passionate motherhood

Last 2 months in pictures

2011-09-03T08:37:00.000-07:00

I am warning you, this post is PIC HEAVY, but here is a little glimse at the last 2 months for us...

*click on any pictures to enlarge*
Here are the chicklets checking out the fireworks we bought....
Josh was very unsure about the whole thing (and after the first ka-boom, high tailed it for the front door)

The girls had fun lighting some fireworks this year

But still spent a lot of time like this...

We suprised them by taking them to a 4th of July parade this day (their first parade ever)...

They were amazed at the crowds

I felt so bad for these 'seasoned' gentleman. It was slightly less hot than the surface of the sun and they had to walk the .7 mile parade route wearing 10 pounds of clothes!

They also decided to shoot their rifles off right in front of us. I think I lost 50% of my hearing that day, what with that and the fire trucks and amulances deciding that our little piece of real estate was the PERFECT place to let loose with their sirens. Lovely. I dont think Destroy Boy will EVER want to go to a parade again, he was slightly fascinated and majorly tramatized by the whole thing.

The girls LOVED these. They saw them and quickly dubbed the drivers 'Mario and Luigi'
These were also a big hit

I also learned this day that our city has roller derby league. Interesting.
And if you want to advertise effectively for your gym. Have a spinning class take place. On a float.

The girls could NOT believe all the candy that was thrown to them. I had to go thru it and try to find the 'yucky' ones as it was quite apparent that some of it was left over from last Halloween. Classy.

We have been going to the library quite often on friday afternoons

See that red thing on the wall? Yeah. We almost had an incident involving THAT, and that little boy in the blue.

We found about 10 of these guys in our garden last month and brought them, and a boat load of dill inside. After we were inundated with sniffly noses and itchy eyes, the 'pillars and thier abundance of dill went back out to the garden. I dont know where they scootched to as we didnt see even one coccoon!

Random playdoh creation by daughter #3.

Random playdoh creation by daugther #2 (this is suppose to be Susan from Chronicles of Narnia whic has been a bit of an obsession here lately)

They went to their first carnival this past month too. I have not been to a carnival in a sweet forever and my jaw hit the floor when I saw the prices. THREE dollars to ride the ferris wheel?? And i think I may have vicariously smoked a pack of cigarettes while there. Bleh.

I told you the whole 4th of July thing traumatized this boy. This is how he spent a lot of time at the carnival

He gave his hands a rest though to ride on this little kiddie train. He was in HEAVEN.

I also ran another race on Aug 27, you can read about it more HERE on my fitness blog

What's that?? Could it BE??

Yep. I won an age group award!! Must not have been many 30-34 year olds out there that day....
I pulled out the stamping supplies a few weeks ago and let the girls go to town. They LOVE doing this. The anti-messy part of me cringes everytime.

This is my posse measuring Noah's ark on our street for school. You can see big sis there (in the helmet) wearing my Garmin for measuring purposes. It's multi-talented, that watch!

We like to throw a little school in every now and then for good measure =)

My oldest had 'Narnia schoool' one day and she printed out a Narnia coloring page and read a Narnia book to them. I think she may have had a worksheet or something for them to do too. Too funny.And THIS is how I have discovered I can cut my onions up without crying. Dont be hatin'. Not everyone can rock Ariel the Mermaid goggles QUITE like an Asian.

HELLO!

2011-07-02T05:09:00.001-07:00

Has it been a while or WHAT??
I am still alive and kickin' and doing quite well actually! This blog has just been neglected and for that I am sorry, I will try to do better!
We finished up ECC in, oh, I think it was March? We took a semi-break for awhile, still doing the basics here and there for a few months and have recently started CTG. We are loving it so far!
Here are some pictures from the past few months *click on any to enlarge*

Dying Easter eggs: this was Josh's first time to do this. WAY messy.

I also let Josh paint for the first time EVER, this Spring. See above comment.

It was SO nice to go on walks this Spring on our trail system and see all the gorgeous flowering bushes!

Momma ran some races this Spring too (to read >alot< more about them, go to my fitness blog HERE )

LifeGate 5K Run/Walk, April 30th

Papillion 1/2 Marathon, May15

Siena/Francis House 10K/5K RunWalk June 26 (I ran the 10K and PLACED in my age group!)

Imitating mommy

Uncle James likes to come and beat up on my children every once in a while

....or maybe its the other way around?

How cute is this new purse?? Saw one just like it that a lady was carrying around Target a few months ago and could NOT quit thinking about. Then finally found it at a local mall last month-and on sale!!

Pluggin' away at school.....

Here is our timeline for school which we will be using for the next 4 years
Our scripture memory verse for the week along w/ our Greek root word for the week (the kids are have a surprising amount of fun learning Greek roots!)

I'll try not to be such a stranger anymore!!

The past week...

2011-01-30T13:41:00.000-08:00

So I dont know if I mentioned it in my last post, but we really got dumped on last weekend.
This is hubby shoveling a path to the shed in our backyard. Look how deep it is!
*click on any picture to enlarge*

We are due to get more fluff this week too. *sigh* Normally I LOVE snow and 'inclement' weather, I really do. But this whole running thing has put me in a whole new frame of mind. Snow is now my enemy. Or tempermental friend, at best.
Random picture:
A 'classy vase' (read:toilet paper roll) of origami flowers the girls made for their papa.

School:

The girls wanted to do our read aloud school set up like this and me sitting in front of them.

Thankfully I dont get stage fright. At least not in this audience. =)

Japanese flag worksheet

Working on origami with Daddy.

When it comes to origami, I am SO not your gal. You need some one to eat your surplus chocolate chip cookies? You can count on me, but origami 'how to' books read Greek to me. Of course, once I see someone do it, it all becomes clear. They are working on a frog here....

After they figured it out, they were all over. Like rabbits.

Now we have origami flowers, vases, foxes, houses, etc. ALL on their own. So proud.

Japan was a fun 2 weeks. The girls were amazed that so many people live in Japan and that the islands are so mountainous and that there are SO many 'little' islands that comprise this continent. We read lots of neat books about Japan as well. We will miss it!

But move onward, we must! Excited to venture into Russia!

------------------------------------------------------

All this travel has me thinking...if you could visit ANY place in the world, where would you go?

Also, what is your favorite 'ethnic' cuisine?

*don't forget to become a follower of my other 2 blogs! you can check out the new posts over there are http://www.fitgirlwannabe.blogspot.com/ and http://www.momof5learnsfrugal.blogspot.com/

ECC week 26 and 27 China, and other stuff

2011-01-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

Still here! I have been updating my other blogs a little more frequently, so if you want to check them out (and become a follower, PLEASE!), feel free.
www.fitgirlwannabe.blogspot.com (I have been slacking this last month on the running, please be kind)
www.momof5learnsfrugal.blogspot.com (I have been getting some GOOD grocery deals, go check it out!)

Life has been good this month. The budgeting has been working and I am very pleased. I wanted to average around $200 a week and when my first week this month ended at $247 I was a little *gasp!* but as the month continued on, things started to average out and it looks like I will ended the month a little under $800 so I am pleased =)

I started watching a baby part time at the beginning of the month and the girls just adore her. She has been a very welcome addition to our household.

It has been snowing chinchillas and aardvarks here lately (cuz 'cats and dogs' is SO overused, dont you agree?)!
Just last night we got dumped on to the tune of about 6-8 inches. I dont mind though, cuz believe it or not, I actually LOVE to shovel. Rake, too. I think there is a satisfation in doing a job and not having it immediately undone. =) The snow being as thick as it is, and us having LOVELY 3' high retaining walls on both sides of our driveway make it a bit of a challenge to get that snow off the driveway and up into the yard. Plus it was -1 with a windchill of -11. Cold.
But again, I still LOVED it =) Had to get out there at 7am to start. I have AWESOME neighbors on both sides who wonderful snow blowers, so if I dont get out there early and get my shoveling 'fix' it will all be done for me. I was nice though and left the right side of my driveway for them to do (just the left side took me an HOUR!)

*Random shot #1, one of the joys of having children with their own camera. So many things I get to see when I am uploading pics for them that I had no clue even occured.

Example #2. This was in their room one night before bed time. They had made up a 'rock band' and wanted to dress the part. Apparently, rock band members wear Buffs on their heads and have messy hair. They're not far off!

Evidence, piece #3. Teaching lil' sis to do headstands.

Not quite.

The proof is in the pudding! Or snow, in this case.

ECC Week 26 and 27 China

I am doing SO poorly with pictures. I'll get better!

Here is our book basket for week 1 in China. We really enjoyed reading about China and Gladys Alward. It's hard to believe all these missionaries have gone thru!

Coloring an ocean worksheet for China...

Lil' Sis coloring her Flag picture....

Still no art or craft projects. We are getting the schooling done, but my focus has been elsewhere the last month, plus. I have been deal seeking, budget making and decluttering-minded. But I know I will shift back to more school focused. I seem to go in waves with these things.

I'm a bit of a fad girl you might say =)

Do you get bitten by the 'must declutter and organize' bug after the holidays?

ECC Week 25 China and other stuff =)

2011-01-07T14:13:00.000-08:00

Hello friends!
I hope your transition into the New Year has been a good one.
We enjoyed our Christmas and all the December holiday craziness, but it feels good to get back to a sense of routine and normality =)

I am LOVING this little gadget SO much!!!
Running has been so much fun for me though I am sad that I havent been able to do it as much as I would like this winter. Running on a treadmill has become a HUGE drudgery to me, so I only do it in DIRE circumstances =) Running outdoors is much preferred, though in the Nebraska weather, my chance to do that are sometimes few and far between. I have only run once this week after a 10 day break (due to sickness and needing to baby my knees, shins and ankles after a running bout in my 7yr old Nikes. Yeah, my legs were a bit irked about that) =)

And this jumbled mess is my run as routed on google earth thru my Garmin training center!! SO cool!! I plug my watch into my computer, it 'grabs' the data and puts it in the Garmin Training center, then I can click 'view in Google earth' and it shows me my run on here!! SO neat! I think sometime I am going to try a run in the shape of an ice cream cone.
OR a cupcake. =)

SCHOOL:
ECC week 25 China
*ok, side note, I am going to be looking to buy the CTG My Father's World set, so if anyone has one for sale, please let me know!

Here are just some of our book basket books for this week. We are loving China!
I have been repeatedly SCHOOLED in Chinese Checkers this week. BUT I am still the Boggle champ (as least in the 10 and under set) .
We are still reading 'Gladys Alward' as our 'Christian Heroes Then and Now' book, but I found Lottie Moon at the library and checked that out as well. I read it myself today and really enjoyed it. There is only one part that I had to 'post it note' over and that is where they use the word 'pr*stitution', otherwise, this was a great book.
I also checked out 'Hudson Taylor' from the same series but haven't had a chance to read that one yet. I am thinking for next weeks Cooking Day we may order some Chinese from a local restaurant to make it easier. I love me some Sesame Chicken! Or I suppose we could just buy some Banquet Meals. *shrug*
=)

A new blog is born!

2010-12-30T11:58:00.000-08:00

That's right, this is blog #3! I just started a new blog HERE called Frugal Newbie.
My goal is to post grocery deals, coupon and price matches, giveaways (and links to giveaways), menu planning, budgetting etc...
I am SUPER new at this so bare with me, but please click over there and become a follower. My 'Followers' area is as bare as the Christmas clearance shelf at Walmart.

Thanks!

Cushnee giveaway!

2010-12-28T19:59:00.000-08:00

Giveaway for a Cushnee bath kneeler HERE which would be SO nice to have for bath time! You can learn more about Cushnee HERE !

Another stroller giveaway!

2010-12-28T19:51:00.000-08:00

Another stroller giveaway HERE I love these Kolcraft strollers!!

Stroller giveway!

2010-12-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

Can be found HERE I would REALLY like to win this!! Contest ends Dec 30th!

Little Ceasar's Deal

2010-12-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

Go HERE to print out a coupon for 'Buy 1 Get One FREE' on Little Ceasar's pizza!
Hurry because today is the last day its valid!

I'm still here!

2010-12-28T13:32:00.000-08:00

Hello bloggery friends! I am sure after such a dry spell of no posting that I lost all 4 of my readers, but if any of you have stuck around, thank you!

I have not fallen off the face of the planet this last month, though falling off the face of the U.S. and down near Hawaii somwhere would have been nice!
This has just been a very busy time for us. This post will be chok full of randomness, so be prepared!

My camera was grossly neglected the last month so we have all of 2 pictures of school. We have still been enjoying MFW in a big way, so don't let the lack of still-shots make you think otherwise.

We have whizzed through Kenya, Saudi Arabia and we are currently visiting India.

The pictures below are of the Decorative necklaces art project we did for Kenya.
Although the girls all seemed to think they made better hats.

After that we suffered a self-imposed craft drought and have done NO MFW crafts until today when we did the stone inlay craft for India. Though we cheated and used playdoh instead of clay, so I am sure it will crack when it dries and we will have gemstones all over the house. Joy.

Random picture.

Here's our Christmas tree this year. I let the girls decorate it completely, so click on it at your own risk. I figure Christmas isnt about having a perfect looking tree, so if they want to group 33 ornaments on one branch, so be it. Its quite a unique tree too....

It's not every tree that has a cute Gizmo ornament....

Or an ill-fated Gizmo ornament...

Their one Christmas Eve gift. Zoobles. Believe it or not, this is the ONLY still photo I have of gift opening. Momma forgot to check and make sure that the camera batteries were charged before Christmas morning. Oops. Rest assured there were abnormal amounts of gift wrap flying around, lots of yelps and squeals and mass quantities of those frustrating little twist ties.

This little guy *HEARTS* his new track set and this is only a SMALL portion of it. I got a HUGE amount of track, extra bits and pieces and a whole bag of motorized trains and freight cars at a yard sale this summer for about $40. So he was set and I didnt need to buy him a THING while holiday shopping.

Momma got a Garmin for Christmas. I love this thing. I may have kissed it when I got it out of the box.

After my run, I hook it up to the 'puter and I can even see my run on Google Earth and do all sorts of other cool 'techy' stuff.

Rad.

And THESE should be arriving any day now. Nike Air Max 2010+.

Retail cost: $160 Price for me: FREE

Only because of THIS:

Bought those in July, only used them for running. I wore down the heels enough to 'pop' that air cushion on the sole. We sent them to Nike to see if they would qualify for a Nike voucher. 2 weeks later I got a $160 voucher in the mail to use at Nike.com and I used that puppy right away. Hopefully the shoes will get here in the next few days as I have been running the last couple weeks in 7 yr old shoes and I am noticing that my knees and shins are kind of mad at me about that.

The other reason for my bloggy absence is due to the fact that I have been spending a fair amount of time trying to work our grocery budget down and learning the ins and outs of coupons and price matching. So far, I have worked us down from about $330 a week to $230, not too shabby! My goal is $200 or less a week (this includes EVERTHING we get Aldi's, Whole Foods and Super Walmart-meaning paper products, soap, batteries, cat food etc)...

