First Week Back...

And almost done :) It has been an awesome week with school so far. I'm still figuring things out each day that will make it easier the next day, but I suppose that will happen throughout our lifetime!

Jayden started Bigger Hearts For His Glory on Monday. She is doing the left side one day (history, Bible, poetry, music, and a rotating box that has vocabulary, timeline, geography, and art) and then the right side the next day (Cursive, grammar, story time, math, and science) both days she does her reading (DITHOR - fantasy genre right now) and dictation, which covers spelling, grammar, and handwriting. We'll keep on with this schedule for a couple more weeks. We'll take a break for a couple of weeks on the reading program after she finishes each genre. It takes four weeks to do each genre, so we'll do probably four weeks on two weeks off. Bigger Hearts is more suited for a 3rd grade program so we are going to go slowly this school year, probably moving to doing curriculum four days a week until she's 8, then we'll start going 5 days a week when her enrichment classes end.

Grace started Little Hearts For His Glory before Christmas and got through unit 2 day 4.... then we started the 1st grade options for the 3Rs and I had planned on it taking about two weeks for her to catch up. She caught up in three days! So today was her first "full" day of 1st grade level work :) She did a splendid job. We will go full speed and probably do school on Saturday's whenever they don't have an activity. I want to space her and Julianna out so that I'm not overlapping curriculum year after year.

Julianna LOVES her time to do school with just mommy. She flies through Little Hands to Heaven and the extra fine motor skill books we got her, so I know she's ready for more, but she's just not quite ready for the written part of the Kindergarten curriculum. She'll start that this next fall, and do the history, science, and Bible every other day. We'll pace out the 3Rs as she needs them. Maybe every day, maybe every other day, maybe some every day and some every other day :)

Evie started speaking in sentences today. She was playing chase with Jayden and backed up against me and said "ont nent me!!" (Don't get me!) and then they started playing hide and seek and she was "one, do, do, do, do" counting for Jayden to hide. Apparently she was cheating because Jayden said "no peeking!" and then Evie just laughed and laughed. She's quickly learning, so it won't be long before she's doing preschool work as well.

I absolutely love teaching my children. It's easy to say that on days/weeks that are going smoothly, but I even love it when things don't go so smoothly. We finished school today for all three of them in less than two hours. Evie is down for a nap now, and we will be playing games until she gets up. It's really awesome!

A Week Before Christmas....

It's been crazy around here since Thanksgiving! Jayden finished up all her work before Thanksgiving, so she's itching to begin again. Grace only had three workbook pages to go and we finally got around to them yesterday. Julianna keeps reminding me that we have to buy her new school books, and Evie keeps finding anything to write with and writing everywhere!

Matthew and I went on a vacation for a week The girls stayed here at the house with Grandma and seemed to have a great time! We came home to lots of presents and goodies.

We started our Jesse Tree advent study; I tried to incorporate our goody making as much as possible. I'll put down our schedule at the end....

I'll be ordering our new curriculum (Heart of Dakota) and books/workbooks in the next couple of days... They are all so excited to start back. Apparently, four weeks off is way more than they need. And we still have at least one week, if not more to go!

I'm going to stagger their starting times to make it easier on myself. Jayden will start her reading program (Drawn Into The Heart of Reading) as soon as we get the new books in, then I'll start Grace after a couple of days on her 3Rs to catch her up even with her history/Bible/poetry, then after Grace's birthday I'll start Jayden on her curriculum and then the next week add in Julianna. I still haven't decided if we will be doing 4 or 5 day weeks. We'll see how it goes :)

Jesse Tree Study:

Adam and Eve - Apple (Genesis 2:4-3:24) - fried pies

Noah - Ark or rainbow (Genesis 6:11-22, 7:17-8:12, 20-9:17) - cake balls (with sprinkles)

Abraham - Knife (Genesis 12:1-7, 15:1-6) - cutting something with a knife

Isaac - Ram (Genesis 22:1-19) - pb balls

Jacob - Ladder (Genesis 27:41-28:22) - make pretzels in the shape of ladders

Joseph - Colorful coat (Genesis 37, 39:1-50:21) - cathedral windows

Moses - Tablets of the law (Exodus 2:1-4:20) - make scrolls

David - Harp (1 Samuel 16:17-23) - play music and sing

Isaiah - Lion and lamb (Isaiah 1:10-20, 6:1-13, 8:11-9:7) - chex mix

Mary - Lily (Luke 1:26-38) - go smell the flowers at the store

Elizabeth - Small home (Luke 1:39-55) - gingerbread house

Joseph - Hammer or saw (Matthew 1:18-25) - build something

Jesus - Christmas story - birthday cake for Jesus

It's all coming together!

Warning... this is a lot... but I want to make sure I have this written down for myself :)

Jayden will finish up our unit studies next week (we will end with Thanksgiving unless she just WANTS to do Christmas), will finish up her math review this week, and finish her reading program (Drawn Into the Heart of Reading) biography (including the project) before Thanksgiving! After Thanksgiving, she's going to finish the last three verses in A Reason For Handwriting 'A' just so we can have that book completed, and I'm going to start her in the next book for DITHOR and that's IT! until we start Bigger Hearts for His Glory (3rd grade curriculum) half speed sometime in January.... I have to order it after the first of January, so who knows when I'll start it. We'll take a break when Grace gets to a break point.

