Home Plate Fun

Mother-Daughter Date

2011-01-23T11:40:00.000-08:00

This past year I made a serious point to take opportunities to take my daughter on dates. I picked up a devotional just for mother-daughter dates. It is called Secret Keeper Girl 8 Great Dates for you and Your Daughter by Dannah Gresh. We have been on three dates thus far. Each one focuses on a certain theme or topic. Each one has been great fun. I am so blessed to be able to share them with a loving daughter. Here is a sneak peak inside one of those great dates....

This dates theme was titled "The Source of Beauty". The challenge for this one was to find a quiet place to have with God. This particular one I had put off too long because I was trying to find the perfect place. I kept thinking the beach or a nature walk. I finally shared my predicament with a fellow homeschool mom. She shared with me about a local hike that her family had recently been on. I wasn't familar with it but was game for exploring it.

It was a 1.4 uphill hike in the local foothills which led up to a cross that someone had erected about four years ago. The hike was intense due to the heat of the day and did I mention it was all uphill. Just imagine being on a stair stepper for 1.4 miles and you may get the picture.

So many times Dancer just wanted to turn around and go back. It was just too much. I kept encouraging her and told her that it would pay off in the end, if she just hung on to it. The talks that we shared along the way about hardships, trials and things that she may face later on in life were used with that hike as a metaphor. It was just the perfect place to be just her and I that day.

After climbing and taking frequent breaks to refuel with our water we finally reached the top only to discover we needed to travel up another small incline. Both of us were tired. I wasn't giving up and she just was ready to throw in the towel. One last thing I shared with her helped her to trudge on. What I shared with her was from the book Pilgrim's Progress. After Christian had traveled the long path he still needed to pass through the river to make it to the Celestial City. I told her to imagine that this was her river and that the Celestial City was just on the other side. I might add that all during our hike that day we hadn't at that point seen the cross yet.....

Once she and I hiked up that last ridge we finally saw the cross. Oh what a site to see and of the valley below. The view was just gorgeous. So worth the 1.4 trek up there. I know the cross isn't beautiful but it is what it represents that is important. This place will always have a special place in my heart for the valuable life lessons that I got to share with my daughter. She will always remember to fix her eyes on the cross even through lifes challenges.

Hawaii Day 6:

2010-10-18T18:36:00.000-07:00

Today was a relaxing morning spent by the pool. After lunch we took a drive further up the coast to another local spot for some more snorkeling and boogie boarding with the kids. While we were packing up our things we met a couple that told us about a blowhole that was about seven miles further up the coast. We decided it was worth the drive up there to show the kids. Hubby and I had seen a blow hole before on our 10th anniversay when we were in Ensenada. A person in Ensenada said that there are only three in the world, Mexico, Hawaii and Australia. Come to find out now there may be two more in Hawaii somewhere.

Some of you may be wondering what a blowhole is. It is a hole in the rocky surface. When the waves come the water is forced up through the blowhole creating a geyser effect.

This one was a real treat for the kids because you could get real close to it. The one in Mexico is surrounded by a boardwalk-type bridge. Since it was later in the day the waves were at full force giving us quite the show and spray of water.

The arial views once again were breathtaking and the ocean colors weren't like anything we see here in California.

I think we may have missed this experience had we not bumped into that couple at the beach. There wasn't anything marked on the map indicating that there was a blowhole. All that we found was a small sign, too small even to be seen from off the road. We are so glad we found it and the kids were too!

Aloha for now!

Hawaii Day 5:

2010-10-12T07:26:00.000-07:00

Today we got an early start to take an all day trip on the road to Hana. We packed plenty of snacks and refreshments for our long journey and yes some motion sickness pills for Racer.

Our first stop before beginning our road to Hana trip was the surfers beach known as Hookipa beach. The waves here were the largest that we had seen so far on our travels through Maui. Living in Southern California we are used to seeing high waves and we had thought all of Hawaiian beaches had them but apparently not. Needless to say the waves and water color here were just gorgeous. So many different shades of blue as far as the eye could see.

The boys were just eager to go jump in the waves but with the long drive were we just beginning, we opted not to. I am sure the local surfer's wouldn't want two young boys in their way of hanging ten while riding a large wave too.

To make the drive on the road to Hana a little easier we had purchased a car CD called the road to Hana. Nothing on this road is labeled for the best places to stop. You won't find any billboards or signs telling you the best places to pull over and stop the car. Locals want to keep the area as natural as possible.

Speaking of pulling over and stopping the car....this can pose as a challenge as well since the road in most places is the size of a single lane highway to be shared between two cars. Having experience driving both Highway 1 and the mountains in northern California, my hubby did just fine.

Along the highway locals have set up fruit stands for people to stop, sample and purchase local organic fruits. We stopped at a few. The first one was a man that served us our first coconut. It is a coconut still in the green pod. Here he is taking a macheti to it. The kids were impressed but I think they were more impressed with the yummy mangos that they purchased. My kids love mangos so much back on the mainland that they decided to use their own money to buy a whole mango for themselves.

We stopped by several waterfall pools along the way. They looked like something out of a movie or a Fantasy Island episode when combined with the colorful flowers and follage around them, simply beautiful.

Our final destination was the seven sacred pools at the Haleakala National Park. There are more than just seven sacred pools there I might add. According to the informative CD that we listened to, they were orignially named something else but changed their name to attract tourists; they were hoping to lure people to area. It was a great day to visit the area because the tide was low and the pools were great for swimming.

After swimming it was getting late for the long trek home and our greatest fear was taking the road home in the dark especially since it is very narrow. A local suggested that we take the road that runs along the backside of Haleakala. Many experienced travelers, including our friendly CD narrator, warned us not to take it. My hubby was up for the daring challenge on traveling on a dirt road in a rental car that could potentially have wild animals stopped to block it along the way.

It was a hair raising, nail biting ride back. If we thought the road was narrow traveling on the way to Hana, this one was even more so and bumpy. It proved to quite the adventure for the whole family and luckily we and the rental car escaped just fine. We got to see some more gorgeous views and the devastation left from the volcano eruption left on this side of the mountain.

We finally arrived back at our condo just about 12 hours later from the time we first left. A long and adventuresome day in Maui.

Aloha!

Hawaii Day 4:

2010-10-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

Today we decided to have a leisurely morning and take the kids out later in the aftenoon to explore more beaches. We stopped at a beach in Keihe and the whole family had fun in the water taking turns with the boogy boards. The kids became pretty good boogie boarders.

After swimming for over an hour we loaded up the car and traveled further down the coast to another beach. The next beach was hidden away from some million dollar homes in the Kanahena area. The beaches here are very different as compared to the beach in Keihe. Keihe has white fine sands and Makena is filled with lava rocks and a ton of coral can be found underwater. The boys found the rocks to be fun to see who could throw the farthest.

By sunset the water still was very warm and the sunset was simply amazing. I think I must have over 100 pix in just sunsets from the many that we saw in the week of our travels there.

Once we returned to the condo we took our cooking outside in the pool area where hubby barbequed some salmon on the grill for the family. Yum Yum! We made a few friends with some local kittens in the complex that come out at night for scraps and our kids provided for them a grand feast.

Another great and perfect day in Hawaii!

Aloha until day 5!

Hawaii Day 3:

2010-10-03T07:21:00.000-07:00

We had to head out early this morning to board a boat to take us to the Molikini crater. Hubby and Racer took some motion sickness medication to avoid any accidents from happening on our 5.5 hour boat ride. It helped them not to get sick but it made them both very groggy.

Molikini was once a cone volcano that erupted thousands of years ago. After blowing it's top it left a crater that still can be seen today. It is located east off the island of Maui. It is now referred to today as an island non inhabitable. People are not permitted on the island but it is one of the world's best places to snorkel and scuba dive.

The snorkeling in Molikini was just perfect that day. God blessed us with great weather that day in fact our whole entire trip I might add. The water was crystal clear just perfect for viewing. Dancer just loved every minute of it. The boys enjoyed it too but headed back early because they felt the water was just too cold. Even after been outfitted with a wet suit they were cold; must have been the motion sickness pills taking effect.

Since the water was so clear the fish were just vivid with color.

The water was just teeming with all kinds of fish that we were so close to them. The more we searched and swam we saw how amazing the world is down below. Not only did God create every living thing on land but His hand was at work when He created the oceans as well. Each fish was beautiful. We even saw a school of fish several different times during our swim. Sorry I don't have any pictures of those or others of our swim since we didn't have an underwater camera at the time. I know, don't ask. All of us have lasting memories that will last a lifetime.

After our swim at Molikini we were taken to an area known as Turtle Town for the tourists. Off the shores of Maui there are plenty of coral caves that house green sea turtles. Green sea turtles are in abundance out there and are protected by US government. Because of this visitors are not permitted to try to hop on their back and go for a swim or to touch them. It is also not best to do so because they are known to bite as well.

By the time we reached Turtle Town the boys were not up for it so Dancer and I hit the water to go exploring. It was a huge success! We got to see five sea turtles and swim with two at two different times. The two we swam with were so close that if we reached out our arms we could touch them. Dancer and I had to keep pulling back as the waters kept pulling us closer to them.

Sea turtles look so graceful and peaceful when they swim. I can't help but think of Finding Nemo when I see them. After watching that movie it is awful tempting to want to jump on their back and go for a swim.

This was a real treat for the whole family especially for Dancer since she is our animal lover who would love to work with animals. I would recommend this trip for others. We happened to stumble on a good deal due to the time of the year. They also allowed two of our kids to travel free with a paying adult. They provided all of the snorkel gear, wet suits were not included however. A continental breakfast, unlimited soft drinks, water and juice and a yummy lunch was included as well.

Aloha until Day 4!

Hawaii Vacation Day 2

2010-10-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

All of us woke up around and a little after 4am. We still hasn't adjusted to the time difference. We just layed around and rested. Shortly after 5am the whole family headed out to the lanai to watch the beautiful sunrise.

After breakfast we decided it would be best to go pick up our snorkel gear. Once we were fitted with gear, purchased boat tickets for Molikini and did a little shopping we went out to the best local snorkel area to give it a try.

Walking in fins was quite the experience. Quite comical at times I might add, but so worth it due to the sharp coral that is in various sections of the shallow water.

Dancer got over her fears of the waves and deided to take hold of my hand as I led her into deeper waters. The different color fish that we saw were truly amazing.

(Please note that the underwater pictures above were not taken by my camera but were edited in based on the fish we actually saw.)

The boys quickly gave up trying to walk in fins and stripped them off to jump in the waves and water. Poor Racer got quite the cut on his foot from the sharp coral and cried and cried. After cleaning his cut we ended up leaving that location since Racer just wasn't in a happy mood any longer and the pain in his foot was too much for him to bear.

Hawaiian shaved ice was near to take his mind off the pain. The whole family enjoyed a cup of shaved ice. Yummy!

Later that day back on our lanai we saw a beautiful rainbow. Since Hawaii is a tropical state and at any given time it is raining some where on the island, rainbows can be found.

Aloha until Day 3!

Where have we been? A Family Vacation to Hawaii

2010-10-02T07:26:00.000-07:00

My Hubby and I have talked about a trip to Hawaii ever since we first got married. That was 15 years ago. Through the years of children being born, Hawaii dreams got pushed to the back burner. Two years ago we finally made it a reality; we tucked some money away and waited.

Instead of just a trip for the two of us to be gone for a week only to worry if the kids were OK, we decided to take them with us and make it a family vacation. I will share with you our adventures in Hawaii with plenty of pictures too.

Day 1:

We left LAX early in the morning. Yes, I did say early. Our goal was to leave our home no later than 5am to make it to the airport in time. LAX is a very busy airport and traffic in and out of it is terrible.

The kids were excited. Excited that we were heading to Maui but even more excited to be on a plane for the first time.

The ride was smooth and worry free. The kids did great and they took turns looking out the one window seat that we did have. The loved the fact that there was a flight attendant to offer them drinks and who would come at just a click of a button and being able to watch a movie was an added bonus.

Once we arrived in Maui. right away we noticed the change in weather. It was windy and humid. Something very different from our dry climate state. All of us couldn't wait to get our bags, our rental car and begin exploring. On the plane everyone placed guesses to see what color car we would be getting. Guess what.....I won! The car was colored maroon/red.

Next, we ate lunch at....Costco. Yes, our first meal in Maui was not a Hawaiian style meal but a cheap hot dog, drink combo. We were famished and let me tell you anything would have tasted good to us by this time. After our quick bite we searched the isles within Costco to stock up on food for our condo. Prices were about the same for most items. The biggest difference we noticed was the bread and milk costs and a few other items.

Once our car was filled with groceries we made our way to the condo. The condo was located in Kaanapali, called the Honua Kai Resort & Spa. For a family that is so used to camping in a tent and most of the hotels our kids have seen are a Holiday Inn Express or a Best Western, this was like staying in a royal palace. We later told our kids to enjoy it while it lasts that this will not begin to be a habit with our family. We would be back to tent camping and cheap hotels again next year.

Words just can not begin to describe how gorgeous everything was. It was just breathtaking. I think I needed someone at this point to help me pick my chin up off the ground so it wouldn't be constantly dragging. (Just beyond the pool in the picture below is the ocean, a beautiful beach too. It was less than a five minute walk from our room.)

Our condo was not an expensive ocean view, but a view above the valet parking. Inside it was a spacious two bedroom/two bath and it had everything we needed. The kids loved the fact that there was three HD TVs, since we only have one really old TV at home. Our two youngest shared a room and one TV, our oldest had the pull out sofa in the living room and hubby and I had the master bedroom.

After unloading our bags we headed down to the pool. The pool looked like something out of a magazine and the water was invitingly warm. The kids were excited that our resort not only had five different pools but a water slide to boot. They felt like they had just died and gone to heaven.

Aloha for now....

Warning!! There is a Science Experiment in the Kitchen...

2010-09-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

Last week during one of my oldest son's Science experiment things got very interesting around here. Luckily I have a rule in my home, Mom or Dad must be home when our children decide to conduct an experiment. Fortunately I was because if I hadn't we many not have a home to come home to.

If your kids love Science like mine tend or if they have a tendency to rush when reading through directions or decide to do something when Mom is running around and is going to be late if we don't get out of the house in about 20 minutes. Don't you love it. Yes, they just wait until the very last moment to squeeze it in.

I know you are wondering, what experiment were you allowing your child to conduct??? It was an experiment out of his Science book about oxygen and fire. Inside that balloon water bottle is yeast mixed with vinegar. Pressure or in this case oxygen was building up inside the balloon. Next to it is a candle with a once precious glass Dancer won at a carnival by tossing dimes inside of it.

After the balloon was filled he was to take the balloon off the bottle and let the air to SLOWLY be released inside the cup. Apparently he tried bless his heart. In his attempt a large flame shot out and the glass broke into a ton of pieces.

Thank God I was home and the fire didn't spread.

Oh the joys of homeschooling...There is never a dull moment around here for entertainment or learning!

