Nov. 17, 2007 - Let's go MOUNTAINEERS!!!
How 'bout them 'EERS?
Oct. 22, 2007 - Is cooler weather going to arrive????
The post-surgery kids are doing really great and are back to normal. They went back to the surgeon for their 2 week check up on 10/11 and he said they have healed 'beautifully' and that their throats actually looked like it had been longer than 2 weeks since their surgery. To celebrate we went camping for 4 days last week....Sunday afternoon to Wednesday. We went to our friend's farm where we are away from everything and everyone. We have a picnic shelter and an outhouse. We take our pop-up camper, 4-wheelers, and supplies and enjoy the solitude by riding 4-wheelers, hiking, shooting BB guns, fishing, and whatever else we find to do in the wild. The fall leaves were pretty, but not nearly as gorgeous as they have been in past years because we've not had much rain this summer/fall. As always, our time ended all too soon, and we had to be back for Wed. evening church since hubby had to lead Praise & Worship. It was probably our last camping event of the year, since cool weather is supposed to arrive tomorrow with the high temp only supposed to reach 65 degrees F, with rain. Maybe it will finally be fall!
Oct. 3, 2007 - Let the healing begin...well, actually continue...
Well....it's over! I'm just now finding time to update, but the surgeries went well last Thursday. The kids were both so very brave, mostly due to a bet E made with S, saying that if she cried before the surgery he would get $5.00, but if she didn't cry they both would get $5.00...LOL. He had it made either way!! The hospital staff thought it was so cute and I overheard their nurse explaining their bet to another nurse working that day. There was no crying before the surgery, which really surprised me. I figured S would have a major meltdown when it was time to go, but she didn't. For their bravery I gave them each $10.00 and lots of bubble gum and soft treats plus all the goodies I bought for them (see previous post).
Unfortunately both kids were very sick at their stomachs all day after they came out of the recovery room. We got to come home about 5:00 in the evening and fortunately we made it home before they had any more stomach eruptions. They were pretty wiped out Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but have since made remarkable progress. They are pretty much eating anything they want except very hard, crunchy items and still want popsicles and coke (helps cut through the mucus, according to the nurse). They are not supposed to have milk products but they have both had a milk shake. On Friday we could not get Sarah to eat or drink anything because it hurt so much, so when she requested a milk shake we let her have it. They've both done really well staying quiet, mostly by watching TV and dvds, which is not my idea of brain food, but I'm letting them do it just this week. They have to stay indoors for 2 weeks, but we are going to start school again next Monday. If they can sit up all day and watch TV then they can read and do their school work.
My mom and my sister came to visit on my birthday and offered to stay with the kids while hubby & I went out to eat and celebrate. My sister then took J, the youngest, home with her for this week and it has been such a help. He is the loud, active child, and was really getting on the kids nerves the 4 days he was here. It has been so quiet in the house...it's amazing!
Sep. 25, 2007 - Kids' Surgeries
Just 2 more days until S & E have their T & A's. Sarah, especially, is not looking forward to it at all. I really don't blame her, but she is soooo uptight about it and has had several crying spells. I am trying to stay upbeat, but not dwell on the upcoming surgery. I have repeatedly told her that daddy & I will be in the waiting room praying for her & Elijah, and that the surgery won't last very long at all....about 1/2 an hour, and that she will not have any more snoring afterward (she snores ALOT!). She was very happy to find that they will give her gas to make her sleep before inserting the IV, so that helped somewhat. I will be glad when it's all over....but then we have to stay in the house for 14 days.....they are not allowed to go out until after a check-up with the doctor in 2 weeks. They are also supposed to stay in bed for at least a week. I won't have much trouble with Elijah...he's a quiet type who likes to play game-boy, watch tv, read, or play quietly; Sarah, on the other hand, is a totally different story! I did buy each of them 2 new gameboy games, a new movie, and a couple new coloring/activity books. They both also have MP3 players they like to listen to, so hopefully I can keep them both down the entire time. I'm getting several library books for them and hopefully can find a few movies for them there, too. My birthday is Monday (Oct. 1), so it appears it will be a thrilling day! Unless hubby volunteers to take the day and watch them for me I will be housebound right along with them! That's his only day off next week so I'm not sure if he will or not.