Grace will finish up unit 3 in Little Hearts For His Glory (K and/or 1st grade curriculum) and will be finished with the right side (basic - 3 R's) K options completely by Christmas.... we'll pick up 1st grade options after the new year. I'll start her back about a week or maybe two before I start Jayden in Bigger and catch her up by doing left side (starting in Unit 4) one day and then two days of basics (starting at the beginning) so she'll be caught up even at the end of unit 6, which will take 10 weeks.... then we'll take a break for a week or two, and start back at traditional half speed (history/science/Bible one day, basics the next) for 3 or 4 units, which should take us to the beginning of the term on our attendance chart for the state, at which point she'll be technically 1st grade and we'll go full speed, probably starting in unit 12 or so. She'll also be doing the Emerging Readers set from Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory half speed, taking breaks as needed.... it's a pre-cursor to the reading program Jayden is doing.

Julianna is going to finish up her preschool workbook by Christmas and we'll get her another preschool workbook to do after that. I'm still undecided if we will start Little Hands To Heaven at the beginning or in the middle. Either way she'll start LHFHG half speed in September. She will technically still be preschool age, but she will be more than ready for K level work by then. We will go half speed all the way through LHFHG with her. She will finish it around Christmas 2012 and we'll start Beyond and do it half speed all the way through.

I haven't decided yet when Evie will start preschool. Not any time this year... I might start her next fall doing LHTH one or two days a week, depending on when/if she actually wants to do school work like her sisters. Right now she's content just to mess up all the big girls' work! :)

So just a recap, when the new school term starts next summer (July 1st) Jayden will be about 1/3 of the way through 3rd grade work, Grace will be about 1/3 through 1st grade work, Julianna will be finishing up preschool, and Evie will be 2. If they were in public school starting next fall Jayden would be starting 3rd, Grace would be starting 1st, Julianna would just be starting preschool, and Evie would still be 2 ;)

When did they grow up?

Autumn Unit Study

We FINALLY finished our Autumn/Leaves unit study today. I was supposed to finish last week, but I forgot about a few things I had intended for her to do until this week :) She made a lap book, which I will post pictures of later today. It contains definitions of words, poems she copied, poems she wrote, a mini-book on leaves and leaf structure and an essay on fall she wrote :) She also learned about six different types of trees we have on our property, wrote an essay on elephants (following a zoo trip) and learned how to alphabetize.

We will start a short unit study on Halloween things (bats, pumpkins, more poetry) Monday and it will include a lot of crafts and decorations :)

We also began a reading program this past week (Drawn Into the Heart of Reading). She's reading "Squanto: Friend of the Pilgrims" right now. She had her first assignment other than reading yesterday... it was a vocabulary assignment teaching her how to use hints and clues in the reading to figure out the meaning of a word. It really helped her understand how that works because there wasn't really a word so far in the book that she didn't know. So she picked 'village' and was able to see how the context pointed her to knowing what it means. She also began learning how to use a dictionary to find the meaning of a word.

Grace is moving ahead with her reading and will be starting the Emerging Readers portion of Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory in January. She is still working through Little Hearts For His Glory at a good pace.

Julianna is having fun working in her workbooks for now, and we'll pick back up with Little Hands to Heaven in February.

Evie is absolutely driving me insane! :) She is so busy and into everything and FAST! She is the main reason I'm not doing preschool with Julianna until February and not doing school every day with Grace right now. I'm hoping she is more easily entertained and for longer amounts of time 4 months from now :)

I'll be back to post some pictures from our learning adventures a little later on...

Where Did September Go?

I cannot believe it, but it's already October! School is going so well that I don't want to jinx it.

Jayden is really enjoying the unit study. We added in another part of her school for the fall. Climate study. She will record the high and low temperature and precipitation type and amount every day this month. I also ordered the reading program that goes along with her curriculum that we will start in January. The program is called Drawn Into the Heart of Reading. Depending on how fast you go, you study nine genres of literature in either one or two years. We'll see how she does, but we probably will do the two year plan for 2nd and 3rd grade. I wanted to go ahead and get at least one genre done before we start the rest of the curriculum (Heart of Dakota's Bigger Hearts For His Glory) so that it will be old hat when we introduce the new harder work and more writing. We haven't gotten very far with the cooking, but it'll come. She's watching me more, and that counts for something, right?

Grace is still doing great with her school work. At this point I'm able to get about 2-3 days worth of school in with her each week... I'm happy with that for now, then we'll start going 4-5 days a week in January.

Julianna is doing much better. She's really growing up and maturing.... she's screaming less when things don't go her way and using her voice more.

Evie is almost 18 months now and her vocabulary is just exploding. She's also the most affectionate of all our children and will just randomly give hugs and kisses and smile at you. She's also on the last legs of potty training. We have a couple more weeks I would say before I'm comfortable with her going diaperless out and about.

So that's been our days lately. Lots and lots of outside time as well... daily walks even for all the girls. And very very good days even on the bad ones!

The Best Laid Plans....

