Reflections on Learning Weeks 12 & 13

I had a LOT of problems loading these pictures. We are about 5 days late in posting. Sorry.....

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. I am late in chiming in with our reflections of the learning week(s). But I do want to take the time to do it. I am finding that I enjoy having notes of what we have accomplished and things that might need some tweaking. Some here goes......

In the learning room....We are marching forward. Chloe is still reading This Country of Ours independently and doing narrations. She is really enjoying this book and is writing 2-3 page narrations. We are still in Colonial Times as a family. I started reading Welcome to Felicity's World with the girls. It is actually a very educational book. I was surprised. It also adds some fun by allowing the girls to bring in their American Girl dolls.

Activities.... The girls enjoyed the weekly Explorers co-op, choir, CCD, American Heritage Girls and art class.

Out in Nature..... last Friday we drove down to Auburn to visit with the cousins. We enjoyed a simply gorgeous day at the park. Playing and catching up on the family. The trip went by way to fast, because we had to return so that C-Sunshine could practice for her 4H Trot or Treat show next weekend. Here she is with her Shareahorse.
On Saturday, Dad took the girls to our parish children's fishing tournament. Both K-Doodle and C-Sunshine participated. K-Doodle caught two fish! C-Sunshine caught nine fishing off the bottom with crickets and won a rod and reel and $20 gift card from Walmart. She loves to fish, especially when prizes are involved. They get it honest. Dad is a fisherman.

This past Friday, we drove into Atlanta to see SlimGoodbody's Bodyology. It was FANTASTIC! If you ever get a chance to go and see this guy, take it. The tickets were only $6.50. The show is very educational and fun! He is very entertaining. Has so much charisma. The girls liked his show better than Disney on Ice! That is saying something.

Yesterday, C-Sunshine competed in her first 4H horse show. She showed a horse named "Sandy". She won first place! We are so proud of her. We stayed at the show all day (and night) and had a great time.


Today we have a Trunk-or-Treat at our parish. We always decorate the back of Dad's pickup and hand out candy to all the little cuties. This year my hubby has created a pumpkin throwing game of some kind. It should be a fun day for all. Hope to catch up with all of you soon. Have a great week!

Join in at Jen's Weekly Wrap Up

They are in Love......

with Buster! On Saturday morning, my friend Robin meet us at her stables and gave the girls an introduction to horses and then took them for a ride. Her horse's name is Buster and he is a 14 year old quarter horse and quite the gentleman. He stands about 14.2 hands. Both C-Sunshine and K-Doodle rode him around the ring, but C-Sunshine actually got to ride him alone, holding the reins and guiding him on her own. Of course, Robin was not too far away.

C-Sunshine has joined the Horse and Pony club this year with our local 4H club. So she is excited about learning more about horses. She LOVES horses and has them all over her room. She reads about horses, fiction and none. I am glad that she is getting the opportunity to be around them, learn to ride and experience life with a horse. I always loved horses too, but never got the opportunity to learn to ride or be around them first hand. One of the joys of learning at home. We get to cater to the child!


K-Doodleehad no fear whatsoever. Both girls were very comfortable around Buster and had a great time. Thanks Robin!

Reflections from Learning Week 11

Weekly Wrap-up from Learning Week 11

3R’s – Just cruising along with language arts. I do need to introduce some kind of writing assignment other than narrations. I think we will write letters to shut-in’s next week and give them to Deacon Jim at church to pass out to those he visits during the week. I also want to do some kind of “seasons” project with Kaylee next week. She is figuring it all out, but I don’t think I have given her the opportunity for all the “cute zee” things that her big sis got to do at her age. We are going to work on that.

History – read in Liberty about minutemen and red coats. The colonist as getting ready to revolt! We actually only got one day of History in this week.

Science – the girls decided to make lap-books this week. Chloe downloaded a ton of stuff from the internet and made copies of things we had at home. She is working on an extensive lap book on ocean animals. Because she is a bit of a perfectionist, it might take a while to complete.  We are currently studying Whales.

