Nov. 30, 2009 - Trigger Memory Super Cyber Monday Sale!
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Nov. 27, 2009 - Thank God For Dirty Dishes
Thank God For Dirty Dishes
Thank God for dirty dishes; They have a tale to tell.
While others may go hungry, We're eating very well.
With home, health, and happiness,
I shouldn't want to fuss;
By the stack of evidence, God's been very good to us.
Author Unknown
My mom reminded me of this poem yesterday when I was less than enthusiastic about cleaning up the kitchen after Thanksgiving dinner. My paternal Grandmother has this hanging in her kitchen when I was a child. I think I will type it up and frame it for my kitchen too!Happy Homeschooling,
Jamin
Nov. 26, 2009 - Today I Am Thankful For...
This month I decided to write down one thing each day that I am thankful for. It has been an interesting experience. What I have learned is that the "things" I am most thankful for are not "things" at all. They are mostly people, relationships and blessings. Here is the bulk of my list. Some are more private things that I didn't want to share with the whole world. :^)
Today I am thankful for my family. What a wonderful husband and children I have been blessed with.
Today I am thankful for my dog Elvis. He is so loving and devoted to me. A consistent reminder of how I want to love God and others.
Today I am thankful for freedom. God bless all the veterans past and present who have sacrificed to give us freedom. God bless America!
Today I am thankful for our church home. Wow, what an awesome church home God has blessed us with! A place where we can serve, as well as be served. A place for friendship, encouragement and deep commitment to spreading God's Word.
Today I am thankful for homeschooling. What a blessing homeschooling has been to our family! I know that the time and energy I have invested in my kids will pay back dividends their entire lives!
Today I am thankful for all my homeschool mom friends. Each of you have encouraged, supported and loved me on my homeschool journey. You are each a blessing to me!
Today I am thankful for my husbands job. He enjoys the work and the people he works with. The kids and I enjoy that he has nights and weekends off. (Something we missed A LOT the 6 years at his last job.) It's a winning combination for a happy home!
Today I am thankful for AWANA. Our family has been involved in AWANA for 13 years, in 3 States at 7 churches. Each and every one has been a place that has brought us closer to God. Over the years we have hid His Word in our hearts, made friends and found a place to serve others through AWANA. What a blessing!
Today I am thankful for my new house! It's been 6 weeks since we got the keys and 4 weeks since we spent our first night here and it totally feels like home. :^)
Today I am thankful for my job at The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. I get paid to write, which is a dream come true for me. I get to write about homeschooling, which I love. I get to work my own hours, from home, with my kids underfoot. It's a win-win!
Today I am thankful for our new homeschool parent support ministry at church. My friend and I started it this year. I have been so blessed to get to know and grow with so many great homeschool parents. I am especially thankful for my friend who is my ministry partner in both Awana and the new homeschool group. She is an amazing blessing to me!
Today I am thankful for our friends M, A, I and C. It has been so great having "old" friends in a new place! Getting to be close to our "nephews" has been wonderful! I am so glad to have adopted family close by. :^)
Today I am thankful that my mom taught me to sew when I was young. I love to sew. Sewing relaxes me. Being able to save money making or fixing things instead of buying new has been a great blessing to our family over the years. :^)
Today I am Thankful that my mom arrives this afternoon to spend Thanksgiving week with us. I have some excited kids on my hands!
Today I am thankful for my parents and my sister. :^)
Today I am thankful for my "PAMily". You know who you are! ;^)
Today I am thankful for my blog. It is a blessing to me as a creative outlet as well as a place to connect with other homeschoolers all over the world.
Today I am thankful for my American Girls! (And their mom's.) American Girl Club has been such a blessing to me. I look forward to learning American history with my girls for a long time to come!
Today I am thankful for John 3:16! "For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only son that whoever believes in Him will no perish but have ever lasting life." The ultimate free gift!
I pray that each and every one of you have an equally wonderful list of blessings!
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Jamin
Nov. 27, 2009 - Preparing For Advent ...
Last year we started a new family tradition for Advent. We count down the days to Christmas by unwrapping one of our Christmas books and reading it for bedtime. We also do a small activity or something small that is related to the book. This year's line up is as follows.
