Apple Picking

This year we went apple picking at Lynd's Fruit Farm.  I had seen an advertisement that they were having a special day to pick apples for the needy.  That morning when we woke up it was rainy, cold, and windy!  We debated if we should take the girls or not, but they really wanted to go to be able to help out.  We also figured with the weather, they might have less volunteers, so figured we really needed to go.  So we bundled them up in winter coats and hoods and headed over.  There was actually a little break in the rain while we picked, which was so nice.  They girls loved it and we bought some apples for ourselves, as well.

Flower Garden

The girls planted their own flower garden this year.  I had an old sandbox we had gotten several years ago at a consignment shop when we lived in Florida that we never used.  After moving up here we found our house came with a sandbox so we just stuck it in the garage.  I dug it out, painted it, and Don filled it with dirt.  Then the girls chose some flower seeds.  They decided on Cosmo Seashell flowers.  We didn't really read the package that well and had no idea how tall they grew.  Even when reading the package later, they were supposed to get 4 feet tall and quite a few grew around 6 feet tall!  They took forever to bloom but when they did we enjoyed many vases of fresh cut flowers.

Family Ice Skating

We took the girls ice skating for the first time this season.  In the past Daddy has always taken the two older girls while I stay home with Ashley as she naps.  Now it seems she has begun to outgrow needing afternoon naps everyday, so we all went together this time.  It was her first time on the ice and LOVED it.  She was a little daredevil, in fact, and we had to stop her from jumping with her skates on the ice.  She used a little skaters bar part of the time, but she also liked to look at us, grin, and push the bar away and skate by herself. Of course she fell every 5 seconds, but she never cried and had a blast.  There's a very nice older gentlemen that skates there every day.  He's a retired skating instructor and hockey coach and he's always so nice to the girls.  He thought Ashley was darling and said that he loved the way she would fall with her knees together and feet spread out.  He called it a "butterfly fall" and said it's something hockey players aspire to do and he knew many who couldn't do it nearly as well as she could.  :)  Emily retired from using the little bar this year and she did great!  She could skate better than Mommy, which isn't saying much, but she really did do great.  She used the bar some, but she decided by herself that she was ready to go without it.  Alexis loved being back on the ice again and skated beautifully.  My dear husband worked with me and by the end I was veering away from the wall a bit.  ;)

Slate Run Historical Farm

This weekend we went to Slate Run Historical Farm.  It's a really neat park that has a real working farm on it.  It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed it so much. We packed a picnic and ate as soon as we got there.  Then we headed to the farm. The kids played with lots of old toys they had scattered about different places.  We toured the farmhouse and garden area and saw all the animals.  This was Ashley's favorite part.  She loves animals and was so excited to pet each of them and talk to them.  She would also try to pick up stray dried corn or grass or whatever and try to feed them.  She was especially funny with the sheep.  There was a whole bunch of them huddled up together near the fence and she crouched down and said, "Oh, hello sheep.  Baaaa!  Are you very hungry?" She then would pick a grass blade and put it to one of their mouths and say, "You want one?"  They actually ate almost every blade she offered and she'd coo back at them, "That's a good sheep."  Emily ended up joining in as well and they were both feeding the sheep.  At the end she tried to get one to eat, but it was apparently full and so after much coaxing she decided to try to stick the grass blade up the sheep's nose.  Luckily Mommy stopped her just in time. 

September 19, 2011 at Our Home

One morning, (Sept. 19, 2011 to be exact), I woke up and had the thought that it would be a neat journaling idea to record a whole day from start to finish at our home.  So I had thoughts, of course, of planning a day to do this.  Then I thought, "Why not today?"  After all the goal was to have a typical day recorded, even if there were still birthday decorations up from Emily's party, the house wasn't the cleanest, there were no neat projects/activities planned, and Ashley was right in the middle of potty training, and therefore many pictures of her would be without pants.  But I really wanted a typical day and all typical days have issues like these anyways.  So I grabbed my camera and a notepad and jotted down the main events of the day.  The day started like most.  The two older girls were asleep on their full sized bed in their bedroom and Daddy, Mommy, and Ashley were sleeping in our room.  Ashley woke up around 7:45 and gave me morning cuddles.  This means she squirms around squishing herself as close to me as possible and climbing from my backside to my front side and back again giving me lots of hugs and a few kisses.  As soon as I open my eyes she smiles huge and says, "Good morning, Mommy!"  She then runs over to the dresser and retrieves my glasses for me.  We went downstairs and she asked to go potty.  Then the girls came down and breakfast this morning was apple slices and Life cereal in bowl.  They always like dry cereal, so they ate their breakfast snuggled up on the couch in blankets watching "Dragon Tales".  They came over to the table to drink their milk.