Wierd Science...Cell structures

2010-09-06T10:08:00.001-07:00

This year in our Science studies we are learning about the Human body. We are using Fulbright's book Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy & Physiology. The first two weeks is about the cell structure and what better way to learn about it, is to build a model of it. This particular activity was not in the course work but I added it in. We spread the activity over the course of three to four days. It could be completed in one day but we chose to do it in smaller chunks.

To begin I purchased a Styrofoam disc from our local craft shop and some modeling clay. All of the cell parts except for the cell membrane and cytoplasm were made using the clay. A marker was used for the cell membrane and a piece of plastic wrap glued down to represent the cytoplasm.

As you can see push pins came in handy to tack everything in place as well as a label maker. If you don't have one labels can always be hand written.

It helped tremendously in information retention. The kids enjoyed making them as well.

Our Dancer...

2010-09-06T09:55:00.000-07:00

Dancer has once again returned to her first love, ballet. She took a year off to explore theatre. She would love to do both and we think we have finally found a company that will give her the opportunity to do just that. During the school year she will be able to practice her ballet steps and in the summer participate in a small theatre production. My prayer is that whatever direction she may choose may she bring God honor and glory.

2010-08-26T19:44:00.000-07:00

Sadly this is the only picture I can share with all of you of our very small schoolroom since it is always overflowing with books, papers and other clutter. Sure our room was clean for the first week of school but with budget cuts this year, the janitor only comes once a week (LOL).

To tell you the truth every space in our home is utilized for learning. Yes, even the bathroom, you ask. Many of my kids will read just about anywhere in the house. (LOL). This room is used for some things but it's main purpose was to store all of our school stuff. Over the few short years since we have had this room, we have outgrown it.

Many have asked what our curriculum plans are for this year. After many months of research, purchasing and shipment travels here is our list for the 2010-2011 school year?

Sport-Seventh Grade

English: Rod & Staff
Vocabulary: Wordly Wise
Latin: English from the Roots Up and Big book of Latin
Composition: Excellence in Writing (US History Based writing)
Math: Pre-Algebra by Addison and Wesley
Science: Apologia Physical Science
History: Eclectic assortment of books history from early American history to Andrew
Jackson presidency.
Spanish: Secondary Spanish by Alpha Omega
Art: Assortment of various artists.
Music: Piano lessons and band practice.
Awana, Lego League and sports once lego league is finished.

Dancer..(Fifth Grade)

English: Rod & Staff
Vocabulary: Wordly Wise
Latin: English from the Roots up and BIg book of Latin
Composition: Excellence in Writing level A.
Spelling: Sequential Spelling
Math: Horizons
Science: Apologia Anatomy and Physiology
History: Eclectic assortment of books history from early American history to Andrew
Jackson presidency.
Art: Assortment of various artists.
Music: Piano lessons and band practice.
AWANA, Ballet and maybe a theatre show.

Racer..(Second Grade)

English: Rod and Staff
Phonics: Explode the Code
Spelling: Spelling Power
Math: Horizons
Sciemce: Apologia Human Anatomy and Physiology
History: Eclectic assortment of books history from early American history to Andrew
Jackson presidency.
Art: Assortment of various artists.
Music: Piano lessons and band practice.
AWANA, soccer and other sports.

Here is a picture to share....
This was taken at the kids band recital in June. It is rare that my kids have the opportunity to get dressed up. Yes, I did snap off a few more pix.

Back to School

2010-08-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

We have a Back 2 School tradition in our home that we do every year. Each year I have the kids pick out a colored piece of construction paper. This year we used scrapbook paper. On that piece of paper they write their name, grade, weight, height and any interesting facts about themselves. We pull these papers out again at the end of the school year and update them. It is always fun for us to see the big changes each child has made in terms of growth.

Another tradition that we do every year is my hubby and I write a welcome letter to each child for the new grade level. We give it to them the night before and spend a time praying as a family for the new school year. Our kids enjoy this time immensely and look forward to the loving words on their new letters every school year.

Do you have any Back 2 School traditions in your home? Please do share...

In Him,

Amy

Happy 15th Anniversary!!!

2010-08-05T17:15:00.000-07:00

15 years ago today the Lord blessed me with a wonderful man. I consider it a real blessing to be married to him. I love him so much.

I'm back......

2010-08-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the long blogging absence, priorities and life just got in the way. Many have asked what had happened to me...it was as if I fell off the face of the blogging world. I will try to blog more regularly once again. Many have shared that they have missed my posts and my home school ideas and secrets. My family has missed the picture up dates and ramblings of our family as well. Not too sure how often I will be able to post but I will try to do my best.

Around here we are gearing up for some big changes...God has been leading and directing us to take some BIG leaps of faith. It has been scary but I would rather be walking in obedience with Him than to be giving in to my fears. More of this in blog posts to come.

Sad to even fathom that summer vacation is just about over. I finally managed to clean out the files and get the school room spruced up for the new year. We will be filing independently this year. The name of our home school was voted by the family and decided on Infinity Christian School (shaping minds for an eternity.) This is another big leap of faith for us. Something I have wanted to do for so long but felt like I needed the assistance of a Christian PSP. It turned out that our money was being spent just for them to keep our paper work, something that I can do just as well on my own. The kids are excited and a bit nervous but with so many homeschool support groups out there that we know of, we will be taken care of with social play dates, field trips and mom encouragement time (so need that).

Our curriculum has been ordered and I am still waiting on a few more packages to arrive in the mail. I have been spending many evenings researching and researching curricula that would be just the right fit for each of my kiddos. I will be hitting some uncharted waters, homeschooling a now 7th grader, 5th and 2nd grader. Uncharted meaning, way back before I had kids I did my student teaching in a 5-6th grade combination and occasional substitute teaching in that grade level as well. Now that our eldest is in 7th, I am feeling a little anxious to have everything covered academically. I know deep down that God has been there in our homeschool since the beginning and He will continue to carry us through these junior high and high school academic years as well. Speaking of that I should do a post for new homeschool moms on blessings. Great topic and encouraging too.

Here are a few picks from our summer activities to share with family and friends...

Racer having some 4th of July fun. What a firework show that was. Always lots of fun.

This is our Lady in Waiting..Dancer was in a summer play of Cinderella. She had so much fun that she was ready each morning, without any need to be reminded. As a mom you know it when your child does this, you found their passion. She has the theatre bug now and can not wait for the next one.

Sport got his feet wet in volunteer work this summer. He volunteered at the local library in their summer reading club. He enjoyed it and it gave him a time to learn how to put others first. To our surprise the library gave each volunteer a $10 gift card to Barnes & Noble, such a sweet surprise. He looks forward to spending it.

What we have been up to....

2010-01-18T13:17:00.001-08:00

For Christmas our family rented a cabin in the mountains. We were hoping for a white Christmas for the kids. Living in Southern California we are spoiled with having 70 degree temperatures on Christmas morning. Most people travel to get away from cold weather, here in California we travel to see and experience cold weather. Sadly, the kids didn't get to see snow falling but we did get blessed with lots of white powder on the ground. The kids had so much fun playing all day on Christmas Eve outside.

On New Years Eve we did our traditional celebration we do every year and have been since the kids were just babies. We set up our living room into a elegant restaurant complete with a fire in the fireplace. Each year it is the same menu, steak, seafood, vegetable and yummy Clearman's cheese bread. This year we enjoyed eating crab legs. After eating, playing games, watching movies the kids enjoy staying up late to watch the NYC ball drop. I was quite surprised that my youngest Racer,6, stayed up to welcome in the New Year.

New Years was a day for naps, games and watching the Rose Parade. A relaxing day for all.

Right after the holidays it was time to hit the books once again. We have been enjoying our history studies of learning about the Middle Ages. While I type this we are enjoying a fire on a rainy day and watching Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Once I get more time I will share with all of you what more we have been up to.

What Kind of Soil are you Working With?

2009-11-06T06:42:00.000-08:00

What kind of soil are you working with? No, this is not a post about gardening techniques but rather teaching techniques. I have always used the parable of the hard clay and soft clay of the potter as I taught my children. However, that parable focuses more on the students we are working with and not on the instructor.

However, after reading Hebrews 6: 7-8 I am reminded of what type of land are we working on. What are we starting from? Are we beginning our homeschool morning frazzled..or are we beginning our morning in the word of God? There have been days that I have sheepishly done both (just in this past week). I've started the day in the word of God alone and/or with my children and other days not at all. There is a BIG difference between the two. My behavior between the two is the difference between night and day as well as in my children.

If we begin our mornings with the Lord we will "produce a crop useful to those whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God." Who doesn't want to be this farmer? This can also apply to your homeschooling. We can produce children that will please and honor our heavenly father. As we take in the word of God it prepares and sets the path for our day.

If we foolishly don't begin our day in the word of God...and believe me I have had a few if not many of these with my children the "land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned." Have you ever had a day where you just want to go back to bed and begin it again all over? I know I have. Or throw the towel in and give up on homeschooling? Or thought there must be something wrong with your kids??? There isn't anything wrong with your kids...it's YOU! What did you place at the top of your To Do List today?

Try beginning your day with God's word. I tell you it will make a world of difference.....

Halloween 2009

2009-11-03T20:34:00.000-08:00

A Fall Hike and a Whole Lot More..

2009-10-12T20:29:00.001-07:00

I decided last Wednesday afternoon to take my kids outside for a hike to do some nature learning. Their task was to find anything to show that autumn had begun. This indeed would be a challenging scavenger hunt. Living in southern California we miss out on having four complete seasons.

We headed up for a local hiking trail about five miles away from our home. It was a pleasant day to escape the books and just get some cool fresh air with the kids. What I hadn't realized or expected we were in for much deeper learning than I had thought would happen. You see, what I didn't realize is that we would be hiking on the same trail that a young man in that neighborhood went missing. Sadly, it had a tragic ending the young man had committed suicide just over a month ago. Had I known this prior to the hike I would have hiked a different trail location altogether but the Lord used this moment for something else.

It says in the word that we as parents are to instruct our children when we walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up. We are to use every opportunity at any given time as a learning tool. Pressing His truths into their hearts. This trail opened up a flood gate of discussion about suicide. My oldest Sport wanted to know what would make a high school senior want to do this sort of thing. I explained that they believe that their life is so miserable that it is simply not worth living anymore. Sport replied is it then better to take your own life to spend an eternity in hell? I replied that they fail to see the big picture they are caught up in the here and now. More questions followed from all three of my children. I proceeded to answer each one of their questions and fears.

As we continued to hike and find different things on the trail, Sport suddenly bursts out "Mom, thank you for giving birth to me." I had tears in my eyes. "You are welcome..and I would do all over again in a heartbeat!"

Take advantage of those hidden opportunities. You never know how the Lord is going to use those Divine appointments with your kids. I know I will.

A Game to Remember

2009-10-11T19:32:00.001-07:00

Last Thursday we took the two boys to a Dodger playoff game. It was memorable event for all of us. Three out of four of us had never been to a playoff game before. It was quite an experience. It is like a regular game on an adrenaline rush. The atmosphere and energy from the crowd is amazing to witness.

What made it more excited is that we witnessed a potential losing game get turned around in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs. In a playoff game some fans believe that they are the reason for getting the scores to change in their teams favor. They will yell louder and from what I witnessed turn their baseball caps completely inside out. Some even turned their glasses upside down and their t-shirts inside out.

A funny story to share about this is I discovered near the end of the game that our youngest son, Racer's shoes were on the wrong feet. I corrected them and went back to watching the game. Shortly after the Dodgers tied the game up, a man seated two rows behind us told me that I was responsible for getting the Dodgers to win because I switched my sons shoes. Now to have that kind of power or influence over a game I do not claim to have.

It was an awesome game to be at. Truly a priceless moment to witness. Here is a short video that I took during the event. Sadly, I missed the winning run in. I had my camera in hand to capture my family's expressions. Just to catch the expressions on my boy's faces was so worth it.

LA Fair photos

2009-09-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

Artist Tea featuring Giotto

2009-09-19T20:41:00.000-07:00

This week our featured artist was Giotto. Giotto was a student of Cimabue. Giotto was a shepherd boy painting on rocks in the fields. Story has it that Cimabue was traveling through an saw Giotto drawing. He was quite impressed with Giotto's work for his young age and decided to ask him to be his apprentice. Giotto was later to take art during this time in a new direction. Not only painting were filled with people and icons but with backgrounds and with rich emotion and dimension. To better understand this look at the angels in this picture there is strong emotions displayed here.

Next week I hope to share some more of Giotto's art work and about our tea.

Baptism

2009-09-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

Rejoicing today...our youngest son was baptised today. He just turned six last month. He had been asking about getting baptised for quite some time. We waited wanting to make sure he understand what he was doing and that it was his decision and not ours.

Well today he surprised us. Our church held a big event outdoors today at a local high school football stadium. There was a call for those that wanted to receive Jesus and those that had already done so but have not been baptised yet to profess their faith. During the pastors speech our youngest one stood up and announced boldly that he was going to be baptised today. We asked if he was sure and quickly asked him all the questions. He said he was going to get baptised....and then marched down the stadium steps. Tears filled his Dad's and my eyes as we quickly followed him. Luckily a friend in the audience loaned me her camera. Once I get the pictures I will post them. There were over two dozen others young and old demonstrating their act of obedience to the Lord in baptism.

What a special day is was today. Totally unexpected but isn't that how the Lord works at times!

Latin Update...

2009-09-10T21:51:00.000-07:00

On my last post about Latin I vented about my frustrations with Latin. If I had trouble understanding it, how was I going to be able to teach it. This time I share with you an update on how we are doing.

Well....I haven't thrown the towel in yet. We're just about to finish four weeks of school. Hard to believe this... We have been averaging just two days a week of Latin. We are keeping the lessons short just 20 to 30 minutes. Small chunks of information at one time. They are understanding it and I AM TOO! Yeah!!

So far my kids have learned about why learning Latin is useful, different types of nouns, masculine and feminine nouns and over 10 vocabulary words and words that derive from them. In addition to all of this the kids have been learning the history of Rome too.

My biggest prayer is that we can maintain this momentum and enthusiasm about Latin. That we can recall things we have learned and to put it to use.

I will keep you posted again soon.

Our first Field Trip this School Year

2009-09-08T21:49:00.000-07:00

This past Labor Day holiday weekend our family went on our first field trip, to the Getty Villa in Malibu, Ca. If you have never been there it is an absolute must. The museum is modeled after an Ancient Greek/Roman villa. The grounds, art and architecture transport you back in to an ancient Greco Roman world. The location of the museum's ocean views give the perfect ambiance of the Mediterranean sea in the distance.

With the holiday weekend they had plenty of family friendly activities for the kids to participate in. These were just perfect for our Ancient Rome unit that we are currently finishing up.

Here are some of the fun things my kids got to do there...

In a hands on kids room the kids had fun drawing on plastic jars that were modeled after Greek ceramic jars.

Other sections of the room had Greek tracing shapes for the kids to use and a "behind the silk" screen for acting out Greek Olympic Warrior scenes.

