Keep the Way

Mama Vs. Computer: Round 4

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:09:00 +0000

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I really do intend to stay updated on this blog -- it is just that unfortunately, two weeks ago, we were hit by a HUGE computer virus that has me without a computer. . . YET AGAIN. grrrrr

I hope to get on my wonderful husband's work laptop this weekend to post a bit, but if not, just hang in there with me and I will be back as soon as I can!

Have a wonderful weekend :-)

Kindergarten Begins!

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:29:00 +0000

Week One: Review

So, we did begin our Kindergarten journey on June 29th. While we have always been year rounders, we decided to go to a 6 week on / 1 week off format for this year. When Monday came around, I had all six weeks figured out -- although that was pretty easy since I was using curriculum that is pre-planned for you.

I did try my variation of Workboxes this week, with pop up hampers that I had purchased from the $1 bin at Target. I had a schedule for each of them that had velcro for either numbers (that correlated to a number on a box) or a picture card (such as Computer Time, Tea Time, Lunch, etc;). I must say that I love the idea of workboxes, how they are meant to give a child a sense of accomplishment -- seeing what has to be done each day and the sense of pride of finishing them one by one -- and I love that it should provide me time to work one on one with each child for Math and Language Arts, since they are on different levels this year. However, they did not work as planned and we abandoned them in week 3. I am really looking forward to the HOTM Conference tomorrow where I can hear Sue Patrick, the master mind behind the concept, and hopefully figure out some tips!

Back to Week One, we used Sonlight for Bible, Scripture Memorization, History, Literature, and Poetry for our "together" lessons, Horizon Health, and NOEO Biology. For their separate subjects, Cali did start with Sonlight LA 1st grade and Math U See Primer, and Jordan used Sonlight LA 2nd grade and Math U See Alpha.

Our daily schedule this week had us doing our morning chores before sitting down to breakfast at 8:30. During this time, I read aloud our Bible lesson (this week we covered creation - the beginnings of Abraham), and we listened to the Sonlight Scripture CD for the verse of the week (All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God). The CD is a huge hit with the girls, probably because it is what they are used to -- I always made up silly songs and dances to help them remember our verses each week, I am just now happy to not have to be coming up with them myself! During this time, we also went over our Health lessons. The first unit focused on feelings, so we discussed different emotions each day.

After that, we moved upstairs. This week, since we were attempting the workbox idea, Jordan would get computer time (she loves Starfall and educational sites like that) while I would work with Cali on her language arts. This was a tricky week because she would easily be able to read the words while on index cards, and would beg to be able to read them in the Sonlight Word List Book (a book that simply listed the spelling words in list form) BUT would completely freak out about reading those very same words in the stories Sonlight provided! We broke it up as best we could, we would cover up the rest of the words, but it still wasn't completely working at this point. Daddy would also read with her in the evenings, as she loved having one on one time and they have a similar learning style so he "gets" her wiggleness much more so than I do :-) We worked on the basic "at" family this week. I will say the biggest struggle is that she wants to learn how to read, she is always looking at books and she sees how well Jordan can read and wants to be just like her, so she asks for it. . . and really, she can sound out pretty easily all CVC words and knows several sight words, but she just doesn't have the confidence that she can do it. I see her frustration sometimes and I try to stop -- I mean, hey, she is only 3!!! -- but that makes her even more upset. So we have been focusing on just trying to be low key and keep it fun (I figured out many more ways to do this, and things started going much better in week 2!)

Then it was time for Cali to get on the computer and Jordan work with me on Language Arts. Jordan's language arts is much more involved, being at a second grade level, and I hear a lot of people say that the language arts is either too busy or "too natural" but I have to say that we ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT! We do make a few modifications, however. She gets her spelling words at the beginning of each week, which I first say outloud and she attempts to write on the white board. This week was all about compound words and she knew them on the very first day. We did have fun mixing and matching endings and different words. All week she LOVED finding examples of compound words in different things she read or heard! :-)

Jordan's copywork was not so good -- we began using Italic print, using StartWrite. Unfortunately, any time that Jordan didn't try her best or would make a mistake, she would just say that it was "an ITALIC H" or "an ITALIC S." That was not going to fly! We did split up the copywork assignment to a few words each day, to last all week, and quickly decided to switch to your standard "ball and stick" penmanship in week 2!

For Jordan's creative writing assignment, on Wednesday she answered five questions to work on "Descriptive Words." She held out one of her favorite toys -- Chattery -- and answered questions in regards to how it looked, smelled, tasted, sounded and felt like. My job at this point is to ask the questions, help her understand what they want and simply copy down word for word what she says. Even though she is only 4, she has NEVER had a problem with story telling or describing ANYTHING, so this was just a fun exercise for her! Thursday she then "wrote" a Descriptive Paragraph that was 6 sentences long and was just wonderful. At this stage, at least, she is very gifted in storytelling!

