Originality-Potter

Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.

Beatrix Potter

After summer update!

I am so dissapointed in this summer! I had so many wonderful plans for our little homeschool but all were tharted due to our involvement with the youth group at our church. I am not complaining about being given the privilege of being the youth ministers for a few months during the summer, it was amazing but with the experience taking most of our time I had little time nor energy to do much else.

School will begin on September 7th for us. A little bit of a late start but I have some things that I must do in the whole month of August before we can begin our next year. I can not tell you how excited I am about our next semester! I completely re-organized and re-arranged our play/school room, it took me 2 fully devoted days and it was worth it. I am waiting on 1 piece to seal the re-do of the room and then I will post a picture. I desperately wanted to get some things organized and filter through some of the old things to make room for the new things coming.

I truly LOVE being able to stay home and teach my boys. What an amazing, truly humbleing and down right near impossibly hard experience as a mother. I am amazed at the amount of emotions I feel as I journey down this God ordained path of homeschooling, no one day is alike. I have those completely joy filled days and then I have those what am I doing days and then so many in betweens! I didnt' set out to homeschool, homeschool found me and it completely captured me in all of it's beauty. Later I found the struggles that came with it but the JOY and BEAUTY always overshadow them.

I will be taking the boys school shopping to get them excited about their upcoming year hopefully soon and I am planning on sitting down tonight or at least this week and ordering all of our 2008/2009 school books. I can't wait to get my hands on all of them and flip through each page anxiously awaiting each lesson. I am going to try some new things with my planning this year I hope and I am going to begin now to pray for my diligence and discipline as a teacher.

Stay tuned....

JOYfully in Him,
Kelli

Our Summer Schedule

6:00 (I am going to work down to 6:00 by 15 minute increments, starting with 7:00am) This is my block of Morning Quiet Time where I will first get dressed, wash face and apply make up and then start coffee but begin with water as I spend some time in prayer and in the word.

6:45 Turn on the radio and grab a cup of coffee, check email, bank account, bills and other things and if time allows enjoy a few pages of a current book and then begin a quick straighten up along with laundry.

7:30 While laundry is going begin breakfast for soon to be awaking family.

8:00 Instruct/train boys to make bed, get dressed and find themselves ready to serve and eat. then they will take turns washing dishes and clearing table every other day with some assistance.

9:00 Finish up laundry and then have a little family Devotional

9:15 Outside nature walk/study time.

10:00 Play a math game Outside if not to hot or windy other wise at the table.

10:30 Spelling time with words taken from current reading books and other while T-Rex has a 15 minute sit still training time (and this will vary according to his current struggles)

11:00 FREE PLAY

12:00 Lunch, clean up and discussion on our memory verse

1:00 Music time and family play time!!

2:00 Rest hour... while Butterfly and T-Rex rest/nap Superman and I will quietly read, create and just enjoy some alone time. :0)

3:00 Superman will enjoy some time to do puzzles and various other kinds of quiet play(Tuesday and Thursday 45 minutes of video game time) while I learn Latin from Memoria Press and do other needed activities.

4:00 Book read aloud time with small snack

4:15 Everyone is up and given a special 30 minute video time while I start dinner

4:45 A special clean up time to prepare for Daddy to arrive home from studying, this includes faces, hands and feet cleaned up along with a nice and tidy house with joyful attitudes.

5:00 Family dinner and table prepping time (all littles will be envolved) while daddy is given 30 minutes to just enjoy being home without any expectations!

5:30 Dinner and Discussion and then family clean up.

6:15 Desert and History with Daddy! and then family free time!

7:30 Bath, pjs, clean up and family worship.

8:00 Bedtime for all littles!! Special clean up time for Momma.

9:00 Creative and Planning Time for me! Hopefully I will make good use of this time to make special fun things along with important things and plan out things for the next day or week!

10:00 Night time routine and then some scripture reading and prayer with Expresso before I call it lights out!

Visitor from the past few weeks...

A Calapa Spinx Moth

Mr. Robin collecting straw for his nest.


A baby fledgling, who I just found outside sleeping sadly eternally.

A friendly Garter Snake.

Slug Slime

We woke up this morning to a long windy path of slug slime in our playroom. It is always a delight to find the glittery paths of slime along the sidewalk outside but not necessarily on my carpet. we found out that our slimy friends can actually get squeeze under our door! There is no other way they can get in. Last week Superman unfortunetly slimed his sock after he stepped on one early one morning. We were all sad, he was a big one to. T-Rex is completely taken with them and claimed them all as "friends". I looked up some information on these extremely interesting creatures and found a nice little slug friendly site with a lot of information from a true slug lover! Take a look: All About Slugs.

I am still here!

Wow, so I have been really neglecting this place! We have been pretty relaxed with school right now which has been great for all of us. I enjoy both a very strict and structured format to our days but also a very relaxed and spontaneous format. A few weeks of the strictness and then a week or so of the relaxed keeps it fresh around here. Right now we are in the middle of studying birds still, also rocks which we are all very fascinated with. Tomorrow we will make a crystal garden and Friday we will possible make a volcano.

Learning to Spell through Copywork, has anyone had any experience with this program? I was able to flip the the pages of it this weekend and really like the looks of it but would love some thoughts of a user. I have decided on Simply Grammar after looking at it. History is still undecided for me, I was thinking of continueing Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer but have been thinking about All Through the Ages by Christine Miller. I like the idea of getting the cd for SOTW and listening to it together each week.

Well it is pouring outside and my boys just woke up ready to eat and start the day! Have a great day! Things will start back in order around here soon.

JOYfully in Him,
Kelli

Olympics

We held the Olympics in our backyard a few weeks ago, it was a blast!

We crowned two winners at the end and they both went on for hours in the "Backyard Obstacle Course".


Superman enjoyed reading Tales from the Odyssey by Mary Pope Osborne. He made a helmet from one of the Greece books he read.