At Home With Jesus! - Homeschool Blogger

Little ballerinas

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:26:00 -0600

This was a very exciting week for Katie-Noel and Annabelle.

It was "parent observation week" at ballet class!
At the end of their class, the parents were called into the classroom to see all that the girls have learned up until this point. They even put on a 'mini-recital.' It was SO cute!

Of course...this would have to be the week that we forgot their shoes....

I love my ballerina girls!

How's violin going?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:40:00 -0600

Sometimes a picture says it all.....

FIAR - Cranberry Thanksgiving

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:57:00 -0600

We thought we would take a break this week from our regular (CLE) reading curriculum to enjoy a week of 'rowing.' In honor of next week's holiday - we are rowing Cranberry Thanksgiving, by Wende and Harry Devlin.

This is a book that I have always wanted to row, for purely 'selfish' reasons.
(It is by the same authors as one of my all time favorite childhood books - one that I still have tucked away in my own box of 'special memories' from my childhood....) ;-)

But ...for this week...back to Cranberry Thanksgiving...
As usual, we found many wonderful resources at Homeschool Share

We learned all about cranberries -

And did you know that our home state of Wisconsin is the #1 producer of cranberries in the US?!
We found lots of great information - ( including a fun kids activity book!) - here at the website of The Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association.
We even had cranberries with our dinner one night this week - (2 out of 4 kids loved them!)

The rest of this week we have been learning about Thanksgiving,
and the history and traditions associated with it.

We made up a menu and guest list for a feast of our own
And discussed the true meaning of the holiday

We wrote 'Thank You notes'....to God

And we learned a traditional Thanksgiving hymn

I, personally, am very thankful for the opportunity to spend this time with my kids -
reading fun books, and making special memories. I am blessed.

A 'failed' crochet project

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:47:00 -0600

I have this book on loan from the library, but I am going to have to buy this one - because I am in LOVE with the patterns in it.

It is called "Get You Crochet On" - Hip Hats and Cool Caps

It is full of 'fun and funky' hat patterns :
reggae caps, hip-hop caps, visors, caps with ear-flaps,
and my favorite - a very pretty, lacy, turban-styled head wrap.
I just think they are all so fun!

But I thought I'd start with something easy just to get 'warmed up'...so I made the bun cover.

I like to wear my hair up in a bun quite often, so I thought this would be something cute.

But...um....it it obviously for women with very thick hair,
(which I do NOT have,) because it is huge.

I don't think I could ever have enough hair to fill it.

Not to worry though....Julie has promised to put it to good use....

Skeletons and Crabs

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:41:00 -0600

Julie's 'body model' for the week was a little too big to put in her notebook - so this one got hung up.

In addition to the body models, we are adding something new to our science activities:

Awhile ago at Heart of the Matter Online (which, by the way... if you haven't checked out... you really must! It is such a wonderful newsletter - full of encouraging devotions, articles and resources for homeschoolers!)

Anyways...over at "HOTM" they had a link for this wonderful lapbook

Since it fits in so well with our science from MFW , we have decided to use it.
(We are substituting it for many of the 'notebooking pages' - because it was repetitive, and to do both would have taken too much time.) ;-)

I'm not sure how long the download was available for (?) - but if you are interested,
this was the original link to the lapbook.

In other news....we have some new pets in our house.

Julie was given a gift card to a pet store for her birthday. She had been wanting a 'small pet' for awhile - she just couldn't make up her mind what. ( Beta fish, little frog, etc.)
What she really wanted was a hermit crab, but Paul and I were unsure .
Julie bought a book on crabs, and read up on their care and feeding....
Paul and I were still unsure.

But then on Friday, Paul calls me and says
"You aren't going to believe what I found at Goodwill today."
And when he came home - he walked in the door with a 10 gallon 'aquarium' full of ....crab supplies.

So this weekend Julie was finally able to go get her new pets:
Shell-y

and Caesar (who is in the red shell - hiding in the dirt)

More birthday fun

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:32:00 -0600

We Took Annie swimming at the YMCA for the afternoon.

After that, there were
Presents,

Dinner at Texas Road House -
(and a ride on ..."the birthday saddle") .... Yee Haw!

And cake! (store-bought...because mommy was just too tired this week )

Thank you to all of our friends and relatives that send gifts. she appreciated every one of them!

Annie, of course wanted to go to Toys R Us right away to spend her gift cards.
But... Do you KNOW what Toys R Us is like at this time of year?!?!
(Obviously I had forgotten!) Wow!
I think we're doing our Christmas shopping online this year!

Happy Birthday Annabelle

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:49:00 -0600

Five is .....

a hand full of fingers,
the start of kindergarten,
the point you become a 'big kid'....

