As some of you know my oldest daughter has voice her opinion on going to public school. This has been heavy on my mind this year and in my prayers as well.  I have jokingly said that I wished God would send me a fax or text message with what He wants me to do about this.  Well, just the other day I think I may have gotten my answer in the form of an email. In side the email was this link http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=87264.

To day before I got this email I received the lastest issue of "The Old School House" which is loaded with articles on this topic. 

I guess I really did get an electronic answer to me prayers.

Now for one of the sweetest pictures I have seen in a long time.....

Have a great weekend.

This morning as I came into the school room to get ready for the day I was greeted by pirates and a pirate ship.

A friend of mine sent this to me and I thought I would share. Christians called to abandon public education I am finding  it very interesting since I have one who is saying they would like to go to public school next year.  I have much prayer ahead of me over this issue.  I would like to hear your thoughts and insights.

Blessing

Ok since I have been missing in action for so long I will start with the latest and work my way back.

 We had a wonderful Christmas break and a wonderful Christmas as well. Christmas morning started EARLY!!! The boys were up at 3:45 am. I of course told them not to touch anything and to go back to bed. I said they could not get up until at least 5am. I was so hoping they would go back to sleep, yeah right!! I think it was 4:58 when they came back yelling "It's 5, Mom, get up" I did, I do still remember the excitment of Christmas morning and thinking you would die if you had to wait any longer LOL

Here is Chaya with her much wanted nail dryer. This thing will be getting a lot of use.

Chesney with her very first American Girl doll. She was so happy.

Chase, our Lego crazy boy had only Legos on his Christmas list, here he is with his "most wanted"

Ok then we have Cade.  All I can say is it is tough being so cool and yet so young!! Tony Hawks look out!!!

This is the one who is going to give my gray hair!!

Our big family gift was a Wii and mom got a ......

ask me how many times I have been "allowed" on the Wii since Christmas!! ONCE!!!!! I am hoping the newness wears off soon.

Ok so there is Christmas 2008, I will be back.

I have to say I am sorry to all who have visited my blog in the past, that I have not been around. I did not fall into a big dark hole. What I did do is create a facebook and have been sucked into that. Bad I know, all the time wasted on there LOL  But I have reconnected with old friends and not so much friends then but maybe now,  from high school. It has been fun.  I do promise that i will update this blog this week and catch you up on all the goes on at our home.

TTFN

We are using Language Lessons for the Little Ones #3 for Cade this year. This is written and published by Queen's Homeschool supplies. We are using different books in the series for all 4 kids and I really like them. Very sweet and Charlotte Manson flavored. The lessons are short and the kids seem to enjoy the books. Today Cade had a lesson on poetry appreciation. He listened to me read a poem and them draw a picture of what the poem made him think of. The poem was "The Night Will Never Stay" by Eleanor Farjeon. I want to share Cade's picture.

I am sure you can tell it is a tree in the forest at night. See the stars and the black sky.

Enjoy

UPDATE: I am listing the poem so you can get a better feel for the poem and why Cade draw what he did.

Today a very normal looking priority box arrived in our mail box. Inside this normal looking box was not one but two not so normal pets for our school. As you have read we studying botany using Apologia's "ExploringCreation with Botany" In lesson 3 we learned about carnivorous plants. It was so interesting that I did a search and come my with www.mycarnivore.com and bought the kids a Venus Flytrap and a pitcher plant.

September 1st and it is snowing. I am not pulling your leg! I am so not happy about this!! Ok I know or at least hope I know it will not stick but there is just something wrong with the whole idea of snow this early.

Can you see the poor little humming bird sitting in the snow?? He is on the red humming bird feeder.

The kids were in the Labor Day parade with our church. Their walked respesenting AWANA, The Boys Club and the youngth group. The weather held off until the parade was almost over. Our church family made a Noah's ark float complete with a rainbow!

In other happenings around our house, we continue to work through "Exploring Creation with Botany" Loving it and learning alot. The kids like it too!!  I am always amazed at all the new stuff I am learning or didnt learn the first time around.

We made a light box and each of the kids got to plant something. The plants are doing great and we will be transplanting the squash plants so they can grow throught the winter.

