Photo Catch-Up

Okay, so this will be a catch up on old photos as well as this weeks update... Lets start with Halloween. We spent the evening at our church doing Truck or Treat. The kids had a great time playing on the moon bounce and eating LOTS of candy. At one point when we did not know where they were, I found them all in the van stuffing their little faces with candy :) LOL

Here is Lulu, my little bumble bee! She didn't fuss once about her costumes and was the hit of the party toddling around. She said "ease" (cheese) for the first time when someone snapped her picture, too cute!

The Thanksgiving Feast at Max's Preschool. Max went as a Pilgrim. There are three boys and six girls in Max's class, both of the other boys were absent this day!

Regan, Max and Micah in the Tee Pee at Max's preschool Thanksgiving feast.

Regan, Micah and Max. Max's Teacher, Mrs. Beaman, was nice enough to make room at the table for Regan and Micah to join the feast too. Lulu ate Lima beans for the first time and LOVED them! Who would of thought?

Micah's Birthday party on December 1st (his Birthday is the 3rd). He's 5 years old now, hard to believe!

So now we are caught up to this past week. I told you last week that we were reading the Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Well, all on their own, the kids decided to act out the Christmas Story. Regan acted as director, costume and set designer and Mary. Lulu was the Angel of the Lord, Micah was Joseph (don't know what happened to his costume) and Max was a Shepherd (You can't tell from these pictures, but Max did have a sheep with him :) The part of Jesus was played by Regan's doll,Lily.

They even had a stable and a manger!They have also been working on puppets for a puppet show of the Nativity Story, but Lulu got into them the other day, so that might not be happening this year!

All the kids have been sick, so Sunday, Phil went to church and the rest of us stayed home and watched the Best Christmas Pageant Ever, movie. It was fun to watch it again, it has been awhile, and I think the kids enjoyed it (although they said they didn't because it was too short)! If you have never read the book or seen the movie, it is a great story of how the birth of Christ can change lives, even for the worst kids in town.

So we have officially ended our Christmas unit and are now getting back into our regular studies. I hope that all of our reading and plays and projects serve to remind the kids what Christmas is really about for years to come. Santa and presents are all fun, but sometimes we get so caught up in the rush of the holiday that we lose sight of the Awesome gift that was given to us some 2000 years ago. The next few weeks will be busy for us, so I cannot guarantee that I will post again before the new year. So, just in case, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from our family to your!

Shazam. out of the black night!

Well, a lot has happened since I last posted. We spent the Thanksgiving holiday visiting our families up in Maryland and were excited to see most of our family and a few friends as well. I am not sure how it happened but we are now well into the Christmas season!

I don't remember if I have mentioned it before, but I have been exploring different options for our curriculum for next year and I have found one that I am really excited to try. It is a Unit Study curriculum and the units are based on character traits of God. Konos is the name of curriculum for anyone who is interested. With this in mind, I decided to branch out a little this Christmas and do a short unit study (two weeks) on the book "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" by Barbara Robinson. This was my all time favorite Christmas movie growing up, I looked forward to watching it every year and so far it has been fun to revisit it with my kids! We are half way through the book and have been doing small reports on the characters. The kids are making puppets to do their own Christmas pageant when we finish next week. We have been learning about plays and acting as well as reading through the Christmas story in Luke daily. Of course it can't be all fun and games, or can it? Our new math curriculum has lots of games and the kids are begging me to play "Go to the Dump" and "Old Main" all the time. Regan and Micah both continue to improve in their reading. Micah finished reading the last of the kindergarten reading books(from our curriculum) before Thanksgiving and so now I am looking elsewhere for reading material for him.

We will be traveling a lot the next few weeks so school will be a little here and a little there. I plan to jump right back in to our Sonlight curriculum as soon as we return from Paula's (Phil's little sis.) wedding on the 15th. and then we will probably take Christmas week off. Hopefully I will have some more pictures to post in the next week or so.

P.S. The post title is one of my favorite lines from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever :)

Finished our 1st quarter!

