Mini Amusement Park at the Zoo

Our local zoo has a mini amusement park built into it.  There's a roller coaster, a log water ride, some kiddie rides and various other rides.  We've been meaning to take the girls for a while now, so we finally did it.  Aunt Becca and Uncle Jason came along with us.  It was really fun.  Daddy, Alexis, Uncle Jason, and Aunt Becca all rode the huge water log ride together, while I stayed with Emily and Ashley - (which I was more than happy to do).   When they got off, Daddy told me that after going down the huge slope, Alexis said, "Daddy, this must be called the log of terror!"  :)  She told me she was scared, but it was a fun scared.  We all took turns riding the roller coaster and Emily and Alexis both loved it.  Ashley was funny on the tea cups.  She rode with Don and she just spread her arms out over the top of the cup, leaned back, and looked totally relaxed the whole time.  She also LOVED the train.  She kept saying, "Chugga Chugga Choo Choo!" over and over again while we rode it. 

Emily's 6th Birthday

Our little Emily turned 6 years old this year.  There was a moment when I was fixing her hair into pigtails for her party that I flashed back to when she was a tiny colicky baby.  I remember as I was crying with her all those evenings, I kept trying to picture her as a little girl.  I kept wondering what she would be like and I kept trying to picture it as I held her and walked with her each evening.  I had to wipe some tears from my eyes as I finished her hair.  I could never have imagined how sweet and lovely and how much a blessing she would be in our lives.  For Emily's birthday the grandparents, Aunt Becca and Uncle Jason, and some good family friends of ours, the Rowlees, came over to celebrate a Jojo's circus party with us.  After painting the children's faces, we started by playing a few games.  The first game was a typical carnival type game where you stack up empty soda bottles and roll a ball to knock them down.  Grandpa graciously donated a dozen empty caffeine free soda pop bottles.  :)  After that we played Lion tamer and all the little lions took turns jumping through the hula hoop.  Then we played musical chairs, and the birthday girl ended up winning.  Then our last game was tossing peanuts into the elephants mouth.  This was a big hit with the children.  After that Emily opened all her gifts.  She got some lovely gifts, including a puppy, a princess book, a woodeez playset, a calico critters playset, a wooden cupcake set, a ballerina doll, a princess colorform book set, a tin tea set, and an art kit.  Then we all sang to her and she blew out her candles.  The family we invited over has a little guy who is allergic to eggs so we tried baking an egg free cake this year.  It was actually better than any birthday cake we've done in the past!  Everyone loved it.  Afterwards the kids played for a while until bedtime.  We are so blessed to have Emily in our family.  She brings such a sweet spirit to our home.  She already has within her a very strong desire to choose the right and she's constantly analyzing good choices versus bad choices all around her.  She loves playing Mommy and and loves helping me around the house.  She's actually as good as many adults that I know at folding laundry!  Her favorite game is playing baby, where I'm the baby and she's the Mommy.  She also involves Grandma, Grandpa, Daddy, Alexis, and Aunt Becca into this game, as well.  She loves learning and is doing so well at reading.  She's very sensitive to other's feeling and loves taking care of others.  We love her so much!

Tornado Warning

The girls and I were relaxing one afternoon a couple of weeks ago when we received a phone call from Nana.  She told us there was a horrible storm headed our way with tornadoes in it and it should reach us in about 20 minutes.  So I checked the radar and sure enough, it was headed our way.  So to be safe, I took the girls down to the basement.  The older two got very excited and even packed "supplies" which included a box they put a few diapers in, some Desitin, and wipes.  They reasoned we didn't need food or water since we keep extra food and water in the basement anyways.  :)  When we were down there, the storm went mostly north of us, with only the southern tip going over us and bringing some heavy rain and a little wind.  We lost power for a second, literally.  The children had a blast in the basement running around the big open space.  We also got out a box of some old toys Nana had brought us from when her kids were little that we hadn't gone through, yet.  We also looked though one of my memory boxes, which the girls LOVED.  We decided we should hang out in our basement a little more often.  :)

