Even my husband doesn't give me flowers!  But the sweet and wonderful ladies of co-op gave me a send-off after our last mom's room meeting that included not only these lovely flowers, but a shower of cards and gifts, too.  And this weekend at our Spring Program, Cathy gave me a lovely gift, but more importantly, lovely parting words.  Oh, how I've loved this group of ladies!  Oh, how I've loved the mom's room ministry!  God couldn't have placed a more perfect situation in front of me and because of that, I went to every meeting full of excitement and thankfulness.

Why did I step away from it you ask?  After all, I've known for years that God was preparing my heart for women's ministry.  I've prayed for years that He would open wide the doors for me to use my talents.  I was given the opportunity to not only be in a unique sort of women's ministry, but was able to teach about teaching (my passion) and encourage homeschoolers (another passion) at the same time. 

Why?  Well, God and I haven't gotten to the full answer to that question yet.  But, one thing I know for sure, He has never failed me yet and I don't expect He will this time either.  If asking me to leave a ministry like the mom's room means He has even more perfect work for me to do, then I will go forth gladly.  Gladly, but still with a heavy heart.  At least for now.  I love my friends from co-op as much as I love the job I had at co-op.  If nothing else, it's simply hard to walk away from something that's been a wonderful part of your life for five years. 

But, I go knowing that the Lord's work is more important than my wants.  I go knowing that friends can still be friends even if I don't see them every week.  I go knowing that the doors won't be locked if I need to go back.  I go knowing that the Lord will soon enough reveal to me the answer of "Why?"

To hopefully lighten up the tone of this post, here are some pictures from our Spring Program.  It's a wonderful night of performances, pictures and food.  :)

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

This picture was taken last night at our church's annual Mother-Daughter Banquet.  Thank you gentlemen for a lovely evening!

As a fitting end to our Keepers At Home year, we had a little scrapbooking party.  What great memories come from this group! 

(And, yes, even our boys have fun.  But, ahem, shooting a foam deer with a bow and arrow in his Contenders of the Faith class at co-op was MUCH more manly!  Thank you , Debbie, for all his manly experiences this year!!)

Even Eli had fun with Mrs. Jody!

Next year, we're asking the girls to take over some of the planning and teaching for the group.  (The moms are weary! ;)  They already have some good ideas like teaching one another the waltz and how to safely ride horses.  I love the idea of the girls taking a bit of control over their group!

Our last unit study of the year turned out to be a great one! 

Using Art and Civilization: The Renaissance and The Usborne Book of World History as our main sources of information, we went on a quick journey through the Renaissance to prepare us for early modern history next year. 

Besides really important stops at the printing press, trade/exploration and Martin Luther, we chose to turn the main focus of the unit on famous Renaissance artists.  After watching this DVD, we spent one day studying each of the following artists and trying our hands at their art.  Some of our art ideas came from Discovering Great Artists by MaryAnn Kohl.  (I LOVE this book!)

Almost all of our artist information came from the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artist Series by Mike Venezia.  My kids can't get enough of these books.  If I couldn't find a library book about the artist, we turned to the internet for research.  Here's a sampling of our projects.

Botticelli -art in the round

Michelangelo - "Sistene Chapel" art

Da Vinci - art from nature

Donatello - soap sculptures

Bruegel - landscapes

Tao-Chi - not your typical Renaissance artist, mind you.  But, an artist from China during the Renaissance time period.  I found this lesson on brush and ink paintings from Month-by-Month Masterpieces and couldn't pass it up! 

We also did a brief study of Shakespeare by reading A Child's Portrait of Shakespeare, William Shakespeare and the Globe, and Stage Fright on a Summer Night.  Our library had an entire series of Shakespeare DVD's, so we checked out Macbeth for a family flick night.  And for our listening pleasure in the car, we checked out Jim Weiss' Shakespeare For Children.

And so, that brings us to the end of another school year!  I have a box of Sensational Summer Sparks already started.  I'll share that with you soon! 

Let's just say the Lord led me to Nancy's blog for a reason today.  I found this and really needed to hear it.  Thank you, Lord, for reminding me that the little things are not only important, but full of worship, too.

Garden #1 has been planted!  :o)  What do we hope to grow abundantly here?  Tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, green beans, snap peas, corn, squash, zuchinni, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, beets, watermelon, cantelope, and honeydew.

