It's June now!

So I haven't been very good at updating my blog again. I think I need to pencil in one evening a week after the kids are in bed to devote to putting up a weekly report!

We have started our 2nd week of our 10 week summer term of schooling. It is going very well. I tried a different way of scheduling and so far it is working well. I made a chart and we have little boxes to check off as we do each subject every day. We like the satisfaction of checking off the box!

We have started a new math curriculum and finally found a winner! It includes flashcards and a one minute timed drill every day...who would have thought that L would like timed drills! I'm so happy we have finally found a math book that he looks forward to instead of dreads!

We are working through Writing With Ease, and both kids enjoy it. Growing With Grammar continues to be G's favorite subject, along with Song School Latin. And L still really enjoys learning cursive writing. We are working through ancient history and having a great time with it.

Most of our subjects for the summer are based on 3 or 4 days a week (except for math, which we do every day.) So today, we decided to do math and then focus the rest of the time on History. We had a big History day! We had a lot of fun learning about the baby Moses, the Exodus from Egypt, the Phoenicians in Carthage, Ashurbanipal conquering many cities around him to build up the Assyrian Empire, and Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians taking revenge on Ninevah and the Assyrians. The kids particularly enjoyed hearing why The Hanging Gardens of Babylon where built and remain one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. It's amazing how much I am learning right along with them! They enjoy the stories, color related pictures, answer questions, and mark appropriate maps for each chapter. History is a favorite subject for us all right now!

Our science has been reading library books, and planting a garden, starting with seeds. It's the first time we have started a garden with seeds, and we aren't sure how it is going to turn out, but it has been a great learning experience for us all!

We also are busy right now with our 4H projects, especially L who will be judged for the first time as a 4H member on Monday June 15. His project is on First Aid. He's already a bit excited and nervous about being judged!

Well, I just wanted to share a quick update. I hope to really become more regular with this! Have a great rest of the week!

It's been too long!

I haven't posted here in a few months...I need to make this more of a priority! So this will be a quick update and I'll share a few pictures!

Since mid-January, we have dealt with several illnesses...flu, colds, and a stomach virus. That has caused somewhat of a setback in our schooling schedule, but I'm not too concerned because we will school through most of the summer anyway.

The big things are that L has finally gotten his addition facts down, and about half of his multiplication facts! We also have decided to change from Horizons Math to Christian Light Education Math (or CLE). This decision was a long process, but as of today, the materials are ordered! We gave Math U See a try, but it just didn't work for us (even though the kids like the blocks!) So we brought our Horizons books back out, and L will finish his next week, and G will finish hers the following week. At that point we will start CLE. The kids had input on choosing this math curriculum, especially L...it has great reviews from people who use it already...we are excited to try it out. You can read more about it here if you like... http://www.clp.org/store/by_subject/4. L will start with grade 3, and G will start with LightUnit 106 of Grade 1.

Everything else is going well...L's favorites right now are Cursive Writing and Writing With Ease. G's favorites are Growing with Grammar and Song School Latin. Baby D is learning his letter sounds (his favorite right now being "T") and counts to 11. I will give a regular weekly update hopefully this weekend!

We have enjoyed some outside time with the beautiful weather last week...and the kids had fun searching for earthworms! I'll share a few pictures from that. Also a big event happened on Monday...G lost her first tooth! She was very excited about it!

This week also marked the end of our Homeschool Enrichment Day for this year. We will have the spring concert tomorrow night (May 1). Both L and G will be performing with their sign language class, and G will be singing with the children's music class (which I teach).

We also joined a homeschool 4-H group. L is doing a project on First Aid. He will present it to a judge in June. G is a Cloverbud (the younger group of 4-H), and is doing an Introduction to the topics of 4-H project just for fun. I also plan to update on their progress with this over the next 2 months.

I hope that all of you are doing well...I will try to do a regular weekly update over the weekend, and I'll work at doing this every week! Enjoy the pictures!

Weekly Reports for 1/5-1/9 and 1/12-1/16

I'm going to combine the weekly reports for the past two weeks since I didn't post it last week. (It didn't get posted because I ignored the request that I take a break on the Wii Sports game and overdid myself on Thursday the 8th playing tennis and baseball...I was hurt for 3 days.)

