Ramblings from a mom, missionary, homeschooler,.........

Oct. 3, 2007 - Week 8-winter promise

With our new schedule, we do all the WP stuff on Mondays, so i can report on our "completed" week before we leave tomorrow. This week we had fun creating clouds and watching it rain. Such a simple experiement and they really enjoyed it. Put 2 inches of hot water in a jar. in a ziplock put ice cubes and then attached it in the neck of the jar with rubber bands. Voila! in about 10 minutes you have clouds and rain.

Mickey has officially finished Before Five in a Row. Some of the last stories were actually bit too young for him, but we enjoyed them. We are flying through the books in Journeys of Imaginations as well. We never just sit and do one day's lesson. It seems like we complete a week's worth of work every time before he is satisfied. At this rate, we'll be done by Christmas. He still has Rod and Staff workbooks to complete as his fine moter skills slow those books down. In all seriousness, he told me last night that his computer password was "wprng". He spelled it out nice and slow for me twice!

Tomorrow we fly. Should be a short, easy flight.

Nobody has bid on Chelsea's ebay item yet. She makes me check almost every hour!

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Oct. 2, 2007 - Ebay

Ebay is really addictive. You should be banned from ebay when you are sick and can't think straight! Weird things start looking like incredible deals just because the clock is ticking down and the seller assures you that this is a rare, collectible item that no home should be without.

All in all, I think I resisted rather well. Though I did come close on a few items that caught my eye!

Chelsea, however, has caught the American Girl bug. Her older sister went through it a few years back and I thought we were safe this time around. Then they went and released a new doll with blond hair and brown eyes-just like Chelsea. And silly mommy bought the books for the girls to read. After all, we've always enjoyed the historical stories and as Julie is set in the 1970's, I thought they would be a fun read. Well, they were. And now she wants one. And to get one, she is willing to sell what to date was her prize possession: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=280158984966&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=018 I just hope somebody bids on it as any money that comes from this sale she is going to apply towards a new doll.

We're all feeling much better and are getting ready for our flight on Wednesday. So, what is there to do in the Detroit area anyway? We've got an open day before the mission conference starts.

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Sep. 30, 2007 - yucky sick week

No week in review this week for us. The kids and I have been sick since Thursday night. Yuck. We are flying up to Detriot for a week with Mike on Wednesday. I just hope we are all better by then.

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Sep. 26, 2007 - Wordless Wednesday-Natural Bridge, VA

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Sep. 22, 2007 - Bloggity blog

Time for another update. This week we tried something new for school that seems to have gone over very well for all of us. On Monday we did math and the entire week of Winter Promise. The girls liked going deep into the topics and following the train of thought all the way to the end. Then on Tuesday through Friday we did all the "other" subjects. It made for shorter days the rest of the week. Both girls liked doing school that way so I think we will continue this for a few weeks.

You know that this is a good program when you can count this as school:

Yeah-we're all big Pirates fans here-all the way down to Mickey.

Babysitting from last week: (Although I'm not sure who is actually doing the babysitting!)

And not to forget Chelsea-she is learning how to cook.

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Sep. 10, 2007 - Man in the house

Mike left for a loonngg trip on Friday. The kids and I are staying in Florida with my mom while he is gone. He will be going to Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan, and Indiana to share our ministry with new churches. The kids and I are going to fly up for a week in which we have two missions confernces crammed, but other than that, we won't see him until the middle of November! It will probably be harder on him than on us, because at least we have all the comforts of home while he is all over the place.

So far the kids are taking it well. Mickey is calling himself the "man in the house" while daddy is gone.

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Aug. 30, 2007 - Wordless Wednesday

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Aug. 27, 2007 - WP Week 4

We finished week 4 (mostly) this week. On Friday we babysat a baby 11 months old, so very little "school" got done-and that is the day we do activities and I take pictures!

Earlier in the week we went to the Gainesville Butterfly Rainforest at the University of Florida. It was really fun.

Mickey, however, was not so thrilled. After all, in his words, "They were real!"

Aren't they beautiful?

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Aug. 23, 2007 - Wordless Wednesday

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Aug. 21, 2007 - Tic Tacs

Yesterday at lunch after church we were quizzing Mickey (4 years old) on what his Bible story had been. He was able to tell us that Peter went fishing and caught a fish that had a coin in its mouth. Then we asked him what Peter was going to buy with that coin. He thought it through and finally came up with the answer "tic-tacs!" I guess "taxes" aren't a part of his normal vocabulary!

