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Yesterday I was looking at the Handbook of Nature blog and decided we would start up nature study again. Barb has so many great ideas and challenges. She also has some wonderful notebook pages to download and use. I can't help it though, I had to make some too. I love making stuff for our notebooks. I made some pages for the acorn and oak tree and the squirrel challenge. I uploaded them to HSLaunch if anyone wants to use them. Any more that I make I will upload too so keep checking my widget to see new stuff (right sidebar). Be sure to join the challenge though. Break time is over so gotta run. Blessings! ~ Nikki
I finally got to upload the Thanksgiving lapbook to HSLaunch. You can find the link to it on my right sidebar in the HSLaunch widget. I hope you all enjoy it. Also be sure to check out the Thanskgiving notebook pages I have on HSLaunch too. What is everyone's plans this year for Thanksgiving? We will be having family over for lunch. I look forward to it but not to the pre holiday cleaning :) I will be posting some book reviews begining in December. I have recieved some great books to review and I will also be having a book giveaway so be sure to check back in December. We are going to be adding some Thanksgiving units to our school work and of course we will be doing our lapbook. This week through Thursday all the Ripleys attractions are free to Sevier County residents so that means we get to go to the auqarium and museums tomorrow if everyone gets over this new crud that came to visit. Is everyone voting on the Homeschool Blog Awards? I have seen some great blogs on there.I'm happy to see some of the ones on there that I nominated too. Just goes to show that you all have at least three readers LOL. I would appreciate your vote in the Homeschool Moms category if you don't have another favorite. Also I bet my DD BabyGirl would love your vote for Best Teen Girl blog. Anyway, it is time for me to get busy again. I just wanted to take a few and let you know about the lapbook but you know how I am to ramble ...soooooooooooo... gotta run. Blessings! ~ Nikki
Hi all! It is a great day in the Lord ! Roosie,Hoopy and I are in Kentucky with our ChristianSchool for Student Convention. Pray for all the competitors today. I miss my DH and BabyGirl and Tman but we head home to Tennessee tomorrow so that makes me happy. I cant seem to get used to time "falling back" this year. For nearly a week now I have been waking up about 4am. Today was no exception. Its only 6:41 am but I am already starting to get sleepy again. No job yet for Toodles but God is being ever faithful. Our needs are met so truly, what else could we ask for? When the right job comes along then Toodles will get it. School has been going great. We are having a really good year so far. We will be doing more special things around the holidays. Stuff like lapbooking or notebooking. We enjoy doing stuff like that. I have not really been able to work much on the free printables I'm making but maybe after convention I can. We have had a hectic pace trying to get ready for that. I'm looking forward to the Homeschool Blog Awards this year. I am eager to see if the blogs I nominated get listed. You are some great bloggers out there :) I may not comment much at times but trust me, I read :) Well I gotta go. We have to get ready for convention. I will update later.
Hey everyone! We are back! Our crew brought home 17 medals today. Hoopy and Roosie both got several first place medals. Hoopy has 5 medals total and Roosie has 7. They all did a tremendous job and I am so proud of them. Well it is late and I am tired so goodnight all! Blessings! ~ Nikki
Now I have to tell you six things you might not know about me.
1. I randomly speak in movies quotes with my family.
2. I grew up a certified countrified farm girl and I miss it too.
3. I know what it is like to carry your drinking water from the spring. My maternal Grandparents and Great Grandmother did not have running water (unless you count the current in the spring LOL)
4. I have met Mrs. Dolly Parton several times. (And yes she is a veeeery distant cousin lol). I even got to watch her film a Christmas movie at a local covered bridge that was 300 feet from my house.
5. White Christmas is one of my all time fave Christmas movies and has been since my teen years when my cousin Noo and I would get together and watch it each year.
6. I love walking in the rain. Always have and hopefully always will.
Now I must give this award to six of my blogger buddies.