Homeschool Plans 2010-2011

Time for that time of year again.  Although we homeschool year round, we do seem to get a lot more relaxed about it during the summer months.  So it seems each September we rev it up a bit with new stuff.  :)  We tend to lean toward classical education intermixed with Charlotte Mason, Thomas Jefferson Education, and child led learning.  So, yeah, we're eclectic.  :)  But here is our basic plans:

Alexis is starting 3rd grade this year.  She took a standardized test at the end of last year just for my own curiosity to see how she was doing.  We order the test and give her two sections at home a day for a week.  We make it really relaxed and tell her that this isn't really a test, but more like a list of things that Mommy wants to check to see how she does.  I don't think this is necessary every year, but it does give her a bit of practice taking these tests and I do get to see how she does in the various subjects, so I can see if there's anything in particular we need to work on.  She did excellent on the test.  She scored at the 98th percentile overall, with ALL except one of her other subjects scoring  between the 96th and 99th percentile.  However, Spelling was her one weak area, (scoring at 48th percentile). It always has been, which I find interesting since she excels so much at everything else.  But it's something we're working on and we love our Spelling program we use, "All About Spelling."   We're taking it at her pace so she is about 6 lessons away from finishing level 2.  We also find doing lots of writing in real life situations helps her immensely.  She has several pen pals we struggle to keep up with and she also loves writing stories and in her Journal.  She also published her newspaper for our family to read.  We never know when it's going to show up, but every so often it does.  :)  We're doing a writing program we really like, called "Writing Strands".  For Math she's on level Gamma in Math U See, but we also love using Singapore Math as a challenging supplement and she loves the variety she gets using both.  She especially LOVES word problems.  She likes seeing Math in real world situations based around stories.  For reading she mostly reads various books on her own that I'll give her or she picks out from our library of books we have throughout the house, and I will have her narrate the chapters orally to me which she loves to do and we discuss what she's reading.  (Right now she's reading "A Little Princess")  However, we do have a reading series that she reads out loud to me a couple of times a week to practice reading out loud smoothly and expressively.  I love this particular series because all the stories are based on values and making right choices which only further emphasizes what we teach them each day.  Also as she reads out loud her younger sisters are always right there nearby listening and we all discuss the stories together.  We're starting cursive writing this year, and using "A Reason for Writing" which has them copy scripture versus as they learn the proper letter formation.  For Grammar we're using "First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind Level 3"  We loved the first two levels so we're just continuing where we left off.  We're focusing on History for Sept.-Dec. and we're focusing on Ancient History.  We read from the Old Testament Children's story reader every day and we also use the Story of the World book 1.  We pick and choose what we use in it and we supplement with various story books.  The hands on projects are so much fun.  Around January we'll switch to Science and study Botany this year with Apologia Science.  Alexis is also taking piano lessons from a WONDERFUL lady in our ward each Monday afternoon.   For art we use Artistic Pursuits and the girls are also taking a homeschool art class for the next several weeks. 

Emily is technically in kindergarten this year.  I tried to enroll her as a homeschooler (which you do at the beginning of the child's 1st grade year), and received a letter back in the mail telling me she wasn't old enough to enroll as a homeschooler since she wasn't 6 yet and apparently our districts cut off date is in August.  However, we're doing mostly 1st grade work with her since she seems ready for it.  She's still got quite a bit of baby in her, which I LOVE about her, so teaching her has got to still have TONS of play involved, which I think is fun.  And Alexis prefers it that way as well, so we make up a lot of pretend play as we learn.  She's using the Alpha Math U See with the 1st grade Singapore Math as a supplement.  She loves Math and does very well at it.  For reading we use lots of different materials with her to keep it fresh.  She reads me lots of early reader books, such as the BOB series.  We use "Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading" and "Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons."  We also use a great program called, "Happy Phonics", which is all games.  We're also starting Spelling with her this year, which she's really excited about.  We're using All About Spelling Level 1.  She practices Handwriting using, A Reason for Writing, 1st grade level.  She also does the "First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind Level 1".  She participates right along with Alexis on her own level with our study of History, Science, Geography, music, and art.  I'm teaching her some basic piano skills right now, and we figure sometime within the next year she'll be ready to start taking formal lessons.

