to our Home!

(Isn't this a beautiful view to wake up to?)

So here we are in our new home and getting back in the swing of things. With a new location and a new year there are a few things we have changed, but many have stayed the same. I thought it would be a good time for me to make a new post about our day to day and what we are using now.

Everyday is different, but in general we keep a certain order to our day.

My day has been beginning with my husband. When he rises, so do I. This was a goal I made for the New Year. It has been nice to spend some extra time with him when all is quiet and the day is new.Throwing on my fuzzy pink bathrobe, because every wife/mother should have one (also because I received one for Christmas, and it is very comfy!), I make him a quick breakfast, mix up some hot cocoa in his cup and set out his lunch. With a smooch and a hug I send him off. In normal weather he needs to leave by 6:20 a.m but since we have had snowy weather he has been out the door by 6:00 a.m. to give time for slower travel.

Once I get Hubby out the door I do one or more of several things:

(sigh) Who didn't wash the pots and pans?

Mmmm yummy rice pudding.

• Personal Scripture Study
• Shower (without interruption)
• Get Dressed
• General Clean up (often there are leftover dishes that need washed from dinner)
• Lesson Preparation
• Exercise (okay, I have really only done this once in the a.m., usually it happens late afternoon)
• Make Breakfast
• Check on Email, Facebook, and my favorite Bloggers

If there haven't already been sleepy-eyed cherubs making their presence known by 7:30 a.m., I begin turning on more lights and being less quiet. When breakfast is ready I make the announcement and get everyone to the table. We pray, we eat, we talk about our night and any silly dreams that occurred. I go over any important reminders needed for the day.

 After breakfast, every person is required to take care of personal needs (i.e. bathe, dress, brush teeth, make bed) and then move on to completing any other chores. Some have animal responsibilities and some have younger sibling care (making sure they got dressed etc.). Once those chores are complete they move on to other chores which we call Cleaning Zones.

(sorry for the picture quality, I took it in the early a.m. and there isn't much light in that spot)

I have divided our home into 10 areas (zones). Everyone is responsible for two inside Zones and one outside Zones. These areas need to be checked for cleanliness twice a day. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon (before dinner). If needed they are given attention a third time before bed.

We keep track of who has what Zone with a printed list I made and then put in a picture frame. I use a wet-erase marker to write the name of the responsible person next to the Zone. At our old house I also had a laminated poster put up in each Zone that listed the expected jobs for that area. It also had a division of just a "10 minute tidy" and a "Clean it good" list of expectations. I may get around to doing something like that again, but for now Mom just has to pay attention and give direction when needed.

Once everyone is ready (including Mom) we assemble at the dining room table for Scripture study. I have talked more about what we do with this time in our day here. Something new we have added is some calender time and memorizing the Articles of Faith (we printed off cards with words and pictures from here).

I have created a framed wipe-off bulletin board by gluing scrapbook paper to the back of a poster frame that wasn't being used. Inside I put a print out of the month, a copy of our weekly schedule ( I use the Simply Charlotte Mason Planner for planning out our year,months, and then weeks), and a couple of blank note cards to serve as background for other things I might write on the board (such as the current A of F we are working on). I use dry-erase and wet-erase markers on this (although I find that even the dry-erase needs encouragement from a wet-wipe to come off). I use the small sticky notes to mark special days on the calender (like Violet's b-day coming this week!), and I also circle what day it is writing the number in the center so everyone has a quick reference to the date.

After our morning ritual we move on to the rest of our lessons for that day. I have just recently organized every one's notebooks with a new system. They used to have it tabbed by subject, but now I have changed that to be by what day it is. I like the Charlotte Mason style where we number our days instead of calling them by name. That way if we don't start on Monday we can still do the same work, just starting whatever day begins our week. It helps me to feel like I am not messing up the week or missing a day by doing Wednesdays lessons on Thursday. This way we never feel like we are behind. Our week starts with Day One and ends with Day Five.