After much deliberation a few months ago, I had our homeschool journey for the next couple of years all planned out. Well, leave kids alone for a couple of months and they'll blow those plans to bits.

Jayden is still loving our unit studies. I can't say at this point how much she's learning, but the focus academically was to get her reading and writing more.... it's working! On the household side of things.... she made bread the other day and it turned out really good! We haven't done much more with that yet because Evie has been exceptionally clingy, and when she's not clingy she's into everything!!!

Julianna is having a hard time lately.... the responsibilities of being almost 4 are taxing to a little mind ;) But as far as school goes she's having a blast! Right on target for my plans!

Grace however, during the past couple of months when I was really focusing on Jayden, decided to just blossom! She's reading quite well, listening and comprehending super, and being quite bored with what I was doing with her. So I told her the new plan was to start Little Hearts For His Glory (Heart of Dakota) slowly in a few weeks. She said she wanted to start now, so I told her we could do a little bit today. I was thinking we might get halfway through one day of plans.... NOPE... in about 45 minutes, including an interruption, she had completed the whole day plus her awana verses. So, even my well thought out NEW plans have been upended and she'll progress full speed with LHFHG starting today.

Autumn/Leaves

We have finally started. I picked this week to "start back" at school. Of course Evie picked this week to be majorly clingy and have a fever :) So Jayden started back, Grace and Julianna had a little bit each day, and I survived!

Since Evie wasn't letting me put her down, we didn't get to do much cooking or cleaning. Jayden made bread one time, but that was it... we'll do more of that as the fall moves along!

Jayden has done a great amount of copywork, about 10 pages of math, and identified three leaves/trees from our yard. I had her pick three different leaves, do a rubbing of each one, write down the type of tree it was from along with three sentences about each one.

She also has done an acronym poem (beginner, it doesn't really make a poem) and a poem about Autumn. Here are her poems:

Little
Evergreen
Apple tree
Free to fall

Autumn

Hello falling leaves
Goodbye green leaves
Hello brown grass
Goodbye green grass
Hello cool
Goodbye hot sun
Hello hot fire
Goodbye air conditioner

She also finished reading the last two chapters in The Courage of Sarah Noble and I let her have a "break" in reading by just letting her read a Junie B Jones book for fun.

We are making a lapbook with the autumn/leaves theme. We will be working on this theme until about the middle of October. I'll post a picture of her lapbook when she is through with it. She still has a little fact book about leaves, alphabetical order work, some poems to memorize, and an essay to write on fall, as well as defining some vocabulary words and a few more poems to write.

It's awesome to have her begging to do school and having absolutely no complaining... I might schedule breaks for unit studies at different points in our curriculum for her....

Home Stretch...

As of today, we have about two weeks left of school for Jayden before we take our break from curriculum. So we'll finish up this week, go to the beach next week, do the last week of school the week after the beach, and then head to Birmingham on the way to Mississippi State! Then when we return I'll introduce Jayden to our plans for the fall. Grace and Julianna are right on track for finishing up around November or so. I love it when everything comes together just right!

This week, we are still trying to read Romeo and Juliet and Charlotte's Web... I might just turn them in and start again with the two of them after we get back from Birmingham. We just aren't having the time to read chapters right now. We are also taking a small break from memorizing right now... we'll start that back up pretty soon with Awana verses instead of poems and hymns. Jayden and Grace are both in Sparks and Julianna is in Cubbies now, which means she has one verse per week she is supposed to learn.

As far as other books, here's the docket for this week...

Owl Moon
Stone Soup
Papa Piccolo
Follow the Drinking Gourd
and they convinced me to get Little Babaji again :)

When we get back from the beach we'll start our science notebook on leaves/trees. And I may or may not take a notebook for them to fill in during our beach trip... maybe one thing per day... we'll see :)

Job Cards...

I've had several people ask me to put up a blog post about our new found way to do chores that works and gives the children an opportunity to serve others and earn money at the same time.

We call it "Pick a card, any card" here... I have no idea what else you could label it as... ask your kids, they'll know! :)

I made a list of all the rooms/areas in the house, and then other jobs that I wanted done (dust, wash windows, feed dogs, etc.) and wrote each one on a separate index card. I then made envelopes out of construction paper of the child's choosing and put their names on them and also made a larger envelope for myself. This was so that I could see who had what job, and so I could know what I had to do. Then I sat down with the three big girls and explained to them what was to happen with each card. I still have to tell them occasionally, but we've been doing it about two weeks now, and they pretty well know.






































Each morning, after I've had my coffee, each of the three big girls picks three cards at random. They cannot see what they are choosing until after they've picked. I read all of them out loud so everyone knows what jobs are to be done by whom, and then they have an opportunity to trade with each other. I help them figure out what order they want to do the jobs and I lay out their cards in that order under their envelopes. As they finish a job, they put the card in their envelope.

After they have completed their three cards, then they are allowed to pick one of my cards (the leftover ones) if they want to and do it for a quarter. It's not much money, but they have the opportunity for 7 extra jobs/day, so that would add up to us paying out 1.75/day if they did all of my jobs. We've averaged about a quarter/day for them.

