Election...a little late.

Yeah, I know it's been over a week since the election. But I wanted to post some pics on here.


On Monday, the 3rd we took a field trip to see John McCain. We went to the rally and had a really good time. It was unseasonably warm that day but the kids enjoyed it.












They expected to see McCain a little bit closer, maybe actually talk to him? I think this because my son told me the night before "Scrub off my tattoo mommy, I don't want McCain to see it!" (temporary tattoo from the day before).


(We were behind the stage :( so this is the best shot I got.)





The next day we went to the poles and split up. Sis got to go with Daddy and my son with me. We showed them step by step what we were doing. Then that night we colored in states as they were called. My son was upset that Obama had won and thought he'd have to immediately start public school again. I believe he had overheard or misunderstood things that we had said before about Obama being anti-homeschool (or more pro-public school and teacher certification...same thing).
Anyway, we explained and he is fine now. ;)

(This pic ~above~wasn't taken by me but by another local hs'er, I don't want to take undue credit...mine were blurry :P)

Halloween update:

The past week has been so busy, with this coming week promising to be even busier.
I wanted to share pics of our pumpkins, as well as pics of the happy little trick-or-treaters.
Igor, the pumpkin on the bottom was a very large pumpkin that no one wanted. If you notice his skin, it is covered with bumps and lines. There was a sign that said he needed a good home (a $20 pumpkin, marked down to $5). My husband instantly had plans to turn this big boy into Igor. Where he naturally laid on his side, we decided to work with that and make the nose the stem. The bumps and lines look like boils.

For school on Halloween we had a fun filled day. We wrote in journals about trick-or-treating and what they were going to be. Then we listened to the monster mash and other Halloween songs. After that we watched the Great Pumpkin. Then I read about the tradition of Halloween and customs, followed by a fictional story. We then worked on a craft that my son's penpal had sent to him (pictured).

Happy Halloween!

One of our big Halloween crafts that we're doing this month is our Haunted Gingerbread House! We got it at Walmart for $8 (it's Wilson brand so you can probably get it at craft/art stores as well). It was already assembled which was really cool because we had problems last year with our Christmas Gingerbread house and keeping the roof on!
It was a goopy/messy bunch of fun! And for some reason, whenever anyone got the black icing, their mouths soon turned black as well....hmmmm...wonder why? :)




As you can tell, my son has always been interested in getting things decorated as soon as possible...the quicker to eat it my dear! haha.

His technique was to simply cover his two sides entirely with icing. It works! :)








My daughter on the other hand has that little artist thing kick in and spends so much time going over ever minuscule/minute detail. Do you see how ever candy of her door is placed just so. :)

Here is the finished Haunted House, they were very tickled with it and had so much fun doing it. Isn't that the most important thing! :)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

PenPals Are Great!

The kids are working on writing to their penpals today. They are so tickled with them and it makes them both so happy when they get letters in the mail.
To do this and make it easier for them this is our process: We read the letter we've received. Then they tell me what they want to say back. I write it in letter form for them (hopefully we'll bypass this step soon, especially as the year goes on and with practice). Then they copy it over for themselves and the rough draft I wrote for them goes in the notebook of saved work. That'll be great for the future also, they'll have the full conversations to look back on.

October is here....

Well October is here...well about a week ago. It officially feels like fall. Those apples we picked are STILL sitting in my kitchen floor. We have done a lot with them. We dehydrated a bit (didn't want to do a lot until I was sure they liked them that way). And we have made apple pie, apple dessert, cooked apples, etc. The kids have had an active part in making the recipes so they have loved that. They also love showing off their creations to family members.

We have a surprise thing for Halloween that we're doing this evening but I can't write about it yet, they want it to be a surprise. It's a little early but it was cheap at Walmart and I couldn't pass that up. I'll try to take pics and post them soon.

I have to say that of all the time we have homeschooled, so far this year is my favorite. The kids are just doing so good with all of the work. My son has FINALLY stopped fighting me over work! He typically gets it done on time. Our math program (Saxon) is working out wonderfully.

We are even successfully doing journals this year. I had introduced them to my son back in K and 1st with no luck at all. We would do a few weeks then stop because he hated it, would take hours and fought the whole way through.