(I love sticky notes!!)(This is my son's folder)

Here is a quick example of what each Kiddo needs to do during the week for lessons:

Lyllian (age 10, grade 5)

(This is my oldest, and so she has different things that she does from the other Kiddos, the only things they share that are the same is when math, journals, and reading are expected to be done. This list does not include our Family Studies, those will be listed later) 

Day One:                                             Day Two:                                           Day Three

Math                                                    Math                                                    Math
Writing                                                 Writing                                                 Spelling
Reading                                                Reading                                                Journal
Journal                                                 Journal                                                  Reading
Piano                                                   Piano                                                    Piano

Day Four:                                          Day Five:                        The curriculum used:
Math                                                   Spelling                              Math-U-See  (Delta)
Writing                                                Computer                          100 Writing Lessons
Reading                                               Reading                             Writing Tales
Journal                                                 Journal                              Sequential Spelling (3)
Piano                                                   Piano                                Typing Instructor for Kids platinum
                                                                                                    Reading: Black Beauty


There are other things that play a part to her day sometimes, or I may pull out a different work book or print off a find on the Internet to supplement or excite a lesson she is working on.

I have also started to include something in their binders that can be done during the week when they are done with their work or while they are waiting for my help. This week for Lylli I printed off this:

I found it on Currclick, from Westvon Publishing  they are/were having a 75 cent sale on all of their items. I found a few worthy items for the price, this is one of them. Lyllian has an interest in rocks and geology (Here is a website connected with this product). She was very excited to find it in her binder and it was a great motivator. The pictures above show what she chose to do with it. They are suppose to be flashcards but she wanted to make it a book. So she laminated and bound the pages with the info and cut out the picture cards and put them in an envelope. That way she can take them out to study and flip threw the book to find the match. It also inspired her to pull this book off of the shelf to find some more info on rocks:

(I found this book and some others from the same series at a second hand store several years ago)

Family Studies
The subjects that are not in the category of the 3R's, we do together as a family. I get in these lessons at different times in the day depending on what is required. Sometimes we can fit in before lunch and sometimes it happens after (on busy, sick, shopping days this is the part of our day we cut out or shorten). I rotate and change things around throughout the year to keep it interesting, but here is what we are doing right now:

Everyday: Prayer,Scripture study with our Scripture Journals, singing Hymns. (I won't list these on each day outlined below).
Day One:  Mom takes time to get the lessons for the week lined up.
Day Two:  Science - we are currently doing Earth Science and our studies this month have been about water,ice, and snow. I do not use a curriculum currently for this, but more of a unit study approach.
                  Literature- Mom reads aloud something just for fun, or something that goes with another study. Our fun book we have been reading is "The Miraculous Journey of  Edward Tulane" by Kate DiCamillo.
Day Three:  Science
                    History- We are using "The Story of the World, ancient civilizations" (I did not purchase mine at this link, I bought my copy from half.com). Currently we are studying The Indus Valley (ancient India).
                    Geography- this is included in our history lessons, although we get quite a bit in within other subjects as well, or just out of general curiosity.
Day Four:   History
                    Geography
Day Five:     History
                    Geography
                    Literature
We also do a lot of home skills, like cooking and art projects that go along with everyday learning or just fun activities to fill the other time.


I have begun to try and have an activity or two out on our table for doing in between lessons or when they are waiting on me. Especially for my little preschoolers. Today I set out a box of scratch paper and a craft book turned to the page on "how to make a snowflake" and also a book Ephraim picked up at the library on folding paper airplanes. I have a plan developing in my mind to organized some boxes/bins/bags that have a ready activity for me to pull out in the mornings. Things other than blocks and puzzles that are already easy to pull out. I will share when/if I ever get this idea out of my head and working in real-life.

Check back later and I might have a more detailed schedule and curriculum list on one of my pages. I am also planning on trying to get My Library updated so you can see what is hanging out on my bookshelf or in my Nook. Sometime later I also plan on posting some recipes that we can't live without. But first I have to organize this:

Happy Day!

ready....set....GO!

Relief...is what I feel about getting back to our day to day routine. How wonderful it is to be in our own home again, eating at our own table, and sleeping in our own beds. What a comfort H-O-M-E is.

