A compliment

this morning I spent 2 and half hours in a waiting room while my husband had exams done on his eyes. Thankfully I packed up all our lessons in a basket to take with me, just in case we were there for more than 45 minutes. Cool thing was we were able to get almost all our school work done while waiting. One of my favorite lessons wasn't even planned but I was able to knock out about 5 math lessons without JJ even knowing it. In his book it has him counting from 0 to 300, in different stages. I know he can do it so I never make him count for the sake of counting. But today we decided to count the square tiles up and down the hall to see how many there were. And wouldn't you believe it was 300 and JJ counted every one. Some how I think that was more exciting than just sitting behind a desk and counting. But it gets better, the boys and I all read together, out loud..... not sure why I hadn't thought about that before. Since there was a T.V. in the waiting area it was hard for me to keep their attention, so I told them they had to follow along and when I stopped reading they better be able to pick up where I left off. This worked well because I was able to regain their attention when it started to wander. And it was fun to all read together.

After we got into the car, my husband told me how the doctor complimented us on how well behaved our children are. He said most children would have been a mess by that time. My husband said, "Well we spend alot of time with our children because we homeschool." The doctor cut in, " I could tell, we home schooled our children too!!!" I just hope we shed a good light on other parents to how well homeschooling works and how fun it is!!!!! And the cool part was when we got home we were able to enjoy the day!!!! Yes I would say that was a very successful homeschool kind of day. I'm grateful for each one of them and take them in any fashion they come!!!!! How about you, do you take school with you out and about? How have others reacted to you?

Break 1

Well we are on Break 1 for the year. It's really a catch up week but it has come at the perfect time. We don't have much to catch up on and we finished our first Read Aloud, Charlotte's Web. So this pause seemed like a natural beat in our schedule. I am hoping this will mean I can upload the chicken and spider worksheets I used. Until then here are some pics of the day we studied the egg. That was loads of fun!!!!

Here we soaked our eggs in vinegar, they were suppose to bounce after 3 days but our didn't. I've very thankful the kids insisted that we go outside to test them out!!!

Cracking open the egg

and of course touching it

and being silly with it

JJ was very serious about his observations

and what's an experiment without an accident

CJ was N-O-T very happy at this point. 

The kids are still talking about Charlotte's Web and we have even had a chance to go hunting spider webs and identify them. It's really neat to see them learning together and retaining what they are discovering!! I think to finish off our break we are going to make spider webs out of glue and glitter. CJ found a book at the library called Aarrgghh Spider that sparked this idea.  I think our next book is Homer Price and I am so looking forward to making homemade doughnuts!!!!!

Missionary Stories with the Millers

is one of my favorite books to read with the children. I remember sitting in front of our big world map with LJ and just bawling my eyes out as I read each chapter. And even as I read the 1st chapter to all three children, once again I got choked up!!! Now since the boys are a bit older and baby girl isn't so demanding I am able to expand a little in our lessons so we are doing three new things this go round with the book.

1. Making Missionary Meals each Friday to explore either the country the missionary is in or was from.
2. Notebooking the country the missionary is in and/or from.
3. Learning the meaning of each country's flag

I am keeping a running list of all the links and worksheets that I make in my right hand column so if you are using Sonlight Core B as well, you might find the notebooking pages useful!Happy Homeschooling.

Heart and Soul

What do you do when your children are fighting? Well I decided to teach them a piano song that they have to play together.



What do you do to help keep the harmony in your home?

Apple Theme

Our home school group ECHO started last week. This year I will be teaching: Pre-K Art & StoryTime and Great Inventors for 6th, 7th, & 8th.  We are kicking off the year with an Apple Theme for the Pre-K room, so when I found this poem on DLTK I knew I had to do something with the flannel board we have in our room!!!! I dug deep into my scrapbook paper and found some green and brown paper and cut out a tree to laminate.

Tree top and bottom free handed

Making sure everything is the right size.

Then I remembered that one of Teacher Book Bag's covered apples, so I printed off apples 1- 10 and laminated them as well.

I'll put double sided tape on the apples and pull them off as we count at the end of the poem.

Then I remembered that in CJs math workbook they were having her connect word numbers to their corresponding number so I laminated the word number apples as well. Yeah I like to laminate....

and glued it onto the back of the tree for a fun matching game!!! Oh I love it when inspiration falls into place so well!!!!

And if you are doing the A Beka Art Projects K4 this will go right along with Project 1. Because some families registered late I will also print off an apple tree our new kids will also have an art project to do as well.

Stand up for your rights!!!!

What would you do in this situation?

I do hope this is a sign of the change of tide concerning parental rights in America. Our government has gotten too big and its time we start fighting for our rights not only in drastic measure such as this mom but by educating our children of their rights!!!! I am currently looking into addressing, via the School Board, the insane decision for the public schools in our county to not teach cursive. Seems harmless at first glance, but if you can't read cursive you can't read A-N-Y of the documents written by our founding fathers. I don't have a child in public school but that doesn't mean I can not hold the School Board accountable for the education that my tax dollars pay for!!!!