My rules for journaling are simple. Just draw a pic and write a story about it. It can be about anything you want. I also don't correct for errors in spelling or grammar. This is just to get them writing freely using their thought process to think of sentences and sound out words. I did print out a few different "dictionary" type pages to have at their disposal while writing. That seems to help.

My daughter though is a perfectionist, she is very adamant about getting it right. She wants me to spell her words for her. I don't typically because I want her to think of them. That's the entire reason I printed the dictionary pages, so that they can look up words if they want to, though they don't have to!

But overall, school is going picture perfect this year! We also have penpals now and the kids are loving that! We also joined our first p.e. group! Yay! I might talk more about that later in the week after our next visit.

Apple Picking...

Hey there everyone. Monday and Tuesday were such good days of school. Everything went fine and I had the epiphany that there's no way we're going to be able to ONLY do 4 hours of school like last year. With Zack's math program taking an hour along with the other things I feel are important to learn, it isn't going to happen. I like the Saxon math, it's very intensive but it's what I feel he needs in order to do math and he doesn't complain. So far the only thing he doesn't like are the timed facts sheets (where he has 1 minute to answer as many of his facts problems as possible) but he's even getting used to that. :)
I'm okay with this realization though, I just had to understand that there was nothing I could cut out, or would want to. The work that they're doing is just going to take longer. So if we start at 8 (including lunch break) we'll be done around 2 and then have 1 hour for p.e. (which is play time outside OR a kids exercise video).
But anyway, onto the good stuff. We included in our school work a home ec moment of making Chili since it was chilly...I know I'm full of cheesy jokes. We picked apples yesterday after our school work was done. We had so much that we ran out of buckets and pots to put them in. The kids loved it and did so good in helping. Now today we get to do the fun stuff of figuring out what to do will allllll of these apples!

Our First Field Trip....The Fair!

Today we went to the fair. It was so fun. I had read ahead of time of the schedule so I could plan what I wanted to be sure to hit.


Of course, the first stop was the exhibits with canned goods, and cakes and crafts and art. And the livestock place "Old McDonald's farm."

Then we stopped by the Reading Roost that one of the local libraries had set up. The librarian loved the kids instantly. She was raving about homeschool, said she even used to be a science teacher with the ps but hs'ers had such higher scores on testing. She read them three books (and was dressed as mother goose). I asked how many visitors she had had today because we were the only ones there and kids were passing us by and she said 0! We were the first! I hope she got more before the end of the day!!!!! I was so proud of my kids though because she first asked them 'do you all want to hear a book' and they enthusiastically said 'yeah!' (which, if you've read the post about my ds you would understand why that was shocking!).

Anyway...moving on, we had lunch then checked out the Remnant Yuchi Nation Native American Tribe and their stuff, it was so cool! The kids were really into that and (big surprise) no other kids were.
But ds loved the dart gun, he thought that was the coolest thing ever!
Then we moved to the rides, they had a good time overall. I enjoyed it myself!

I'm also including a pic of a really really cool entomology display that someone had submitted, it isn't ours but thought it was so cool we might start working on something like this in the future!

Additional note on the schedule....

I've still not got it right! I was thinking that it wouldn't take as long for math but it's averaging an hour per child now so that throws off the schedule terribly and we can't keep going much after lunch because 1) the kids are usually tired and ready to head outside and let out that energy and 2) I need to utilize that time to work on my own school work.
We've been running to 1 or 1:30 (before the hour p.e. outside) and occasionally to 2:30. I've been having some problems starting at 8 on the dot, but I am determined that it is possible and we WILL accomplish this small goal!
I spent a while last week trying to work out a new schedule and it looked good on paper, it always does, but putting it into the works today didn't work out. We didn't start until 9, then we just had a hard time starting, and a lot of interruptions. Well, at 1:30, I called it a day even though we hadn't done math. We'll hit it harder tomorrow. I am determined that I can get all of this done from 8am to 12 or 12:30. It has to be possible.
I am also working on a 4 day schedule with a 5th day for extras. My problem is that when I worked it up I didn't move much from the week to friday, instead I ADDED EXTRA STUFF! No, no! quit while you're ahead! :) I'll post the new schedule when it's perfected, if that ever happens! :P

Up to my elbows again!

