Today we made some yummy fall crafts! Our friends came over and we "painted" pumpkin cookies and baked homemade apple pie from scratch! Have I mentioned that I love fall?? As you can see Colton loves frosting!!

Autumn is upon us and we are certainly enjoying the beautiful weather! Sophia is enjoying the renewed energy from mommy (who can't stand being hot!) and all of the fun things she gets to do because of it! LOL! Today we made Pumpkin Pie out of a paper plate and sprinkled it with ground cloves, cinnamon, and ginger to make it SMELL like pumpkin pie! We also used cotton balls to simulate dollups of whipped cream!

After the "pie" we sat and emptied the seeds out of the pumpkins we'd painted last week! Tonight after dinner we get to snack on the seeds!

We are loving our Zoo pass! It's  great way to havsomething to do to get of town for a little while. The zoo we have in Sacramento is small enough to beable to spend the morning seeing what there is to see, play awhile, enjoy a picnic lunch and be home in time for a nice afternoon nap! Plus, with our memberhip, we get to bring a guest and their kids for free! It's a great way to invite people to do something without fear of burdening them! Here are some pics of us enjoying a beautiful day with some friends!

     Today was Pioneer Demonstration Day at Sutter's Fort in Sacramento. The theme was Harvest time. Sophia and I went an got to see some different displays of people doing the things that would have been done at the time the first settlers came to Sacramento.

     Sophia was able to see exactly how wool went from being on the sheep into being a woven rug! She even got to card and spin the wool herself. The woman working the spinning wheel gave her a hand spinner of her very own and some wool roving to practice her spinning! We've ordered some more tools for her to experiment with some felting and other neat wool projects!

     Another thing we got to experience was wheat weaving! Sophia made a braided wheat wreath like the pioneers would have made to save some of their wheat for the next years seed! Sophia also got to grind wheat on a stone mill and we learned what the "X's" sometimes seen on old bags of flour meant! Every X on the bag meant one time that, that particular flour had been through the mill! The more times you ground the flour, the finer it became!

     In the Trade shop we purchased a clothespin doll that is a replica of a doll that a little girl had brought with her to Sutter's Fort when her family settled there.

     I remember visiting Sutter's Fort as a child myself but I was much more interested this time around lol! Sophia had a great time and who knows, maybe picked up a lifetime hobby as well with the wool!

Apple Hill, for those who aren't familiar, is located in the hills of Northern California. It's an area filled wth many different orchards, farms, and wineries many of which open themselves up to visitors to bask in the wonder that is Autumn and enjoy the homegrown goodness that blesses this land!

I don't remember when exactly we started visiting Apple Hill each October, but I do remember it as a cherished piece of my childhood and I am excited to now share it with my children! This year, our homeschool meet-up group took a trip to Apple Hill to a quaint orchard called Denver Dan's. The kids got to bake their very own apple pies! Afterward we took them apple picking in the orchard!

Enjoy these pictures taken by my mom (a photographer)!

      I apologize for not blogging once a week like I set out to do. We've had a whirlwind start to school coupled with the fact that very dear friends of ours are moving far, far, away. I've not had time to sit and blog while we try to fit in last minute play dates and cramming in the memory making!!

     Sophie has been doing WONDERFULLY with her school work though! She has 2 little first reader books that she can read PERFECTLY every time! She has been very successful using the "Explode the Code" phonics supplement and is as proud of herself as I am of her!

     We had our first official meeting with our ES and it went well. I had ALOT of work to show her and tell her about for the week and a half of work we had done when she came. Next time it will be for 20 days worth of work!!! I've decided to pay close attention to the state standards and make sure I let her know about the things we've done that go along with those and let everything else just be for our benefit and not worry if I forget to tell er about an extra few readers or an episode of Magic Schoolbus that we watched. We do school in everyday life and it's hard to sit and remember how it all breaks into the different "subjects" So, all they want to know is that we are meeting the minimum standards set by the state, so I will make sure they are seeing that. The rest, as they say, is gravy.

     Oh and to those who have given me a hard time about not blogging more often.....how about leaving me some comments so I know you are actually reading what I blog! ; )

Until next time....

We had a great first Day of school!

Last night Grandma and Papa came over and took Sophie out to dinner to celebrate her special day!  Then we came home and had a brownie cake in the shape of a pencil!

This morning I took sopme pictures of Sophie for her first offial day of school!

For lunch, a few of the families from our homeschool group met at Chipotle.

Enjoy!

We've had a very busy and exciting summer! We did gymnastics and swimming lessons and spent alot of time at the park with friends and spent time getting to know our new friends in our local homeschool group!

As summer winds down and the the rest of the town gets ready to go back to school, we are getting ready to NOT go back to school! In fact our homeschool group is planning a "NOT Back to School" Sundae party!!

We've decided this year to try out a homsechool charter school in town. I was wary at first of the whole "public charter school" idea, however, after talking to the other moms in our group that use the charter as well as meeting with the teacher we were assigned, I am optimistic. This particular school has a vision for parent led education. They exsist to facilitate the use of out tax dollars used in the way WE choose to educate our children! We are even free to use christian curriculum and the teacher will find the ways we are matching the "standards" set by the sate to make sure we are satisfying the basic requirements and we are free to explore any area we see fit to learn using fnds from the school to the tune of $1800 for Kindergarten! We have a LONG list of vendors to choose from including some of the most popular homeschool favorites such as Rainbow Resources! We even get to use the budgeted money for Gymnastics! I really like our particular teacher who will visit us once every 20 days to "check-in" She is very easy to talk to, genuine, laid back and extremely supportive of homeschooling our way as she is a homeschool mother herself!