- The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey - Put up our Nativity.
- An Ellis Island Christmas - Bring one favorite stuffed animal/doll to storytime.
- Christmas Tapestry - Look at and do some repair of my childhood quilt with kids.
- Grandfather's Christmas Camp - We will have hot chocolate with crackers.
- The Crippled Lamb - We will talk about what makes each of us special and unique.
- Christmas in the Trenches - Listen to songs by John McCutcheon.
- Too Many Tamales - Eat Mexican food, maybe some Tamales?
- The Animals' Christmas Carol - Put out some birdseed treats for wild animals.
- The Biggest Snowman Ever - Make snowmen out of marshmallows and eat them.
- One Winter's Night - Attend the live performance of Return to Bethlehem at a local church.
- The Chanakkah Guest - Have a Jewish meal and play a Jewish game.
- Gingerbread Baby - Have gluten-free gingerbread while Daddy reads.
- Jingle the Christmas Clown - Make star cookies for the neighbors.
- The Christmas Day Kitten - Wrap up cat treats for Grandma's cat.
- The Dog Who Found Christmas - Wrap up dog treats for our dog.
- The Legend of the Poinsettia - Make Poinsettia ornament.
- All Is Well - Collect a box of give-away for Goodwill.
- Woodland Christmas - Sing the 12 days of Christmas.
- The Steadfast Tin Soldier - Eat biscuits with a small toy baked into them.
- Merry Christmas Strega Nona - Have late night pizza.
- Silver Packages - Wrap sibling gifts.
- Drummer Boy - Play music together.
- The Christmas Candle - Read the story by candle light.
- The Christmas Story - Go to church.
We place the advent books under the tree. The kids will have fun taking them out each day and then doing the little activity.
Blessings,
Dawn
Nov. 23, 2009 - Pumpkin Dump Cake
One of my friends made this for our Pumpkin Party earlier in the month. It was SO yummy I had to get her recipe. I am hoping to make this today to share with my mom who arrived yesterday to spend Thanksgiving week with us. :^)
Pumpkin Dump Cake
1 can pumpkin (29 oz.)
1 C sugar
1 can evaporated milk (12 oz.)
3 eggs
1 box yellow cake mix
4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 C melted butter
1 C chopped pecans
Combine pumpkin, sugar, evap. milk, eggs, spices, and salt in mixing bowl. Beat well. Pour into greased and floured 9x13 glass pan. Sprinkle cake mix evenly over mixture. Sprinkle the pecans over the cake mix. Pour melted butter over all. Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes. Watch closely, burns easily. (Knife inserted in the middle of cake should come out clean when done.)
If you are looking for a new yummy Thanksgiving recipe you might want to give this one a try!
Happy Homeschooling,
Jamin
Nov. 21, 2009 - DONE!!!!!
The room is done! There is even some furniture moved in already. It came out great, a little bit smaller than we had hoped for, but GREAT none the less... The whole experience was great! The contractor was super GREAT! The workers were great! The project came in $600 under the proposal so we had some additional work done. Our contractor went out of his way to get us deals. He went two counties away to get us bamboo floors that were sitting in a barn ~ the leftovers of a business that had gone under. We got them for $1 a linear foot ... they retailed for over $5 a linear foot. They are perfect!! He also looked our house over and found a few things that were in desperate need of repair and fixed them for almost no cost. Let's put it this way. Part of our home had to be jacked up because of a failing support beam. He did the job for $76 ~ the cost of the beam and a little extra to pay for his helper. The mess was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be .... So, you all want me to stop carrying on about how great it was and let you see the results for yourselves!?!?
Yay! Well, this is all you are getting right now. The big reveal will be just after Christmas. This year we are giving no toys (except stocking stuffers) so that we can decorate the children's bedrooms. I'll show you all the rooms once we have curtains up and such.
In the meantime we will be painting the rest of this room. We decided to paint the floor insted of refinishing the wood becuase it is so costly if you have a professional do it. My dh has refinished two floors in our home, but it was a really grueling project, and they have not held up as well as we would have expected. So for now we will paint this floor instead. We will need to do all of the trim work and no furniture can go on it for a week.