After breakfast Alexis asked a question about a particular country she had read about in a book the night before and so we looked it up on the globe and the girls spent a few minutes exploring the globe after that.

After that it was time to get ready for the day.  Both older girls are in charge of tidying up their bedroom, getting themselves dressed, teeth brushed, and hair combed so I can fix it.  We're trying to incorporate some regular morning chores in there, as well, but really haven't gotten that far yet.  They will help out but have nothing really set as their "regular morning chore" and I think this particular morning Alexis took some water out to the goats and Emily wiped down the downstairs bathroom.

After that we called Daddy downstairs and we all gathered for morning devotional time.  This is one of my favorite parts of the day. I always throw a blanket down on the floor, (mainly to give Ashley boundaries of where she's supposed to stay, but also for the cosiness aspect of it.)  This morning we began learning a new hymn, "The Lord is My Shepard."  We looked up the scripture references for it and read those and then practiced the first verse.  Of course we already know this song but the goal is to know it so well, we don't even need our hymn books to sing it and we can sing it where ever we are throughout the day.  We also read a Bible story out of a children's Bible storybook and discussed it.  Then we all kneeled for our morning family prayer. 

After that I turned around a small shelf in the corner of our living room.  There I keep educational toys and activities for Ashley to freely do.  We switch them out every week so there's something new.  She grabbed an alphabet puzzle and Emily wanted to practice her reading.  She's in the 1st grade this year, (or would be if she were in public school, but we don't really think about grade levels here at home.)  She's REALLY into reading right now.  She wants so bad to be able to pick up a book and read anything.  She can read most simple picture books now and she's moving right along so as I imagine it won't be long before she's reading chapter books.  She loves her reading practice book we do.  Probably because I know what motivates Emily and that is make believe and letting her be a nurturer.  So we have little characters I've copied and laminated from her book.  They all have unique personalities and she enjoys some of them helping her to read and some of them needing her to help them to learn to read.  We also help her read the scriptures every night which also is helping her reading quite a bit, as it did for Alexis when she was learning.  So Emily and I cuddled together on the love seat and read for a while.

While we were reading Ashley was playing with her alphabet puzzle.  She punched all the pieces out and then put them back together.  After that she went to the playroom and got out some baby dolls and a stroller and fed them.

Meanwhile, Alexis, who would be in 4th grade if she were enrolled in public schhol,  had gone into the guest room and snuggled up under the covers to practice her cursive.  She uses a book called "A Reason For Writing" that has them practice very short lessons of individual cursive letters and words for the first 4 days of the week and then on the last day they get to choose a pretty paper from the end and copy down a scripture verse in cursive that utilizes some of the words they have been practicing that week.  Then they can color it and then either color it or give it away as a gift to someone.

After they were both finished we did Alexis' math lesson.  Alexis is going through a review right now on her multiplication facts.  She can do long multiplication problems with 5 or 6 digits with no difficulty, but she is still a bit shaky on her facts, which make the process much faster.  Alexis LOVES stories and so knowing this, I found an great book that uses a different story for each of the 15 facts that are tricky to memorize since there are no tricks to learning them like some of the others.  So we've been going through a new story each day and having her do hands on activities to cement them. It's really working and she's learning them all very quickly!  Before I would think she had them memorized and then she would forget them again.  This time, I'm thinking it's sticking.  For this particular day the fact was 6x3=18.  The story was about 6 chicks who had to move a tree(3) from their barnyard and when they were done their backs were achin' (18).  Emily helped her act out the story and they had a blast.