Weeks 13 and 14 have been very productive! Here is a rundown.

Math:
L completed 9 lessons and a test. Topics included place value to the thousands, addition in the hundreds (i.e. 287+212), subtraction (i.e. 48-23), and adding 3 or 4 numbers (i.e. 5+2+4 and 3+5+2+4). He has complained less and completed math in a more timely manner than he was doing before the Christmas break, so we are much happier about that! Let's keep it up, L!

G completed 9 lessons. Some of the topics she worked on were place value to the tens (tens and ones), counting by 3's, addition (i.e. 72+5), subtraction (i.e. 19-3), and shapes being divided into equal parts (beginning fractions.)

For both of them, I am considering a different math called Math-U-See. We may start out supplementing the Horizons books with it. If it works well, we will consider switching over to it alone. It has a different approach and stresses mastery of facts as well as giving a thorough understanding to the whys behind the math. I think it would help L to learn his math facts and not rely on his fingers as much as he does for counting. I will update more about this later.

Phonics:
L completed lesson 7 and 8 in his book. Lesson 7 focused on oo saying two sounds (as in boot and book). Lesson 8 focused on ea saying two sounds (as in eat and head.)

G also completed lessons 7 and 8. Lesson 7 was a review lesson, and Lesson 8 focused on ending pairs of consonant sounds (i.e. -sk in mask).

Grammar:
L's topics for the past two weeks were alphabetical order, the dictionary, the two parts of a sentence (complete subject and complete predicate), simple subjects and predicates and diagramming, compound subjects and diagramming, and compound predicates and diagramming. The introduction to diagramming sentences went pretty well.

G focused on Statements in week 13 and Questions in week 14.

Grammar continues to be a favorite for both of them!

Writing With Ease:
Both of them did week 3 in their books (L in book 2 and G in book 1). L's work for this includes copywork, narration of a passage, and dictation. G does copywork and narration of a passage. Both of them are doing ok with this, but it is still new to us so we are still learning the process. I have total faith in this curriculum though and feel it will help them become good writers.

Latin:
The past two weeks we have learned words for family members and people. We continue to enjoy learning from Song School Latin together! Here are the words we worked on.

pater = father
mater = mother
soror = sister
frater = brother

puella = girl
puer = boy
vir = man
femina = woman

History:
We did 3 chapters of history over the past two weeks. I am thrilled that we have decided to make history more of a priority. Since I bought the cd's, we have been listening to history during lunch and then working on the coloring pages and maps. I am going to pick and choose a few projects as we have time. Here is what we covered:
Chapter 6: The Jewish People (Abraham and Joseph). They each made a coat of many colors with different colors of construction paper, and told Dad the story that night at dinner.
Chapter 7: Hammurabi and the Babylonians...they learned about Hammurabi's code.
Chapter 8: The Assyrians...they learned about king Shamshi-Adad who was a dictator taking over the "whole world". He just killed anyone who didn't do what he told them to. We learned that after he died, Hammurabi conquered Assur and added it to his Babylonian empire, making him the new "King of the Whole World." He was much less cruel then Shamshi-Adad had been. We also read about the story of Gilgamesh.

We've also had a lot of physical education time. In week 13 we got some snow, but it wasn't extremely cold...so the kids spent some time playing in the snow. D enjoyed the snow until it got on his hands...then he screamed. This week we got 6-8 more inches of snow, but it was bitterly cold (wind chills of -20 and -30 degrees fahrenheit), so we stayed in. We bought Wii Fit though, and it arrived on Thursday. The kids and I have been diligently doing 30-60 minutes of exercise on it each day since! We love it! It's exercise that I want to do!

D has been busy building with blocks, coloring with crayons, looking at books, singing abc's, counting to 10, and just being a 2 year old!

I have worked on scrapbooking also. I put together a Christmas book of each Christmas over the past 10 years since Tim and I met. It includes just pictures of us (no other family members or anyone else). I have 3 Christmas scrapbooks that are alike, and book 1 spanned from 1999-2007, book 2 will include 2007-2015, and book 3 will have 2015-2023. Each year gets 2 pages. By the time book 3 is completed, L will be 23, G will be 21 and D will be 17, and we will have a complete record of all of our Christmas' together through their childhoods! I'm so excited about this! So far I have pictures in place from 1999-2008, and next I have to go back and put the year on each 2 page spread and add words or stickers as I decide to.