My kids had fun participating in a trading game. They were merchants in the Mediterranean area buying an exchanging supplies. Here the kids traded a piece of cloth for some olive oil that they were able to make.
I didn't know that cheesecloth is used to separate the olive pulp from the oil.

Crushing olives is hard work especially since they have pits.

Here is the finished olive oil. The oil at the top is what is referred to as virgin, it is without pulp. The oil at the bottom would be used for fuel for oil lamps at the time.

Next the kids got to grind spices. The spices were then added to the olive oil to be made into perfume.

The last trading station was designing a Roman coin. They had fun using a stylus to trace their creations onto a foil type coin.

Please keep in mind the kid exhibits change periodically but I am sure whatever it happens to be it will be an added bonus to any Ancient Mediterranean unit.

Another Tea with Cimabue

2009-09-01T11:51:00.000-07:00

We had our artist tea today. The artist that we focused on was Cimabue. If you are interested in reading more about him please read my previous artist tea post found in the blog archives.

Cimabue's artworks would have a profound influence for other artists during the Early Renaissance. He helped raise the status bar that society had placed for artists at that time. Artists no longer came from low-income families but now higher incomes as well.

The crucifix as an icon dates back to the fourth century and has been used in art mediums for centuries. The Crucifix by Cimabue can still be seen today in the church of San Domenico located in Arezzo, Italy.

The resources that I used for this study of Cimabue were:

A Child's History of Art by: V.M. Hillyer

God and the History of Art by: Barry Stebbing

Charlotte Mason Geography Lesson

2009-08-31T21:15:00.000-07:00

This year I decided to add Geography to our lessons. Yes, the kids get plenty of Geography from their history studies but I was looking for something a little more relevant for today especially since our time period we will be studying this year is from 30AD to 1799.

With my younger two students I chose to use Ambelside online's Charlotte Mason geography. It is available directly from their website and for Free! Can't beat this. It is a great introduction to Geography and so simple to use. Charlotte Mason breaks it down earth as a planet, days/nights, seasons, hemispheres, etc.

The lesson I will share with you today was from the section about how the earth revolves and rotates. I combined it with the next lesson on poles, axes and hemispheres too.

After reading this section with the kids and demonstrating the concept of rotating and revolving with the kids. I had each one role play the earth and the sun. Spinning around each other slowly.

Next I had them color a picture of our earth. By doing a google search I found a coloring page of the earth.

After they colored their earth pages I had them fold it in half and cut it along the fold. Once that was done. They pasted them onto a piece of construction paper.

From here Dancer who is in fourth grade this year needed to label north and south pole, equator and both hemispheres from her memory. Great way to practice her narration/memory skills. My youngest, Racer told me verbally and pointed while I wrote it for him.

Here is the finished example.

I hope you are able to use this for your homeschooling lessons. Enjoy!

Trouble with Latin

2009-08-24T20:50:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple of years I have attempted each year to teach my kids Latin. Each year always facing the same struggle. Our main frustration was trying to find the right Latin curriculum to fit each child and for myself.

This year we set out again with high hopes with a new Latin curriculum....

You ask why teach Latin? You don't need to learn a dead language. Yes, Latin is not a language openly used today but it has roots in many languages used today. It is also found that those that study Latin improve their language proficiency scores and helps them learn other related languages. If your kids love Science or Charlotte Mason styled Nature Studies like mine than Latin becomes quite useful.

Fortunately, the past two curriculums didn't scare my kids away from wanting to. They still have the desire and motivation to learn Latin. I just pray that I can keep up with it and make it an enjoyable subject for them the best I can. Praying that our third try at this will be a charm.

Will keep you updated on our Latin study progress.

Camping in Lake Arrowhead

2009-08-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

We had fun this past weekend camping with friends up in our local mountains. Our joining campsites with two other families was a huge child paradise this weekend. The kids had fun building forts, watching birds, grinding nuts for wild animals and using old trees as their playground. There was also plenty of food, laughter and campfire smores.

Charlotte Mason: Artist Tea

2009-08-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

Over the past few years I have made a real effort to implement more Charlotte Mason style learning in our home. Here is just one I would like to share with you....

Every Tuesday in our home I host an artist tea. It is very simple and the kids look forward to this every week.

It can be as simple as cookies and tea or a full tea with fancy tea sandwiches, fruit, cookies and tea. I just use what food I have on hand here at home. This time it was taquitos that I cut in half, diced mangoes, carrots and apple juice. It was too warm for tea.

Yesterday, the artist that we discussed was Cimabue (Chee-ma-boo'ay). Cimabue lived in Florence, Italy. He had lived between (1240?-1302). He is considered an artist that helped shape the world. Cimabue is credited with resurrecting the art of painting by using live models, something that was unheard of at the time. He is most noted for having Giotto as his pupil.

This week we studied Madonna Enthroned (1285?).

They shared about the colors and lines. We discussed how painters used halos and why they did.

This painting is over 12 feet high. This was quite a stretch at the time since most were just painted on small canvases. This painting here followed the Byzantine style at the time but he was able to give his paintings a life like feel something that traditional Byzantine styles did not.

Next week we will continue to study Cimabue. I hope you will try to implement an artist tea into your homeschooling day. It is a real treat to any given day.

First Day of School Traditions 09-10 School year

2009-08-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

Summer went way too fast again this year. Last week my kids were begging to start school again. Yes... I did say begging. Let me just say this is not always the case. Last week we were pretty much house bound out of choice. I just needed the free time to get things together for school to begin. Summer has been busy days filled with swimming, play dates, VBS, vacation and just leisure days. By God's grace I was able to accomplish all what I needed to finally begin our year.

Here is a brief description of our first day back to school and some traditions to share with all of you.....

We have a few back to school traditions that we do around here. Breakfast is one of them. Usually I make them a fancy breakfast. This year I opted for something different...new. I took them out to a local restaurant. They specialize in breakfast. In fact they serve just about any style of omelet, waffle, pancake or crepe. Absolute yummy! Definitely not a place to go if one is on a diet. The kids loved it and it was a great way to get them back into the routine of waking up early.

Once we got home from breakfast another tradition we have around here is that I take pictures of them with a sign of their current grade level.

I also make a point to measure their height and the kids love to jump on the scale to check how much they weigh. (They are still young...mind you. LOL).

Another neat tradition that we do in our home is to write an welcome letter to the new school year written especially for them. They get a big kick out of this and Daddy usually throws in a small gift.

I hope you had fun reading about our first day. May God bless you with a special school year.

Blessings,

Amy

Homemade Lollipops

2009-07-14T12:59:00.000-07:00

Do your kids suffer from the boredom syndrome in the summer? My kids do on occasion. This week I was prepared with a few tricks up my sleeve to elevate their boredom blues.

We made lollipops. I know what your thinking, why on earth would you be using your oven in the summer. It is in the triple digits outside as I type this but after you read on you will see I only had to use it for a total of 10 to 16 minutes.

I found the recipe from the blog titled The Crafty Crow. The craft was titled Homemade Lollipops and can be found directly by going to The Decorated Cookie blog. If you are in a hurry here is the simple version with a few photos to share....

Here is the list of ingredients you will need to have on hand:

lollipop sticks ( found mine at Michael's-I cut them in half)

Bag of Jolly Rancher Candies

Baking tray

Aluminum foil

parchment paper

Step 1: Have your kids unwrap all the individual Jolly Rancher candies. This is a big temptation teaser for kids.

Step 2: Line a baking tray with one sheet of aluminum foil and on top of that place a sheet of parchment paper.

Step 3: Assemble your candies in stacks of three as shown. They had fun coming up with their own patterns and designs. Please be sure to leave room (2") on either side of the candy patterns for room for melting.

Step 4: While the kids are busy making their lollipop patterns preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Once the oven has reached this temperature slide your trays in for just 6minutes.

Step 5: Once the pops have been pulled out of the oven act quickly to press the sticks into the candy creations. Be sure to try to coat the stick completely. Cool.

Enjoy some summer fun to beat the boredom blues.

New School Year Plans for 09-10

2009-07-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

I am just about finished planning and have been spending time in prayer for the new school year. Curriculum choices have all been made except for one additional subject I am still pondering. All the boxes have arrived and excitingly opened. New books for a homeschool Mom is an exciting day.

This year my kids will be in sixth, fourth and first grade! My where did all those years go. It seems just like yesterday I was just venturing out into the homeschool world. Hard to believe this will be our seventh year.

Just like every year I tend to tweek a few things. This year my main goal with my sixth grader is to transition him into more independent learning. After much research I have found a free program for homeschoolers that is basically an online planner. The teacher records all the required courses and assignments on given days and all the student does is log in and their daily plan is laid out for them. The program is called Skedtrack. Feel free to google it.

I would also like to keep with our Charlotte Mason learning style approach. Short lessons from living books which also include art and music appreciation. The artist teas from last year were a big hit. I am hoping to include them for next year as well.

I am looking forward to our new history curriculum for the new school year too. After reading through it it seems to fit my learning style like a glove and it leaves plenty of room for the different learning styles of my kids.

Here is an overall view what we will be covering.
For Math the older two will be using Teaching Textbooks. We will pick up from where we left off in Math 7 for my oldest finish that in the first semester and jump into Pre Algebra the second semester. My fourth grader will be using their Math 4. My first grader, Racer will be using Horizons Math 1. Sadly, he complained with Saxon. He wanted something with more color. It never was a problem for the older two but what works for one may not work for another.....this is the freedom in homeschooling.

We will begin a more formal grammar with the older two. I decided to use Growing with Grammar. Short lessons with a practice page to complete.

Spelling will stay the same with Sport (Spelling Power) and I have been working over the summer with Dancer with Sequential Spelling. It appears to be a good fit for her.

Our historical period of time will be studying this year is form 30AD to 1799. After much prayer God directed me to Romans, Reformers and Revolutions from Diana Waring. I am looking forward to this.

Science will be the year of animals. The kids have been wanting to study Ocean animals more in depth so we are taking the dive into Zoology 2 and will finish our school year with Zoology 3 (kids choice too!)

I found a long list of Renaissance artists and composer studies to add to our school year. Please check back at what we are doing with these.

It is shaping out to be a full year. I still need to purchase our writing program and I am considering a Latin program. We shall see.

Amy

Victory!!!

2009-05-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

Just when I thought baseball season was over for my two young boys, something exciting happens. Allow me to explain; last year I shared with all of you on my blog what a rough baseball season our oldest, Sport, was having. He had a really hard coach that made baseball seem like it just wasn't fun anymore. His whole coaching approach was negative, which affected not just Sport but many other young boys on the team as well. As the protective Mother bear that I am towards my cubs, all I wanted to do was yank my son off the team. Luckily, my husband spoke some sense into me and we decided we would use that year as a valuable life lesson. We simply explained that coaches are just like kids; they are not all molded the same. Some may be encouraging while teaching the fundamentals of baseball and others can be like drill sergeants getting their team ready for battle out on the ball field.

We also explained to him that this is a great opportunity to learn some valuable coping skills in life because others in the workplace (in the future) may be just like these two styles or a combination of the two.

We then asked him what type of coach he would someday like to be and right away he chimed in that he would want to be an encourager. He had his chance to see this played out this year on the field in two ways. The first was being blessed with a Great coach this year. He is an encourager, but is never shy to point out what skills the kids to hone in on and he encourages them to do just that. The second, Sport was able to help my hubby with our youngest sons' T-ball team. It was great to see him warming up the kids with stretching, fielding balls for them, teaching them how to hold a bat and how to hold their glove when catching a ball. He made sure to encourage them too! During the season of being a coach for T-ball, he shared with me that when he gets a little older he wants to coach his own team at our church.

Baseball continues in our family for now as Sport's team made it through two playoff games. Last night they were pronounced National league champs for their division. (Sadly no trophy will be awarded for this) They were the underdogs. No one had expected them to come this far. I believe in my heart that it is due to the coaches style. It is far superior than the rest. The big championship game is this Saturday and my prayer is a two-fold one in that the boys go out and just have fun and that the encouraging coaching style shall be victorious both on the field and off.

Let's PLAY BALL!!!!!!!!!!!

There is Light at the end of the Tunnel....

2009-05-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

I sincerely apologize for the long stretch in between posts. Life just has been too busy with homeschooling, home, T-ball, baseball and my daughters upcoming play at the end of next month.

There is finally light at the end. T-ball has now come to a close, school wraps up in nine days, and baseball should end soon.

Even through all of this I have managed to sort through curriculum for next school year. I finally picked a history curriculum for next year that God kept leading me to. I will share about this soon.

Pictures will come soon too once I download them from my camera...LOL.

God's blessings to you.....

Dancer's Webkinz Birthday Party

2009-04-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

We celebrated Dancer's 9th Birthday at the end of March. She loves Webkinz so we decided to do a simple Webkinz themed party. I got a few of the ideas from doing an internet search and others we made up on our own using ideas from the Webkinz online game. Here is a quick overview of our celebration...

During the arrival of all the guests the girls had a chance to make a beaded necklace for their Webkinz. Each girl used ABC beads to spell out their Webkinz' name.

After all the girls arrived and had a chance to make a necklace the build their own nachos for dinner with lots of different toppings.

Next they went outside to a yard full of different carnival games.

The carnival games that we played were...

Croquet ball smack, bowling, Newspaper delivery (from the website game), jump rope, hoop contest, ring toss, gem hunt, Webkinz twister race and ball throwing into the hoop. The kids earned tickets at each different station.

To play Webkinz Twister each Webkinz with their owner faced each other. They advanced based on what the spinner indicated. The first one to make it across the mat was the winner.

The gem hunt was just a bucket of plastic gems buried in play sand. The girls later used the gems to glue on to a crown for their Webkinz.

After the games were played and the tickets counted it was time to count tickets and get a chance to spin the wheel of WOW! Each girl spun a couple of times and received their prizes. I picked up the girls a wooden animal coloring piece and a yarn animal kit from Michaels for each of the girls to take home and make.

After the Wheel of Wow it was time for cake and ice cream. I picked up a dog bowls from the dollar store and filled it with vanilla ice cream, chocolate brownie pieces and hot fudge.

Next it was time for presents and a movie with plenty of popcorn. All in all it was a fun party. Dancer loved every minute of it.

Happy Resurrection Day!!!

2009-04-12T07:16:00.000-07:00

Happy 9th Birthday to Dancer....

2009-03-31T21:14:00.000-07:00

It was a Webkinz sleep over party this past Saturday night. Today is her actual birthday. I am hoping to post soon. I appologize for the lagging of time in between posts.

Spring Gardening

2009-03-09T20:58:00.000-07:00

I recently checked out a book from the library called Square Foot Gardening by Bartholomew. It made me to rethink things in our small home garden. With some help from my husband and from a few of my kids we were able to transform our home garden into this....

We installed three trellis vine fences to help clear for more ground space. I planted two types of tomatoes, cucumber, string beans, zucchini, yellow squash and I am hoping to add cantaloupe too(if space allows).