It has been a while... a lot of things have been going on here. We have been going and going and going, kinda like the energizer bunny ...minus the energy LOL Anyway, we had our Fall festival at church yesterday and had a great time.We raised some money for our youth and ate some great food.Our county sheriff volunteered to be arrested to help us raise money. He was great so thanks Hoss. Last week I went to a Third Day concert with DD,DS and a friend. It was an amazing worship service.. Look forward to seeing them again. Our drama team has been busy practicing. We have two performances coming up and we are very excited. Our local paper came by the festival yesterday and talked to our youth group and took some pictures. They liked that :) We had an amazing service this morning at church. I would love to be there tonight to see all the baptisms (6) but both DDs are down with the sniffles. So at least I have found the chance to sit and blog. School has been going great. This past week we gathered some leaves. The color has been amazing here again this year. I have found that I prefer laminating the leaves instead of ironing them with the wax paper. When you laminate them you can hang them up on windows and get a stained glass effect. It is very pretty. It is also time for the Homeschool Blog Awards again. I have to do my nominations tonight. There are so many great ones out there that it is hard to decide. On the other hand if anyone would like to nominate me (shameless begging I know!) that would be nice. Not sure what I could be nominated for ..but I have to at least be good for a laugh every now and then . Right? Anyway, looking forward to getting settled back into the quiet side of life for a bit and hopefully doing some blogging and getting some free stuff uploaded to HSlaunch. Blessings! ~ Nikki
Thanks so much Pat for your great poem. Hey readers, you can read Pat's poem here Autumn Leaves
Here is what Pat won:
Autumn leaf tea towel
Autumn leaf plastic container
Candy corn playing cards
Autumn leaf stationery
Pumpkin girl shelf sitter
Autumn scent candle
Blessings! ~ Nikki
Here is my poem for the 2009 Autumn Poetry Party. You are invited too! Check out the rules at the top of my blog. Blessings! ~ Nikki Autumn
Azure sky and golden leaves
Woodsmoke wafting on the breeze
The crunch of leaves on the forest floor
As squirrels add to their winter stores
Shades of orange in the pumpkin patch
The scarecrow smiles and waves
He loves dancing in the wind
On lovely Autumn days
Fall is here
Its all around
Sings nature as dances
In her gold and crimson gown
copyright 2009 LNS (simcoxhomeschool)
After being laid off for 9 months and putting in tons of applications . . . DH Toodles got a call back yesterday! We have been trying so hard to not get discouraged as the weeks turned into months without a job and it has been hard. Only God's Grace has seen us through. We are praying that if this is the job God wants him to have then he will get it. Will you join us in praying? Thanks so much ! Blessings ! ~ Nikki
Today is Hoopy's 12th birthday so "HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOOPY" ! I love you ~ always! Hoopy had two requests for his birthday. One was to visit his Grandparents in Chattanooga , which won't happen today due to vehicle problems. And to sleep late. Now that one I can do. As a matter of fact he is still sleeping peacefully. We will have some "hands on" stuff for school today. why? Because we must take our 5 gallon aquarium and build a habitat for this fella: He is a gray tree frog. Hoopy caught him last night on our porch. Now Hoopy has the nickname " Lizard Whisperer" in our family because he like to "hypnotize" lizards by rubbing their bellies. i'll let you know if he tries to "hypnotize" the frog :)
What is especially neat is that this morning, the tree frog had changed his camoflauge. He looks less like tree bark today and more green. I thought that was neat. He will be our guest for a little while anyway so we will make him more comfortable today. I will post a picture of his new home tomorrow. I plan on making some worksheets and stuff for us so that we can study our new guest. I will post them on HS Launch when they are done. Once again let me invite you to join the Autumn Poetry Party. Have a great day ! Blessings! ~ Nikki
Happy Fall Y'all! Its official ~ Autumn is here! We had a great first day of Fall. The weather has gone from foggy and rainy to sunny and then back to rainy again. We started our studies on poetry today. We read Fog ~ Carl Sandburg, Autumn ~ Emily Dickinson and several by Robert Frost. I love his poems. Imagine my surprise when I mentioned Robert Frost's name and Hoopy says "I know that name!" He then begins to recite "The Road Not Taken" and Roosie chimes in. I give them the "I can't believe you know that" look of course. Hoopy says," I learned it on Disney". Roosie says," Yeah Mom. See we do learn stuff from tv so you should let us watch it for school." AH, the things kids say. We also had a nice art project today. We colored some leaves from one of the sites I posted yesterday. Then we cut them out and taped them onto some jute string and tied on some old strips of gingham I had and made a garland. We hung it up over the window in the living room. I will try and post a picture of it tomorrow. Well its time to go read some blogs before bed. Be sure to join the Autumn Poetry Party this year. You can read the details at the top of the blog. Blessings! ~ Nikki
Tomorrow is the first day of Autumn so I thought I would share some websites that I have found . They have some great activities. If you enjoy these sites then tell your friends to come by and chek out the list. Tomorrow I will put up the Mr. Linky for the 2009 Autumn Poetry Party. I encourage everyone to write a poem and join the party. You can even use it as a writing assignment for your kids.This year we will be giving away some neat little Autumn themed prizes at the end of this years Poetry party. I will be working on the prize list throughout the week and will have it posted by next Monday. Enjoy the sites and God Bless!
