I'm listing a bunch of my Scholastic Teacher Resource books on eBay. These are wonderful for teachers, homeschooling moms, etc.! We don't need them anymore, and I love for them to go someplace where they'll get lots of use.
We're pinching pennies this year, and the funds will be used for Christmas and an upcoming birthday for the munchkins. Please take a look and pass the information on to anyone you know who might be interested. Thank you!
*Ü* Blessings,
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
Mid-Summer's Fun
Well, we've been busy enjoying one of Maine's best summers ever! It has been glorious! While we've had some rain, the majority of it has been at the end of the day and overnight... that means lots and lots of sunny days!
We got the kids one of those inexpensive soft sided pools... the kind with the inflatable ring that "floats" above the water line thus "holding up" the pool sides. It has been a blessing on some of our hot-hot days!
Here's a picture so you can see what I mean:
We've had a busy summer too... ds7 played Little League for the first time this year. He loved it!
And our little ballerina took two classes of ballet all year, so she had two recital numbers to perform this year. She really loves to dance, so next year we're looking at different schools for the coming school year.
A local gym offered a class called YEOP (Youth Environmental Obstacle Play) that we took advantage of. There was lots of running, jumping, balancing, climbing, tumbling, etc. The kids loved it, so we have been going all summer.
Our Keeper's club ended with a Pinning Ceremony. The club members received pins for weaving, plastic canvas, decoupage, croquet and music. We had two boys with us this year, and we let them follow along and earn pins as well. Since our members aren't able to commit to the club in the fall, my own girlies and I continued through the summer with two more skills - wild flowers and flower pressing.
Our family had the chance to visit the Nina and Pinta - replicas of the original boats Christopher Columbus sailed on in 1492. It was amazing to see just how small these boats really were!
We did our annual strawberry picking, and made some jam for the year. We visited a living history museum in Newfield, Maine called Willowbrook Village. We played with sparklers on The Fourth, we attended my family's annual reunion, and we visited the local amusement park - FUNTown USA. And just last weekend, we visited my sil in Connecticut. The kids played on a Slip N Slide for the first time, and we visited a park that had a pool and a splashing fountain! Both were great fun!
I'll end with just two more photos of our summer of fun... Daddy created a slide for our little pool:
Hope your summer is just as much fun as ours!
*Ü* Blessings,
We got the kids one of those inexpensive soft sided pools... the kind with the inflatable ring that "floats" above the water line thus "holding up" the pool sides. It has been a blessing on some of our hot-hot days!
Here's a picture so you can see what I mean:
We've had a busy summer too... ds7 played Little League for the first time this year. He loved it!
And our little ballerina took two classes of ballet all year, so she had two recital numbers to perform this year. She really loves to dance, so next year we're looking at different schools for the coming school year.
A local gym offered a class called YEOP (Youth Environmental Obstacle Play) that we took advantage of. There was lots of running, jumping, balancing, climbing, tumbling, etc. The kids loved it, so we have been going all summer.
Our Keeper's club ended with a Pinning Ceremony. The club members received pins for weaving, plastic canvas, decoupage, croquet and music. We had two boys with us this year, and we let them follow along and earn pins as well. Since our members aren't able to commit to the club in the fall, my own girlies and I continued through the summer with two more skills - wild flowers and flower pressing.
Our family had the chance to visit the Nina and Pinta - replicas of the original boats Christopher Columbus sailed on in 1492. It was amazing to see just how small these boats really were!
We did our annual strawberry picking, and made some jam for the year. We visited a living history museum in Newfield, Maine called Willowbrook Village. We played with sparklers on The Fourth, we attended my family's annual reunion, and we visited the local amusement park - FUNTown USA. And just last weekend, we visited my sil in Connecticut. The kids played on a Slip N Slide for the first time, and we visited a park that had a pool and a splashing fountain! Both were great fun!
I'll end with just two more photos of our summer of fun... Daddy created a slide for our little pool:
Hope your summer is just as much fun as ours!*Ü* Blessings,
Sunday, June 5, 2011
The school year is winding down...
