Friday School

Each Friday morning we attend a prayer meeting at a friend's house. The kids play while moms fellowship and pray. The meeting wraps up at about 12:30 just in time for lunch.

Last year, I had good intentions for our Fridays. My good intentions included getting up early to work on school before we left and finishing school once we returned home. Unfortunately, getting up early is not a talent I possess. And after we returned home and ate a little lunch there just wasn't enough time left in the day for a full day of school.

This year, I developed a plan. M, T, W, and Th we do school as usual...you know,bible, math, English, spelling, history, science...the works. But on Friday we will go to our prayer meeting, go to the library, and complete two subjects at home: music and art.

This accomplishes many things for us...I've always wanted to take the kids to the library each week, but we could only manage to get there about once a month. Since we are all already dressed and out of the house, it's not such a big deal to swing by the library.

Also, adding art and music to the end of a full school day was always difficult and rushed. Since these are the only two subjects we do on Friday, we can spend more time enjoying them.

Last April I purchased Mr. Everybody's Musical Apartment 3-book set at the Midwest Homeschool Convention. It's a simple way to teach young elementary students to read and play music notes. We decided to use a xylophone with this book that we purchased through amazon.


The kids learned three notes last Friday and each played their first song. They've been continuing to practice it throughout the week.


We've chosen to study Mary Cassatt during the months of August and September. I plan to add a composer of the month as well, but haven't done so yet. We brought home books from the library last week and looked at all the beautiful pictures.

Finally, G9 and A8 both are required to read two books independently a month a complete a book report on those books. The reports must be completed by the 2nd and 4th Fridays of each month. Remember, how I told you about the new friend living in our home? Well, G9 and A8 both decided to read the above book for their first report.


I'm allowing them to choose different styles of book reports, and this time they both wanted to give an oral report and create a poster.


A8 got rather creative with her poster. She did this all on her own!

Pin It Now!

The Edible River

I believe one of the greatest benefits of homeschooling is that I have the opportunity to discover how fascinating human history is and give that to my children.

This year we are using The Story of the World Volume 1: Ancient Times .


We've started the year first by discussing what history is and how we discover it. The kids recorded a little bit of our own family history by creating this book.


Along with fact sheets about themselves, they also interviewed family members and created pages for them as well.

Please Note: The following pictures will prove that having fun with education, does not mean you must be super-crafty, and that participating in extra craft activities does not have to result in a perfect, award winning creation in order for your children to have a memorable educational experience.


Our focus then turned to Ancient Egypt, which we will camp out on for a couple of weeks. The kids are keeping History notebooks, where they colored a map of the Nile. We quickly mixed up some peanut butter cookie dough (2 cups peanut butter, 1 cup sugar, 2 eggs) because it was the easiest recipe I could find and we had the ingredients on hand. After refrigerating the dough for 30 minutes, the kids spread it out in a baking pan, carved out the shape of Nile River and placed a few cookie pyramids along the bank. We baked it for about 20 minutes (I think on 400 degrees). And because we did not have blue food coloring, we opted for chocolate pudding to represent out river.


We spread on more pudding, flooding out the Nile Delta and the banks of our river, just like the Nile would flood over Egyptians crops each year provided the much needed water.


L2 woke from her nap just in time to help us enjoy the pudding-covered cookies.

Pin It Now!

Wow! Awesome deal!!

I can still remembering receiving my first copy of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. I opened it up and didn't put it down until I literally read it from cover to cover. I devoured every article, every ad, every bit of even the fine print! It was such an incredibly helpful homeschool magazine and I couldn't wait to receive the next issue.

Every once in a while TOS will offer a great subscription price and I always try to take advantage of renewing during one of those times. I can't bear to think that I would miss even one issue! In all my renewing, though, I can't remember one time when the subscription price for the print magazine was quite as low as it is right now...seriously I'm use to TOS offering good deals, but I was shocked when I opened my email to see this sweet deal...

Right now, you can receive a one-year print subscription for just $7.95!! That's it...$7.95!

If you'd like the current issue as well, pay just $12.95. One-year subscriptions start with the winter issue. The one-year plus current issue starts with the fall issue.

Only 5000 of these special subscriptions are available from August 31 through midnight on September 15. Once the 5000 are gone, they'’re gone!

So what are you waiting for? Head over to TOS and get your subscription! Pin It Now!

Time for Science

I've been particularly excited about our science this year. We're going a little heavy and using not one, but two of the Young Explorer Series from Apologia. First, we're using Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day.


I really love everything about this series. The text reads like a conversation and Fulbright is a genious at weaving in God's truths so naturally into science.

Fun experiments are worked into each chapter. Last week the kids studied how it is that winged creatures can fly. They found out what type of wing flies the furthest by creating two "fliers" out of cardstock, clay, and pencils*. (The experiment actually called for straws, but we didn't have any. The straws would have worked better.) One "flier" had a long, thin wing...the other a short, wide wing.



They tested the "fliers" by flying each 10 times, measuring the distance, and finding the average.


This picture was pretty cool...even though you can't see our "flier", you can see the shadow.


To top it all off, we added a new member to the household just to enrich our science studies. Meet Reepicheep.

Okay...we didn't exactly get him just to enrich our studies, but it was very timely. Really, it's a rather long story that includes one of our children being asked to birdsit for a friend while they were on vacation, said child taking excellent care of said bird for 10 days...seriously, excellent, then said bird being found dead at the bottom of its cage the very day our friends were returning home, and finally extremely sympathetic grandparents who bought a bird, cage, and supplies for said child.

Reepicheep is a chatty, young parakeet who isn't exactly thrilled to be a part of our family. He sqauwks loudly and angrily each time the kids come running and yelling through the living room. I sort of think we're soul mates.