We do not do the optional Explode the code or Wordly Wise with her, as we feel that would be unnecessary busy work. The only other part of her Language Arts is the actual reading. She is reading The Beginner's Bible, one story at a time, and is reading with such fluency and dramatic flair that it is a pure joy!

At that point, Jordan would get a "FUN" box -- such as her Draw Write Now book or Lite Brite or something, while I worked with Cali on Math. Math U See Primer is the only one that is not mastery based, you can move at their pace, but Cali is absolutely flying through this! We are on week 6 right now and she is in Chapter 15! Really, she would sometimes look at me with the "Are you SERIOUS?" look on her face before answering the question in a "No Duh" type voice, HA! She is such a silly nut!

Cali would then get a "FUN" box -- maybe a preschool activity in a bag, a lace up shape or colors -- while I worked with Jordan on Math. She is in Alpha, which is the mastery level, but she is also doing very well. She flew through the first few chapters, getting a perfect "score" (although we don't really keep grades) on the "tests" for chapters 1 -4 within the first week and a half! I can't remember which chapters she did this week exactly, but what I do know is that both girls enjoy Math and I am not afraid to teach it, which is GREAT!

At this point it would be around 10:30 and the girls would get free time while I recapped with Gregg via IM, check email, do a few chores and begin lunch.

This week, we would just enjoy lunch, and then move to our Read Aloud time. We have made some changes to this, but just remembering how well it went is making me want to try this again. I absolutely LOVED our Read Aloud time! We would all snuggle up in my big bed and read our Literature, History and Science pages.

The Boxcar Children was our literature selection this week. We were only "supposed" to read Chapters 1 -5 and it was "supposed" to take 3 weeks, but we finished the entire book this week! I would read only one chapter in the beginning, then move onto History and Science, saying that I would read more IF they listened just as well to the other two subjects. Our History read aloud was from Hero Tales, a book on missionaries, and we read about Gladys Aylward. I had been leery of this book, hearing it was too advanced for the age group, and my girls are younger than the suggested age, but we had no troubles at all. The girls were able to do easy narrations and enjoyed it! Our Science read aloud was DK Weather as NOEO focused on weather for the first 4 weeks. We would look at the pictures, read the captions and just talk about the subject with narrations and discussing examples. Then we would always go back to The Boxcar Children! :-)

After this, I was trying a Nap Time. One day that worked. . .

Then it was free time (although they did have two boxes with "FUN" items in it, if they wanted -- but we never got to them!) until 3:00, which was Tea Time. We would have a fun snack and read the Poetry selection from Sonlight, Language and Thinking from Sonlight, or other literature selections from other "treasuries" we are working through, as well as just recap our day and listen to music.

Besides the workboxes, the other thing that I had planned out that didn't work as planned was working in a SL Prek Theme schedule (which I got from a SL yahoo group). I had been concerned that the K schedule might be over Cali's head, since that is what everyone warned about, so I wanted to work in books that would be more age appropriate. Really, she has been doing wonderfully, and I have just pulled some favorites out to read with her one on one in case she was too young to remember them (since we had read almost all before). We hadn't read 20th Century Treasury before and that has moved to Tea Time, and besides that, all the other ideas I had to make it more "hands on" and supposedly more "age appropriate" has just felt like busy work to both of us and has been phased out. :-)

Well, I think that is a good review of Week One. I am sure there were wonderful discussions had that could have been included, and I could have listed Jordan's descriptive paragraph, but this is already pretty lengthy!

I will be back with Week 2 in Review soon. . . I hope! :-)

Statement of Purpose

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:55:00 +0000

Over the last few months, Gregg and I have been having "Advisory Board" meetings for our homeschool. During preschool, he would meet with me once a month to help choose topics for the various weeks, and we did sit down together to plan out what curriculum we would use for Kindergarten, but apparently I was still presenting myself with a sense of fear in regards to our homeschool.

Although we have taken the last few weeks off due to various vacations and events, my mother comes over on most Friday nights to do a Bible Study with me and Gregg. Our last study was Too Busy Not To Pray. One of the lessons was on fear and how it can hold us back in our prayer life. After our study was over, Gregg and I ended up having a marathon discussion on fear in regards to homeschooling. Although I didn't feel as though I was fearful, it was coming across that way. After much discussion, we realized that it boiled down to not having a written down, agreed upon vision for our homeschool. Not a strict plan on what curriculum to use each year or books to read, but an overall goal for what we want for our girls by the time they graduate, and an idea of what time periods in history we wanted to cover and when.

We had discussed these things verbally through the years, but it was never put on paper, and never so formally. Gregg's MBA really paid off in helping us set attainable goals and narrowing it down to what we want. We used the model from Educating a Whole Hearted Child and added our own ideas to it. Along with our homeschool vision and mission statement, and overall homeschool objectives, we listed the subjects we wanted to cover and what our goals were for each of the subjects. This became the Keep the Way Christian Academy Statement of Purpose. We then came up with a basic K-12 plan for each of those subjects, a plan for when we would cover those areas (and things such as when we would cover what time period in history). Then, we planned out the next 3 years.

