Acknowledging Him - Homeschool Blogger

August Cuddling

Wed, 4 Nov 2009 11:16:00 -0600

As I was uploading pictures I realized that we've been quite busy the past couple of months. So without further ado, here is a quick pictorial rundown of the month of August.

As you may remember, Christy came to help out shortly after Joel was born, so here's a picture of all our cutie-patootie kids, minus Joel:

And we spent some time cuddling the baby

Then someone turned seven years old

And my Mom was here to cuddle the baby

And we did some baking (I think this was oatmeal cookies?)

Then we cuddled the baby
Then another friend came to visit, and we spent the time musing about what life would be like with children who looked like us, but in the end we decided not to trade after all

And we ended the month by - cuddling the baby

Next time, we'll have September's pics - where we cuddled the baby in exotic locals

Signs of Autumn

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:57:00 -0500

This is my favorite time of year! Fall means:

Pumpkin spice lattes

Angels in the postseason - go Halos!

my butter and coconut oil are solid again
flannel sheets and quilts on the beds
apples! apple crisp, apple cider, apple pie, cake, and bread, apple sauce...

dinner in the dark, and breakfast would be too, if I were a morning person
and finally, my fave sign of cooler weather: boots!

Stay tuned, Mari: I just uploaded a bunch of pics, so I will have to post again soon :)

The Obligatory School Post

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:12:00 -0500

Well, maybe I'm not really obligated to post about what we're doing this year, but I enjoy this sort of thing, and I know some of you do too, so here 'tis.

This year, Arianna will be doing mostly second grade work, and Zeke and Noelle will be going through a somewhat abbreviated Sonlight P4/5 course (and No, I did not pay that much; I'm just linking in case anyone is interested in seeing what it includes). Abbreviated because for various reasons I do not own some of the books, nor do I have plans to get them. Improvised might be a better word. Anyhow, I'll talk more about the specifics as we got to them. Here's the breakdown by subject.

Bible
Because I didn't want to buy Sonlight's suggested Bible story book, we will be reading through ours again. We will however be memorizing the verses suggested in the lesson plan, because every now and then, I DO like to be told what to do (mostly when it makes my life easier). Arianna will be reading corresponding passages in her Bible.

Phonics & Language Arts
Noelle and Ezekiel are both working in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Noelle is much farther along). This year Arianna has started Level 1 of Sequential Spelling. I really like the way this program teaches spelling, but it is a little teacher intensive, so I hope I'm able to stick with it! She is also about halfway through reading the books on this list. She reads aloud for now, but when she moves on to the next list, she will be reading silently, and I will only require narrrations to gauge her understanding. I'll list the books here for those interested, but not link individually; for quick information on a specific book, click the previous link :)
Keep the Lights Burning Abbie, The Long Way to a New Land, The Long Way Westward, At Home in a New Land, The Chalk Box Kid, The Paint Brush Kid, Prairie School, Clara and the Book Wagon, Riding the Pony Express, The Secret Valley, Third Grade Detectives #1, Cora Frear, THe House on Walenska Street, The Littles, Viking Adventure, The Last Little Cat, Tippy Lemmy, Tornado.

Handwritting
For both girls this year will just be copy work. I use StartWrite to create copywork sheets using our memory verses, vocabulary words, poems that strike my fancy, and so far it's working alright. Ezekiel does not do handwriting yet.

Math
Both girls are still going through their Horizons math books from last year; Arianna nearly finished with the second book, and Noelle almost through the first kindergarten book. I still really like this program, though I think that Arianna is going to need a bit more practice with memorizing her basic math facts before we move on to second grade.

Ezekiel has just begun this Developing the Early Learner workbook. He has been begging to "do math" like the girls for at least half a year, and while these are not specifically math related, he loves them. I'm happy with them too, and it's so cute to hear him asking for more when I tell him we are done!