The other vegetables that were planted were bell peppers (red, orange and yellow), radishes, carrots, beets, turnips, different types of lettuce, spinach, broccoli, Swiss chard, green onions, corn and lots of herbs.

With the recommendation from the book I also added marigolds and nasturtiums to help control pests that attempt to invade our garden and add a touch of color.

Now that our garden is planted and after a few finishing touches are needed we can sit back and pray for a bountiful harvest to share with friends and family.

What we have been up to.....

2009-02-27T16:04:00.000-08:00

I apologize for the blogging delay. We have been busy around here. Like they say life happens. It hasn't help that a few of us have been sick around here. It just feels like the month has just flown by too quickly and my calendar just keeps filling up with baseball schedules, field trips, church commitments and etc...

Here is a quick glimpse of what we have been up to....

We went bowling with our homeschool group for some Valentine fun.

An educational field trip to JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). Sport loved the space discussion and up close look at the mission rovers.

A Physics experiment on circular motion and calculating into distance. God had perfect timing with the space field trip for this one too. We got to discuss how important this is in space exploration with the movement and travel patterns of planets.

AWANA Bible verse quizzing last Saturday. This was Sport's first year participating in this. He enjoyed it very much.

He was awarded with fourth place!

Here is one last picture to share with you of the kids on one of our weekend hikes. We are hoping to return to hiking soon with the kids but will have to wait until the whole family is feeling better.

Blessings and hope to post again soon. I have some more pictures to share with you about a rather unique local castle we had a chance to tour. Until next time take care and God Bless.

Snow Play 2009

2009-02-22T21:30:00.000-08:00

Baseball season is just beginning....

2009-02-18T07:46:00.000-08:00

Spring training is almost in full swing in our household. Sport has begun to have practice twice a week. His opening ceremonies are at the end of this month with games beginning first week in March.

We have been so thankful for the rain but we have had a lot in just a short amount of time which can be a BIG problem. Since I wrote last we have had two large storm sytems come through with another large one expected to hit this Sunday through Tuesday. Rain has put a big hinderance on baseball practice and for Sport this is just devastating. He just wants to practice.

God has heard our cries about baseball coaches. As you may recall me sharing this last year Sport had one tough coach last year. He just made it miserable for all of us. This year Sport's coach appears to be a real gem. He is encouraging and helpful. A big difference from last year.

Practice should also begin soon for Racer. This will be his first year in T-ball. He is very excited and even more so that his Dad will be his coach. Luckily his practice is just once a week with a game on Saturday mornings.

I hope to post pictures soon of my ball playing boys real soon.

God bless,
Amy

2009-02-09T18:58:00.000-08:00

Thank you for all your prayers we have been having steady rain since last Thursday. The storms have now past and beautiful white powder is everywhere on our local mountains. Another storm is expected later this week.

Spring flowers

2009-02-04T12:56:00.000-08:00

There are signs of spring in our garden already. I know for those of you it may be hard to believe. Especially after hearing the ground hog forecast calling for six more weeks of winter. Here are some spring flowers to cheer all those cold spirits to all those who read my blog.

Southern California features two distinct seasons spring and yes, summer. I just love spring but it would be wonderful to have beautiful fall trees during fall and not winter as it is here in most cases.

Today in our Nature Studies I told the kids to find something of color and sketch it. Dancer chose to sketch these beautiful flowers that are now in bloom.

Sport chose to sketch our dying red bell peppers. They did not survive our freak hail storm we had a few weeks back. What we did find interesting is tiny aphids crawling on a bell pepper leaf. Those nasty little critters. We looked them up and read about them in our Nature Handbook by Comstock. They are nasty but very interesting. The kids learned that there are two different type of female aphids. Those that have wings and those without. The ones with the wings give birth to eggs and the ones without wings give birth to live aphids. Sport wasn't too sure if they could still be called an insect but maybe they should be considered a mammal. After close examination of the legs, counting six, it is definitely an insect.

I just love the small purple blossoms on the Rosemary.

Daffodils and tulips are one of my favorite flowers. Daffodils always seem so happy. Shinning for spring and reminding me of Easter that is soon to come.

Take care my friends spring will be here Real Soon!

Egyptian Lapbook

2009-02-01T15:48:00.000-08:00

Here are the pictures from our Egyptian lapbook. The resources we used were Evan Moor's History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations, homeschool helper website and homeschool share just for some paper folding tricks to display our own ideas. Our spine books that I taught from was the Bible and Ancient History: Adam to Messiah from Heart of Wisdom.

The coloring pages shown above were found in the Evan Moor book. We primarily just used this book for the Egyptian coloring pages.

A detailed map of Ancient Egypt.

We talked about the different styles of pyramids found in Ancient Egypt with a picture and description of each.

Agriculture and the Nile was a big part of our study because the Egyptians were so dependent on the Nile.

What type of jobs were there in Ancient Egypt and what were the canopic jars used for.

Tools that were used during that period in Egypt.

Picture timeline of Joseph's life from the Bible. We did talk briefly about Moses but will focus more on him in our Tabernacle unit.

Dynasty timeline which we used as copy work. We spread it out over several days.

Quick narration on Cleopatra. When I say quick, it means it hasn't been edited.

Crossword on Joseph's life. I think I found this from the Calvary Chapel kids pages.

We did talk about the 10 plagues that the Egyptians faced. We learned that each plague was referencing to a different Egyptian God that was worshiped. God is simply amazing in how he was reaching out to both the Egyptian and the Hebrews that there is only ONE GOD. All these other gods do not measure up to ME! The Great I am!

I hope these give you some ideas and inspiration for your Ancient Egyptian studies.

Enjoy,

Amy

Our Egyptian Unit Wrap Up Night....

2009-01-30T17:04:00.000-08:00

Last night was a big success! The kids were so proud and excited to share their projects with their Dad and Grandma. Here are some photos to share with all of you. I encourage all homeschoolers to host a wrap up night to end their units they are studying. It is a great way to put closer on a unit and for the kids to feel proud of what they have accomplished. It also gives them a chance to recall what they have learned and practice their public speaking skills.

I hope to share with all of you our Egyptian lapbooks that we made during this unit as well. I can't get to it now so stayed tuned until next time we meet. Enjoy, Amy

Preparing for Our Egypt Night....

2009-01-29T16:28:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone!

Just a quick blog entry to update you on our Ancient Egyptian night we are having tonight.

The game hens are now in the oven and the house is being filled with the fragrant aroma of apricot, garlic and pistachio nuts. Let me share with you a recipe that I came up with. I purchased 4 small game hens from a local market. After rinsing them I stuffed each of them with cooked long grain rice with pistachio nuts in it. I placed two birds each into Reynolds oven cooking bags and drizzled each on top with olive oil, minced garlic, sea salt and pepper. Finally, I prepared an apricot glaze using dried apricots, sugar, cinnamon, ground cloves, paprika and water by cooking it on the stove. Once the mixture was a little thick and soft, I poured it over each of the hens and sealed the bag shut.

For a fresh salad I just sliced up some cucumbers, red onions and poured vinegar, water, sugar and lemon juice over them.
We plan on eating all of this with pita bread, or special prepared crackers for Dancer and an Apricot pastry dessert I picked up.

It should be quite a feast and a chance for the kids to show off all that they have learned about Ancient Egypt. I hope to share some pictures with all of you next time of our special night.

Blessings,
Amy

A Desert Tortise

2009-01-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

I have only a minute to share a couple of photos with all of you today. They are from the Nature Center the boys and I went to with their Contenders group. The boys were able to learn about and touch some of the animals that they have at the Nature Center. Unfortunately, I don't have a pictures to share with you of my oldest Sport with any of the animals just Racer since I was in his group.

The desert tortise became very friendly with Racer and myself as you can see in this photo. I don't know of he thought my sons' book was food. It made for a good picture though.

We enjoyed our visit with our animal friends and of course Racer was wanting to take the tortise home with us.

Blessings,
Amy

Our Egyptian Costumes

2009-01-26T20:10:00.000-08:00

The kids and I were busy making Egyptian costumes during our history time today. At the end of the week we celebrate our wrapping up our studies of learning about Ancient Egypt. We are planning on serving some Egyptian food, dressings up and sharing with Daddy all their projects that they made during this unit.

The material I used for the boys costumes was originally a bed skirt that my Mom picked up for me at a thrift store. It was a great fabric style for this project and it cost next to nothing.

For Dancer's costume I used an old white t-shirt from my husbands and just added a belt and jewelry.

Have some dress up fun with your kids.

Blessings,

Amy

Egyptian Mummy

2009-01-25T20:28:00.000-08:00

Last week the kids and I had the chance to practice our mummy wrapping skills, thanks to the idea found on Jamin's homeschool blog.

I purchased one barbie and two Ken dolls from the Thrift store in town. Dancer wanted to keep all of them but I had to explain to her that it wouldn't be possible. She was happy is settling just for the new doll clothes that they arrived in.

Since this was going to be a big project I broke it down into several days. Tuesday afternoon we prepared the body for the process of mummification. I discussed with the kids what would happen to the body before it was wrapped. We pretended to remove the organs from the dolls and Dancer needed to cut her Barbie's hair very short.

After the organs were removed and the hair was cut. We prepared the spices to preserve the body. The spices we mixed were Cinnamon, nutmeg, red wine vinegar and olive oil. The kids shook them up in a baby food jar and used paint brushes to preserve the body.

Once this was complete we put them aside until a few days later. The real mummification process took about 70 days from start to finish.

On Thursday we wrapped the dolls. To do this I used some muslin fabric scraps that I had on hand that the kids ripped up into strips and a mixture of water and flour. It was a ratio of 2:1. Two cups of water to one cup of flour.

The kids then dipped each strip in the paste, scrapped off some of the excess mixture and wrapped the dolls.

Once all the dolls were wrapped we left them to dry.

On Friday I had the kids construct and design their own tomb for their pharaoh. We used file folders that were folded and cut in a box shape.

I hope you can get inspired to try your hand at making a mummy with your kids sometime soon.

Blessings,
Amy

Great Link to Share....

2009-01-22T19:01:00.000-08:00

I have a link to share with you today that I stumbled upon this afternoon. I was in the process of ordering my library books for the new Ancient Greece unit we begin the first week in February. The site that I found is www.mainlesson.com At this site there are hundreds of out of print books written before the mid 1920's broken down by authors and genres.

I found one written by Alfred J. Church (1829-1912) called Three Greek Children. The whole book including the table of contents are available to either read from your computer screen, print and read or read from another electronic device such as the new Amazon reading device known as Kindle. It seems that most of the books shared have strong values and virtues to instill in young kids.

I read a few paragraphs from the book mentioned above and was drawn right in. I can't wait to share it with the kids once we begin our study of Ancient Greece.

I hope you get a chance to check out the site. Now I am more intrigued about purchasing a Kindle because I know of another site that carries Henty books online too for young adult readers. Hmmmmm.....Something to consider....

Blessings,
Amy

Our Nature Study

2009-01-21T15:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we tried to implement our first Nature Study. It was very informal. Remember, baby steps..... We are using Anna Comstock's book Handbook of Nature Study as a reference book for the kids to dig deeper if they choose to.

For our first try at this all of us went outside in the backyard with a sketch pad to observe nature in action. I then had the kids find something of interest observe it and make a sketch of it.

Here is Sport sketching a plum tree. He chose to lay on the pavement and not the wet grass. Notice the warm ski cap. Our weather has been warm lately but he just loves the hat that his Grandma crocheted for him.

Dancer chose to sketch our daffodils that are now in bloom. Yes, daffodils in January. Last weekend we had temperatures in the 80's here. We are in desperate need for rain around here. We appreciate the warm weather but we need Rain!!!! Sorry I didn't take a picture of our daffodils to share with you.

Here is a picture of Dancers' Nature page of the daffodil. After she sketched the daffodil we read about them in the Handbook of Nature Study book. I also had her write the Latin name for the daffodil. She also wanted to disect it.

She tried to taste the sweet nectar but was quick to spit it out. She said it was very bitter. I don't blame her. She was hoping it tasted like the honeysuckles we have growing in our yard.

As you can see we even taped down our daffodil specimen to save.

I will point out to you that Sport my oldest quickly sketched his but was not the least bit interested in researching about his plum tree. He was more interested in working of working on the project he had begun outside yesterday. Now that the rocks are all cleared he is excited to begin his clubhouse construction. Did I mention...One Step at a Time.....

Blessings,

Amy

PS. As I type this the weather report is expecting rain today. Praise God!

Our first Artist Tea

2009-01-20T21:22:00.000-08:00

We hosted our first Artist tea. It was nothing real elaborate. In fact it was just quickly thrown together quickly with the help of the kids. I pulled out some fancy luncheon glass plates and class punch cups. My boys are not tea drinkers like my daughter and I are. Luckily I had some cranberry juice on hand. They enjoyed juice while eating crackers, salami slices and cherries.

We are currently studying Picasso and the picture of our focus today was Guitar and Mandolin. Here is a picture of it.

I had the kids pick out the colors, patterns, shapes, and lines. They pointed out that the picture looked like a face.

We also discussed the style of Cubism that Picasso used and what sets Cubism apart from other styles. It was Picasso along with another artist that first began to use the Cubism style.

After the short sharing time of the painting the kids cut out a colored copy of the painting and glued it on to a artist note booking page. You can find them here http://www.notebookingpages.com/ ; they are free to download.

Go ahead and try to host an Artist tea with your kids. You can make it as simple or elaborate as you like. Your kids will enjoy it and it is a relaxing event to add to you day.

Our new Charlotte Mason style homeschool day....

2009-01-20T15:03:00.000-08:00

I had great reviews from the kids about our new Charlotte Mason style schedule that we implemented today. They have no idea who the idea was modeled from but by the looks of it, it wouldn't matter much. As I type a quick post from my laptop in my dining room the boys are now working like young men and shoveling rocks to clear a space to build something. Yes, they are using their free time constructively. Mind you this was only after they had snack, chores and used an hour of screen time. I'm glad to hear that at least for now they are working together outside.

Here is an idea of what our day was like today. We started school a little after 8am only because we were setting up our schooling in the TV/living room to watch the Inauguration live on television. After opening devotion and prayers for our school day and for the incoming president I had the two oldest one copy a poem neatly either in handwriting or printing while I worked with Racer my kindergartner with his printing. Next I gave each of the older two grammar pages. Dancer had one on different verb uses such as past, present and future tenses and Sport practiced subject and predicates. Keep in mind that these lessons are brief and to the point. Just the amount of time that a child is able to pay attention.

After grammar I gave them a choice for a pre writing assignment. Here is the list of choices I gave them to choose from:

1. You are an Egyptian pharaoh explain how your life is.
2. You are an Egyptian pharaoh who has passed away please describe your funeral and burial process.
3. You are an archaeologist and have stumbled upon a burial chamber that is yet to be discovered within a lost pyramid please describe your discoveries/findings.