After that Alexis did a few activities that involved making up some problems with 6x3.  Then she chose to do a page from her Math Detective book.  She LOVES word problems and utilizing math in real life situations and that book uses real life situations in the form of mysteries and so she asks to do a page every couple of days.  Meanwhile Emily practiced her handwriting.  She uses the same program Alexis does, only hers is manuscript.  She is quite the perfectionist when it comes to her penmanship and I have to keep reminding her that every letter does not have to be absolutely perfect.  She gets frustrated when it doesn't look absolutely perfect and keeps erasing so I finally bribe her with a sticker if she'll promise me she'll just do her best but NO erasing unless it REALLY needs it.  She giggles and agrees to this arrangement.

Meanwhile Ashley has been very busy stringing up some beads to make a necklace.

She finishes and I ask her if she wants Mommy to read her a story.  She runs over to a book basket and begins stacking up books.  I think we ended up reading 8 in that particular sitting.  She's definitely one of the family in her love of reading.

Emily then chose a couple of pages out of her Singapore Math book she wanted to do.  Sometimes I plan specific lessons but a lot of times I let them choose what they want to learn about.  I find it motivates them more and the lessons stick easier.  She chose a couple of pages dealing with adding money so we got out some coins and went over the concept, which she picked up quickly since she was already a bit familiar with it.  Then she did the pages.  After that she practiced a few of her math addition facts using a game board we have called Math It.

I didn't get a picture but at this point I hear crashing noises and find Ashley in the library/music room emptying a shelf full of books.  sigh.....  Apparently she was looking for "Goodnight Moon" so after she helped me pick up the mess I find it for he and we read it.  Then I get out some playdough for her and play with her for a little while as the other two work independently.  We sing songs together as we form little playdough creations using some homemade playdough I made 9 months ago that is amazingly still soft!  Although I notice that it is finally starting to become just a bit tougher to use so I think I'll make a new batch sometime in the next week.

Since Alexis has just done a lot of writing with her math I decided spelling should be more playful and active.  So we got out our alphabet mat and she hopped from letter to letter as she practiced the words she's currently working on.  We use All About Spelling so each lesson teaches a different rule and gives them words to practice on that follow that rule.  She also normally does dictation sentences on her dry erase board using words we've already covered, as well.  Spelling is definitely a weak point for Alexis be we trudge right along and don't stress too much about it. Ashley wanted to play with the math as well, so I called out words for Alexis and at the same call out letter sounds for Ashley and she happily hops along with her sister and got on the right sound every time except for one.

After that Alexis works on a story she is writing.  Even though spelling is a weak point for Alexis, writing is her passion.  She LOVES to write stories.  We're doing a writing class right now with another homeschooled family and she loves it.  They only thing we need to work on is her typing skills.  We got her a program and she uses it on the computer to teach her to type.  But she's just beginning, so what happens is she hand writes out her story.  The last one she did was 16 pages front and back. Then I type it up for her.  The class is ending next week so after that we'll pick up with our normal writing instruction.  We use the Institute for the Excellence in Writing program which is amazing!  It's really teaches them a lot and Alexis absolutely loves doing it.  We haven't gotten very far and we look forward to picking it up again in a couple of weeks.  She also writes in her journal a couple of times a week, too.

Emily took some playdough time at this point and made some little items she pretended to sell in a shop.

Ashley asked to play on the computer so I put her on the PBS kids website.  She's doing something with nursery rhymes here.

After that I asked Emily if she's like to play with some shaving cream while she practiced some spelling.  This was a definite yes, and when Ashley saw what was going on she had to join in as well.  Emily did great spelling out her words and then they both ended up playing together in the cream.

After that Emily went off to play with paper dolls and Ashley asked if she could cut paper. So I made her some strips and she cut with her scissors.

While she was doing that I got out our Beethoven stuff.  We take turns learning about a different composer or artist every couple of weeks.  We're doing Beethoven currently so I read the girls a story about Beethoven and then we listened to his 5th Symphony.  The girls pretended to conduct the orchestra and we talked about how much work it is to write a symphony needing to write music for every instrument. 

After that I fixed the girls some lunch and while we ate I read to them out of our Botany book and we discussed different ways of seed dispersal.  Ever since then they have been noticing seeds when we go on walks and have been commenting on how they must have been "dispersed".  When we finished, each of the two older girls narrated back to me what they had learned.  I love this particular series of science books because it is taught from a creationism point of view and God is woven throughout each lesson.

