Our Jesse Tree

Please excuse the distractions on the wall behind it.

This is our first year doing the Jesse Tree and we are using the FREE eBook from Holy Experience, called Jesse Tree Journey. This is a beautiful ebook for the Christmas season. Written to show God's love for His creation and His desire to send a rescuer fron their sin... His own Son, Jesus.

We've actually been re-reading some of the Jesus Storybook Bible, just the stories that pertain to the particular day's devotional. It still has the same effect:

God loves us.

He created us.

He longs for us.

He Sent His SON for us.

It's this longing that should cause a longing in our own hearts.

To wait for the coming Messiah.

What a beautiful truth to be teaching our children.

It's not too late to start the Jesse Tree Journey. QUICK! Download it, print it out, print out the beautiful ornaments on some nice cardstock. Find a simple tree, tree branch, or even a silouette of a tree on a wall. You will not regret adding this to your school day!

Ones, Tens, Hundreds

Look! She found the 5 Tens!

for the Real Foodies - educational book for ages 12 & up.

Food Renegade is offering her ebook Real Food Nutrition for 20% off retail until November 27th.  You just need to apply the code:

THANKFUL20

This book is geared to students ages 12 and up.

Click on the picture below to see the sale.

History Journal

Here's Half-Pint copying some facts that she felt were important about Squanto.

She now thinks we need to save our fish scraps and bury them in our vegetable garden.

Taking a sick day...

Half-Pint had a low-grade fever yesterday afternoon and it lasted for a few hours. I have her a few doses of a homeopathic med. and she started feeling better around dinner time. Thank God. She woke up this morning with no fever and is acting almost normal. She is a little dizzy at times, but she seems fine.

So, I decided to take the morning off from school. The T.V. has been on for a while already... eeeesh.

Lately, we've been doing a lot of reviewing. It's nice to have that freedom to be able to stop where we are at and go back and review just to make sure that she is "getting it".

I can't believe that it's already November! We're taking History nice and slow, which is good, because we are enjoying all of the books and reading that ties into our "spine". I think I am enjoying it more than Half-Pint, simply because I didn't excel at History when I was in school. At the suggestion of a friend of mine, I checked out Draw Write Now, Book 3. Half-Pint loves it! I highly recommend those books! I am putting another one on hold at my local library.

I haven't found a good rolling crate yet for our library books. I need something that can hold a LOT of weight and that would be easy to "cart around". Get it?

We are experiencing technical difficulties...

For some reason, I cannot upload pics to the blogs via Picasa. It's weird. I'll try to update later today or tomorrow, if I can figure out the problem.

In the meantime, we've changed up our schedule in order to be a little more productive with our day.

We have a million books from the library and I am trying to figure out the best way to cart around. My shoulder is killing me and I hate pushing around a stroller... in fact, I don't even know where our big stroller is.

How do you cart your library books around the library and to/from your car?

Weekly Wrap-up, 10/11- 10/15

Nature Journal: pumpkin in our backyard

Language Lessons...

Cursive

We had a pretty busy week. I was feeling pretty under the weather, run-down, etc. We got through the week and I think it went smoothly. The first 2 days, I let Half-Pint pick what she wanted to work on. The "picking" was an issue. While I know that this works for some children, it certainly doesn't work for HP. She needs structure at this point and likes to go by a "list". I still limited her time, so she wouldn't get bored on each subject. If she didn't finish her work in the allotted time, I let her finish it off later in the afternoon. School just seemed more enjoyable by the end of the week.

As I posted before, I've been reading Pocketful of Pinecones, and I just adore it. I've been more convicted about the kids' outside time. While I do see the importance of free time out of doors, I wanted them to be more intentional about looking around them as they are outside. There were a few days where I had to force them to stay outside for more than 5 minutes at a time. I wanted to lock the backdoor, but figured that'd be wrong... it would've been wrong, RIGHT?!?!?! ;) Either way, they spent some time out there and even sketched a little bit for their nature journals. :D!!