Sport and Dancer both chose the last one and jotted down some ideas for their writing assignments this week. Next, was reading and spelling practice followed up with Math, history and an Artist tea. I will post soon with pictures of our History and Artist Tea with details of how to plan one each week in your homeschool.

Here is a quick time frame of our day if you would like this for your own reference. I do enjoy having a guide for my day but my ultimate guide right now that I am leaning on is my Lord, Jesus. His plan for my day may be totally different from one day to the next. Remember it is just a guide. Blessings, Amy

Tuesday
8:00-8:30
Bible/Devotions
8:30-9:00
Poetry Memory
9:00-9:30
Edit/Writing
9:30-10:00
Writing/spell
10:00-10:30
Math
10:30-11:00
History
11:00-11:30
Artist Tea
11:30-12:00
Lunch

Here are some new things I am considering.....

2009-01-19T08:15:00.001-08:00

Here is a list of some new things I am considering....

1. Shorter lessons 30 minutes max. (Not too sure if this is really going to work-But I am trusting the Lord on this one!)

2. We already added an artist study and composer study earlier in the year. The kids are enjoying this.

3. Planning on participating in the Outdoor Hour challenge which uses the Handbook of Nature Study. I have had this book on my shelf waiting to be used. This will be a challenge for us since we live in the suburbs.

4. Having the kids participate in more life study skills. Considering a building project with the boys and more sewing with Dancer.

5. Our Poem memorization is working well. We will continue with this.

6. Using the new Language Arts ideas to fit with our History studies too. I'm thinking of having the kids write a short paper as if they lived in Egypt maybe as a Pharaoh. Just an idea we shall see what they come up with.

7. Need to create a Peace Place in my home for the kids to work out anger issues. You can find more information at http://www.ourjourneywestward.com/ for this.

I am sure I may come up with a few additions to this list but in this case less is best for my sake and for my little ones.

I'm excited to see what the Lord has in store for us this week. It helps that we have had a holiday weekend and are taking it easy to watch the Presidential Inauguration this morning it gives me time to mull things over in my head.

I will try to post again soon and share with you how we have implemented these new things.

Blessings,

Amy

School Schedules and Charlotte Mason

2009-01-19T08:11:00.000-08:00

Well, it is that time of year again where I begin to reassess what appears to be working and not working in our homeschooling year thus far. I am tweaking my language arts program and my school schedule with the kids. Up to this point we have been using Character Quality Language Arts (CQLA) but my oldest Sport is getting frustrated with it. I don't want him to dread grammar or writing so I decided to take the plunge and come up with my own Language Arts program. Something I did when he was much younger but got caught up in fear and the what ifs that seem to plague the best of homeschooling mothers. More of that to come in a minute....

Since I began homeschooling about six to seven years( if you count preschool) I fell in love with Charlotte Mason philosophy of homeschooling. It is what drew me in along the with the Lords' doing as well. I feel the Lord is calling me to return to this style of teaching...something that has gotten lost in the background along the way. Shorter lessons that hit to the main point of any given subject and more of a God driven homeschool home than just recreating school at home. Coming from a mother who used to be a second grade teacher many moons ago this is a hard thing. Something that I have wrestled with for years. It is so hard getting out of a box that society has taught us to be in. But through God's grace and his leading I am realizing that I have been trusting in the box and not just Him. So instead of planning out my days and weeks to come I going to place my trust in Him to plan our days. What does He desire of my family not what I desire of my children. Rest assured I am not going to jump in and have no plan for my day....He will have my plan. Trust me I will know that Math and all the other academics need to be accomplished but if something else is begging for attention at the moment I would be better served there than in Science textbook.

With shorter lessons we will have a shortened school day. The kids are excited about this. I am looking forward to them having more free time. A chance for them just to be kids. This is so important to me. Free to roam in the backyard and to come up with their own interests. They seem to have so many as of late. Sport is excited about outer space and wants to fly to the moon someday. Dancer wants to adopt every animal that is out there..our future vet and Racer I'm still unsure about but if it involves guns he is all over it. Scary thought! He's my warrior ready to defend.

Our language Arts will not be any different from others just condensed. I will still have grammar, editing, vocabulary and writing. It will take a little more planning on my part. I am blessed to be a homeschooling Mom in the age of the internet there are tons of stuff to pull from and I can tweak it if need be.

To all those Homeschool Moms out there who read this blog .....Trust in Him. Not your schedule book or daily planner but Christ. He knows what is best for them. Step back and let Him lead.....

Blessings, Amy

Art Museums

2009-01-18T12:12:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday I took the kids to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). We were there to see their Ancient Egypt Art and some of the artists we have been studying about. This museum is endless. It takes more than one day to go through it all. Given that it was a free day we set out with a plan in mind of what we wanted to see while we were there. I wasn't interested in the modern art. Modern art has an acquired taste. I don't think I have acquired it yet and I confess I may never will. I just have a hard time seeing a rack of backpacks on several hooks and calling that art. It is just not my thing.

Sadly, the website led me to believe that they would have a larger collection of Ancient Egyptian artifacts than what they had on display but we did enjoy what we saw. The kids enjoyed sketching what they saw and it gave us a chance to take a peak into other Ancient history rooms.

Our trip also was quite manageable with a kindergartner in tow too. He never had a chance to get bored or restless because we planned out what we wanted to see and if we saw a bit more that was great too.

Mary Cassatt is one of my favorite artists. My bedroom is decorated with her prints. I just love her pictures of Mothers with their children. Each one is so relaxing and inviting. We studied her art earlier this year.

Mondrian here on the right. I think he is considered modern art but his fun to teach kids line, spacing and shapes. His style is quite interesting.

Currently studying Picasso and the kids were quick to point out that he painted this during his Blue period.

Art is fun to explore with kids. Step out and enjoy it!

Blessings,

Amy

Sunday Thoughts....

2009-01-11T15:36:00.000-08:00

Well, the weekend is just about over and it has been a busy one indeed and next week shall be as well. I hope this Sunday finds you in good spirits. I wish we had a relaxing weekend as seen in this picture with Racer but it was not. Most of Saturday was spent at church helping to paint and prepare the children's Sunday school classrooms. They are starting some exciting new things at church for our first through fifth graders. They are taking this time to clean,paint and redecorate the much needed classrooms.

It is simply amazing what the kids will be able to participate on a given Sunday. They will have five center rotations of Science, Arts/Crafts, cooking, drama and computer that will be all tied into the weekly sermon. Each grade will rotate on a weekly basis to each of the learning centers. The kids are just as excited as I am. The main focus is to capture their attention and help crystallize their retention using the different learning avenues. It is a real homeschoolers dream come true. What makes it is that it will be all Bible based.

My hubby and I have volunteered to take on the Science center for five weeks. I will try to post more about that soon in an up and coming post.

The wheat free diet appears to be helping Dancer. She is no longer complaining of stomach aches. It is taking a lot of learning on my part. I feel like I am always in the kitchen now either baking more bread or preparing something else. Yesterday was hard as all the others were taking a break from painting and eating pizza and Dancer couldn't have any. Her and I ate Taco Bell fast food instead. She was a little disappointed but she was glad not to be suffering from a stomach ache later that night! I have to say that I am becoming quite educated in the different flours that are out there; I never knew that there was so many. I am also enjoying the food but do miss not being able to drive through IN and Out and pick up cheeseburger in a bun. We haven't done too much fast food lately....one step at a time.

Well, with a full school week ahead I must be going and do some school planning.

Our Week so Far...

2009-01-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Our week is going well. It was hard for both the kids and I to wake up and be ready for back to school on Monday morning. The leisure mornings of Christmas vacation are now behind us. I am doing well with my New Year Resolution too so far. We shall see how I am doing say March or April.

Since Saturday I have spending a lot of my free time in the kitchen. Our dancing daughter has been having a lot of recurring upset stomachs. Our pediatrician ran some tests over the summer and they came back negative for celiac, thyroid and a wheat allergy. After doing some online research of my own I decided to try out a wheat/gluten free diet with her anyway. The whole family is doing it for 30 days. Dancer will most likely stay on it longer. She hasn't been complaining of stomach aches as of late. From the research I have done she may just have an intolerance and not an allergy. It is a total life style change for myself in the types of foods I prepare and where we dine. I thought the 30 days would give me time to come up with some healthy recipes that I could carry over for Dancer. It is hard because wheat is in everything that we eat.

We are still studying Ancient Egypt in history. Science we are learning about Force and other mechanics of Physics. Art we are studying Picasso and Mozart for Music appreciation. We are hoping to plan a Egypt wrap up night sometime toward the end of this month. I will share some pictures with many of you soon.

Blessings and Happy Wednesday,
Amy

Happy 2009!!!

2009-01-01T19:27:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

I love the start of a new year! Setting goals, beginning new things, new challenges, new ideas a fresh start, great time to rethink goals and to clean and organize our homes and lives. I'm not very good at setting and keeping New Year's resolutions. I admire and marvel at those who can. I had fun following the one year crock potting meal blog. She had a made a resolution to use her crockpot everyday for a full year. She was even featured on many TV shows that followed her endeavor. I don't think I am quite capable or patient enough to come up with 365 different meal ideas. I have enough trouble cooking for my own family each night.
I'm still thinking about what goals I would like to set for this New Year. I would love to be able to read the Bible completely in one year. I always have the best intentions but seem to peter out as the year rolls along. I have read through the entire Bible but not in one year. It took me a lot longer than that.
Maybe the goal I should set for myself would be to complete things that I have started. I have so many unfinished projects that plague my home. I am very capable of doing this but I am prone to be swamped ideas and not enough time to finish them. Then I come up with a new idea and move on. I think this would be a great goal to set for myself...not to begin another project until I finish the one that I am working on.
This will be a challenge in of itself. I have so many interests.

Here are some other things I would like to do this New Year...

Scrapbook our vacation pages. I am so behind years I believe....
Quilt with my daughter a small doll blanket.
A club house for the boys.
Finish a few unfinished projects around here.( I will get back to you on these later.)

Happy New Year and set some goals for yourself.

2009-01-01T19:14:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas 2009......

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christ centered Christmas this year. We enjoyed ours very much. The season always comes and goes so quickly. Too quickly I believe. Why rush it. Savor every minute of it. Make Christ a part of your life every day this new year. What a great gift that would be.

Blessings and Happy New Year!

Amy

Our Christmas Card Photo

2008-12-11T07:49:00.000-08:00

Here is our Christmas photo we sent to everyone this year. It was actually taken six months ago in June while we were on vacation. Hard to believe it has been that long ago already and that there was snow icy snow still available on Hurricane Ridge,Wa in late June. I hope to update all of you soon. We are knee deep in holiday preparations around here.

Take care and blessings to all of you...

Thanksiving Photos to share

2008-12-04T06:39:00.000-08:00

I know the Christmas decorating is now in full gear but I wanted to share with all of you some Thanksgiving photos. I enjoy the holiday very much and am always a little saddened how it is so lost/hidden between two of the most highly advertized holidays. Enjoy the photos and I hope to post a new post sometime soon on what we are currently learning about....

As you can see I love table decorating and home entertaining. One of these years I need to participate in our local fairs table decorating contest. The fun I have is making the people I host treated as fine guests. If you have china plates why not use them. I enjoy using mine especially since I only get to use them a handful of times throughout the year. This is the kids table centerpiece. I found the idea in a Family Fun magazine issue. Luckily I had the turkey face from a craft that my kids had done at a school event.
There is a fun story that goes along with this table cloth. We added a new table in our holiday event this year and I didn't have a table cloth to fit its size. I didn't have time or money to spend on a new table cloth. I came up with a quick fun alternative. We had an old sheet from our Revolutionary War tents and I set it outside with some paint and the kids had fun painting turkey hands all over it. It was good messy fun. What made it more memorable was that we had to beat the incoming rain that was lingering overhead as well.

I hope you enjoyed a few Thanksgiving pix.

Blessings,

Amy

What board game are you???

2008-11-18T10:14:00.001-08:00

What Board Game Are You?

You Are Boggle
You are an incredibly creative and resourceful person. You're able to dig deep and think outside the box to get things done.You are a non linear thinker. You don't like following directionsYou draw your inspiration from the strangest places sometimes. You're constantly inspired.

Blessings,

Amy

Egyptian Pyramids

2008-11-17T20:43:00.000-08:00

If you are looking for the Christmas projects, I did post them. Please read below. I needed to post something again to hide the cover post from my little ones.

We are currently learning about Ancient Egypt in our history studies. It is simply amazing to myself and my kids historical and Biblical accounts of Ancient history. We are learning just so much. Today we had fun learning about the pyramids. After the kids read some books about the pyramids we added a write up for our lapbooks. I had them learn and find information about the three different types of pyramid that were built in Ancient Egypt. They are the step, smooth sided and the bent style pyramids. They added pictures of each kind and researched where in Egypt each one is found.

Next the kids got messy with sugar cubes and glue to create a step pyramid. I think they had more fun eating the cubes than building. It was quite tricky for my two younger ones. This is where Math concepts stepped in and Math patterns were formed. I will need to remember to look up some more pyramid Math problems on the internet for my oldest to solve. He enjoyed it immensely. Here are a few photos to share with you in our building process.

Hope you enjoy,

Amy

Christmas project photos to share

2008-11-17T20:11:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally got around to taking a few photos of some of my finished Christmas projects that I worked on last weekend. Sorry I can't post all of them. I wouldn't want to spoil the fun for family reading this blog.

The first one I share with you is for Dancer. She loves to cook and the apron that she has now is in sad shape. I also wanted to make a matching one for one of her American Girl dolls. Sadly, I just had enough fabric for two. I have been trying to use up a lot of my fabric I have had stored away for years. Believe me I do have a lot. Four large storage bins filled. The color came out terrible from this angel. It is lavender with a pink rick rac trim. The one apron took me about four solid hours one night. I was up late that night after the kids were in bed sewing on my machine.

The next item I share with you is a real necessity. My oldest son Sport has a large baseball hat collection. I just don't have enough hooks or wall space in the boys room. I found the Simplicity pattern for this on sale for $1.00 over the holiday weekend. I was even blessed to find jean material in the bargain bin to be use for this project.

This next project I share with you is a very easy and quick. I finished this project in about 2 hours. All I used was a red turtleneck purchased from Walmart. I had a few different styles of Christmas fabric for Dancer to choose from. She chose the teddy bear print and I measured the desired length for the dress. I cut enough fabric to go around the whole end of the turtleneck with plenty of extra for gathering. Rule of thumb is to double the measurement of the circumference of the turtleneck. I don't thing I did exactly that but it worked. Cut the material and add a hem with lace or ric rac or another trim if desired. Run a gathering stitch and add to the base of the turtleneck and sew in place.
I even had lace left over to add some at the neck of the turtleneck. It sure is easy and she now wants me to make one for her doll to match. We shall see. I'm not sure I have enough fabric on hand but I may be able to pull something together.

I sure had fun with these projects and now I'm off to create some more.

Blessings and I hope you are inspired to create something homemade this holiday season.