So now that we have survived the moving and holiday madness, unpacked most of the boxes, and get to return to normal living (whatever that may be) we have dug back into our lessons. Driving full speed ahead (toot toot) everyone is on board and ready to go. This time I chose to dive right into our full schedule, not waiting for an adjustment time. It has worked out well and I am content with what we have accomplished this week.

Everyone was excited to get back to our Scripture Journaling. In the future when we take a break, I plan on continuing this part of our studies, as it is the most important. We picked right back up where we left off, and I am pleased to witness that they all actually remember what we have learned previously including songs and what is expected of them during this part of our day. It still remains to be my favorite part of our lessons time.

To get us started with our week and the New Year, they all filled out a worksheet that I came upon on Pinterest (sorry, I didn't save the link for the printable) that has questions pertaining to highlights from 2011 and goals for 2012. It was surprising what I learned from reading (or penning for the younger crew) each of there responses. Lyllian would like to learn "the french language".(Guess I better make it my goal to find her a language program. I welcome your resource finds!) 

 Ephraim wants to continue learning math and can't wait until he finishes his spelling book.

HanaRose had very admirable goals for this next year. She would like to "be an artist" and "be a better big sister". The hardest thing she did last year: "climbing a pine tree".

Violet's responses consisted of Barbies and princesses being the best things of 2011 and she also wants to continue to play both of those in the coming 2012.

Evalynn was not a participant in this activity, as she was napping. But I can bet her answers would have to do with babies, puppies, kitties, candy and the like.

I on the other hand have several goals for this coming year. Some are habit changing and others are just things I would like to accomplish. I have begun getting up before my Hubby goes to work and sending him out the door with breakfast and a hug. This has propelled me to rise earlier and be more prepared for when the Kiddos get up. I am also able to have a bit of mom time, which in turn gives me a better start to the day. Some of the things I would like to have completed this year are: add some biographies to my reading list, plan and execute a garden, meet all of our new neighbors (and remember their names) and various home improvement projects. It is going to be a good year.


Happy Day! (and Happy 2012)

Learning Journal *week 2*

It is only the second posting of our Learning Journal....and I am already late....but o well, I am a Mother among many other important things so that comes first. Better late then never.

Last week was not as eventful as before. In fact I am having a hard time remember what we did! I know I had some struggles through out the week. We were also fighting a cold virus among us causing everyone to have the cranky monsters picking on them. I spent a good portion of the beginning of the week trying to prepare some activities for entertaining the younger ones and for the older ones during the times when they are waiting for me to make the rounds.

Is this a hug or a choke hold?!?

.....................................Resource Favorites..................................

Because I was looking for some good "busy" activities for my young ones, my favorite resources this last week were from the web.  I found all sorts of useful ideas from fellow blogger: The Homeschool Den, in her Preschool and Toddler page. I was able to use a lot of the ideas there for us and from other links she has posted. One thing I did was take the "Mail it!" idea and turn it into our own. I found a small plastic trash can at the dollar store and labeled one side "Mail it!" and the other side "Trash it!". So far I have only used the "Trash it!" side with my first grader to practice her sight words. I flash the cards at her and if she reads the word she keeps the card, if she doesn't know it I say "Trash it!" and she puts it in the "trash". When we get through the stack of words, she then has to go "dumpster diving" and pull out one card at a time to practice that word. It seems to be working out well, and so far a favorite game for my HanaRose.

....................................Book of the Week..................................


Lyllian (10) has really been enjoying reading  the Ramona books by Beverly Clearly. I think this is fun because I can clearly remember enjoying these books too!

.....................................Star Students..................................

Everyone did okay, but I do have to say that my big girl Lyllian was incredibly helpful to me last week. She helped me print, laminate and cut all of the above mentioned new activities. She also spent a lot of time with her little sisters keeping them happy when I was my wits end.

.....................................Special Occasions..................................


HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

 

It was our DOUBLE birthday week. We had Ephraim who turned 8 and Evalynn who turned 2 the next day! We waited for Saturday to celebrate because........Dad came for a weekend visit! We were all happy to see him and it was fun to be able to celebrate together. We also got to enjoy watching General Conference (a LDS church  broadcast). It was wonderful to here the council given, I am always strengthened when I listen to Conference. 