Garden #2 will be planted soon.  The kids have already started their sunflower hideaway where you see the brick markers.  More corn and green beans will come soon, along with pumpkins, gourds and some flowers for cutting.  This garden has a pretty good clay base, so it's harder to depend on for a good harvest.

I'm not the neatest gardener in the world.  This is about the most weed free they'll be all season!  But, I attempt to keep the weeds down enough to at least walk through the rows.  :)  I have some pretty handy helpers this year - woohoo!

Yes, these garden plots probably seem excessive to some of you.  We try to plant enough to share with all the little critters that love to steal our food.  Otherwise, we don't harvest much.  We'd like to can and freeze A LOT, too.  Food prices keep getting higher and higher, so every little bit will help.

Don't ya just love when kids use their imaginations and create really cool things?  This afternoon, the older kids made great use of their free time (and I was able to get in a little discussion about simple and complex machines!)

Caleb loves ladders, ropes, tools and other bits and pieces of boy stuff.  Living on a farm leaves lots of room for boy stuff to be sitting around.  After a failed attempt to use the ladder to climb this really tall tree, he went to work putting together a pulley with an old ax head for the purpose of smashing things.  We just happen to have a stash of really old bricks that are easily smashed, so what could be more fun, right? 

Along comes big sis.  Seeing the ladder leaning against the tree reminds her of the tree house that Dad has promised to build soon.  Together they start scheming how to use the new pulley system along with the treehouse.  This is the second invention of the afternoon - a dumbwaiter.  When they want something in their treehouse, they plan to ring a bell for the servant (me) to do their bidding and send up whatever they need using the board and rope!

Do you think these ideas are worth leaving a tip in the tip basket Caleb recently put in his room?

My BFF, Melissa, has sparked a renewed interest in nature study around our house!  We've always loved nature, but I think living on a farm and seeing or hearing nature everyday has caused us to take for granted the wonderful things going on around us.

But lately, our eyes and ears have been on guard.  And to our excitement, God is putting on a wonderful show!  (You know, He'll do that when you take time to listen and watch!!)  In the past couple of days, we've seen:

Baltimore Orioles

Canada Warblers (probably) 

And not seen, but heard (very excting, indeed!) - the Great Horned Owl

We're running a tight ship this week to finish up school for the year, but I have big plans for unscripted, untimed, lazy-days-of-summer nature study starting next week!  Our nature journals are ready (mine, too) and our pencils and colored pencils are sharpened.  We'll be ready for whatever flies, cries, walks, crawls or slithers our way!

By the way, our next nature club will be focused on pond life.  We're going to have so much fun!  I'll give you a sneak peak at one of the studies we'll be doing - Jilly Jar Scooping.  Thanks, Barb!!

As we headed off to the zoo Friday, we were driving along praying for our day, which is our usual custom when we head off for a trip before we've had time for Bible and prayer together.  One of the kids or I pray aloud as we begin our journey.  We hadn't gone far down the lane when our prayer was focused on praise to God for all the glorious creatures were going to see that day.  All of the sudden a brilliant streak of black and orange flew past us and landed on a fence along the road. 

I was able to get a picture of husband and wife before they flew away.  (Even with 10x zoom, they were a bit hard to get a good picture of - especially how brilliantly orange the male was.)  I'm sure Baltimore Orioles have flown around here before, but this was our first meeting with them.  What a beautiful sight!  We promptly thanked the Lord that He not only provides glorious creatures at the zoo, but right in our own back yard as well!

Wanna see what we did for a field trip this week?  I love the zoo!

 

 

Here are two pictures of most of our gang - my children, my sister and her children and my parents all went.

 

 

 

Here's what Eli thought about each and every animal we saw.

 

 

 

And here's a very fun new addition to the zoo this year - a small water play park!

 

 

In the end, we were rained out and had to leave early.  We only missed a few animal exhibits - penguins, kangaroos and orangutans.  I guess we'll just have to go back and visit again soon!

 

On Thursday of last week I reminded the kids that Daddy's birthday was coming up.  Within hours, Caleb had designed and built these two gifts.  I heard lots of hammering at the barn and the next thing I knew, Mahayla had hooked the wagon to the lawn tractor in an effort to help Caleb hide the (enormous) gifts under the porch. 