Literature
This year we are reading three books from Ambleside Online's Year 3 curriculum:
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
The Children of the New Forest by Frederick Marryat
as well as 6 Tales from Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice, Pericles, The Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, Much Ado About Nothing, and Hamlet.
And we have an (almost) daily poetry reading from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

Literature selections for the littles will include: The Real Mother Goose,
Stories From Around the World, The Children's Book of Virtues, (we have the treasury) The Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit, The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook (LOVE her), The Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit (if by complete you mean 4 stories out of the 23 she wrote. ANYway...) and Eric Carle's Animals, Animals.

History and Geography
All of my students learn history together. This year we are studying the 1800's and focusing on US geography as the colonists become pioneers and start heading west. You can read more about it and see our current book list in my last post. We have a nifty timeline with images from here, and will do lots of map work, for which I wish I had THESE or even THIS.

I have just recently decided (like, as I'm typing this, LOL) to add Minn of the Mississippi and Tree in the Trail to our history and geography studies - fun stuff!

Social Studies
This is mainly a subject for my preschooler to have a little fun with, as well as a catch-all category for things I want to remember to teach the kids like How to Tie Shoes, What To Do In Case of Fire, and how to sing Kumbaya. Some of the books we'll be reading in this category are: A Child's book of Art, Then and Now, Things People Do, The Berenstain Bears' Big Book of Science and Nature, The Year at Maple Hill Farm, and First Thousand Words in Spanish.

Science
Another subject we all enjoy together. This year we'll be studying plants in Jeannie Fulbright's Exploring Creation with Botany. So far we've collected samples of both vascular plants and moss right in our own front yard, and made notebook pages recording our finds - fun stuff!

Art & Music Study
I haven't actually planned the whole year yet, but for this term we will be studying the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh (which the more I see, the more I appreciate) and the compositions of Franz Liszt. Also on the docket are some folk songs like O Susana!, Follow the Drinking Gourd, and The Erie Canal.

Phew! I think that's it. Seem like it took me about 10 times as long to type it all up as it will take anyone to read it, putting in all those links. Not to mention the 3 times I accidently navigated away from the page and had to start all over again...The only thing I didn't mention were our read-alouds, which are our bedtime stories around here, and not really part of 'school.' But since some of you booklist junkies might be interested in that, I will try to get it up tomorrow, m'kay?

Napoleon's World

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:18:00 -0500

As always, I am excited about what we'll be learning in history. This year we will be covering the 19th century; the next few (ok, 10-12) weeks will cover the U.S. Presidents from John Adams to John Quincey Adams, Napoleon, the industrial revolution, Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, the War of 1812, and Simon Bolivar. We'll be using the books listed below, but I reserve the right to add others ;)

Actually, I will be adding others, since I just remembered that I have not gotten my books on Monroe or John Quincy from the library yet!

Operation Clip Chicken Wings

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Ok, I will share these pics here because I had trouble uploading them to facebook, which, by the way, is my new favorite place to be on the web, much easier to navigate than this dinosaur blog. So if you are not there yet, you are daily missing out on my wit and photos of the kids. In the meantime, here are some pictures of today's project: clipping the chickens wings in an effort to keep them better contained (please note: no chickens or children were harmed during this operation).

Noelle is an excellent chicken wrangler.

So is Zeke.

Adam contained while Arianna clipped.

And now our yard is full of feathers.

And while I'm hear, I guess I will say that soon and very soon I am going to post about our school year. I know you're all dying to know what we're doing this year right? I'm working on it, I really am. I even have one of those booklists that make some of us drool all ready to be posted here, so check back soon.

A True Friend

Fri, 7 Aug 2009 21:40:00 -0500

A True friend...