We have been doing some cool experiments like dissecting a flower and preserving a fresh flower.This week we will being doing a flower pollination project. Since we didnt get as much as I wanted done this summer we will be saving the butterfly garden for the spring.  We did a fun project with seeds where the kids placed seeds on a wet paper towel in a bag to see if they would grow in different areas. We put one in a cabnet(no light), one in the fridge( cold) one in a window(sun light) and one on a shelf in the school room.(nature light from basement window) You can see the results below. The point they learned was that seeds do not need soil to grow only air, warmth, and moisture.

We are also growing some crystals. I will add their pictures next time.

Well thats about all the new stuff that has been going on. I think I will go get a good book and a blanket and in enjoy the snow

Happy Labor Day

Boy, where has the time gone?? I cant believe it is the end of August. Well let me caught you up. As you know I did a bunch of painting this summer. I can happily tell you that I do not have one white or off-white wall in my whole house! Color is the best. I even finally picked colors for my room and bath. I love it!! Sadly I must report that we did not get as much school done this summer break as I planned but that is life.  We bought a new van this summer, that was one of the high lights. I took over a couple of  cleaning  jobs of some local businesses from a friend who was moving to finance that purchase. Chaya helps me with the work. Chaya is now an employed teenager, this finances her many hair colors. We made it through Princess dance camp, soccer camp and games, baseball season, which BTW half of was in snow! It took summer forever to get here this year. Must of Chaya's plans for camps fell through so she is very happy for dance to be starting soon.  She did go river floating with her yougth group, her legs are still looking like she spent most of her time in the water not on the tube.

We started school August 4th, doing just 2 or 3 subjects a day until September 2 when we will start the full load. I am still struggling to do as much school together as possible but it seems we are all on such different levels, it is getting much harder. We have been doing Exploring Creation with Botany and using Live and Learns fold and learn notebook for our notebooking work. I am very impressed with this and plan to use the one for zoology 3 when we get there. Chaya is doing Apologia's General Science this year. It is very impressive and very much a "big kid's" book. She will not be doing zoology 3 with us which is sad and reminds me she only has 6 more years of school. Which also means this adventure that I started 7 years ago and tried to talk God out of hasn't killed either of us LOL.  BTW God still hasn't said ok, send them to public school. Yes, I still ask some days more than others ; )

Ok now for the pictures......

my room

Chaya's room, is it not terrible? What can I say, yes I painted it and no I dont have to look at it much or sleep in there!!!Brushing Bowzer's teeth!! Hope that isnt my toothbrush!!!!

Swimming summer birthday party

Chesney masters her bikewith a little help from Dad

New look for Chase's room

Cade's new look for the summer. We cut the braid off a few days ago. He was over it.

What do you get when you take this mess and and two shades of pink?? You get this......A pretty pink room for a princess.

 Then what do you get when you mix spinach green, catus green and off white? Well, a room fit for the Incredible Hulk, of course!

So as you can see 2 of my 7 painting jobs for the summer have been completed. Yeah!  I start on room # 3 tomorrow. Not bad I guess as we have been busy with Princess dance camp, and soccer camp not to mention babseball games and soccer games.

In other happenings, the baby of the family is no longer the baby. She has lost her very first baby tooth.

We love lapbooks. What a great way to learn.

We used Sonlight this year for the boys(Chesney listened in) and also for Chaya but we did not start until December so we will be continuing  next school year.  Anyway when the boys finished with ancient Egypt they did a lapbook on Mummies.  We may do one on pyramids over the summer.

Chaya in her study with Sonlight finished up with learning about Ancient Rome and then did a lapbook.

For the boys and Chesney we been using  Winter Promise "Animal and their Habitats".  We also did not start at the first of the school year so we have next year to finish. We learned about the African Savanah and are ready to start the rainforest but we did lapbooks first. We are also going to do one on gorillas.

Can't we tell who is the class clown in our house??

Chaya also finished a study on Amelia Earhart, very interesting lady.

Chesney has done a lapbook just for her. It was a counting/numbers book from 0 to 100.

We will be lapbooking all summer long with a list of things the kids want to learn about such as dance(who would have guessed!) snakes, alligators, frogs, Prince Caspian, pirates oh the things we can learn about!  We will be starting our botany study next week, going slowly throughout the summer and we will be notebooking/lapbooking using Live and Learn's  Learn and Fold. I am excited about using this. It in new to us, but looks so cool.