Pin It Now!

Our First '10-'11 Field Trip

Thankfully, we all survived the first week of the homeschool year, and made it to the second. This was especially good since the second week turned out so much better.

One of the highlights of the week was are very first official fieldtrip of the school year. I have to apologize up front for the excessive amount of photos. This is actually a slimmed down version from what I actually took. I'll keep my comments to a minimum to compensate.

We took a trip to our county GOP for a civics class. By the way, I didn't dress my boys in the same type of shirt on purpose...actually I didn't even notice it until just now.


G9 got us started by leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Mrs. Kim King is running for state representative and led the presentation to our group, which included about 30 K-5 homeschool students.

To demonstrate how a bill is passed, first a governor was chosen from the audience.

The kids were divided in half. One side represented the Senate and the other represented the House of Representatives.


My E6 had a lot to say.


Once a proposed bill passed through the House and the Senate, it was signed into law by the governor. As a side note..I thought it rather funny that the two laws that were proposed by the presenters were "To serve only pizza everyday in school cafeterias" and "The only subject in schools should be recess all day". Apparently, this has gone over well with the public school children when they had done this presentation before. However, the home school students were adamant in their opposition to both of these "bills"! They were all bringing up all sorts of insightful comments as to why they shouldn't "pass" them. Some of my favorites were...

"What if someone is allergic to pizza?" and

"If students only have recess, they won't have enough education. Then they won't be successful in life." (This student was probably in 2nd grade.)

For the sake of the presentation the parents had to coerce them into voting "yes". They VERY reluctantly agreed.


Our state flag.

My A8 was chosen to wear a Derby hat as the lesson continued on to discuss Kentucky traditions.





E6 was chosen to be a jockey.


The jockeys with their trainers paraded around to the tune of "My Old Kentucky Home" mimicking the Derby pre-event.


Ladies in Derby hats and gentlemen in ties clapped for their favorite horses.


G9 (in the tie) looked just like his Daddy. :o)


Here's the whole group! Fun day!

Pin It Now!

Look How Far He's Come!

Our Baby L was born exactly 1 year ago. 6 lbs. 15 oz. Such a sweet little man.

One week later he became sick and was admitted to the NICU. Eleven gut-wrenching days. But God sustained us and never left us. And despite the fact that his MRI showed 3 brain bleeds, despite the fact that he has overall low muscle tone, despite the fact that our therapists didn't even expect him to crawl by age one...


Yup! That's Baby L standing all by himself 2 days before his first birthday! God is good!!!


L1 waits expectantly.


Hmmm...seems interesting.


Oh, yeah! This is definitely my favorite...his first bite. I laugh out loud every time I see this picture.














Oh, was it a mess! I have to say a big THANKS to Chad who totally took care of clean-up.


After a quick dunk in the tub, he was ready to open presents.


What a big boy!!

Pin It Now!

Curriculum Picks

After admitting my failures and anxieties in yesterday's post, I thought I'd try a more positive approach today and share with you the curriculum we've chosen this year.

E3 is enjoying Rod and Staff's simple ABC pre-k set. There are actually seven books total in this curriculum including a Bible story book that I read aloud to him. He colors in the coloring book that accompanies the story book and then does a page from Adventures with Books and Counting with Numbers. We'll start the other books later in the year. As you can see, he la-la-loves to color. It is not uncommon for him to spend the entire 3 hours we spend in the schoolroom each day coloring in his books.

H5 is in Kindergarten/first grade this year. She's halfway through Math K which she will continue, and at the rate she flies through it, I'm expecting her to be finished way before Christmas at which point I will probably start her on Math Mammoth's 1st grade. We're using the Italic series for Handwriting, and Language Arts 1 from Christian Light Education. She's also working her way through Explode the Code 1 & 2. This child is the Workbook Queen. I'm not kidding, I can not give her enough worksheets, so these are all perfect curriculum for her.

E6's independent work is not as extensive. He's my hands-on man and does not do quite as well with a lot of workbooks. He's using Math Mammoth 2nd grade and Explode the Code 3 and 4. His entire English program is based around Explode the Code as I'm using the Teacher's Guide to add in related Language Arts activities. I've also got Beyond the Code to use with him this year.

A8 is using Math Mammoth 3rd grade, Rod and Staff Beginning Wisely, Explode the Code Books 5 & 6, Phonetic Zoo for spelling. She's required to keep a History and Science Notebook, and to read 2 books independently a month. Book reports are due on the 2nd and 4th Fridays.

Silly-faced G9 is using Saxon 5/4, Rod and Staff Beginning Wisely, Explode the Code Books 7 & 8, Phonetic Zoo for spelling. He's also required to keep a History and Science Notebook, and to read 2 books independently a month. Book reports are due on the 2nd and 4th Fridays.

L2 plays in the toy area of the schoolroom during lessons, but also has a desk set up with her own crayons and coloring books. She also frequently plays with our Preschool Activities in a Bag (shown above).


The whole family is enjoying Who is God? published by Apologia, Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day (Jeannie Fulbright also by Apologia), and Story of the World Volume 1.

And even though we didn't get to it last week, our plan is to make Friday our Art and Music Day. We'll be learning to play the xylophone, using a curriculum I bought at the Midwest Homeschool Conference and focusing on an artist and composer of the month.

I'm also hoping to add in a curriculum that I've been wanting to use for a couple of years...both are from Pearables:

Lessons in Responsibility for Boys (for the big boys)

Home Ec (for the big girls)

But I really think the only time we could fit these in would be on Saturday mornings when Daddy could lead the boys and I could teach the girls...oh, to Saturday school or not to Saturday school? Should it really be a question?

Pin It Now!