Our first week of school went great. Tman has found his niche in the Christian school again and is enjoying himself. He has learned quite a bit this week. I think he has been most intrigued by his Bible PACE which makes me smile extra big. I love it when my Blessings enjoy the Bible. We are moving along at a wonderful pace in our PACES in our homeschool also. We seemed to have settled into a routine without much struggle. Last Sunday after Homecoming we headed up into the mountains for some quiet time and found some amazing things to do some nature study on next week. We are reading the Hobbit in our homeschool for this grading period. I am having the kids do some drawings for each chapter. This way we can get art and literature done at the same time. We are eagerly looking forward to Fall coming to our area. We love the cooler weather and color. On my HS Launch page you can download an Autumn Lapbook I made last year. I want to try and make some more this year. I enjoy making things for others to use. If you are interested in some free printables you can go to my page through the link on my right sidebar.
Today my girls and I got to meet my favorite author, Beverly Lewis. The girls and I love her books. She is so sweet and nice. She is an amazing writer and so friendly. She was having a book signing for her new book in the Seasons of Grace series at one of our library branches today. She was so easy to talk with and seemed very humble when I complemented her on her writing ability. I told her that God had really blessed her and she said “yes He has”. The look on her face when she said that spoke volumes about how much she loves her Lord. We have some pictures to put in our memory books. Here is a picture of my signed copy of the Missing.
I will be adding the link again for the Nature Nook on my blog. I created the Nature Nook last year on Ning to be able to share videos, pictures and printables about animals and nature with other homeschool moms. It didn’t take off like I had planned but maybe this year we can get it going. I miss the Blogger Friend School which seemed to help keep me on track blogging. I tried blogging about websites I had found and my favorite homeschool blogs but they didn’t seem to draw much traffic so I think I will no longer post about them. I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a meme something like BFS. Maybe we could post our favorite Scripture and have an assignment to blog about like we did with BFS. If anyone else is interested leave me a comment. Maybe someone has started another BFS and I haven’t found out about it yet J If so let me know. Blessings! ~ Nikki
Today was our first day of school. Everything went great. Tman had a great first day at the Christian school but we missed him so much at home. We had an easy first day. We worked in English, Word Building and Bible. We had to go to the fair and pick up our fair projects. I'll post more about that later. Here is what our curriculum looks like this year.
Tman:Math, English I, Biology I, Etymology,World Geography, Bible
BabyGirl: Her last requirement is English IV and she will be doing 3 Bible courses.
Hoopy:Math, English, Social Studies, Science, Bible and unit studies
Roosie:Math, English, Social Studies, Science, Bible and unit studies.
All the kids are using ACE PACES this year.
Our full schedule will probably look like this.