I baked bread for the first time, and also made homemade pizzas. I've also tried a few new recipes from my new books. One of the biggest hits was Chicken Cordon Bleu...we all really liked it and it is definately getting put on a recipe card in my book! Tim had a tooth pulled on the 15th, so on the 14th decided he wanted to eat steak and he wanted it cooked on the grill. So at temperatures around 0 degrees with about 6 inches of snow on the ground, he fired up the grill on the patio and cooked steak. I have to say, it was delicious, even though I thought he was a bit silly to do that in such temperatures!

We have had a very productive 2 weeks! This week we start back with Enrichment Day. It will run 14 weeks from Jan. 20 through the end of April/beginning of May, every Tuesday afternoon. We are looking forward to this week!

Christmas Day!

We had a wonderful 1st Christmas at our new home! Here are some of the gifts Santa brought: 4 Wii games (L got Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam and Super Mario Galaxy, G got Wild African Safari and Animal Crossing: City Folk), L got a new keyboard and mouse for his computer, G got a Baby Alive Sip and Slurp doll, D got lots of Lego Duplos and a Percy duplo set (from Thomas the Train). Other gifts included books, Curious George dvds, the set of Liberty's Kids dvds, etc.

Tim got some tools, clothes, and solar panel stuff! He spent the afternoon making a solar panel of his own. He is really interested in being able to create electricity!

I got some cookbooks, clothes, and a very special gift. We had about 13 rolls of film from when we were first married and when our oldest L was born that we never developed. Tim had them developed and bought me a photo album to put them in. Not all the pictures turned out, but I got some really good ones in it!

We just had a very nice day! Here are some pictures! I hope all of you also had a Merry Christmas!

Update from the past month

I have not been good about posting here, so I will just post about the highlights from the past month. I promise to get back to weekly reports in January!

D turned 2 years old a couple days before Thanksgiving. We had a small party on his birthday at home, a party with Tim's parents the next night, and a party with my family on Thanksgiving day. We can't believe he is 2 already! The gifts that were highlights were a Thomas the Train kids sofa from us, a wooden train from Granny and Pappaw, and a radio flyer first bike from Grandma and Grandpa! Here are some pictures from the 3 parties.

Tim and I went to his work Holiday Party on December 6. His parents came over and spent the night with us and watched the kids. They played games and watched a movie together while we had a Date night out...Just the 2 of us was very nice! We would like to do that again sometime soon! Here's a picture of us all dressed up!

We put our tree up on December 14th. The kids enjoyed helping to decorate it! Baby D tried to put up some ornaments too. Here is a picture of the kids in front of the tree.

We went to the mall to see Santa on December 20th. D actually sat on his lap for the picture with L and G, but he wouldn't smile. L and G rode the train ride also, but D just screamed about it...amazing how much he loves trains but refused to go close to that one! Here is also a picture of L and G on the train.

On the 21st D tried on Daddy's big headphones and enjoyed listening to a little music! It must have made him sleepy because the next thing we knew he had fallen asleep on his sofa in the living room! (He wore his coat around for a while that afternoon because we were all dressed warmly to combat the -30 degree windchill outside...he wanted to wear his coat!)

On the 23rd I made a few dozen Peanut blossom cookies. And on the 24th (today) I made 6 dozen Buckeyes and about 3 dozen sugar cutout cookies. The kids got in on the baking when it came time to cut out shapes and sprinkle colored sugars on them! Here are pics of the finished products as well!

We ordered pizza tonight for dinner and then got a call that a gift was waiting for us to open. It was from Tim's parents...it was a Wii! We had a lot of fun for about 3 hours playing all the games in Wii Sports tonight! Here are also pictures of the kids playing bowling.

For school we have gotten through week 12. We are now off for Christmas Break, and will start back up with a better routine on January 5th.

And now it is almost time for Santa to arrive here, so we had better get off to sleep! Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to all of you.

Week 6 Report

This was our first week back to school in about a month. It turned out really well! Here are some highlights from each subject...

