Art Contest Winner!!!

To most of my family this is old news, but I have not had a chance to post pictures until now because we just got hot his picture back from being displayed at the local library.

Back in February Braeden entered one of his many artistic creations in the county art contest for kids. Later in March we got a letter saying he had won some special recognition in the contest. Turns out he won 2nd place in the K-3 category for our entire county! He is super proud of this accomplishment! Here is a picture of Braeden and his winning picture along with the ribbon he won! The title is "Braeden riding a jetski"

The Butterfly Garden

As part of our curriculum this year we had a butterfly garden. We decided to wait till a little later to actually get the caterpillars so it would be warm enough to let them free outside after they changed into butterflies. The caterpillars arrived in the mail in a small box. Inside was a little plastic tub with 5 caterpillars and their food inside. They were pretty small when they arrived, but boy did they grow fast! The kids were amazed and wanted to look at them several times a day to see if they grew or not. A few days after they arrived they began to go into their crysalis stage. The kids liked learning about the life cycles of butterflies, and we read The Hungry Caterpillar book over and over. Lyriel wore her Hungry Caterpillar outfits too just for fun! Here are some pictures of the butterflies after they changed!

All 5 caterpillars lived to be butterflies, can you see all of them? They are hard to see!

Watching as one of the butterflies prepares to fly away and be free!

A close up of a butterfly with its wings spread...

I wanna taste one!

My camera wasnt fast enough to catch one in flight. The pictures I took of the caterpillars and crysalis were mysteriously deleted from my camera

If you now want to get one of these and raise a butterfly garden in your home heres where to get one
http://insectlore.stores.yahoo.net/livbutkit.html
They have many other types of insect kits too! Id like to try the praying mantis kit next

I hope you enjoyed seeing our pictures!

Nest Week

We actually have been doing the N week for 2 weeks now. They just didnt get the sound and kept confusing N with M soundwise. Plus Laurel had a high fever for a couple of days and didnt feel so great. She was able to fight off whatever was making her sick though

One of the activities this week was to draw pictures of a bird building a nest, then sitting on eggs, then baby birds, then an empty nest. I mixed them up and had them put them in order, I could see their little minds working! They figured it out pretty quickly and now ask for more story sequencing activities.

Braeden became obsessed with mail this week after getting a card in the mail. He wanted to learn to write letters and mail them. I found this site when looking for a good way for him to practice first.
DLTK Kids Letter writing practice
Theres even pretend stamps to cut out and glue on! This was really fun for them!

I also found a neat place to print out their names, or whatever really, for writing practice.
Handwriting for kids

And some nice pages for Laurel who isnt exactly good at writing yet and needs some basic practice
Preschool printing practice

I hope some of those links helps someone out there!

Apple Week

This week has been such fun! On Monday I introduced the new letter for the week, A, and they both already knew the sound. That made it easier for them. I got out the alphabet flashcards and Braeden said he wanted to try saying his letter sounds by himself so I said go right ahead. I was so surprised, he got every one right except for X, but who uses that letter much anyhow? LOL Im so impressed by his progress in such a short time! He really was ready for this, and he is loving it! Laurel then sais she wanted to try also, she knew quite a few, but needed help with most. That real progress for her too, they are truly learning at home! I had to show my doubting husband this!! He couldnt hide his surprise, hes so proud of them. It was a wonderful moment for all of us.

Laurel liked writing her A's, they both did awesome with their worksheets this week. Lainey even tries to sing along with the ABC cards with us. She has picked up a few by heart as well.

We are in our new classroom finally! I will post some pictures at the end :) It is so nice to have one place to keep everything, instead of here and there around the house. We do not always have school time in there but I can find what I need quickly, and I can also lock out the 2 year old when she tries to invade and destroy the room when we arent in there. The kids know this is THEIR room, they are free to use the art supplies as long as they put them away when they are done and try to keep baby sissy from getting the really messy things like paint. They come find me real quick to get her out haha.

