I decided to give the kids a break from school. My decision was based mostly on my need for extra time to get ds ready for recruit training which starts next week. He had a full-page list of items that needed to be bought so we spent 3 hours in Walmart (my least favorite store) purchasing everything from undershirts and white boxers (12 each) to dressy slacks and shorts for a luau he will be attending during Advanced Training (the week after recruit training). I cringe when I think of how much of my money Walmart now has. Recruit training starts on the 25th and runs to the 8th of July and then advanced training runs from the 13th to the 19th of July. We will begin school the following week probably.

Between now and when we get settled into our new home in South Carolina (which probably won't be until early November) we will do math, writing, grammar, and a science study I found on the NOAA site. We will add TOG 3 into the mix at the end of August (following our new online co-op's schedule) and drop science during the move. I plan to take the advice of many TOG mom's who have moved during the school year. We will have short days, lots of field trips and as much time at the pool (if the hotel has an indoor one) and outdoors as possible.

Please be in prayer for ds during recruit and advanced training. Because of the number of cadets and the kinds of training they will be doing, there is a low to NO tolerance for bad behavior. Ds will be starting a new medication for his ADHD this upcoming Thursday, just 5 days before training starts. We took him off of his medication to see if it was the cause of his irritability and anxiety and he has been off for about 2 months now. He has been bouncing off the walls and his irritability did not decrease so we are eager to get him back on something to help him concentrate. This recruit training is set up very similar to boot camp and most of the kids cry at some point during the first few days as they adjust to the requirements. The cadets will be housed on a barge and will sleep in a long open bay. They will be woken up daily for PT at 5AM and will have lights out every evening at 10PM. Their days will be filled with training and lectures on everything from swim training to hazing. I think this will be a good opportunity for ds to hopefully learn some discipline and respect for others, but he will need God's strength to get him through without a major meltdown. Your prayers will be much appreciated.

Dd and I plan to work through a study from Beautiful Feet on the History of Horses that I picked up at the curriculum sale for $5. She is also doing a horse camp for the next 6 weeks every Monday from 1-5PM. It started two weeks ago and she is having a blast. There are 4 other girls around her age and she is eating up the extra time with her beloved horses. Her instructor, who is the same lady she takes the regular weekly riding from, is wonderful with the kids. She has them learning the different parts on a horse right now. You would be amazed at how many bones and muscles a horse has! This last week the girls learned and practiced the many different kinds of leg wraps. Next week is learning how to clean the saddle. Ds and I use that time to go to our favorite beach right up the road from the equestrian center. He is really enjoying the one-on-one time with me.

I love to schedule things and make lists and charts. I seem to be in a perpetual planning mode. Someone on my TOG yahoo group sent this link for Donna Young's site. I have visited her site before, but she has recently revamped it and done some neat changes. The site is not finished, but I found plenty to keep me busy yesterday afternoon.

I downloaded a really cool weekly schedule (link is on the right side of the page) that Donna made up using Excel. I am sure if I played around enough I could make something like this, but I always have so many other things to do. This planner is so neat, because it allows you to customize the subjects down the left-hand side of the page, add text to each of the subject boxes and has boxes for the kids to check off when they are finished with an assignment. I printed something similar off of her site a couple of years ago, but had to handwrite all of the information. I transferred all of the assignments for each of the kids and printed off a copy for each of them. I am going to start saving them as South Carolina requires us to keep a daily journal/log of our schooling. This will be a great way to fulfill that requirement.

My next project is to come up with a usable timeline. I would prefer to do a notebook timeline because I don't want to have one on the wall. I am having trouble with the logistics of it, though. I would like to draw a line horizontally across the top of a sheet of paper, with each page representing 10 years. (A double page spread would then show us a 20-year time span.) My roadblock, however, is how to fit all of the information on each sheet of paper. Right now we are studying the American Revolution. I have one full sheet of typed information just for the years between 1775-1783. I thought about maybe making mini flip books for each year.

For example, there are three events in 1775-the Battles of Lexington and Concord, General Washington being named commander of the Continental Army and the Battle of Bunker Hill. I would have three pages in the 1775 flip book relating to the American Revolution. Anything else happening in 1775 elsewhere in the world would have its own picture and caption somewhere else on the page. If anyone has a better idea, or has an idea to tweak this setup I would greatly appreciate it.

The science fair was a big success. We had roughly 25 displays ranging from making homemade ice cream to how lightning is formed. Everyone did such a good job on their projects.

Dd received many questions about her display, "Is Oreo really the best?" Moms especially were interested to know that there are healthy alternatives that taste good to Oreos. Oreos did win the taste contest, hands down. The regular Oreos were closely followed by the sugar-free Oreos. 7 out of 9 testers chose Oreo as number 1.

Ds successfully built his trebuchet and we launched it several times in the grassy area behind the house. Dad and ds managed to throw a golf ball 119'. Everyone, especially the boys and men, were intrigued with the trebuchet. It was suggested that maybe next year the homeschooling support group could hold a trebuchet launching party. Each family who was interested could build their own trebuchet and then see which one launches objects the farthest. The current meeting site has a great launching field. Grandpa was interested as well and is thinking of launching hedge apples this fall.

I will try to post pictures later, but the site is saying I don't have enough availabe space. If anyone can help with that I would much appreciate it. I had the same problem with my last posting as well.

TOG Redesign Year 3-history, geography, literature, writing

Writing Aids-composition

Easy Grammar

Saxon Algebra 1/2 and 6/5

Apologia Physical Science and Zoology 2

Wordly Wise Books 7 & 8 (ds) and 5 (dd)

Latina Christiana II or Latin in the Christian Trivium Book 1

Our Christian homeschooling support group is doing a science fair and both kids are doing projects.