Blessings,
Ronda
Sep. 13, 2007 - Weight Loss update
Just updated my ticker above. I was pleasantly surprised this morning to find that I had lost 3 more pounds. I had hit a little plateau and was slightly disturbed that I had not lost any weight for a couple weeks. In retrospect, I think it was probably due to PMS, because now that my period is nearly completed this month I lost 3 more pounds!! YEAH!!
I recently saw my friend who was my inspiration to start this diet and she has lost 60 pounds! She looks great. I really hate to call it a diet (South Beach) because it is more of a healthy eating plan. If you struggle with your weight you might want to look into South Beach. After the initial 2-3 weeks of getting rid of the cravings (but never having to go hungry!), following the diet becomes much easier and the pounds just melt away. My husband and I cannot see ourselves ever going back to eating the way we used to. Once you realize how much better you feel you never want to go back!
I had several comments from friends at church on Sunday about my weight loss. My mom recently gave me some clothes she had outgrown that fit me, so I gave her all my clothes that are now too big!! I've dropped 2 sizes, from a 20 to a 16. So, since I'm no longer wearing the clothes that are too big, people are noticing.
Blessings,
Ronda
Sep. 6, 2007 - I got to shake hands with Jeff Gordon!!
If any of you are NASCAR fans, particularly Jeff Gordon fans, you will be pleased to know that I got to see him this evening at our local DuPont plant. Since hubby works for DuPont immediate family members were also allowed to attend the event. Sadly we were not one of the 100 employees chosen to have a personal item autographed and have a photo taken with Jeff, but at least we were there!
Ronda
Aug. 23, 2007 - We have a new butterfly!
We're beginning our 2nd week doing paces and I still feel restless (for lack of a better term) about our curriculum this year, but I am having such a hard time letting go of the familiar curriculum path. I am seriously contemplating taking a break when we've completed the first round of paces (3 weeks total--so sometime in a week or two) and try doing our own unit....just to see how it goes and if we actually follow through. If it doesn't work out we can always come back to the paces, but I'll never know if we don't give it a try. That would give us 2 or 3 weeks to try a mini-unit before having to take a short break for Sarah & Elijah to have surgery to their tonsils removed.
Our dentist recommended all the kids see an orthodontist, and the ortho took one look in their mouths and said that S & E have huge tonsils, which affects their breathing patterns, which will affect any ortho treatment. So.......the tonsils & adnoids will be removed on Sept. 27th. They're not too excited about it, but at this point just want to get it over with.
On a more exciting note our last butterfly just emerged from the chrysalis this morning! We've all (even hubby & I) learned so much doing this little project. We have watched 4 butterflies emerge after transforming from egg, to caterpillar, to chrysalis, to butterfly. I truly think this project is what has given me a 'bad taste' for using paces. Actually doing/seeing the entire process in real life is so much more meaningful than reading about it in a workbook and answering questions. My next step is to print out the photos so we can make our own monarch butterfly life cycle book.
TTFN!
Apr. 25, 2007 - Weight Loss
OK---for years I've heard that following a low carb diet can result in weight loss, I've just never tried giving up the carbs to see if it was true. A local friend of mine has lost 40 pounds following the South Beach Diet, said the weight just falls off and she does not go hungry or have to weigh, measure, or count anything, so I began looking into the diet online, checked-out the book from the library and hubby and I decided to give it a try.
I've been fairly sure for quite awhile that I'm a 'carb-addict'. I only wanted to eat breads, pastas, starchy vegetables, sugar, etc. Following this diet has confirmed it for me. In the six weeks since I began I have lost 18 pounds with very little effort. The first 2 weeks were the hardest, having to give up practically all carbs and sugar, but it is the only way to totally get rid of the carb cravings. After those 2 weeks I was allowed to add in some fresh fruit and whole-grain bread and pastas. I'm still limiting myself to one serving of grain and one serving of fruit per day because I have quite a bit of weight I need to lose. I cannot believe how different I feel! I don't have to measure any food and I can basically eat any time I'm hungry.....I just have to make sure I eat low-carb. I keep low-fat cheeses, cut low-carb veggies, hard-boiled eggs, etc. on have to snack on betweek meals. I purchased some sugar-free chocolate candy at the Dollar Store and when I have to have chocolate I eat one. My appetite has decreased dramatically. I am just amazed!
I recently read Jeannie Fulbrights blog about The Only Way to Lose Weight (link under 'friends') and discovered that the diet she recommends is basically what I'm following on South Beach. She also recommends one day of 'cheating', ie..eating anything you want, in order to keep your metabolism from stalling. We've found Sunday is a great day to do this as we often eat out after church. By doing this we can still have our Mexican, Italian, attend the church social, or eat in Amish country (!), etc. and still lose weight!