We have already made applesauce several times this year, and canned it, so we didnt do it again this week as the curriculum called for. We always have apples on hand, we also had red pears to compare tastes to, made a great snacktime! We made a craft on Friday by tracing their hands, cutting them out, and using it for a tree trunk. We added leaves and a little bird and glued on a poem included in the teacher book. We were supposed to dip fingers in red pain for the apples but I didnt have any so we will add that later. They enjoyed this too, and we have them on the walls now of our class. People coming to visit can see we do something around here LOL!

OK here are some pictures, enough of my endless chatter :)

Now keep in mind the walls never got painted.....

Heres their work table and a big fabric map I found at walmart years ago.



My desk, storage wardrobe, and chalkboard which fell apart. See the ugly hole we had to make in the wall to fix the chimney? Yeah thats getting fixed soon I swear!



Bookshelves which are hiding the spare bed in case of company. Bin full of fun stuff :) and the art cart. And a pretty new window!



Another bookshelf and Laineys table. The play dough table is hiding in there too and another big easel my Mom made my older kids like 15 years ago.


Heres the craft we did using their hand tracings, I only included one since they were all basically the same. This is Braeden's hand.....I used a stencil for the bird, I couldnt freehand one that looked right.

Leaf Week

I guess first I should apologize for not updating much here. My life is always seriously hectic, but then on top of all that we lost our main computer. The hard drive just died on us. I now have a laptop, with windows vista on it. Both I had never used before. Vista wasnt much different but the laptop sure is. Im not overly fond of it LOL! After getting a real mouse for it, it was easier to use, but still very different. I miss my number keys on the side. I use those a lot for the business.

Also because of the computer loss I lost a lot of pictures. School pics that is, I backup regularly so I only lost about a months worth. So no pics of what we have done lately, sorry!

Leaf week was really fun for the kids, Laurel especially liked it because her name begins with L. Oh and by the way she will write her L letters with much enthusiasm! I figured out she likes to write letters with straight lines, like L, and E, and A. If they have curves, like S especially, she wants nothing to do with those. But thats OK for now, she is learning all the sounds and recognizing the letters just fine.

I have this book here called How to Homeschool. I found it at a yard sale and got it cause it was cheap with the intention to pass it on to another curious Mom who was thinking of HS'ing. Well this book had turned out to be a HUGE blessing to me! One of the suggestions inside was to take one day a week to skip all the paperwork and class time and do projects outside weather permitting, or go on field trips etc. So this week instead of doing the activities recommended by MFW on each day of the week, I combined them all into one big day of fun. This went over really well, and now each day we get through the class time much faster so they have more time to play anyhow. I have found that being as pregnant as I am (25 weeks) I have at least one day a week I feel kinda BLAH anyhow, so instead of sitting cooped up for a whole morning we go do stuff.

Some of the things we did was going outside to collect different leaves. When I pointed out the difference in the leaves they immediately starting looking for the differences themselves. After we got all the tree leaves in the yard we went to the garden and got some big squash leaves, and tiny leaves from bushes. We also found a treasure! On our property is a tiny peach tree which has never produced anything edible. Well this year it did! Only a few near the top of the tree, so we shook them down and although they were small they tasted so good. The next day they were all gone, we would have missed them had we not been out that day. What a sweet little blessing God sent to us!

The kids enjoyed doing leaf rubbings with their leaves the next day, and we pressed some between book pages. We have one houseplant, a Christmas cactus, I do not have a green thumb and kill everything else unintentionally. Our teacher book has me to pull a leaf rfrom the plant and explain how the plant was like God, and we are like the leaves. As long as we are attached to the plant we have everything we need to live and grow. But once we are detached we begin to die. Each day we looked at the detached leaf and talked about it. It got wrinkly, and turned dark, and began to wither away. This was a wonderful example of how we need God in our lives everyday, because without him we begin to change into someone different, and for a while we may think we are OK, but in reality we are dying inside. They got the message, and not in a scary way. I love this curriculum so much, I am so thankful we were led to it by dear friends! You know who you are!!

Day 2 and 3

No pictures sorry

I will post pics of all their artwork at the end of the Creation unit.

Ive never seen kids so excited to have school, they wake up ready to go, they can barely stand to eat breakfast first! Braeden is loving every part of it so far. He has picked right up on the letters and  sounds, we did a lot of that stuff last year with him but I didnt test him or anything, I wanted it to be all fun and no pressure. Part of the lesson is to use flashcards and mix them up and let them guess at what letter it is and surprisingly hes gotten them all right but 1 so far. Little b and d are easy to mix up so I expected that. Today he corrected himself with those without me telling him though!

