End of Sept. update

I can't believe tomorrow is the last day of September. It seems like each month is flying by even more quickly than the previous month. We have been moving on with school and finally, using balloons, hung up our model of the solar system. I should have taken a picture of it last Monday when we hung it up because now Saturn has shrunk and its rings are hanging by one piece of tape. (hopefully I'll get around to repairing it and post a pic one day). The kids at least repeat their mnemonic phrases of the order of the planets often so the model keeps it fresh in their minds. In case you need to remember the order of the planets then maybe their sentences will help you: My Very Energetic Monkey Jumped Sideways Under Nickie's (or Nathan's) Piano (or Planet) which reminds them of the order Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.
Another nice addition to our homeschool this year has been workboxes. Here is a picture.

I put the kids' assignments in hanging folders and as they complete each they move the number on the folder to the outside of their box. This system is the hot trend in homeschooling (I bet you didn't even know homeschooling had fads), but it is making me be more organized and incorporate other activities that I've picked up here and there. The kids like the boxes because they know exactly how much work they have left.
On another note, last Monday night ended up being an eventful one here at our house. It had just started to storm, and we were all sitting in the living room reading our bedtime stories when we heard a light boom sound. It sounded like something fell off the wall somewhere or hit some wall in the house. As I walked to the kitchen to see what happened, I glanced outside into the backyard and saw that one of our trees had been blown over and was laying/leaning on our roof.
By Tuesday night the tree had been cut down and the TV satellite was working again and all was back to normal. Now I still take a second look when looking into the backyard expecting to see the tree. Now our little garden will have more sun so we may see more results next year (hopefully).
On a completely separate topic from the above and my original reason for typing out this update right now before our school day was to highly recommend a book.
I have been using commentaries from Dale Ralph Davis for my quiet time in the mornings and each day I am blessed by doing so. If you're looking for a new Bible study, as my dad recommended them to me, I highly recommend any of them to you as he has several (Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings). Right now I am reading through 1 Samuel and it is a highlight of my day.

Now I've gotta go fill those workboxes I was blogging about!

Homeschool Update

We have just finished our third week of school this year and we are really enjoying our new curriculum. I thought I should start keeping a digital record of all that we are learning and doing.
We'll just see if I can keep up with the updates or if my next blog doesn't come until November :-)

We our using a new curriculum this year from Heart of Dakota Publishers. It is a Christ centered, history based curriculum. It is very organized which I love because it is less work for me.
Since Bounce is a little young age wise for this book, we are taking it half-speed, so we'll take 2 years to complete the lessons rather than one.
Despite working at half-speed, our days are full since we're also adding in Apologia science and Calico Spanish. The science curriculum is creation based and we study one day of creation for an entire year. This year our focus is astronomy. I am so grateful that we are able to bring everything back to God. For example, we were learning how God uses the stars as signs (ex. star of Bethlehem) and then we looked at the whirlpool galaxy online.


Ketchup was so excited about the cross that God put in the heavens that she wanted to print out a picture of it to show her friends.
Spanish has also been a lot of fun. Calico Spanish is a brand new immersion based Spanish curriculum. It incorporates a lot of music which the kids love. They walk around the house singing the songs. Daddy is really impressed with what they have already learned in these few weeks. I am glad that when I say "Nino y nina escuchenme. Ahora es la hora de espanol (Kids, listen. It's Spanish time)," they squeal with delight.

I also like this Spanish because it has a script for me to read so that I am saying everything in Spanish and as a result my Spanish has improved as well. Above is our bulletin board that we use; everything came ready to just put up and use - Mommy/Teacher likes!!

We are studying the colonial time period and also learned about Christopher Columbus. The kids are enjoying the texts so much that they are disappointed when I stop reading. Below are their portraits of Christopher Columbus (with 2 objects representing his importance in history: a ship and the Atlantic Ocean) and their blue water paintings with fish that we completed in Spanish class following my instructions completely in spanish.

Another of our favorite activities we have done was something we called "geography jump." We taped the outline of the earth and it's continents on the floor and jumped from continent to continent. We used it several times to mark Columbus' journeys and then the kids also wanted to put their stuffed animals in the continents in which they live.

Finally, we were able to join our homeschool group for a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art. One of the paintings we saw was by Pissaro and used what I believe the guide called "pointallism" which is the technique of using small dots of color instead of strokes of paint. The day after our field trip, the kids' assignment was to paint a picture based on the poem we had been studying. The poem was "The Storm" by Sara Colerdige and talks about a storm with its rain, lightning and thunder (I'm reciting it in my mind as I'm typing, but I'll spare you the recitation) and then the sun starts to peek out. Here are their paintings: Bounce focused on the lightning, and I was especially impressed with Ketchup's use of pointallism with no prompting from mom.


Note that the kids are still in their pajamas which is how we often are dressed as we learn. It seems as if every day there is one reminder of why I am so glad that we are blessed with the freedom and opportunity to homeschool from pajamas and sleeping in to being able to truly see how God has created all and holds everything together. Looking forward to the rest of a fun year!

Relaxing Vacation

We were blessed to spend two weeks in beautiful Arizona last month. Our time was filled with lots of animals: newborn baby bunny, swarms of hummingbirds (there were literally 15-20 hummingbirds at one feeder at one time) , tarantula, fish, frogs, tadpoles, dogs, horses and cows. Here are some of those pictures.
We also experienced a few firsts:

Ketchup caught her first fish (I guess it counts!)
Bounce caught his first fish (what a great look of amazement!)
Bounce rode a bike without training wheels for the first time. The dirt and rocks were the ultimate motivators to get him to take off those crutches.
The kids saw their first "shooting stars" and meteor showers as we were blessed to enjoy true stargazing outside of city lights. These have really meant more as we began to study astronomy in homeschool this week.

The kids experienced their first cave at Kartchner Caverns and were able to see science in action as the drips of water cause amazing formations underground.
They also had their first ride on a rowboat and had their turn at the oars - resulting in lots of circles in the water :-)

My parents blessed their grandkids by getting them an inflatable waterslide. Ketchup and Bounce spent a lot of time on this and we enjoyed watching their re-enactments of "Wipeout."
I enjoyed running in the mountains and chasing off longhorn cattle and deer.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures (as if you wanted even more):




Every evening God painted the sky for us. We are thankful that we were able to enjoy so much of His amazing creation!