Lo que un día de diversión!

or~ "What a fun day!" This week we are studying Mexico, because Friday night our homeschool group is putting on a medican dinner, and we wanted to know more about Mexico before Friday. Phew- We have had a full schedule today! I didn't get to take too many pictures, because we were so busy and my camera battery was dying after just a few pictures. Charging it up for another exciting day tomorrow! One of the first things we studied about Mexico was a few of it's animals. That is the younger kids favortite things to do, is learn about different animals! Here is Bailey with her Monarch Butterfly. We of course have them here in Maine, but it looked like a really fun craft! The three girls made Butterflies!

Bailey's Butterfly!

The boys made snakes.

Brynn is hard at work on her Mexico lapbook. Something that they had soooo much fun with today, was when they first woke up I was pronouncing their names in Spanish, because when they were still sleeping I looked up on Google Translate how to say each of their names in Spanish. It was really funny how hard Bailey was laughing at her name! So besides ANIMALS....we also learned our COLORS in Spanish and our NAMES in Spanish~ When you open the flap it has the name of the color written in Spanish!

Part of Brynns Book Finished

Brynn's Cover Page

The Teacher who loves her students more than anything in the whole entire world!

Thank you, Lord, for allowing me to stay home and watch my children grow, experience life with them, teach them, nurture them, and point them to you! I am

so blessed!

Cousins!!!

Bestest Cousins!
These two are so cute together, when they are playing and being good! Their nicknames though, are often: Double Trouble. Look at them look at eachother and laugh! They were laughing sooooo hard at eachother, and having so much fun. This put such a smile on my face!
(Things that did not put such a smile on my face today: Having a Raisin Bran throwing party in the playroom....giving themselves their own bath while an entire bottle of shampoo... pulling out all my Bible school stuff.... filling their hair with Hair gel.... pulling all of Bailey's dresses out of the closet and wearing almost all of them within a half hour.....taking glasses of water into the playroom......not only spilling them, but also breaking the glass on the floor....and lastly taking Jada's pottery wheel and clay out and getting it all over Jada's bedroom....

It's been a fun day. You might wonder, "WHERE WERE YOU??????" I was either teaching the older children in school, cooking breakfast, cleaning breakfast, cooking lunch, cleaning lunch, cooking dinner, or cleaning up a prior "activity" of theirs!

*E* and Bailey!!!

Cutest cousins ever!

:)

Cousin *E*

Working with Brynn on a WOLF lapbook. We were looking up wolves in the Bible, fun facts about wolves and other animals in RUSSIA (the country that we are studying this week, in Galloping the Globe)

Cousin *C*

Brynn working on ther WOLF book!

Daniel......Looking WAYYYYY too old. For some reason I think that he looks so old in this picture. I think I can already see what he will look like at 6 or 7.

Daniel is sooooo sweet, always wanting to please mommy and daddy and make us happy! He always says, "Mama, I'm obeying!" or, "Look at me Daddy, Im listening to you...." (especially if the other children arent listening and obeying right away, he likes us to know that he IS)

Well, it's been a fun and busy day with the cousins!!! We will all sleep good tonight :)

Homeschool Group

Have I mentioned lately how much I LOVE HOMESCHOOLING my children, and also how wonderful it is to have such wonderful friends that also homeschool! It is a true blessing the Church Hill Baptist has begun a homeshcool ministry this year! I LOVE every other Friday getting out of the house and fellowshipping with other homeschooling families, as the children get to fellowship, learn, have fun, and grow in the Lord!
I also LOVE that our homeschool group consists of smaller families, larger families, families that have been homeschooling for only a year, a woman who just finished homeschooling her last child and has been homeschooling for 22 years! We also have a wonderful woman/mother who just left her career as a 4th grade teacher in the public school to stay home and teach her children! And I am SUUPER excited to add, that my BEST FRIEND in the whole world is going to be homeschooling next year also!!
I am just so excited about everything that the Lord is doing in our lives. I am so blessed with the opportunity to be able to stay home with my children. I know to many in our society it may be a burden to stay home, and some just don't have that desire... but I DO and I am soooo blessed to get to do what I TRULY love best in my life! How many people can really look at their life and say "I am living the exact way I have always wanted to live" ? Who can say that they LOVE their "job" with everything they are?
I know, I don't get "paid" for my job! But I don't even think of it as a "job" it really is my "calling", it is not something I am getting paid for every week, or bi-weekly, but it is definetely an INVESTMENT and I KNOW that I will get such a RETURN on this investment one day :)

This PAST year...