I would love to hear your best grocery saving tip!

Thanksgiving Fun!

2010-11-29T15:14:00.000-08:00

We had a great week off from 'regular' school! One of the highlights of the week was making 'Thanksgiving Blessing Mix' for the neighbors.

First we decorated bags....
Laid out the goodies to put in the bags....

Starting stuffin'....

Then we attached a message that told what each goodie represented...

They had fun delivering them =)

The older girls did a small workbook I printed off from Enchanted Learning...

The younger 2 did a simpler book from the same site...

Little guy had a good time perfecting his Leapster skillz...

He's a stylin' boy, that one...

Thanksgiving video

2010-11-24T13:17:00.000-08:00

Here is a youtube video of my kiddos and what they are thankful for... HERE
ENJOY! **edit to say: that may not work...here it is all typed out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVE6X7r1g58 I hope that works!!

ECC week 19 Kenya (Africa)

2010-11-22T08:47:00.000-08:00

First off, here's a picture of our first snow of the season. This was Friday night, Nov 12. Started around 7pm and snowed off and on thru the night. Melted all the next day though and we havent had any of the white stuff since! I am hoping for a mild winter (as far as the snow is concerned) so that I can still get my outdoor running in!
Here are our book basket books for week 19....

Playing mancala w/ my 5yr old. She was the only one that just about beat me!

Some map work....

Grassland mural...

Impromtu Grasslands book that my 10yr old made. There were about 6 pages, each w/ a different animals/nature picture and a fact about it.

Non school related, but this little cutie got a hair cut courtesy of daddy this weekend....

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I MISS MY BABY!!!!!

Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Party!

2010-11-21T13:53:00.001-08:00

'Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows...' James 1:27

This is our 2nd year to participate in Operation Christmas Child. We are so blessed by this oppurtunity.
Last year, I shopped for the box and the girls just put the items in.
This year, I not only took them with me but they each contributed $5 of their OWN money to buy stuff for an unknown 5-9 yr old girl somewhere in the world.
They also paid the shipping cost and were THRILLED with the fact that this box was COMPLETELY from them.

This year, the homeschool group we belong to put on a 'Shoebox party'. We all gathered at a church, brought our shoeboxes, and food to share from a different place and any artifacts, jewelry, pictures or money to share from a different country.

In this picture we are getting ready to pray over the shoeboxes. We watched an Operation Christmas child video and it took all my strength to not end up a blubbery mess at the end!

Oh those sweet children!!

Here's all the kiddos (minus a few little ones) w/ the shoeboxes...

The gal who spearheaded this did SUCH a good job. There were 2 tables for each continent. One table held artifacts/pictures etc from that continent and the other had an activity to do. The kids were also given a map of the world. Once they had completed an activity, they would put a star on that continent....

Here they are doing origami animals for Asia...

Face painting from Africa....

Oreo penguins for Antarctica....

Kangaroo sack races for Australia...

Igloo building for North America...

'Dutch pins' (bowling basically) for Europe...

(There was also 'futbol' for South America, but I somehow didnt get a pic of that)

That whole counter was full of food from different places....

YUMMY!!!!

I cant wait til my girls are a little older and we can volunteer at the distribution center. I have always had a BIG heart for giving and helping the less fortunate and I cant wait to share that passion w/ my girls =)

ECC Week 18 Kenya (Africa)

2010-11-13T13:36:00.000-08:00

Jambo!
We have just completed our first week in Africa (Kenya) which means we have also completed the first HALF of ECC! We have reached the pinnacle and now we are cruising down the other side of the mountain to the finish. And loving every minute!

Here are some pictures from our first week. I apologize that I didnt take any book basket pictures. We had a lot of good ones this week!

John 3:16 page...
Labeling different countries in Africa...

Color labeling different grassland areas around the world (I didnt know different grasslands were called different things depending on where in the world they are found!)

Grasslands worksheet...

We have used this book for some read aloud time-very informative!

We have LOVED reading David Livingstone, and as with George Muller, we are already a few chapters ahead. I see my library has more books from the 'Christian Heroes: Then and Now' series so we may be checking more of them out in the future!

Here is a cute picture Ariel took. Savannah was having 'school' one night this past week and would write something on the white board for the 5 and 7yr olds to copy (this was the 5yr olds picture) and then they had to illustrate it. Too cute.

Had to share this one too. My 7yr old who is just about the smiling-est, skippy-est, most jolly-est child you will probably ever meet is in LOVE with her stuffed animals. Many times a day she'll go skipping down the hallway and we hear 'I'm going to take care of my stuffed animals now, they need me!' and she will proceed to arrange them on her bed, or 'groom' them, or talk to and hug them. She is such a sweetie. The girls have their own camera that they share and she took this and about 48 other pictures of her 'stuffies' (and thats probably NOT an exaggeration)

(and yes that bottom right animal is a Gizmo from the movie Gremlins and NO my children have not watched the movie. She saw it at Toys R Us one time and INSTANTLY fell in love. So she got it for her birthday in October and she carries it E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E.)

And a non-school note, we got our first snow of the season last night here in Husker country. Normally I LOVE stormy, snowy, inclement weather, the more inclement, the better. But now that I am a runner (don't laugh), I LOATHE hearing there will be snow on the ground. I had to skip my long run today due to the snow. I PROBABLY could have done it, but I got a really junky night sleep last night (up from midnight to 5 a.m.!!) so I think that was the Lord's way of telling me that I wasn't suppose to run today. I am hoping that it will be fine tomorrow as most of the sidewalks have melted today.

HOWEVER.

Its suppose to be really cold overnight, so I am hoping that the sidewalks wont be solid sheets of ice tomorrow. I'm not equipped with the oh-so-cool YakTraks or screws shoes with which to tackle such an environment.

I GUESS I could pick up ice skating and call it a day...

ECC Week 17 week 2 GERMANY (Europe

2010-11-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

I still cant believe how wonderful My Father's World is. We have loved it every step of the way so far. I cant believe that my older 3 girls have memorized most all the countries of North America, South America, and Europe. Ok, ok, *I* have memorized them too. =)
Here was our book basket books for week 2 in Germany. We really enjoyed reading the top book 'A Family from Germany'
For science, we learned alot about rivers and lakes. And in the Living World Encyclopedia, we learned about Pond Skaters and how they are so light, they can walk on top of the water without sinking. We illustrated this w/ a paper clip and water. I cant explain why it worked, but it was pretty cool.
We tried to do what the teacher's manual asked us to-partly open a paper clip into an 'L' shape and use that to place a 2nd paper clip in the water and the 2nd paper clip should float.
Didn't work.
So I went to the trusty My Father's World forums and found another method.
We cut a small square of toilet paper-twice as long and wide as the paper clip. We placed the paper clip in the center of the square and carefully laid it in our bowl of water. Slowly, the toilet paper sank to the bottom but the paper clip stayed on top of the water. The girls thought it was super cool.

We learned a little about castles this week and watched a few YouTube videos showcasing some TRULY gorgeous castles in Germany. Then we got to draw some...

It was a sad time when we said goodbye to George Muller this week. What a testimony that man leaves behind. It is amazing to think about how many lives he has touched and how many lives that God has allowed to be spared thru the work of this faithful, generous man.

We have decided to skip the vocabulary cards as my girls DREADED doing them. Now we just flip thru the book, I cover the definition and tell them the name and show them the picture-then they have to tell me the definition. Has been working well. We also use Fridays to go thru our memory verses.

The weather here has been BEAUTIFUL these past few weeks. Hard to believe late fall in Nebraska can be this nice! I am hoping it sticks around for awhile. I dont know how I will fare trying to run in the snow!

Maybe its time to look into snowshoes....

Red Kettle Run 5K 10/30/10

2010-11-01T14:20:00.001-07:00

Normally I would save all my running/fitness posts for my FITNESS BLOG
but this past Saturday was just too good NOT to share! =)
I ran my 3rd 5K this past Saturday. The Red Kettle Run 5K was put on by the local Salvation Army. It was the first year for them to do this race and entry fee was 10 cans of food or $10. Being that it was the first year, I didnt really expect there to be alot of people but WOW! I am thinking at least 500 if not more.
Hubby ran this race with me too, his first race ever. He is pretty athletic and in shape and ran this like it was BARELY a jog while I was huffing and puffing like an overweight hog.
ANYWAY.
He really helped me to push the pace in this race. My 'soft' goal was to beat my first 5K time (Aug28) of 32:19. Second goal was to beat 30:00 and HARD goal was to beat my 5K time from the Race for the Cure on Oct 3 which was 29:00.
Honestly, as I was running, I didnt think I was going fast enough to even break 30 minutes. I was SO sure that I wasnt going to beat my Race for the Cure time until next Spring.
So....we are on the final stretch, but I couldnt see where the finishline was and didnt know how much farther we had. Hubby asked if I wanted to pick up the pace and I said no as I didnt know how much farther we had and I was BARELY sustaining the pace I was going at, at that time.
Well, we rounded a bend and a bunch of trees and I saw the finishline and finish clock about 50 yds ahead which said 27 minutes and some odd seconds. I could NOT believe my eyes!! So I put on the rockets and blasted thru to the finish and finished up in 27:30!!! TWENTY SEVEN MINUTES AND THIRTY SECONDS!!!! I still can NOT believe that my times have come down so much since my first 5K at the end of August.!!
Anyway, I am so convinced that it was because the hubs really helped to push me along =)
The gal in the picture is my friend Keely who I met on Daily Mile (like a Facebook for fitness, basically) and whom I finally got to meet in person at this race. I hope she and I can meet up at more races in the future.
It's so funny...at about the beginning of September, I was wondering when I would be able to run a 10 minute mile, and here I ran THREE POINT ONE miles at a pace of 8:52 per mile!!!!!
I was on a runner's high that WHOLE day and even now, 2 days later, I am STILL smiling when I think about it =)

ECC Week 16 GERMANY (Europe)

2010-11-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

Guten Tag! We have enjoyed our first week in Germany! Somehow I didnt get a picture of our book basket books, but we had several favorites. One being 'The Candy Bomber' by Michael O. Tunnell, which tells the story of how pilot, Gail Halvorsen, became known as the candy bomber during World War II. INCREDIBLE story, I highly recommend it. There is a shorter version as well called 'Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot' which is in our book basket for week 2 in Germany.

Passports
Germany John 3:16 coloring page....

The Wee Sing songs this week really got the girls' dander up and we had quite a spastic dance sesh during school time. Even the boy was infected.

Science experiment to show the different densities in salt water vs fresh water. We had 2 cups of fresh water, one had blue food coloring...we had 2 cups of salt water, one had green food coloring...

We put a few drops of the blue fresh water in the clear salt water and noticed that it stayed at the top, due to the fact that it is less dense. Therefore, the salty green water should have sunk to the bottom of the clear fresh water cup, but we didnt notice this happen, it seemed to just disipate. However, we didnt wait longer than a few minutes to see if it would all gather together after sitting for a bit due to the fact that....
they wanted to play some water-glass-and-spoon music =) So I had to do some water adding and taking away to get them the right notes to play a very off key sounding Mary had a Little Lamb. =)

Pretty verse for the week. I have been very pleased how well they have been remembering the memory verses.

We have REALLY enjoyed reading George Muller and have even read more than 1 chapter per day. What amazing faith that man had and what a testament to how God answers prayers!

We also started the tradition of eating M&M cookies while we read which has made us look forward to George Muller time THAT much more =)

Side note: nothing to do with Germany but we tried to make our own stuffed crust dough/pizza last week. I thought it was just 'ok', the dough tasted too 'floury' to me and was a little too dry...how DOES Pizza Hut do it???

We also enjoyed some good 'ol fashioned fort building time. Josh and all his Pillow Pet homies are protecting the girls.

Au revoir, France! ECC week 15 France (Europe)

2010-10-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

Book basket books for week 2 in France:
Took a walk last weekend. Loving the fall colors...
*click any picture to enlarge*

She was hoping a leaf would fall down right into her waiting hand =)

Classification activity: hard to do with all the different objects they brought to the table, but we managed!

We only have on more country to learn for our geography game!

Working on making the Eiffel tower. What a challenge!

They got this far and called it good =) Savannah made the background for it. Not exactly geographically correct, but it'll do =)

COOKING DAY!!

I didnt realize, until I looked up french recipes, how complicated alot of them are! I was unaware of the fact that some of the ingredient lists would be longer that my week long grocery shopping receipt. Ok, maybe I am exaggerting a TAD, but wow. I am a 5 ingredients or less kind of gal. Ordering out is even better. =)

But I got a little bit of my Paula Dean mojo going by turning this....

into this!
And this.......
Into this! (baked brie)

The table: We had: casse-croute (basically grilled cheese), baked brie in a pastry crust with honey, apple cake (suppose to be apple tarts but we cheated and made apple cake), strawberries for the crepes, french onion and potato soup (both from cans, cuz I can!), french bread, croissants and crepes.

No one liked the french onion soup, the older 2 liked the potato soup, everyone liked the croissants and french bread, the older 3 liked the casse-croute, everyone (including me) LOOOOOVED the crepes w/ fresh strawberries in them and powered sugar on top-oh.my.word. No one really cared for the brie and crackers or the baked brie. I thought it was quite tasty!

Happy girls awaiting their feast!

Yum.

Tornado boy had set up an audience to watch his 2 trains go 'round and 'round the checker board....

I come back 10min later to to a sold out crowd =)

See you next week in Germany!

Homeschool Park Day

2010-10-21T14:18:00.000-07:00

We had a park day today with some moms from one of our local homeschool groups. It was in an area of town I rarely go to, so I was unfamiliar with it, but we really liked it. Not too much playground equipment, but right behind me, as I am taking this photo is a LARGE grassy area (bigger than the inside of a football field) witha nice 10' wide sidewalk all the way around it!!
I figure maybe sometime I can take the girls to play there with my dad (who is retired and is a good watchdog for us) and I can do my runs while the girls play!
It was a beautiful day out, so I had no guilt what so ever about playing hooky from homeschool.
Well, I guess it doesn't really count as hooky when we did the MFW portion of school yesterday with Wednesdays work and will do the 3R's stuff tomorrow =)
Tomorrow is our last day in France!
We went shopping today for some food with which to celebrate. To be quite honest, I had a hard time finding anything I wanted to make. Either there was too much dairy (we have intolerance in our family) or WAY too many ingredients. So I went easy and cheap!
I bought a can each of French Onion Soup and Potato Soup so the girls could try them....French bread (because what's a study of France without some French Bread?)....strawberries to fill the crepes we will hopefully make tomorrow....and we also bought apples. I was going to make an apple tart, but decided to change things and make an Apple Cake-we LOVE apple cake. Oh and I bought some Brie. Apparently, Walmart doesnt carry guyere cheese. Or I just wasn't looking in the right place-quite possible actually.