Dd chose to do a project to see if Oreo brand cookies are really the best creme-filled cookie. She got 9 people to volunteer to taste 6 different cookies (Oreo, Oreo sugar-free, Murray sugar-free, Back to Nature, Health Valley, and Newman-O's). The volunteers were not allowed to look at the cookies because most of them had their names on them. They were told to rate each cookie on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the best. I will post the results after the science fair so as not to give anything away.

Ds originally was going to do an experiment to try to determine which metal rusts the most in water (aluminum, copper, zinc, steel, silver). He was going to use salt-water, distilled water, vinegar and juice. We bought the test tubes online to hold the wire, but then could not find any of the wire at Home Depot except the copper wire.

He is now working on building a trebuchet, which is very similar to a catapult. Ds and dad bought all the materials at Home Depot and spent the afternoon putting the frame together. They seem to have run into some problems, so I am not sure if they will actually be able to continue with this building plan. My view is that the whole process is a learning experience. It would be really cool, though, if they could get it working and be able to lob tennis balls across the yard.

I have recently gotten re-interested in notebooking for the kids' schoolwork. We are going to do notebooks for history/geography and science. I showed the kids several websites I had bookmarked last week with lots of ideas, templates and clipart. I am very excited to get started!

Dd has been working on a notebook for the past several weeks for history. I had her start pages for each of the three colonial regions. She started her work on 12x12 pages, so we will continue with that size for her book, but ds will do 8 1/2x11 pages. Both books will have plenty of flap books, mini books and shape books, making sure to make the best use of our page space.

The biggest reason I started this undertaking is to have some nice, colorful keepsakes of the learning we are doing. I would like to have something to look back on to see not only what we learned, but to see how much the kids grow over the years. I will have to discipline myself to take lots of pictures, though.

I am so pleased that I was able to go to the local Christian homeschooling conference. My husband was able to move out of shift-work just in time for me to go. I talked to my neighbor the day before and she decided to go as well.

Both days were just wonderful. I mainly chose the workshops that dealt with homeschooling in junior and high school, but I did attend a workshop put on by IEW on story and book report writing.

The high school workshops were presented by Mary Schofield, the author of The High School Handbook: Junior and Senior High School at Home. I learned so much in these workshops. She made many great points, like the need to plan ahead and write out a plan of action for what you want to accomplish by graduation. She also had a good point about giving our children proper credit for the work they do. She said 1 credit in high school is equal to about 150 hours of work. If you give your child 300 or 400 hours worth of work to do, they should earn more than 1 credit.

I came away with a renewed energy and a renewed vision for what I want to accomplish in training my children. The keynote speaker was Ken Swanson and he was wonderful. He, along with Mary, reminded me that I need to work on character education first and that preparing my children to serve the Lord should be the most important part of our homeschooling journey. It will not matter how high the kid's GPA's are if they do not know Jesus as THEIR savior. Nothing else matters if you won't be spending eternity in heaven with Jesus.

The Bible tells us to do everything as if we were doing it for Jesus. That includes our homeschooling.

Paradice Academy Mission Statement

My purpose is to train up my children in the ways of the Lord, to love Him and serve Him all the days of their lives. In so doing, I want to help my children to own their faith, so they will have a personal and close relationship with Jesus Christ. I desire to have my children see Christ's mercy and grace in my life. I promise to love, encourage, teach and correct them and to surround them with men and women who profess their faith in Jesus. With the Lord's blessing I will raise my children to do their best, realize their potential through Christ, develop a concern for others' needs and use their talents for God's glory.

Social Goals

To have a home filled with love, laughter, joy and peace. A home where everyone feels accepted and part of the family unit.

To take responsibility for ourselves: our thoughts, words, and actions.

To feel confident interacting with others in an appropriate manner, no matter what their age, gender or race.

Academic Goals

To develop a Christian worldview where we view everything we learn and all of life in the light of the Word.

To teach my children how to be resourceful. "It is not how much you know, but whether you know how to find the answers."

To raise confident and independent thinkers who have courage and strength of character to think and make decisions for themselves based on Scripture, truth and logic.

To instill a life-long love of learning.

To teach my children homemaking skills such as cooking, baking, cleaning, scheduling, and money management.

To instill in my children the desire to do their best on everything, remembering that we do all things unto the Lord.

My ds had his first Invention Factory workshop last Friday morning. The University of Hawaii offers this class to homeschoolers to teach them about simple electronic circuits, magnets and motors. They get to do things like build a printed circuit board lamp switch, make an Archimedes switch, build a simple LED circuit, construct an LED flasher, build an LED chaser, build a morse code buzzer and game, and build a simple motor.

Their focus in on using their new knowledge in ways to improve the well-being of people with special needs, such as the elderly and those with disabilities.

The class consists of 15 kids between the ages of 12 and 16. The class is eight sessions long and lasts for 2 1/2 hours each day. My ds seemed to have enjoyed himself. I have two reasons for signing him up for this workshop. The first one was to expose him to something new, hoping he might take an interest in it and possibly develop a new hobby. The second reason was to give him something to do that does not involve his sister or me.

I managed to switch dd's horse riding lessons to Friday mornings as well, which works out really well as they are only a couple miles apart.

I revised our daily schedule so we do devotions, math and english in the mornings and have latin, science and history in the afternoon. As it works out, we will skip math and english on Friday mornings due to being gone and then we will just pick up with lunch and Latin when we return home.