Laurel is also surprising me, she loves art but does not have the skills for coloring and drawing that Braeden has. Hes been a natural since age 2, I just encourage her to try hard and anything she colors is just fine. She can use scissors so well! She has done all of her cutting out and for the most part stayed in the lines. This morning cutting out her numeral 3 was the hardest so far. She brought it to me twice wanting me to do it for her but I told her to just take her time and go slow and she could do it. And she did! She was so proud too, this is very encouraging for her. Shes doing OK with the letters. She is 4 though, and if all she gets this year is an introduction and a good solid start then thats fine.

Lainey has been a royal little pest though while we are doing school. She is not happy coloring a page different from theirs, she doesnt want to be quiet at all, and it kills her that they are not running around with her at the moment. She has preschool stuff to play with, loads of puzzles, you name it. Shes so used to playing with them she doesnt want to play alone I guess. I hope she gets more used to the idea that for about an hour a day they wont be able to play with her the whole time. Today we took a couple of breaks and one would play with her while the other finished up something else. Next week when we start the music introduction she will love it though, shes a singer!

Thats about it, not too exciting I know. Its raining and cold here today so no outside play. We may go to the library later if I can get my work done for today. (We have a home business)

Thanks for reading!!

First day of homeschool!

I was up really early this morning, I actually cleaned the kitchen and did 2 loads of laundry before the kids woke up! Wow! I made oatmeal with cinnamon and raisins, a favorite here, for their first day of school breakfast. Laurel was too excited to eat, Lainey didnt eat much, but Braeden chowed down, thats my boy!

Heres how we started our school day today.....


Everyone took their turn at the growth chart, and I marked their height.
Laurel insisted on wearing this dress today, it way to big!


See why I call them my stairsteps?

Then we read our bible story and discussed it together. In My Fathers World curriculum the first 10 days are all about creation, and what happened on each day while God created our world.
On day 1, God made the air and the earth, and said "Let there be light" and He named the light day, and the darkness night. So our lessons today were about darkness and light. Each day they color a numeral and add artwork to create a reminder of what was created each day. Im putting these in a binder so they can look back and see all they have done all year long.

Here are the kids coloring their number 1



Then they cut them out and pasted them on construction paper...



And yes they cut them out all by themselves! I was impressed!
Ive always done a lot of art with them though, guess it paid off!

Heres what Lainey colored today, not bad for a 2 year old!


Then we did our bible verse and made a page with half white and half black to represent darkness and light and glued on the verse. For some reason my camera did not take the picture of those? Ill get a picture later on though. I think Ill do those all in one post at the end of the 10 days like my friend Michelle did. Shes so smart!

Then we used our alphabet chart and sang the alphabet song slowly while following along with their finger. We then used the A and B flashcards to go over those 2 letters for the day.

By this time they were losing interest so we took a break. We had a special snack of oreos and milk. The oreos was another idea I gleaned from Michelle, the cookie represents darkness and the filling represents light. They loved showing off their light to daddy!

Mmmm light is yummy!

My silly sweet boy!

Eating like a little lady in her playsilk cape!

Do you think he likes this snack or what?

Its been an awesome day! I dont know what I was so nervous about, we just jumped right in and it was all good. I just had to get started :)

Thank you to everyone out there who has encouraged me, thanks to God for allowing me the  blessing of being able to do this for my children and for Him.  I cant wait to do it again tomorrow!

One last thing I want to mention, as I am sitting here typing this out, Ive been feeling my baby move inside me  for one of the first times!  Ive felt a slight movement a couple of times before but nothing like this, how sweet!  Encouragement from within!!

Tomorrow is the BIG day!

Tomorrow will be our official first day of homeschooling!

I told Braeden earlier today that we would be going to bed earlier so we would be good and rested for homeschool, and he cheered! This was before church this morning. Then this evening at dinnertime he didnt come down to eat so I went up to look for him and he was in his bad covered up and asleep! If you knew my Braeden you would be shocked to hear that story LOL

He is so excited and so is Laurel. She is still all bright eyed sitting by me as I type this, at 11 PM, so much for early bedtime for us huh?