* will drive 17 hours, with her kids in tow, to your house, braving such perils as an over heating van, flirting truckers, and fast food. Uphill. In the snow. Both ways...
* can exchange A Look with you in public - and no other explanation is needed.
* takes the time to teach you to train your children properly.
* washes your dirty diapers, without needing to be told that it needs to be done.
* will spend 15 minutes admiring LED nightlights with you at Wal-mart, and understand when all you end up buying is bulbs.
* fry up lots of potatoes, and understand the importance of cooking with lots of butter.
* thinks thrift store shopping is the epitome of cool.
* will worship your new baby almost as much as you do
* recognizes all your movie quotes
* does not complain when the air mattress she's sleeping on deflates every night
AND
* will stay an extra day and wash half a dozen loads of laundry in an effort to rid your house of fleas.

I will never be able to thank you enough Christy! But maybe you'd take a cat scanner?

Welcome Baby Joel!

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:12:00 -0500

We Welcomed Baby Joel into our family on Saturday afternoon. Here's his story:

Well, Friday night I felt Joel finally move into the right position, and I thought ‘good! That ought to help labor get along quickly!” Saturday morning I got out of bed at 8:30 and started feeling contractions around 9:00. Right away, they felt hard and serious, and were coming pretty frequently, so I knew it was the real deal. We had planned to go garage sale-ing that morning, there were a few in our neighborhood and I thought of walking around to them might help, but I was already progressing too far to be able to get ready in a timely fashion, or care too much once it was getting too late. We left the house at 11 am, dropped a book off at the library, and picked up our friend who agreed to come with us and watch the kids at the birthing center. By then, it was pretty obvious that we needed to get there FAST, so Adam had a fun (harrowing?) time speeding along the freeway to get there. A few minutes before we arrived, I felt some fluids leaking out, and was really worried then, because for me that usually means baby is imminent. But he held out, and Adam helped me out of the car and into the center. When the midwife checked me she said my water hadn’t completely broken and that I was dilated 9 cm. I wanted to get in the tub, but the next contraction came and my water broke in one big gush. I tried to get up again, but the next contraction let me know that it was time to push! After two back to back pushes his head was free; I paused, pushed his shoulders through, and felt instantly relieved when the rest of him slid out too (isn’t that the best feeling in the world?) We had gotten to the birthing center at 12:30 and he was born at 12:37! He weighed 8 lbs and 1 oz and was 21 inches long, and we named him Joel Titus. He has lots of dark hair, just like all the rest of my kids (yes, even the ones that are now blond!) and is just perfect. Thanks for all your prayers!

38 weeks

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:57:00 -0500

For those of you that are into this sort of thing....

What's New

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 20:34:00 -0500

Wow! I didn't realize it had been so long since I blogged! I think I have been too busy sharing on Facebook. Yes, I finally succumbed, and if you haven't already, you can find me there too, where I will share even MORE mundane details of our lives, LOL. For now, I am tired of sharing Germany photos, instead here is what happened today: DH brought 10 chicks home in the back of his car, but I'm not upset ;)

These are Buff Orpingtons. They are a little over a week old. They are supposed to friendly and hardy.

They are for eggs, not eating. Unless they stop laying. Or end up being male. Or make Adam mad...

Chicks are WAY better than a kitten, because there are enough to go around.

Yes, I think we will keep them.

And this picture's just because. And no, I did NOT tell him to do that :)

A New Member of our Family

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:29:00 -0500

When you saw the title, didja think the baby had come? Didja? No, he still has 6 weeks till he is due, but we did add another new little guy to our family this weekend:

Isn't he cute? We went out garage saleing on Saturday morning, and found nada until I saw a sign at one house that said "free kittens." Well, I had to at least look, and he was so cute and sweet that there was no turning back after that. His "birth family" was calling him Candy Cane (see the stripes?) but we have named him Milo. He is very good with the kids, and they are thrilled with him, especially Ezekiel and Emily. Here are a few more pictures to make you go "Awww..." I wish I had one with Emily, but when she is holding him, I mostly have to be right. there. to make sure she isn't holding him a little too tightly

I think he is going to fit in right well with our family