I'm not sure why they worked so hard at hiding them, though.  In their excitement, they ended up giving him his gifts the next day (four days before his birthday.)  :) 

The first thing Caleb said when Steve sat down on the bench was, "Oh, please don't sit there.  You really need to move down some.  I'd hate for you to break it!"  And, so, we are now the proud owners of a barn bench with designated seats and a tool box shelf.  (I think we need a new box of nails, too.)  Oh, and Steve will smell very good after shaving thanks to the aftershave Mahayla bought! 

When Steve said, "Now what am I supposed to do on my real birthday?", Mahayla answered, "Oh, don't worry.  We're going to give you so many homemade cards it'll keep you busy all day!"  Such sweet kids. 

Weather was the last stop of our Earth Science unit.  As has become our end of unit habit, the kids had to develop a presentation to show something they learned.

Mahayla chose to write a letter from the viewpoint of a drop of water going through the water cycle.  It was very cute!  She also drew a nice picture of the water cycle to go along with an experiment that demonstrated evaporation and condensation.

Caleb did an experiment that demonstrated evaporation and condensation, too, but in a different way.  Both experiments worked very well!  He also created a "rain alarm".  Marbles are placed in a film canister.  The canister is propped on a small slope with sugar cubes.  When it rains, the sugar cubes melt allowing the canister to roll.  The noise from the rollling canister is supposed to alert you when it starts raining.  :)  And he wanted to be sure we noted the cumulus clouds in the sky!

I don't know if I've mentioned here before that my husband accepted the youth minister position at church earlier in the year.  Because I'm his help-meet we work with children from about kindergarten through high school.  Honestly, it's been a tough adjustment for me - even playing a huge role in me deciding to give up my co-op ministry next year.  :(

On the other hand, we have a SUPER group of kids at church!  I'll probably be sharing more often some of the fun things the youth groups are doing. 

One of the best events so far had absolutely nothing to do with us!  LOL  Two of our good friends, Josh and Barbara were willing to take the reigns and plan father/son and mother/daughter events.  Since both events happened at the same time, I could only take pictures of the girl's day.  ;)  You won't see any pictures of the boy's event, but rest assured, they had as much fun as us!

Father / Son Hiking Trip

A small trip in the van to Blue Licks State Park started the boy's afternoon.  After a wonderful devotion about the revolutionary war sacrifices made at the park and the sacrifice of our Saviour, the boys and men hiked the trails at the park.  To their surprise, canoes were waiting at the end of one of the trails and they got to canoe back to the starting point!  That made for some very excited and happy boys!

Mother / Daughter Iron Chef Competition

The gals stayed around church for skits, devotions, games and cooking.  All the activities were designed to bring moms and daughters closer together, learn a little bit about each other and laugh a lot!  The main event was a cooking competition.  Each mom/daughter team was asked to bring ingredients for a no-bake dish, which we had to prepare at church.  Judging cards in hand, we judged everyone's recipes for creativity, originality, taste and appearance.  (I think I would enjoy very much being a Food Network Challenge judge!)

Josh and Barbara, thank you for a wonderful afternoon!  Lord, thank you for pretty weather!

Thanks to our area minor league baseball team, we had FREE tickets to one of their games this weekend!  The Lexington Legends host a reading challenge each year that allows kids to read for two free tickets to a game.  Both of our older children earned two tickets, so off we went.......

This weekend was also the kick-off for Caleb's baseball season.  After a parade of the teams through town and a short field dedication, each team batted through their line-up once.  We love baseball season! 

I know many of you homeschool year 'round and as much as I think the idea is wonderful, I enjoy my nice, long summer break too much.  (Not to mention canning and freezing season makes doing school almost impossible in the summer.)  Anywho - we have only TWO WEEKS left!  Can you just feel my excitement??  I'm literally jumping up and down in my computer chair right now!

I'll be doing some posts soon about wrapping up the school year, thinking ahead to next year and some of our summer plans.  But for now, I'm just basking in the wonderfulness of the words - ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT!

I can't decide if homeschooling is harder with a baby or a toddler.  I'm leaning toward toddler.   I don't think I can count the number of papers he has either run off with or scribbled upon.  I'm also not sure how many pencils have no erasers due to him biting them off.  I think he still has pen and marker on his tummy from somehow finding those tools and trying to turn himself into living art (more than once).  Needless to say, the baby chasers (older children and myself) are all ready for a break from school. 

