Inauguration Day

We watched the Inauguration this morning as part of school and that's pretty much all we did. I purchased an Inauguration Day Fold and Learn from FIAR digital.
These fold and learns are pretty interesting. They are different than regular lapbooks. They contains lots of info and pics but is not set up the same as a lapbook. I went ahead and did my own thing with it and made it into a foldnlearn/lapbook. It came out pretty good.



I wasn't sure how I was going to explain this all to the kids but interestingly enough they were able to follow everything I was telling them. I gave them so much information about presidents, vice presidents, slavery, Lincoln, but they stayed with me! That was a pleasant surprise!

I was also surprised to see just how excited they got when Obama finally made it to the platform. X4 was jumping around saying "There he is, there he is!" They seemed to be very happy that Obama was now our President!

Very Last First Time

This week we are rowing the book Very Last First Time. It is the story of a girl named Eva, and the adventure she has under the sea.
Geography: Northern Canada
Culture: Inuit culture
Language Arts: vocabulary words
Science: dress for the season, temperature, who lives in the tide pool.

Here is a pic of the lapbook we made.

Ocean Unit Study & lapbook Part II

This was our second week doing the ocean unit study. This week we got more into, God creating the land and the ocean and what they mean to us and all the creatures that live in it.
They learned what a continent is and how many and their names. We also learned their location and the oceans names and location.


We also read the book Arabella, about a grandfather his grandson and the sea. The book is out of print but somebody from the Five in a Row message boards knows Wendy Orr and contacted her. She sold us the book, shipped it from Australia and signed it!! Thank you Wendy! It is a wonderful story and my kids enjoyed it very much!
I have a world puzzle that has the continents and oceans, they played with that everyday. We finished the second lapbook, oceans and continents:




Then on Friday we watched Planet Earth The Complete Series dvd. We watched Shallow seas and Ocean deep. They got to see all the ocean creatures we learned about last week plus we got to see which ones live on which ocean and how they travel from one ocean to another for different reasons. The Great White footage was incredible!



Amazon.com has the complete series dvd for under $20 if you buy it used, which is what I did. If you buy it new, you're looking at $50+. This dvd is going to come in handy when we do our Zoology unit study at the end of the school year.

Next week we're going back to doing a book a week.

Show and Tell Friday

It's fun to stay at the...

Y M C A

Past Lapbooks

I wanted to post about the lapbooks we've done so far. I'm going to be posting pictures of our lapbooks this year but I don't have any of the ones we did when we first got into lapbooking, so here they are!

Our first lapbook, Mirette and the high wire!

Madeline's Rescue

Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge

Climbing Kansas Mountains

The Story Of Ferdinand

The Wild Horses of Sweetbriar

How do we Homeschool?

Hmmm...this is a tricky question. I would call myself an eclectic homeschooler. I do unit studies (FIAR), we do Charlotte Mason Method, stuff like reading living books, copy work, nature studies. Bible character studies as well.
We are doing Letter of the Week with X4 which is pretty much a poster with you guessed it, the letter, number, shape and color of the week.


We also do a bit of unschooling, especially with my son.
Once we are done with formal school(reading weekly book, work on lapbook, math, phonics, copy work) I let my kids loose and just let them pursue their own interest, of course there is no tv, no video or computer games. I try to make sure the place is filled with lots of books for them to pick up and read or just look through. A6 loves to draw, so I make sure there is plenty of paper and crayons, color pencils around for whenever creativity strikes.
Toys like legos, Lincoln logs, puzzles, building blocks stuff like that. Not everything has to lead to an educational experience, but the truth is they have tons of fun playing with this stuff.

Right now they are really into Star Wars Clone Wars, they got lots of action figures for Xmas and they are constantly playing with that and making up stories.

We practice piano everyday and listen to Suzuki everyday. I'm starting to introduce other music cds as well. Since they are into Clone Wars right now they've been listening to the Episode I soundtrack.

Plus they get to run, jump, kick, dance, throw all over the house and in the backyard. We have a park right next to us and lots of grass right behind our house, perfect for little boys who just want to run!

For right now all of these things are working just great for us, I'm sure it will change as the kids get older and we get into more things.

Why do we Homeschool?!

I was chatting with my cousin on facebook today and she was asking me questions about homeschooling. She has a little boy who's a little over a year and another one on the way!
I gave her a link to this blog so that she could see how we do it.
Then I realized I have never really posted anything about why we made the decision to homeschool.