Yes, it is. We've complete Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory by Heart of Dakota, and we really enjoyed it! I think our favorite part was the book American Pioneers and Patriots. We just loved the short stories about the pioneer children and the "How they ..." pages that told how they made butter or soap or log cabins... or even how they lived on a sailing ship!
We had a change in math programs part way through the year due to my ds7 being diagnosed with a color deficiency. We opted to stop using Math U See (which I had been using successfully with all my children except this one.) SO we switched over to the (recommended by HOD) Singapore Math US Edition. Because it is a totally different way to teach math, I thought we would do best if we started at the beginning... so we went back to the beginning of first grade with both my ds7 and dd8. Alot of it was review for dd, but I'm okay with that. We are now about 1/3 of the way through the second book, and we'll work on it all summer so that we can start book 2A in the fall. This will put dd a bit behind, but I think that will be okay if she can work at her own pace, she may even catch up at some point.
Besides math, over the summer months ds will continue to read through the Emergent Reader set in Beyond. I added in the alternate books, so it is taking quite a bit longer to get through the books than it normally would. This is okay, because ds is progressing nicely and enjoying his reading time. He is even choosing to read on his own to himself some days! I had a Little Bear Treasury book that he completed independently! I'm so proud of him! My dd is also continuing reading over the summer, but she'll be reading some of the storytime books that we haven't yet read. The list is full of so many good books!
I've already started preparing for next year. We'll be starting Bigger Hearts for His Glory, and I'm super excited about that! I've already got every book we'll need, except three from the Extension Pack... which I'm not even sure we'll need, but want to have, just in case dd needs a little extra challenge. I've been organizing and preparing notebooks, binders and the like! While out with the family today, I happened across a 20 pack of page protectors for $1.50! I bought four packs, enough for history notebooking for both children. After I was home, one of our older children told me what a steal I had gotten, that generally these page protectors are closer to $4 a package! Woo-hoo! Now I realize I'll need at least 12 of these packages - I'll have to go back for eight more! Here's the real question... do I really NEED them? Can the children do a notebooking page on a piece of copy paper and then three hole punch it to fit in a binder? Or will that be sloppy? We've done lapbooking, but never notebooking... so this is a new journey for me!
I decided on separate composition notebooks for the vocabulary work we'll be doing in Bigger. And then dd will need another notebook for her Dictation work... or I can have her do that on loose leaf paper, and then put it in a Language Arts binder for her. She won't be doing spelling like ds. He gets 340 note cards and a special box to hold them all... I got a box that will hold them all for $1.25 at the same store as the page protectors. I've never seen a box that will hold that many, so I'm glad I found it! He'll be learning cursive this year with Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting book D. I'm hoping that jumping book C will be okay. His penmanship is very good, so I think he's ready. My dd has already learned cursive, so she will be doing copywork of the poetry selections in Bigger. For her I have the poems printed in the Getty-Dubay cursive font (I used the StartWrite program to do this) and put in page protectors for her. She'll then copy a portion of the poem onto loose leaf paper which will go into the page protector as well, and we'll have a nice poetry copywork binder at the end of the year.
I'm thinking two binders for each kiddo. One binder to hold all the Language Arts stuff (dictation/spelling, copywork, grammar - maybe even a pocket for the vocab book) and another to hold the History and Science notebooking pages.
Now to figure out how to make this work with the oh-so-organized-Workboxes!
*Ü* Blessings,
We had a change in math programs part way through the year due to my ds7 being diagnosed with a color deficiency. We opted to stop using Math U See (which I had been using successfully with all my children except this one.) SO we switched over to the (recommended by HOD) Singapore Math US Edition. Because it is a totally different way to teach math, I thought we would do best if we started at the beginning... so we went back to the beginning of first grade with both my ds7 and dd8. Alot of it was review for dd, but I'm okay with that. We are now about 1/3 of the way through the second book, and we'll work on it all summer so that we can start book 2A in the fall. This will put dd a bit behind, but I think that will be okay if she can work at her own pace, she may even catch up at some point.