My goal is to blog at least once a week....we'll see how well I can do!

Here's to a GREAT "not" school, year!!!

It has been a BUSY Summer as I'm sure it has been for everyone! I did take more catapillar metamorpohois pics but didn't unpload them till NOW! So, without further hesitation..

The Chrysalis

The Butterflies!!

The day the butterflies emerged, Sophie became very concerned that they were stuck in small mesh houses when they were meant to fly free! They weren't eating much she observed and was afraid they wouldn't be alive in there by morning. So we headed out back to let them go....poor Sophie's forced smile in the picture below was through tears of concern. Once we had them outside they wouldn't leave! They kept flying around us on the lit porch but wouldn't venture out into the dark. This gave us a unique opportunity to "play" with them for awhile. We figured the were afraid to fly away in the dark since there may be preditors out there that might want dinner! So, we brought them back in until morning. Sophie was extremely relieved to see them alive when she got up. We then took them outside and one at a time released them into the yard. They all flew in the yard for a minute or two before taking off into the sky!

This was a great experience that we will be repeating this spring with a larger habitat and some butterfly plants in out backyard to invite them to come back and visit!

We woke up this morning to find all 4 of our caterpillars hanging from the lids getting ready to make their chrysalis' !! Very exciting stuff let me tell you!

Tomorrow will be one week since we adopted our little caterpillar friends. They aren't quite so little anymore! I wanted to post some update pictures. We had an activity day with our group that's doing the project together. We did some butterfly crafts and got a folder chock full of infrmation on these little creatures. Sophie loves pulling up a chair and just watching them. We've noticed that one of them has been on the top of his container in a J shape for awhile now. We THINK this means he's getting ready to build his chrysalis!  Stay tuned.....

We've just started a project with some of the other families in our homeschool group! We're raising Catapillars! For 2 weeks they will live in these small containers (about 1.5 inches tall) and eat the cattapillar food in the bottom of it. Then we will move them to a critter habitat and watch them build their chrysalis and emerge as butterflies!! We're meeting with our group once a week to observe and discuss! Sophie is SO excited!

Be sure to check back for updates!

She's named them....from left to right: Flutter, Creeper, Cooper, and Fuzzy

Ok it's 7:30pm. But, I don't know many other Irish phrases.

This week we've been studying Ireland and St. Patricks Day.

Monday we baked shamrock shaped sugar cookies and frosted them with green frosting. The package (yes, prepackaged) had yellow frosting but Sophie saw how we could turn it green by adding blue food coloring. While the cookies were baking we took a blanket out to the front lawn to sit and hunt for 4 leaf clovers. We found 2 of them! They are currently being pressed inside a Strong's Concordance. lol.

Tuesday we went to the library and checked out some fun story books about Leprechauns. We had a chance to talk about the difference between real and make believe as well as the difference between making up stories for fun and telling lies in order to decieve. We learned about St. Patrick and how he used the 3 leaves on a shamrock to tell people about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

Wednesday we read a book about Ireland and had fun trying to dance a jig!

Today, Thursday, we did a project involving a box of lucky charms! We set out to find out if there were more green clover marshmellows than any of the other shapes. We sorted, tallied, graphed, and estimated! In the end we found that there were more star shapes than any other! Then Sophie had fun eating just the marshmellows which is something she NEVER gets to do! :D

Sunday we'll be enjoying Corned Beef and Cabbage at Grandma and Papa's house!

What a fun week we've had! I'm sorry I didn't take any pictures. It didn't occur to me until I sat down to blog that I should have!

in case you're interested, we got the idea for the Lucky Charms project from:

http://www.technospudprojects.com/

Sophie started gymnastics on Saturday at the park district. Grandma and Papa Shoro took her since Tim and I were at his dear grandmother's funeral that day, She loved her gymnastics class and can't wait to go back next week! Thanks mom for snapping some pictures for me!

Last week I finally got all of our "homeschool stuff" organized into one area where it's easily accessable and easily FOUND! It's nothing fancy but it works for us! Sophie's very proud of "my very own classroom" and loves to eat and play here too.

This is a view from our dining area:

 One of the favorites, the music box:

I'm Lisa, homeschooling mama of 2 great kids! I thought it'd be cool to get a blog going to document some highlights of our homeschooling journey!

I just started homeschooling my dd Sophia (will turn 5 in April). We are currently using Sonlight curriculum and loving it! We're doing core Pre-K with LAK and I'm waiting on my order from Right Start Mathmatics (level A) Sophie also enjoys her Kumon workbooks that are really helping her develop those fine motor skills!

My ds Colton (will be 2 in March) Enjoys listening in on story time and joining Sophia and I for our morning Bible Story, Scripture memorization, and Praise and Worship time. I'll tell you there's nothing quite as precious as your 2 year old dancing around the livingroom in his footie pajamas, hands outstretched toward heaven singing "Holy!, Holy!, Holy!" Where else but in homeschool??