keeping up.

Life is crazy. Absolutely crazy. We recently discovered that a close friend of ours has brain cancer. Suddenly this blog seemed so unimportant and inconsequential.  
But we are still here. We are keeping up. These kids are still learning.  
  

Crazy. We were learning about leaves, apples, and pilgrims while our friend was waiting to have a 10 cm tumor removed from his brain. How is that possible? 

  
I didn’t get pictures of everything they did the last few weeks.

  

But I managed a few here and there.

  
I am still impressed with MFW, especially the kindergarten curriculum. 

 
 I love it’s progression through God’s world.

  
The week about apples was particularly enjoyable. I thought the tie in with the fruits of the spirit was wonderful.  

I know this blog isn’t life and death. But I realize that my kids education is important and I do want to document it here as much as I can. 
  
My reaction to the things that come our way impacts our girls. And while life is certainly crazy and full of unexpected horrible events, I can’t curl up under the covers and hide. Honestly, the girls’ precious existence has probably rescued me more than I have rescued them. Their little bodies and active minds keep me getting out of bed each day, no matter what depressing things head my way. 

Jamestown and the Powhatan Indians

We combined MFW Adventures week 3 on Jamestown with Beautiful Feet’s lessons on Pocahontas and a field trip to make my favorite week so far. 

We made this model of Jamestown that I found here from a sample from homeschool in the woods. 

 The girls enjoyed playing with their Jamestown settlers and Powhatan figures inside the fort. 

Pocahontas is my favorite D’Aulaire book so far. It is beautiful and seemed to hold the girls’ interest even more than the others we have read. 

 
We are blessed to live close to Jamestown and so we decided to take the girls to the actual place to make this week’s lessons more real to them. They loved it! Especially the Powhatan Village.

  

They got to go inside the wigwams and they got to grind corn.

   
The girls tried on armor. And we went aboard recreations of the boats the settlers sailed in. 

 
And GI Joe got really lucky and the blacksmith asked him to help forge a metal hinge. 

If you are able, I highly recommend these two places: Historic Jamestowne (actual archaeological site) and the Jamestown Settlement (recreation of settlement and museum). They are amazing! 

 

Ss is for Sun

We had so much fun with MFW Unit 1. Our words to remember were Jesus is the light of the world. Blondie Pie wanted to put her badge above her desk and she is looking forward to a long row of completed badges above her desk.  

 
She loved writing the letter s in salt but I didn’t get a picture of it. We did so many activities with S that I just didn’t get a picture of them all. 

She loved the cuisnaire rod activities.  

 
All three girls painted a sun this week using watercolor crayons, which by the way are amazing inventions.   

   
I have also been using All About Reading Pre-Reading program with Blondie Pie and she LOVES it. It comes with a zebra puppet and she can’t get enough of that silly puppet. Their letter activities and rhyming games have been adorable so far. Here is one that she completed this week. 

 
We read several wonderful books about the sun and the letter S but Blondie Pie’s favorite was definitely My S Sound Box by Jan Belk Moncure. Our library had it and it is excellent. She has written one for every letter and I’m hoping to find them all. 

 

C. Columbus

Unit 2 of My Father’s World Adventures found us reading a lot about Christopher  Columbus. I’m pretty sure I can call him C. now because I have now read more about him in the last 2 weeks than I have ever read in my life. Here are a couple of the books we included in our studies…

Columbus by the D’Aulaires is a beautiful book.  It follows Columbus from boyhood to a white haired man.

Pedro’s Journal by Pam Conrad is a different take on Columbus. It is the story of his voyages as seen through the eyes of a ship’s boy.  Pedro is, at first, excited to be on the voyage with Columbus but as time wears on he becomes ashamed of Columbus and his men.

We made these interactive maps of Columbus’ voyage which the girls loved again.

They love moving the ships back and forth and yelling “mutiny!”.

We enjoyed our science for this week. Our first experiment was finding out what happens when you put one egg in tap water and one egg in salt water. Do they both sink? Do they both float?

Jazzy Tot enjoyed tasting the salt water for some reason. She is one curious baby.

