We went to The Picture People today and had the girls Christmas portraits done, as well as Kayleigh's 9 month pics. (Of course I'm a week late on her being 9 months. LOL)
Why do I hate them you ask? Because they do such a fabulous job that I want them all. It's only by God's grace that I came out under my budget.
These are just the ones I purchased. I'll share the rest when they email the proofs.
Almost 8
What could be better than being within grabbing distance of all that hair?
Maybe this snowman. Kayleigh LOVED him. She screamed down the building when they tried to put him away.
Poor "Frosty" no longer has buttons. A devious wee babe didn't think they matched his hat.
Santa happened to be at studio while we were there. I will never again pay for pictures with the mall Santa.
I saw this over at Kym's and thought I would join in. I will not tag anyone, just invite you to leave a comment if you do decide to play. Copy the list and the highlight the ones you have done. (I am bolding the ones I have done)
Here goes...
1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world (I've even been to Tokyo Disney)
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang/played a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea (I watched from the shore though!)
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch (knitting)
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables (Not successfully)
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51.Gone scuba diving or snorkeling (Both diving is actually less scarey then snorkling. No waves pushing you around.)
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Gotten flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt (Technically I've only pieced one quilt square LOL)
We've been busy little beavers getting our work done with no interruptions...for 2 weeks in a row. Yay!
Bible
The birth of Jesus
The birth of John the Baptist
Social Studies
We're still studying Knights and Castles. We've finished the Time Traveler Book and our now working in CHOW and The Usborne Book of World History. Mackenzie was said to be finished with TT, as it was one of her favorites.
Our read aloud is Robin Hood and it goes along nicely with our history. And it is a GGGRRREAATTT book. Lots of adventure. It's hard to put it down.
We were studying the African countries last week in geography and we decided to study it for an extra week because there were 8 songs to learn. We needed extra time. LOL
We are still enjoying Window on the World. That book really gets us thinking and makes us more appreciative of how blessed we are here in the U.S.
Math
This week Mackenzie started colum addition and she pretty much freaked out at the sight of it. (Sigh, that girl is so dramatic...) The thought of adding 3+ numbers just sent her over the edge. Then she watched the lesson, did a few practice problems, and declared colum addition "easy and fun!"
Language Arts
We studied friendly letters and direct quotations in grammar. She is also memorizing a new poem, The Little Bird, as well.
Mackenzie reading More Stories From Grandma's Attic as her reader. She loves the stories but she's not always thrilled with the length of the assignment. "My voice gets tired." Hello? You have the option to read silently. LOL
Mackenzie has an interest in learning cursive. As her printing has improved greatly this year, I opted to let her try since we have A Reason for Handwriting transition book, which includes cursive lessons. However, their cursive program is not as good as the printing and Mackenzie hated it.
She was still insistent on wanting to learn cursive so we checked out a few other programs online and she choose Handwriting without Tears. We used to use it, we both liked but then a friend was using ARFH and Mackenzie loved the border sheets so we switched.
So once it arrives she can work on cursive M-Th and print her Bible verse on her border sheets on Friday. Big excitement, I know. LOL
Science
We are studying what's in the ground this week. We've learned how subways are built, how electric cable is layed, what kind of creatures live under the ground. Not the most exciting stuff but interesting enough.
Our science experiments have been on magnets but, I have to say, the magnets that came with our science kit are lacking. They have not been strong enough to complete some of the experiments properly. Mackenzie was disappointed. I might run to the local teacher's store this week and pick up some better ones.
Extras
Mackenzie started a 4-week cooking class last week. She is loving it. I love it because my only involvement is paying for it and getting her there. Yippee! So far she's made Northern Idaho Supper Soup, bread, homade oreos and ginger banana bread. I haven't tasted any of it yet but she says it's all good.
Soccer is officially over. Mackenzie did fabulous. They only lost one game. She is very excited to play again next year. Next she'll move on to cheerleading for the upcoming basketball season. Daddy tried to get her to play basketball but she was not interested.
