Christmas Vacation!

Today is our first day of Xmas vacation!! I already have everything ready for school next year so for the next two weeks I can truly relax and enjoy the holidays!

All of the kid's gifts have been wrapped, they are waiting patiently for Friday night(they get to open 1 gift on Christmas Eve!) and Saturday morning.

This will probably be my last post of the year, I will post on the new things we"ll be doing next year, next year!

Hoping Nina and Grandpa will be able to join us for the holidays!! I pray we will all have a safe and blessed Christmas and New Years!

Lsst Week of School 2010

This week we only have two days of school, A8 has to finish her math and X6 is just reviewing his RME words. They are also creating their new Winter nature study journals. I was only going to do fall ones this year but we've been doing so well with them that I thought the winter one would be a great idea!

I'm using the templates found in Five in a Row's Winter Nature Studies.

The Five in a Row Digital Nature Studies are not just a list of activities of things to do in each season. Rather they are an encouragement for you and your children to begin a life style of becoming more observant about each season, and noticing and learning throughout the year more about the nature around you. It is a call to begin to discover together the signals of each season drawing to a close and the signs of the next season beginning. The Five in a Row Digital Nature Studies are an attempt to inspire you to enjoy the many aspects of each season through signs of nature, music, poetry, stories, and more.

We don't really use the stories, music or poems part of it, just the observation templates, maybe as they get older I will incorporate the other stuff.

Snow Day and No Tooth

It is snowing outside, it's started around noon and it's still going. Nothing heavy but it is staying...I had no idea were supposed to be getting snow today....We are going to the movies tonight with our small group, we are going to see Narnia!!! I hope it will stop snowing by then...

In other news, my son X6 has lost another tooth!It happened last night right before Clubs. We already had his tooth fairy gift at hand... we knew it was only a matter of time before the tooth finally came out.Now the tooth right beside it is loose as well...

Last Science Project of 2010

Today we finished our last science project from the Zoology 1 book. The kids were supposed to create a fossil of a pterosaurs, an egg with one coming out of it.

We needed clay, plaster of Paris a real egg of course and some tea to help make the "fossil" look older.

I think we did pretty good, I know the kids were really trying to make it look like the one in the book, but I think it ended up looking more like a flower coming out of an egg than a pterosaurs.. ha ha!!
The plaster kept breaking up, either I made it too thin or we didn't wait long enough before we started applying the tea water to make it darker looking.
We had a good time doing it and that's what matters, plus the kids have a better understanding of what a fossil is and the job a lot of scientists have of finding them and trying to figure out information about it based on the fossil. A hard job to do!

Next spring we will get to do the rest of the projects we were unable to do due to the cold weather. I think there's about 4 or 5 of them left. A couple that have to do with insects and a couple of bird ones.

Parents Day at Ballet

A8 has been taking ballet lessons for the last few months, today was parents day! I was not able to make it but Dh was there and he took lots of pics and videos of the warm ups and the performance! Enjoy!!


Here's a few video clips of the night!

School Week 17 2010

This is our last week of school for the year. We will be doing some nature study next week that will count towards school and A8 will be finishing lesson 5 of Gamma but that should only take a couple of days. By Wednesday we should be starting our XMas vacation!!!

This week A8 is rowing the book, The Bravest of Us All, this is our second time rowing this book. I know it has nothing to do with Xmas or winter for that matter but she really wanted to do it so I gave in!

X6 is reading five different Christmas books for our Baby Jesus lapbook.
Tomorrow we'll be done with Reading made easy for the year, the next lesson starts with the letter I sound, no sense starting that now and have a two week break right after starting a new sound.

Also next week the kids get their winter journals, they've been working on their fall journals but after next week it will no longer be fall.... sigh.... :)

Nature Study Club Post 8

This morning as we were doing school the dogs needed to go outside, when I was letting them back in I noticed this bird in our backyard, well the neighbor's backyard....It was a Cooper's Hawk according to my bird expert daughter, we grabbed the binoculars and took a closer look. The bird was beautiful!! It was a juvenile hawk, not a full grown adult. Our bird feeders are now full of Dark eyed Juncos and we think he was scoping them out for a quick lunch, of course the Juncos were nowhere to be seen... as soon as the hawk left they all came back!It flew to the other side of the backyard and then left. What a beauty!! The PA bird's field guide also showed another hawk that looked a lot like this one, the red tail hawk, but we know it was a Cooper's hawk because it's tail was dark, not red.