On a side note, I will be running my next race on Halloween....with my hubby!!
I have wanted him to run a race with me for a long time now (well, I HAVE only been running since July so I guess 'long time' is relative)...it IS an afternoon race so I am a bit concerned about that-all my runs and races have been in the morning thus far...AND its my longest distance yet- a 15K (9.3 miles)! So please pray that I will be able to run it strong and steady.

As long as I dont puke at the end, I'll count it a victory. Actually, in the runner's world, if you DO puke, THAT'S when you count it as a victory. =)

ECC Week 14 France (Europe) and the zoo!

2010-10-16T10:20:00.000-07:00

Bonjour!
We just finished our first week in France. Here are our the contents of our book basket for this week. I pre-read them all. Great books!
The girls put their France flag sticker in their passports. WITH a snack of pretzels on the side, of course. We seem to be incapable of doing any 'together' school without a snack.

Our France coloring page....

Geography game. We only have 3 more countries on here to learn! I may add more of the ones that My Father's World didnt include (Denmark, Netherlands, Belguim etc...)

Vocab cards for the week....

We have enjoyed reading more of Kingdom Tales this week and cant WAIT to get to the 'Tales of Restoration' part of it. We are also really liking George Muller and reading about Menno Simons in Hero Tales. What courage!

The girls were a little grossed out to learn that one of the main sources of nutrients in a cave for the animals that reside there is bat guano! YUCK!

We also really liked listening to the Irish and Scottish music on our 'Wee Sing' CD so I may try to find some more of the same online later this upcoming week.

THE ZOO!

My parents called me Monday morning OUT OF THE BLUE and said 'Hey, you guys wanna go to the zoo?' !!!!
I knew they had planned on going this week sometime, but I expected a least a 24 hour notice. We didn't plan on going AND I had school all laid out for the day, but I figured, this is one of the beauties of homeschooling-doing fun stuff on a whim!

So the school stuff got pushed aside for the day (we did end up making it up, as we squished Thursdays work in with Fridays).

The weather was PERFECT on this day, NO wind, a little cloud cover. Probably around 70. Prefection.

The girls, myself and my parents on what I like to call the 'photo op lions', at the front of the zoo.

The aquarium. I think the girls could spend an entire day in here. We never get tired of it.

Running has been going really well. You can check out my fitness blog to read more about my journey to fit!! FITGIRLWANNABE

ECC Week 13 Days 3-5 Norway (Europe) and other stuff

2010-10-16T10:12:00.000-07:00

We have been LOVING these cooler temps! As is probably evident by my absence here. We have been outside a lot and going on walks.
ECC Week 12 Days 3-5

Here are our vocab cards of this week....
and our 'pretty verses'....

We enjoyed Norway!

On the 8th, we were invited by another homeschooling family to go to a Pumpkin Patch. I haven't been to a pumpkin patch since before kids, and the girls have NEVER gone, so they were quite excited. This line up here was about 22 kids, from about 7 mommas. And this didnt show all the kids 2 and under. We were a big group!

Took a hayrack ride out to the patch of pumpkins. Each paying child got to have 1 free pumpkin...

Then it was back up to the main part of the farm to enjoy the animals....

The girls had a BLAST and can't wait to go back!

ECC Week 13 Days 1-2 Norway + other stuff

2010-10-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

Hello folks! I am still in bit of shock that we are in OCTOBER!! Where did the summer go? In our area, our first snow fall last year was on the 10th of October, only 5 days from now! I am hoping it holds off for at least another 2 or 12 weeks =)

Ok, non-school stuff first...my race on Sunday was AWESOME!!!! I have started an exercise journal on wordpress, so that's where I will be posting my workouts from now on, so you can check out that full race report there... FITGIRLWANNABE scroll down to the bottom for my race report.
In short, I OBLITERATED my previous 5K personal best, which was 32:19 (well, race personal best) from my race on August 28th. I was hoping to beat it by at least 30 seconds which would have been a really good improvement over 5-6 weeks, but I ran it in 29:00!!!!! I sprinted hard the last 50 yards and thought I was going to puke at the end, which apparently is how you are suppose to feel if you give it your all, so I guess I did my part. =)

I went biking yesterday morning and this morning at Lake Z close to my house. Yesterday I saw 6 deer, a couple huge flocks of geese and a few cranes. This morning, I saw 4 deer, more flocks of geese, some cranes and about 6 turkey!
The highlight yesterday was that one of the 6 deer I saw was SO close off the side of the trail that I could have reached out and touched him. Literally, he was 2 feet off my right side. How cool is that. I dont know WHERE his mind was, or if I all of a sudden tapped into my inner super power and became invisible but he acted like I wasnt even there, that I wasnt just whipping by him at 10 miles an hour, quite weird. OR maybe he thought HE had tapped into his inner invisi-deer and I couldn't see HIM...who knows....?
Todays highlight...as I was huffing and puffing around the west side of the lake (always the hardest for me) I heard something rustle off to my left so I stopped and 6 huge turkey (ok, maybe more, didnt count them) crossed the trail, about 10 feet behind my bike!
And a bit of weirdness, there were a LOT of dead mice on the trail...is the cold getting to them? Are they starving? Am I scaring them to death with my super speed? Don't know. All I know is its like playing Mario Kart and trying to avoid the bananas....yuck.

Ok.

ECC Week 13 Days 1-2 Norway

Not too many pictures for the past few days...
Here is one of the coloring pictures the girls did while I do our read alouds...
World Geography pages that Savannah and Ariel did (quite challenging for them actually)

Living World Encyclopedia illustration

We STILL havent finished our rosemaling boxes, hopefully we will do that at SOME point this week. I am kind of slacking the art department, its just not my 'gift' or 'forte' if you will. If you want to see a really awesome My Father's World blog, check out Miranda at a moment in My Father's World

Yeah. She's all kinds of awesome.

ECC Week 12 Days 3-5 Norway, and other stuff =)

2010-10-02T10:09:00.001-07:00

Wow! I feel so special!! My first award =)
A big thank you to Miranda at A Moment in My Father's World for this super lovely 'One Lovely Blog' award.
The Rules: Share 3 things I think are Lovely
1: My God
2: My Family
3: Homeschooling

Now, I need to pass on the loveliness to 3-5 blogs that I find wonderfully lovely....
A New Day in My Father's World

Farming Wisconsin

Life the Way we Do it

The rules, should you choose to accept it: =)
1: Put the one Lovely Blog award logo on your blog
2: in a new post, share 3 things that you think are lovely
3: pass the award on to 3-5 other bloggers
4: link the nominees in your post
5: let the nominees know they have won the award by commenting on their blog
6: share the love and link to the person from whom you received the award

Disclaimer: No need to pass the award on if you dont want to or dont have time to. I'll still love ya =)

We went to the zoo on Thursday. We figured we better enjoy it as much as we can before the cold weather really hits!

This gorilla was HILARIOUS! His expressions were so funny. He liked to making 'hooting' noises at people who came to his window, then when they left, he would look down the hall to see who was coming next. I caught this picture a millisecond too late, right before this is TRULY looked like he was grinning!

This gorilla kept giving everyone the evil eye. Recession is getting EVERYONE down apparently =)

Yesterday I went to pick up my race packet for my race on Sunday, here it all is! I am SO excited.

ECC Week 12 Day 3-5 NORWAY

Vocab cards for this week....

Memory verse for this week....

Coloring page....

These are the countries that we have worked with this week on our Europe map. We have 8 more to learn this upcoming week and then I hope to add in a few that MFW didnt include....

Savannah doing her World Geography page...

Non-school stuff:

Went biking this morning for the first time in a few weeks. It was so great to get back in the saddle! However, I was unprepared for the temp (low 40s) and I think I lost one of my ears. BRRR. Lesson learned: next time, bring ear muffs!

I am excited and nervous for my race tomorrow. The temp is suppose to be 41 at start time. The coldest I have run in is 49 and I wore a long sleeve shirt with a tank top underneath and shorts, 5 minutes into that run, I ended up having to take the LS shirt off...SO I was going to wear that same set up tomorrow when I was checking the temps earlier this week (when it was saying race morning would be between 46-49) but it keeps getting lower and lower, and NOW its saying we have a frost advisory tonight! Yikes! So I am thinking I may have to bust out the running tights tomorrow even though I havent worn them yet to run in-I'm a bit nervous about that.

I just don't want to be too warm because I know I will warm up quite a bit once I get going...

Apparently what some people do is wear 'throw away clothes' over their race clothes at the beginning of the race and they strip them at the start or right after the start when they warm up. And then they throw them on the side of the road!

Apparently, the race 'people' pick these up after the race and donate them to charity-so that's an option....I'll just have to see what it feels like tomorrow. The last thing I want to do is overdress.

Wish me luck! I'll give you a full report Monday or Tuesday!

Weekend and ECC Week 12 Day 1-2 Norway (Europe)

2010-09-28T14:29:00.000-07:00

--Book basket books for Week 12-13 NORWAY

I hope you all enjoyed your weekend. The weather was fabulous! Saturday night after dinner, we took the girls over to Lake Z by our house for a nice evening walk. And then on Sunday we went downtown to walk across the Bob Kerry bridge which connects Nebraska to Iowa. We have never been there before and the girls thought it was so neat. AND we were lucky enough to have the Ferry go under the bridge while we were on it!

The girls wanted me to get a picture of them with the ferry in the background. If you turn around 3 times, squint and tilt your head to the right you can probably JUST see in there in the background. Oh well, I tried!

Standing in 2 states at once-they got a hoot out of that =)

Standing in front of the 'Big Muddy'. I didnt know the Missouri River was the longest river in the US, so that was cool to learn. And see that guy on the right. Yep-marathoner. TOTALLY forgot that Omaha 1/2 and full marathon were taking place that same morning and the route went right under the bridge, so we got to see some finishers coming in-so neat.

SCHOOL

ECC Week 12 Day 1-2 Norway (Europe)

We are in Europe! I have always wanted to visit Europe. =)

I have realized going thru this curriculum that there is SO much I didn't know about this great big world of ours. Not only about animals, biomes, zones etc, but the countries! I could probably tell you where about 10 countries were before starting this curriculum, now I know all the countries in North, Central, AND South America (as do my older 3 girls) and we have already learned where 9 countries in Europe are! I feel so well traveled.

=)

Passports....

Labeling the countries in Europe (we're not learning all of them, I think they only have us learning 22 or so, but we may learn more on our own)....

Putting the flag stickers on the correct countries...

Their illustrated pages that goes along with the Living World Encyclopedia-this time, in color!

I printed out a picture of a moose (since they can be found in Norway!) and the girls colored these while I read 'Kingdom Tales' (so exciting to see the path Hero is taking!)

Day 2- illustrated page that goes with the Living World Encyclopedia....

Art Project this week: Rosemaling

Savannah was going to draw an image and then paint it.....

But then she scratched that idea and painted her whole box white (as did girl #2 and #3). They want to finish them tomorrow (which mean I gotta go thru the whole paint mess AGAIN tomorrow)....

Yep, THIS mess....

For some reason she found this SO funny.

*singing*~~~~ 'One of these things is not like the other'~~~~

She marches to the beat of a different drummer =)

Non-school related:

Runs have been great this week. My run today was for 3 miles but I stretched it out to 3.1 just to see what I might expect for my race on Sunday (Race for the Cure). My Ted E Bear Hallow 5K race was run in 32:19, this morning I ran it in 30:40!!!!!! I am SO excited.

However.

The Race for the Cure is expecting around 20,000 people *gulp* and a good number of those will be walkers and a fair number will probably have strollers. I am hoping I can get up towards the front of the line so I'm not weaving around to get past the walkers and therefore KILLING my time. I have also heard this is a hilly course-major downhill at the beginnning, major downhill at the end, so i'm curious to see what that will do to my time.

Knowing that, I think I am going to shoot for running it in 33:00. My last 5K race was pretty much all flat.

My last run this week was suppose to be Fri or Sat, but I am going to do it on Thursday (5 miles) and then rest on Fri and Sat so I will have nice, fresh legs for the race.

As long as I don't fall on my face, I think I'll be fine! =)

ECC Week 11 Day 5 End of Brazil

2010-09-24T14:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, Blogger is acting goofy and not letting me add the first few pictures of this set. You're not missing much, just pictures of some polenta simmering away and the girls peeling oranges. Picturing it in your head? Ok, were good then =)

This was called 'Orange Salad'. It was orange slices with salt and sugar sprinkled on them. It called for pepper too, but that was a little too out there for me. They were funny tasting to say the least...

Heres the table! The 2 pots in the middle hold Feijoada (Meat Stew) which apparently is a very common dish down there. The pot next to it is Peppered Rice, but I left out the chili pepper, it was actually a little bland for our taste. Flanking the pots is fried polenta on the left (some ate it w/ honey on it, some had it with just a little salt). The two plates at the top hold sliced avacado (which grows in the rainforest) and next to that is Corn Cake (which didnt cook all the way thru so I had to scrape out the good parts, they all loved it though! )
The bottom 2 plates are brownies (they DO have cocoa bean trees down there, so I had to represent that somehow!) and then the white things are Cocadas which is basically just sugar, water and shredded coconut. I do NOT like shredded coconut so I didnt even try these. The girls didnt seem to care for them very much either.
Recipes came from HERE and HERE.

*CLICK PICTURE TO ENLARGE

Here are a few of the books they read this last week and some pictures they colored

These were their vocab cards for this week: Swamp and Marsh.

After we cleaned up after lunch (I think I did 3 loads of dishes!!), we went for a walk over to the pond. We got to feed the 8 geese who were loitering around. We ACTUALLY took bread over there to see if we could feed the fish (sometimes they are near the surface and will eat, othertimes not), and saw these geese. I was a little leary so we started to throw bread in the water about 30 feet away from them (they were on land, not in the water) and they immediately started heading towards us. So I had the girls stay behind me while we fed them just incase one of them decided to go bully on us.

One goose keeping nipping the behind of another when he would try to get a piece of bread-poor thing! So I was sure to throw THAT goose (the poor outcast) the bigger and best pieces. I LOATHE bullies.

See you all in Europe next week!

ECC Week 11 Day 3-4 Brazil (South America)

2010-09-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

Non-school related:
It's been a great week so far! As most of you know, I have been running the last few months (ok, so its probably more like jogging, but humor me). And it has been going so well!
This was cutback week which has actually been a bit tough on me, only running 2 miles at a pop seems so, I don't know, pointless! I know thats not true and that my body NEEDS to cutback in order to build up, but I LOVE running the higher mileage.
However, my run yesterday was really a morale booster. I beat my previous 2 mile time by 30 seconds. My previous 2 mile PB (personal best) was 19:25 and I ran it yesterday in 18:55!! I felt like a rockstar.
Tomorrow is my last run for the week (all 3 runs this week were 2 milers), and I will be doing hill work. Thankfully I have lots of hills a few minutes walk away, so I don't have to drive anywhere. I'll be going up one hill, over to the next street and down that hill, and then over to the next street and UP that hill and so on, until I have covered 2 miles. I actually LOVE going uphill, but I need to work on my downhill form as you can really hurt your knees if you don't do it right (don't ask me how I know.)
Next week my runs will be 4, 3 and 5 miles. I cant wait!!