As you can see, the egg in salt water floated. It was pretty cool actually. The girls loved this.

The other experiments we did focused on air. Here is M&M pushing an empty bottle under water…is the bottle as empty as it appears? Nope! It is full of air that you can see in the form of bubbles as you push it under water.  The girls loved this experiment so much that they did it over and over for a very long time.

I am looking forward to moving on to Jamestown next week. I’ve got some exciting things planned for the girls!

the excitement of Creation

Blondie Pie is doing My Father’s World Kindergarten this year. If you aren’t familiar with it, it explores God’s creation through unit studies. We just finished up the introductory unit which was a study of the Days of creation. Even though she has studied the days of creation before, Blondie enjoyed this unit SO much!

Each day we read the verses for that day and then she colored the number for that day and added it to her creation numbers book. Every night she was talking about how she couldn’t wait to do the next day’s number. She carried this little book around with her and showed her daddy each night.

Here she is after she completed all the numbers. 
She also completed a drawing page each day for her very own Creation story book. Here she is hard at work on it…

Here she is showing the cover which was all her idea.

And here she is showing her favorite page – Day 6 – when God created man and land animals. Precious side note: when I told her to draw some of her favorite animals for this page, she asked if she could draw a unicorn. I couldn’t say no but she ended up drawing a giraffe, a bunny, and some squirrels instead.

Blondie Pie was so proud to have completed her own book. Her older sister is always writing books and so she was thrilled to have one that she could call her own. She can look through it and tell the days on her own now and she says it is the best kind of book to have made – one about God.

The past couple of days have been a tiny bit stressful around here but looking back over these photos of Blondie Pie’s week reminds me of how precious this time with my girls is and how important it is to perservere with them even when I would like to go hide in the closet sometimes.

Viking wrap up

This week we wrapped up Vikings. In hind sight, I definitely could have done everything in one week but I’m glad we took our time and didn’t rush our first couple weeks of school. 

We finished our Beautiful Feet study of Leif the Lucky which has been awesome. I am in love with Beautiful Feet books and study guides.

 

We made Viking Boats. These boats are from Story of the World Volume 2 Activity Book.

    
And we watched How to Train Your Dragon 1 and 2 which we had never seen before! The girls loved the movies, especially the 1st one.

M&M also started Math Mammoth this week which is going well and she started Rosetta Stone Latin which she loves. She begs to keep doing Latin after she has completed her lessons for the day. 

Next week is gonna be another adjustment as we add in Language Arts, science, and my father’s world kindergarten for Blondie Pie. 

Leif Ericson and the Vikings

 There is so much I would like to tell you about this week.  I tend to be an oversharer, rattling off every detail of our homeschool day until your eyes glaze over as you dutifully listen.  I could tell you every thing we learned and every activity we completed.  But instead I want to tell you this today…

Blondie Pie may not always remember that we learned about Vikings this year.  
M&M might not always remember that Leif Ericson landed in North America in 1000 AD…

  

Or that he helped spread Christianity in Greenland…

  
They probably will forget about this map we made of Erik the Red and Leif the Lucky’s sea voyages.

   

 But I hope they remember that we played together…

 

    Explored new worlds together…

    
And we cuddled up and read together…

   
And hopefully remembering these things will help them remember what a joy learning about God’s world can be.

 

artistic pursuits and our art wall

Today we started our new art curriculum and we are so excited about it. It is book one of Artistic Pursuits for elementary ages. The curriculum introduces us to another artist’s work each week and then guides us to create based on the concept we studied inside that artist’s work. It is so great because we get to see and discuss real works of art and also use many different kind of mediums to create through out the year. Last year our art curriculum choice really fell flat so I am so excited to have found this one this year!   
This book includes 36 lessons which is perfect for us. We have designated Wednesdays as our art curriculum day and I’m sure we will all look forward to it.

  Today our lesson called for watercolor paper and watercolor pencils.

None of us had used watercolor pencils before so it was quite an experiment. And I don’t have any pictures of us in the midst of painting because honestly it is hard to take photos while painting and trying to keep your toddler from climbing on the table and spilling water all over everyone’s work.