I have NEGLECTED this blog!!!! And I am pretty sure that ONCE a year I come back to it and write a big post about how I am reallllllly going to keep up with it "from now on" and then I go an entire year without posting anything! It is because I pour everything into Our Family Blog, and I am sure that I still will, but I really do want to TRY to keep up with homeschooling on this blog!
With 5 littles ones at home, a husband that works 55 hours a week, and pretty much JUST enough time to update our family blog, I am not making any promises!!! Plus, it is more just for myself, I would love to have an archive of thoughts, activities, curricula, projects, fieldtrips, growth, and so on!!! I would love to look back and see what we did, where we went, what and HOW we all grew and learned!!

Here are just a very few pictures of what we have been up to recently!

Bailey LOVES to color!

This is part of our classroom! Jada and "fun facts" about Camels!

Our "pre-school" area... A few little chairs, a little table and lots of big activites go on right here!

Poochy lip Bailey~ in the reading area!

We have just recently begun to make lapbooks. I never really looked into them or found them to be worth while, but the Lord has brought us in this direction and shown us great things that can come of making these little lapbooks! Plus, the kids LOVE making them!

This is NOTHING compared to everything we have been doing lately, but like I said, I hope to update a lot more often. Maybe if I start with a small goal...like...say, once a week I will update what our school week looked like :) Hehehehe. This should be funny!

Well, See you next year 'round this time..... (kidding)

Ahhhh! So it is now February and I HAVE NOT kept up with this school blog like I had hoped too. But I decided that it is never too late to keep trying! LOL.

We have had our challenges this year, as any homeschooling family does, but we have made it through every one of them and are right on track...due to finish school by Jada's birthday, May 17th.
We went from moving to Portland, moving in with relatives, being VERY pregnant, all right around the holidays, to having baby Evan, and now with Evan being a little over a month old I am praying that I will be able to keep up with the blog a little more than I have in the past four months!

Brynn is making AMAZING strides in school! She is learning each letter of the alphabet and we are doing it very slowly to be sure that we 1. HAVE FUN with them and 2. REALLY get to know them. Each week we take one letter and learn the NAME of the letter, the SOUND of the letter, and work on words that begin with that letter.

This week we are doing the letter Vv. We only have 4 letters left to learn and she'll know the entire alphabet...this is a HUGE accomplishment for Brynn and I am so very proud of her for the work and effort she has been putting in this year.

Brynn is still currently struggling with blends and beginning reading, but I know that the more we do it and the more time we take, she WILL get it. A lot of people think that if someone isn't learning something at home that it must be the FAULT of the parent. Or if a child has a slight learning disability that they need to be taught in the public school system because 1. it will be easier for the parent, and 2. because a public school teacher either "knows better" or is "more educated" to deal with that kind of student. Neither is really true. Well, I suppose it could be easier for the parent, but I don't want easy, I want to teach my child! But point #2 is definitely far from true. Just because someone has a "degree" in education or even special education does not mean they are more equipped to teach a child. A teacher must give his/her attention to many other students. Brynn is learning ONE on ONE at home with ME, and I do have four other children to tend to, but when it comes to her education I have to keep reminding myself that even though she learns differently and slower than Jada perhaps, that I AM CAPABLE of teaching her, and just as Jada has her own pace, Brynn will have her own pace.
Of course I worry a lot about the scrutiny of others and what they will think if Brynn continues to have trouble learning to read, but again, I have to remind myself that I KNOW that this is what GOD wants. He gave us children to RAISE, to EDUCATE and to LOVE and I know that I AM doing just that.

Just a side note, I am also using two curriculum with Brynn next year. I am continuing with A Beka and also using a 5 year old curriculum from http://www.handsonhomeschooling.com/ I have been using some of the ideas that they show in the sample curriculum on their website and Brynn has really been taking to the different things that we do ! Homeschooling...it's a FOREVER learning process...for mom too!

Jada too is doing excellent in school this year. I think every year I am just going to keep being amazed at how much children at these ages really learn. I don't think that as adults we learn this much in a given year. But I do think that by the time I have schooled 5 children K-12, I should be a pretty smart woman! LoL- That's like getting 6 K-12 educations! Not bad! I am definitely re-learning things even now in 3rd grade. It's great!

But anyway, Jada really is excelling in her arithmetic skills and reading. We are currently trying to get her handwriting to look neater, therefore working on her slowing down and taking her time when writing book reports or papers, or even just in seatwork.
As a parent that really NEVER reads for pleasure, it is something that I need to work more on with Jada, but I honestly don't know how to get her to like it, if I don't. The last thing I want is my personal flaw to effect her. Like, I used to HATE history in school, but I want to make it fun and exciting...to do so (and I think we LOVE doing History now- and I think that I DO make it fun and exciting) is to learn to LOVE it.
My goal this week is to read WITH Jada. Anytime I make her sit down and read a book, I have to sit down and read a book also.