Well, my school is back in full swing. I just completed the first week and already I'm tired. :)
But I'll get it done. I'm trying to work on my time management better and scheduling things right.

The kids school is going good, we're into week three with them. Zack is actually getting his work done without much fussing, day dreaming or complaining! I wonder if it's because she school year is new, he's finally mature enough to embrace what needs to be done and when, or....the threat of no games if we have problems.

My school work is still mostly packed, but I was able to get to a lot of it without unpacking boxes. Some things are still packed away and I REFUSE to open them until we've moved! ;) There are only a few subjects that we're completely improvising with.
History is one of those. We typically do Story of the World, but it's packed, so we were using a social studies book about communities and maps. Now we're moving to our Weekly Reader study on the election. It should carry us through till the actual election in November.

My new system of reading a little in a 2nd grade science text then working on lapbooking is going great! We are learning about how plants grow and change. For a science project we are growing green bean seeds. I'll post the pics soon and detail it more but the kids are loving it!

New School Year...New Look!

Well, that day has finally crept up on us. The day when summer comes to an end and it's time to break open the school books. As a child and even now it is always hard to do that when the weather outside is so perfect and sunny still!
I thought with the age of a new school year, it would be nice to change things up a bit and give the blog a new look. Give me your opinion...do you like it, hate it? :)
Well, our first official day was wonderful. We only had a few problems...(for those who don't know I had packed up all of our school supplies and books) such as the frantic hunt for pencils first thing this morning! There was the typical delay with handwriting with my son but I think it will get better there. All in all, we got all things completed that I had scheduled and with some of our curriculum still packed away, we made due very well!
The main thing I fudged on was art, I just had it as part of our English which has an enrichment exercise to do an illustration for the Caterpillar poem we're memorizing.
Here is our schedule. I don't adhere to it strictly but I do try to keep close so that we are sure to get all subjects included.

8am- morning prayer and pledge of allegiance

8:05am-meeting book (Comes with our new Saxon math curriculum...includes calendar and weather recording work)

8:20am- daily studies (address/phone/shoes/character)

8:30am-DS math (DD handwriting)--we use saxon math now and a handwriting workbook from walmart but that is packed away so I'm printing things off to work on)

9:00am- DD math (DS handwriting)

9:30am- english/ grammar--First Language lessons for the Well Trained Mind

9:45am- english/spelling--Spelling Workout

10:00am- snack break/choral reading

10:15am-DS reading (DD look@books)

10:30am- DD reading (DS look@books)

10:45am- weekly reader

11:00am- history--previously Story of the World but while packed away I'm using both an elem. history book for 1st or 2nd grade in addition to the weekly reader election series.

11:25 am- science--We're using a elem. science book for 2nd grade and we are going to use it as a basis for doing lapbook work. We also have the supplemental science packet that comes with weekly readers.

11:50am- Bible lesson-- Our Disciple land workbooks are packed away so for now we're going to work on memorizing Bible book names, there are two wonderful youtube videos that have old and new Testaments in seperate videos.

12:00pm- lunch break

12:15pm- m/tu=art w/th=music - this is going to be a mix...monday will be art crafts, tuesday will be an art appreciation. Wed. will be music fun time and thurs. will be music appreciation. (We will have more or less time for this each day depending on the rest of the schedule as well as the weather, etc)
The art appreciation I have no guide for yet, I may just make it up as I go along or go through my own college art book from before and have them look at pics that corelate to what time period we're studying in history and attempt to duplicate the styles. I'm not sure yet!
For Music appreciation I found a wonderful set of DVD's from Netflix called the 'Young People's Concert' and we're borrowing them to watch for it. It's an old black and white series but very in depth.

12:30pm- exercise tape---possible...I'm debating this one. I might include it or not. If I do, we have some cool videos like Dancing with the stars and kids karate type videos. I might use this as a backup for rainy days, but I'm undecided yet.

1:00pm- p.e. outside (if weather perm)