Besides math, over the summer months ds will continue to read through the Emergent Reader set in Beyond. I added in the alternate books, so it is taking quite a bit longer to get through the books than it normally would. This is okay, because ds is progressing nicely and enjoying his reading time. He is even choosing to read on his own to himself some days! I had a Little Bear Treasury book that he completed independently! I'm so proud of him! My dd is also continuing reading over the summer, but she'll be reading some of the storytime books that we haven't yet read. The list is full of so many good books!
I've already started preparing for next year. We'll be starting Bigger Hearts for His Glory, and I'm super excited about that! I've already got every book we'll need, except three from the Extension Pack... which I'm not even sure we'll need, but want to have, just in case dd needs a little extra challenge. I've been organizing and preparing notebooks, binders and the like! While out with the family today, I happened across a 20 pack of page protectors for $1.50! I bought four packs, enough for history notebooking for both children. After I was home, one of our older children told me what a steal I had gotten, that generally these page protectors are closer to $4 a package! Woo-hoo! Now I realize I'll need at least 12 of these packages - I'll have to go back for eight more! Here's the real question... do I really NEED them? Can the children do a notebooking page on a piece of copy paper and then three hole punch it to fit in a binder? Or will that be sloppy? We've done lapbooking, but never notebooking... so this is a new journey for me!
I decided on separate composition notebooks for the vocabulary work we'll be doing in Bigger. And then dd will need another notebook for her Dictation work... or I can have her do that on loose leaf paper, and then put it in a Language Arts binder for her. She won't be doing spelling like ds. He gets 340 note cards and a special box to hold them all... I got a box that will hold them all for $1.25 at the same store as the page protectors. I've never seen a box that will hold that many, so I'm glad I found it! He'll be learning cursive this year with Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting book D. I'm hoping that jumping book C will be okay. His penmanship is very good, so I think he's ready. My dd has already learned cursive, so she will be doing copywork of the poetry selections in Bigger. For her I have the poems printed in the Getty-Dubay cursive font (I used the StartWrite program to do this) and put in page protectors for her. She'll then copy a portion of the poem onto loose leaf paper which will go into the page protector as well, and we'll have a nice poetry copywork binder at the end of the year.
I'm thinking two binders for each kiddo. One binder to hold all the Language Arts stuff (dictation/spelling, copywork, grammar - maybe even a pocket for the vocab book) and another to hold the History and Science notebooking pages.
Now to figure out how to make this work with the oh-so-organized-Workboxes!
*Ü* Blessings,
Saturday, February 12, 2011
I'm SO neglectful!
Gosh, I can't believe how bad I am about keeping up on this! I think it must be because I feel like every post must come with photos, and that takes longer... so my new goal is to update each week (Saturday morning may be good) and if I have pics great, if not - that's okay too!
Are you ready? This is a long one! I'm going to back up and go quickly over everything I've neglected...
The kiddos started swim lessons at our local YMCA at the end of September. We've kept right up with it all through the winter... we've had a couple cancellations due to excessive snow - in case you hadn't heard, we've been lambasted this year! lol
Here's one of my fave pics of each of the kiddos in the pool:
At the end of October, Daddy got to doing some woodwork with the kiddos, using power drills and hammers (thankfully no sore thumbs!) and this is what they created:
Doesn't that look like fun? They LOVE it! It's packed away in the shed right now, but I know when Spring does arrive here in the cold North East, they will pull that out and the fun will start all over again! Oh the joys of childhood!
Just last week, I was driving B to violin practice...just the two of us...and she was looking at the clouds... "Mom, is that a Cirro-Cumulus cloud?" I was amazed that she had actually retained the information we had gone over back in November on cloud formations! You know I love our curriculum Heart of Dakota - Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory...well, I can't remember what unit it was, but here is a photo of her doing the "Science Exploration" that week:
Yes...that is shaving cream she is using to create different cloud formations - they both had a blast! Another bit of homeschool news...we participated in our homeschool group's Fall Workshop, which was themed "The First Thanksgiving". The kids absolutely enjoyed themselves! I scrapped a couple pages about this...