Apr. 17, 2007 - Probably should update...
....but there's not really much to write about. We're winding down on our school year. Most of the kids have only 1 or 2 paces in each subject to finish, except Sarah, who was delayed slightly when she broke her right arm last September. She will be schooling for a few more weeks. Our annual portfolio evaluation is scheduled for May 19th, so we're going to try really hard to be finished by then. My plan is to take about 6 weeks off and then start back up again, going with a 3 week on, 1 week off schedule.
We're making another trip to the zoo this Friday and the kids are psyched up for that and counting down the days. Looking ahead to the following weekend my oldest daughter and I will be making a weekend trip to Ohio Amish country for our church's annual ladies retreat. We will spend most of Friday and Saturday afternoon traveling around to the shops and houses to tour. I really love visiting there, even though I don't usually buy much because the prices are so high.....but it's always fun to look!
Been poking around An Old-Fashioned Education's website the past few day (see side-bar for link). I am so impressed with the way Miss Maggie has the whole curriculum set up and how she has lesson plans for (almost) all grades levels. The remaining two will be finished this summer. I never knew there were so many free, out-of-copyright books online. There are others who take these out-of-copyright books, put them on CD, and sell them to unsuspecting homeschoolers, but Miss Maggie has such a giver's heart and has put everything online for free! I would like to start trying to implement some of the books into our school, mostly as read-alouds for the younger children for now.
Mar. 8, 2007 - Curriculum for Next Year
I've been buying some gap items for curriculum for next year and I think I've purchased about everything needed. I've finally reached a compromise in my dilemma with my love for Charlotte Mason education vs my need for more structure than following CM gives me. I'm going to use CM for the extras, but still use ACE to make sure the basics are covered. This will help me so that I can (1) work with Leah in what will probably be her final year of actually homeschooling. She plans to spend the 08-09 year preparing and taking CLEP tests and possibly attending some college classes while she remains in the ballet academy. She wants to pursue dance after high school and needs more academy instruction in order to have a chance for a dance scholarship. And, (2) I need to have time to work one on one with Jacob (K) who wants so badly to do school (particularly paces) like his older siblings.
Leah-11th grade
-
Write With The Best Vol. 1 & 2
-
ACE Old Testament Survey
-
LFBC Culture Wars/Current Events
-
LFBC Government/Economics
- LFBC Physical Science
-
LFBC Home Economics
-
Math U See Basic Algebra & Geometry
-
Total Language Plus Literature Guide
3 Younger students--as a group
- Bible Stories, Worksheets, Copywork
- Hymn Study (SCM/Ambleside Online)
- Composers Study (Ambleside Online)
- Literature & Poetry read-alouds from Tanglewood Education site
- Artists--co-op class
- Disecting--co-op class
Sarah-4th grade
- ACE English
- ACE Word Building
- ACE Literature & Creative Writing
- ACE Math
- ACE Science
- ACE Social Studies
- My State History Fun Book
- ACE Animal Science paces
- Typing
Elijah-2nd grade
- ACE English
- ACE Word Buliding
- ACE Math
- ACE Science
- ACE Social Studies
Jacob-PK
- ACE English & Math Reading Readiness Paces
- Hubbards Cupboard Joyful Heart Rhyming Times: Bible and Rhyme
- Hubbards Cupboard Calendar Binder ideas
Jan. 11, 2006 - ACE Curriculum
I received a comment from Crystal asking me to post about ACE School of Tomorrow curriculum, so here goes:
ACE curriculum has been a wonderful choice for our family's curriculum. My oldest daughter has used ACE off and on since her middle school grades, mostly for science and social studies, to fill in the gaps around unit studies that I either planned or purchased. This worked for us until my younger 3 children were born. I tried to continue doing unit studies, but more often than not, I spent most of my time on the computer researching info for units or searching the library database for the right books we needed to have for the units. All the while we were not getting our school work done. My daughter would complete her LLATL when I had time to help her and do some math from the Saxon textbook we were using at the time. That was about it. The units never seemed to come to completion. I also always seemed to feel the need to cram way more down my children's throats than what they needed to know at their age. I would expect them to learn and understand information I learned past high school. We all ended up frustrated many times. I also love the Charlotte Mason approach to learning, but we usually ended up doing very little school while following her ideals.
