Oops..Update

I haven't blogged for a while so here is an update on what we've been up to in the last couple of weeks. The kids are enjoying their summer now that the neighbor kids are done with school as well. The pool is open but it's been raining, hopefully today we can go since tomorrow it's supposed to rain again.

I have all of A8's lapbooks done! Like I said before, she has 16 FIAR Vol 4 books to do lapbooks for and they are all done!

X5 has 34 books, however I am not doing a lapbook for every book. Some books will have coloring pages, others will have games, art projects and for a couple of books we are just going to read and enjoy, no activities. I'm 3/4 of the way done with X5"s lapbooks.... a few more to do and I'll be done!

I've come up with great ideas for American history using My America books. I'm going to do a journal style notebook, just like the ones from Apologia elementary science. There will be questions about the books, she will get to draw in some pages and I will have a few lapbook type mini books. I will also have pages with historical names.. for example in the Jamestown books Pocahontas and John Smith are mentioned. I can have a page where she gets to write a few sentences about who these people were.

This journal is going to be a sweet challenge for me! I haven't decided whether to do it in a three hole binder or to have the whole thing spiral bound. We shall wait and see how this thing ends up looking like!

For X5 I'm going to be working on how to make Reading Made Easy a fit for him. This coming school year is going to be all about getting him to start reading!

It's June!

So here we are are in June already, school is done for most of the homeschooled kids around us and the public school kids will be done next week. My niece is already with us, she was done with school June 1st.
It's so nice to see all the kids in our backyard in the evening, running around, playing. it is a true sign of summer! The pool will be open full time next Tuesday, last day of school. We haven't gotten our pool pass yet. I think this year we'll just get one for A7 since X4 still going in for free.
Last year we just didn't go as much and it was money wasted. This summer looks just as busy with Camp and day camps and friends over.

Monday we started our review month. A7 has been working for about an hour a day on her handwriting, reading and unknown number!
She's reading for about 15 minutes a day. She also started her journal. There is a question for everyday of the year that she has to answer in a complete sentence, with no help from me. She has to figure out how to spell the words she wants to use, then when we go over it together I show her the proper spelling and she rewrites the word or words she misspelled.

It doesn't take long at all for her to do all this and she is becoming familiar with getting her own work from her workbox folder system.

X4 on the other hand wants nothing to do with it. I have lots of fun stuff for him to do in his boxes but he will not go near them. He's done a few of the name practice and number practice ones, but will not even look at any others. Maybe I have to change it around or make it look simpler..who knows. No worries, we have plenty of time with him.

I 've been getting stuff ready for A7 for the Fall. I'm assembling, if you will, what she'll need for her lapbooks and for language arts. Everything else is already taken care of!
I already have most of his lapbooks set up... and lots of games in between! Iam really trying to start with a clean slate with X4. After teaching A7 for two years I don't want to assume that all of the things that worked with her will work with him. A lot of people tell me just how different teaching their boys was from the girls.

That is all for now!!

A Sweet Smelling Home (hint, hint)

I've been going to a lot of different blogs in the last few days because of the Homeschool Blog Awards and there was one blog that I really enjoyed reading.
It is a homeschooling blog but she also has tips on how to take care of your home. This blog has so much info that it's going to take me several weeks to get to it all.
One of her post is about keeping you home smelling nice, especially when you have company.
She talks about wax potpourri warmers as a great way to do this. Now, I've heard about potpourri warmers but I just didn't like them because you need to have a tealight in the bottom section to do the actual warming of the wax. Well, they now have electric ones. I think they've had them for a while, I just never took notice. I have a candle warmer and I love it! But the thought of having a wax warmer and being able to just purchase the little wax tarts in all different kinds of scents it's just too cool!!!!
Yankee Candle has this beautiful Gingerbread Electric Wax Potpourri Warmer that would be perfect, of course I would need a different one for the rest of the year!!
The website also has all of the different wax tart scents.



These are the ones I want to start with!

• Frosted Cedar Wreath
• Country Linen
  
• Good Morning
• Sun & Sand
  
• Lemon Lavender

Are you reading this my blondie bluey!!!!!