Veteran's Day

2008-11-11T20:27:00.001-08:00

Happy Veteran's Day!

We had a long weekend. Over the weekend I was able to get a jump start on my Christmas to do list. I enjoyed sewing most of the weekend working on holiday gifts for the family. I will try to post pictures soon of my different projects. Two of them are so quick, easy and cost effective. I promise to share them soon as well as our Science lapbook we are finishing up this week.

Today the family and I spent most of the day at the Richard Nixon library & museum for the Veteran's Holiday observance. The kids enjoyed putting their election skills information to the test. My oldest was amazed at how votes were tallied in years past elections. Both Dancer and Sport also remarked on how the electoral college state votes have changed since Nixon's era.

I hope you had a great holiday.
How did you spend your Veteran's holiday?
Blessings,
Amy

Easy Fall Craft

2008-11-06T22:00:00.001-08:00

Here is an easy fall craft I did last week with the kids. We had gathered some acorns a few weeks ago from a local live oak tree and wanted to use them in a fall craft. I decided to make some fall napkin rings with the kids to decorate our Thanksgiving table.

Here are the supplies listed that we used to make these:

several paper towel tubes or toliet paper tubes

felt in fall colors

hot glue gun

raffia

acorns

First we roughly guessed the desire size for each napkin ring and cut each cardboard tube into sections. We got about 4 rings from each cardboard tube.

Next we measured and cut a piece of felt long enough to stretch across the tube and glued it into place. Lastly, we decorated each napkin ring by adding raffia and acorns.
Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday or Not So Wordless....

2008-11-05T07:55:00.001-08:00

Do You Need a Hug this Morning???

Mesopotamian Lapbook

2008-11-03T20:10:00.001-08:00

This past week we wrapped up our Mesopotamian Unit we had been working on. I had the kids create another lapbook with their studies. The end result came out great and they shared this this past weekend with grandparents and with Daddy later on Sunday while tast testing some dates. Here are a few photos to share. Most of the print outs found come from a printable book titled History Pockets of Ancient Civilizations from Evan-Moor. Others we such as the Mesopotamian art picture and gods pictured from a site called http://www.karenswhimsy.com/ . The rest of the ideas I put together myself (empire and Science/Technology inventions) with the help of display organizing from http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ . We had fun with this unit and look forward to doing the same with our next unit Ancient Egypt.

Having Fun in Science

2008-10-16T07:29:00.000-07:00

How many of you enjoyed Science in school. I particularly don't remember Science in elementary school. I had some good teachers in High school but the teacher I had for Chemistry was a teacher that spoke in a thick accent. It was very hard to understand him and he never really taught to the class. He just enjoyed solving equations. So the year I had Chemistry are known as the Mad Scientist years and I always thought Chemistry was just too hard of a subject to understand.

Now that I am teaching the kids elementary Physics this year we are having a little dose of Chemistry in our books this year. I am trying to make it fun and creative for them to understand. Here is a fun activity to share with all of you that we did this week....

The study of an Atom and learning the Elements

Just to add we did these activities on Tuesday afternoon after we had read in our Science books on Monday.

First we talked about the Periodic Table of Elements and reviewed some of the more common ones that they may have heard before such as helium. I had the kids find items in our home or outside that were made up of elements and we located them on the periodic table. Then I had them recreate the element hydrogen by standing in a circle each kid was either a proton, neutron or an electron. Then I had the kids do a matching game that I found. They matched the element name with the abbreviation and matched it where it is found in the environment. For instance, Chlorine CL is found in swimming pools. Here is a picture to share.

Next, I had the kids work together to pick out 8 elements from the chart to find out how many protons, neutron and electrons that each of them had and to record them. After using the internet to find the information we made a sugar cookie of what each of them looks like. The kids had lots of fun with this one.

We used Reeses Pieces. The orange colored ones were the protons, neutrons were yellow and the electrons brown.

I encouraged the kids just to talk in Science terms to help them get acquainted with the new terms that we were learning.

It worked! Aside from the sugar high Science was fun and non intimidating and less boring.

Have some fun and bake up some Atom cookies they are yummy!!!

Girls just love Dolls

2008-10-06T22:09:00.000-07:00

American Girl Place October 2008

Hi Everyone!

My daughter and I took our very first trip to the American Girl Place doll shop in Los Angeles this past weekend. My daughter worked so hard to save up for her second American Girl doll. The first one she received as a Christmas present last year and she has been hooked ever since.
She decided to purchase Kit. She fell in love with the books and the recent summer movie. Since this was our first trip there we were simply amazed with everything we saw. If you have never been there and you have a daughter who is American Girl doll lover at heart you are in for a real treat.
I will attempt to give you a quick over view of the store. When you walk in the bottom level features the current popular doll. Clothing and accessories to match for you and your doll. There is also a beauty salon for those dolls with nasty knots to have a new hair style for a fee. The second floor is a museum and store wrapped into one. Each doll have a cove of sorts that displays clothing, accessories, books, games, tapes and other items that feature that doll. Dancer took off for the Kirsten cove because this was her first American Girl doll. I treated her to a new outfit. She was so excited and had a difficult time trying to pick out just one.
After finally making our purchases we headed for the cafe area. We didn't have a reservation but checked to see if there was any cancellations . Luckily there was so we treated ourselves to a scrumptious lunch that was worth the fun and to see the priceless smile on my daughters' excited face. She wasn't expecting this treat at all. After the waitress seated us she handed us two doll highchairs for my daughter American dolls. Our lunch consisted of a first course of sweet and sticky cinnamon rolls. The second course was veggies and dip, tiny cheesy potato skins, and egg salad cherry filled tomatoes. The third course was our main course Dancer chose the Tic Tac Toe pizza (very large portion) and I chose the sun dried tomato quiche ( it came with a small herb salad). Our food was yummy! The grand finally was a small flower pot filled with chocolate moose, a sugar cookie and a small heart shaped butter cream cake. There were a couple of souvenirs to take home hair ties (napkin rings) and the daisy fake flowers that filled our moose flower pots.
My daughter had such a great time that she is already planning on her return visit once she saves enough money again to purchase her own new American doll.

Blessings,
Amy

Things the I have been up to Lately...

2008-10-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

As always it has been very busy around here. I don't think there is ever a dull moment. I'm sure I will have plenty of these in my later years of my life but for now I'm enjoying every minute I have with my young kids.

I have been doing some redecorating in my living room. I became very inspired from reading the Nester blog. I went ahead and tried my hand at window mistreatments. They did not come out exactly how she suggested so I did do a little sewing to make them long lasting in the years to come. I also finally dragged out my fall decorations from the garage to get my home in gear for one of my favorite seasons. I just love fall and spring. Both are completely on the opposite spectrum. Here you have spring and new life is being created all around. Easter is a glorious celebration of the new life we receive in Christ once we accept him into our hearts. For fall it is the foliage. It is nature's last hurrah until winter approaches. Here in Southern California I can only dream what fall foliage really looks like as seen in pictures. With the warm temperatures our trees are still changing colors even in the winter. There have been many warm Christmas afternoons around here with highs in the upper 70's and fall leaves piled high.

I have added a few more subjects in our school time this year. Finally, I have been able to add Art appreciation and Music appreciation to the mix. We shall see if they will last after the holidays that is the true test. We are currently learning about Bach and just finished Mary Cassatt. Today I had the kids participate in Home Ec. After morning devotions we worked in the yard for an hour to clear our vegetable garden area in preparation for a winter garden. We just worked for an hour before running inside to escape the soon to be 100 degree temperatures. Later after the rest of our studies I had the kids copy a recipe and bake some yummy lemon bars. Daddy will just love today's Home Ec lesson.

We as a family have also been following the elections and the bail out debates. All of us have our many opinions mine is of prayer. This is a great opportunity to reach out to others to offer prayers and help when needed. Yes, we all depend on money but money can't buy you salvation and you can't take it with you when you die. If we put the Lord first in our lives every thing else falls into place.

I will try to post some pictures soon. My prayers are with all of you who read this blog regularly. May God grant you His everlasting Peace!!

Blessings,
Amy

Some Fun Projects to share with you...

2008-09-23T06:47:00.000-07:00

I have two projects to share with all of you that we have been working on in our schooling this year. The first one is an beautiful craft project I found on the the Crayola website. I love snatching quick and easy projects from that site to do with the kids. I'm afraid I don't remember the title of the project.

It was quite simple to make and the result is a beautiful fall craft display for your home. First, take a pice of white contruction paper and have your child fold it into fourths. Basically fold once and then a second time to fold into a square shape and unfold. Next have them choose four colors and have them color very dark with a marker into each box. Once that is done have them collect four leaves around your yard or neighborhood and these will be painted on one side with gold paint and pressed down on to each separate colored square as shown above.

Once it is dried you will carefully slit lines with an exacto knife about a half of an inch apart. Be sure not to slit all the way to the bottom of the sheet. Once that is completed have your child take some bamboo sticks (we pre painted ours gold) and carefully weave the sticks in a basic weave pattern on to the art project. Here is a photo of it.

The other finished project that I can shre with you today is our dinosaur lapbook. Here it is finally. You can find all the links to make one for yourself at http://www.homeschoolshare.com/

Sorry for the long Break....

2008-09-15T20:21:00.000-07:00

I apologize for my absence. I have been neglecting my blog lately. Life has been busy around here lately. What have I been up to you ask. Well, aside from schooling the start of every group that our family is involved has now begun. What are they you ask. Soccer for the two boys, ballet for my Dancer, AWANA and Bible study and Homeschool Park Days. We have added a couple of new ones to the mix too this year. Contenders of the Faith for the boys, American Heritage Girls and a twice monthly Friday School. The last two groups luckily only meet twice a month right before our scheduled park days. Otherwise I would not have signed up for either of these.

We also finished our dinosaur lapbooks and will be sharing those very soon. Today we begun our new spine book on Physics. Sport is looking forward to this and I'm hoping to add plenty of lapbooks to help spice things up too.

My hubby and I painted the living room this weekend. It came out very nice. We have had off white walls in our living room for years. We finally made the switch by adding some color and I just love it. It's funny, aside from our hallway being white every room is a shade of color.

Here is a picture to share with you before I leave you all again. It is from the kids first day of Friday School.

Blessings,
Amy

P.S. The cat picture at the top is our cat. Dancer and I have a lot of fun dressing up our cats.

Creation vs. Evolution Lapbook

2008-08-28T14:41:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures to share with all of you of our Creation vs. Evolution lapbook that the kids enjoyed creating this week. Please keep in mind that this was done with a third and fifth grader. At this young school ages my main focus was just on definitions, who Darwin was, to Compare and Contrast (just at surface level) and to give a few reasons why the theory of Evolution is false. Please excuse the spelling errors inside the lapbook that is one of our weak areas that I am addressing this year.
**Please excuse the website link on the lapbook cover. I should have had the kids cut that out before they pasted it. Oh Well.....

This is a photo of the Creation lapbook back cover.

To begin this lapbook I assigned each of my children a side to work on. Since my oldest is in fifth grade I gave him the Evolution side to work on and my third grader was assigned the Creation side.

Oh, I also would like to point out that these lapbooks were glued together as one giant lapbook. I hope that helps.

I had them also learn about the Scientific Method process. Something that was review for them from a couple of years ago. We talked about what are theories and how do they move from a hypothesis to a theory and them become a proven theory and ultimately a fact.

Here is a picture of the left side of the Creation lapbook. Many of the print ables for the Creation pages I got from Lapbook Lessons. This site is fabulous and if you have kids who enjoy lapbooking then this is the site to add to your favorites.

This is the inside center of the Creation Lapbook. The Garden of Eden picture I found just by googling it. My daughter loved it.

Here is the left inside of the Evolution Lapbook. The picture of Darwin was from Google.

This is the center section of the Evolution lapbook. Again the photos used here were found from Google.

This is the right and final section of the Creation vs. Evolution lapbook. The pockets that you see here were found at Homeschool Share website. This website is another one that needs to be added to your favorites list.

My son decided what the pockets were to be and he even wrote some information about each inside the pockets.

I hope you attempt to make a Creation vs. Evolution lapbook of your own with your kids we enjoyed making this one.

Blessings,

Amy

Creation vs. Evolution Our First Unit

2008-08-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

Since our oldest Sport is in 5th grade this year I though that this would be the perfect time to cover Creation vs. Evolution and the age old question where is the evidence that the dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible. I not writing this to open up a debate for anyone but to share with other homeschooling parents out there that these are the ideas, text and other resources that have worked with this age range of children.

This is our first year using the Heart of Wisdom teaching approach so please bear with me. I ordered the Creation unit E-book and we have been using this as our spine for teaching. It is very informative and I have breaking it up into bite size chunks for my Dancer third grader to follow along with us as well.

This whole week our main focus was on the Creation story from the Bible itself. Reading from the Bible laying the foundation of the two groups of people who believe in Creation but the two differ in old earth vs. new earth. From the old earth there are three groups within that camp, the Gap theorists who hold the belief that their is a gap in time from Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 1:2, the Day Age group that hold the belief that each day of Creation mentioned in the Bible was spread out over millions of years, and finally Theistic Group they hold the belief that God used evolution as a form of controlling the earth.

Now I understand what you are thinking how in the world do you teach that to a fifth grader if you alone don't understand it. Luckily, my Sport loves to read. We have been reading and taking notes. When we are finished I am hoping to have the kids construct a Creation vs. Evolution lapbook.

Another lapbook idea I found for my kids to do was a Creation one in itself. Even Racer made a Creation lapbook of his own. I found the information from Lapbook Lessons. A great site for ideas and templates provided.

I had the older two work on a circle Creation lapbook that I found from a homeschooling blog called Barracudas Lapbook Corner. She even provided a short video how to cut out and fold the circles to make the book. My hat goes off to her.

I hope these ideas will be of some help to those of you who decide to a Creation vs. Evolution unit with your children. Please remember this is an important topic to not only discuss with your children but to press God's truths on their hearts. To teach both sides to them so when the opposition arises they may know the real truth!

Blessings,

Amy

Fun and not so Fun First Week of School.....

2008-08-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

At first glance of the blog title I know what you are thinking.... We have all been there once in our lives. We were so excited to start to school but once school had begun we couldn't wait for the day or year to quickly come to an end. I am sorry that was not my intention for posting that title for you. You see, I have a new Kindergartner this year and he was feeling under the weather this week. He was suffering from that nasty head cold that seems to be going around. He still celebrated and did a relaxed style of learning this week and he was a real trooper through everything. As a Mom I made sure he had plenty of love from Mommy, lots of juice, and the comforts of his parents bed with the humidifier on. He is now on the mend and is bouncy back to his happy self once again as the week drew to a close.