ECC WEEK 11 DAY 3-4

What a blast this last 3 weeks has been. Every country we have studied we have enjoyed more than the last. We cant wait to go to Norway next week!

During school yesterday, the girls all colored pictures of macaws while I read aloud to them...
*CLICK ANY PICTURE TO ENLARGE*

Today they colored pictures of Blue Morpho Butterflies, which live in the Amazon, while I read some facts about them. Oh, and my 6yr old wanted to color a picture of a jaguar as well =)

While we were reading about hunters in the Amazon in the Living World Encyclopedia my 8yr old made a playdoh jaguar =)

Then they each choose one thing out of the reading that interested them. They illustrated it and wrote something about it. For some reason my older 2 decided to leave theirs 'natural'. The 6yr old choose a bat because she loves bats right now, and my 5yr old drew a tarantula. I have NO CLUE why she wrote the word 'jar' above it.

Then we were to make some paper 'MAF' airplanes in keeping with our reading of Nate Saint. We finished the book today and LOVE LOVE LOVED it. Very suspenseful towards the end. But its also a little brutal. I would read a chapter ahead before you read it aloud to your kids so you will know if there would be some parts you would need to re-word or water down for your more sensitive kiddos.

So we turned these....

Into these!

The girls thought it would be neat to put our Lincoln Log indians around the planes like they are the Auca warriors....
Then we put some of the army men around it to represent the Ecuadorian soldiers....

My 8yr old decided she wanted to make a tree out of this rolled up cardboard (from the inside of some wrapping paper)....

So she did! She plans to add fruit that you would find in the Amazon to it, later today, and then she wants to use it as a prop tomorrow for our Brazilian party. Creative cookie, that one.

3 great websites for ECC Weeks 9-11 Brazil

2010-09-22T06:53:00.001-07:00

Stumbled on these GREAT websites today and thought I would share
Amazon Rainforest
Journey in Amazonia
Brazilian food/recipes

Enjoy!

ECC Week 11 Day 1-2 Brazil (South America)

2010-09-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

Not much to report, but I didn't want to leave ya'll hanging!
Here is a picture of our book basket books for this week, lots of good reading. We love our library!
We have had a blast delving deeper into South America, and we love reading about Nate Saint. We are on Chapter 12, where they have been making gift drops to the Auca tribe and getting ready to meet with them. One of my girls was heard to say 'That was the best Chapter yet!'
I am thinking of leaving the My Father's World recommendations for language arts...we just really arent feeling the Primary and Intermediate Language Lessons. So we may go back to what we were doing before-Learning Language Arts thru Literature, or just do PLL/ILL 1-2x a week and do LLATL the other days, undecided.

Non-school related:
Went out with my hubby this past Saturday to celebrate our 14 year anniversary, and being the awesome guy he is, it was a day devoted to whatever I wanted to do....so shopping it was! I needed some winter running gear, so we went to a few stores and got me a few t-shirts, long sleeve shirts and running tights-all for great prices. Gotta love a sale! Then we putzed around the mall for awhile and while there, I got a pair of sunglasses that are PERFECT for running and biking in (even if its a cloudy day, I have to wear shades while biking, or I take a bug or three to the eye-not pleasant!), AND the specs were only $5!
After shopping, we ate at Valentino's. I am a BIG buffet lover. Seriously, if you want to be my best bud, just take me out to eat at a buffet restaurant. Or just throw me a donut, I'm good either way.
Afterwards, we saw a movie before heading home to get the kids settled for night time. It was a GREAT day just to spend time with my sweetie without 5 chirping mouths!

ECC Week 10 Days 4-5 Brazil and other stuff

2010-09-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

I cant believe we only have one more week left in South America! It'll be with sad faces that we pack our bags to move on to other lands. But if we must, we must!

I sheepishly admit that we have not been playing the geography game for South America that came w/ our curriculum. Instead, the girls have enjoyed testing their speed w/ labeling the South American countries at Sheppardsoftware.com. So far, Ariel holds the record-getting all the countries of South and Central America right in 33 seconds!

Yesterday the girls did their 'pretty verses' where they write out the memory verse for the week and then decorate the page. This week they decorated it with rainforest themed pictures
*CLICK ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE*

We also added a few more animals to our Amazon rainforest collage

Our vocab cards for the week:

DELTA

JUNGLE

Then, oh joy of joys, we went to the zoo! For school of course.

We have one of the best zoos on the whole planet with an AMAZING indoor jungle. So I took the girls to explore and made a little worksheet for them which I'll show you towards the end. I typed out a bunch of South American animals and they had to see if they could find that animal at the zoo and then write down its Latin name and any fun info about it if they wanted to...

Here is a picture of the rainforest from the top level. We had fun imagining ourselves in the rainforest and picturing the different levels. The girls determined in this picture that we were about at the understory level....

I'm not quite sure if these next two guys are from South America, but holy cuteness, Batman. HAD to get a picture of them.

Here begins our South American animals....

Note: these fish are one of the largest fresh water fish in the world. They look to be almost 6 feet long! We just got done watching our Jeff Corwin video on the Amazon, and he had these fish featured in his movie-the girls thought that was pretty neat.

Two-Towed Sloth: I dont think he's changed position in the last 4 years...though we DID learn on the Jeff Corwin video that they do come down to the bottom of the tree to, *ahem* 'do their business' and they only do that every 7-10 days!

These creatures aren't native to South America though sometimes I think they are DIRECT decendants of the howler monkeys...

Here is the worksheet I made for the older 2. The younger 2 just wrote down the animals name on a sheet of loose leaf paper if they wanted to

Once we got home, it was time to finish the rest of our school, which wasnt much given that Fridays are 'light days' with My Father's World (we LOVE that).

We really enjoyed watching the Jeff Corwin movie on the Amazon and would recommend it if your library has it. It's a Discovery School movie and its title is 'The Amazon: Aquatic Ecosystem'.

I finished up week 3 of my training plan this morning! 4 miles in 41minutes. WOO HOO! I discovered a site a few months back www.mapmyrun.com where you can map your run before or after to find your distance. I have been adding my workouts at www.dailymile.com It will be fun to look back after I have been tracking them for a few months to see the progress (hopefully!).

Way off subject, can you believe Christmas is just over 3 months away?!

ECC Week 10 Days 1-3 BRAZIL and a little 'bout runnin

2010-09-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

Well, we had a fantastic weekend. We celebrated 10 years of motherhood for me and 10 years of life for Savannah! I still cant believe that I have been a mom for 10 years and have 5 wonderful children. Anyway. Savannah choose this year to have a store bought cake but she wanted to decorate it herself. With Littlest Pet Shop animals. Fine by me! Saved us a pretty penny. She picked the cake out herself and bless her money-savin' heart it was only $8.99!
Jaidyn cant have the cake when we get store-bought, so I always make her a crockpot hot fudge sundae cake which is DIVINE. It makes its own hot fudge sauce as it cooks. Yep. Its as yummy as it sounds. If you want the recipe, it'll cost ya $1,000....... =)

SCHOOL: ECC Week 10 Day 1-3 Brazil

We have had so much fun learning about South America and the Amazon Rainforest. SO much to learn!!

We made a rainforest picture today showing all the layers of the rainforest. Each girl got to draw and color a 'layer' of the forest from emergent, all the way down to the herb/floor layer.

Here is our finished product. For today. You can click on it to enlarge. We plan to add more animals into the various layers over the next week.

Well, here is our Science experiment one week out. And it did the opposite of what it was suppose to do! Partly my fault though. We were suppose to set the cups in a warm place but there is NO warm place in our house and I didnt even think to set them outside during the day. DOH! Anyway, I explained to the girls what was SUPPOSE to happen and why, to which the older 2 both said 'yeah, we already knew that ma'....GRRR! Why bother!!?? I guess I should just be thankful that I have some smart little cookies on my hands =)

I plan to watch this tonight and if its acceptable, the girls will watch it tomorrow. I have watched Jeff Corwin before but I cant remember if I felt he was appropriate for the girls to watch....anyone?

Running has been going great. I am on week 3, day 3 of my training plan (Hal Higdon's 15K plan which you can see HERE

I actually had my best run yet-time wise. A 2 mile run in 19:20! I usually run a mile in 10:45-11:00 minutes so this was really good for me. I have been biking 1-2 days a week for 5-10miles and am doing the elliptical 1-2x a week as well.

I am hoping, if I can continue to train this winter, that I will be able to run a 1/2 marathon next fall. But even if I cant, I am LOVING what running is doing for me. Love the new found energy, confidence, fat loss etc... And I love seeing the muscles developing in my legs...now if I could just find a way to channel the fat out of my tummy I would be one happy momma!

Oh well, it'll be a good insulator this winter, right?

ECC Week 9 Days 2-5 Brazil (South America)

2010-09-10T14:17:00.000-07:00

Well we did it. We squished 5 days of school into 4, and we're no worse for the wear!

What a fun week this has been!
In Science this week, we learned about the Tropical Rainforests. For an experiment, we planted bird seed in 2 cups-one is covered one is not. And we'll see which sprouts first. The girls all predicted the one with NO cover would sprout first as the other isnt getting any air.
We started these on Wednesday. So far, no change, except that the one with the cover is getting a wee bit of fuzzy stuff growing on the soil.
We are also reading Nate Saint this week and are really enjoying it. The girls colored a picture of a Toucan while I read.

For art, we made Carnival costumes. Instead of using pillowcases, we took a big piece of paper, folded it in 1/2 and cut out a moon shape. Then they decorated with paints, markers, punches, pom poms, and sequins. Oh, and crayons. The table was CRAZY messy for a while there!

For our Vocab cards this week, we learned about the Zones (Polar, Temperate, Tropical). The girls think it funny that when its the dead of winter here, they are wearing shorts and tshirts down in South America!

On Thursday or Friday of every week, the girls do a 'pretty verse'. They write out the memory verse for the week and then decorate and we hang it up.

We have enjoyed this book alot!

You HAVE to click this picture to enlarge it. That baby sloth looks like he is smiling and is so enjoying being wif his momma =)

This weekend we plan to do the terrarium which was scheduled this week.

Tomorrow is my oldest daughter's 10th birthday. TEN! It's crazy to think, but I got married at 18. And she will be 18 in only EIGHT years now!! Of course, according to her daddy, she ain't NEVER gonna get married! =)

And then on Sunday is my hubby and I's 14 year anniversary. He's like fine wine, he just gets better and better as he ages. =) I am one lucky woman to be married to such a GREAT guy =)

Cultivate and wait...our little bamboo trees

2010-09-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

Last night was wonderful.

It was the first meeting of our school year for the local Christian homeschool group I am a member of. I LOVE this group and am always encouraged by the other moms.

Last night, one of our veteran moms gave a devotion that really spoke to me (as they usually do) and reminded me of something I had read a few years ago.

I remember reading about the Chinese Bamboo Tree and the fact that after you plant the seed, you see NOTHING for 4 years. FOUR YEARS.

But then.

The FIFTH year, it not only sprouts, but grows at a crazy fast rate. Eighty to Ninety feet in that one growing season! 80-90 FEET!!

Though it looks as though nothing is happening that first 4 years, the bamboo tree is developing a tough and strong root system that will allow it to grow at such rapid rates once it 'matures'.

It really resonated with me when I think about what we put into our children. How we cultivate these little seeds hoping and praying for maturation. WANTING to see the fruit of our labor. PRAYING that they practice what we preach.
But many times, we are disappointed.

What we may not realize is that those seeds we are planting are taking root. Deep in their heart. Where we can not see. And we don't know what progress is being made. Only God knows. Only He sees. But, if we 'keep on keeping on', I believe that when those seeds mature and as our children grow and age, we will be pleasantly surprised at the growth we will see.

So cultivate, and wait and you WILL see the fruit of your labor.

If we labor for the Lord, we do not labor in vain....

Labor Day and ECC Week 9 BRAZIL (South America)

2010-09-07T14:19:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you but we had a fan-TAB-ulous Labor Day. Made even more so by the fact that my brother and sister in law mosied (moseyed?) on down from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to share in the days activities. Actually, without them, there really wouldn't have been any activities, so I guess we have them to thank for all our Labor Day hoopla!

I started the day off with a 3 mile run on a whole new route-I LOVE running thru neighborhoods for the first time! Then it was home to pack the absurd amounts of food for the picnic....then my brother and his wife, and my mom and dad showed up. Pandamonium!

My brother and his wife know that the girls have been wanting kites for 1/2 of forever, so they brought some with them this time and helped them to put them together before we headed out to the lake to picnic. *click any picture to enlarge*
The day could not have BEEN more perfect for kite flying. The wind was CRAZY! At one point Jaidyn was getting a little panicky because the wind was blowing her kite so strong that she thought it would pull her away!

After everyone (above the age of 10) was quite done with the kite flying, we headed down to the lake to search for pebbles and flat stones to try to skip across the water. A feat which was only mastered by my brother, hubby and Ariel as well! She was so excited.

It was a bit warm while the sun was out (maybe a lot warm, this little boys cheeks were like two rosy apples there for a while), so I poured some cold water into his snack tray and he had a hay day splashing around and making a whole mess of himself and the stroller.

Ok, SCHOOL!!

ECC Week 9 BRAZIL (South America)

We are starting our study of South America this week-namely Brazil. We had fun learning about Canada the last 2 weeks but I can not WAIT to dive into South America-so many interesting things to learn about!

First are some pictures our our book basket books for this week. I have collected educational magazines from yard sales and have marked the front of them so I know which weeks I can use them in our book basket. Here are our ones for South America....

Books for South America-I have pre-read them all and they are SO good!!

Putting the Brazil sticker in our passport books...

Shading in the rainforest sections of the world for Science....

Labeling the countries in South America....

We started reading Nate Saint today and I think we are really going to enjoy this book, much more so than Cameron Townsend. This will be an interesting week, trying to put 5 days of school work into 4. I am SO thankful that My Father's World has scheduled light Fridays, it will making the squishing much less squished. =)

I will have some links to share tomorrow to enhance your Brazil/South America knowledge-so stay tuned!

Fun Day off!

2010-09-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

Everyone needs an unexpected day off for a little fun, homeschoolers too! Well a 'sort of' day off, we still did about 15 minutes of school this morning so they weren't off the hook totally!

We had a great day today.

First stop was the library to drop off our 4, 247 books and pick up almost as many. Seriously, is this a homeschooler disease? We can NOT walk out of the library with less than 40 books. And that is not including books for school! We got a great stash of books now for Brazil next week, we cant wait to dig into them!

Next stop was to Culver's for lunch. We almost never EVER go out to eat in a restaurant (now ordering in the drive-thru and bringing it home is a whole 'nother thing-don't want you to get the wrong idea!) So this was a HUGE deal for this little passel of chickies. They were bouncing around in their seats with excitement waiting for the food to show up.