At the end of the day, before supper, I'll check their envelopes and mentally go over what those rooms looked like the last time I was in there. If someone hasn't done something properly, they get a do-over. If they still don't do it to their abilities, they have to pay me a quarter for having to do their job. So far we haven't had this crop up.... I pretty much expect Jayden (7) to do just about as good of a job as I do, Grace (5.5) is given a LITTLE leeway, but not too much, and Julianna (3.5) pretty much has to do her best at this point... working diligently and not complaining.

As of right now, Evie does not pick a card... she'd just eat it. But she does shadow me when I'm doing my jobs and she helps (put the toy in the box, put this in the garbage, take this to Jayden, etc.) so I consider her in training. I can see her picking a card herself by the time she's two.

My house has not been this clean since we moved in 4.5 years ago! It's so nice to not be concerned about someone dropping by, or having to run around like a mad-woman if we are having out of town guests.

August is here!

I still cannot believe it. We have now hit August, which in terms of our lives means that the year is as good as over! Fall is an extremely busy, fun time of year... Mississippi State University football season tickets means that 6 weekends will be spent away from home by Matthew and at least one other person, but that person will change from weekend to weekend... Grace and Julianna will be starting soccer at the end of the month and it will go until the end of October. Then you have birthday week... then there is Thanksgiving. After that Matthew and me will be going on a cruise (hopefully, we haven't booked it yet) and then Christmas/New Years/Grace's birthday. Then we can slow down for a minute :)

I have decided that I'm not going to rush things with regards to school this fall though. We are finishing up week 31 (out of 34) in Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory with Jayden this week and will hopefully get week 32 done between now and when we leave for the beach August 22nd. That's going to be harder than it seems because Jayden is going to camp the 9th-12th from 10am until 4pm. So that's a week we will not be doing school! Then I'm hoping to finish up with Beyond by the end of September. After that we'll take a little bit of a break from curriculum... She'll have Awana for Bible, cooking for reading, math and science, card games for math, LOTS and LOTS of outside time in the beautiful fall weather, and at some point in October I will order our new reading program Drawn Into the Heart of Reading, which is also put out by Heart of Dakota. We will start Bigger Hearts For His Glory sometime in January.

Grace and Julianna will continue using Little Hands to Heaven until we finish that and they finish their current basics.... kindergarten level for Grace and preschool level for Julianna. When we finish that I will order the 1st grade level basics for Grace and K level for Julianna and we will start with Little Hearts for His Glory. That may be in January, but with Jayden starting a new guide in January I might bump them to February or March.

Now, as far as this week goes....

... finishing up unit 31 with Jayden
... still working on Charlotte's Web and Romeo and Juliet (we had company over the weekend and didn't read too much)
... still working on Psalm 117. For whatever reason it will NOT stick in my head!
... got some more great books to enjoy...

Miss Rumphius
Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?
Andy and the Lion
Corduroy
Grandfather's Journey
We're Going on a Bear Hunt
How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World
Mirette on the High Wire
The Snowy Day

We are having a lot of fun working through our booklist. I used booklists from Sonlight, Five in a Row, Before Five in a Row, and Ambleside Online and combined them to be able to have a great selection for the fall. We may get finished before winter though, and that's ok :)

Last Week of July...

So today is the last day of July... I cannot believe it is August already! Of course, I'm wanting August to fly by so we can get to cooler temperatures, but at least yesterday was nice. I was able to wash a load of clothes, a load of towels, two comforters, and two sets of sheets... the only thing I didn't hang to dry was one of the sets of sheets... it was 9pm at that point. :)

On to school, learning, the kids, and growing up...

Evie is all over everything... she is everywhere and learning all the time! I cannot keep up with her. She has so many words and knows EXACTLY how to use them to get what she wants. She has a combination of signs and spoken words actually. Her receptive language is outstanding... there have been many times that I've called out to the big girls to do or get something and she has done it. Therefore she is still my favorite ;) She can now reach onto the counter, which I suppose will make me keep it tidy. She also can climb onto just about anything to get what she wants. Her favorite pass-time as of yesterday was to climb onto the counter and feed us all grapes and to pull the numbers off of the school calendar. I'm guessing August won't have a chance to be up this year :)

With the other girls... We finished up what we were going to get finished with the last set of books we read. They did NOT like the Brer Rabbit book and they would complain every time I said I was going to read the Pooh book... so I turned it in and told them we'd get it again later to finish it up. This week we have Romeo and Juliet and Charlotte's Web for our main readings and some great other books...

Madeline
The Little House (one of my favorites when I was little...)
The Runaway Bunny
Eric Carle's Animals Animals
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car

And Jayden checked out a level 2 reader and another Magic Treehouse book... she so desperately wants to read those, but just can't get into them enough to finish. I think they are just a tad above her fluency level right now. She CAN read them, and can understand them, but just not fast enough yet.

They loved "Mix a Pancake" and we are going to learn Psalm 117 for this week.

Praise the Lord, all nations!
Glorify Him, all peoples!
For great is His faithful love to us;
the Lord's faithfulness endures forever.
Hallelujah!

As far as curriculum... Matthew is using the Little Hands to Heaven (Grace and Julianna) Bible reading as our family worship readings. I told him that it would help me get their school in if he would use it AND it's passages specifically geared toward the ages of our children... a little short for Jayden's abilities, but it lets her get to the meat of the passage, and it's not too long to expect Evie to sit through. And Jayden is finishing up week 31 out of 34. My goal is still to finish before we go to the beach.

