The past couple of weeks...

Just a quick update for what Jayden's been doing in school the past couple of weeks. The above picture is her interpretation of the nativity.... otherwise known as "this is what happens when Jayden finds pencil, paper, glue, tape, and scissors."

She's been diligently working on handwriting, and math is starting to transition to multiplication and division while working in higher addition and subtraction (above 20).

In science, she has done a couple of experiments on light. One was bouncing a ball back and forth to see how light moves in waves. The other one was on how shadows change based on seasons and time of day. They both worked together well and helped her see how it is dark in some parts of the world and light in others, as well as how different seasons have different lengths of daylight.

She has done two poetry sections and illustrated them....

"The Cow"
And "God, Who Made the Earth"
She also learned about how Native Americans made intricate blankets... They would trade their land with Pilgrims/Pioneers to get colorful material. She also is learning about King Philips War.

The same unit she read "The Cow" she also studied about cows and learned about what is made from milk, etc. This is her cow art.


I'm hoping to get one more week of school done between now and January 10th. We obviously have Christmas next week, are leaving to visit relatives for New Year's, and Grace's birthday is January 5th and her 'party' will be the 9th, so a lot going on, but I think we can manage five days worth of school in all that.

I'm getting there...

I haven't updated in a while because we've been busy. Super busy. We've kept up with school, and even did school on Saturday, but I can't even remember now what we have done. I know Jayden made a woven blanket out of construction paper, but that's about it :)

Evie has started crawling, and is the curious one like I thought she'd be. We are constantly having to take things away from her and find new things that she might like instead. She's also in the throes of teething and is hurting. A lot. :(

Today the kids are playing baby.... they have their slings and are carrying their babies and nursing them. I love it... such little mommies. :)

I've also been busy working on gifts. I'm a little over halfway done with Evie's blanket, have Evie's skirt to the point of hemming, and will get another one to that point today.

Off I go again.... busy busy busy...

A Rainy Wednesday

Ok, well, this morning was rainy at least. I decided to actually change our routine up a bit so as to hopefully make the screaming and fighting a little less. I separated all the children into different areas with different projects and switched every 20 minutes. I had the computer center that was pulled up to starfall.com, the pattern center in the living room that had pattern boards with little shaped blocks to follow the pattern, and the school center in the school room.

Now, we have done a wonderful job this week of staying on task with school even though there has been a lot of fighting and fussing... way too much cooped up time!

Jayden has continued to have fun with measuring, and also had review in math. She finished her Singapore 1A book this week, and will begin 1B next week. She is reading a level 3 book and doing a great job with it, and we are reading "The Trumpet of the Swan" for our fantasy book. We are focusing on the story element 'mood' right now, and she's having a lot of fun imagining the faces of the characters in the book.

In history, we are reading about how cows, horses, sheep, and pigs were brought from Holland to New Amsterdam (New York City), and because of that, our science is focusing on these animals as well. We have had two experiments this week in science; one was making ice cream and one was making cheese. We can't do the ice cream one until we go to the store because it calls for gallon size storage bags, but we made cheese this morning. The girls had a lot of fun with that, especially watching the curd separate from the whey. They all tasted the finished product, and Julianna wanted to eat some on bread. Here is a picture of the cheese spread on the bread. Mommy was not brave enough to try it. We didn't wash the whey out very well so I know it was sour.


We did not get Grace caught up last week, but she'll be caught up by the end of this week. It's hard to get her motivated to do school again after a long break. That is a good reminder for me why we school year round. Hopefully, once we get back in the habit she'll enjoy it again.

School Time

School is back in full swing now. I finished the week out for Jayden early, minus a page of handwriting and her 4-H class tomorrow, and I'll be trying to do a good bit of catching Grace up to the same week of school as Jayden. I should be able to do that completely tomorrow.

Before I post about what Jayden has been doing in school, here's our Jesse Tree so far. Dec. 1 - creation, Dec. 2 - Adam and Eve, and Dec. 3 - Fall of man (or in their picture Bible, the sneaky snake)Here are the pictures of Jayden's clam that I alluded to in the last post. The "paint" is white corn syrup with food coloring mixed in. We made red, yellow, and blue and then mixed them to find out the secondary colors. Then she painted them. As a warning, it takes a LONG time for the paint to dry. Like days. This was science, art, and history.