Half-Pint is moving along nicely with her work. She enjoys her Language Lessons from Queen's Homeschool Supplies. The lessons are long enough to keep the child engaged, and short enough that they won't get bored or frustrated with the work. HP also LOVES her cursive book and so do I. Although, with Farmer Boy, I may use Cursive first to go along with SWR, but we'll see. I still have a few years for that!

We just finished reading about Pocahontas, Jamestown, and Captain John Smith. I now love history. I hated it when I was in school... but wow... it's just so fun!

Sarcasm warning: THANK YOU, Disney... for completely screwing up the Pocahontas story! hahahaha

Visit this link for more Weekly Wrap ups, on Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

Jigsaw Atlas

A few years back, I purchased a puzzle book. Half-Pint wasn't much into puzzles as a little-little one. She and I would work on some of the puzzles together, but it wasn't something she absolutely loved. Our Farmer Boy LOVES puzzles! He has good hand-eye coordination and a lot of patience when it comes to his work. So, I had him work on one puzzle. Next thing I knew (during math for Half-Pint), he had finished the whole book of puzzles!

We have a wooden puzzle United States. All the kids love that one, including Half-Pint (for some reason). They work on it together and we get a geography lesson at the same time. :D

First Paragraph

In Half-Pint's language lesson for today, she was to write a paragraph and practice Capitalization.

This just made me smile.

Nature for Today, and maybe I need to buy a book...

We found this beautiful moth just outside our front door on a sunny morning. Half-Pint recieved a "bug magnifier" for her birthday, so we were able to observe it for a few minutes before letting it go. I completely forgot to have her sketch it off the pictures we took, maybe we can do that on another day.

After talking to a friend and reading a bit from Pocketful of Pinecones, I am thinking about purchasing Anna Botsford Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study. I checked it out from the library once and thought, "eeesh... this is too huge. What woud I do with that?!" Well... now I know. The kids ask me about spiders, trees, and these other beautiful insects, and I have no clue of what their names are! ;)

So, I'll be checking out used copies of this book.

We're over a month into school and I am ALREADY thinking of buying more books for school.

Please tell me that I am NOT the only one!

lack of updates

sorry everyone. Don't worry!!! I didn't enroll the kids in the local public school!! We've just been so busy with school and life that I haven't been able to get to blogging. I hope to take some pics of school time next week.

Half-Pint has been plugging away. Her favorite subject: reading, of course.

Okay, that's it for now. My brain is fried.

Map Project #2: Lakes & Rivers

The student journal that goes along with the QH's AS, vol. 1 has helped me (Ma) as a teacher. I never excelled in history or geography. The Student Journal is a place for the student, and (in our case) the teacher to narrate again, what was read/learned. I appreciate the map work SO MUCH!

Map project #2 (where is #1?? I forgot to take pics.) had the student locate the Great Lakes and major rivers in North America. We had our garage sale find of a map spread across the table.

And did you know... this is so embarrasing... I forgot about Lake Huron!!!

the coloring map was purchased from Miller Pads and Paper

New Week

I am all set for a new week. We finished learning about Leif Erikson and I am so glad we took 2 weeks to talk about him, read about him, and talk about his character. Our favorite book in addition to our Queen's "spine" was of course, Leif The Lucky by the D'Aulaires.

We did have an emergency with the book. I had it checked out from the library, but I couldn't renew it again because someone was in line and had requested it. UGH! So scrambled around and was blessed to find it from a few people at church. Wheew!

So, this week, it will be the usual stuff, but I think we'll add some play dates in here and there. That will be nice.

I'll try to post some pictures later today!

Our Current Read-A-Loud

We are currently listening to Pa read Little Pilgrim's Progess a-loud to us. This is such a good book. The chapters are short enough to have a little discussion about Christian, his journey to the Celestial City, and all the people he comes in contact with along the way.

We highly recommend this.

Math for Farmer Boy (the 3 yr old boy)

Keeping the younger ones occupied isn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Sometimes they do get a little loud, but Half-Pint has been gracious and isn't distracted like she used to get.