We believe that our statement of purpose is pretty much in "stone," while our K-12 plan is in "ink." The 3 year plan is in pencil, meaning we know that it can change, but it definitely helped me to know in detail what we want to cover, and for those 3 years, what curriculum we would like to pursue. A major advantage of this for me was that I was constantly reading about different curriculums that I thought all sounded great, and I worried about not only fitting them in but when. By doing the 3 year plan, and seeing what we wanted to cover, it all fell into place naturally! I can do Sonlight Language Arts for awhile, since the girls and I both enjoy it, and in 3rd grade when the SL LA program doesn't match wonderfully with our plans for history and literature, I can switch to Learning Language Arts Through Literature for a year. For history, Sonlight does the first part of world history in first grade, the second part in second grade, and moves to American History in third grade. Gregg and I would rather do a year overview of world history in first, an American history overview and intro to American geography in second, and then begin our four year History rotation in third. That means that we can use Sonlight (with my own modifications between SL 1 and 2 since I prefer the History in one and read alouds in the second lol) for first, get to try My Father's World for second with their "Adventures in My Father's World" program, and use Mystery of History for third grade along with some wonderful read alouds from The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach and the notebook supplement from Winter Promise!

I guess we really are eclectic after all, huh? I fought that label for awhile, wanting to be strictly unit studies as that seemed so freeing, then I wanted to be Charlotte Mason as that seemed so lovely, but in reality, we are just US. Jeans wearing, book loving, variety-is-the-spice-of-life believing, God worshipping, eclectic US. And I like that :-)

Now this post was supposed to be about our first week of Kindergarten. Somehow my fingers hijacked my plans, but maybe that is because someone out there was struggling with fear issues as well in regards to a certain aspect of their homeschool journey. I am not saying that my answer works for everyone -- in fact, I know many people who would balk at this approach -- but the peace it has given me has been wonderful. Now, when I read about a great book, curriculum, idea or unit study, I look to see if it fits with our plans for the next 3 years. If it does, I make a note to bring it up in our next "Advisory Board" meeting to discuss adding it to our plans, and if it doesn't, then I keep on moving. If I wouldn't be covering that topic for another 4 years or more, it is likely that there will be new products out at that time that may be even better or if it truly is right, it will come up in my research when I plan for those years. I am telling you, this has truly set me free!

Well, the girls quiet time is almost over. Hopefully I can hop on this weekend to begin journaling our Kindergarten Adventure. For now, I will just end with the first sentence I originally wrote for this post, before my fingers hijacked it. :-)

We began our journey into Kindergarten June 29th. . .

Jordan's Recipes

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:05:00 +0000

I will be posting all things Kindergarten starting tomorrow (probably), but right now I am cleaning up my Master "Teacher" Binder and found two recipes that Jordan created sometime last year. I want to post them here before I lose the scrap piece of paper. . .

She loves to watch cooking shows on The Food Network with me, and one day she asked me to write these down for her. Unfortunately, we haven't tried either yet, but we may just try the second one this weekend!

Pizza a la Jordan

Take dough. Put cooking gloves on and put it in the oven

Bake for 10 minutes, then it will be 1 minute, then none. . . then ready!

Set the table with spoons and forks, and put the pizza in the middle and put cheese, tomatoes and sugar on it!

Dessert will be vanilla doughnuts with cream

Jordan's Crispy Crunch Cakes

Trick or treat for candy

Crunch up all the candy

Add cream

Bake!

Bon Appetite!

The End of Preschool

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:22:00 +0000

You can tell that I was ready for something new by my notes. I started the year documenting every single thing we did -- books read (and when we read them), crafts done, side notes to self on how the lessons went, etc;

As you could maybe tell from my last post, my notes started to include less and less. . . now that I am looking at our final month (4/20 - 5/31) it is a simple spreadsheet that was pre-typed that listed the date, the letter focus, what day in the Bright Beginnings book we were using for Math, Language Arts and Bible (at this point, I knew we weren't going to use it for a full 36 weeks so I was picking and choosing the lessons that I thought we could benefit from since most were pretty simple anyway), the animal focus, the job focus, the geographic focus and any literature units.

I also knew by this point what we were going to be doing for Kindergarten. Sometime in April, Gregg and I sat down and decided that it was time to move on from FIAR and try Sonlight. I wanted to make sure I covered the remaining FIAR books that I was interested in (and that my library carried), so we just added them in.