Monday: Bible
English
Math
Word Building
Social Studies
Tuesday: Bible
English
Math
Word Building
Science
Wednesday: Bible
English
Math
Word Building
Social Studies
Thursday:Bible
English
Math
Word Building
Science
Friday: Homemaking Skills
Field Trips
8:00 am Take Tman to school
9:00 am begin school at home
9:00 - 9:30 am Bible
9:30 - 10:30 am Math
10:30 - 11:30 am English
11:30 - 12:00 pm fix lunch
12:00 - 12:30 lunch
12:30 - 1:30 pm Word Building
1:30 - 2:30 pm Social Studies/ Science
2:30 - 3:00 pm cleanup and pick up Tman
Blessings! ~ Nikki
Time does seems to be flying by here at our humble abode. August saw many busy weeks for us. We had VBS in August this year. It was awesome! DD BabyGirl turned 16! I don't know where the years are going. I turned 35. I have earned every wrinkle and silver hair. I'm proud of them. I had to go to the Dr. to discuss possible surgery for my bladder and to have several tests done. Instead of surgery I will be having meds and PT. This is day two of the medication and it has done some great things for me. Had I known years ago that it would help this much I would have taken it sooner. We are preparing for school to begin week after next. DS Tman will be returning to the Christian school at our church this year.He wants to have some interaction with his friends this year so we are going to give it a shot. I help out several times throughout the year and they allow our kids to attend the conventions with them . We have decided to go with all PACES because frankly, I feel like having a "lazy" year. BabyGirl will graduate in Spring of 2010 and we have a lot to plan for that so we want to take it easy on the lesson planning. I'm sure we will do some mini units and lapbooks together but our mainstay will be PACES.
Today is my Big Brothers birthday so "Happy Birthday Brotherman!" I love Ya! We have spent the day finishing up our Fair projects. I still have some things to do but I will finish them up later tonight. The county Fair starts on Monday. The kids enjoy the rides and Toodles and I enjoy looking at the exhibits.
We have also been doing the Fall cleaning around the "homestead ". I will post more about that on my Homestead blog. You can come on over and check it out if you like. There are some amazing recipes and stuff on all the blogs over there. Just click on the "Dreamin' of the Farm" pic on the right sidebar and visit my blog. Then you can check out the other blogs by either clicking on the Front Porch link or using the Random Blog link. Well Tman is making some homemade chili for supper tonight, Momma taught him:) so I'm going to post on my other blog and then check out what is going on in the kitchen.Have a great weekend! Blessings ! ~ Nikki
Hi all! Just wanted to let you know that I have uploaded some new stuff at HS Launch. You can check it out through the widget on the right sidebar. I created a F.R.O.G. Folder lesson planner with some other neat pages in it. There is a page to keep up with appointments , a menu planner , a chore planner and a grade keeping page. On the grade keeping page I created it so that I can keep grades for each week using a four block system. There is a block for the pretest grade, one for the test grade, one for a project grade if we have one and one for any extra credit assignments. You may not be able to use it but if you can then enjoy! I also created some frog calenders for August 2009 til July 2010. you can download them from HS Launch too. Come by and let me know what you think about the new stuff and if it was helpful to you. Also I wanted to share this new site I found . I wasn't able to fix the pdf so that you could type in it and then print it out because I am using the free version of Primo pdf to create my stuff. But I did find a place, PDFFiller.com, where you can upload my pdf and it creates an image of it that you can type on and then you can print it out. Hope that helps! :) Have a blessed day ! ~ Nikki
Ok, no way did I anticipate that I would be so busy this summer. It seems like we have been on a constant go go go. Well at least this is turning out to be a cool summer. I can't believe the weather we have been having. I guess I will update and let everyone know what we have been up to . That is if anyone is still reading my blog ...are you? Are you there? Hellooooooooooooooo? Well anyway , here is the story... (imagine a movie narrator's voice..)
When last our blog writer left us she had intended to keep up with her blog posting but time seemed to slip away much faster than she anticipated. One week was spent in Bible study with her youth group in order to prepare their hearts for worship at the Casting Crowns concert. Truly it was an amazing week...watching God speak to the hearts of the youth (and adults too) was awesome. The concert was awesome too. The crowd was pleasantly surprised when special guest John Waller took the stage (ok our blog writer was extremely happy ...she loves his music). Mark Hall and the Crowns are some of the most humble people on the planet and they have such amazing talent. It was more than a concert it was a worship service. (pictures to come later).