Last stop was to a park we rarely visit but that they frequently talk about. Its about a 15minute drive from home...and we are SURROUNDED by so many great parks so we dont drive often to visit this one.

But they were SO glad we did.

I ran into a friend who I used to go to highschool with and who homeschools her kids (with My Father's World too!! They just finished ECC a couple weeks ago).

So the girls were THRILLED to make a few new chums.

I hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day!

ECC Week 8 Days 3 & 4 CANADA

2010-09-02T17:57:00.000-07:00

Bonjour! Au revoir! Merci! Comment vas-tu?
All words and phrases we have learned this week while studying Canada.

I have been slacking on the picture taking the last few days but I do have a few to share!

On Tuesday (or maybe it was Wednesday? I dont know...loosing track of days here) we made Igloos out of cotton balls on blue paper. Girls had loads of fun with this and went a bit off track and started making other creations...
Like a 'stand up igloo' as my 9yr old called hers...

Six year old said 'No idea' when I asked what her creation was. Ended up being a cotton 'blob' which she decided to throw away...what a waste... =)

Savannah's finished igloo-not too bad!

I read this book aloud this week whic the girls really enjoyed. Its about a husband and wife team who decided to commit 5 months of their lives following the migration of the caribou to thier calfing grounds. They have to battle fierce weather, steep mountains and even bears! It was quite an exciting book!

The older 2 girls have been reading this aloud to all of us-we really enjoy this book.

We are so excited to start Brazil next week!

Does anyone have any big plans for Labor Day?

We are having family in town and can not WAIT to see them (my brother and his wife), and will probably end up having a picnic lunch over at a local lake like we did last year. Ariel has been praying about this at EVERY meal and bedtime for the last few days =)

My biking has been going well. I have managed to bike almost every night this week- about 6.75 miles a night. The weather has been lovely! However, I do think cyclists should wear a full helmet. I dont know how many bugs I inhaled or how many went STRAIGHT for my eyes. YUCK!

I have been staying up far too last the past few nights and have missed my morning runs =( But I am DEFINITELY going to go out tomorrow morning-its going to be so nice!

We are taking the day off school tomorrow to visit a local park and then go out to lunch somewhere. The girls dont know yet, so no blabbin'!

Have a great weekend!

ECC Week 8 Canada....and race results

2010-08-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

Well I did it. Yep, me, number 199. Ran in my first EVER 5K this past Saturday. It was AWESOME. The atmosphere was SO friendly. It was a 10K and 5K race. The 10K folks lined up ahead of us little 5K peons. We all had ankle chips so we could find our EXACT time after the race.
I felt so 'official' with my 199 bib safety pinned on to my shirt. Lots of butterflies floating around my tummy pre-race!
I made the first timers mistake of not pacing myself and ended up going a little too hard in my first 1/2 which means I was running on LESS than fumes at the end (werent purty).
BUT I did finished in under my goal (goal: 34 minutes....actual time 32:19). AND I placed 13 out of 21 in my age division.
Anyway, I have officially been bitten by the racing bug and cant wait to sign up for another one. I think I am going to have to start donating plasma or renting out my children to pay for all the races =)

On another fun note, I got a bike this weekend!! Ok, you might be saying to yourself, 'Doesnt Anna HAVE a bike? Didnt she post a couple few times ABOUT her bike HERE or HERE?' Well, yes, yes I did. BUT after riding it only a few times, I just knew it wasnt right for me.
THANKFULLY Walmart took it back and I PATIENTLY waited until hubby and I could so some serious bike shopping.

We did just that this past Saturday. We went to 3 or 6 bikes stores. Some were good, some not so good. One place we walked around for TEN minutes and not one sales person approached us. At another, they did not have even ONE bike in my size....So we saved the best for last. The little hole in the wall place that looks SO run down from the front. This is where we got our bikes from 12 years ago and is the only place in town that carries Raleigh's (which is what we had 12 years ago and I just a little bit loved)....
The guy worked with me for TWO hours. Let me test ride numerous bikes and fined tuned all the gadets, adjusted all the adjustments and tweaked all tweakments....ya know, just generally made me feel pretty stinkin' special =)
I didnt take a pic of my sweet ride as I put in the garage and dont feel like traipsin' down there right now, but here is the sales stub. Hey, I had to take a picture of SOMETHING! =)

Anyway, lets talk a little bit 'o school...

For science today, we read about plants and did the 'celery' experiment. We (tried) to remove all the xylem from the brocolli on the right and left the xylem intact in the celery on the left. By tomorrow we should notice wilting in the celery on the right and should notice the leaves on the left getting purple-showing us that the xylem takes the water up to the leaves. Now I didnt have any food coloring (except green and yellow which would have defeated the purpose) so I used grape kool-aid. I hope it doesnt mess up the experiment. Hope the celery has a sweet tooth as its VERY concentrated!

We read about Greenland in Window on the World and learned that the language there is...Greenlandic! The girls have so much fun saying that.

Learned about Industry and Nature in our Illustrated World Atlas, which for some reason prompted my 8yr old to draw a blue print for her zoo/animal exhibit....

The animals in her sisters animal/zoo exhibit prompted my ALMOST 10 yr old (12 days!) to draw a picture of the animals (real live breathing animals) that she would like for her birthday.

Not gonna happen sister. Sorry.

Its suppose to rain over night, but I am HOPING it will stop by 630 and be dry enough for me to take Mr. Raleigh out for a ride tomorrow. I ran 2.5mi this moring and was TEMPTED when I got home, to grab the bike for a quick spin but I was already pretty pooped (SUPER humid here today) so I decided against it. I broke him in last night, but cant wait for our next time together....*swoon* =)

ECC Week 7 Day 3 CANADA

2010-08-25T13:05:00.001-07:00

It was another uber lovely day today here in the good ol Cornhusker state so the girls and I decided to head out for another walk, this time to the Fruit and Veggie stand near by (and near by Culver's which the girls keep looking at with such longing that I ALMOST caved in and took them. But my resolve held and we managed to escape with out stopping).

*the following pics were all taken by Savannah and Ariel (my older 2 girls)....

These are what we came for. We ALL love a good fresh peach. Last year we went almost everyday to a fruit stand to buy some and would throwdown a good 6-7 of them in one sitting!

Of course it WAS a school day, so I made sure we got to the books when we cam home.

Coloring in the Canadian flag and writing down a few facts about it....

Then, since it was still such lovely weather out, the girls had lunch out on the covered deck. Well, 3 of them did. My oldest was fearful that an insect invasion was going to take place so she choose to dine on her jelly sandwich and fresh peaches INSIDE the house where the only 'insect' she would have to deal with would be the 2 legged variety- and there's only ONE of him. =)

Today we made our canoes to go along with the Paddle To the Sea book we read and video by the same name (we all preferred the video)....we watched a YouTube video to see how to make the canoe (Youtube has taught us SO much...how to count in French, how to cut an onion without crying, a few Irish Dancing Steps and last, but definitely not least, how to moonwalk. That was a fun one)

We cut a curvy line in a piece of blue cardtock, taped a popsicle stick to the canoe and were able to make him glide thru the 'water'. The girls want to add dirt and twigs to make it more life-life.

We'll see.

Savannah took these pictures yesterday evening of some flowers in our backyard. She took about 10 and these were the best 2.

Its hard to believe that in about 6 weeks, it will be October!! We're savoring the summer and soaking up the sun while we can.

ECC Week 7 Day 2 Canada

2010-08-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

What a lovely day. After the soaring temps we have been having, today was a welcome respite. High 60s and low 70s with a nice breeze.

We did a teeny bit of school this morning and then decided we just had to get out and go for a walk. The girls didnt know that I had a secret ..... =)
We walked through our park, and as many times as we go, it never gets old. We LOVE this place.

SURPRISE!! We walked over to Culver's (which we have never done before) for one of the girls' FAVORITES drinks- a Strawberry Cooler.

And some french fries and onion rings.

Hey, it was a .75 mile walk-I needed to refuel, ya know? Even if it WAS only 1/2 past breakfast....

The walk back home turned into a Nature Walk and we ended up looking for a Maple Tree from which to gather leaves for our Maple Tree Rubbings (which we did today instead of the canoe craft-we'll do that tomorrow).... I have NO clue what a Maple Tree looks like, but since we know that a maple leaf is in the middle of the Canada flag and we HAD just studied that yesterday, I had a faint idea of what we were looking for...

"Hey mommy, is that a Maple Tree"?

WOO HOO! I think this is it! Gather some leaves, girls!

Photo op courtesty of Savannah. She told them where to sit and how far to lean forward. Budding photog, that one....

Then back home to settle in for some schoolin'

Dictation on the dry-erase board....

Coloring and labeling the Canadian provinces...

Demostrating a food web....

The Maple Leaf Rubbing Craft...funny-the girls thought I said we were going to do a Maple Leaf RUGGING...they though we were going to make a rug out of the Maple Leafs!

ECC Week 7 Day 1 Canada

2010-08-23T12:51:00.001-07:00

ECC Week 7 Day 1...we are in Canada!

The girls got their passports back today and we put the Canada sticker on page 3, then we colored the John 3:16 page for Canada....
The older 3 copied the memory verse for this week, Matt 5:11.
In Illustrated World Atlas we read about Canada and learned that its the 2nd largest country (Russia being the first) but has a very low population for its size.
We learned about food webs in the Living World Encyclopedia and read about the Garifuna people in Window on the World. I love the gentle introduction this book gives to cultures around the world, how they practice thier religion, and how we can pray for them.

I also found a few videos on YouTube the girls enjoyed. One was how to count to 10 in French, another was a few children's songs in French...Aloutette, Frere Jacques...oh and I think there was one more, but it escapes me now...

We also watched Paddle to the Sea today which is a short 30min video that shares the story of a canoe and indian a little boy made that he hopes will make it to the ocean. The girls really enjoyed it. Tomorrow we will read the book, and then do a canoe craft.

I also DVR'd some nature programs, one of which was on the Niagara Falls. We watched that today as well and the girls were amazed at the sheer volume of water that pours over the falls every second. It really is breathtaking-just watching it on tv...I cant imagine what it must be like to actually visit the falls!

Its almost nap time here, so I am off to get the little fella ready to spend some time in his cage while I finish phonics with Jaidyn (age 5) and putz around on the 'net for awhile.
Have a great day!

A Day in the Life of....ME!

2010-08-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

Last week for the Not-Back-To-School-Blog Hop! This week features 'Day-in-the-life'. So...here's mine! *click any picture to enlarge*

Typically my morning starts out with these bad boys. We usually hit the pavement to the tune of 2-3miles...

Then back home to shower and eat breakfast and spend a little time in the Best. Book. Ever.

Then I get the school books ready....

And make sure the class room is tidy....

And then they get it up....

Little

By

Little....

Two year old makes a mess and leaves his sisters behind to clean it up-story of his life...

Last kid finally awake! Apparently the camera flash is very bright at 830 in the morning...

Doing our morning chores....

Starting our school...oops! Destroy Boy is trying to write on someones paper!

Putting him in his corral, er, I mean Blanket Time, so we can school without distraction. Well, at least with LESS distraction...

Apparently, I added that picture twice so ignore this one!

After school, its time for lunch!

After lunch we check the chore charts to see what we need to do before some free play time...

Then we put Destroy Boy in his swing while we clean...

then its time for a little free play time....

Then some quite reading w/ the book basket books....

Then a little 'recess'...whats school without a little recess??

Reading and Snack time while Destroy Boy recharges his batteries (aka as nap time)....
Then dinner time.....
And since this was Friday-it was also movie and popcorn night!

After the movie, the girls helped clean up, we brushed teeth and it was time for some quiet room time before bed.

Hope you enjoyed a peek into our day!

Book basket books for Canada Week 7

2010-08-22T14:05:00.001-07:00

Lots of great books for our first week of Canada study. I have pre-read them all and really enjoyed them! You can click the picture to see the titles more clearly....
Tomorrow (Monday), we will watch this Paddle to the See DVD and then on Tuesday, we will read the book and make a canoe craft. I am still undecided on if we will do the soap carving craft which I had planned for this week....I can just see that being an issue for some of my children who like thier creations 'just so'. =)

ECC Week 6 Day 5 Mexico

2010-08-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

It is with a sad farewall that we bid Adios to Mexico this week. We have learned a lot and had a boatload of fun. But the bright spot is that we will be traveling to much cooler temps this week coming week-CANADA!
Sorry this post is late, meant to post on Friday but plumb forgot!

These are our geography cards for this week...Gulch and Canyon.
Also, I made memory verse flashcard this past week.
On the front is the memory verse....

on the back is where it is found in the bible.

Now, off to Canada!

Website for book levels

2010-08-20T06:20:00.001-07:00

Have you ever wondered what level your child is reading at? Or KNOW the level but want to find other books IN that level? I stumbled upon a great website last year that I thought you might enjoy.
BOOKWIZARD
You can type in the name of a book and it will tell you the interest level (like grade 2-4) and the reading level (maybe 3.5). This has been helpful for me to see where my girls are reading-wise.
Enjoy!

FIESTA!!!!!!!

2010-08-19T12:18:00.000-07:00

FIESTA TIME!!!!

We had SUCH a good time at our fiesta today. The girls and I started to decorate last night (ok, they ran around and played with the balloons while I hung up streamers).
And then I finished up this morning. This is a picture of the room before they woke up today.
*click any picture to enlarge*
Our display wall. If you notice, we also put sombreros and maracas on the balloons (the girls colored the pictures and we cut them out and taped them on)....

Display area: some worksheets the girls did these past 2 weeks, some of our art projects and some of the library books we enjoyed....

Here are the pictures they colored....

More pictures of balloons...

We put on some Mexican music while we started to make our food...here we are making Mexican wedding cakes...

Dancing with Grandpa while the Mexican wedding cakes cook...

Finished product BEFORE they were doused in powdered sugar....

Homemade tortilla chips before they were baked....

Baked tortilla chip-yum

Making guacamole....

and homemade tortillas...

The table! (though I forgot to put the Mexican Wedding Cakes and Tortilla chips on there-oops!)

homemade tortillas, pico de gallo, guacamole...

Tomatoes from our garden, refried beans, taco meat, cheese....

Apple Enchiladas...
Eating the food-so so so so good

After lunch, we were ready to hit the pinata! I had to take a picture of this. Them laying under the pinata SO excited to start...

hitting the pinata....

The loot!

They had so much fun today. We all loved the homemade tortillas and I probably WOULD have liked the homemade tortilla chips-if the girls would have left me any (we only used PAM and salt on ours)! They have requested that I make those MUCH more often. They also loved the mexican wedding cakes (didnt use nuts), and the Apple Enchiladas.

I dont know if I have said it before but.....

I LOVE MY FATHER'S WORLD!!!!!!!

ECC Week 6 Day 3 MEXICO

2010-08-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

Its a good thing I'm not allergic to tissue paper flowers or I fear I would be ODing on some type of allergy med about now. I taught the girls how to make tissue paper flowers yesterday and I think they have made another 40 of them since then. Its out of control I tell ya. I need to stage an intervention of some sort!
Oh well, it could be worse right? And they ARE pretty...but our limited space tells me these flowers may be the short-lived variety...