4/20-4/24 brought us the letter "M." What a fun week this was!!!! My wonderful friends from Homeschool Share and various blogs from around the globe, along with our amazing family members, sent our girls postcards and letters this week so we could focus on Mail! Our occupation was Mail Carrier and our literature unit was Meerkat Mail. I used this unit from HSS, along with lapbook pieces from Mailing May, Boxes for Katje, and printables from USPS and Enchanted Learning, to learn about the mail system, writing letters AND track the mail the girls received from around the globe. My favorites were postcards from England and South Africa!!! What I failed with was getting letters sent back out. . . I had wonderful intentions but I STILL have not gotten any stamps (just ask my two father in laws who have yet to get the lovely Fathers Day cards that are sitting waiting and addressed! Luckily for my father, he lives next door so I couldn't mess that one up too badly. Martha Stewart, at least in this regard, I am not!) Just thought I would be real there for a moment about my correspondence flaws. . . now, where was I? Oh yes, school. Our animal focus was Meerkats and mice, and our geographic focus was Mexico. We used a wonderful unit from HSS for this -- The Old Man and the Door -- and we absolutely loved it! My favorite part of this week was eating Mexican food every single night! Since moving to Houston, I have fallen in love with Mexican dishes and collect recipes whenever I can (so if you have any, please send 'em!)

This weekend, Gregg's dad and step mom came up for a visit and we all went to Texas A&M for their Vet School Open House. As I mentioned, Jordan says she wants to be a vet, and even though she is young and we definitely won't pigeon hole her, it is a total fit. . . just like Cali, my dare devil child, saying she wants to be a firefighter is a total fit! Anyhoo, we went down there and had a wonderful time. They make it so child friendly, and our first stop was the Teddy Bear Clinic! They brought animals from home, and after getting dressed from head to toe in Vet gear courtesy of A&M, they were led into an exam room where they became Assistant Surgeons!!! They received diplomas with their picture taken "while in surgery" and felt very proud of themselves. Afterwards we had a tour of their three different huge buildings -- where they do large animal surgery, small animal surgery, where they kept reptiles and the like -- and went out to the petting zoo they had set up. We saw zebras and camels, pigs, goats, horses, donkeys, and other animals, and then -- an interesting highlight -- we were allowed to stick our arms INTO a "fistulated cow." I trusted them at the moment that it wasn't hurting the cow, and looked it up later to make sure (it doesn't. . . go ahead, google it. . . I'll wait. Crazy huh?!?) but what an experience! We ended the trip through the reptile exhibit where the girls took a picture with a HUGE snake wrapped around their neck!

4/27-5/1 The letter "N." I must admit here that while I added my own ideas for animals here and there, many of them were used from our Zoo Phonics curriculum. Their animal for letter "N" is Nigel Nightowl and since we hadn't studied owls yet, I thought "Why not?" We read Owl Moon and Owl Babies along with a few others that I didn't record. We read New Coat for Anna as well. Our occupation was News Reporter and this was SO much fun! We read lots of different non fiction books on newspapers, watched a Blues Clues episode on it and I told them things I learned in school (Broadcast Journalism major at LSU) and then we made our own newspaper. The girls also had to interview my husband and my mom, and they did very well -- they had to choose their own questions and then ask them, I wrote the answers of course. Our geographic focus was New Orleans and I used the Louisiana Multi Book Unit Study I wrote for Homeschool Share, along with all the books listed there, and had a blast! Again, we ate food the entire week that went with our geographic focus, but that wasn't that strange since we eat like that normally, ha!

5/4-5/8 Was a combination of "O" and "P." We learned about the Octopus and Penguin, officers in the military and police department and Paris. We read Officer Buckle and Gloria, Lentil, Oxcart Man and Paul Revere's Ride, which strangely enough the girls absolutely LOVED! We did a variety of octopus crafts and dressed up like Penguins, watched lots of videos on both animals, and did a few lapbook pieces from HSS. I pulled pieces from the Officer Buckle unit and a variety of other sources for a lapbook on police and safety, and pieces from the Lentil unit for a lapbook on our military and patriotism.

5/11-5/15 "Q and R" had us doing a fun lapbook on rabbits -- pieces gathered from a variety of books on the HSS website -- and on Queens and royalty. We learned about Russia and read Little Red Lighthouse, Miss Rumphius, and Muncha!Muncha!Muncha!. We had fun this week, gradually getting lighter and easier with our days and falling into a lot of more cuddly reading and watching videos that went with our topics -- maybe that coincided with the increasing temperatures outside, ha!