Ephraim being the ONLY boy, always gets a totally BOY toy for his birthday. This year he received a large Remote Control Monster Truck and of course a practical gift (because Mom's are like that) a nice warm winter coat for our first real winter in 2 years! 

Evalynn received her first very own baby doll, two in fact, and a shopping cart/stroller 

to push them around in.

Other stuff we did:

So because last week was so off I am not going to delve into the other categories this time. But we did finish canning the peaches. We did not however do black berries...we were too late. There is always next year. We did have some great fun making play-dough and flubber. I found the recipes at this great website. We made the chocolate play-dough with the cocoa powder to use for our Volcanoes we will be erupting in the near future. I had to remind the kids that although it smelled like brownies....it's not...don't EAT IT!

Here is a video of Lyllian and Ephraim having a great time with the Flubber:

Happy Day!

Our Learning Journal * week 1 *

Here we go I think things have settled down enough that I can start posting on a regular basis about our days. I am going to try and review our week every Friday or Saturday. I hope to share more about what we are doing so that I can see that we are working hard (or not).

.....................................Resource Favorites..................................

This week we really enjoyed our History/Geography lessons from The Story of the World. We read chapter three and learned about the first writings in Ancient Egypt. We also colored maps, locating the Nile river, Euphrates River, Tigris River, Egypt, Mesopotamia and Sumer. The Kiddos were very entertained as they learned that hippopotamus means: river horse. This was used to teach them that Mesopotamia means: between two rivers. We are going to do some Hieroglyph and Cuneiform writings of our own before moving on to chapter four (mummies!).

I also introduced HanaRose and Violet to the Walk beside me Preschool Curriculum which you can read about here in an earlier post this week. Violet completed most of the packet, but I used a few of the pages to entertain HanaRose too. They can't wait to do the next letter packet!

.........................................Book of the Week....................................

This months Earth Science focus has been on volcanoes. We all really enjoyed reading The Magic School Bus: Blows it's Top! I read this to them all before we studied the pictures in our other books (one pictured above) from the library and labeled a diagram of the parts of a volcano. 

.................................................Toddler Time........................................

Violet (3) was very involved this week with our learning. She colored along with the others and was happy to have some "work" of her own to do with the A is for Adam packet. 

Evalynn  made a couple of milestones this week as she comes up on her 2nd birthday. One being that she discovered she likes to stack the wood blocks and then knock them down! And the other...sticking a crayon in her nose...she was very proud of herself! 

............................................Star Students..........................................

Making  Chocolate Zucchini  Bread...Yum!

Lyllian (10) did a great job with her math this week. She started off testing on Lesson 7 (Math-U-See Delta) and proceeded to complete and test on Lesson 8 by the end of the week. She is finding that learning division is fun! She has also read through a couple of Ramona books. Doing most of her reading when she goes to bed and in the morning before rising.

Eprhraim (8 next week!) only missed one question on his math test (on Lesson 7 in his Beta book) this week. He was worried because the concept of Regrouping seemed very daunting to him. All of his practice paid off! He was very proud...and so was I.  He is also progressing well in his Sequential Spelling book. He has completed 17 lessons.

HanaRose is listening better this week. We have had no more pencil incidents and she has actually enjoyed writing in her journal. She is working on writing one or two sentences on her own with help only for big words. She has also enjoyed reading some Bobs books that we picked up at the library.

.....................................Field Trips & Other Fun Stuff....................................

Wow! It has been a full week of field trips! We arrived here just in time for canning season with Granny! This has been a great time to learn for all of us! We have canned tomatoes, grape jelly, pickles, relish, & peaches so far. We have a few more peaches, pears, blackberry jam, and apples to do next!

Here we are picking up the peaches at the Orchard:

Here is some of our tomatoes and relish:

Here is Lyllian learning to do dill pickles!

To top of this exciting week....we went to the FAIR! 

There was a Camel in the petting zoo!

Here we are enjoying snow cones and listening to some good 'ol  country music!

The Kiddos were excited to see all of the animals and other events taking place. We even saw the neighbors pumpkin they entered and won first place for largest by weight! I allowed them each 2 rides at the carnival before it was time to go home. This was really their first experience with the Fair, but no their last!

Happy Day!