My daughter began having trouble with the spiral method of Saxon math. There was just not enough instruction for her to actually "get it". We were using the DIVE cds, too, but it was not clicking. Then I realized she could not even remember the basic grammar instruction that is very lightly taught in LLATL. She couldn't pick a noun from a verb in sentence. I began searching for something that would follow a mastery approach to learning and everything I researched and read kept pointing to ACE/SOT curriculum. I fought it for quite awhile, because I'd heard so much negative about ACE. My oldest son had been in an ACE Christian school for grades K-2 and he didn't like the curriculum either. For his high school I used an eclectic hodge-podge of different curriculums, mostly Alpha and Omega and SOS and we didn't like any of them. They were still teacher dependent and seemed to be somewhat scattered and vague in some of their questions/answers. I eventually found the ACE groups on yahoo and began reading favorable comments from other homeschool moms. I learned that ACE in a homeschool setting can be very different than ACE in a school setting. (Thank you, Mary!!) I decided to give ACE a try and had my daugher do the online diagnostic testing. We completed the gap paces and have moved on from there. This year she's doing 8th level and will move next year into the high school courses. She did want to go back to LLATL again this year. I think the grammar in ACE's English last year helped her tremendously, although it was way more intense than she was used to doing. If we had used ACE's English from the beginning I think it would have been easier. I plan to have her continue with ACE in all subjects except English to the end of high school. We will do English and creative writing courses from other sources. I also plan to add in literature that coordinates with the social studies she will be studying, as I want her to read more literature than ACE provides. I will add courses from other curriculums that ACE does not have: Home Ec, PE, and Driver's Ed.
My youngest daughter is doing all 2nd level paces this year and loves it. She gets her school work completed by noon each day and has the rest of the day to read, dance, etc. I was doing LLATL blue (1st grade) with her and she was struggling with the way it slowly teaches reading, so last year we used ABCs with ACE to learn the sounds she had not yet learned and then jumped right into the 1st grade paces. Her reading has improved greatly and I'm very happy with her progress.
I'm using ABCs with my kindergarten son this year, working slowly through the program. We have 8 more letters to learn then we'll begin working in the remaining first grade paces.
I feel that ACE has let me be mom again. For the first time in several years I can keep up with the household chores and school still gets done. My husband took a new job 3 months ago and works a swing shift schedule. He has a 7 day break every four weeks....and school still gets done during his break!!! I love that I can be as involved or uninvolved as life dictates. Lesson plans are as easy as writing down what pages the kids are to do on the goal cards. I've recently began letting them do their own goal setting, so I don't even have to do that anymore!! My oldest daughter does her lesson plans and most of her work on her own, and I supervise her scoring and grade her self-tests and tests. If she has a question about anything she will come to me and we'll work through it together. I do listen to my youngest daughter read all the stories, we discuss, and then I check all her work. Of course, with the kindergartener I do the teaching, but since we spread it out over at least 2 days we finish in 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
I plan to use ACE from here on out in our school. I sometimes add read alouds for my younger children, but I don't schedule anything particular. If we find an interesting book, we read it. We have several books in our home library that we have read or plan to read. I feel the curriculum has enough in itself to teach what they need to know, but we do like to read together. If we want to add a unit study, we can, although up to this point I've not felt the need to do so.
Aug. 24, 2005 - My Latest Favorite Song
| Artist: | Chris Rice |
| Title: | Untitled Hymn (Come To Jesus) |
| Album: | Run The Earth, Watch The Sky |
Weak and wounded sinner
Lost and left to die
O, raise your head, for love is passing by
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus and live!
Now your burden's lifted
And carried far away
And precious blood has washed away the stain, so
Sing to Jesus
Sing to Jesus
Sing to Jesus and live!
And like a newborn baby
Don't be afraid to crawl
And remember when you walk
Sometimes we fall...so
Fall on Jesus
Fall on Jesus
Fall on Jesus and live!
Sometimes the way is lonely
And steep and filled with pain
So if your sky is dark and pours the rain, then
Cry to Jesus
Cry to Jesus
Cry to Jesus and live!
O, and when the love spills over
And music fills the night
And when you can't contain your joy inside, then
Dance for Jesus
Dance for Jesus
Dance for Jesus and live!
And with your final heartbeat
Kiss the world goodbye
Then go in peace, and laugh on Glory's side, and
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus and live!
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