Anyway, we didnt really have much school today to do outside of the normal 3 R's.
We colored the Mexican flag today and the older 3 each wrote down a little info about Mexico on the bottom of the page.

And last night, the girls asked me to print out some coloring pages on Mexico so they could color them, and then use them to decorate the school room for our fiesta, which is tomorrow. (You can see a TINY amount of the flowers that now take up residence here).

Here is the final product.

We also made our pinata today.

Putting the loot in....

We have several food allergies here and a few that are sensitive to dyes which made filling this bag a little tricky...but thanks to Whole Foods and finding some cheap little toys at the Dollar Tree I managed to make a fun little stash for them...

The finished pinata-they all thought it was great fun to walk under (probably hoping it would spontaneously burst)...

It was a beautiful day today so we had a little recess time after lunch....

Josh, if you didnt know, is CRAZY about Thomas the Tank Engine...

He always has to check it out....

Make the proper seat adjustments....

And check out the 'guts' of the machine....

This was our read aloud book today...

We are so excited to be having our fiesta tomorrow! I back decorations and balloons at the Dollar Tree and we will be making Mexican food tomorrow and listening to Mexican music.

Come back tomorrow for pictures!

ECC Week 6 Day 2 MEXICO

2010-08-17T12:54:00.001-07:00

ECC Week 6 Day 2 MEXICO
This week is going by far too fast! We are SO enjoying our stay in Mexico and learning alot.
Today we learned about Nature, Farming and Industry in our Illustrated World Atlas, and about how animals and plants deal w/ the dryness in the desert in Living World Encyclopedia.
Oh and we threw a little language arts and math in there for good measure.

I read this book aloud today...
*click any picture to enlarge*
We all really enjoyed reading about children in Mexico and learning a bit about their daily lives and their interests.

But of course, the highlight of the day was craft time.

We didnt get to our Yarn Art yesterday, so we did it today instead....

They all did surprisingly well with this, though our fingers got all sticky and 'yarny'. Savannah and Ariel's are on top, Skylar and Jaidyn's on the bottom.

We also made tissue paper flowers today....

For now, the girls made 2 each but they want to take the supplies to bed tonight so they can make more during their quiet time....

I'm hesitant to admit it, but I THINK My Father's World may actually turn me into a craft-lovin' momma =)

Student Week! At the Not-Back-to-School Blog Hop!

2010-08-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

Its Student Week at the Not-Back-T0-School Blog Hop!

Here is my 'class' for this year. We are an all girls school. At least for a couple more years. =)
*click any photo to enlarge*

Student 1: Savannah is 9 (will be 10 on the 11th of next month, and she is MUY excited). This picture is HER to a T. She ADORES, LOVES, WANTS, OBSESSES ABOUT and KNOWS horses. Ever since she was about 5. And she has NEVER wavered (unlike Student #2, but we'll get to her in a minute).

She likes school and 'gets it' pretty easily. She struggles a bit with spelling but excels at the rest. Learning comes easy to her. She is the typical big sister and oldest child and loves to plan all sorts of activities and 'pretend plays' and 'classes' for her siblings to be involved in. Or she makes 'stores' with her unwanted stuff and tell them they can buy it from her. For free. =) She DEVOURS any book she can get her hands on and that pretty little head of hers is PACKED with knowledge.

Student #2: Ariel is 8.5. Coming just 16 and a half months after her big sister, she is a carbon copy of her momma and big sisters' side kick. When she is 'into' something she totally IMMERSES herself in it and gets a tunnel vision of sorts. She learns all she can about it, reads about it, talks about it, etc... Her interests change like the wind and she can be SO 'into' something and BOOM! Its gone and its onto something else. She has a different learning style then her older sister and her and I are learning together what that is. She is an EXCELLENT speller (completed 7th grade spelling last year!) but struggles with math a bit.

She is an EXCELLENT helper and is always at my side in the kitchen helping with whatever she can. She LOVES her little brother and is pretty much, his best buddy. She also loves to read but would rather be 'doing' something. She is a very happy, outgoing child and always want to make sure everyone is having a good time.

Student #3: Skylar is 6.5 and will be 7 in October. She is a sweetheart through and through. She is happy 99.9% of the time and almost NOTHING can get her down. She always has a smile on her face and is, what her sisters call a 'hug bug'. =) She is doing well with school but she would rather be drawing pictures of rainbows and kitty cats. She is VERY high energy and has calloused knees from running and sliding on our wood floors so much. She is little bit of sunshine floating around our home.

Student #4: Jaidyn just turned 5 in June. Go straight down Crazy Avenue, hang a left at Silly Street and you'll be right at Jaidyn's door. She is a BALL of CRAZY energy. She is also CRAZY about babies. Books about babies, real babies, baby dolls etc. Sometime she still thinks she IS a baby.

Ya know how a 180lb dog still thinks its a puppy and will jump in your unsuspecting lap? Yeah, thats this child. She loves her momma though and would rather be at my side than anywhere else. I will cherish that as long as it lasts. She is in our gentle introduction to schooling and is, for now, just doing phonics and handwriting, as well as sitting in on our My Father's World lessons. She wants to be doing whatever her sisters are doing and would like to reverse roles with her big sis sometimes and be the one in charge. It's tough being the youngest of 4 sisters!

Student-in-training: Josh is 2 and a half, is our 5th child and only boy. And ALL boy he is! WOW! We are always having to think 27 steps ahead of him. He is always trying to take things apart to see how they work, or breaking it...or turning it into a 'vroom vroom' of some sort. He is CRAZY about trains, particularly Thomas the Tank Engine (we are so thankful he isnt the least bit interested in My Little Pony or Strawberry Shortcake, both of which are in abundant supply here). He's got a stubborn streak a mile wide and thinks his purpose in life is to get into as much mischief as he can. He also goes by 'Mr. Mischief', 'Destroy Boy', and 'Double Trouble'. He is also our wild card kid-not only a boy but the only child w/ blue eyes and light hair in a family of brown eyes and black/brown hair!

I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about my clan. Go to the BLOG HOP to meet some more students!

ECC Week 6 Day 1 MEXICO

2010-08-16T13:43:00.001-07:00

Hola! This is our 2nd week in Mexico. I am a little lacking in the picture department, my apologies! I did however get a picture of our book basket books for this week. *click picture to see titles*
We are getting ready to do our craft project today which is Yarn Art. Would have done it earlier but our day has been running behind since this morning when I let the little people outside to play for what ended up being a very EXTENDED recess. It is beautiful here today!
We read about Haiti today in Window on the world and learned that they are the poorest country in the Western world. We prayed for them to have great wealth, not in earthly riches, but in riches that will never spoil or fade.
We listened to 2 Wee Sing songs and our favorite was Chi Chi Bud. Gonna have to go find some more Jamaica music- we were groovin'!
Our new memory verse was Matt 4:19 which was SO ironic as yesterday, Ariel (8yrs old) put on a bible club for her younger sisters (ages 6.5 and 5) and the 'theme' for her club was that verse! She printed out a craft for them to do and everything, I should see if I can find it and take a pic-it was a hanging fish mobile-she helped them assemble it and everything! Hmmm....maybe I should put her in charge of craft time...? =)

For Science we learned more about deserts and transpiration by putting leaves in a plastic baggie and putting them in the sun for a few hours. The girls were amazed by how much moisture and 'pourable liquid' there was in the bag! Science is so fun when you can 'see' it.

We are feeling much healthier today and I think we will have a clean bill of health by the end of the week which will be SO nice. The girls really want to go to the park and its gonna be so nice this week!!

Most likely we will do our fiesta on Thursday instead of Friday as the girls really want Grandpa to come for it and he will be out of town for 1/2 of Friday. So it looks like we'll need to do our 2 other craft projects tomorrow and Wednesday (tissue paper flowers and a pinata 'mommy style' which means: easy and no-mess) =)

ECC Week 5 Day 5

2010-08-13T18:23:00.000-07:00

Short post. Still living life in the den-o-sickness....I STILL have not caught this sickness so YAY for me!!
ECC Week 5 Day 5 MEXICO

Today we did vocab cards. Dune and Desert.
We also finally painted our clay suns. Which morphed into painting on paper, then painting on the newspaper, then to getting it all over our hands. BUT they had fun. =)

ECC Week 5 Day 4

2010-08-12T14:00:00.000-07:00

Mexico is FUN! The girls are having so much fun learning about it. And I LOVE all these travel games they are playing-so fun!!

Today is our day to 'do' Health. It is required by the state we live in. Right now for Health we are reading Prudence and the Millers and the girls really like the little stories. Though the KJV verses have them looking like I just asked them to tell me the square root of a donkey. Yeah, that look. Thankfully I keep my bible close by and can flip to the NIV version and then things go back to normal.
Today we learned how to say different colors in Spanish (most of which they already knew) and some phrases. I think they have said 'Hola! Coma estas?' to each other at least 2 or 10 times.

I have a membership to EnchantedLearning.com. $20 for a year and unlimited access to their website. LOTS of great printables and educational 'stuff'. It has been WELL worth it in my opinion. Today I printed out a little info sheet on Mexico.....

Then we did an activity worksheet that went along with it.

AND Today was Science experiment day. The experiment was to put an ice cube in each of 2 bowls. Place one in a sunny window and one in a closed cabinet. THEN put an ice cube in each of 2 baggies. Bury one 5-12" underground and lay the other on top of the ground in full sun. After the ice cubes that are in the sun are melted, take out the ones in the cabinet and the one in the ground and compare to see why animals seek shade in the desert or burrow under ground.

However its about 257 degrees here today with steroid-induced humidity....MEANING that its super cool in the house (gotta keep it cool or the kiddos act like they are DYING or heat exhaustion when they go to bed at night), and Death Valley outside.

So.....when the one outside in the sun had melted, we checked all the ice cubes. The one under ground was ALMOST all the way melted (I was surprised, thought the ice cube would be bigger, but the ground is still pretty warm, even 6" under!) while the one on the ground was completely melted.

The one in the cabinet and the one in the sunny spot inside looked almost identical! But again, our house is pretty chilly (I usually have to wear pants, a zip up jacket or long sleeve shirt and socks all day!), so this experiment was a bit of a bust. I put the before pics below of the inside ice cubes in hopes of doing some before and after pics, but they werent much different. Just picture slightly smaller cubes with a small pool of water around them.

But the kids thought it was fun and already understood that of course it will be cooler in the shade or underground then it would be out in the sun.

So I just wasted 4 ice cubes for NUTHIN'.

Ready to get back to it! and ECC Week 5 Day 3

2010-08-11T11:49:00.001-07:00

I get to exercise tomorrow!!! YAHOO!!! I never thought I would be 'yahoo-ing' about being able to exercise but I really REALLY miss it. In a 'I-would-miss-oxygen' type of way. I decided to take Mon, Tues and Wed this week as COMPLETE rest days (well, as complete as you can get as a momma) to give my legs a little vacation from the pounding that is running. BUT I'm not going to run. Yet.
I am going to start out on the elliptical tomorrow, and Friday, then go for a brisk walk on Saturday and Sunday, rest on Monday and then run/walk 1.5 miles on Tuesday. I am HOPING by running a little less miles (and running on the local highschool track for 1 of my runs) that I can prevent any overuse injuries.
So.

SCHOOL
ECC Week 5 Day 3 Mexico

Today in Writing Strands Level 3, Savannah had to write a paragraph about a subject of her choosing...guess what she choose....
Yep, this girl is CRAZY about horses. She could probably write book.

We also started playing our geography game today that came with our 'Exploring Countries and Cultures' curriculum. I was amazed at how many countries they knew when we were done!

Learning about Mexico and getting passports has prompted them to play NUMEROUS travel games. Today they told me they are going to Panama, so they wanted me to read about Panama out of the encyclopedia and give them the 411. Later they are going to Venezula and then on to Cuba. It is sweet to see them packing thier bags to go on their 'trip'.

Right now they are making 'Information books' on each place they visit.

I LOVE MY FATHER'S WORLD!!!!!!!!!!

ECC Week 5 Day 2: Mexico

2010-08-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

Today was ECC craft day! YIPPEE!
We choose to do the clay sun faces....

Warming up the clay....

Making the sun shape....

Using a toothpick to shape the facial features....

Cutting out he facial features...

Arranging the suns rays...

All 4 happy smiling suns!

ECC Week 5 Day 1: MEXICO! and other stuff...

2010-08-09T13:47:00.000-07:00

We had a fun vacation last week. At least the first part of it. The part after that? Where the kiddos got sick? Yeah. Not so fun.
It was Skylar on Tuesday, then Ariel on Friday, then Savannah and Jaidyn on Saturday and now, today, Josh and hubby are getting it. Bleh.
I have also discovered I need to scale (WAY) back in my running for awhile. I was doing way too much too soon and my shins, knees and ankles are a bit off-their-rocker about it all. So I am going to follow a much gentler 5K plan (instead of the 1/2 marathon plan I had started) to appease them. I am more than a little disappointed about it as I love love love to run. But better this than to get injured and be sidelined for even longer.

Last week I found this on the table. Looks like my 9yr old is starting her own newspaper. Too cute. (click to enlarge)
ECC WEEK 5 DAY 1 MEXICO
We started our study of Mexico today. I handed out their passports which I worked on last night. The girls were SO excited.

They colored a picture of the Mexican flag and um, is that a Mexican cowboy? I dont know. Not well versed in Mexican cowboys.

Savannah did a page from the World Geo book. We had to follow latitudes and longitudes to find certain North American islands. Quite fun actually.

Then we had to get our world map out that we started during our study of the USA and find Mexico and color/label it.

For Science we are studying Deserts. We labeled some deserts on this page using the Living World Encyclopedia as a guide.

I remembered I ordered this pack of missions/geography type stuff a few months ago from a site I found on the MFW archives for Exploring Countries and Cultures. They sent me 4 passports along w/ coloring pages, maps etc...the girls had fun cutting out the little stamps to put in these passports to use 'just for fun'. And they sent it to me for FREE!! Gotta love free =)

Not-Back-to-School-Blog-Hop: School Room week!

2010-08-09T05:38:00.000-07:00

This is the 2nd week for the 'not-back-to-school-blog-hop' and this week, everyone will be sharing pictures of their school room, or if they dont have a school room, the area they do school in. So here is ours. *link is at the bottom to go to the blog hop to see more*

We have an eat in kitchen so we really dont use the diningroom to eat in, so we decided to use IT for our school room. When we first moved here 4years ago, we started out schooling in the basement but always seemed to drift back upstairs, so I thought, 'why fight it?'
Originially I did NOT want a 'schooly' looking house. However, this seems to be what is working out best for us, so I'm just gonna go with it!