I just had to share the little story, keep us in your prayers as we start our homeschooling journey. Ill be posting pictures and updates as time allows. You all know how crazy my life can get over here!

Here are our homeschool ID cards for the year...........enjoy!

Box day! AKA our curriculum is here!

Our curriculum box arrived yesterday from My Fathers World! Here are some happy pics of the kids opening it up and going through and playing with some of the learning toys. Ignore the messy background, we are starting to can our garden and I had a ton of packages out to mail for the next day LOL

Opening it up.....

Pulling it out, how can I pick just one thing?

Braeden (5) has been asking for one of these!

What a cheeser!

Laurel (3) and Lainey (2) working a puzzle together

Even my 11 year old (Tommy) had to play too  :0)

Looks like the lacing shapes are a hit!

She had to do it her way LOL

Lainey likes the stacking pegs too  :0)

They didnt even pay attention to the books and things with all of that to play with. Im so excited to start putting together their things to get started. Just 3 weeks till homeschool officially starts for us! Id LIKE to set up a cute area for them to work in, Im going to get busy seeing if I can work it in somehow. I have a couple of ideas but I need to give away a few things first to make room. Hopefully Ill be posting about that soon!

Ordered our Kindergarten curriculum today!

I decided a few weeks ago to use My Father's World for our Kindergarten curriculum this year, but me being who I am thought I could get a better deal if I kept checking ebay and various other places. Well I did pick up a couple of items and kept thinking to myself that I have all kinds of time to find the rest. I need to stop thinking this way, really I do LOL! I have enough to do around here without adding more!

I took the plunge and ordered the entire deluxe curriculum and now I can stop thinking about finding pieces here and there and focus on getting ready to start K! I got my letter from the state that we are approved to homeschool this year, its official!

Id like to thank my friend Michelle for giving me this nudge in the right direction! She posted pics of her kids opening the MFW box when it arrived. The happy looks on their little faces still make me smile when I think about it! Im going to do the same thing when our box gets here too. We dont plan on actually starting until PS does here, so that I can spend time with my oldest daughter who's a senior this year, sniff!

It's been a while since I have posted to this old blog! I deleted quite a few of my old posts, personal reasons, hope no one will miss them.

Preschool Fun

This week we did "A" week! All kinds of activities and stories and both preschoolers know their A sounds now They insisted I take pictures of some of their work, and Im posting them here for family and friends to see too. They look very proud dont they???







I wanted to add here that we do NOT just sit around and do paperwork all day. Quite the contrary! We might spend 15 minutes every other day doing some sort of worksheet or something like this. We sing, and play dolls, go outside and play, go to the pool, etc. I do try and make it a point to read to them at least once a day, they pick the books. They have a huge white board they love scribbling on too. So it isnt all work around here!!

First days of homeschooling

The past few days have been our first days of homeschooling. Ill be teaching our youngest 3 children at home, hopefully for their entire school years! We have 7 children in all, 3 of which are in public school and 1 who has graduated.

This year Ill be focusing the most attention on our 4 year old son, he LOVES learning and I decided not to wait until the traditional September dates to start school with him. Hes been more than eager to do everything Ive tried with him. Today he wrote his letters (ABC'S) in his write on wipe off book mostly all day. Hes VERY proud of the way he writes, and had to show me like 100 times LOL.

I will also be doing preschool activities with my soon to be 3 year old daughter, and the baby (girl) who just turned 1. She already loves coloring, and surprisingly has not eaten a crayon yet! Blocks are a huge favorite of all of them. They love being read to, so I just bought the Five in a Row books to use as part of their curriculum. We are also using the www.letteroftheweek.com curriculum. I also plan on buying the book, teaching your child to read in 100 easy lessons.

I scored a whole box of homeschool books at the thrift store on Monday, not all for this age, but I couldnt pass them up! I also have some books coming I bought online from a friend. I want these first few months to be a very enjoyable time for them to get used to learning at home, I want it to be FUN for everyone! I really hope Daddy gets involved too.

Ill be posting about our journey here, and someday I can come back and read and remember these first days together!