All of our kids love Lauri Toys. If anyone who is reading this has a Toddler or Preschooler, you MUST get your hands on some of these! We love them in this house. They are safe for littles, and if you lose a piece, LauriToys will replace it for free (I believe you have to pay for shipping, so double check). In the pictur above, Farmer Boy is learning his numbers by playing with the Number Express.

School time is all the time...

In the future, you'll be seeing a lot of pictures of our kiddos with books.

Half-Pint has been reading up a storm. Her reading & spelling skills really picked up after we began the Spell to Write and Read program. It began as a little co-op with other kids her age from school. Our friend taught it and the moms sat in and helped or just watched. I am truely amazed with that program. We are continuing on with it this year.

Half-Pint and Farmer Boy are constantly asking me "is school done now???". This drives me batty. It's almost as if they are saying, "Are we done?! Can we be free now?!?!?!?" Seriously?? As if I have them chained to a desk, staring up at a chalkboard, making them rattle off facts that they probably don't understand in the first place? My answer usually is, "NO! So quit asking!"

Yesterday, I was asked the blasted question. I took a deep breath, quickly asked God for wisdom, and then gently replied,

"No. School is never over in this house. We learn all day, every day. We learn from books, from cleaning, cooking, gardening, and even doing the laundry. So... no. We are NOT done."

I didn't hear the question all day.

But I did hear it this morning. I turned around and Half-Pint said, "Woopsie." Then I gave her a smile.

In this picture, you will see HP reading to FB. It's a book called Small Wolf by Nathaniel Benchley. I am one proud mama. HP didn't need any help with the words. She even stopped to explain some of the book to her brother. So sweet!

Reading- CHECK!
History- CHECK!

Jesus Storybook Bible

This year, we are going through the Jesus Storybook Bible**. Why did we choose this? I had read so much about this particular story Bible and it stuck out in my mind. The main premise: Every story whispers His Name. Whose name?

JESUS CHRIST

What a beautiful way to not only teach about different stories in the Bible, but show HOW even the Old Testament events happened, because of what was going to come- JESUS! The SAVIOR!

There are 44 stories. After talking with a friend, I decided to do what she was planning on doing. After each story was read, have my daughter draw a picture and write something about what she learned from the story.

It's scheduled out this way:

Monday: read one chapter.

Tuesday: Listen to the chapter on the CD. Then, draw a picture from that chapter. Copy a significant statement from the chapter.

Wednesday: repeat Monday (but the next chapter)

Thursday: Repeat Tuesday

Friday: review and Praise God for Jesus!

Here is the first in her own Jesus Storybook.

So precious. What a great reminder, too!

**please note, we own the Jesus Storybook Bible, deluxe edition. This comes with the story read on CD. BEAUTIFUL!

Our Little School Center

Here's our "school center" in our kitchen. It's located under the overhang of our kitchen island. I wanted something to house all our books and supplies needed on a daily basis. Last year, I had everything in a different room and had to bring things back and forth when starting and ending the day. Not really a big deal when schooling one child in kindergarten, but I didn't want to do that this year.

So, if you click on the image, you'll see what is what and where.

This is from the IKEA Trofast collection. I love the versatility and it doesn't look terrible.
I used IKEA Flyt magazine holders to house each subject that we will be covering.

I think this will work out just fine. If not... I'll be in trouble. Hehehe...

Hello out there, and welcome to the new school year!

After some consideration, I decided to separate our homeschooling posts from our (private) family blog. I have so much to say about our journey, that I am sure those who view our (private) family blog could really care less about school. So, here it is. Hopefully, I'll be able to give updates a few times per week, but you never can tell around here.

Today was our first official day of school. I woke up at 6:30am and got ready for the day, got lots of house chores done, made breakfast, vacuumed, and school started at 9am. The first hour went by great! Then, after the kids' snack break, I kinda lost 'em. I am sure I tried to cram too much into our morning. So, guess what I'll be doing tonight?

Re-working the schedule.

Yup... that's right.

Thank God we're homeschooling!!