World Cake

I've got the pictures on my computer, so I decided I might as well go ahead and upload them.  At first I had around 20, and decided that was probably too many.  :-)  It's tough to decide which pictures to put up here, but I've finally whittled it down a bit.  :-)

 Here's D, outlining Australia.

 Europe, Africa, Asia...

 A is filling in the oceans.

 I thought about just leaving the continents bare with no frosting, but my kids weren't having any of that!  :-)

 Filling in the continents...

Voila!  Our finished Cake!

 Two proud girls  :-)

 But of course no cake is complete without sprinkles! :-)

 Yum!

Sugar!  :-)

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Week 2

We've only got one more day for week two, and we're doing great!  We did have a light week of school this week, though.  The girls are going to VBS every morning from 9-12, and it's just too much to have 3-4 hours of school in the afternoon.  So we've been doing the fun stuff, and the things that would be too hard to catch up with next week. 

I didn't take many pictures this week, until today.  We made a cake and decorated it like a map of the world.  That was so much fun!  I took lots of pictures of this activity, and will try to post them this weekend. 

This morning the girls got up early so they could help me make the cake and get it in the oven before breakfast.  Once it cooled I found a map in one of our school books that was about the size of our cake.  I unfolded a paper  napkin and placed it over the map, then carefully traced the shapes of the continents in pencil.  For the continents that were very close or touching (Africa, Europe, Aisia; North and South America) I made it all one shape, to make it easier for my girls to decorate.  Then I cut out the continent shapes and carefully placed the napkin shapes on our cake in the correct places.  This afternoon the girls mixed up some blue and green frosting, and took turns tracing the shapes of the continents with the blue icing in a ziplock bag with the tip cut off.  Next they filled in the blue oceans, then took the napkins off the cake and filled in the rest with green.  Oh, my oldest daughter suggested we use the plain white frosting for Antarctica, since it's not green that far south.  :-)  The finished product was great!  We lost quite a bit of detail when spreading the frosting, but you can still tell which continents are which.  The perfectionist in me really wanted to take over and do it all myself, but I had to keep reminding myself that this is for my girls, not me.  :-)  And they really did a great job!  I did help a little, and did just a bit of touch up work.  But for the most part, my girls decorated the cake! 

I'll try to post pictures either later today, or sometime this weekend.  Enjoy your weekend!  :-)

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Week 1 pictures

Here is a collection of pictures from our school work this week.  The girls have sure had a lot of fun this week, and so have I!  :-)

 D & A drew the continents on oranges...

 We sliced and peeled the oranges, then tried to put them back together in a flat map.  Here is D's orange...

 ...and A's orange.

 Here is A's John 3:16 poster...

 ...and D's John 3:16 poster.

 Wednesday the girls studied our backyard habitat.

 Later we went on a nature walk at the park.  A sat down on the bench and drew a water fall.

 On Thursday we started an experiment with worms.  We'll keep an eye on them during the next week and see how they mix the layers of the soil.

 watching the worms wiggle around in the dirt

 A is drawing her findings for her science notebook.

D is drawing her observations for her science notebook

This has been such a fun week learning about the world God has created!  We're looking forward to see what else we'll discover next week!  :-)

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Week 1 - Day 4

What a wonderful week this has been!  We've still got one more day of school this week, but it looks like tomorrow will be a light day.  Which works out great, as by Friday we're usually ready for a break.  :-)

I'm hoping I'll be able to post some pictures this weekend of our first week of school.  We didn't take any pictures the first couple days as my oldest was sick and feeling pretty miserable, but starting Wednesday we started taking pictures.

Here's a bit of a recap of our week.  Monday we started the week with prayer, saying the pledges, and taking communion.  I think I already wrote about the rest of Monday.  The highlight for the girls was filling out their passport applications.

Tuesday we learned about Ecosystems, and read about what the first ecosystem in the Garden of Eden might have been like.  We did all the basic things... spelling, handwriting, math, LA, geography and science.  For art the girls each made a John 3:16 poster.  They cut out pictures of people from around the world and pasted them onto their colored paper, then wrote the Bible verse to go along with it and pasted that on their papers, as well.  They put those posters in their geography notebooks.

Wednesday during Bible we read a book called God Speaks Numanggang, about a family who moved to Papua New Guinea 30-40 years ago to start working on a Bible translation.  That was an interesting book.  The girls' favorite activity was a nature walk we took in the park.  Each of the girls took a clipboard, blank paper, colored pencils and a magnifying glass.  We walked one of the trails at the park and they each chose something to draw.  My oldest drew a waterfall, my youngest drew a rock.  Yeah, that pretty much sums them up.  :-)   We'll try to plan a nature walk every week.