That is all for now!
Blessings,
Dawn
Nov. 17, 2009 - A Reading Party for Goldilocks
What an amazing day we had today! Goldilocks has been struggling to learn to read for 2 years now. Most of the time, it seemed like we were spinning our wheels and making no progress. We have switched reading programs five times and tried all kinds of different games with very little improvement. Then today happened ... Goldilocks sat down for her lesson as usual and said she wanted her reading party today. I said that she had to finish the entire Storybook Treasury of Dick and Jane (1st grade) to have her reading party. She said she was going to finish that book today and have her party. Mind you, she had only previously read the first page of the 193 page book when she sat down with me this morning!!! Over the next 2 1/2 hours she read the entire book!!!! All 193 pages!!! I would have never believed it was possible!!! This is the child who can take 40 minutes to write 3 sentences in her copywork book and has spent the better part of the year screaming, hiding and crying about reading 3 pages in a Bob Book. I switched her to Dick and Jane about a week ago. She seemed to like it more than other programs. Then I decided to start giving her hard boiled eggs and Kiwi each day (brain food) which is supposed to help with ADHD symptoms and improve a person's IQ. I can't say what happened differently today but AMEN!
This picture was taken when Goldilocks was on the last few pages. Kids were piled up everywhere to see her make it to being a READER!
Reading the last page!
Goldilocks with her book and certificate ....
Goldilocks had a confetti cake with strawberry frosting and a black sugar bunny in the corner!
Blessings,
Dawn
Nov. 16, 2009 - Charity ...
When I sit down and think in the quiet hours of the evening about what I want for my children, one of the things that always comes up is charity. I want my children to have charitable hearts for those less fortunate. I want them to be an active force in their communities when they are grown and to think of others and what they can do to serve them. The best way to train our children in this is to have them serve in their community now and see us serve in our community as well. Our children are so blessed. They have so much while others go without. In light of our children all getting separate rooms in a few weeks, it weighs on my mind all the more how important it is that they know how privileged they are and learn early to care for others.
So, I want to reaffirm how we teach our children to be charitable. In the past, we have done charity here and there and then heavily at Christmas time. There seems to be so many opportunities at Christmas time that it is very easy. However, how are we as parents showing our children that charity is one of our core values, if it is not at the forefront of our teachings? To me, when I turn them out into the world in just a few short years, my children's character is more important than their academic abilities. So we are going to put charity at the forefront of our teachings in the next year. Whether it be at home (with sibs) or out and about, it will be one of our driving themes.
To get this new idea started, we are going to pick a charity to focus on each month. For the month of November, we will be raising money for polar bears. This was easy to decide upon because we are studying the Arctic this month. The kids are very interested in polar bears and were sad to see how hard their lives have become due to the change in climate. (We watched the Disney movie, Earth, for our Sunday night movie night yesterday.) I was able to find a charity where we could make a tiny impact for $25. To make this come to life for the kids (instead of Mom writing a check), we are going to earn the money by cutting back in different ways at home.
- One night this week we will only eat rice for dinner. This will save us about $4.75 from the amount of an average dinner.
- The kids are going to put any change in the jar they find on the ground. I have one child who finds a penny or two almost every time we leave the house!
- We will skip the Blockbuster Sunday night movie and make do with the library to find our Sunday night movie. (We often do this anyway.)
Well, that will be a good start. The kids are excited (except Tom Sawyer about eating only rice for dinner -- ne never forgets to thank God for food during his evening prayers LOL). If you all have any great ideas of charities, leave them for me in comments. Just as we did last year, we will be doing a charity each week from Thanksgiving through the New year. I still am plotting those charities out.
Blessings,
Dawn
Nov. 16, 2009 - First Thanksgiving Dinner Celebration!
Our First Thanksgiving Dinner was Friday and it was AWESOME! We had 40 kids from 18 families attend for a total of 60 people in attendance. (Just a few more than the 53 Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving!)
Here is the day in pictures...