Brownies is going well. Her troop is earning lots of badges and doing fun things. She also works on badges at home quit often.
We worked on a science try-it yesterday and it had some fun experiments.
Art is going well. We decided to take a break from drawing and work with colored markers for a while. We know how to color properly with lines and dots. Sounds weird, but it really looks a lot nicer. LOL
Kayleigh's Happenings...
Kayleigh, Kayleigh, what can you say? She is still adorable, still hates most food, and still determined to defy me.
1) She turned 9 months old. I forbid growing.
2) She is officially crawling. Wahh...I really enjoyed setting her down knowing that she'd still be there if I walked away. Thankfully, Daddy was home when she did it so he got to see the big event. He left the next day, so it was close.
3) She decided to start pulling herself to standing postions in her crib. At 3 a.m. Again, right before Daddy left for his trip. A mere 3 hours before he left in fact. So he was able to lower the mattress before hand. I'm totally "fix-it"challenged. She'd be better off jumping out of the crib then allowing me to mess with the screws. Sad but true. LOL
So that my daughter won't have sit there and be humiliated like this girl while her daddy is off defending this horrid teacher's right to bully her students.
The best part of our week was Kayleigh feeling better. That allowed me time for things like schooling and folding Mt. Laundrey.
Bible
Elisha and the Widow
Naaman is healed of leprosy
Young King Josiah
Daniel
Math
We reviewed money. It took Kenzie all of 20 minutes to finish the week's work. So we rounded out the week using Singapore Math. She worked on adding 3 3-digit numbers which freaked her out at first. But after a few examples she declared it "fun!"
Science
We took a bit of a science break. At least from the book work. We used this week to catch up on some science experiments.
We did some experiments with water.
Float and Sink
The force of water
How shape effects the ability of objects to float
How a submarine works
Kayleigh ate grass
History
We completed week 9 this week. Mackenzie is LOVING knights and castles. It goes without saying that she loved Time Traveller. Some of the extras we did...
She learned how to draw a castle and wrote a little blurb about what she thought it would be like to live in a castle. (We got this from the Draw...Then Write book from Evan-Moor.)
The girl who hates to write insisted that it would take longer to write if she wrote 3 seperate sentences instead of one long one. "Three is more than one mom." Whatever you say...ROFL
She made a castle hinge book with a diamond poem about castles inside it. We got the book form from www.teacherfilebox.com, which is ran by Evan-Moor. I LOVE that site. The poem idea came from a unit study.
She also made a medieval coin purse that I found in the SOTW activity guide. I should have taken a picture of her wearing it. She actually uses it. LOL
FYI: Thieves cutting the strings on these purses is where the phrase "cutting the purse strings" comes from. I'm confident that you were dying to know that little tidbit. LOL
Language Arts
We finished Strawberry Girl and started The Minstrel in the Tower. We'll be done with that one in no time. Only 2 more chapters to go and we just started on Wednesday.
We ditched our 1st Sonlight book. The Last Little Cat had to go. We both totally hated it.
It was a surprise that we didn't like this one because we loved The Wheel on the School by the same author. It's the first book that my voracious reader has ever not liked. Even if something seems slow, she'll generally read along further to see if it picks up. Not this time.
Mackenzie said, "If this lady continues to repeat every sentence 5 times I might pull my hair out. I understood it was a world full of closed doors the first 30 times she said it." I had to agree. I also noticed she has my ability of exaggerated sarcasm when annoyed. Uh-oh! LOL
Extras
Soccer is still going well. They played the "best team" in the league this week. (I say best team tongue in cheek because technically this is an instructional league so we don't keep score. But since all the children know how to count they all know the score. ROFL) Last time we were creamed. This time they tied those mighty Lemon Drops. The little Lemon Drops were stunned. They've always creamed everyone.