This is the main portion of our school room. *click on pictures to enlarge*
If I go stand by the table in the above picture and turn around, this is the other end of the school room. This was suppose to be a 2nd living room, but again, never used as such. The door way in the left of the picture leads to our living room, the doorway to the right leads to the hall and stairs to go downstairs. This end of the room is our computer station. The table along the left side of the picture is where we dry out art projects.

Here is a closer up look at the area. A lot of the stuff under the table is my craft stuff. The green box on the table holds book basket books for our My Father's World curriculum.

This is my 'active' bookcase and holds all our current curriculum. Well, mostly. The top shelf is my stuff, the middle shelf has teachers manuals, read alouds and the little 3 drawer unit holds math flashcards, post it note and white out tape. The 3rd shelf is all our MFW stuff. The 4th shelf is a hodge podge of workbooks. The bottom shelf holds Destroy Boys toys (which you cant see, its a disaster, trust me).

This book case holds books we may eventually use, workbooks I have purchased at yard sales, 'Book it' books (I have to ration out the books they read for book it time. My 9yr old reads a book a DAY). And encyclopedias as well as some of my vintage childrens books collection.

The 4 drawer unit houses crafts stuff and math u see blocks. The top drawer is a 'teacher drawer' that holds things like stapler, hole punches, tape, etc... My hubby installed a removeable swing in the door way here so Destroy Boy can swing when we do school (or whenever he feels like it). I can turn it around to face into the kitchen as well.

The 3 drawer unit on top of the 4drawer unit holds computer paper, lined paper, and construction paper.

This 4 drawer unit belongs to the girls. Each girl has their own drawer for their crayons and coloring books or whatever other treasures they want to put in there..

This is our game cabinet. It mainly houses board games and educational games as well as playdoh, and some extra craft stuff. The top holds our blanket time pieces for Destroy Boy as well as his 4 boxes of toys for blanket time. The green box holds a child sized accordion I got at a yard sale. No one here can play it, but they girls thinks its peachy to try!

This is my wall. On the top sheet I write down things I will need to order soon. Under that is my agenda for MFW. On the yellow wall is my daily schedule for school (which I posted last week), and under that is a yearly calendar.

I hope you enjoyed taking a peek into my schoolroom! Go to HERE to see more!

Book Basket books for ECC Week 5-Mexico

2010-08-06T08:10:00.001-07:00

Well, our 'fun' vacation week has fizzled out due to sickness which I am sure we caught at the zoo on Monday and therefore shared with whomever was at the library on Tuesday-sorry library peeps! So we have been spending our time going thru large quantities of tissue and drinking our weight in honey water.

Anyway...I have been getting set to start up school again next week, which is our week in Mexico. We are all so excited! I got a bunch of books to tie in with next week at the library (have I ever mention how much I love the interlibrary loan system?)

Here are the books for next week. I have read thru them all (I pre-read everything for my girls). I am VERY strict about what I allow them to read and these all passed my inspection. You can click on the picture to see it larger if you want to know the titles.

Here are the books that are on deck for our 2nd week in Mexico. I cant put all the book in the book basket at one time as my girls will devour them in a day or two. No joke.
I have read thru most of these as well, except for the book at the front of the stack (Tortilla Sun). I will take a better picture of these at the end of next week.

Our School Schedule

2010-08-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is our daily school schedule!
As most of you know, we are doing My Father's World 'Exploring Countries and Cultures' this year. For those of you unfamiliar with this curriculum, click here to learn more about it. We think its the bee's knees.
Now as for this schedule. Its not down to the minute. It's not even 'clocked'. And there are days we deviate from it drastically, but its nice to refer to so I can be sure everyone has something to do and isnt busy wandering off and becoming knee deep in glue sticks and pipe cleaners.
So, here is our schedule:

Read Bible and Do Together School for the older 3
-Jaidyn colors, or works on worksheets during parts that dont pertain to her
-Josh watches video

ARIEL MATH and PLL with me
-Savannah online math drill
-Skylar Complete Book of Animal worksheets or other worksheets
- Jaidyn watch Letter Factory
-Josh blanket time

SAVANNAH MATH and ILL with me
-Ariel math drill online
-Skylar starfall.com and math drill
-Jaidyn watch Letter Factory
-Josh blanket time

SKYLAR MATH and PLL with me
-Savannah copywork/cursive
-Ariel copywork/cursive
-Jaidyn activity box
-Josh blanket time or playdoh/coloring

JAIDYN PHONICS and HANDWRITING with me
-Savannah geography online/finish up other schoolwork
-Ariel geography online/finish up other school work
-Josh snack

We typically start school around 10, sometimes earlier and are finished by noon for the most part. We save read alouds for the afternoon and usually do book basket time during the tornado's, er, I mean the 2 yr olds nap time.
Now the only thing missing here is Spelling Power which we will start this upcoming week (we did it last year, for 1/2 the year but havent started it up again this year, so I am unsure if we will move that to the afternoon or move other things up.).

I hope this helps someone. Please feel free to ask any questions!

Did ya miss me?

2010-08-03T15:09:00.000-07:00

We have had a great week of 'vacation' from school thus far!

A couple nights ago we had a 'click' moment for one of my children. They watched as water condensed on the lid of my pot and then fell back down into the pot. Then A HA! 'Hey mom, thats just like the water cycle, when the water evaporates, forms into clouds by bumping together and then coming back down as rain!' Now she can 'see' how it works.
Monday, we went to the zoo with my dad as I *THOUGHT* it was going to be a wee bit cooler then usual in the morning. Yes, the Nebraska climate was laughing in my face when I had that thought. Humid-city folks, weren't purty.
I wish I would have taken more pictures but I was simultaneously enjoying the excitement of my children as they experience the zoo for 279th time (it never gets old when your a kid, does it), and trying to stay hydrated. I think I could have sucked moisture out of the air with a straw to accomplish that. Yeah, it was that bad.

Today, we went to a pond about 2min from our house to feed the ducks. The girls LOVE doing this and we dont do it very often. Again, the mosquitos honed in on me and my girls were spared. Which was fine with me. When my girls get a skeeter bite, 1/2 the block knows about it.

Cute.

Josh was leary of the ducks at first.

Momma duck I am SO sure was scolding her ducklings here. Probably for nipping one another on the rear, which we saw them do, when their sibling took the piece of bread they wanted.

So glad I'm not a momma duck.

I'll take the 'hey-I-had that first' and 'shes-looking-at-me' over tush nippin' anyday.

Our curriculum

2010-08-02T10:40:00.001-07:00

I am participating in the 'Not-Back-To-School' Blog hope over at Heart of the Matter Online. This week's focus: curriculum.

This is our first year using My Father's World. We started beginning of July and are doing the 'Exploring Countries and Cultures' unit which is the first unit in their 5 yr history cycle. It covers bible, reading, geography, science, art and music. We add in our own foriegn language, math and language arts. You can see the curriculum here
I am using this as the main curriculum for my almost 10yr old, 8yr old, and 6.5 old daughters and my 5yr old sits in for most all of it as well.
By age:

Savannah who will be 10 next month:
Language Arts: Intermediate Language Lessons, Writing Strands, Spelling Power
Math: Math U See

Ariel age 8.5
Language Arts: Primary Language Lessons, Writing Strands, Spelling Power
Math: Math U See

Skylar who will be 7 in October:
Language Arts: Primary Language Lessons, Complete Book of Animals, HWT 'Printing Power'
Math: Math U See

Jaidyn age 5:
Phonics: Teach your child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
Handwriting: Handwriting without Tears
Also using Get Read for the Code book A

For Health we are currently using Prudence and the Millers. When we finish that we will start Abeka.

Some extras: We love the Math U See drill online which is free for anyone. We also go to the Sheppard Software site which is ALSO free to drill geography. This is a GREAT site with a lot of different educational avenues, not just geography.

Thanks for looking!

ECC Week 4 Day 5, and a sad farewell

2010-07-30T14:07:00.000-07:00

Oh the knees...if you are a runner, you know...the knees are the window to your world. Well, your running world that is. I think I have been over zealous and have done too much too soon as my knees are a *little* achy. Not bad, just a little niggle. So I am going to start running only every other day, and not do 2 days in a row-as I have been (sometimes 3-4 in a row). It is going to be hard as I am SERIOUSLY addicted to running. I map my runs, I map new running routes, I think about where I would LIKE to run, what time do I need to go to bed to get UP for my run, I DREAM about my runs...you get the picture. So taking it down a peg is going to be tough, but I dont want to risk injury.

SCHOOL

This was our last day for our North America Unit. We will taking a week off for fun stuff before landing in Mexico for 2 weeks. The girls really been enjoying this last month in My Father's World and I am SO glad we found it. What a blessing!

The girls wrote thier 'fancy verse' today. Our memory verse was Matt 1:23 and I was surprised that our 5 yr old could say most of it from memory as well. AND she said the John 3:16 verse as well! Proud momma moment.

Our Geography vocab words for this week were 'butte' (how DO you pronounce that?), and 'badlands'.

And here's what they did when school time was done. Ariel built them this 'fort' and they all got in to watch Barney with their little brother.

Good times.

I will be back next week once or twice to let you know what we are up to, and I will post my school schedule as well. Also, next week starts the 'Not-Back-To-School' Blog Hop. Learn more about it here. I'll be participating. How 'bout you?

Put it under lock and key!!! And ECC Week 4, Day 4

2010-07-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

Discoveries I have made today: there are certain foods that will be eaten in abnormal quantities if left anywhere within the 4 walls of my house. Among them: Pringles, Peanut M&M's and oreos. What foods do you have a self control problem with?
Discovery #2: The first mile of my run is S...L...O...W....I dont even know HOW slow when compared to the rest of my run, but tomorrow I am going to time mile 2 as it seems my shoes grow rocket boosters at that point. At miles 0-1 and 1-2 I think the cute older people out for a stroll can pass me.
Seriously, its' bad.
Moving on...

ECC Week 4, Day 4
Tomorrow will be our last day in North America. My older 2 girls know pretty much all the states (thanks to Sheppardsoftware.com!), my 6.5 yr old knows a few, and my 5 yr old thinks every state is called South America =)
Today we read Matt 2:12 and had to find some key places in the bible on the map (Israel, Jerusalem, Bethlehem). So I showed the girls the map in the back of my bible and they hunted them out.
We worked on our memory verse (Matt 1:23), and learned about Farming and Industry in the US. I was surprised to learn that the interstates that go north and south have an odd number and the ones that go east and west and an even number. Never knew that!
We are going to read the Kingdom Tales story here in a bit. The girls are really captivated by the stories in there. If you are thinking of skipping this part of ECC, dont. Trust me.

There really wasnt anything too exciting today, but the girls are still pretend playing shoot offs of our Kingdom Tales story from Tuesday which was Princess Amanda and the Dragon.
Savannah made the egg below for Skylar. I asked why it was in 2 pieces and she said the dragon had hatched. I asked where the dragon was and she said 'invisible!' Clever.

Josh doing what he usually does for a portion of our school time-'Blanket Time'. I bought four lidded clear containers and numbered them. I filled them with toys and books that I knew he would like. He gets one tote a day ONLY to use during blanket time. Friday doesnt have a tote yet as our school is so short on that day that he usually doesnt have blanket time.
But this has made our school time SO much smoother. Any tips/ tricks you have used to make school time better?

ECC Week 4 Day 3

2010-07-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

ECC Week 4, Day 3

Today in school we read about Harriet Tubman in Hero Tales and the older 2 copied the character trait in their bible notebook. Its interesting how much of Harriet's life story they already know from books they have read in the past.

We did the flag work sheet below, coloring the flag and listing some facts below it.
The one below is Skylars, age 6.
Jaidyn wasnt paying attention when we were going over the colors of the US flag.
OBVIOUSLY.

In Science we looked up different trees online and the older 2 drew the leaf and the leafs 'fruit', or seed.

For our nature walk, I let the little people play in the backyard as I just wasnt feeling up to a walk this morning, but hey. Our backyard is nature, and they DID walk around, so... 'check'.

Some leaves they collected

Doing a little bark rubbin'

Ran a nice 3.51 this morning. For some reason it always takes me about 2 miles to get into the 'groove' and after that I feel like I could throw down with Forrest Gump. Next week I start a 1/2 marathon training program, so we'll see how THAT goes.

Have a wonderful day!

Day 1 back in the saddle and ECC wk 4, day 2

2010-07-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

I am sure you all lost a good 2 or 6 hours of sleep last night wondering just HOW my ride was this morning. Sorry 'bout that. I actually cheated and took it out last night for about 20min just to see how she rolled. I really enjoyed it. My quads definitely need to be a little stronger for me to feel like I can make it up the hill without making embarrassing noises. But all in all, I rode for 45min this morning, 7 miles total, a few too many hills and I came home quite sweaty, which to me, is the sign of a pretty good workout, no?
Going to hit the pavement tomorrow runnin' and then will bike again on Thursday. I am SLIGHTLY suspecting my bike may be a bit too big for my vertically challenged size, so I am going to have hubby watch me ride tonight and see what his not-so-expert opinion is.
Anyway.

SCHOOL
ECC Week 4, Day 2

Today we were challenged to use 4 colored pencils and color in the states without any 2 colors touching. I could see all sorts of frustrating emotions flying out of this activity so I took it down a level and let them use 5 colors. My 9yr old, who loves a challenge, LOVED this activity and wanted more like it. My 8yr old on the other hand just did it because she was suppose to.

In 'Kingdom Tales' we read 'Princess Amanda and the Dragon' which prompted my 9yr old to draw a picture of this fire breathing, uh, horse?

What can I say? The girls LOVES horses.

For Art we made a quilt design board and learned about the early American women and their quilting bees. I bought a pack of asst. fabric at WalMart and cut little sqaures out of them. Then they arranged their designs on a piece of 8x9 cardstock (cut to size) and we glued them on.
Then we cut ribbon to make a pattern down and across to hide the imperfect edges of the fabric due to their mommy being a little scissor-challenged.
They LOVED this project. You can click on the pictures to see them larger.

SAVANNAH age 9.5

ARIEL age 8

SKYLAR age 6.5

JAIDYN age 5...who was feeling a little camera shy, until......

she looked down and realized the colors in her 'quilt' perfectly matched what she had on.

Yeah, she thought that was purty cool.

All my happy girls! (and the head of my boy)

Hola internets!

2010-07-26T13:58:00.000-07:00

Hello dear friends! I hope you all had a refreshing and fun weekend. Mine was fun and a bit busy.
So, Saturday I asked my parents to come over so the hubs and I could go shopping for some 'official' running clothes for myself since I was previously running in cotton (*Gasp!*) and some ill fitting Nike shorts from my more, ahem, 'substantial' days.
The shorts still fit, but I have to do an adjustment job every 4.4 seconds to ensure my modest status would not be demoted to something less desirable.
The shirts were comfortable, just cotton cami's, but as I am starting to run more, I am noticing that the presence of sweat drenched cotton against my skin is not the most pleasant of situations.
So.
Hubby and I went to every sports store in a 10 mile radius, and managed to find me a few new shorts and a couple pairs of new shorts. He also bought a camera for the girls as they have been DYING without one (the older 2 used to have thier own but they died a slow agonizing death from all the 'oopies' they suffered). Below is the girls and I trying to take our own picture. Look. We're so angelic, we glow.
Feast your eyes on the next picture. Oh sweet bike-wheels Batman, I am ONE happy gal. I have been wanting a bike for YEARS, since we sold ours many moons ago. But I have only REALLY begun to want one the last few weeks as I have become more serious about running and subsequently, wanting to find something to cross train with that I find just as enjoyable as running. Here's my ticket to more fitness excitement!! Lets hope I dont wipe out on my first time out tomorrow. Oh and icing on the cake?
It matches my fanny, er, I mean HIP pack.

