What's Been Going On...

Well, just to update everyone on what's been going on lately...We went on a field trip on Friday to a local Orchard & learned about Apples, picked appled & pumpkins, tasted fresh apple cider, shopped in the market, and socialized with other homeschoolers from the area - We had a great time!

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Yesterday we went to our first Co-op of the year - Our group has them once a month and it is an all-day event! Each month there is a different theme, the parents take turns volunteering to help teach, do crafts, help in nursery, help with snacks, etc...the kids go to their grade's class where they spend the day learning, playing & having a lot of fun! The theme for this month was American Indians ~ The kids got their faces painted, ate corn bread, played games, watched a video and a lot more! Jake was great and slept for a while so I even got to organize all of our family photos from last year in preparation for scrapbooking! Next month is NJ History...

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Today we will be back to a "normal" school day (except for the fact that I have been awake since 3:30am when Jake felt that he had slept enough for a while and wanted to hang out!) Along with the usual mathematics & language work we complete daily, we have been trying out a new curriculum for Early American History by a company called Beautiful Feet Books (www.bfbooks.com) and recently finished reading Leif the Lucky by D'Aulaire & now are going to start the book Columbus by the same authors...Becky & Matthew really enjoyed the other book - The illustrators for these children's books have some pages in color and some are B&W sketches, which I photocopied as per the Teacher's Guide from Beautiful Feet Books and they color their pages while we talk about the story & then get to paste it on colored paper & put it in their school notebooks. This has been working out really well for us (& I actually know where all of the kids schoolwork is in one place!)

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Jake Update: His head is rounding out very nicely & he only has 4-6 more weeks in the helmet! Can't wait to be able to hug him close without getting klunked in the face with the helmet & to be able to kiss his ear or the side of his head for more than 1 hour each day. He sits by himself & gets onto his belly by himself & really wants to crawl! He eats fruits, veggies, meats & yogurts & loves them all! He also enjoys feeding himself the fruit & veggie puffs finger foods by Gerber! What a cutie!

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Last night Becky wanted me to teach her how to cross-stitch so we started with that, she has been practicing her piano lessons, we have been frequenting the local library for different books & videos & will be taking Matthew to story & craft time for preschoolers in the near future ~ (Becky seems to have a real interest in horses so she has been taking out books from the Saddle Club series & reading them each day!) and the kids have been going outside a few times a week to kick around the soccer ball ~ Our homeschool group has a soccer club which meets once a week & we are going to try to make it to that ~ Becky also wants to play basketball through the township so we may head over to the Rec Center today as well to check into the fall/winter sports programs that are going on...

Ha! Mother Does Know Best

Phew ~ Friday's here ~ What a busy week! That said, I'd like to share a quick story of something that happened with my daughter Rebecca. She is 7 going on 37 ~ I really think that she could run the house without me if she needed to (and she thinks so, too!). For the past few weeks in our homeschool we have been going through our lessons each day and phonics and math have been a lot of review (which is absolutely necessary to reinforce the skills she learned last year). Well, Becky has been complaining a lot about "What-Vowels-Consonants-I did this last year!", "I already know this!", etc. Well, I was getting pretty tired of the complaints ~ She was trying my patience, so I decided to give her the first Phonics test last Friday. When she was done she got a 91 (which is still great, of course). But, she was a little bummed out & asked "Why did I get a 91 today and last year I got mostly 100's?". **Just what I wanted, a chance to reinforce to her why she needs to review materials she already learned before!**

Saturday Becky & Matthew spent the day with my family at my brother's house to celebrate my dad's birthday while I stayed home with Jake & got a lot done around the house (I had my dad over for dinner the night before). (Danny was away for the weekend at a Camp Out with the men & boys from our church - He is a Ranger Kids Commander (which is basically our church's version of Boy Scouts). Well, my other brother John drove my kids back home for me & hung around for a visit after they went to bed. He proceeded to tell me things that the kids did throughout the day, funny things they said, etc. Then he told me something that made my week!

He said that Becky was telling him about school and how she had a test and got a lower grade than she thought she would. Then she said, "I guess my mom was right and I do need to review things I already learned". I almost fell off my chair - Becky said I was right about something! (You have to know that Becky thinks she can do my job better than I can - If I tell her to do something one way, she automatically does it a different way). Hearing that she said I was right was a total encouragement to me as a homeschooling mom because sometimes (okay, most of the time) I question if things I try to teach her actually sink in!

Well, I had to share this (even though it was almost a week later than I had wanted to post it!) to hopefully give some encouragement to any of you out there who are newer to homeschooling like I am and may sometimes question or have doubts...Anyway, hope you all have a good weekend and let's pray for the safety of all of the people who are in the path of Hurricane Rita, the people who are stuck in all of that traffic trying to evacuate Texas, for the leadership of the Governors of Texas and Louisana & President Bush, that the oil refineries in Rita's path will not be damaged and that the storm will weaken before it even hits...