Our first day kicked off with a special breakfast. I made them some special butterfly rolls. Here is a close up picture of one of them. I found the idea on a website. I am sure if you google it you may find it, if you are interested in making them for your little ones too. To make them take a roll of the large oven baked biscuit dough such as Pillsbury. Remove all 8 biscuts from can and slice each one in half. Spread each with a small amount of the jam of your choosing and seal it carefully. Cut them in half lengthwise, making two halves of a biscuit. Bake in oven according to the package. Cool completely. Join two pieces together and add Rediwhip cream for the butterflies body, strawberries, chocolate for eyes and I used a fruit roll-up cut and rolled for antennas. YUMMY!!

I also had the kids decorate a sign to show what grade they are in. We also filled out a questionnaire in which I measured their height too. The kids love to visually see how much they have grown. I'm also amazed how fast they are growing too!!

For the rest of the day the kids had fun decorating and personalizing their new school folders and getting to look through their new books.
All in all we had a great first day despite my Racer felling under the weather.
Blessings,
Amy

School is starting just around the corner????

2008-08-16T06:27:00.000-07:00

How did that happen?? Summer is just about over and where did all the time go this summer. This summer has been so full with a list of endless events. From vacations to birthday parties the time just flew by too quickly. Just this past five days I have been busy teaching 29 kindergartners in my youngest son's class at VBS. I had so much fun and look forward to seeing them today for a huge summer snow day our church is hosting for all the kids and any additional more who would like to join for some cool and free fun. I look forward to seeing the kids I had in my class. They were a joy. In all our church hosted just shy of 500 kids everyday from age 3 to just completed 5th grade. We had over 70 kids who made the decision to accept Jesus as their Savior...Praise God for this! The kids had a blast coming everyday and many of them were sad that it had come to an end. If you are interested in seeing pictures our church has a new website www.skitministries.com and check out the summer section titled VBS 2008. There you will find slide shows from each of the five days.

Yes, the plan is to start school this Monday! Yikes! I'm almost ready. I have some last few things to prepare for my three munchkins. If you are curious what we will be studying this year here is a quick run down....

My Sport Nut (5th grade)

-Character Quality Language Arts Vol. 3 Level A
-More handwriting practice (this was one of our struggles last year-I need to give more individual attention to this one)
-English from the roots up 3x a week
-Spelling Power word lists
-Reading Comprehension (Assigned Readers)
-Teaching Textbooks Math 7
-Ancient History (Adam to Messiah)
-Creation vs. Evolution in Science followed by Christian kids explore Physics ( This is not your high school level Physics.. no need to panic..)
-Plenty of Art, PE, life study skills,AWANA, Home Ec and a new boy group involvement called Contenders of the Faith for boys.

MY Dancer (3rd Grade)

-Character Quality Language Arts Vol. 3 Level Pre-A
-Handwriting Practice
-Spelling Power word lists
-English from the Roots Up
-Reading Comprehension (Assigned Readers)
-Math 3 workbook review and firm up Math skills until Teaching Textbooks Math 4 hopefully is ready this winter for ordering.
-Ancient History (Adam to Messiah)
-Creation vs. Evolution in Science followed by Christian kids Explore Physics
-Plenty of Art,PE life study skills, AWANA, Home EC and a new girl group involvement called American Heritage Girls.

My Race car Driver (kindergarten)

-Phonics K review and to complete the book
-Explode the Code more Phonics review when K book is completed.
-Printing practice
-Lots of Reading with Mom and to Mom
-Math 1
-Unit Studies we will be working on this year: Bible Characters and major events such as Noah and his Ark, holidays and why we celebrate them, my community, family tree, Pledge of Allegiance, and a few Science and nature ideas thrown into the mix too. Lots of lapbook creations with these units.

Well those are my plans they are never set in stone I have learned over my many years of homeschooling. You ask how many this will be my 6th official year of homeschooling but really I began from birth with all of them.

Plans are never to be set in stone. Days change, events and opportunities arise and I want to be especially open to God to be the lead of our days. HE may have a teachable moment for all of of us here at Homeplate to learn from. We shall see.

Blessings and have a great weekend!
Amy

PS. My hope is to add more pictures soon....

I added more photo pages...

2008-08-12T21:18:00.001-07:00

Please scroll down to see the new photo pages I added to the slide show.

Enjoy!

Amy

More vacation photos

2008-07-29T19:38:00.000-07:00

This morning I was able to scrapbook a few more pages from our June 2008 Vacation. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

On a side note my oldest son Sport returned from being gone six days at camp. He had a blast. He hopes to return next year. He had a ton of fun stories to share with all of us. He was chosen out of about 160 kids as a tribal chief of the day. He displayed friendliness towards other campers, great attitude, enthusiasm and a few other great things. It touches a parents heart to hear that all what we teach our children at home is being used outside these doors. Praise God!! I give God all the credit for this and not of my doing but HIS!!!! It is with HIS wisdom, guidance and strength that I am even able to raisse and teach my kids on a daily basis.

I will try to post more picture albums soon.... Enjoy!!

Vacation Slideshow part 1

2008-07-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

I have been busy the past two day scrapbooking digitally. This is all new stuff for my non techie brain to absorb. I still have no idea what I am doing.

I am going to attempt to publish a scrapbook slideshow of my first installment of my vacation photos. Grant you this was a 16 day trip and I am only on the first few days.

It will be attached to the upper left hand corner and you can view the slide show there. Hey, if I get pretty good at what I'm doing maybe one day I could add music. ..Don't count on that for quite a while. One baby step at a time around here.

Enjoy!!

2008-07-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

Road Trip Summer 2008

My kids are really good travelers. We trained them early on. Once each child celebrated their 1st birthday they were ready for their first camping trip. Not just a local one but a family road trip. When our oldest was just one we traveled to the Grand Canyon. When our daughter was about two we traveled to Lassen NP, Crater Lake NP and Redwoods NP. For our youngest we returned to the Grand Canyon once again and the following year we went to Yellowstone and the Grand Teton NP. Each year or so we try to visit a different National Park with the kids. Our family enjoys camping when the opportunity arises.

Sadly on this family vacation we were not able to camp. If you live in Washington state you will totally understand..the weather is unpredictable. Since our trip was so long packing possible wet gear was out of the question.

Back to traveling...friends have asked me if we have a DVD player in the car. My answer is no. My kids have plenty of opportunity to watch movies at home I don't want their attention taken away yet again to miss seeing what life is like outside their own state. Here are a few hints and tips I have gathered through the years of traveling with kids and it varies from age to age with each individual child.
When our children were young we would break up the long drives. We would try to limit our drive down to 200 to 250 miles in the car with a break for lunch at a kiddy park or fast food restaurant climbing gym. Now that they have gotten older our largest day was over 6 hours in the car. Yes, they probably could be traveling longer ( we had in fact our Mexico Mission car ride was longer) but nasty tempers was parents and kids soon follow. I bring lots of snacks and drinks for fussy tummies. We have books on tape, radio shows or I read to them out loud in the car. They enjoy this!! My oldest can read in the car on his own without getting carsick but my daughter can't. He also enjoys playing a hand held game of baseball or basketball. She enjoys playing with her dolls and chewing bubble gum while looking out her window. For my youngest this year I rented some books on tape for him from the library and hooked him up with his own cassette player and headphones. He also loves to draw, doodle and snooze. Sometimes we play games in the car. This year we brought battleship in the car for fun. Another thing my kids enjoy is that I find a few points of interest along the way to break up the trip. Hope this ideas you can use and don't fall victim to needed a DVD player in your car. You don't!!!

We're Back!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-07-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

Home Sweet Home! Yes, life in suitcases is not the life for me. I missed my home and my own bed and I think my home missed me. The kids are happy to be home too.

We returned from our big family vacation on July 4th. Yes, what a day to be returning home. Our 4th of July was spent unpacking, washing tons of laundry and lighting a few sparklers and watching PBS 4th of July special. We were gone for a total of 16 days only to unpack, reload and be back on the road to Mexico for a family mission trip. We just returned from that on Sunday.

I am beginning to become a real good packer for a family of five. This week I will be able to reuse my expertise to pack for my son's church camp. He leaves this Sunday afternoon. He is excited and Mom is nervous. So I am containing my nervousness to be excited with him with this new passage in his life.

I will begin to slowly share with all of you our vacation and mission trip experiences. there is just so much to share and tons of pictures to show you. This summer we have traveled through six different states and two different countries. My oldest son is just amazed and has loved every minute of it.

Stayed tune for more.....

Summer Break is Here!!!!!!!!!!

2008-06-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

We officially began our summer break from school yesterday June 4th. We have a busy summer filled with trips this year. For starters we are leaving mid June for a 15 day trip that will take us into Idaho to meet up with friends and from their travel to Washington state and stay in Olympic National Park with an overnight stay in Victoria, Canada. I will be waking up this year on my birthday morning in a foreign country this year. What a treat that will be. From there we will head to Astoria, Oregon to visit the Lewis and Clark points of interest and make several other stops along the way back home to California.

Then in July we will be spending a weekend in Mexico on a church family mission trip. This should be a great starter for getting our feet wet in Missions work for the whole family.

Another week in July our oldest will be away for one week at church camp. I'm already having Mommy/son withdrawals and it isn't even yet July. I will probably be a basket case by then.

Then it is VBS in August with school starting just around the corner.

So in between all the packing and unpacking I plan on relaxing, taking naps when possible, reading and crafting when I can.

So what are your plans for this summer?
Blessings,
Amy

P.S. This seems to be the summer of pets. My husband found a tiny bird outside that must of fallen out of a nest. He is not injured in any way but has not learned to fly yet. Today I had the privilege to and feed him with a syringe. Not only did we find a bird in our yard but mu dancing daughter found a small lizard. This lizard is only an inch long. Now our home plate has two cats, two rabbits, a tiny lizard and a temporary wild bird. We did have a few fish just last week but they died. My dancing daughter has been bouncing around all day lovingly caring of them all. She still has a list and a request for more animals. I mentioned to her if we are good stewards with the ones God has given us, He will bless her with more. She feels God is blessing her with an baby bird to care for and a tiny lizard too. This put a giant smile on my face and my heart.

Having Fun with Math

2008-05-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

We put away our Math books away last week for the year. I searched my files for an Math idea that would be creative and a bit challenging for my bunch. With a grade level range from Pre-K to 4th this can be a bit of a challenge to please both of my boys on either grade level ends. This we had fun building geometric shapes. I found the large dome you see in the picture from a blog called the Crafty Crow. The geometric dome is made using recycled newspapers. You will need 100 full sheets to accomplish this building task. I had the kids count out 4 large sheets and then we rolled them into 25 rolls. Using 15 of the rolls 5 triangles are constructed and stapled together and joined at the top to connect each one. The final last 5 tubes are made into a tube star and staple to the top. Please search the Crafty Crow site it has a more detailed step by step process with pictures included.
For the the other geometric shapes I had an old AIMS handout from my teaching days in the school system. The handout suggested clay but I used gumdrops to make it fun for the kids. Use toothpicks and the gum drops just like you would Tinkertoy to create geometric designs. We discussed vertexces, edges and faces of a geometric shape. It was a bit of a challenge for my younger two but I offered a hand for my daughter and she caught on real fast. For my Cowboy he had sun with just 1 dimensional shapes.

Have fun with Math this week! I'm not quite sure what I have planned for this next week in Math. I will have to put on my thinking cap for this one.

Alaska & Hawaii 5/12-5/16/08

2008-05-25T19:03:00.000-07:00

Here are the activities that we did for both Alaska and Hawaii....

1. Mapping skills

2. Learn about polar bears and life on the Tundra. Last year while we were camping in the Rocky Mountain National Park we drove through and visited the Tundra areas. They are nothing quite like the ones in Alaska but they got the idea that the snow never melts and trees no longer grow at certain elevations.

3. Eskimos The kids made their own igloo out of a Styrofoam ball. After I cut the Styrofoam balls in half I had the kids scoop out the middle with a spoon. Then they cut a door. Dancer is still using it for her dolls.

4. For Hawaii we learned how pineapple are grown and harvested.

5. We tasted some strawberry, pineapple and banana smoothies. Yum Yum!

I know we could of done more stuff for these two states and several others that we didn't do justice for but I was glad to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. This unit was very long this year.

Here is a list of the books that we read for this Region:

- Sled Dogs Run - Jonthan London

- A Polar Bear Journey - Debbie Miller

- Life in the Tundra - Penny Clarke

- Eskimos - M. Wilson

- Tundra - Lynne Stone

- Welcome to the USA Alaska- Ann Heinrichs

- Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear? - Bill Martin

New England States 4/28-5/9/08

2008-05-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

New England States

Here is a quick overview of what the kids learned about when we studied the New England States:

1. We mapped out the states for Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island.

2. We learned about whales. I had the kids use a tape measure and mark off how many feet an actual whale is. They were amazed. We also watched some quick videos on YouTube about whale Harpooning in Finland.

3. The life cycles of a cranberry. I had the kids create a comic strip as if they were the cranberry growing.

4. We ate clam chowder for lunch with sour dough. The sour dough isn't quite a New England idea. It's more of a San Francisco one but once you eaten a Clam chowder bowl you can never eat just an ordinary plain bowl of chowder again.

5. The life cycles of a lobster. We even dissected a cray fish on our Science laboratory table (yes, our kitchen table). It didn't turn my dancing daughter away from wanting to eat lobster or crabs again.

6. The clam life cycle too. We watched a National Geographic video online that I came across about clams. They are real
bizarre creatures. Similar to snails in that they too use a large foot to move dig themselves underground. They were a lot harder to dissect. I got grossed out just by all the dirt and debris inside their shell. Once inside the shell, the shell's pearl color could be seen.

7. Learned how maple syrup is harvested. No wonder maple syrup is so expensive it tales 40 gallons of maple sap to equal just one gallon of maple syrup. My kids are spoiled we stitched over to the real maple syrup a few years ago. I am still trying to add whole foods to my kids diet.

8. The importance and significance of lighthouses near the coast.

After we completed our New England State Study we took a trip to the local beach here to explore the Tide Pools. My Cowboy was learning about hermit crabs. He was making a lapbook on ocean life so what better way to learn about sea creatures than a trip to the Tide Pools. Here is a few snippets of our Tide Pool Discovery Day

It was a perfect day for the beach. We saw numerous creature there. Lots of hermit crabs, other crabs, ocean spiders, anemones ( green mushroom types in the pictures), the purple spiky things are sea urchins, fish, giant starfish and many other living things as well. Cowboy was a little afraid of the crabs because they were everywhere. The colors were beautiful. It was too tempting we wanted to touch everything but were warned by the tide pool patrols that we would be fined. The whole trip was free of charge except for the traveling money down there and back.

The books we read for this region were:

- Animals without bones: Lobsters - Jason Cooper

- Oceans Alive Lobsters- Marthan Rustad

- Finestkind O' Day: Lobstering in Maine- Bruce Mc Millian

- One Morning in Amine- Robert Mc Closky

- Cranberries Fruit of the Bogs- Diane L. Burns

- A House for Hermit Crab - Eric Carle

N is for NUtmeg: A Conneticut Alphabet - Elissa Gordin

- Shells - Jennifer Coldrey

- G is for Granite: A New HAmpshire Alphabet - Marie Harris

- Sugar Snow- Wilder

- M is for MAple Syrup: A Vermont Alphabet - Cynthis Furlong Reynolds

- The Big Tree- Bruce Hiscock

- Sugar on Snow - Nan Parson

Atlantic States 4/21-4/24/08

2008-05-25T15:50:00.000-07:00

I'm finally getting around to posting the rest of our 50 state study. I apologize for taking such a long time. The longer I delay this the harder it is to keep track of all that we accomplished with this unit. Without further a do here goes....