We finished our first quarter this week! I can't believe it, it's gone by so quickly. This week Regan started her Book 2 reader. Her reading is improving everyday, it exciting to see! Micah is almost through reading all the Kindergarten readers for the whole year! I am going to have to find more reading material for him in another week or two. In History we studied the different continents and in Bible we are reading about Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness. Regan has been sick this week and we had some Dr.'s appointments and MOPS so it has been a low key week. No field trips or big projects. Grandma is visiting for the weekend and the kids are enjoying spending time with her and reading all the books that she brought with her. Tallulah said "Grandma" (or actually "Mamma") for the first time yesterday. Sorry Mom, looks like we have another kid who does not want to say Grammy :) .

More pictures from our Fall Party

Another week has past. As I mentioned in my last post Grammy and Poppy came to visit last week so our school week was abbreviated. We had lots of fun visiting tho ugh and did manage to get all our 3 R's (reading, writing and arithmetic) in. We also finished reading My Fathers Dragon, a big hit with the kids and I will be off to the library to find it's sequel this week :) I am posting some more pictures, they are a few weeks old, but later is better than never! The first picture is the kids helping Daddy rake the leaves in the back yard a few weeks ago. The picture on the right is of Regan and Micah with their Sunflower. We traced their hands on yellow construction paper to make the petals and then week went on- line to find pictures and information about Sunflowers. We learned that they can grow 9-10 feet tall. We could not make ours quite that tall, but we did the best we could!

This picture of Tallulah has nothing to do with home school, it was just too cute to not post!

Here are a few picture from our Fall Party on October 25th. We spent the afternoon of the 24th making and decorating cookies. Here is Regan hard at work rolling out the dough.

The finished product! they turned our well, but it was a lot of work, all in all probably more than 4 hours of baking and decorating!

I painted a bare landscape on a roll of white paper (an idea I got from another home school blogger, Danielle, who happens to be my step-mother-in-law's niece). The kids had fun decorating the bare landscape with foam leaf, acorn and pumpkin stickers.

Here is a picture of the whole group. One family was not able to come due to sickness, but we had fun none the less!

Some of the pictures I promised...

Grammy and Poppy came to visit this week!



We went on a field trip to the farm for a hayride!

Everyone loved the hayride, especially Tallulah, she was throwing hay everywhere!

Here are some pictures from our field trip last week to the Children's Museum.

Police Man Max!

Regan, Micah and Max in the fire truck.

Where to begin...

I have been thinking it would be fun to record our adventures in and outside our "little white schoolhouse" but I am not sure where to begin... This summer we made the decision to home school Regan and Micah when the Lord's leading in that direction became more and more clear as we prayed, researched and talked with other homeschooling families.

Our adventure officially began in September. We have been using Sonlight's Core C, Language Arts 1, Science K and RightStart Math. There is too much to tell to fill you in on all we have done over the last 7 weeks, but here are some of the highlights:

We have read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Box Car Children, Apple and the Arrow and are currently enjoying My Fathers Dragon.

We have been on quite a few field trips: Williamsburg, the Virginia Air and Space Museum, and a Bug workshop where we learned that honey is bee throw-up!

Micah is reading, (very exciting!) and Regan's reading and writing is improving daily:)

So, that brings us up to this week. We have been reading about Moses leading the Isrealites out of Egypt, and of course had to watch "Moe and the Big Exit" (veggie tales) to supplement our reading. In history, we have been learning about government and politics, rivers, lakes, oceans and seas. Thursday we had some friends over for a Fall Festival in the morning. Regan made us a Pin the Leaf on the Tree game to play and we bobbed for apples. Wednesday we spent the whole afternoon making and decorating cookies for the party. I will have to post picture later, as I just sent them in for developing! In Science we have been learning about plants and flowers and how then are pollinated. Yesterday we used kidney beans to start plant seedlings, we are all excited to see if they will grow!

Today was a big field trip day. Phil took the morning off work and we went to the Home school Day at the Children's Museum and the VA Sports Museum. Max skipped preschool to come with us and the kids had a blast "driving" the fire truck, bus and police motor cycle at the Children's Museum . We also learned that our arm span is equal to our height! At the Sports Museum Regan climbed to the top of FedEx Stadium on a stair master!

There is so much more to tell, but this is a good beginning. I hope to have pictures up soon so you can see and not just read about what we are doing!