With all three girls I keep all their supplies in their own box we keep stacked in a corner of the living room.  then I rotate supplies, games, manipulatives in and out of the box, depending on what we need for the week.  It's simple and works well for our family.  For Ashley I keep a fresh supply of learning toys, books, crayons, puzzles, and various other activities in her box.  Then as I teach the other two girls, we can get things out for her and she has things to do.  I try to do an activity with her, (which doesn't take more than 5 minutes), and then do a learning activity with each older girl and then they'll continue to work on whatever I started them on and I go back to Ashley and it starts over again.  For example I might pull out her felt ABC chart. We go through all the letters pulling out each object out of the pockets that go with the letter and putting them back.  I then leave her with the chart and most often she will then pull out all the letters again by herself and say their names correctly and put them back.  While she does this I teach Emily her Math lesson and get her started and then I go over Alexis's Math lesson with her and answer any questions she has and get her started.  Then I might go back to Ashley and read her a book while the older two are working on their Math.  Ashley's a really quick learner and loves learning, as well, which keeps me busier, but I can't complain.  She knows almost all her letters and she has a special love of numbers in particular.   She's always counting everything and she counts consistently well to 20.  She also recognizes all her numerals to 10 when she sees them and is always pointing them out where ever we go.  She also loves shapes and knows all the basic ones.  She's really cute when she pronounces "octagon" or "hexagon" or "pentagon".  She always says, "octagtagtagatgon" or "hextagtagtagon".  :)  However, she moves very quickly from one activity to the next, so I have to have a lot on hand to keep her occupied and even then, the house is usually a mess of toys by the time we've finished everyone's subjects.  But I don't mind that and at the end of the day we all help tidy up together.

The main part of our studies is usually done in the morning with maybe one or two things left over to do in the early afternoon, and then they rest of the day we just spend as a family.  We do switch things around every so often to accommodate morning activities, like every Thursday for the next 6 weeks we leave here at 10:00 to go to Art class in Columbus.  By the time we get there, participate in the class, and then play with the other kids at the park and drive home, the day's pretty much shot.  So we do just a few basics before the class and maybe one thing after the class.  We also participate in a Geography club that meets once a month on Wednesday mornings.  And every so often we'll have a morning playdate with another family.  So we work around stuff and we're pretty relaxed about it.  We believe that learning is a life long process and doesn't start or end at any particular time or age, so we incorporate education throughout our days and look for the teachable moments.  I also try not to get sucked into the philosophy that each child should learn the exact same things at the exact same ages and try to follow my children's interests, gifts, and weaknesses to help them learn and succeed at their own pace, knowing the ultimate goal is a child of God who will choose the right, have a strong testimony, be obedient to the Lord, and have an eternal love and desire to learn.  Homeschooling works well for our family and probably my favorite thing about it is being able to incorporate gospel learning throughout our day in everything we do.  We ALWAYS start each homeschool day with a family prayer, a scripture story, (which we always act out), and a hymn or Primary song.  I find when we do this, the rest of the day goes so much better.  We always end the day before bedtime in the same way, except we read from the scriptures then, instead of the story reader.  I love watching their little testimonies grow and blossom and knowing how much they love the Lord and trust in Him completely.  I also love learning along side my children and getting to discover new things right along with them.

Rocket Science

One of our recent learning expeditions recently had to do with space travel so we made little homemade rockets and used film canisters and alka seltzer to launch them.  Unfortunately we found our rockets to be too heavy to get any real lift so they only went a couple of feet.  So we removed the rocket part and the canisters flew great.  The girls said they were sending their rockets to Saturn.  :)

Apples and Ice Cream

A family we know from church recently bought a home that had tons of apples trees that needed picking.  They invited over anyone who wanted to come and pick some apples.  So we took the girls for Family Home Evening one night.  They had a great time picking apples and pears.  Ashley really got into it.   She had 3 special apples she picked and she refused to let go of them the rest of the night.  She kept telling us, "Apples for me."  Afterwards we stopped by the ice cream shop and got ice cream cones for everyone.