I've really been happy with the way our learning has been going the past few weeks since I've become more intentional. We've had some rough days, but we are moving forward.

Awesome week (or two)!

Well, my last post didn't quite all happen in one week... but I got most of it done! Plus we went to Grandma's house last week and we had vacation Bible school this week.

At Grandma's house we did some of our reading and a LOT of swimming. The girls improved, and I found a reason for water wings... Evie is fearless, and the wings let her do all the activities the big girls were doing without us saying 'No!' too many times. She LOVED the freedom, and is quite the swimmer! She was jumping off the diving board and going down the slide more than the big girls were! Not the best pictures of their abilities... but here's some decent shots. Julianna can swim, but wanted the wings because Evie had them... Jayden and Grace are really good swimmers and don't need to jump in the shallow end nor do they need Matthew to catch them...






























































Bible school was a great, but exhausting, time for everyone. They all learned a lot and had a really good time.... LOTS of crafts and games!

We did not finish the Pooh Bear or Brer Rabbit books, but everything else was read and learned.... we will finish those books this next week. I cannot get them to say the poem, but I'm 90% sure they know it because I've said it to them so many times :) So now we are off to a new poem... again by Christina Rossetti. This one is "Mix a Pancake"

Mix a pancake,
Stir a pancake,
Pop it in the pan;
Fry the pancake;
Toss the pancake, --
Catch it if you can.

I've also been teaching Julianna "Bean Porridge Hot" and other little rhymes that the others know.

Someday it will not be so hot outside and we'll actually get outdoors a lot more....

More Intentional...

I've come to realize that since Evie has been mobile I've been less intentional about the children.... especially with their learning. I've been abiding by the curriculum as opposed to using the curriculum to supplement their learning. I've been just surviving... and now, I need to get back to being intentional with them. Evie is proficient with the stairs now, and the house is as baby-proofed as it's going to be.

So with that said, here's what we've been doing this past week.

*History theme - Pioneers Go West by Covered Wagon
*Bible is a review week this week...
*Poetry study - "Written in March" by William Wordsworth
*In math we are back to adding double digits, but amazingly Jayden's picked that up since last time we were there...
*Storytime is "All of a Kind Family" by Sydney Taylor, which they absolutely LOVE because the family is the mom, dad, and 5 sisters, and the character trait we are studying is integrity.
*Jayden just finished up reading Animal Adventures and is moving on to The Bears On Hemlock Mountain... it looks scary and she's excited about that!

Part of my new-found intentional-ness is reading more classic literature to them... I've fallen away from that except for what is involved in school. So I'm using the book lists from AmblesideOnline Year 0 and working up from there. On the queue for this next week is

*Winnie-The-Pooh/The House at Pooh corner (AA Milne original version)
*The Little Engine That Could (Watty Piper)
*Make Way For Ducklings (Robert McCloskey)
*The Story of Little Babaji (Helen Bannerman)
*Brer Rabbit books (Joel Chandler Harris)
*Poems and Prayers for the Very Young (Martha Alexander)
*A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson)
*Aesop's Fables
*Mother Goose
*other classic children's poetry

In that intentional-ness is Charlotte Mason's "A Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six" that I now have hanging on the fridge to remind me :) I did this (without knowing) with Jayden, and I need to be sure to not leave the others out!

So this week we are working on learning "Clouds" by Christina G Rossetti

White sheep, white sheep
On a blue hill,
When the wind stops
You all stand still;
When the wind blows
You walk away slow,
White sheep, white sheep,
Where do you go?

Getting excited!

We are nearing the end of our curriculum for Jayden (Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory) and having a blast with it. She absolutely thinks George Washington was the best person ever and is really enjoying listening to our Paddington book. Math has moved on to fractions instead of the dreaded addition, so she's enjoying that again, and she's ALMOST through with her nature book and is excited about going on to the next reader. I'm getting excited about the next stuff we are planning! After we end the curriculum I'm going to be teaching her how to cook.... how to use the stove, read recipes, and put meals together. The end goal will be her being able to fix a meal from start to finish, and theoretically having her fix a meal once every couple of weeks or so. Then we will be moving on to our next curriculum (Bigger Hearts For His Glory) which from the looks of it is a very very exciting year! We'll start out slowly and build speed as we get into the winter.

Grace and Julianna are doing well in their curriculum (Little Hands to Heaven) and we are on schedule to finish sometime in November or December. Tomorrow they get to build the wall of Jericho and get to tear it down by eating it (it will be made out of graham crackers and peanut butter)

Evie has been working on climbing and walking/running... she is all over the place. Here that's not so bad, but other places that aren't familiar I feel the need to actually watch her.... she gives me a workout!

Lots of Learning!

Besides the fact that we've been "doing school" just about every day for the past couple of weeks, getting back in the groove after playing during early spring, we've been learning a LOT.

We've still been outside most of the day.

We've planted in our garden and planted seeds in pots. We have talked about how different/similar each of the plants are and seeds are.