After that we moved on into the holidays! My friend and I had our 3rd annual pie baking day again this year... it is always so much fun to have her and her family over and to spend time baking together! After that of course there was Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful day with all our family - except my oldest son was not there, but home sick; I brought him a plate later in the day. Then B had her 8th birthday! I cannot believe she is already eight! Time flies... here are the pages I scrapped about that special day:
Then Christmas came... that's an entire story all by itself! Let's just say it was the most wonderful season of all! And then the snow came...
Here are the kids on the slope behind our house:
More woodworking with Daddy, more snow, more sledding... oh and Mommy went to FL to visit her Grandpa who was celebrating his 100th birthday! And Daddy taught the kids to ice skate while Mommy enjoyed the sunshine and warmth! lol
Here's some layouts I did about those things:
OMGoodness, this is really getting LOOOOOONG, eh? Really, we're in January now, so I'm almost done! The day after I got back from FL, the homeschool group held their annual Spelling Bee...I'm so proud of all the hard work my kiddos did to prepare! Of course, I scrapped those photos too!
You know what...this is plenty long enough. I'll stop for now, and catch you all up on the last month of our lives next week!
*Ü* Blessings,
Are you ready? This is a long one! I'm going to back up and go quickly over everything I've neglected...
The kiddos started swim lessons at our local YMCA at the end of September. We've kept right up with it all through the winter... we've had a couple cancellations due to excessive snow - in case you hadn't heard, we've been lambasted this year! lol
Here's one of my fave pics of each of the kiddos in the pool:
At the end of October, Daddy got to doing some woodwork with the kiddos, using power drills and hammers (thankfully no sore thumbs!) and this is what they created:
Doesn't that look like fun? They LOVE it! It's packed away in the shed right now, but I know when Spring does arrive here in the cold North East, they will pull that out and the fun will start all over again! Oh the joys of childhood!
Just last week, I was driving B to violin practice...just the two of us...and she was looking at the clouds... "Mom, is that a Cirro-Cumulus cloud?" I was amazed that she had actually retained the information we had gone over back in November on cloud formations! You know I love our curriculum Heart of Dakota - Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory...well, I can't remember what unit it was, but here is a photo of her doing the "Science Exploration" that week:
Yes...that is shaving cream she is using to create different cloud formations - they both had a blast! Another bit of homeschool news...we participated in our homeschool group's Fall Workshop, which was themed "The First Thanksgiving". The kids absolutely enjoyed themselves! I scrapped a couple pages about this...
After that we moved on into the holidays! My friend and I had our 3rd annual pie baking day again this year... it is always so much fun to have her and her family over and to spend time baking together! After that of course there was Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful day with all our family - except my oldest son was not there, but home sick; I brought him a plate later in the day. Then B had her 8th birthday! I cannot believe she is already eight! Time flies... here are the pages I scrapped about that special day:
Then Christmas came... that's an entire story all by itself! Let's just say it was the most wonderful season of all! And then the snow came...
Here are the kids on the slope behind our house:
More woodworking with Daddy, more snow, more sledding... oh and Mommy went to FL to visit her Grandpa who was celebrating his 100th birthday! And Daddy taught the kids to ice skate while Mommy enjoyed the sunshine and warmth! lol
Here's some layouts I did about those things:
OMGoodness, this is really getting LOOOOOONG, eh? Really, we're in January now, so I'm almost done! The day after I got back from FL, the homeschool group held their annual Spelling Bee...I'm so proud of all the hard work my kiddos did to prepare! Of course, I scrapped those photos too!
You know what...this is plenty long enough. I'll stop for now, and catch you all up on the last month of our lives next week!
*Ü* Blessings,
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