We're still doing our art lessons and I thought I'd share this one. Kenzie's clown was soooo cute!
Kayleigh's Doings
Making a huge mess but not actually eating any food
Defying Mommy's orders and trying to crawl
Fieldtrip to the Farm
Notice the hair flying about. That's not the wind. That's Farmer Tom's Wild Ride. His hayrides are no joke. Woo-hoo!
Mackenzie has started her own blog and she is very excited. She loves my blog so I thought that I might use this as a way to get her writing. So far so good. She has done one entry and has another one in the works. She's waiting on me to upload some pictures. LOL
I know that she'd love to have visiters so feel free to check out her blog...
We had a very easy week this week. Well, schoolwise, it was easy. I decided to only do LA, Math and read alouds this week because we had a couple of other things going on.
Daddy was off on Monday and since he was leaving for Michigan on Tuesday, we decided to ditch school in favor of family. And isn't that the #1 perk of homeschooling?
On Friday we had a fieldtrip to a historic cruise, so that would constitute school for that day.
Mackenzie was a bit miffed about skipping history. She is very into knights and castles. So we made a quick trip to the library and she checked out tons of books on the subject. She's been reading them ever since.
As it turns out, it was just as well our school work was light, as Kayleigh got sick. I've been holding her non-stop since Wednesday, and it's Sunday now.
Since I have nothing interesting to report, I'd thought I'd share some misc. pictures.
Here is Kayleigh on the day she turned 8 months. ::sniff, sniff::
Here comes trouble. Apparently she's a PS3 fan.
Mackenzie is a HUGE fan of the Time Traveller book. She insists on wearing a "helmet" and "googles" like the book says too. Here's what she came up with.
+We read about Elisha and Elijah. For some reason Mackenzie always gets a kick out of them and their names. LOL
Social Studies
+We worked on Southern Asia countries in Geography. Mackenzie doesn't like this particular song much because she says the way they say Sri Lanka is creepy. ROFL
+We started Knights and Castles in history. Mackenzie is loving it. We didn't do any activities from the SOTW activity guide but we did do a couple of notebooking pages from History Scribe. She did a fabulous job. Especially on the page about knights. A minor miracle considering how much she loathes writing. ROFL She also declared that she would like a page for Christmas so he could wait on her. LOL
+We read about some of the countries in Southern Asia in Window on the World. We continued adding the country's flag to our prayer book that we're making.
Math
+We reviewed skip counting by 10's so that took her all of 5 minutes to complete a weeks worth of lessons. Since we finished MUS early we worked a bit in Singapore Math and decided that MUS teaches regrouping much better. LOL So Kenzie did it the MUS way.
Science
+We have moved on to insects and creepy crawlies this week. Two of the pages in the FirstEncyclopedia of Animals had HUGE pictures of spiders on them. Totally creeped us both out so I had to cover them up before either one of us were willing to read.
Language Arts
+We learned about adjectives in grammar and then reviewed nouns.
+We are continuing to read Strawberry Girl and we still love it. It has lots of excitement to keep us guessing what happens next.
+Mackenzie finished reading Third Grade Detectives: Case of the Stolen Statue and moved onto The Last Little Cat. It has started off slow but we're hopeful that it will get better, as it's by the same author who wrote The Wheel on the School, and we wound up loving that one.
+Not much to report about spelling and handwriting, other than we did it. LOL
Extras
+Her soccer team is showing a lot of improvement. They actually look like they know what they are doing. The games are quite exciting now.
Her's Kenzie scoring a goal. (She's in orange, light brown braids, #9)
She also falls a lot. LOL That's the only shred of athletic "skill" she gets from me.
We also had a fieldtrip to a local fire station. They did a play for us.
And finally I uploaded the horseback riding pictures...better late thaen never right?
In grammar we studied contractions and replaced copywork with dictation.
We started reading Strawberry Girl. That is a fun read. The story is about a family of Florida crackers. There's nothing more fun then my attempts at a southern accent. LOL The story's pretty good too.