But I do have photos of our finished masterpieces…

This first one belongs to M&M, the third grader. I am actually really pleased with hers. She really seemed to listen to the lesson and integrate it into her work.

   

This gem was done by Blondie Pie, my kindergartener. She had so much fun and she was so proud of herself. 

  
Jazzy Tot’s was so wet by the time she got done that it wasn’t salvageable so we are calling this one hers. ; ) She did great, don’t ya think?!

 
 Here is our art wall for the year. M&M is already talking about having it full of dazzling work. And Jazzy Tot is sitting in front of it lost in what I’m sure must be an artistic daydream. 
What about you? What art curriculum are you using this year?

First Day 2015-2016

Well, today was the day!  

 M&M is in third grade this year. She is such a smart girl and I am looking forward to learning along side her again. 

Blondie pie was so excited to start Kindergarten. We aren’t actually starting her K curriculum for two more weeks but she is tagging along with MFW Adventures with her sister.   
 
  Here are all three together. Jazzy Tot had no idea what was going on but she was excited about it!  

Today we started work in MFW Adventures. We put our timeline up and started our U.S. Notebooks. 
Here is the beginning of our timeline…  
…and the end of our timeline. I love timelines. They speak to my ordered, organized side. There is just something so crisp and perfect about seeing all those details laid out in a row. I am excited about adding to this one over the school year.  

We made our red, white and blue snack at the end of the morning. We layered yogurt, strawberries, and black grapes. M&M thought this was great and asked where I got the recipe. She thought the person who came up with this was a genius!

  

The snack was definitely Jazzy Tot’s favorite part of the day!!

  
If you want to follow us this year and are interested in our curriculum choices, here is a list:

M&M ( 3rd grade): 

My Father’s World Adventures in US History –  This is an amazing curriculum that includes Bible, Science, and History as well as hands on activities and suggestions for literature and nature walks.

Beautiful Feet’s Early American History for Primary grades– This is an amazeballs literature curriculum that perfectly pairs with MFW adventures.

Abeka 3 rd grade Language arts – This includes spelling, grammar, reading, and writing.

Artistic Pursuits, Early Elementary Book 1 – I am so excited about trying this new art curriculum this year.

Math Mammoth, Light blue Series – We are switching from Singapore to Math Mammoth this year.

Rosetta Stone Latin, Homeschool Version

Blondie Pie (Kindergarten) – 

My Father’s World Kindergarten – Includes math, phonics, science, and Bible

All About Reading, Pre Reading – This is to give extra practice on pre reading skills. I am really excited about this and Blondie is excited about Ziggy the Zebra!

Blondie Pie will tag along with big sis for History and art.

I am so excited about this year! We are gonna crush it!

preparing for the year

A new year is upon us.  Our second year of homeschooling begins on Monday.  My plan is to start slow and work up to all the subjects being added in by the second week of school.  Our room is set up and ready to go.  I am super excited about our new space in our new state but I also miss our cozy little space in our old house.  I hope the girls are able to adjust well to this new year in an all new place.

We have a table beside our white board and calendar to do our group work together on…we will do Bible, history, and art here together.

group table

Next to our group table is our mini classroom library.  This summer I got organized with our books and placed them in these colorful bins and organized them with labels.  Each book has a matching label on the back that corresponds with the bin it belongs to so the girls can easily put the books back in the correct place.

library

Beside the group nook are the little ducks’ desks.  M&M and Blondie Pie have desks to do math and handwriting alone so they don’t distract each other during their independent work.  And Jazzy, of course, got her own desk so she wouldn’t feel left out…she will need it in a year or so anyway. : )

M&M’s desk

three little desks for my three little ducks.

Right now I see a full year of learning unfurling before me and I am so excited.  I am excited for what the girls will learn, for what I will learn, and for what cherished moments we will spend together.  I am so thankful that I have been given this opportunity to be my girls’ teacher.  It is a thrilling experience ripe with immense responsibilities and I am so glad to face it together with them.  I know there will be challenging days ahead right alongside the easy days but I can’t wait to begin!
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