So how on earth is it possible...that my BABY is FIVE?!!!
The years just slipped away , right in front of my eyes...sort-of like this

Happy Birthday to our dear, sweet Annabelle.
Our princess, our drama queen, our little adventurer....
You make us laugh, (and sometimes cry.....)
But mostly you make us eternally grateful
that God chose to bless our family,
by sending you... to us.

(*I'm hugging Annabelle a little bit tighter this year, after reading about dear little Christian Drews...
who was exactly one day older than Annabelle.
Christian's mother, Marsha, wrote an especially touching post about him today.
My prayers go our to his entire family.)

School Review

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:47:00 -0600

We've been working hard in school the past couple weeks, and we've made a few 'transitions' in MFW. I think things are looking up.

First of all, we have finally turned the corner from "B.C." to "A.D."
The kids made notebooking pages with short summaries of Jesus' time here on earth.

I was rather disappointed that we didn't cover it a bit more
...but I realize that this year in MFW is more about the establishing of 'the Church.'

We also finished Augustus Caesar's World! I have such a mixed review of this book.
I really liked that it gave a lot of the background about the 'setting' in history into which Christ was born.   Why were the Jews looking for a Messiah, who was Herod, and why had he been made ruler of that region?   (It also gave us a LOT of insight about the festival of Saturnalia ...and where a lot of our "Christmas' traditions come from. I gotta be honest.... I've always LOVED Christmas, but after reading that...I'm a bit uncomfortable with some of the aspects of it now!)

As informative as it was...I am also quite glad to be done with the book.
There was so much talk of paganism/false gods, and it just got to be heavy and depressing to me after awhile.   Also - I must admit that while the book gave the historical reasons why a Messiah was needed - that author 'missed the point,' biblically, in many instances - and I ended up re-wording a lot of the materials so that my kids wouldn't hear false doctrine.

So now we have moved on.
This week we began Galen and the Gateway to Medicine.
The kids really enjoyed the first couple of chapters...and I'll admit I did, too.
We also began a new read-aloud - Twice Freed by Patricia St John. The book is a work of historical fiction, based on the Book of Philemon.
Julie really likes it so far, but Joseph can sense the 'romance' aspect of it...and, as a 9 yr old boy, I don't think he's quite thrilled with that -
Hopefully, that aspect won't be too heavy that it over-shaddow the 'message' of the book.

In science this week Julie is learning about the skeletal system of the body. we haven't made this weeks model yet - so I'll share her models from the past couple of weeks -

the skin:

and the eye:

For music, we begin our study of Mozart this week.
Unfortunately, as we did not buy the MFW 'deluxe package', and our library does not have the Mozart CD's we needed - we are sort of doing our own thing.
(It's okay though...I actually prefer it in this case) ;-)

We enjoyed the Opal Wheeler biography of Haydn so much, that we decided to read the Mozart one as well.

We are also doing our own unit study on instruments/sections of the orchestra
last week we studied the strings
This week I think we'll learn the brass family of instruments, as well as a bit of theory....

I also bought this wonderful book

It's sort of a more grownup version of the "Hymns for a Kids Heart" book that we loved so much a few years ago.   We won't be reading all of the stories in it, but I thought for sure we would focus on the Christmas ones during this upcoming season.
But since it's November, I thought this one would be a great place to start

As for art - I have to admit - we've just sort of been doing 'crafty' things on our own.
Julie has been working on a latch hook kit, and beading;
Joseph has been drawing 3-D pictures, and working on a picture of the Roman Colosseum;
and the little girls have been having lots of fun sponge painting.

(I also wanted to mention that Katie took her first Light Unit test for the CLE Learning to Read program....she got 100%)

It's been a productive week.

Polly put the kettle on....

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 20:18:00 -0600

Probably not what they had in mind with those lyrics, huh?
(and... as you can plainly see... these Pollys prefer Suisse Mocha to tea)

Apparently it's time to round up my girls to pick up their toys.....

We Are Thankful

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 06:49:00 -0600

As is the custom for many at this time of the year,
we are reflecting on God's bountiful blessings to our family.

In years past we have done a 'tree of thanks',
it's a project that we have enjoyed, but this year we are doing something just a bit different....
an 'advent calendar' for Thanksgiving.

First, we made our own envelopes (one for each day of November,)

and then we searched online for cute images and clip-art to decorate them.

Inside the envelopes are small slips of paper that say, "I am thankful for...."
Each day we will each write down one thing that we are especially thankful for, and then place it in the pocket for the day.

At the end of the month,(or perhaps at our Thanksgiving celebration,)
we will all read our slips and share with one another just how richly we have been blessed.

Now, our God, we give you thanks,
and praise your glorious name.
1 Chronicles 29:13