5/18-5/22 "S and T" We were supposed to learn about snakes, tigers, surgeons, tailors, and Texas. . . we didn't do any of that. We did read The Boy Who Held Back the Sea, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening and Truman's Aunt Farm. The lapbook on that got scrapped and I did forget to purchase an ant farm, BUT as luck would have it, a HUGE ant pile appeared outside our front door so we were able to watch the real thing, ha! The only real learning that happened that was structured was an impromptu lesson on Scotland. My father is a personal trainer and massage therapist. I workout with him on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, followed by a short P.E. lesson he does with the girls. After he is finished with us, he then has a massage client meet him at his house (next door) who happens to be from Scotland. I casually asked if he could ask her for ideas, and she actually came by with tons of goodies for the girls! She gave them thistle soap (apparently that is the flower of Scotland), a stuffed bear with a sweater of the Scottish flag, a beautiful decorative statue and pictures to look at! The girls loved it all and hearing her voice -- and they were very interested after that. Luckily, HSS is amazing, so I was able to hop on the Internet and print out lots of great things from Wee Gillis, Frog Went a Courtin' and a few other units, as well as crafts from DLTK, Enchanted Learning and a few other sites, and had a lapbook ready to go within the hour. I think my dad was pretty impressed with what we were able to come up with so quickly, and the girls loved role playing the different stories we learned about Scotland for the rest of the week!

5/25-5/29 "U - Z" HA! As I mentioned, we were in combining mode and I was in burned out mode, PLUS my girlfriend Sandra was coming over with her girls for a playdate and she was interested in both Bright Beginnings and Zoo Phonics. I decided to just finish it all up, picking and choosing my favorite lessons to finish out the week.

Gregg and I took the girls to the FEAST homeschool conference in San Antonio (awesome) and we went to SETHSA here in Houston (really good), and the girls and I did two units in June -- Pirates and a combo week on ice cream and chocolate (the units are at HSS, along with complete book lists....the girls loved all the pirate books and we all loved The Parrot Tico Tango)

The rest of June was spent organizing the house and deeper cleaning, and LOTS of relaxing! I also got everything ready for the new adventure of Kindergarten that started at the end of the month. I am SO excited to start sharing about that journey!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Preschool in Review - Post 3

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:13:00 +0000

It is funny. . . I knew we were learning a lot and having lots of fun at the time, but I don't think it really sank in until now, having to sit down and type it all up so quickly!

I realize I am not explaining the crafts of the various lessons that we did, but I am trying to cover the highlights and at least get my book list in here. We have read some amazing books the past few years and not only would I like to remember them, but would recommend almost all of the ones I list in these posts (I say almost because it is possible that I forgot to scratch a stinker or two off my lesson plan!)

So, onward we go:

The week of St. Patrick's day brought lots of fun! We began the week with a visit to Katelyn and Ashley's house (friends from co-op) to learn about The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Marlene did a wonderful job with this lesson! She had the girls make sock puppet caterpillars, then cut out sequencing cards for the story, and all were stored in decorated old coffee cans. Now whenever the girls want to act out or retell the story, all the materials are together! We ALL made Fruit Loop caterpillars, and play dough caterpillars. Marlene also had HUGE cut outs of all of the items the caterpillar ate in the story that she used to retell the story for the children, and finally, we looked at a poster of the life cycle of a caterpillar. On St. Patrick's Day we watched the video from Veggie Tales and read a paragraph about him in our History book. We talked about shamrocks and how he used them to tell about God. We then colored pictures of them and leprechauns, and looked at pictures of Ireland.

It was around this time that we got our catepillars in the mail to raise our own butterflies. This was so much fun -- for the entire family! It was amazing to watch the caterpillars form the crysalis, to attach to the top and then sit and watch as they emerged as butterflies! We kept them for about a week and then put them out on the milkweed plant we have potted outside (it is their host plant). Since then, we have had several caterpillars feeding on the plant and forming crysalises! The girls get so excited about the whole process and brings learning to life! I LOVE HOMESCHOOLING!!!

The rest of the week focused on the letter "I" bringing us ice cream, India, Italy, the DVD Bilingual Baby - Italian (SUPER CUTE!!), Tigers at Twilight (Magic Tree House), Italy A to Z, My "I" Sound Box, The Sundae Scoop, Maya Angelou's World - Angelina of Italy, There's a Dolphin in the Grand Canal, Opera Cat, Ice cream: The full Scoop, Madeline and the Cats of Rome, Stregna Nona (girls LOVED this!!), Big Anthony, Elephant Dance: Memories of India, Baya Baya Lulla-by-a, The Story of Little Babaji, writing our names in icing, and watching Bollywood dance videos and cardio tapes (total workout!). We also began History lessons with History for Little Pilgrims this week. I had planned on waiting till we started Kindergarten, but while I was looking at it for planning purposes, the girls kept picking it up to look at and asking me to read it, so I figured I would go with their interest! We did a simple poster board Timeline with this and they really enjoyed it.

We spent a second week (for those curious, we are now at the week of 3/23 - 3/27) on the letter I as there had been so many geographic locations that were fun to expose them to, I wanted a second week to focus on the animal and career. We learned about inchworms this week and had so much fun! This week we read Papa Piccolo from FIAR which was very cute and did LOTS of inchworm crafts (Dot-to-Dots, play dough, connect the dots, etc), measured things, crawled like inchworms and sang songs. Our occupation was Investigator and we used the Detective unit study/lapbook on HSS -- it was awesome! In all, this was just a week full of experiments, crafts, and lots of glue!