SCHOOL:
ECC week 4, Day 1
This is our last week of school before we take a week off for fun stuff. I am planning a playdate or two, a trip or two to some parks around town that we dont go to very often, a trip to the zoo and a trip to the library. It's gonna be a full week, folks!

In Science we learned more about temeperate forests and the older 2 had to fill out a worksheet based on what they learned.

Savannah completed another sheet from the World Geography book, this time on Mountains of North America. Let's pause a moment so I can show the colors of my mommy-with-a-fried-brain syndrome.
So, we are studying N. America last week and this week. At the TOP OF THIS WORKSHEET it says, 'Mountains of N. America'. We were to find out how tall each was and list them in order from tallest to shortest. We get about 1/2 way thru and I say OUTLOUD 'Gee, isnt it funny that all these mountains are in North America?'
Yeah.
Thankfully my sweet daughter either didnt hear me, or didnt want to make me feel bad by commenting.

Savannah doing her math drill on the Math U See site, I love all the free sites we have bookmarked for this kind of stuff.

Enjoy your day. Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow SANS any road rash.

Pray for me.

ECC Week 3 Day 5 and some stiff competition

2010-07-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

Light Fridays ROCK! One of the 2, 476 reasons I love My Father's World =) Today we did minimal work. Everyone did Language Arts and math. For 'together school' we read Hero Tales, learned how to look things up in the bible and did our vocab cards, which you can see below. We did isthmus today and forest. They are having 'free play' right now for about 10min and then we will do 15min of quiet reading with the book basket books. This afternoon will be read aloud time with Kingdom Tales and 10min each for Savannah and Ariel to read aloud to me (Skylar did her read aloud with me during school.

As far as running, today was a rest day as I ran 2 days in a row (Wed and Thurs) and will be doing my long run tomorrow (4.5-5 miles). I love that I am able to see the changes in my legs already, just wish my pooch would get the memo that its time to pack the bags and make like a tree and 'leaf'!
Last night, there was a run on my job! Ariel decided to start her own school for the 'little girls'. Here they are at the 'desks' she made them. She wrote a sentence on the white board and they are busy copying it....

Savannah (who was the teachers assistant) is pointing out letter formation...

Checking their work...

Skylars copywork:

Jaidyn's copywork:

Then she had me print out a coloring page for each of them.

Teacher, teacher's assistant, students and completed coloring pages.

she told them next week they would 'study' whatever they wanted, to the answering shouts of 'Kittens!' 'Turtles!' 'Pandas!' to which she answered 'Sure, whatever you want, we can do it!'

Seriously, how am I going to compete with that? Looks like I am going to have to bring out the big guns of ice cream and cake to keep them on my team. *insert evil laugh*

Running, ECC Week 3, Day 4

2010-07-22T12:35:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday! To my dad that is =) He turns a whopping 67 years old today. And to celebrate he is having a play day with my kiddos. My oldest and him just got done with a very animated game of Yahtzee. They are currently adding up the scores to see who won. Grandpa got a Yahtzee (whoppee!!!) so I am thinking he's got a good chance of going home with the bragging rights. *update: they just added up the scores and she beat him by 12 points. Way to go, Savannah!

Running: I ran 3.61 this morning. It was very humid out at 6:30 this morning so I took it a bit slow. BUT I still got the miles under my belt, so I'm a happy camper. Or runner, rather.

SCHOOL
ECC Week 3 Day 4

We were to make bookmarks that say 'Matthew' in Greek, given that was the language it was orginally written in and that is the book we are mainly focusing on this year. So they wrote Matthew in Greek....and then we thought it would be fun to see what THEIR names were in Greek. So we went here to find out and they wrote their names in Greek on the backs of the bookmarks, as they are showing below...

Then Savannah (my oldest, age 9.5) thought it would be fun and oh so funny to write Daddy a letter in Greek. It says 'Dear Daddy, I love you, PS Grandpa came today, it is his birthday....xoxo Savannah'

Here she is gathering all the words she needs for the letter....

Playing Yahtzee with Grandpa

Running, Dinner and ECC Week 3 Day 3

2010-07-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

Wednesdays are a busy day for us here. Its what we like to call our 'chores-til-you-drop' day. I don't know how Wednesday became so bogged down with work, but it has, so we delegate and get it done.
Running: After my shin splint incident on Monday, I decided to start off REALLY slow and easy today. My right shin in particular was feeling a little testy but after about 1.5miles, she seemed to ease up. I went for 3.61 total today and did some more fartleks which really made me feel like a super hero. I could almost hear the Eye of the Tiger song playing SOMEWHERE just for me...

Anyway, in addition to being nosy about what other people read, I also like to know what they eat. So I decided to post some of what we had for dinner last night.
The girls had Potato Chip Chicken. They all like it, and no one is allergic to it and its SUPER easy.
I had purchased 2 packs of boneless skinless chicken breasts. One was used for the potato chip chicken and the other I was going to use to make teriyaki chicken for hubby and I's supper later that night (he had to work late). BUT I remembered that I had a bag of frozen Asian Stir Fry in the freezer (just a mix of frozen veggies that, when they are together, morph in Asian ethnicity)...ANYWAY, I took some of the chicken I had diced up to be used later and fried it in the pan with some oil. Then I took it out after it was cooked thru and put in the veggie mix with some teriyaki sauce. Cooked that thru (7-8min), add the chicken back in, a little more teriyaki sauce and cook an additional 5-7 minutes.

Served over rice, it was SOOOO yummy and I felt a little bit of my healthy ninja coming out.

Oh, and dont hate on the plates. They're a throwback to my childhood. I am SURE they will make a come back some day like the My Little Ponies and Strawberry Shortcakes have...now if ONLY they would bring Popples back....

SCHOOL

ECC Week 3 Day 3

Skylar, age 6.5, has really been enjoying the Complete book of Animals. Today, we learned about Beavers.

Savannah refreshed her States knowledge by playing this great game at sheppardsoftware.com GREAT site with lots of free stuff.

This was our 2nd day to read Hero Tales and we are reading about Dwight Moody. The girls are really enjoying this book.

The older 2 also had to copy the character trait at the end of todays reading and will continue to do so on this same piece of paper for the rest of the book, whenever they appear.

Used this map to review where the states are (for the older 2) and learn where some states are (for the younger 2).

Savannah decided to help Jaidyn out with her phonics today. She helped her with this lesson review and then when they were done, Jaidyn read it to me, they were both quite proud.

We didnt finish our Coup Sticks today. JUST as I was going to go out and fetch some twigs it started to POUR and I'm talking DRENCHED within 2 seconds of going outside kind of rain. But it only lasted about 10min. Anyway, the sticks were super wet so I think we may finish it tomorrow or just be safe and use popsicle sticks or something. My 8yr old is dealing with some WEIRD contact dermatitis on her hands right now. Its like little bitty baby blisters ALL over her fingers, part of the back of her hands and all over her palms. Thankfully, and oddly, they are not itchy or sore....this started LAST Wednesday and we think it may have been from some roses that a friend gave us, so I am leary to bring any more variables into the house right now (especially something she will be touching), until it heals up. So this project will have to be in 'to be continued' status for a bit....

Ecc Week 3 Day 2

2010-07-20T10:24:00.001-07:00

Hello folks. Hope you had a restful nights sleep last night. Ours was briefly interrupted by some crazy loud thunder. Thought maybe God had dropped his trophy collection. YOWZA it was loud!
And somehow I forgot to set my alarm on my watch to wake up this morning so I missed my morning run. HOWEVER, I DID work out the elliptical for 35min. The poor girl was starting to get a little flabby after her 4 week vacation. It was the least I could do.

ECC Week 3, Day 2
In Science today we read about Temperate forests. Then we were to color code a map indicating where the different forests are located (deciduous, evergreen and mountian), using the map below as a guide.
I think I may have let out a whimper when I read that, given our LAST experience with trying to do this. So I made it VERY clear that this didnt need to be perfect and they could just color in the general areas. It went MUCH better this time and I still have all the hair on my head.

Meanwhile, Jaidyn worked on her Handwriting without Tears book....

Ariel worked a bit in her Primary Language Lessons book.....

For Art we were to make a Coup Stick. The girls went ahead and made the pictures today and we will attach them to their sticks tomorrow.

Here are the older 2 girls pictures....

Here are the younger girls' pictures.

They had a lot of fun drawing and coloring the pictures and telling each other the 'story' of their pictures. Making memories!

ECC Week 3 Day 1

2010-07-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

If I can, I am going to try to post everyday we do ECC, however, a little thing called life may occasionally get in the way, so dont go calling the authorities if I miss a day. I am most likely fine, or maybe be lost under a pile of laundry....or buried under slew of Littlest Pet Shop animals and whatnots. Either way....

A littl peak into our day...

Some science (had fun learning about the layers of a forest)
Some geography (focusing on N. America the next 2 weeks)

Some coloring....

Some math....

And some giggling....

Now off to my evening multitasking event of making dinner. Yay rah.

Fartleks, hills and shin splints, oh my.

2010-07-19T14:40:00.000-07:00

Yes I said Fartleks. Or typed Fartleks, rather. You may laugh, I'll wait....
Feel better now? Ok, let's move on.
I went for my run this morning and a whopping EIGHT minutes into it, I was demoted back to 'walker' status due to some off-the-charts shin splints. NO idea why I got them this morning versus any other.
I tried to walk slow, run fast, run slow, nothing seemed to help. So I turned around and started for home.
I figured if I couldnt get my normal distance in, I could at least do some fartleks. Real word people, look it up. Lessons 1 that I learned about fartleks: fartleks and fanny packs do not always marry well together. May have to leave my beloved fanny pack at home next time *sigh*
Then I ran up the hill on what would normally be my home stretch on my normal route and for some reason that seemed to make the shin splints a lot better. So I tried it again.... yep, the shins seems to relish in the deliciousness of the hills. So I ended up doing 7 hill repeats today (run up a hill hard, run down easy, rinse and repeat).
It was quite rock star-ish of me actually, I felt quite invinsible. Save for the out of this world breathlessness and gasping for air at the top of each hill like a fish out of water. I am sure the neighbors got quite a chuckle out of watching me.
The out of shape momma running with an overstuffed, out of control fanny pack.

I am the queen of fashion and fartleks, people. Deal with it.

On my nightstand...

2010-07-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

and under it!
I am a bit of a book nut, just a wee bit.
And I always like to see what other people are reading so I thought I would share my current 'playlist'.
Under my nightstand, I have a few magazines boxes that hold the vintage magazines I am getting ready to read next as well as other current magazines that I haven't gotten to yet. Magazines take a back seat (maybe a trunk seat) next to books, so these will probably sit down here for a while, untouched.

On my nightstand.

At the bottom of the pile are a bunch of Focus on the Family magazines that I got at our used curriculum sale for free, next is Debi Pearl's 'Created to be His Helpmeet', next is 'Fit after 50' by Ruth Wassinger (she is a runner, breast cancer survivor and mom to one of my good friends, Kristine. This it NOT just a book for people over 50!)...on top is 'The Wisdom of Fenelon', by Fenelon, which is a reprint of an OLD book by Lamplighter Publishing.
I just discovered Lamplighter last year at our local homeschool conference and I was HOOKED. They are a bit pricey but VERY well made. Lamplighter is a Christian company.

Here is a most of my Lamplighter selection. I have loved EVERY Lamplighter book I have read. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
If you are looking for quality literature, this is definitely a good place to look (the Lamplighter site, not my bookcase, though if you are local you are welcome to borrow, for the cost of a chocolate shake!).
We have also enjoyed books from the Keepers of the Faith website as well as Rod and Staff. We are big book junkies over here. Books are my 'crack'.
=)

Beautiful Beautiful Morning

2010-07-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a difference between this morning and yesterday! At one point, the temp was 90 degrees but the heat index was 108! Yikes! Thankfully it rained (rained might be the wrong word, more like a torrential downpour) yesterday evening and that drenched the humidity right out of the sky.
I got up at 6 this morning for my run which was 30min earlier than I USUALLY get up for my runs and it was SOOO nice. I think I am going to try to get up that early as a rule to get out and run. Did 4.79 this morning and was able to time my 5K finally which was 33:07. Not bad for a newbie but I'm not going to be winning at 5K's anytime soon.

Today was Week 2, Day 4. BUT before we started school, we loaded up and went to our favorite annual church garage sale. I had restraint this year and didnt buy every thing that remotely interested me, but I DID find these National Geographic magazines for $1 (12 issues) which will come in handy thru out the school year.

Today in Science we learning about oxygen and water cycles which for some reason really confused my 8yr old (I think it was the wording in the book), so we did this science experiment....

Potting soil, then grass clumps planted in them. Lightly water, and seal. Put in a warm place and then watch nature work!

Now given that our house is normally kept just a tad bit above 'freeze-your-buns-off' degrees, I knew I would be hard pressed to find a suitable location indoors to make this project work, so we decided to set it out on the deck to see if it would REALLY show us the whole water cycle....time will tell

Geography.

Learning about directions. So we drew our neighborhood (sort of) on a piece of poster board and got one of Josh's cars. I told the girls where I wanted to go and they had to tell me which directions to turn (N,S,E,W) down what streets to get there.

I cant believe tomorrow will be our last day in this 'introduction' phase and then we get to move onto more fun stuff!

School and Slimeville

2010-07-14T12:21:00.001-07:00

Holy Humidity, batman! I knew it was a bad sign when I open my front door and the storm door is so covered with condensation that I cant even see my front yard. But being the 'hard core' girl I am, I decided I could tough it out and went for my run anyway. The slimey-ness in the air only added to the oh so enjoyable experience *insert sarcasm* I am sure the motorists got quite a kick out of the gal running at about .03 miles an hour. Lesson learned.

School.

Nothing spectacular today, just a few pictures of our schooling this morning.

Skylar doing her PLL dictation on the white board

Ariel practicing her cursive

Jaidyn practicing her letters

Josh sportin' some bed head and Thomas jammies.

We were suppose to go on a nature walk today, but I knew there was no WAY my little flowers would last more than 3 minutes out there without wilting beyond repair, so we may try for it tomorrow. For now, I am going to go sprawl out on my cool wood floor.

As for tomorrow, I'll take an order of 75 degrees with a side of breeze.

Hold the slime.