Art – Kaylee had art day about every day this week. She just LOVES to create. She has a “formal” art class on Thursday afternoon’s two hours each week. Both of the girls do and absolutely love it. I have always known that my girls were Artsy girls, but I am still blown away by all that they create at home and away.

The Impromptu Masterpiece

Nature - Yeah, we actually got outside this week. We played outside, walked outside and this morning Kaylee and I just sat outside for about two hours. She spent her time making sketches of the trees and drawing pictures. I was actually being bad and typing lesson plans on the computer, but I WAS enjoying the outdoors. Especially since it was only about 62 degrees. I love Autumn!

Outside Activities – we had our first week of our homeschool “Explorers” co-op. They are studying China these six weeks. We also had American Heritage Girls, CCD, homeschool choir and today (Friday) we are at Disney On Ice – Toy Story 3! Picture forthcoming, I am sure.

Around the house – disaster. A good tidy is planned for the weekend along with the dreaded season changing of the guard with the clothes. Why do I DREAD that every season? It really doesn’t take that long, but I still dread it so.
Still struggling to find a rhythm these days. I am still preoccupied with outside activities ( being the Mom who leads, directs, plans). I need to pick ONE thing each year and that’s it. It truly is taking away from the things that I need to be doing for my family and the planning that I need to be doing for our homeschool. Will I ever learn?

Join in at Jen's Weekly Wrap Up

Our Big Fat Almost Free Vacation

This is actually a post that I wrote a couple of weeks ago, but took until now to load up the pictures. Have I complained enough about being too busy lately? I need to go back to this place!


Well we are back from our "almost" free vacation. It was such a fun time together. I think planning it for free was half the fun. Here is a list of what we had to work with to produce a free vacation.


1 - my parents gifted us the use of their timeshare condo on the beach in Ormond Beach

This was the view from our unit...watching the sunrise every morning with my coffee......aaaahhh...

2 - We purchased 95% of our food using the buy one, get one free items from Publix over the past few month. We ate spaghetti, taco's, harvest casserole (meal makers) and had chicken for the grill, but ended up bringing that home. We also had all our breakfast, snacks and lunch stuff. We brought back a LOT of groceries.


3 - We had about 150 dollars in cash from birthdays (Pat and I), a walmart gift card for $10.

4 - Four Disney coupons good for a day at Walt Disney World from their Give A Day, Get A Day campaign. This was a great savings as it turned out. I had NOT idea Disney was so expensive!

We did have expenses that we didn't know how we were going to cover. Such as the food at Disney and any soveniers for the girls. Well on our first day at the condo, they offered us a hundred dollar VISA gift card if we would go and listen to a high pressure vacation sales pitch. We looked at each other and said "sure". After a free breakfast, 90 minutes and a "we don't make any decisions without thinking it over for 24 hours", we had our gift card! (On a side note, the vacation plan sounded really good!) We used that Visa card for our Disney day!


We did well finding resources for miscellaneous spending and the vacation. But knew that we would have to pay $140 for our dog who was with a dog sitter. On our last day on the beach, someone approached us about seeing yet another vacation speal. Well, we all said no. Then the guy said he would give us $120 CASH and a 3-day stay in Gatlinburg, TN. Dad said "that will pay for Lucy" and we are agreed to go. After 2 hours, we had the money for the dog. Well almost, we were 20 bucks shy. Turns out, when we arrive to get Lucy, her sitter said "120" because she was such a good dog. Go Figure! That is exactly what we had earned for our last pushy sales pitch!

So the vacation was a success with minimal out of pocket and loads of fun. We had time to reconnect as a family and just hang out. That is priceless in my book. Can't put a price tag on family.

This.....is pricesless......

Reflections from Learning Week 10

Our Week in Review

At the request of my good friend Patty at Reasons for Chocolate, we are going to begin participating in Jen's Weekly Wrap Up. So here goes for this week.