I like Steve Lambert's explanation on how we came to be homeschoolers. He said that the finger of God reached across time and space and touched our hearts and asked, "What about homeschooling you kids?"
I had only heard about homeschooling once, I was at summer camp at Greenwood Hills. One of my cabin mates was homeschooled. I remember thinking how cool it would be not having to get up early in the morning to go to school on cold crappy weather. Now please understand, I loved school!
Especially high school. No, it wasn't perfect but I had a great time most of the time.
There were a few things I struggled with but overall my public and private school experience was a good one.

I had started gathering together with other believers who homeschooled and they made it sound so great. I just kept thinking there was no way I would be able to do it. I did not have the patience, I was not creative enough and I didn't think I was intelligent enough to homeschool my children.

My husband on the other hand loved the idea. He was my biggest cheerleader. He knew I could do this. The enemy kept putting thoughts in my head against it but a very wise woman told me that God was speaking to me through my husband, "trust Him" and I did.

I did a LOT of research about homeschool, I visited I don't know how many homeschool blogs.
I liked everything I was reading. Then came time to choose a curriculum or not.
I found out about Five in a Row from one of the blogs I was reading and it just sound it too good to be true. I decided to start two weeks before A6's preschool was done. I figured if it doesn't work out I can still enroll her in kindergarten. Our first book was We're Going on a Bear Hunt, and the rest as they say is history! We were hooked! Not just the kids but me as well.
There is something so wonderful about sitting on the couch early in the morning reading a great book to your children.
Needles to say that summer we did many more books, mostly from Before five in a row, which is geared towards 2 to 4 yr olds.

Once September came we started to "row" (as five in a row moms call it), Five in a row books in addition to before FIAR books. Our first book was Madeline! My children fell in love with Madeline. When we started our second year of homeschooling we started with Madeline's Rescue and for our third year I have Madeline in London scheduled to start!

The homeschooling journey is by invitation only, when God invites you on a journey He has already taken care of all the details, all you have to do is follow.
That is the best way to describe our journey. I'm simply following Him! When God is in control we can rest in that, any questions that you have He already has an answer for. He has answers to question you don't know enough to ask yet.

The longer I do this the more I realize that academics is only a small part of homeschooling. Building relationships with your children, strengthening your own relationship with God, teaching your children about the One who created them. Showing your children that they need a Savior and that you do too.

"We are accountable for how our children are raised, they are accountable for how they turn out."
Steve Lambert

There is so much more on this subject but it's late and I have to go to sleep.

Reading Level

I never knew how people were able to tell what reading level kids were reading at. I thought you had to be an education expert to determine that. Yesterday A6 was reading the book Dory Story. She read the whole book and only needed help with three words, fish names since the book is about fishes. On the book cover there is a sticker that says Level: 3.4. I didn't know what that meant.
I asked a teacher friend of mine and she told me that kids who were able to read that book were reading at a third grade and four months level. This was another one of those "I'm not sucking at this" moments!!!!

Ocean Unit Study & lapbook Part I

After a three week holiday break, school is back! I learned a lot from my first year of homeschooling. I was able to write down some things I noticed throughout last year, mainly the times of the school year when we were more motivated to do school as well as the times where motivation was non existent.

September through November, lots of energy and motivation!! Right after the Xmas holidays and Easter week? no desire to do anything... both me and the kids.

So, while I was planning this year I made sure to schedule things that would get us back into the swing of things, something to motivate us in the new year. Since it is the beginning of winter I decided to do an ocean unit study. You know, the beach, summer....{sigh}.

It is a two week study, the first week we are learning about creatures who live in the ocean. More specifically, whales, dolphins and sharks! The kids are familiar with them and want to learn more about them, also we don't really need to get too in depth since we are doing Exploring Creation: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day in a couple of years.

The second week we'll be learning about the oceans where these creatures live as well as the Continents where the oceans are located by.

Lapbooking is something we started this year and it's been a great addition to our homeschooling. I decided to start posting pictures of our lapbooks now that I have the hang of it!
Please remember that most of our lapbooks are made using Homeschoolshare.com, if you see something you like you can just go there and find it.

Here is the lapbook for this week: whales, dophins and sharks! Like I said is very simple but the kids love it, they look at the pictures over and over.