Yeah...I'll let you know how that goes! :)

Well,that is about all I have to say for today. I know I did a lot of rambling...but what are blogs for? Here are a few pictures from today. Brynn had a blast making her letters out of Play dough, and we even added vowels to her letter V today and she actually READ her blends without any trouble! Oooooh, that funny little Brynn!!! Gotta love it!

Pipe Cleaner Fun!

Jada, Brynn and I had fun this morning making our vowels and numbers out of pipe cleaners! Brynn helped by telling me the names of the vowels so that I would make each one, we saved them to use during letters and sounds time!

Jada made all her own numbers. We would grab two numbers and have to multiply them. We mixed up all the numbers and grabbed two and we would say "3 times 4 is 12"

FORT WILLIAMS

Today after school we went to Fort Williams! It was a lot of fun. When I told Jada where we were going for the afternoon she did not want to go. She said that is didn't sound fun, and she even tried getting Pa to watch her while we all went. Let's just say in the end she was very glad that she came and I didn't let her stay home! We had a wonderful time in the forts and at the headlight! It was fun and educational. We learned so much history about the place, what things happened there, when the forts were erected, what they were used for, and so on. Here are some pictures of everyone on our little learning adventure at FORT WILLIAMS!

Here is a shot that I loved, that I got of Portland Headlight.
Brynn and Bailey looking at the plaque that told about the old mansion that you will see in the next picture!
Here is the mansion that was built many many many years ago. It was interesting to learn what it was originally built for and what it ended up being used for in the end. And just to see what the remains look like today! Just a few years ago I was walking through that building and today they have it gated off at every entrance due to dangerous falling stones and such!
Here is a really cute picture of Daddy and all 4 kiddos inside one of the forts, looking out!
Here is the handsome little man just being a good boy in his stroller.
Brynn, just being a cutie pie as usual! I love this picture of her.
Would you just look at my four beautiful children all sitting together (on top of one of the forts).
Here is Jada (one of her three very own posed pictures). Did my best to edit out the black eye and red cut underneath her eye that her sister gave her on the ride there!
I love the three of them sitting on the fence looking over at the headlight. Bailey kept calling out "water, water, water, water, water..." and if you know Bailey she said "Water" about 30 times in a row before she found something else to talk about!

I loved learning and seeing all of the old exibits at and around the Portland Headlight! Jada would stop and read each plaque and stand. We also learned that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used to walk from Portland to Fort Williams and sit at the headlight...They believe that it is here that he was inspired to write one of his very famous "lighthouse" poems.
Brynn, on her tippy toes trying to see out to sea!
Jada, looking through the binoculars.
Everyone had their turn!
Here is one last shot that I really liked of the headlight. Not much different from the first picture...but it was just so beautiful, fun and educational!

We had a wonderful day there!!!

PAINTING with apples . . .

Today we cut apples in half to see the star on the inside, we then we used the apples for stamps to paint beautiful pictures with. The pictures here speak for themselves...the girls had a blast with this activity!

Field Trip . . .

Today we took a field trip to the Kents Hill Apple Orchard and had a blast picking apples!!! We picked enough apples to make us some yummy treats! Daniel even enjoyed the time there. We had a wonderful day for picking; the air was crisp and a little cool, but the sky was bright blue and sunny the entire time. We took a break for a picnic lunch and watched all the little ones play together on the big hill. Bailey loved seeing the hourses and the alpacas. Jada and Brynn ran about picking all the apples they could and filling their little bags! It was a great family day !

Another FUN day. . .

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Today we made Apple Trees!!! Color a brown paper bag like an apple tree and leave the bottom 1/2 of the bag plain brown. Stuff the bag with whatever you like (rice, apple seeds, etc) for shakers, or for plain trees simply stuff with newspaper or toilet paper! It was fun.

Johnny Appleseed Song

Oh, the Lord's been good to me.

And so I thank the Lord

For giving me the things I need:

The sun, the rain and the appleseed;

Oh, the Lord's been good to me.

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Oh, and every seed I sow

Will grow into a tree.

And someday there'll be apples there

For everyone in the world to share.

Oh, the Lord is good to me.

(There are many more stanzas/verses to the song, it's really a cute and wonderful song, but kind of a little too long to write the entire thing on here)