We're plugging along in spelling and handwriting. She still hates handwriting but she has finally learned to do it neatly the first time. Lest she have to erase it all and do it again.
We also finished our literature pocket on The Boy Who Cried Wolf. We're reading Aesop's Fables this year and I found an Aesop's Fable Literature Pocket to add in some craftiness to our studies. It covers 8 fables.
Mackenzie is reading another Third Grade Detective book. She loves those. There is currently a handwritten sign in our front window that reads "Detective Agency." And you'll often find Mackenzie and the baby dressed in "disguises" so I won't notice them "detecting."
A couple more books and we'll be onto the advanced readers. I made a good decision when I decided to buy all the readers that Sonlight offered. Mackenzie reads them double time so we go through a level and 1/2 every year. If I'd just gone with her reading level, we'd have been out of readers by grade 1. ROFL
Social Studies
History: We have officially finished our study on Vikings. It was interesting but we're really excited to start Knights and Castles. We read Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky this week. Mackenzie really enjoyed it. Especially because it was true. We did a little book report on it to help her learn how to pull out facts from what she reads.
I'm going to shy away from SS for a minute and talk about book reports. I don't really think book reports are necessary for a homeschooler. I think they're very useful in a regular classroom setting, where I wouldn't have time to orally evaluate each student. If I want to know if Kenzie understands what she read or what she thought, I can ask her. No book report necessary.
However I found these awesome book called How to Report on Books. It's essentially a bunch of different forms and projects that focus on different skills like setting, main character, real/make believe, identifying problems/solutions, etc. It's been a great teaching tool for me. And they're quick for Mackenzie. She loves them. Plus I bought it as an e-book so I can just print the page I want. LOL
Now back to SS...
In Geography we've been learning about maps and globes by reading Maps and Globes. LOL It's been pretty interesting to learn how maps have evolved over the years. Of course we work with real maps too. ROFL
We're also continuing on with Windows on the World. We still love it. Plus I've been printing out flags from each country that we read about and we're going to make those into a book. We've been writing some reminders of what we need to pray about on the flags.
Science
We are finished with birds and have moved on to reptiles. Neither of us are enjoying the pictures of icky snakes. Ick!!!
We are behind in experiments. We're going to have to have a massive experiment day in the near future.
Math
This week we studied adding with regrouping. I've said it before and I'm going to say it again. Math-u-See is the BEST! The way they teach just makes sense. Mackenzie has had no problems picking up any of the concepts with this program. And I wouldn't say she's got a knack for math. (Clearly judging from how long it took her to master her addition facts, especially the 2s. LOL)
And quite frankly, my math skills have improved GREATLY.
Extras
She has had a busy week this week. For brownies she went horseback riding and to Disney on Ice. Big excitement!
Soccer is going well. Best of all the weather has been cool so we haven't been sitting in the 99 degree hit sweating to death. Yay!
And, like I promised, we got our art lessons done. We worked on contrast, drawing geometric shapes, and "stacking" objects.
I'm going to try and get back in the habit of recapping our week every Friday. This is a homeschooling blog after all.
It's already not going well since it's already Tuesday and I have recapped last week. LOL
Bible:
We studied Samson and Ruth this week. Mackenzie was fascinated by Samson's long hair. "Why couldn't he cut it?" "Because he was a Nazerite." "So?" "Because God said so." LOL I should have said that in the first place.
Social Studies:
In History we're studying Vikings. Neither of us our thrilled with the Vikings. It's not that we don't find it interesting, it's just that they're so mean. It makes us angry. Mackenzie was horrified at the thought of them constantly raiding people, even churches.
We've done some interesting activities with the Vikings though. We made a Viking warship, a Viking pendent and we had a Viking burial. Aladdin barbie starred as the Viking. LOL Sadly I didn't get any pictures because of Mc Screamy.