Today in science we learned about niches.  The girls really enjoyed today's activity!  We filled a large pickle jar (empty and cleaned, of course) with layers of moist soil, sand, soil, sand, and a thin layer of oats on top.  We were going to try to dig up some worms in the back, but the ground is too dry so we weren't able to find any today.  Instead we drove to the local sporting goods store and bought a dozen night crawlers.  We brought  them home and had fun dropping them into our jar.  My youngest wouldn't touch the worms, of course.  My oldest thoroughly enjoyed playing with the worms.  :-)  They each drew the jar and wrote their observations, then we covered it in dark paper and put it in my closet (a cool dark place).  Each day we'll take out the jar and see how they've mixed the layers as they tunnel down into the soil.  We'll do this for 10 days to two weeks, and when we're finished we'll set the worms free in the garden, if any survive that long.  :-)

Tomorrow looks to be a light day with just the basics.  Hopefully I'll get some pictures posted sometime this week, and next week I'll have more fun school activities to report.  :-)  We're really enjoying this new curriculum!

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First Day of School with My Father's World!

What a day!  It's been a long day, but overall, a good day!  Unfortunately my oldest daughter has been sick... she felt pretty miserable over the weekend, so this morning we made an appointment for her to see the doctor.  I told her yesterday if she wasn't feeling up to it we didn't have to start school today, but she said she really wanted to.

This morning when I went into my younger daughter's room to wake her up, I noticed she was snuggled under her covers, fully dressed for today wearing khaki's and a long sleeve shirt.  When I woke her I asked if she had gotten up early and gotten dressed, then went back to bed.  She shook her head "no."  I asked when she got dressed and she sleepily replied, "I wanted to be ready for school."  I distinctly remembered her wearing her night gown when I put her in bed last night, so I asked her if she changed into her day clothes after I put her to bed.  "Yes.  I wanted to be ready for school!"  Silly girl!  But I'm really glad she was so excited to start school today!  :-)

Even though my older daughter said she was miserable, she really wanted to start school today.  So after breakfast we opened our day in prayer, then said the pledges to the flags (we have an American flag and Christian flag hanging in our school room).  After that we had communion, then began our learning with reading from Window on the World.  We also reviewed our memory verse for the week, John 3:16.

Some other subjects we worked on this morning were language arts and math.  Then the girls filled out their passport applications.  Since we'll be studying geography this year both girls will receive passports, and get to enter in a sticker for each country we study.  They were pretty excited about filling out their applications, and turning them in to the Passport Office, aka Daddy!

After lunch we made the trip into town to see the doctor.  It turns out my daughter has a left ear infection, a right eye infection, a sinus infection, and possibly bronchitis.  Poor girl!  No wonder she's been so miserable!  On the way home I told her we don't have to do any more school today, she could just relax.  To which she replied, "No, Mommy!  I want to finish school today!"  So once we got home we finished our day with some geography, followed by science.  This year in science we'll be studying ecology.

I think that about sums up our day.  It was a great first day of school!  I wanted to take some pictures, but since my daughter was feeling so miserable I decided to wait on that, until she's feeling better.  I'm thinking we did more than what I've written here, but it's late and I can't really remember.  And this post seems a bit scatterbrained, but I wanted to at least get a quick post up and say how wonderful our day was, despite my daughter being sick.  Hopefully the antibiotics will kick in soon and she'll be feeling better.  And now I'd better get to bed so I can get up early to give her the next dose...  If you've got a moment, she could sure use your prayers that she'll recover quickly from all these infections.  Thanks!

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19 days and counting

This past Friday was our latest Box Day.  We received our school supplies, and had fun looking through all our new books.  Our math books came today, so now we're all set for the upcoming year! 

This is going to be such a busy month!  On Sunday our oldest goes to camp, and she's so excited!  The day after she gets home from camp both girls will be staying with their grandparents for a week.  Their church is having VBS, so the girls are looking forward to going to that.  Then on July 25th we start our first day of school!  :-)

I've spent the past few days looking through our curriculum, and at first I was a bit intimidated.  The instructor's guide seems a lot more detailed than what I'm used to.  But after spending more time with it, I think it will work out just fine.  I figure the first couple of weeks we'll all be getting used to the new program, but after that it should come a lot more easily.  Hopefully in about three and a half weeks I'll be able to write a new blog entry about our first week of school!  It's amazing that it's coming up so quickly!

Last night my oldest was sitting with me as I was putting all the worksheets into sheet protectors.  She was looking through the art book we'll be using this year, and she found a lot of interesting projects.  As she was just about ready to go to bed she turned to me and said, "I'm so excited for school to start!"  That's such an encouragement to me, and confirms to me we're doing the right thing with homeschooling our girls.  :-)

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Our Homeschooling Journey

Update - 08-02-11  When I wrote this we were using Sonlight for our homeschooling.  I still love Sonlight and am grateful for the wonderful library we've built up, but this year  we decided it was time for a change.  We are now using My Father's World, and so far we love it!  I'll leave the rest of this post up, until I have a chance to do a full edit and give more of my reasons for switching.  But for now, I'll just leave this edit here.