Here is her finger-painting of the flag of England (St. George's Cross). This was art, geography, and history.


This is Jayden's version of a bush during each of the four seasons. This was art, science, and math since she had to divide the page into four sections. You can't really tell, but the 'winter' bush has snow on the branches.


And this one might be my favorite AND my least favorite of her projects all in one. Whoever came up with this should be shot. This is a snake. Jayden drew it, and then she had to glue paper "holes" from a hole punch in a pattern as the scales on the snake. A really neat way to help her learn how the scales are, but oh my goodness was it hard to do!! I helped her with it because it was nearly impossible to expect a 6yo to sit there and do that. Anyway, this was science, art, and math (patterns). And also patience :)

In math, she's been measuring, which has been really fun because a lot of the lessons have been finding things longer/shorter, taller/shorter than her or something else. She's really had fun with that. She's also been doing patterns. So making Christmas decorations has been an added lesson. She also got to do an experiment in science with making pepper separate in a bowl of water using the tip of a bar of soap. She wanted to keep doing that one over and over and over again.

Trees

I think we've just about finished our Christmas tree. All that's left I think are what the kids make between now and Christmas. Matthew also has the lights up outside and all we have left are finding the indoor decorations and putting up the kids tree in their room. The tree is our first live Christmas tree and the only thing on it not made by us are the lights and a 'stocking for Jesus'.


We also started our Jesse Tree. We traced all of our hands and cut them out and made the tree. The kids will be making paper ornaments that go with a Bible study for each day between Dec. 1st and Christmas. All three are making an ornament, but only one is going on the Jesse tree each day, the other two will go on the Christmas tree.


In school, Jayden is learning more about the Pilgrims. She finished a craft of a clam with a popcorn seed as the pearl. This is supposed to help her remember both what she's learned about clams in science and that the Pilgrims made clam broth and the Indians brought popcorn for the first Thanksgiving. She also made an English Flag (St. George's Cross, not the Union Jack) using finger paints. I'll get pictures of those up when I get them uploaded.

Catching up

Well... My first post and then nothing ;) What can I say. We had a virus... the computer kind... and I couldn't get online easily until today.

Thanksgiving was wonderful. We made Thankful Turkeys and before we had dinner we all said something that we were thankful for, I wrote it down, and we all put it in our turkey.


We also played some of the games we learned about in school that the Pilgrims and Indians played at the first Thanksgiving.

A relay race


broad jump

ring toss

Friday morning we got up and went to the mountains to pick out our Christmas tree. It's our first live Christmas tree and everyone was excited!


Saturday we started decorating it. I have a feeling it will take us until Christmas to get done.

We are going to light our first Advent candle today. We've never done Advent candles before, but thought it would be a neat tradition to start. But it is not the time to do it when children are falling asleep at the table.

I'll have pictures of the Christmas tree and candles later today or tomorrow.

My first post!

I'm about as excited as I get... about Thanksgiving? Christmas? No. We came up with a name for our school! None of us are creative namers. My first dog's name was Stray. Matthew's blog is East's Weather Blog. Jayden named our dog Puppy.... you get the idea!

Cornerstone Academy it is!!

Cornerstone as defined on dictionary.com

- something that is essential, indispensable, or basic
- the chief foundation on which something is constructed or developed

We want to lay the basis for both our children's education and faith. It is our God-given job as parents to disciple our children, and we feel we cannot accomplish this if they are away from us for 8 hours a day. We also feel we are more capable of teaching our children because we know them and care for and about them more than even the best teacher in a school system can possibly be.

A lot of people ask us "what about socialization?" Well.... kids aren't supposed to "socialize" in school?! They get in trouble for socializing, or at least they did when I was in school. But, our kids have more friends than we do. They play with kids in the neighborhood at least once or twice a week. We go to church as a family on Sunday mornings and our Sunday school class is an integrated class, which means all age groups attend, and we get to supervise their social interaction with people of all ages. They do AWANA and children's choir at church, which is almost all about socializing. And they play sports once they are old enough. This winter we are actually doing basketball for the first time. That should be interesting.

We don't know what we'll do in the future. We are taking this one year (and a lot of times one day) at a time. In the mean time... we love it and wouldn't have it any other way. It's loud, whiny, lots of screaming and crying and fighting, and full of love.