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Aug. 20, 2007 - WP Sky and Sea week 3

This was a good week schoolwise. We are finding our groove with WinterPromise and tweaking it to suit us. I have ended up assigning all the reading to be done on their own and then we get together to answer the questions and do the worksheets. Totally the opposite of the way the program is written, but this way I know that they know if you know what I mean! Caitlyn is not crazy about the books in the Older learner's schedule, so we are tweaking that around a bit, too. PLUS those are mongo huge, heavy books that I really don't want eating up our baggage space when we do return. So I am trying to sell them (silly me lost the Barnes and Noble receipt so I'm not sure if I can return them) and I think I will have her use Streams Of Civilization 2 as a go-along history reading. Science I had already added in extra Creation SCience and Health so that is going well for her.

We made a sailor's bean stew and it was really tasty, but I forgot to take a picture before we ate it! So sorry, no picture this week. It seems like the girls always pick the cooking activity!

Mickey and I are still doing Before Five in a Row. We did a second week of Katy No-Pocket as we hadn't finished all the activites yet and we were having so much fun. I also added in Winter Promise's Journeys of Imagination program as it is mostly just reading. I am picking weeks at random to use as they tie in, so last week we did the Pinocchio week. This upcoming week in BFIAR we are going to do Caps For Sale and from JOI I'll pull out one of the Curious George weeks and we'll have a monkey theme going on for a while!

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Aug. 16, 2007 - blinkies

Have you ever noticed how addicting blinkies can be???????

Somebody really needs to stop me before I add something really silly.....Oh wait, I already have!

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Aug. 16, 2007 - Wordless Wednesday

Why study history when you can visit a fort that is over 600 years old and sit on a cannon that was left behind by the British?

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Aug. 16, 2007 - Another cool contest!

The Battle for the Toy Box Contest!
I entered the Battle for the Toy Box Contest
on the HSB Company Porch. I hope to win
over $100 worth of, Tales of Glory, Bible-based toys
from one2believe!!

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Aug. 13, 2007 - Neat contest

Check out this neat contest! http://www.homesteadblogger.com/thecottageporch/65460/

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Aug. 3, 2007 - Thursday Thirteen

13 Places I would like to Visit Someday

1. Ireland

2. Scotland

3. South Africa

4.Egypt

5.Afghanistan

6.Japan

7.Oregon

8. Quebec

9. Maine

10. Boston

11. Western Australia

12. New Zealand

13. New Orleans

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Jul. 31, 2007 - BFIAR & BFFs

This week in school Mickey has for his Before Five in a Row story Katy No-Pocket. It is the story of a mama kangaroo without a pocket for her joey. So they go looking for pockets and get a big apron full of pockets in the city. Our activity today was to wear pockets and give all our animal friends rides. Mickey really enjoyed this, hopping around the house wearing his pocket apron.

On a sadder note, Caitlyn's BFF (best friend forever) is moving to North Carolina tomorrow. The girls got to spend one last day together today. They were sad.

BYE WE WILL MISS YOU!!!!!!!!

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Jul. 29, 2007 - We were featured in the paper today!

Here's the link: http://www.ocala.com/article/20070728/FEATURES02/207280321/1027/YOURLIFE

i do think the writer sensationalized a little bit and there are a few small errors in the srticle. but it was really neat to see ourselves as a leading story!

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Jul. 22, 2007 - WinterPromise Adventures in the Sky and Sea-Week 1

We officially started back to school this week using WinterPromise's Adventures in the Sky and Sea. Over all, i think the girls really enjoyed the week, and their style of doing things. It wasn't too stressful, and we were able to complete the together activities in about an hour, depending on how long the read aloud was for that day. Surprisingly, they both are enjoying the book Treasure Island, and even Mickey is listening to "the arrgh pirates". I was a little concerned when I first got the books that they would not enjoy it as it seemed so "boyish". But both actually LIKE doing stuff together (so far anyway!), when in earlier years I could not get them to do anything together except listen to read-alouds.

Here is a picture of the Week 1 activity that they chose-making a pie with the same ratio of water and land on the earth as blueberries (oceans) to strawberries (land). BUT our pie ended up more land because everybody kept saying they wanted strawberry pieces rather than blueberry. So although we did the math and technically knew how much of each to use, I let them reconfigure the mesurements in the end. It tasted really good, too!

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Jul. 16, 2007 - Vacation photos

Our vacation got off to a good start with Mickey getting lots of love from his great-graddaddy in Virginia!

The next day we headed to the Richmond, Va Zoo for a day of animal fun. The kids got to feed and pet the giraffe, and we all loved the baby monkey. It was so cute!