This week was a short week because of doctor's appointments and too many outside activities. It was rushed and unorganized and drove both C-Sunshine and me (perfectionist) crazy! We had to turn down a camping trip with American Heritage Girls just to get our life back together. I am hoping for a more peaceful and productive week next week.

Habits

Well, we had certainly fallen off the band wagon on some very important habit traits. This week we concentrated on just getting back into our normal morning routines after vacation. Getting up, actually getting dressed, eating breakfast, making beds and brushing our teeth. This should be done by the start of schooling at 9 a.m. SLOWLY this is coming back to us.

Language

C-Sunshine is using Language of God D, Language Lessons for the Elementary Child and Learning Language Arts through Literature. It seems like overload, but it works for her and was at her request. She is also using Spelling Wisdom again this year. She has a reading list a mile long. She is never without a book in hand. She begins The Trumpet and the Swan next week as a read-aloud.

K-Doodle is progressing nicely with her phonics. We are using a combination of things for phonics this year. I have downloaded some Montessori language files that I plan to print, laminate and begin to use soon. We are finishing up our blends this week. K-Doodle also loves to read and gets frustrated if she can’t understand every word in her sister’s books. She is reading short chapter books and still lots of picture books.

Math

Saxon Math 6/5 for C-Sunshine – looking into more games for her.

Saxon Math 2 for K-Doodles along with math games.

Science

We studied about whales this week from Swimming Creatures lesson 2. C-Sunshine has been reading ahead in the book and does quite a nice job at narration. They are sometimes 3-4 pages long at this point. She is turning into quite the writer. I purchased Pagoo and the Burgess Seashore book to help us with our study of the ocean. I have also ordered What’s Under the Sea? from Usbourne. I checked all these books out from the library previously and they are all keepers.

History

We are currently studying about the American Revolution but did not do much with history this week. I did print out the timeline figures and plan to work on putting them in the girls timeline books. Other than that, this week was a History wash out. Bad mommy!

Faith Formation

The girls attended their first Little Flowers meeting and weekly CCD class. Other than daily prayer, I am afraid I did not do much with faith formation at home this week. We were extremely consumed by outside activities. Not good.

Fine Arts

We are listening to Vivaldi this week. The girls attended homeschool choir and their weekly art class. In addition we did drawing, painting and some crafting. Again, we were over extended this week.

Nature Study

Failed here. Nice weather and were just too busy to really enjoy it. Do I sound like I am complaining about being too busy? :) Again, Mom failed here.

Home Life

We are beginning to feel “fall” arriving around here. Finally it is below 80 degrees! We will be pulling out fall clothes and decor over the next week. We have begun Holiday planning by starting a Holiday Notebook and the girls started a Homemade Christmas gift list. We are going to try and make as many gifts as possible this year.

There are no pictures because we were just too busy being busy!

Our first Little Flowers Meeting

Well tonight was our very first Little Flowers Club meeting. We will meet once a month from October through June. We are actually meeting at our parish hall which makes it pretty convenient for us. I was a little nervous about the first meeting, but with the help of C-Sunshine who headed up the games, I think things went really well.

We had a total of seven girls ranging in age from 5-11. Our group is geared towards the 5-9 year old range, with C-Sunshine being the helper Little Flower. I am hoping to start a Little Women of Hospitality group for her next year. One step at a time.

The girls helped set up the room.



C-Sunshine organized some fun ice-breaker games.....



After having our introduction to Little Flowers, we discussed our virute of the month - Faith and our saint of the month - Saint Catherine of Sienna. Using the wonderful resources over at Shower of Roses, the girls scrapbooked a Faith page for their Virtue scrapbooks.



I attempted to make a delightful snack. These are sunflower cupcakes with a single sunflower seed in the middle. They looked "ok", but the girls LOVED them. So, I guess they were a hit. :)



We made flower windsocks that I purchased through Oriental Trading. They were listed over at Shower of Roses on her suggested crafts for Wreath One. I find such great ideas over at Jessica's and plan to go visit her blog often!



We had such fun with a great group of girls. We are all looking forward to next month.