We're doing Weekly Readers this year. Mackenzie gets a kick out of them.
We've been LOVING Geography Songs. Kayleigh included. We worked on the former countries in the USSR this week. It was hard but we got them down.
Language Arts:
Our read aloud was Ginger Pye. It was a fabulous book. Drama, excitement, suspence, happy ending. We loved it! It's just hard to read outloud. It was soooo loooong. We're considering it for one of our top 10 favorites.
We've been working on abbrievations in First Language Lessons. We both like that this program is mostly oral. Mackenzie hates to write.
Mathematics:
Math was a breeze. Reviewing skip counting by 2's. She had the entire weeks work done in 20 minutes.
We spent the rest of the week doing Mind Benders and Dr. DooRiddles.
Science:
We wrapped up our study of birds. I asked Mackenzie how she liked learning about birds. "It was pretty good. I would have liked to have learned how to get rid of those 2 birds who sit on our roof and poop on the house." ROFL So would I dear child, so would I.
Extras:
Soccer is going well. Mackenzie has really surpised me and loves it. She's such a girly girl that I wasn't sure if she'd like or not. It's looking like she might not be as athetically challenged as her mother. She scored the first goal of her first game. She'd probably do even better if she'd stop coaching the other girls and just do what she's told. ROFL
She's in a new brownie troop this year. One that actually does stuff and earns badges. What a novel idea! They went horseback riding this weekend, so that's already a million times more then what she did with her troop last year. Impressive!
I haven't signed her up for dance yet. Life's been busy. Hopefully next month I'll get around to it.
We fell off the wagon with our art lessons. It's been a few weeks since we did anything but I promise we'll get back on track next week.
That's all that I can remember. LOL Maybe if I did this on Friday like I'm supposed to...
I don't remember if I mentioned it here, I'm pretty sure that I didn't, but Kevin has had some exciting news. He recently earned the biggest promotion of his 19 year naval career, he was promoted to Chief Petty Officer.
It is the biggest achievement that an enlisted sailor can get. Not only is it the biggest pay raise, but they get to leave behind the "Popeye" uniforms and start wearing the khaki's and the nice white uniforms like the officers wear. Steffy like...LOL
The ceremony for promoting chiefs is unlike anything else in the navy. It's seeped in tradition and they do it up better then anyone else in the navy. Even the officer's promotions are not as big a to-do.
Before the actual pinning ceremony, where they pin on their chief's anchors, there is a 6-week transition ::cough, cough, hazing, cough, cough:: period where they are "trained" on their new responsibilities.
Not only was it a "great time" (please here my sarcasm) for the selectees, it was great fun for the families as well. I'm sure that there were many valuable lessons that they learned but I think it is utterly ridiculously that they (current chiefs) make this time so completely stressful for all involved. But because it's "always been done this way" they refuse to change it. That's men for ya!!
Personally, I think they should take a page out of the Bible and see how Jesus taught humility. But that's just me.
At anyrate, it's over and we all survived. He is an official chief and we are so proud of him!
He had a lot of people come share the moment with him... my mother, a couple of lieutentants that he used to work for, his brother, some local friends, and his parents.
He had no idea that his mom and father were coming. His mom has an upcoming heart surgery so she told him she wasn't able to travel. We managed to keep it from him for a month, even Mackenzie. She came in on a Sunday and hid out as his brothers until right before the ceremony. Boy was he surprised!
At anyrate, here are the highlights in pictures...
Waiting for his anchors and cover (hat)...
Getting his anchors pinned on by me, Mackenzie, and his mom.
Getting ready to receive his cover from his mentor, Chief Schools
Receiving his challenge coin...of all the ridiculous things...LOL
Here are Mackenzie's official 2nd grade photos. The watermark is on there because I got them off The Picture People's website.
And Kayleigh's 6 month pictures. For the first time in history... she did not torment The Picture People. She actually cooperated. Praise Jesus!