We watched Finding Nemo since it's a perfect movie go along with our study. Happy Feet also shows ocean life and Orca whales!
I wanted to watch Jaws so they could see a Great White shark...but that's probably not a good idea. I watched that movie when I was 6yrs old and had to sleep in my grandparents bed for about a week!! Instead we are watching shark clips on YOuTube.
Along with the unit study we are reading the book Dory Story. The kids love this book, the great thing is I only paid $.25 for this book at the used book store.

Happy 2009 and other things!

I hope everybody had a great new years, we sure did! We got to relax, play and relax some more.
Everybody is healthy again, enjoying their toys. I got to go to the ladies retreat this weekend.
I got a ticket for speeding on my way there, my first ticket, YAY!!!! Don't you just hate it when that happens, especially since I was on my way to a christian retreat to encounter God. Well, I didn't let that interfere with what God had for me this weekend, and He had a lot for me.

There is a lot of stuff to process, starting with making sure I always find time throughout my day to process it. I've been making things really loud around me, maybe trying to drown out God's voice. Sometimes when we are slacking in some areas of our lives we just don't want to hear it and we make it harder to hear God's voice.
I've been doing a lot of "winging it" over the last few months and God's been faithful but it's time for me to start motivating and preparing myself for His service.
The thing is God has promised to give us everything we need to further His Kingdom and we always take that to mean he will give us everything we "want".
DH and I have a lot of talking and praying to do.

I'm so glad I decided to go for the whole weekend, since I was planning to just go for the whole day Saturday. I would like to thank my Dh for taking my Sunday school class this morning so that I could stay for the last session!

Tomorrow is the start of the second semester, I have an ocean unit study that we are doing and of course a lapbook, we won't be doing any math u see or phonics this week. I want the reentry go to smooth, we'll start that stuff next week. I'm going to do a review of all the letters, colors and shapes we've learned so far with X4 as well, then next week we'll pick it up were we left off.

Happy Christmas To All!

Sith Lord Darth Vader wishes you all a Happy Christmas!

So do I!!!!

Happy Christmas to Us!

We are celebrating Xmas today because we are going up to Nina and Grandpa's house for the 25th!
I have to say we got the kids some really great gifts this year. I can't remember spending this much money on gifts ever!!! We told the kids not to get use to it.... ha ha!


We took some pics of the kids and their gifts. A6 was all about American Girl this year, she got the doll whom she named Emma, she got a bunk bed, a tent and lots of clothes for Emma! Grandma got her a tea for two set, gorgeous!!


X4 was all about Star Wars Clone Wars this year, he did get an American boy doll as well, and some clothes for him so that brother and sister can play with brother and sister!


Here are some pics of our Christmas, enjoy and Happy Christmas!

Random Thoughts

The Christmas pageant went really well. We had so many parents come to the play the Church was full! and the funny thing is it only lasted about 15 minutes. I bought enough cookies and we had enough of everything for everybody.
Today we had our last Ladies Bible study of the year, we'll start again sometime in January, we all went out to eat to this little place called Gracie's. It was really good!!! I'll have to take Dh there sometime.
We are celebrating Christmas with the kids this Sartuday, we'll be having pernil and arroz con gandules for dinner! I can't wait!!

Holiday Vacation

We have been enjoying this week so much, no school, just play. I have been getting everything ready for our Christmas pageant tonight for Clubs, I'm in charge of refreshments!
I'm almost done getting everything ready for school for the next semester and even looking ahead to next year. Did I mention how cool lapbooks are?!?!? I did!! Oh well.. worth mentioning again!

Our Journey on the North Pole Express

This past Saturday we went to the Cumberland Railroad Station to take a ride on the North Pole Express and see Santa at the North Pole!

It was so much fun! We got there around 5:30 pm, it takes around an hour/half from our house to the train station. There was five of us, Mom and Dad, A6, X4 and we took a little friend with us M5!

The kids were loving the ride, there were so many people in their pajamas, if we do this again we'll be wearing our pajamas!! The whole thing took about 3/half hours. It was very cold and we even had some snow, the slippery kind which made everything much more fun.

Once we got there, the kids got to talk to Santa, well A6 did. X4 and M5 had issues talking to Santa!!! Once they talked to Santa they each got a little bag of goodies from Mrs. Claus!


Then we got in line for hot chocolate and Xmas cookies. The hot chocolate was delicious and really hot!! the cookies were okay....I gave mine to the kids:)

On our way back everything was so nice and relaxed. The drive home seem to go so fast.
We may do this again next year. It's more fun if a lot of people you know go as well. Maybe the Longs and the will join us next year!