Those Wildwood Days...

We went away for a mini-vacation to the beach last weekend with my family - It was so much fun! We go every year the weekend after Labor Day - It is so great because the weather is still awesome & summery, but all of the kids and families are back to school and there aren't a lot of crowds...

Jake went into the ocean for the first time ever ~ He was a little unsure at first, but then he liked it. Matthew really enjoyed jumping the waves & Becky is happiest just sitting on the sand and building her sandcastles! One day we went to see a motorcross race they had right on the beach - It was so cool - Matthew LOVED it! Now he wants his own dirtbike like the little kids that were racing!

Hope you enjoy the pics of our trip...

Becky also wanted me to show a picture of all of the stuffed animals that we won on the boardwalk at the crane games. Between my mom & Danny they won over 30 stuffed animals (and no, they didn't spend their entire life savings doing it~They're just that good!)

Mrs. Clean Was Here!

We're going away for the weekend so we have a friend coming to stay at our house and take care of the dogs for us. So, naturally, I was a maniac yesterday & cleaned the house from top to bottom. Then I when I was finished (and totally exhausted!) last night, I was pondering this...We live here in this house everyday and coexisted with piles of papers and books all around, baskets of laundry to put away in my room and the kids rooms, & the bathtub was way overdue for a good cleaning, to name a few things - Now, we're leaving the house for a few days and It's Spotless - Go Figure! Isn't human nature funny?

The house was also this clean a few years back when we had our house on the market for a while ~ We had wanted to buy some property and move a few hours south of here and build a house, but it obviously was not God's plan for our lives because that was four years ago and we're still here! Anyway, when they would put the house listing in the local papers they would write "Mrs. Clean Lives Here..." (After the house was off the market & had become really cluttered again or we just got busy with life & didn't have time to thoroughly clean the house everyday, etc. Danny would say to me, "Hey, where's Mrs. Clean? When's she coming back?"

I guess when we come back from the shore this weekend, I am going to have to pretend that someone is coming over everyday to keep it this clean because I have to say - I LOVE it this clean! I really do enjoy cleaning & I just have to make it more of a priority to keep the house at this level of clean - The kids are helping out a lot more as I mentioned a few posts back & Matthew has even progressed to attempting to make his bed, so that's a major plus! Yay!

Anyway, have a good weekend & check out my cleanliness...

Friday Progress Report

We're finishing up our first week of this new school year with some curriculum changes and more chores; here's our progress report: We've had a good week! We're back on a more structured routine with starting back to school & it is a good thing! I have printed out "Daily Routine" charts for the kids just to help remind them of things we would like them to do each day - Once they do something it gets checked off in the box for that day. They both love it! I have to say that with a better structure & more "things" required of the kids each (as opposed to our totally relaxed summer schedule), it was a very nice week. The house was cleaner (since Becky is loving this chart thing!) - She's vacuumed, made her bed & kept her room clean every day, & her favorite thing - Setting & clearing the table after each meal - I printed "instruction sheets" of how to properly set the table & how to clear the table (where to put dirty dishes, how to wipe the table with a warm washcloth, etc...) Matthew has a routine chart also & for him I put cute clip art since he can't read yet & it says things like "Get Dressed", "Brush Teeth" & "make bed". He's into doing everything except the making the bed - He has a mental block on it - He doesn't even want to try! But we'll keep working on that...

School-wise things are great so far, although Becky didn't realize that usually the first week or two of school are a review...She will be having a spelling test today & she actually can't wait! Matthew is enjoying his preschool work and all of the read alouds that we are doing. I am doing a much more relaxed school day this year & it feels much better. Of course we are covering the basics each day as far as Math & Language (phonics, spelling, writing) are concerned and then we are doing Bible, social studies, science, art, music, gym/health and everything else all throughout the week...The kids have made ABC Album scrapbooks this week & predecorated the pages with one letter of the alphabet on each page - The plan is for them to record different things we do in school or as a family throughout the year by adding pictures (and short sentences for Becky to write - Matthew can dictate his & I will write them for him). We are also going to make a school notebook today which will have sections for each subject so we can put in the completed work pages and keep an organized record of what each child did this year - I think it will be nice to look back at in years to come!

Well, this was my Friday Progress Report of our first week back at school ~ I am looking forward to the nice long holiday weekend & having Danny home with us! The kids really miss him when he is at work. We have our annual church picnic this weekend which is always a LOT of fun & some other things planned, as well as just a lot of hanging out & relaxing! :)