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

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????

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...

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

Enjoy!

Amy

More vacation photos

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

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!!

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!!!!!!!!!!!

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.....