"J" focused on Jellyfish, Japan, judges, jello, the lapbook for Grandfather's Journey, a tour of Bluebell Ice Cream Factory with our Co-op and a family trip to the zoo. Having spent a week learning about jellyfish, it was so much fun for Gregg and I to watch the girls be so excited to see jellyfish up close! They kept coming back to the display and just sat, staring, for a very long time :-) We did a variety of jellyfish crafts and read several nonfiction books. We did read lots of other books this week -- I know lots of Allan Say books -- but I did not write any of them down this week. I will say that while the information about Japan was interesting to the girls, they did not enjoy the Allan Say books very much. . . their highlight was jellyfish!

"K" focused on kangaroos, zoo Keepers, acts of kindness, kittens, karate, karaoke, ketchup, Katy No Pocket, If I Ran the Zoo, Animal Strike at the Zoo, the zoo lapbook on HSS, Mrs. Katz and Tush, and Katy and the Big Snow and the lapbook on HSS. Our Co-op this month was on your own but it was on Bunnies and Easter so this week we also read The Bunny Who Found Easter, Rechenka's Eggs, Over in the Meadow, Clifford's Easter, and of course, Peter Rabbit. We had a blast learning about kangaroos this week -- we learned that they can jump 40 feet, so we measured that length in our backyard and recorded how many "Mommy" "Jordan" and "Cali" jumps it would take to equal one kangaroo jump!

Focusing on kindness was great -- we instituted "The Blue Plate of Kindness" this week, where someone gets to eat off of a special blue plate if they are noticed doing something kind for someone else. We also made lots of paper hearts with the word "Kind" on them -- the idea was to look for random acts of kindness that can be done in secret and then, again without being seen, to take a heart and leave it where the act was done. One example from the week -- Mama's shoes were left out in the living room and Jordan grabbed them, put them in my room and left a heart where the shoes had been. Jordan LOVED this game! I also had a poster board up in the kitchen where we would write down acts of kindness that were noticed.

They also loved the zoo keeper lapbook we made from HSS. Jordan wants to be a Vet when she grows up and both girls love learning about animals -- one of the reasons it was such a focus point this year. This was a great project to show off what they have already learned and be exposed to new things.

April 13-17th: "L" brought us lizards, love, lions, The Little House (and the lapbook), lifeguard, London, Shakespeare (London tie in!), Stage Fright on a Summer Night (Magic Tree House book about Shakespeare), the library, and lollipops. This week doesn't have lots of notes, but I know the girls loved the lapbook for The Little House, and we had fun role playing being lifeguards and learning about water safety.

One more post will definitely finish up our preschool adventures! We went into super fast mode at this point -- I was getting a bit burned out on what we were doing, was ready for a change, and we decided to sell our curriculum in May and take a few weeks off before starting K in June -- so we started combining letters.

I will try to sneak back on in the morning to finish up the preschool series, but if not, I'll finish on Monday. I can't wait to begin journaling our Kindergarten adventures! It has been a total change, but I am loving it!

Preschool in Review - Post 2

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:58:00 +0000

Two days in a row, I am on a roll!

I realized last night that while I am glad to have just this little bit on here, that I did not take out their various notebooks from the past few months which are full of fun things, great narrations and crafts. . . at the end of this quick review, I may go back and record a few of those highlights as well. But, for now, I will pick up where I left off yesterday . . . the wonderful letter "E".

We took a second week for "E" the week of February 16-20th. Gregg had chosen so many wonderful picture books on engineers and I had found some really cute minit books on Homeschool Share to go with them, that we stayed with this topic for a bit. We reviewed all our previous Scripture memory verses, did some narrations of Bible stories and caught up on our occupations notebook, as well as learning about Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin. This week we also went to the park, spent a long time watching Nutria, had our Preschool Co-op where we made bird pizzas and chef hats, and went to the library for story hour. Friday of this week was our "Big Girl Day!" The Paci Fairy had heard how mature our girls were and thought it was time for their Big Girl Day (totally got this idea from an episode of John and Kate plus 8!). The girls left out a snack, along with their old pacifiers and blankets the night before, and when they woke up on Friday the Paci Fairy had left them a huge keyboard! It was totally approved by their musically gifted Godfather and has been a lot of fun! We started the morning with breakfast at McDonald's, followed by a visit to the Children's Museum and lunch and play at Chuck E. Cheese. :-)

At some point in February we took our co-op field trip to EJ's Pizzeria, where the girls not only had a wonderful behind the scenes tour of the pizzeria, but were then able to make their own pizzas! It was a BLAST -- for kids and moms!