Math: (Horizons)
L- Read tally marks for numbers, did a word puzzle by answering addition problems, reviewed place value of hundreds, tens and ones
G- Learned about the half dollar, did addition with 70's and 80's (i.e. 72+3), place value of tens and ones

Phonics: (Explode the Code)
L- words with ar and or in them (for example, swarming and homework)
G- words beginning with a blend with an r in it like tr and dr (for example, trim and dress)

Grammar: (Growing with Grammar)
L- Sentences, fragments and run-on sentences (he's quite good at telling the difference!)
G- What a sentence is (a complete thought), Beginning sentences with capital letters and ending with a punctuation mark (so far only a period)...she says grammar is one of her 2 favorite subjects!

Reading: (CLE Happy Hearts which is new this week, and Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading)
L- Read first story aloud in Happy Hearts about a girl who always loses her shoes and learns a lesson about it. L also began learning to use a dictionary. We looked up the vocabulary words in the story. He now says he loves to use the dictionary and asked me to give him extra words today to look up!
G- read words and sentences using the short e sound (as in pet) and the short i sound (as in win)

Writing: (Writing with Ease)--new this week for both
L- did Week 1 of book 2...he did quite well with narration of the excerpts I read, and did his first dictation this week. So far so good!
G- did Week 1 of book 1...she did very well with copywork of short sentences and pretty good at her first narrations.

Latin: (Song School Latin)
Both together- This week we did chapter 5, which was a review of chapters 1-4 (good week for review to get back into it!) Latin continues to be a favorite of all of us, and on the days we don't do any written latin work we enjoy listening to the CD that comes with the book. Even baby D walks around singing "Salve salve!" (Salve means Hello!) He loves the first song on the cd! (and Latin is G's other favorite subject!)

Science:
Both Together: We read chapters 1-4 in The Burgess Animal Book (some was a second reading since we started it before, but we went ahead and started back at the beginning. We've had fun learning about different types of hares and squirrels, and also learned that they are all members of the rodent family. We are enjoying this book very much! We've been reading it during breakfast to start our day, and it is going well!
Thursday is science day: This week we talked about atoms and molecules, watched The Magic School Bus Meets Molly Cule, and did experiment #1 in our Adventures with Atoms and Molecules book. It consisted of putting water in a cup and adding a drop of food coloring to see if molecules move or not. We learned that molecules do move but it takes a while in liquids. To demonstrate Molecules, I told them that each member of our family is like an atom that bonds together and makes our family molecule! They really liked that analogy!

History:
No formal history this week. We did spend some time discussing the election process, and the kids went with us to vote on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday we discussed that the new president won't actually become president until January and that he and his family have to move to a new city and live at the White House.
Hoping to add in formal history study next week.

We went to Enrichment Day also on Tuesday. L is really enjoying basketball. G likes my music class. Baby D likes playing with the trains in the nursery!

On Wednesday evening we spent some time outside enjoying the beautiful weather and raking leaves in our new yard. The kids really enjoyed teaching baby D how much fun it is to jump in the leaves!

Our new house is coming along. I'll post a picture of the front of it on the day it became ours (it was raining though so the picture is from inside our van!)...I haven't taken any pictures yet of the inside with all our stuff here because I'm not finished unpacking! I'll do that soon. From the front the house looks so small, but it really isn't that small...it's a tri-level so half of the house is underground basically and you can't tell that from the front. The only room that is on ground level is the living room and that is the room you see with the windows in the front. We still have cleaning to do this weekend at our apartment, and we are hoping to get it finished up quickly.

It's been a very nice first week back to school! I hope you enjoy the pictures of the kids in the leaves!

G is 6!

Today our baby girl turned 6! In the midst of packing and preparing to move, we spent most of today celebrating this milestone for her. Throughout the day today she talked on the phone to Granny twice, Daddy (at his lunchtime), Grandma, Papaw and Grandpa (all different phone calls!)

This evening we invited a couple of girls over and we had a nice little party.

We ate pizza, cake and ice cream. The kids made puppets out of paper bags and played with balloons. G opened her gifts, the big gift being some animal finger puppets and a mom-made doorway puppet theater! Then the kids had fun putting on a little show with the puppets.

Everyone had a great time!

After the girls left, G and I put together one of the puzzles that her brothers got her. Then we painted her fingernails and toenails after she put on her new penguin jammies.

It was a nice birthday. G declared that she doesn't feel 6 yet, though! I hope you enjoy the pictures!