Next for our blog writer came the July 4th holiday. A wondeful time spent with family and eating all that awesome July 4th food fare. A pleasnat evening was had by all as fireworks exploded in the night sky creating vibrant splashes of color against the inky blackness. (pictures to come later)
Then came the birth of our blog writers BFF's lovely (much anticipated and teeny tiny) preemie baby girl. Both Momma and Baby are home and doing fine. Visit Shirley at MyThr33Sons and check out the story (with cute baby pics).
Later , our blog writer and family got to travel to Chattanooga and celebrate the 70th birthday of her lovely MIL.
Next for our blog writer and her handsome hubby came an unexpected oppurtunity to travel. They enjoyed a lovely trip through Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Virginia. Their favorite part was having some playtime at Lake Erie. Lovely cannot describe it. Pictures will definetly be posted later!
And last but not least our blog writer has been preparing for her and her DH 10th wedding anniversary tomorrow. They will be renewing their vows amongst a gathering of family and friends.Stay tuned for the next installment...
OK, was that funny? Did it make it more interesting? Did you smile? At least a little bit? Let me know if you are still here ... leave me a comment... go ahead ...I'm begging...I'm making puppy dog eyes at you right now...Blessings~ Nikki
Check out all the great blogs over there(including mine although I wouldn't say mine is great). There are tons of great recipes, gardening tips and home canning ideas on the blogs over there. Go check it out... now...really...GO NOW!
Check out the last 100 entries page or use the random blog feature.
Blessings! ~ Nikki
It has been a while since I posted. I would like to say thanks to all who were praying for my requests.There has been a lot of improvement for all. We enjoyed our camping trip. We had almost 40 ... count 'em ... 40 black bear sightings. One Momma bear had four cubs with her which is unusual for our area. Of course this year we are having an increased black bear population. I have lived here all my life and have only seen about 10 to 12 black bear in Cades Cove , so seeing this many this year was very exciting. So if you want to see black bear and you are near the GSMNP then you should check out Cades Cove.
Tonight we had a tornado warning issued for our area. We were watching some rotating clouds over our house . It was such a weird sight. The storms passed us over though and for that I am thankful. The garden is growing and I have been harvesting some cucumbers and grape tomatoes. Pickle time!! I will be posting about my garden and canning exploits on my Homestead blog. There is a link on my right side bar. Its called "Dreamin' of the Farm"
I have a family of bluebirds hanging around my yard but can't find where they have nested. Not that I am complaining. I love bluebirds. We have a lot of young wildlife in our yard this year. We have several baby rabbits and squirrels.
I am trying to get some school plans going but for some reason I just can't seem to concentrate on them. We found some great deals at the annual library book sale this year. I purchased the Hooked on Phonics program for $ 1 . Yep ! $1. The only thing wrong with it is that tape number 6 is missing but I hope that I can find a copy somewhere. I'm going to have my youngest use it for review this summer as she still has some reading struggles. My youngest son struggled with reading too and he hated to even try to read. PTL though now he loves to read. It just took some time for him to find his rhythm. So if you have a child who struggles with reading, don't give up hope. It will come. Sometimes it just takes time. Well I am going to post on my Homestead blog. I hope to be back on schedule with my regular posts. Blessings! ~ Nikki
Here is a photo I took on landscape setting of a storm coming in over the Cove.
He is a gray tree frog. Hoopy caught him last night on our porch.
Now Hoopy has the nickname " Lizard Whisperer" in our family because he like to "hypnotize" lizards by rubbing their bellies. i'll let you know if he tries to "hypnotize" the frog :)
He looks less like tree bark today and more green. I thought that was neat. He will be our guest for a little while anyway so we will make him more comfortable today. I will post a picture of his new home tomorrow. I plan on making some worksheets and stuff for us so that we can study our new guest. I will post them on HS Launch when they are done. Once again let me invite you to join the Autumn Poetry Party. Have a great day ! Blessings! ~ Nikki