The letter "F" brought us fishes, feathers (and birds), fire fighters, fairy tales, France, farmers, fairies, friends, Feathers for Lunch, The Little Bird (Mother Goose), Fishwish, Flotsam, DK Illustrated Book of Fairy Tales, Big Red Barn and A Chair for My Mother (book and Reading Rainbow episode that showed fire fighter training). The week before at story hour, the focus was fire fighters, so we learned lots of cute songs and it tied in so nicely:-). We had our Tea Party with our co-op friends where we did picture study, listened to Mozart and a cute Rossetti poem. This week we also went to The Depot to meet up with the cowboys riding into Houston for the big Rodeo. We got there early and parked to wait for the riders and before we knew it, we were literally surrounded by horses and riders on all sides! The cowboys were so sweet and let the girls ride the horses, feed and pet them, and it was simply a blast! We also went to several different parks and nature reserves this week.

The letter "G" week began with a small birthday party for Dr. Seuss! We focused on his books all day, reading Green Eggs and Ham, Oh The Thinks You Can Think, ABC, Mr. Brown Can Moo, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, and Hop on Pop. Along with our yummy cupcakes (which we baked while doing fractions lol) we watched the animated versions of Sneetches, Zax, Green Eggs and Ham and Horton Hears a Who. We played a game I found online for Pinning the Egg on the Plate, we created silly stories and did lots and lots of rhyming games! Cali enjoyed coming up with rhymes for Cat (hat, rat, that) and Sad (bad, dad), while Jordan came up with the following story -- I should note that the girl LOVES to tell stories and has been known to go on for over a half hour with stories that flow completely, have wonderful characters and everything but this was an assignment to go into a very small Dr. Seuss hat minit book, so I cut her off really short lol.

Once upon a time there was a cat in a hat. He was singing lots of songs until he bumped into something.
He thought he bumped into something . . . but, it was just lightning. It was going to rain and then he thought he was going round and round, but it was just the rain going Pitter, patter, pitter, patter

The rest of "G" week focused on gardens, goats, giraffes, Guinea pigs, gorillas, Greece, grandparents, The Golden Rule, Galileo, Planting a Rainbow, The Tiny Seed, Good Night Walk, Growing Vegetable Soup, Flower Garden, My Two Grandmothers, Good Morning Gorillas (Magic Tree House), gratefulness, grace, I Completely Know about Guinea Pigs (Charlie and Lola), G if for Goat, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Secret of the first one up (groundhogs), Gladys goes out to lunch, Good Night Gorilla, lots of nonfiction books on animals and geology, George Gershwin, Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh, D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, and Galileo for Kids. The girls also created stories this week that they asked me to type up and make books for, which was fun.

The beginning of "H" week began with a REAL TREAT! We went to a Family FARM! A wonderful woman in our co-op mentioned back in September that she was raised here in the Houston area on a farm, and how much her children enjoy going there. As I was planning the week for "F" and was trying to find a good farm to visit, I remembered this conversation and immediately reached out to her. While we had some scheduling conflicts, the wait was well worth it! This family was so gracious and kind, and we had a total blast! This was better than anything I could have found and we were able to do way more than a farm open to tour groups. We collected eggs, fed their chickens, sat and observed the chickens and roosters for awhile (and where they slept, how they got around, etc), helped them plant a garden (zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers), observed their TONS of cows and baby calfs, played in a creek (spent lots of time here, watching water flowing from higher ground to lower, examining rocks, skipping rocks), fished in their pond -- and caught 2 catfish(!!) -- played in sand, road bikes and skateboards, observed a wide variety of trees and just HAD A BLAST! Thank you so much Sinitieri family!!!!

The rest of "H" week focused on Hawaii, our read aloud was High Tide in Hawaii (Magic Tree House), horses, horticulture, history, Haydn, Handel, My H sound box, H is for Horse: an Equestrian Alphabet, My First Horse and Pony book, tons of Billy and Blaze books, Hans Holbein the Younger's painting of Edward VI as a child, Hooper Humperdink by Dr. Seuss, happiness, Luka's Quilt, Hula Lullaby, Grandma calls me beautiful, watching Hula for Children and having lots of fun dancing around, A House for Hermit Crab, Milton Hershey, Sam Houston, John Hancock, and hygiene.
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Well, I guess that is good for today :-) I am feeling better already having some of this on here as a record of our schooling, so I really do hope to have all of preschool updated and online within the week. Then it will be back to taking a week at a time and including posting our fun family moments in with the lesson plans!

We are still here :-)

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:47:00 +0000

Well HELLO!!!

I know it has been forever since we have updated. In fact, our first official "year" of preschool has come and gone -- we only did it from January 1st until the end of May, as the girls flew through it!

This is just a quick little update post to let you know that I will be coming back (even if it is just a couple times a week) to post pictures, review the school week, keep up to date on family stories and events, journal my own thoughts, and express a little creativity!!

We are now on our fourth week of Kindergarten using Sonlight K, Math U See, Horizons Health and NOEO, along with a few other things here and there (like HSS, Moving Beyond the Page, Bob Books, extra read alouds, Draw Write Now, Donna Young, etc;).