Don't let this next shot fool you. Kayleigh CANNOT even remotely do this on her own. It was staged and lasted about 10 seconds. She is still pretty much a slug, only cuter. Her best skills are nursing and sitting. She's rolled over, maybe, a dozen times and then quit cold turkey.
For my own sanity, I am still not encouraging movement or talking so no need to worry. LOL Sitting was the only thing I wanted her to master.
We finished our first official week of 2nd grade and Mackenzie did great! We got everything done that I had planned and we got a bit a head in somethings.
Here's our run down...
Bible: We reviewed creation and starting reading The Awesome Book of Bible Facts. Mackenzie just loves that book. She prefers to read that one to me. So it's gone from read aloud to reader.
Another favorite was Window on the World. I have to say wow! It's a book of short stories about different people groups all over the world. It gives you facts about the country, cultural information and ways that we can pray for each people group. Trust Sonlight to find another book to touch our hearts. I just love the way Sonlight gets us thinking and praying for people all over the world
Social Studies:
For history, we mainly just reviewed what we'd covered in Core 1, which wasn't that exciting, but we did get to start reading Explorers News. I knew that would be a big hit because Mackenzie loved The Greek News in core 1.
We both can't wait to get into the meatier history. Sonlight never lets us down!
We're using The Story of the World Activity Guide 2 to add some hands-on to our history this year. A little more work for me then the History Pockets we use last year but I'm making do. I'm only picking the simplest of activities. I think I might need to get the 3rd guide to finish up the time periods we're covering this year.
SOTW has some really neat map assignments too. Mackenzie really liked those.
We also started using Geography Songs. Can you say fun? Mackenzie learned her continents and oceans in about 3 minutes. And she can find them on the map. I like how their is a book with blackline maps for us to copy and color. We'll be putting those in our notebook. Plus it came with a large blackline world map. And even Kayleigh likes the music. LOL
We're also reviewing in Language Arts. Nouns this week. And she's working on memorizing the poem, The Goops. Spelling was a breeze she aced the pretest. And she even did her handwriting without complaint.
Our real aloud is Red Sails to Capri. So far we're loving it. I'm getting a little confused while reading because I always try to read with accents and voices. This book has Italians, French, British, and Russian or German. I'm pretty much butchering them all. Thankfully, Kenzie doesn't seem to mind.
Mackenzie is finishing up the last of the intermediate readers and is reading The House on Walenska Street. I have to say that she has given the mother in the story an accent too. Although she hails from Russia, she seems to have a Brooklyn accent. LOL Good stuff! And it's cute to hear Mackenzie try and read the yiddish words. I have no doubts she does better with them then I would.
She finished a week and a half's worth of math in 2 days. The first lesson in Beta was place value review so it was pretty easy. Since we finished MUS early we moved on to Singapore 2A, which was also place value. Funny how that works out.
We haven't started science yet but we did start our art curriculum, I Can Do All Things. It is fabulous. It will teach us drawing, painting, colored pencils, and markers. It's perfect for artistically challenged people like me. Very simple and easy to implement and it has a video. I'll let a real artist doing the teaching on this one. Kenzie and I are doing it together. She is really enjoying it. So is mommy.
Kayleigh is working on sitting up. We are using this as a motivater. It is my hope that she will sit up as well as this baby soon. It will really make her 6 month portraits a lot easier.
I know it's been a while but it's not my fault. I had a huge post typed out a few weeks ago and HSB "ate it". I'll try a few short ones to catch you up and see if HSB behaves better.
We started school yesterday. Mackenzie is now an official 2nd grader. Boo-hoo!
Kayleigh also turned 6 months old yesterday. Double boo-hoo.
It only took me 6 months to get her to take a bottle LOL
and our now working in CHOW and The Usborne Book of World History. Mackenzie was said to be finished with TT, as it was one of her favorites.
happy! Be sure to check it out...
Thankfully, Kenzie doesn't seem to mind.