Nature Study Club Post 7

Remember Toni the black swallowtail caterpillar, the one that was supposed to be overwintering? Well, apparently we forgot to put him in a cold location so that he could in fact overwinter till the spring. We kept it upstairs in the living room and of course the colder it got outside the warmer it got inside.... and Toni emerged from his cocoon early.... much earlier than we had anticipated!

Here's Toni as a caterpillar!
Here he is inside his cocoon overwintering.... or so we thought!
Here is Toni as a beautiful Black Swallowtail butterfly!
He stayed in A8's room, because she keeps it nice and warm and we gave him an orange and lost of sugar water in a cotton ball for it to eat!
He emerged from his cocoon the Sunday before my surgery, he lived about 10 days. No females for him to mate with, he kept looking at the sun through A8's window but it was too cold outside for us to release him. We made him as comfortable as we could....
Thanks for sharing your beauty with us Toni!

Nature Study Club Post 6

Nests! For Zoology 1 one of the projects is to build your own bird nest. Here is a pic of the nest A8 build all by herself. I think she did a great job!
She used lint, grass, mud, sticks, dry leaves... and some other stuff she found outside. She had a great time building it!
She was hoping to save it till spring and have a real bird use it, but I don't think there's any way to let birds know, "hey! we have a nest already built for you":)

School Weeks 15 & 16 2010

Last week I was unable to post anything due to the fact that any moment I had with even a little bit of energy had to be spent doing school with the kids, I did not want them to get behind in school because of my health issues.

Now that I am feeling much better I can blog about our school! School Week 15:
Last week A8 rowed the book Snowflake Bentley. It is a wonderful story about Wilson Bentley the man who loved taking pictures of snowflakes. We got to use our new digital microscope, we had no snow to look at (Thank God!) but we did look at some ice crystals from the freezer.

We also started Math U See Gamma! A8 is doing very good so far, she understand what we are doing and knows where we are headed... multiplication!!!!!

She has two more weeks of spelling through copywork, next semester we start vocabulary.

X6 rowed the book Library Lion. We love this book every time I read it I'm full of emotion by the time we get to the last two pages!!

School Week 16

This week we are rowing the books Cowboy Charlie(A8) and The Three Questions(X6).

We are on lesson 8 of Apologia Zoology 1: Flying creatures of the fifth day! Which happens to be our last lesson. We started with lesson 1 then skipped to lessons 9-14 which dealt with insects. Once we were done with 14 we went back to lesson 2 which deals with birds.
There are a few experiments we were not able to do due to the cold weather that we will be doing in the spring, so we are not completely done with Zoology 1!

One and a half weeks to go!!!

So Long Harry!

Our beloved beta fish Harry died this morning! It was very sad. Usually when I go into the kitchen he comes to the front of the fish tank, just to look at me. Today he didn't, when I looked closer I saw he was in the bottom of the tank... not moving.

We'll miss you Harry, you were the best pet fish I've ever had!!!

Christmas is here!

Our Christmas tree is finally up! The kids and I helped put as many ornaments as we could on the tree... it's pretty packed! We have no lights around the deck this year because we forgot we threw all of them out last year so we could get new ones. So I guess we better go and get new ones for outside!! We want the LED lights, those are the ones we now have around our tree and our light pole in the front.

A trip to Lowe's this coming week!!!

So Many Things to Blog About So Little Time

We are still here! I've been recuperating from surgery, retraining my now gallbladderless stomach how to eat, figuring out this acid reflux junk and what things I can and cannot eat, my hemoglobin is low because of the lack of food and the surgery, so I'm also working on getting my blood iron higher than it is right now, and of course doing school!

I was finally able to drive this week, my surgeon assures me the incisions are healing very nicely and my doctor just gave me some new acid reflux meds that should work better than the last ones she prescribed for me... All in all we are moving forward!

We have two more weeks of school although since we are staying home for the holidays I may extend school a few extra days... if I need to... Xmas is not till Saturday so we could do school up to that Wednesday the 22nd.

School post coming very soon!

Happy Thanksgiving 2010

I'm still recovering from my gallbladder surgery, we won't be able to go to my Mom's for Thanksgiving this year, so we are spending it at home! I'm not sure if I'll be able to eat any turkey... and no black Friday shopping for me either... oh well.

Happy Thanksgiving anyways!!!