We got to watch ants in action. We saw a few scouts come and investigate a spoon on the ground, find peanut butter on it, and go back and tell the others. Then we got to watch seemingly millions of ants come out from under our driveway....

We have learned about the doppler effect by listening to the ice cream truck. We have also learned the value of money by discussing the prices from the ice cream truck and comparing them to the prices in the store.

We have started t-ball/coach pitch with Jayden and Grace and have been working on hitting the ball and fielding with all three big girls.

Some of the day is inside though.

We have seen ginger root, garlic, and onions and talked about the differences and similarities.

We've cooked and cleaned.

We've discussed the nature of strep bacteria and how antibiotics can help keep others from getting strep throat :(

Both inside and outside we have been working on behavior... trading desirable behaviors for undesirable ones.

And Evie has been working on walking and climbing :)

I love homeschooling because you can do SO MUCH MORE than just school.

Great Work!

Matthew went out of town this past weekend, so I used this time to catch up on pictures and do a LOT of school to fill in the time. So I have pictures from the past two units of Little Hands to Heaven (our preschool curriculum) work Grace and Julianna have done, a bit of Jayden's work from today, and maybe a picture of Evie...

I'll go in order from oldest to youngest...

Jayden -

handwriting,
















copywork,
















and a project to see what foods are made of mostly water and mostly fats... she chose pancake, candy, orange, and cake and found out that pancake and cake are mostly fat, an orange is mostly water, and Smarties candies are neither.








Grace -

First her letters: D - dirt, E - elbow mac, F - playdoh? but it was fun!











Now two of her art projects:

First is Joseph in the desert and his brothers didn't recognize him (ie, he was hidden from them) - she drew a tiny Joseph, covered him with a post-it and painted with a glue/water mix and then sprinkled sugar over the glue for sand.




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Next, we studied about Moses. This is where she cut grass out of green construction paper, glued it down, cut out an oval for the basket they put baby Moses in, and then glued it among the grass in the river.






Julianna -

her letters, again with the dirt, elbow mac, and playdoh...












Her hidden Joseph in the desert








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her finished Moses in the river and she was singing our Fingerplay "baby in the basket float float float" at this point she was floating :)








And Evangeline on her first birthday, complete with a bruise!

The Birthday Month

We are now in the midst of birthday month in the East household. That combined with a beautiful spring have lead to little formal schooling, lots of work, and a huge amount of outdoor play!

I think we've managed to fit in one week's worth of curriculum in the past month, but we've worked on baking and icing cakes, designing cakes, making birthday presents, looked at the calendar every day, and have learned how to act in social situations :) We've also had dentist and doctor appointments where we have seen x-rays and have talked about lots of science!

And like I said, plenty of outside time! The girls have been outside at least 6 hours every day, and sometimes more than that. They have been reading nature books and finding things in our yard, pioneer books and pretending to be pioneer children and thinking of what games they may have played, and have caught butterflies. We also got to witness flying ants come out of the colony and take flight yesterday!

We are also trying to plan a field trip/vacation, and we are thinking maybe Washington, DC. I'm also thinking that might be too much and we might do better to do something in the mountains. We'll see where that takes us.

Wow...

It's been a while! I didn't realize how long it actually HAS been... Evie was sick for a good chunk of the time between the last post and now, and she's still not sleeping well, so doing much more than what is required is asking a little much. Fortunately she's getting better, just not sleeping.... I'm tired. :)

We had FamFest at church this weekend. It was a lot of fun... the kids had a great time learning how to be helpers for mommy and daddy around the house, Evie actually had fun in the nursery (hopefully she doesn't get sick again), and me and Matthew had a great time being together without wrangling kids!

We've kept going with school... I guess out of the past month we've done three weeks worth of school. Jayden learned about Ben Franklin and Deacon Shane Drowne (she loves insects, so learning about grasshoppers was a lot of fun) Mostly they've been doing a LOT of outside time, and especially playing in and near the stream in the backyard. Oh, and she's starting multiplication... it apparently is easier than place value :)

Grace and Julianna are having fun with their school too... they are really remembering things and making connections. It's nice to hear them recall things from previous days of school.

Yesterday was the first day of spring, and it was so beautiful! We were at church most of the morning, but then we were outside pretty much the rest of the day. We ate lunch outside, played a good bit (took a break for the MSU-UNC basketball game) and we painted some wishing rocks for some good friends.... I wish I would have kept their wishes they made, but I didn't think about it. I'll have to try to remember exactly what they said....

Grace for Lela - "I wish that she have a fun time and that she be my friend"
Jayden for Laurel - "I wish that she would have a great week!"
Julianna for Liv - "Wish her a birthday cake because she like birthday cakes!!" and then she insisted I draw a birthday cake :)

They all signed their names and wrote little notes for their friends. We were going to dye eggs, but we just didn't get around to it.... sometime this next week maybe?

After that we went to the airport for a picnic supper and a great time of watching airplanes take off and land. That may sound boring, but it's really quite fun. It's really fun watching each of them see an airplane for the first time. The lone picture I'll have on this post will be of Evie's reaction to the airplanes (forgive my goofy face!) She's saying "hey people on the airplane!!" and right before this she signed 'airplane'. We had hoped for more of her face, but her hand was too wild... she was just beaming!!