When I was pregnant with our first daughter, my husband and I knew we wanted to home school. We had both gone through the public school system and turned out alright (smile), but we knew we wanted our children to have the opportunity to learn what we believed (and still do!) was most important, our faith in Jesus.

In the beginning, I knew next to nothing about homeschooling. I had a few friends who had been home schooled, and from what I could tell it seemed like a pretty simple concept. When our daughter started reading at a very early age, we decided we'd go ahead and start preschool early. When she was three I did some research, and decided it should be fairly easy to come up with my own curriculum. I know for some families this works wonderfully. However, ours wasn't one of them. :-)

I also tried a couple of curricula that utilize the library for your main resources. After a few weeks of this, I decided that wasn't going to work for us, either. I needed something simpler, something all laid out for me.

I had heard of Sonlight, but by this point I'd forgotten about it. My Mom-in-law somehow knew of Sonlight, and suggested we take a look at it, again. (Thanks Mom! :-) When our daughter was 5 we ordered the Kindergarten Core, and have not looked back. It's worked wonderfully for us!

The main thing I like about Sonlight is the fact that everything is planned out for me. And you also order all the books, so there's no running to the library only to find out the book you need is unavailable. It is a literature based program, which means lots of reading for my girls. Being as how they both love to read, this works well for us. I don't think it would work quite as well for a child who doesn't enjoy reading.

This year we're starting 4th Grade for my oldest (American History part 2), and First Grade for my youngest (World History part 1). My first grader is very excited to start school! My 4th grader wouldn't mind waiting a few more months. :-) In any case, we plan to start next month. It's not quite soon enough for my youngest daughter, and a bit too soon for my oldest. But it's just about right for me. We always seem to get behind during the school year (last year our water heater broke and flooded our bedroom, so all of our bedroom furniture was in the dining room [aka the school room] and living room for a couple of weeks; later we moved, so there were another couple of weeks without school...), so this year I'm hoping that by starting early we can prevent falling behind too badly. But we'll see how it goes. I guess that's part of the beauty of home schooling... it's so easy to make school revolve around your life, rather than life revolving around school.

One of my goals for this blog is to keep a running list of our favorite books we read in school this year. I don't know if I'll succeed at being faithful to that, but I'll try. Hopefully that can also help me to keep motivated to keep Grandparents updated in what we're studying throughout the year. It's one of my goals, anyway. Usually my goals last a few weeks (or a few days! :-), so we'll see how this one goes.

And that, in a nutshell, is our homeschooling journey! If anyone who reads this has any questions about homeschooling in general, or Sonlight in particular, feel free to ask me any questions!

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long time no see

Wow, so much has happened since I posted, back in February. I'd like to start posting on my blog again, but it's hard to get started after a long break. :-)

I guess the biggest thing that's happened to us is we moved in February! We've moved into a beautiful house! (No more apartment life for us, at least for a while!) We have a back yard with room for the girls to run around, a playhouse, swings and a slide, and room for a future garden. I'm hoping to be able to start the garden next spring. The girls each have their own room, we have a play room, and even a school room! God has blessed us so much with this house!

Along with moving, we are now enjoying small town life. I've missed living in a small town, and now this town is just perfect for raising our girls! We're closer to our church, and we love it! We really feel at home here. Also, there is a nearby church where the girls will attend AWANA in the Fall, and that's a blessing, as well! We no longer need to drive into down town in the early evening amidst all the traffic getting off work... now we can walk! God has really blessed us with this move, in so many ways.

We are excited to start our next school year. In fact, the girls are so excited they wanted to start early! So last night we dove into our handwriting curriculum. This year we will be studying our second year of American History for Fourth Grade, and our first year of World History for First Grade. The girls are so anxious to start (especially our First Grader!) that we will probably go ahead and officially start the year next month. And hopefully with starting in August we'll do better at not falling behind this year. Every year we seem to fall a bit behind during the year, then rush to catch up in May and June. :-) Hopefully this year we can avoid that, but we'll see.

I've got one or two recipes I'd like to post, and a few fun stories about family life. But I'll leave those for another day. Hopefully that will motivate me to update this blog more than every 5 months. :-)

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A couple of great finds

I've recently found a couple of stores that have special offers for home schoolers. I love a good bargain, so I was excited to learn about these! Jo-Ann Fabrics has a rewards program for home educators. It's for any teacher, but the cool thing is they include home school teachers. You just need proof that you are a home school teacher (a PEAH or HSLDA member number) and you'll receive a card for 15% off your purchases! Teacher Reward Page

Then today I was in Car Toys, and the manager gave me a discount for being a homeschool teacher. He told me if I let other home school teachers know and to ask for him, he will give them a discount, as well. I don't know if this is at all Car Toys locations, or if it is specific to our local store. In any case, it can't hurt to ask! :-)

It makes me wonder what other stores offer discounts for home school teachers. I think I'll just have to start asking! :-)

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