1. We mapped all the states that are considered the Atlantic states.
-New York
- Pennsylvania
- New Jersey
2. Learned about Ellis Island and the history of New York.
3. Read about Peter Stuyvestant
4. Made a paper model of the Statue of Liberty
5. Watched My Fair Lady. My dancing daughter loved the costumes in this movie.
6. Listened to lots of Broadway show music.
7. Learned about the Amish

Here are the books that we read for this region of states:

- Welcome to the USA New York - Ann Heinrichs
- Building Liberty: A Statue is Born - Hochain
- The Story of Ellis Island - Stein
- On the Day Peter Stuyvesant sailed into Town - Arnold Lobel
- The Amazing Impossible Erie Canal - Cheryl Harness
- Rip Van Winkle - Washington Irving
- Welcome to the USA Pennsylvania- Heinrichs
- Welcome to the USA New Jersey - Heinrichs
- G is for the Garden State: A New Jersey Alphabet - Eileen Cameron

California Adventure 2008

2008-05-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

Legoland Homeschool Day May 12, 2008

2008-05-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

Wow how time flies.....

2008-05-13T19:30:00.000-07:00

I appologize for not blogging lately. Life has gotten in the way. My freetime has been spent going to Sport's baseball games, studying and finally purchasing next years curriculum, attending too many amuzement parks.

This is the second year our eldest son Sport has signed up for the local Pony league baseball league. Before this he was involved in our Church T-ball baseball program. Last year we had a positive first year with the Pony league but this year has been a real challenge for my hubby and I as well as Sport. His coach this year has the win-win attitude which is good but he can be extremely hard and negative on the little guys. Mind you this is just 9 & 10 year olds out on the field. I being a Moma bear just want to protect my cub and yank him from the team. My hubby on the otherhand has been holding me back every step of the way.

I share this with my readers for two reasons. One is to vent obviously and to explain to you that my husband saw something more important that was taking place during the practices and games than I had. Our son was learning there are different styles of coaches in this world positive ones and negative ones. We have been able to use this year as a learning stepping stone into the real world. Sometimes there will be people in this world that we just cannot please. We serve our duty as a team member to play our part or to serve our role. We also pray earnestly for those who we are serving under in this case a hot headed coach. We have made a point to pray each day for this coach and let me share with you his attitude is softening. Now I don't know if it is due to the countless prayers for him or for the fact that we have no way of making it to the playoffs. But I do know this he has been happier a little more relaxed around the kids and they have been winning! Too Bad the coach hadn't tried this attitude approach sooner he could be smelling victory at the end of this season.

Yes, our school year is almost over and I finally have an idea and a plan of what my munchkins will be learning about next year. We have enjoyed four years learning different unit studies with the help of KONOS. For next year, I decided to sadly put it on the back burner. I had been praying for several years for a chronological history program that does not put such a heavy focus on foreign gods or mythology. I finally found that in Heart of Wisdom by Sampson. I ordered her HOW book in January and read it in about a week I believe. Her philiosohy and history of education is right on track. I am looking forward to beginning next year teaching the kids the history of Adam to Messiah. This will include Summerian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek and Hebrew history as well. For Science we will be covering Creation vs. Evolution for my older two, Light, Energy, Matter, Motion and Electricity.

I still have plenty of planning anf getting things ready for next year but I am looking forward to it.

Yes, learning about motion should have been taught this year. We have been to more amuzement parks this year than ever before. We enjoyed Disneyland for Dancer's 8th birthday, California Adventure as part of the 2fer deal and just yesterday we were at Legoland for their homeschool day. The family had so much fun and our Cowboy couldn't believe everything was made out of legos. He was awe at Thomas the train made out of legos as well as Las Vegas, New York, California and areas of the southern state repicas. We hadn't been there since I was pregnant with our little Cowboy and my that park has gotten bigger. There is a chance we will be going back to Legoland. Yesterday, we showed our ticket stubs to Guest Relations booth to claim five free return tickets that must be used before June 15th. The kids were excited about this!!!! What a deal a discount and then a freebie.

In the next few days I will try to post some pictures for you from our Lego land and or California Adventure. I also will need to add some information about our 50 state study. Can you believe this is our final week on the 50 states. Today and tomorrow we will be learning about Alaska and then Hawaii on Thursday. I'm burning out quickly on this state study and our notebooks prove it. We did so many pages on the earltier states learned and have petered out toward the end. Yes, the end is near.. Finally. A wrap up family 50 state party is in my planning notebook of things to do this week. Dancer would like to have a Hersey candy bar eating contest in honor of Pennsylvania. Yummy....Hmmmm I will have to plan some fun things for this one.

Blessings to all of you,
Amy

Great Lake States

2008-04-19T22:06:00.000-07:00

How many great lakes can you name? Can you name all of them? Here is trick that I taught the kids this week while we studied the great lake states...HOMES. H = Huron O= Ontario M= Michigan E= Erie and S = Superior.

This past week the kids and I traveled to Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

Here are some ideas and photos to share...

Michigan is shaped like a mitten. That is why it is often referred to as the mitten state. There are over a thousand islands near and around Michigan to explore. It is the birthplace of the affordable first car invented by Henry Ford. Who also gets the credit of his invention of the assembly line.
Ihad the kids construct their own assembly line. I took a roll of foil, a car from my Cowboy son and all my child labor hands in my home. The car that my son had came apart in piece so this worked great for our demonstration. I also showed them a video on Utube of a real assembly line from the 50's and one of today. The kids were amazed by the video from today's era. Robots have replaced people. Robots in Japan assemble cars. I guess job security in the auto assembly line is a term of the past now.
The cheesehead state is the state of Wisconsin. The kids memorized the great lakes.

In Ohio we had fun making and eating homemade ice cream while learning about dairy cows. We also went on a local farm tour for our little cowboy.
We had the joy of seeing a two day old horse. He was so cute and still wobbly on his long legs. The kids will never forget this one. They talked about it all the way home.

They also learned about Neil Armstrong. I didn't realize that so many presidents and astronauts were born in Ohio.

On Friday we learned about Indiana and Illinois. Sport did a notebook page on the baseball teams found in Illinois and my Dancer did one on Lincoln. We also learned out the Chicago fire.

Here is a list of books that we read this week:

-B is for Badger: Wisconsin Alphabet by Kathy Jo Wargin
- The Great Lakes by James Barry
- Welcome to the USA Wisconsin by Ann Heinrichs
- Welcome to the USA Michigan by Ann Heinrichs
-Along Came the Model T! by Robert Quakenbush
-B is for Buckeye: Ohio Alphabet by MArcia Schonberg
- One Giant Leap: Story of Neil Armstrong by Don Brown
- My Dad Works on a Farm by Sarah Hughes
- Cows in the Parlor by Cynthis McFarland
- L is for Lincoln: Illinois Alphabet by Kathy jo Wargin
- Welcome to the USA Illinois by Ann Heinrichs
- H is for Hoosier : Indiana Alphabet by Ann Heinrichs
- Welcome to the USA Indiana by Ann Heinrichs

Camping with Friends

2008-04-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

Camping with friends can be quite an adventure. We had a chance to do just that this past weekend. We traveled a few hundred miles away to the Sequoia National Forest. Friends of our have a family cabin in a small town located there. Here are a quick highlights and pictures from our trip with friends.

If you are traveling with friends make sure you have understanding friends especially if you have a child who throws up in their car. Our cowboy threw up in the car on the ride there. Sadly, he couldn't wait until reaching the rest stop. Traveling in a van in the back did not agree with our little one. Luckily, they have kids too and have faced this situation many times.

If you are traveling with more kids than parents you are out numbered. Decibel levels are high and lack of sleep always occurs. The parents would have fun staying up late playing cards only to find that our kids would awake at 5:30 in the morning. Seems we had our own roosters in the cabin. Yikes! We still had fun!

My dancer is a horse lover. She had her horse appetite fed by getting to ride a horse. She also got to help groom and feed one.

It was cowboys first time on a horse. He loved it.

Roasting marshmallows is a must for campers. Makes for great memories.The kids loved the smores and sticky marshmallows. It seems sticky stuff was everywhere, what fun. Sadly, Sport (my oldest) couldn't have sticky marshmallows due to his braces. He made up for it in chocolate and graham crackers though. We also sang songs, told stories and played flashlight tag near the campfire.

One important thing the children did learn this weekend is even though the outside temperature reads in the 80's...River water is COLD!!! Yes the kids were curious to go wading in a nearby river. Their adventure was short lived. Yes, very short lived. This is something they will never forget.

Go and make some memories with your kids..try camping for a change.

Southwest States Week 2

2008-04-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

I apologize for this late in coming post. Last weekend we were out of town so this Southwest State post will be short and sweet. We spent 3 days at a cabin with friends in the Sequoia National forest. The kids had a blast. It was like a giant sleep over. Lots of play, hiking, eating and sight seeing. I will post some pictures soon. Right now I will give a quick glimpse of what we did for our second week desert study....

We learned about the dust bowl state, Oklahoma on Monday. We topped it off by watching the musical Oklahoma. My dancer loved the singing and dancing numbers and the beautiful colorful dresses in the show.

Tuesday we moved on to the Lone star state of Texas. My little cowboy was excited that we got to revisit Davey Crockett. We learned about the events of the Alamo and watched the Disney version of the Alamo.

Wednesday we explored caves and learned what animals and plant life can survive in caves. Since Carlsbad Caverns is located in New Mexico we also learned about stalagcyites and stalagmites. Sadly, we had so much preparation for our trip that we will have to set up our stalagcyite and stalagmite experiment for another time.

We also took the time this week to finish our desert diorama. The kids painted their desert animals and added sand. They came out looking great.

Here is a list of books that we read this week...

- S is for Sooner: An Oklahoma Alphabet by Devin Scilian
- Dust for Dinner by Ann Turner
- Welcome to the USA Oklahoma by Ann Heinrichs
- Welcome to the USA Texas by Ann Heinrichs
- The Alamo by Dennis Brindell Fradin
- The Inside-Outside book of Texas by Roxie Munro
- The Story of the Alamo by Norman Richards
- Pecos Bill by Steven Kellogg
- Let's Take a Field Trip to a Cave by Kathy Furgang
- Welcome to the USA New Mexico by Ann Heinrichs

Southwest States Week 1

2008-04-05T21:32:00.000-07:00

Do you know the Bible has many references in it about the desert? The two main stories that may come to mind is Moses and the Israelites wandering in the desert after fleeing the Egyptians and Jesus' 40 days in the desert. The desert offers beauty, solitude, challenges and many obstacles just to name a few. The desert is an amazing habitat created by God and we learned some interesting things about it ....

The first thing I did with my kids was to find out what they already knew about a desert. Since we live in California they have as the privilege of being able to drive through a desert. Now when we learned about swamp life that was a bit of a stretch of the imagination. (One of these years we will make it to the south.)

Next, I taught them the trick on how to spell desert. I told them the years in school that I would improperly spell desert with two "SS" instead of one. We all had a laugh.

One thing I never realized that there are so many varieties of cactus'. We learned bout the animals that live in them and around them. How to get water from them if you are ever stranded in a desert. I had them make a model of one out of cardboard. I had precut the pieces. They painted and added the spikes or spines on them. Then they made desert animals out of modeling clay. We will have to paint them next week, after they harden up more.

They also made a sand art desert animal and colored a picture of the Grand Canyon.

Here is a list of books that we read this week on the Southwest...

-Desert Animals at Night by Lynn Stone

- A Walk in the Desert by Caroline Arnold

- The Seed and the Giant Saguaro by Jennifer Ward

- Cactus in the Desert by Phyllis Busch

- Around one Cactus by Anthiny Fredericks

- Welcome to the USA Arizona by Ann Heinrichs

- Meet Josefina: An American Girl by Valerie Trip

It's Great to be Eight!!!

2008-04-05T20:58:00.000-07:00

I'm back!!!

As I mentioned to you last time we took our dancing daughter to Disneyland for her 8th birthday. The whole family had so much fun. The weather was picture perfect for California and the average wait in line time averaged about 20 minutes. This time we were able to have her picture with Princess Jasmine. Two years ago when she turned 6 she had her picture with Cinderella.

Since we went to Disneyland on Monday, her actual birthday we had a small celebration at home Sunday the day before with cake and presents.

Each year my kids get to pick their theme cake and ice cream flavor out. Dancer chose a ballerina slipper cake. I found an easy recipe on line. It took me such a short time to make. Each slipper is made from a frozen Sarah Lee pound cake found at your grocer's freezer. Luckily we were just having a small gathering because this cake would not be able to feed a large party.

She opened up some precious homemade dolls that her grandma had made for her. Dancer has a similar one in a different color that she had made with her. She had told Grandma that she wanted a doll in each color. Grandma said she had fun making and naming each one. She signed each one and wrote their name and birth date on each doll.

Each year we make a point to thank God for that precious child on their birthday. This year we held her on our bed and prayed for her and her future years to come.

Happy Birthday to our little Dancer. You are such a blessing to our family!!!

Too Busy for Blogging Lately....

2008-03-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't written lately. I have been busy enjoying life and other things. Here is a quick update on what we have been up to in case you were wondering.....

We took a much needed Easter vacation/Spring break. The kids and I both enjoyed the rest from school and the chance to take naps and to sleep in. I was able to do some spring cleaning around here that had been neglected for quite a while. Sad to say, with three little ones my house is messy again. At least the cobwebs, windows and a few closets are still clean to prove my hard work.

Here are a few pictures of the kids working in their gardens. I thought up a cleaver way to get them to want to pitch in with the much needed weeding. Each child got to pick an area to set up their own garden. Their ears perked up for that one. A few days we spent all day outside working on them. I still have a few more areas but it is beginning to look beautiful.

This year we made some beautiful Ukrainian Easter eggs. We cheated using a kit that I ordered online. They came out beautiful.

This past week the kids were still off from their studies due to testing.

I hope you enjoyed a few photos of our past weeks of what we have been up to. On Monday March 31st is our dancers 8th birthday. We went ahead and did a little bit of schooling today. We are planning on spending the day at Disneyland in celebration of this happy event. The kids are very excited. All of them have been their once before two years ago. They are having another spring special for California residents and we couldn't pass up the good deal. Hope to have some photos to share with you soon.

Blessings and peace to all of you.....

Have a Blessed Palm Sunday

2008-03-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

Wishing all of you a blessed Palm Sunday and a time of renewal and reflection during this Easter week of the Greatest love story ever fulfilled....