Lots of stuff...

First of all... My goal for the new year was to make it a habit to keep the house tidy. I think I've succeeded! If I skip a day sweeping, the floor REALLY bugs me. We pick up stuff out of the floor daily and vacuum SOMEWHERE in the house daily. AND laundry is kept up with.... I might miss a day, but it's not so bad because I don't have 235 days worth waiting for me to do anyway! :)

Now, on that same note...

The scope and sequence for North Carolina first graders says that for history/social studies they are to be learning about family. Well, in our history we are learning about Pilgrims, Puritans, and the Revolutionary War. So, how in the world am I supposed to do that. OK... yes I'm slow ;) this is just now becoming obvious to me.

We ARE a family... they are learning about family because they are part of the family. They are with us 99% of the time. They are involved/see arguments and solutions (conflict resolution anyone?) they are involved in decisions to a certain degree. They get choices and see standards set and carried out. They know where we stand as a family and what our beliefs are and will defend them! They play together well, and I would say that they are close friends. We are working on loyalty right now as well as being kind to each other in the privacy of our home, but they are still young so that will come.

They know how a household works... They've watched me pay bills, and they've heard us talking about when we have money to go out to eat and when we don't because other things come first. They've already learned to a degree that credit cards are bad and that we are to be good stewards of our money. They are learning how to take care of our house... Jayden can do just about everything I can do just about as good as I can do it! She is slowly learning to cook. Grace and Julianna can do a great portion of all we do around the house, as their height and strength allow... although I don't trust them with knives and the stove yet... my problem, not theirs! And they've learned through seeing and helping how to care for a baby, although they don't know all the happenings while they are asleep.

So, though a schooled child will not learn these things so easily, it is just a part of life with a homeschooling (large) family. I'm not knocking parents who send their children to school! I'd be the same way! Doing chores and paying bills while they are away... not having nearly as much of a say in decisions because there wouldn't likely be as many decisions.... and they definitely wouldn't know the baby stuff :) and my mom was the same way, which is why I'm JUST NOW figuring out how to keep house and I've been married for almost 8 years.

And, now, last on the list....

We went to the museum Monday. We had a great time, and came home exhausted! Here are some pictures....

Someday I'll get pictures up!

But today is not that day :) This week has been too insane.

First and foremost, Evie has been sick. She's 10 months old. We thought it was just a cold, but then she stopped sleeping, and then she stopped nursing, and no one else amazingly was sick?! Except Matthew and myself had a bit of something, nothing major, just something. So I made an appointment to find out why she wasn't eating. While waiting for the appointment time I started trying to figure out why she would be the most sick, the other three girls wouldn't even have the sniffles, and we would be a little icky. I settled on some sort of bacteria. It would make sense that Evie would share it with me (nasty little baby kisses :) ) and I would share it with him, but the other girls would be fine (they run from nasty baby kisses). So... long story short, we went to the doctor, it is a sinus infection, and she's on antibiotics. We should know if they are working tomorrow afternoon. But she's still not nursing which is causing me all sorts of grief.

But somehow through all that we've still done school. Everyone is enjoying the preschool curriculum and activities. Julianna is practicing diligently on writing her name. Grace is caught up in math and fine motor skills, we just have to catch up on handwriting to get all of those to the same spot. And Jayden is having a good time doing her things too because they are special just for her. She got to do a math "game" where she used cheerios and the spinner from Chutes and Ladders to learn how to add and carry, she got to design her own ribbon of merit like the Puritan children got in school, and she is really enjoying reading!

Olympics

While we wait on confirmation on our official status of homeschoolers we are going to be doing random other things. We will be doing a minor unit study on the winter Olympics that I know will be including geography and probably statistics as well as P.E.

We will also be doing a bit on Valentine's Day (although not much, probably more art than anything) Presidents Day, and Mardi Gras ... hopefully I can find a King Cake around here.

We will continue doing handwriting and Bible with Jayden, and handwriting and math with Grace.

I had posted on the Heart of Dakota message boards on how to figure out how to spread them out, and the creator of HOD curriculum answered and suggested that since I'm currently doing nothing other than the basics with Grace that maybe I should do the preschool curriculum (Little Hands to Heaven) with both Grace and Julianna, along with K level right side (reading, writing, fine motor skills, math) of Little Hearts for His Glory for just Grace. Then when we finish that we would Little Hearts for His Glory with both of them with K level right side for Julianna and 1st grade for Grace... keep them together instead of separating them.... So I'm giving that a go, and so far it seems to be working well. Grace is enjoying it because there's more to school than just the workbooks now and Julianna is enjoying it because she's getting to do school again.

I'll admit... the main reason for there being an issue at all is because I got lazy and Evie got active :)

On another note, I think it has finally become habit to keep the house neat and clean. I have to make myself DO things like laundry and dishes, and I have to actually make sure the girls do their part instead of dictating chores, but I'm not behind at all and the house looks nice if I do say so myself. Well, right now while I've been making this post Evie has ripped apart napkins and strewn toys all around the floor, but for the most part I'm not embarrassed for people to stop by unannounced any more :)

Getting Started...