I will try to post lapbook pictures as we finish them though teh summer but mom has big plans for herself which means I am cutting back on blog/computer time. My personal goal this summer is to get our Disneyland trip scrapbooked and to move 2 children to different bedroom, which means painting 3 rooms. So everyone have a great summer and I will check in as I can.

(Everything pictures above was from In The Hands Of a Child or from Homeschool share web site.)

I had Bev @ www.homeschoolblogger.com/BevG/ ask when we were done with school so instead of posting a big reply to her blog I thought I would add one to mine. We are done with school this week, the 16th is the last day but we will be doing a bunch of stuff through the summer, this is the plan. We will see what we get done. I just downloaded Beginning Reading from "In The Hand of a Child" for Chesney to work on through the summer.  I also have plans for some other lapbooks for her based on books. I will getting them from my most favorite place, Homeschool Share. We are going to get to botany this summer (I promise Miss Y) I bought some wonderful, wonderful notebook pages for this study from Live and Learn, I am excited about getting to these.  I have a ton of lapbook subjects for the kids like tigers, amphibians, pirates, Ancient China, Prince Caspian,dance, aligators, and we will be finishing gorillas, which we started this week.  Reading, reading and more reading is going to be a must this summer, mostly for the boys.  We also will be finishing Cantering the Country which we have been using to notebook and learn about every state in the USA. I really like this book but do not want to continue the state study next year so we will "Try" to finish through the summer.  Another great book we have been using with this study is " The Man in The Middle" It is a fun way to remember the state location on the map. We love it. Chase will be working through the summer with  Times Tales deluxe to try to get those darn times tables down. I also have "Two plus Two is not Five" for Cade to help learn the addition facts. Add in baseball, soccer and dance camps, geez we arent out of school but dont tell the kids!!!

Happy summer!

How did rocks get on the roof you ask***.  Well, that is a lesson for a different day!

For those of you who have  troublesome rocks on your roof, I will now teach you how to get them off.

First get on the roof, of course do this with someone watching you. (preferable someone with a camera)

Gather rocks,  that have somehow gotten themselves on to the roof and toss them one at a time to the ground. Be very sure not to hit anything or anyone.

Once the roof has been cleared of all rocks you must get you down. Please do not toss yourself to the ground!!  Important note: it is much easier to get on the roof than it is to get off.  So to remove yourself safely (safety experts will question this, I am sure) have your trampoline place near the roof so you can JUMP off of the roof. Please make very sure you jump inside of the net if it is installed.  Please note: when jumping you must do it with complete joy or the act itself looses something.

There you have just learnt how to safely remove rocks and yourself from the roof.

End of lesson.

***Do you really need the lesson on why or how those darn rocks got on the roof??  Yeah I didnt think so ; )

WHAT!!??

 It is finally looking like Spring here in Wyoming. Yes we have still have had some snow in May but things are starting to look green and the flowers are starting to bloom. Hurray!!! My first "flowers" of the season.  Giving to me by my sweet hearted Cade. Every once in a while I get a lookinside of the rough and tumble of boyhood into the man he will someday be.

Other news at our house, we have a new puppy, Bowzer "the wowzer" He is a basset hound and we are all in puppy love. Isnt he a sweet thing?

We have made it through another year of AWANAS. Everyone finished their books and hid away  many of of God's verses in their hearts. 

Chaya got her Timothy Award, she has finished 8 years of Awanas. We are very proud of her.

Chase got to hold the flag in the flag ceremony. He finished his first year in T 'n' T or green shirts as we call them.

 Cade finished 3 years in Sparks and will be moving up to the green shirts next year. Chesney is not a cubbie anymore, she finished her first year of Sparks and will be in her second book next year.

We have also made it through another dance competition season. Chaya and the Daredevils come home with two first places, a second and a third.  Her 6th grade class come home with two 2nd places and two 3rds. Chaya performed a solo at one of the competition and she won 1st place. Mom of course cried(but I didnt let her see!) when I saw the posted scores. I am very proud of her.

Yesterday was a fun filled day of activities. First, we went to lunch with a dear friend and 2 of her children. It was a very nice relaxing lunch and visit. I realized we do not see each other enough, this needs to change!

Second, was our monthly co-op get together. The kids painted piggy banks. It was such a fun time, they all had a blast. It was fun for the moms to see all the different and creative ways the kids painted their pigs. There were 3 different piggy body styles, with 33 kids painting, not a one of them was the same when they were done. It was such a hit with my own little artist that afterwards I had to run to the store and buy her some more items to paint.  