Gall Bladder Surgery

My gallbladder is finally out!! I went in at 6:15 AM, came home around 11:20 AM. I've been taking pain meds every 4 hours. It's been helping! The only things I've had to eat are saltines and water, no, I don't mind :)

I had a very good night sleep! My Dh has been AMAZING! taking care of me... I keep forgetting I can't be picking up after the kids... he keeps reminding me:)

Thanking God for taking care of me!!! I just took some pain meds.... starting to feel a bit sleepy. Will post more later.

School Week 14 2010

This week we will attempt to row the books The Hatmaker's Sign with A8 and This is the Feast with X6. I said attempt because the boy is sick, I have an early doctor's appointment on Wednesday and may have others, and we are going to see a Shakespeare play on Friday. Next week is Thanksgiving week which means no school the whole week.

My gall bladder needs to come out and on Wednesday I get to find out when that is going to happen. Dh wants it to happen the week after Thanksgiving, but that would put XMas in jeorpady. I wanted it to happen last week, yes we'll miss Thanksgiving but at least we'll have XMas... but of of curse it is out of my hands... unless I decided to eat lots of high fat, fried food and get an attack and then he will have no choice but to take it out that same day :) No chance of that happening.. nooo way.. ha ha!!

Truth is I just want to get this over with. I'm getting a little anxious about the surgery and of course the after surgery "how is my stomach going to react to certain foods" dilemma. I have heard many different things about the surgery but everybody agrees you just don't know what's going to affect you till you eat it.

Not sure I want to find out while at a XMas party away from home... having to spend 30 minutes in somebody's bathroom is not my idea of a fun holiday..

I have decided to trust my Dhs' judgment on this one and let him take care of me.

As far as school goes, A8 is DONE with Beta! She will be taking her final test today, no math for the rest of the week. We may start Gamma after Thanksgiving week, of course not knowing when my gall bladder surgery is going to take place I'm not sure if I should just wait till January to start Gamma as originally planned.

This is going to be one of those "we will just have to wait and see" weeks... ohhh joy...

All Hallows Eve Pics!

I finally moved all of the Halloween pics to my computer!! So here they are!!!

Cleopatra

Toothless

At light the night at our Church.

Hot chocolate and cookies!

The Youth group did a skit for light the night!

We had a great time that night, the weather was perfect, although it did get a bit breezy the later it got. The kids stayed at the church most of the time and it showed in their candy bags. They had enough candy for two days only... usually we have Halloween candy all winter.. ha ha!!

Where there is smoke, there is Fire!

This morning as the kids and I were outside looking for leaves and mud and sticks to make a nest we heard all these sirens... the scary thing was they kept getting closer and closer... we were in the back yard and then we saw them... three firetrucks coming down our street. I thought there was a fire in the elementary school across from our street.

It was actually one of our neighbors house. The kids and I ran down as she was taking her little animals out of the house. She seemed pretty shook up, she had just come home from work. I believe cigarettes were involved, but thank God it was only smoke, the fire started in the garage. The rest of the house was covered in smoke.. NOT fire!

School Week 13 2010

This week A8 is rowing the book The Hickory Chair. A story about a boy who has been blind since birth, and his beloved Gran. When Gran dies and her will divulges that she has hidden notes "for each of my favorite people in one of my favorite things," the boy relies on his keen insight into his grandmother to find many of the notes.

This is a wonderful book and we finally get to read it!



X6 is rowing County Fair, one of the books in My First Little House Book Series. I'm going to be using the Almanzo books for X6, I thought reading about a boy in a farm in New York state will be more interesting to X6 than reading about Laura and the Prairie. Plus the story takes place in the Fall!

School Week 12 2010

It is November... I can't believe how fast these months are going... It is raining here and the kids are sound asleep.. I don't have the heart to wake them up :) Which means school is going to run a little late today.

This week we are rowing the books The Gullywasher and Henry the Castaway. The Henry books were out of print which is why I never rowed them with A8, but they are now available again! I just got mine in the mail Tuesday!

At the beginning of the week I had a couple of doctor appointments and had to have some tests done, we didn't get much school done because of it. We are now caught up!

A8 has a couple more weeks of Math U See Beta and she will be DONE!! We are going to be able to start Gamma earlier than planned! X6 is doing very good with Reading Made Easy, we are doing lots of reviews and I'm introducing news words very slowly. It can be a bit frustrating since he has a tendency to try and guess what the word says rather than just trying to read it, but when that happens I change my approach and it seems to work... this is going to be a long road for the both of us, at least till his little brain is able to connect all the dots...