I finally sent in our paperwork to register our school yesterday. Now I wait to see if I did everything correctly. :) Hopefully we'll officially begin school in March, as in keeping records and things. I would love it if they'd let me count the school we've done since the beginning of the year, but I'm guessing they won't.

But, because of that we are taking it slow and easy until March :) Just doing what we want to when we want to do it basically. We are focusing on Awana verses and handwriting mainly, but also reading and math.

I'm also trying to figure out a rough schedule for the next couple of years (yes YEARS) to see how I want to spread people out or combine or what I want to do with them. I really don't want to be doing the same "grade" back to back. I really want to be able to skip a year between doing the guides for each of them. But it seems the most logical way to do it would be to combine Grace and Julianna. Do the preschool program (Little Hands to Heaven) and for Grace add in Kindergarten level math, reading, and handwriting starting now until we finish it. Then do the next program (Little Hearts For His Glory) after that with both of them but doing first grade basics with Grace and K basics with Julianna. But I'm not super sure that she'll have the fine motor skills to be able to do handwriting and to write the answers in math. She struggles greatly with holding a crayon/pencil not in a fist.

I know it doesn't matter really in the long run... it'll all work out. This is just the time of year where I start planning for the next year, and I already know what curriculum we will be using, so I have to plan SOMETHING!

Lemonade stand...

Yes it's nearing the end of January... I know that... my kids know that. BUT, they do not know that people will not buy lemonade any time during the year. And due to that we got a good easy lesson in economics!

Jayden and Grace were going to do a pretend lemonade stand yesterday. They made a sign, took their little table up to the road and sat there. Matthew reminded me that we have lemon juice in the fridge, so I mixed up a bit of lemonade for them. Then they told me they were selling cups of it for 50 cents each (or in their words, two quarters...) So the bank (of Mommy) gave them four quarters for change. They went out there and proceeded to sell all of it in less than an hour!

After playing outside for a while longer, they came inside and started the math/economics lesson. I spread their money from their cup out on the counter. Jayden counted it and told me how much there was (2.75). I reminded her that she had taken out a loan from the bank of four quarters (yes I talked about how each one was 25 cents and four of them make up a dollar) and that she needed to pay the bank back. She paid back the bank, then she counted again (1.75). I then told her about when you start a business and someone else uses their time and equipment and 'stuff' to help you get started that you pay them for "parts and labor"... I charged her 15 cents for the lemon juice, water, sugar, cups, and pitcher and 10 cents for my work. She had to add up 15 + 10 and then pay me what she owed me.

After that, she counted again and figured up that they made a profit of 1.50!! I'd say a profit of 1.50, plus learning how to start a small business is pretty good for a lemonade stand on January 26th! They are already having Matthew and me help them figure out how to make more money in the summer.

It's finally the weekend!

Before I get started... if anyone has tried to make a comment on here and it's not gotten published, I'm sorry. The only comments I've been asked to moderate have had a string of hyperlinked periods after them that goes to a strange looking website. So I've not published them. I'm sorry if this has happened to anyone.

And I'm exhausted. It's actually the middle of the weekend and I'm even more than usual exhausted. Evie is teething. Jayden had a sleepover last night and didn't go to sleep until around midnight, and as usual she was up at 6ish... so she only got about half the normal amount of sleep she gets. Grace has some sort of swollen gland or something on her neck and is complaining of it hurting, and considering that she has an outstanding pain tolerance that is a lot. I have no idea what's wrong with her.....

As far as school goes... We had a pretty good week. We only got 3 days of curriculum done, but the other two days were filled with learning. Jayden finally caught up with her reading, did handwriting every day, and has learned about 6 Bible verses.

Grace did a bit of school this week too. She did puzzles like crazy, as well as playing Guess Who. She also did 3 pages of handwriting, 2 pages of her fine motor skills book, and we went over 22 lessons of "Reading Made Easy" They were pages she's already done, but its' been a while so I wanted to see if she could still remember them. She did great until she got bored with it ;)

I've figured out that I'm happy with only doing 3 or 4 days of curriculum a week as long as they do some sort of something I can count as school without searching for ways to make it sound good on paper for 4 or 5 days a week. And with basketball on Monday and Saturday, Awana on Wednesday, and 4-H on Friday it's pretty easy to get there!

Hopefully, we'll all stay well and I'll be able to take pictures and post them next week.

We are back.

Now that we are fully back in the swing of things after the new year I'll start back posting again. :) The holidays were so busy and tiring, but we have pretty much recovered. 

I'm getting on the ball with actually regstering our school... I'm concerned that there is something I'm missing, but hopefully in the next month or two we'll be official! 

We are now in week 18 of Heart of Dakota's Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory with Jayden. During the four-ish weeks of our break we did one week of our curriculum as well as about a weeks worth of "extra" basics to catch us up with reading, handwriting, and keeping us on track with math.  We also focused a lot on Awana verses during this time, and Jayden has now learned how to memorize/learn something on her own and then come recite to me! This will make life easier on both of us. :)

One of the fun things we did was learn the different parts of a river: source, banks, bed, mouth. We also got to make a model of a river out of playdough and actually put water in it to see how each part worked and was formed. And I know in the next few weeks we are going to be making canoes out of bread dough and baking them to eat.... fun stuff!