Chase and Cade working on their pigs.

Chesney was in heaven! She loves to color and paint.

Chaya working on her pig.

Finished master pieces.

Last in our busy day was a talent show at our church.  Of course our dancer preformed a dance. One that she choregraphed herself. She danced to Nicole C. Muller's song "Redeemer"  She looked beautiful and I am not just saying that because I am her mom!

She might paint a "splattery" piggy bank but there is nothing "splattery" about her when it comes to dancing. I hope God was as honored by her dance as I was to be her mom.

The other kids did not share their talents this time, but Cade did do a private preformance for Miss "Y" of his amazing talent of arm pit farting!!!!! Boys!

In other happenings, the kids are all about done with another lapbook.  I will post details when they finish. Have a wonderful weekend. The sun is shining here, we will all be out in it today, it has been a looooong winter, we are very excited to see the sunshine.

We just completed our first lapbooks and I can tell you they will not be our last! We loved them.  We did them on polar animals, igloos and penguins. I just checked out eveything I could find at the library and we read and read and read some more. What a great way to learn.  The kids did not get the idea at first but once all the things were done that were going into the books and I laid a book out on the floor so they could see what I was talking about they got very excited about doing one. They did the same items for their lapbooks but they got to plan where they would place them inside the book. Some of the books we used .

Cade plans his book.

Chesney is "Queen Messy Desk" at our house! I tell her everyday to clean off her desk, you can see how well she listens! Oh well as long as she can do her work, right?

Chase deep in thought as he puts his book  together.

Chesney proudly displays her book.

We enjoyed doing our first books so much that Chesney will be starting a lapbook on counting and Chaya will be doing one on Amelia Earhart.  (Chaya did not do a polar animal book) Chase, Cade and Chesney will be doing one for science based on a book called "Crawdad Creek"   I think we may be hooked!!! 

Chesney has been working her way through the alphabets, she will be at "Q" Monday. But of course before "Q" is "P" . After working all week on "P" and its sound she got to make a pig! And it was a pretty pink (of course)pig.

We made the pig out of paper plates which she painted.this one shows that more than the pig got painted!

After she had the plates painted we glued two together. She painted 8 plates, so we had 4 sets with 2 glued together.Then we added toilet paper rolls, which she also painted pink, for feet. We cut the corners off of a pink piece of card stock and used a pipe cleaners twisted around a pencil for the tail.Oh, I forgot the nose is a piece of an egg carton. Chesney drew the eyes and smile with markers.

The week before "P" we learned "O" she made an octopus, Octavio the Octopus to be exact! He was made with a bag and hole reinforcers.

I couldn't post about the alphabets without adding her ABC wall.

She has an artistic flare, I think . She can color has pretty amazing pictures.

I dont know if you noticed but we do school in our pjs LOL!

We now have 2 in our school with glasses. Dont they look smart?

Finally I am finished with Chesney  afaghan,  YES that color was getting to me LOL

Well that about all the updates for now. Have a great weekend.

For Sale: An up-to-date brain. 6th grade level.  Call Chaya @____________.

We just started using Wordsmith Apprentice. It is really wonder and fun. Today's imagination stretching exercise was to do a For Sale add. You have to admit the up-to-date part is pretty creative and funny. She is not complaining about writing, thats a plus.

Added March 4, 2208

This from yesterday's writing on classified adds. She wrote 8, but this one I really loved. Do you think I can collect the $75.00 an hour?  If not at least I know what I am worth.                                                         HELP WANTED (MOTHER):

Reading,cleaning,laundry, cooking and soothing is required. Salary is $75.00 an hour.  Contact Chaya @______________________.

In honor of you, Letita and your white deck.  I want to share some of our whiteness. At this time of year I would really like to share it will you. LOL as in ship it all to ya.

Enjoy that sunshine, friend.

Dixie

Creative writing lesson today. This one cracked me up.  This is posted just as I got it : )

My House

By:Me

My house is a unique house,

It tis not as quiet as a mouse.

Yes infact, We dont live in Loas

Both of my parents have a spouse!

My house is a weird home,

It has exactly no foam,

But yet a nice color tone

And in it you may roam.

My room is a special room,

It does not have a moon,

But it is very bright at noon,

Im going to color it in June.

Just for the record her parents do have a spouse and it is each other LOL