We're finishing off the year with a Renaissance Artist unit.  In history, we last studied the Middle Ages and next year takes us into early American history, so a bit of Renaissance history with a slant towards art will be just the thing to make the history connection and end the year with some really fun projects.  Lord willing, I'll keep you posted on the artists we choose to study and the projects we do.

So I'm sick with strep.  (Feeling much better today.  Thank the Lord for strong antibiotics!)  My sweet older children offered to take little one out while I napped yesterday.  Here's what they did.

Yes, it was only April 23rd.  I suppose they cared more that the thermometer said 80.  I'm just thankful I had the chance to nap! 

As co-op comes to a close for this school year, and I am finishing the "love" verses, this will be the last "Inspiration of the Week".  I hope you've enjoyed these entries.  They forced me to write down some of my Bible-time thoughts, which I tend to shy away from - at least for all the world to read.  ;) 

Quote of the Week

We destroy the love of learning in children, which is so strong when they are small, by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty rewards--gold stars, or papers marked 100 and tacked to the wall, or A's on report cards, or honor rolls, or dean's lists or Phi Beta Kappa keys--in short, for the ignoble satisfaction of feeling that they are better than someone else.

1 Corinthians 13 Inspiration

Love never fails....

1.)  What is love? 

1 John 4:8  "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."

2.)  What did Love do? 

1 John 4:9-10  "This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.  This is love: not the we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

3.)  How do we love? 

1 John 4:12  "No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us."

1 John 5:2-4  "This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving and carrying out His commands.  This is love for God: to obey His commands.  And His commands are not burdensome."

1+2+3 = LOVE never fails. 

These were SO much fun!  I first saw the idea of making hot rocks at the Crafty Crow.  Since we just happened to be doing the rocks and minerals section of our earth science unit, the craft fit in perfectly.  The rocks turned out so well, we entered them in the craft division of our co-op's expo. 

You can find the original directions at Wise Craft, but put very simply - heat rocks in the oven at 350 for 15 minutes.  While you wait, peel the paper from several crayon colors.  After 15 minutes, you place the crayons on the hot rocks and create your masterpieces.

I placed aluminum foil on the pan, so when the pan came out of the oven, we gathered around it, used old oven mitts to steady the rocks and went to town. 

***

My BFF, Melissa, recently posted about tempera monoprint art.  This was another fun project that turned out so well we entered it in the printing division of the expo.  I won't bother with directions, hers are great!

I know, you're tired of hearing how wonderful our co-op is!  But seriously, it is.  Friday night was our annual competition night.  The children choose from all sorts of competitions to enter - music, art, cooking, Bible memorization, science fair, construction, knitting/crochet/sewing, spelling bee - and maybe even more.

Here are a few pictures from the night.  Mahayla entered knitting, science fair, cooking - pies, and art - painting, crafts and printing.  Caleb entered wood construction, cooking - cakes, and art - printing and crafts.  We'll have a fun ceremony in a couple of weeks where the kids will find out if they placed.  Pretty ribbons and certificates are given to all winners and participants.  They make for a nice addition to a yearly portfolio.

And finally, post #4 of 4 from our Question Box topic week at co-op.

How do you schedule a Charlotte Mason-style day?

Short answer:  Any way you want!  LOL

Longer answer:  If we're talking a true CM day, it will be characterized by the following:

-short bookwork lessons (10-30 minutes depending on the age of the child and the subject)

-daily lessons in Bible, copywork, math, language arts, foreign language 

-weekly or more lessons in science, history

-bookwork finished in the morning hours

-afternoons spent outdoors with free play or nature study, handicrafts, reading, etc.

-time scheduled throughout the week for nature study, artist/composer study  

I'm not a CM "purist", but our day usually goes something like this:

Chores - aka Life Skills

Bible

Bookwork - which isn't necessarily workbooks.  This includes everything from math to language to unit study.

Lunch

Family Reading  - sometimes quiet time reading

Art/Nature/Handicrafts - sometimes guided, sometimes free

FREE Time

Here are some sample schedules from Simply Charlotte Mason.

Here's another sample from Deborah Taylor-Hough.

I realize this post is fairly vague.  Since I don't do CM education to a "T", I don't want to mislead anyone.  Also, my opinion as you've heard my say 1,000 times, is that your homeschool should be your homeschool.  Incorporate what you want to incorporate in a way that really works for your family.  A Charlotte Mason-style education is a wonderful path to take with your children, though, I can't deny that!