In March we took a walk at one of our local county parks.  We have one just a few miles from our house, and actually another just a few miles the other direction too.  While we were there I picked up a brochure to see how long the trails were.  There was a website listed so I decide I would check out the other park close to us and see if where they had other parks with walking trails.   Boy was I surprised!

I came across an 'events' page and on there was a home school outdoor ed link.  They offer 1.5 hour outdoor ed classes once a month for home school families!  WOW!!  We signed up for both the April class and the May class.  They also have a whole slew of other events for families, for kids, for everyone!

The April outdoor ed class was on the life of a stream - what lives in Ohio streams, how to tell if a stream is healthy or not and they had a lot of fun looking in the streams and learning if it was healthy or not.  The May class was on microscopic life, so they spent time out by the lake then in a room with microspopes, learning about the small life that exists in our world! 

While there I picked up a brochure for the Young Naturalist Camp (2 hours a day, 4 days) for this summer and we picked our top three choices and got our registration form sent off.  They will be doing:  Critter Crafts (making homes out of nature stuff like beaks, string, etc like animals do), Native Americans that lived in our area (will have to do some pre-teaching about things they might say as far as 'millions' of years ago and religion factors), and Water World.  Then we will do a 'night class' on the Creatures of the Night.  Both this program and the Outdoor Ed classes are free programs thru the parks department!  What an awesome resource right here in our own back yard (so to speak).

I also went back to the website and we picked a few things to do over the summer.  The girls will be doing a butterfly one - learning aobut butterflies that are in our area and when is the best time to spot them and then they will all do a reptile one (snakes, turtles, lizzards), and to end the summer we will do the cocoon and catepillar one!

We are wrapping up school for the year.  RJ is done already with his main subjects.  We will do some stuff over the summer above and beyond, just to work on a few problem areas and to kinda keep them in the mode of school/structure!  The girls both have some things to do in the main subjects but will finish soon. 

We have had a good year and the children have worked hard.  I have decided to switch some curriculum for the upcoming year.  We will be using ABeka for language arts/english and for math.  We are going to continue in Story of the World for history - the children are all enjoying that!  We will also add in Ohio State History for them since Rachel has to learn that in 4th grade and I hope to do alot of field trips and hands on things for that to make it more fun!  RJ will also be doing ABeka hisory (Land I Love).  And we are going to do Answers in Genesis "Gods Design for Science" for our science curriculum this coming year.

I excited to get our books and start planning out our year.  We will continue art at the library each month and we will do some things thru our local park department both over the summer and thru the school year.

Snow, Snow and more snow!  That is what we have!  We got hit with a winter storm yesterday and today that the news station is calling "The Blizzard of '07".  We received 10-12 inches of snow and have drifts up to 20 inches in our yard!  Boy the kids loved playing in it and got their school done quickly so they could go out and play in it! 

Here the kids are playing outside in the snow yesterday!  We had another 6 inches or more of snow after this over night and this morning!

We had to shovel the drive out so Daddy could get to work today ~ Thankfully the neighbor saw us shoveling and brought his tractor over and plowed it for us!  Part of school tomorrow will be writing thank you notes to him for doing that for us!
I am sure tomorrow will be full of doing school then heading outside again!

We had a wonderful Christmas Break.  We had Christmas here at home on Christmas Morning with just us, and celebrated with Pa (Daddy's Father) & Uncle Danny & the kids on Christmas Eve at Uncle Danny's house.  Then on Christmas Day we went to Momo's (Daddy's Mother) side of the family and had a late lunch/early dinner - buffet style with them. 

On New's Years weekend we headed to KY for Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa Smitty and that side of the family.  As always playing with all the cousins is great fun!

After we left the Air Force Museum we headed to Kentucky.  Uncle Bob was home on leave from Iraq!  We stayed at Uncle Bob & Aunt Christina's on Thursday night.  Then Friday and Saturday we stayed at the hotel.  Everyone came in so it was nice to see all the cousins and aunt and uncles and grandma and grandpa!   We went swimming, played pool, played video games, jumped on the trampoline, played with cousins, went to Gatti Town, ate lots of food and had lots of fun!

Best of All, we got to see Uncle Bob!  We have been praying all year for him and will continue until he comes home for good from Iraq!

We had a 'down week' in schooling.  Daddy was sick for 3 days so that always throws our schedule off balance.  So there was little 'formal schooling' this week. 

We did some home ec, learning out to clean our rooms and shared in some cooking duties.  The kids also spent a few days at our friends farm doing some farm work - cleaning stalls, helping with and learning how to trim hoofs on donkeys and horses.  They also helped with grooming the horses.  It was a lot of fun for them!

Tuesday RJ practiced football in the rain.  The girls had their cheerleading practices cancelled. But they all practiced on Thursday.

We finished our week with some family fun.  We went to a high school football game.  The girls both took a friend and we had a good time watching Daddy's alma mater play football (they lost btw, making them 3-1 on the season). 

Today all the kids had their football games.  All three teams won!  An exciting day!  Tonight it is to bed early since we had a late night last night.  Tomorrow is church!

That is our week in a nutshell!  Have a great weekend!

Here are the kids 'beginning of the school year' pictures.  We'll post end of the year as the end of the year!!

  Brandi - 10yo - 5th Grade
 Rachel - 7yo - 3rd Grade
 Rodney - 12 yo - 7th Grade