After lunch and our botany reading the girls went off to play.  I didn't catch any pictures but they played with their new princess castle Emily got for her birthday for a while and then they had a game of house where they were all mothers and they each had their own areas for their house and they would come to visit each other.  Another time they were playing some sort of game with the balloons left over from Emily's birthday.  There was one disagreement at one point, but nothing major and it was solved quickly.  Alexis went off and read some of "Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm" and then decided to go to play the piano and violin for a while before lessons.  At 3:00 Daddy took her to her piano and violin lessons while I prepared our Family Home Evening lesson for the night.

While Alexis was gone and I was working on the lesson, the girls went outside to play.  It was raining, but unless it's really bad, (storming or bitterly cold) I always let them play outside every day.  They actually love playing in the rain as it's a perfect excuse to use their umbrellas.

When Alexis returned from her lessons she joined them and sat on the back swing reading from the Friend magazine.

Here's Emily playing with a bit of sidewalk chalk.

I went inside and got dinner going while I watched Ashley from the kitchen window.  After that I went to the door and asked if anyone would like to help make cookies.  Of course they all immediately scrambled inside and we mixed up some chocolate chip cookies. 

I had some very sweet helpers.

After that it was time for dinner.  We had spaghetti and lasagna and green beans.  Don and I love lasagna, but none of the girls like it. It's easy enough to make a little pot of spaghetti for them, so that's what we do.  After dinner is over the girls help clean up.  Every night I put food away, tidy up the kitchen, and wipe counters and tables down.  Emily puts away all the dishes in the dishwasher.

Then Alexis loads the dishwasher.  We really only do dishes once a day in the evening.  I will wash larger dishes throughout the day by hand, but for the most part in our family it seems we fill up the dishwasher once a day and there isn't much from earlier in the day, ince breakfast and lunch are usually pretty simple, so we usually just do it all at once.  (Unless we have someone coming over, ha ha ha.)  :)  Ashley loves to sit on the counter top and help whoever is washing dishes, (or play in the water.)  :)

After the kitchen was cleaned up I gave Ashley and Emily a bath and Alexis took a shower.  They got into pajamas and we began Family Home Evening.  I was in charge of tonight's lesson and we did it on prophets.  After discussing what prophets do and how important it is to listen to prophets, we sang the song "Follow the Prophet".  We each took turns on each verse being the prophet the verse was talking about.  For example when the verse sang of Noah, we discussed the story of Noah and then Emily put a sheet around her and pretended to be Noah.  She marched around the house while we all sang and followed her where ever she went.  We did this for each verse and the girls loved it.  By the end Ashley knew all the words to the chorus and was singing along happily with the rest of us.  After home evening was over we ate chocolate chip cookies for a treat we had baked earlier.  Then we had our evening devotional time.  We read out of the New Testament, discussed what we were reading, sang a hymn, and said our evening prayer.

After kissing Daddy goodnight the three girls went upstairs, brushed their teeth and they all climbed into our bed.  I read Ashley a couple of picture books and sang them a lullaby.  Then read a couple of chapters out of our current read aloud, which is "Pollyanna".  After that Ashley was asleep so we all tiptoed out of the room, with her sisters giving her one last goodnight kiss ever so gently so as not to wake her.  I then walked the girls to their room, gave them kisses and they went to bed.

After they girls go to bed I usually spend time with Don, read, watch Netflix, or prepare stuff for the next day.  We usually go on a few outings each week and also get together with different friends as well, and some days we do really neat projects/activities but this is the general idea of what a typical day of homeschooling looks like for us.  We are so grateful for the blessing of the freedom of homeschooling and all it adds to our lives.  I love being there to teach and watch my kids learn.  I love all the time we get to spend together and the memories we make.  I love that my girls are each others best friends.  I love being able to incorporate the gospel into their days all day at any time.  I love the extra time they have to play and enjoy their childhood, follow their interests, and the way they thirst for knowledge.  I love being able to individualize their learning to their unique little personalities and help them follow what they love and utilize their strengths while at the same time strengthening their weaknesses in an environment of love and encouragement.  I just love everything about it!  :)