Here I am with my 2 youngest. (Oh, come on you knew you would see me dressed like a Pilgrim at some point! LOL My costume was just a black shirt and skirt I had in my closet. Then I wore one of the hats I had made and added a collar and apron made from white felt. Super simple!)
Here are some of the Indians and Pilgrims arrving.
My handsome Indian teenager!
His shirt is a white t-shirt we tea stained and then fringed the edges with scissors. It was super easy! (I boiled about a gallon of water and then seeped 7 tea bags until it was pretty dark. Then I removed the tea bags and soaked the shirt for about 30 minutes. Then I put the t-shirt through the spin cycle of the washer and ran it through the dryer. Once it was dry we fringed the edges with scissors. You could add beads too.)
After everyone arrived and got their hats on I spent a few minutes talking to the kids about the first Thanksgiving. Here are some of the kids listening to me talk.
I asked them lots of questions too so they all got to tell what they know about the first thanksgiving.
Then we had a story.
The First Thanksgiving By: Linda Hayward
Here is my daughter reciting a poem she memorized as the blessing for the food.
The First Thanksgiving
When the Pilgrims
first gathered together to share
with their Indian friends
in the mild autumn air,
they lifted the voices
in jubilant praise
for the bread on the table,
the berries and maize,
for field and for forest,
for turkey and deer,
for the bountiful crops
they were blessed with that year.
They were thankful for these
as they feasted away,
and as they were thankful
we're thankful today.
Author Unknown
She did an AWESOME job. I was so proud of her!
The FOOD!
We had turkey, fish, deer stew, fruit, nuts, cheese, corn chowder, potatoes, cranberry salad, apple sauce, and a lot more! Yummy!!!!
Pilgrims and Indians eating together.
Lots of yummy food!
We also played games. Here are a few of the pilgrim girls heading out to play games.
And my WILD Indian boy!
3 Legged Races!
Corn Toss
The Turkey Shoot!
There was also a corn hunt (Similar to a egg hunt except dry corn was thrown in the grass and everyone hunted for it.) and pumpkin races where the kids pushed a pumpkin with a stick, The games were great!
And lastly we made our craft (Which the kids LOVED and I didn't get any pictures of.) and then played Thanksgiving Jingo!
It was an awesome day. I can't wait to do it again next year!
Happy Homeschooling,
Jamin
Click HERE to read my post on planning out this party. :^)
Nov. 13, 2009 - A Glimpse of Our Week ...
Wow! This week has flown by. With all of the distractions the house is presenting right now, plus a flood in the basement and dear Goldilocks having a major meltdown and needing to leave home for a two day respite with her one-on-one therapeutic worker, the week had its downs. Still, we got loads of living and learning done. So, here is some glimpses of our week, in no particular order.
Apple pie making and tasting...
A dreamed for and saved for first violin. Little Red Ridinghood saved up her allowance and bought it herself. This is the Strike a Chord violin, and it is much nicer than I expected. It plays 18 classical songs that the child can listen to and then play by rubbing the bow across the violin. It plays the song at the speed of the childs bowing. It also can be turned off for the child to just play the scales. Very cool! (Notice the paint in little ones hair)...
Writing on the wall, literally. This counts for handwriting and spelling, right?
A nature walk to see the latest flood. This park is less than a mile from our home. Our city is in the process of doing a wonderful job of turning much of the flood zone into wetland parks. There is a little bit of everything for everybody ~ playgrounds, picnic areas, hockey and volleyball courts, walking trails, dog park, nature trails, decks over the river to fish from and much more in the works. When the river leaves her banks, the park fills with water and there is minimal loss and damages.
Goldilocks returned home much happier and calmer ~ ready to be a family member once again.
The kids are working on creating an arctic book, using their Draw Write Now book #4.
Lunch out and play date with some friends ...
and tea time, painting walls, chores, reading lessons, painting walls, furniture moving, movie watching and painting walls. Just a few more hours of painting and I should be in the clear. At least with painting the walls that is ~ lots of furniture to still refinish and paint for Little Red Ridinghood's Christmas gift .
Blessings,
Dawn