Christmas Week

This week we are reading a couple of Christmas books, Madeline's Christmas and The Night Before Christmas.
We are going to read Madeline the first half of the week and do the lapbook, then we'll read the other book and do a lapbook (that I found online for free) for that one.
This is our last week of school for the year, we are finished with math u see primer and we'll be starting Alpha the second week of January. Next week I'll be getting everything ready for the second semester, book list, a folder for each week and getting the lapbooks ready for each folder.
Doing lapbooks for each book we read is making school so much easier and enjoyable for both student and teacher!
I am looking forward to the end of school and I'm sure A6 is as well!

The Clown of God

This week we are rowing The Clown of God, it is a Christmas legend set in Italy. I was a little worried about this one because it gets a little sad at the end, but the kids seemed to like it plus I have the book's movie.
Geography: Italy
Language arts: vocabulary words, Italian words from the book. What is a legend.
Science: gravity
Math: ordinal numbers
Christian character/Bible study: doing things for God's glory, how God blesses us throughout our lives.

This week we are doing lesson 29 of Math U See, there are 30 lessons in all. I had decided to start MUS Primer the second semester of K so that we could just do math games the first semester of K. Now that we are almost done with primer we'll be starting Alpha the second semester of 1st grade. I like it a lot better like that, that way after summer vacation we go back to something that is familiar instead of starting something completely new.

The last two lessons have to do with subtraction. It is just a general introduction to subtraction, -0 and -1, stuff like that. She seemed to get it just fine.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I've been a little busy the last two weeks, between jury duty(I didn't get picked!), school, piano practice, church, getting all the Christmas' gifts(I try to have everything ready before Thanksgiving weekend, have you ever been to the Mall after black Friday?... it's crazy!!) and of course Thanksgiving. We also went to see the movie Twilight! it was very good!

Last week we did a Johnny Appleseed lapbook, it was pretty basic but the kids really enjoyed it.
We have two more lessons to go and we'll be done with Math U See Primer. We are starting Alpha in January. We are moving right along with reading made easy, A6 is doing excellent with that!

This past summer when I was planning the first half of the school year I had schedule this week off from school. But we started having so much fun doing lapbooks that I decided to do school for two days this week so the kids could do a Thanksgiving lapbook, I got greedy!
Turns out we really needed to have this whole week off. When we got up this morning nobody wanted to talk about school, starting with me. We did read The Night Before Thanksgiving and The Thanksgiving Door but our heart was not really in it. So I made an executive decision and school is canceled for the whole week as originally planned.

Last year we had a six weeks on one week off type of schedule, I thought we would continue that this year but we were having so much fun lapbooking that we just kept going. Now it is time for a much needed break. After this week we have two more weeks of school then three weeks off!!!
This will probably be my last post for this week, we are going to Grandmas for Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving Day!

Cranberry Thanksgiving

This week we are rowing Cranberry Thanksgiving, which centers around Grandmother's Famous Cranberry Bread, wild Mr. Whiskers and snooty Mr. Horace. Looks can be deceiving!
Geography: New England states
Language arts: vocabulary words
Science: cranberries, where do they grow?
Christian Character/Bible study supplement: don't judge a book by it's cover. 1 Samuel 16:7
The kids really want to make the cranberry bread recipe in the book, I'm not crazy about cranberries but the recipe looks easy enough. Maybe we'll make it for home economics on Wednesday.

Yes, we have a new President. Last Wednesday morning when the kids woke up they wanted to know who had won the election, When I told them Obama won, X4 said to me, "Mommie, we have to pray that he will take care of the babies", and that is exactly what we did!

Elections 08...In November

This week we are working on an election 08 lapbook I purchased from Five in a Row. We get to keep track of the election, we have information on each candidate and we get to learn all about the president of the USA. They kids will get to vote right along with Mom for the new President. We'll be watching the news channels to keep track of which state goes to which candidate. Then when all the votes are counted we will have a new President!





At the same time we'll be rowing the book In November. A wonderful book about what happens to nature during the month of November. What we eat and about one special day in November where we travel far to share a special meal with loved ones.
Geography: how far do we travel for Thanksgiving(map)
Science: migration, adaptation, hibernation, dormancy & weather in November
Vocabulary words: migration, adaptation, hibernation, dormancy
Art: draw nature in November