Now that we have a computer back up and running (WOO HOO!), Gregg and I both think it is important to get back to updating this blog, at least once a week. As my wonderful husband just said, "I just know we'll regret it in a few years (or longer) if we don't start doing it."

So, what have we been doing since I last posted in November? WOW, that has been awhile, huh?!? We used Bright Beginnings, Zoo Phonics (thanks Heart of the Matter!!!), FIAR and HSS for our five months of preschool. Gregg and I used them to create our own trip down alphabet lane. While the girls did create a few complete lapbooks, we mostly used a variety of notebooks to scrapbook our learning -- we had an animal science notebook, an occupations notebook, and a hodge-podge notebook full of various lapbook pieces on cardstock for our different literature units. Each week we learned about a different animal, career, and geographic location that began with the letter of the week, and pulled together TONS of fun picture books on a wide variety of topics that related back to the letter of the week.

Bright Beginnings was our main spine for Bible activities (loved, loved, LOVED this part), Scripture memorization (Gregg made huge posters each week with the verse to remember and the girls LOVED it), Health, and Character lessons. We did many of their math and language arts suggestions, however we did skip many as our girls knew a lot of the information. . . but what we did use provided a WONDERFUL foundation!! Jordan (currently age 4) is reading up a storm -- using Sonlight Language Arts 2nd grade and is doing wonderfully -- and is in Math U See Alpha for first grade. Cali (currently age 3) is using SL LA 1st grade and while we are supplementing with Bob Books, Starfall, and totally going at her own directed pace, she is doing awesome! As for Math, she is using MUS Primer for K, but is FLYING through!! This is week four and she is on lesson 12! Since there are 30 lessons total, I know she will be in Alpha before the year is through.

Our schedule currently consist of Bible, Scripture and Health with our breakfast, then Jordan comes up for an hour to do Language Arts and Math while Cali watches her favorite show of all time -- Blues Clues -- then Jordan has free play while Cali has school for 30 minutes. Cali's schooling is always at her own pace and is driven by her desire to learn and be like her big sister! :-) After that is free play till lunch, which is eaten with History and Science read alouds, then they go to their room for our literature read alouds in bed before Quiet Time. After Quiet Time is over, we have Tea Time with poetry and other fun stories, then it is free play till Daddy comes home.

Back to Preschool:

Zoo Phonics is a WONDERFUL program! We used this a little differently than is suggested, spreading it out in the beginning, so that we can keep with our one letter a week concept. They suggest two a week before moving into more advanced phonetic concepts. Doing it the way we did I think was a good middle ground for my girls, with Jordan way beyond what we were doing but EXTREMELY enjoying every single lesson, and Cali really learning and reinforcing what she knew while having lots of fun. Zoo Phonics has TONS Of ideas for a well rounded curriculum so between the two, along with the tons of ideas we came up with, I had way more than enough, but I thought that was a good problem to have :-)

So let's see:

We began the year the first Monday in January with a family breakfast at IHOP and a fun trip to NASA to coincide with our "A" week! Also, this month, our Co-op learned about Ping and China. We went on a trip to the Imperial Gardens in Katy, Tx (followed by a yummy lunch at The Rainforest Cafe with the girls best friends Skylar and Emy), and a day at our house with the girls learning about what sinks/floats, and other cool related things that are escaping my mind at the moment.

"A" brought us alligators, Africa, astronauts, apples, animal crackers, Armadillo's Rodeo, finger painting in apple sauce, aerobics, adding, scurrying like ants, Adam and Eve, and Noah's Ark, among other things.

"B" brought us bears, Brazil, ballerinas, throwing balls, BINGO, Berlioz the Bear, Flight of the Bumble Bee, how to make books, Tower of Babel, balancing, The Wheels on the Bus, Baking, and Babies being born.

"C" was for Cats, China, Canada, Chefs, Cookies, Clouds, Eric Carle, Being Capable, calendars, crawling like crabs, cheese, crackers, catching, cardio, calisthenics, Courage, catching balls in containers, cornbread, cooking techniques, Cook a Doodle Do, counting, and conducting music. Wednesday of that week also brought a WONDERFUL day of story hour with our good friends, a half an hour of exploring a trail at the park and then tons of free play at the park playground. Gotta love Nature Study time when the Houston Texas weather is actually bearable -- um, unlike NOW!

"D" brought us Deer, Denmark, Dentists and Doctors, feeding ducks, Dandelions, Daisy-Head Mayzie, doughnuts, Jacob's dream, dreams of all kinds, dancing, drums, dogs, Dvorak, A Dance of Friendship (Angelina Ballerina), and Dependability. Wednesday brought us a repeat of the week before (still wonderful weather in February) and Friday brought us a field trip to the Dentist where they got their teeth clean.

"E" brought us Elephants, Egypt, Engineers, Horton Hatches the Egg (which Jordan related to our story that week of Joseph being sold by his brothers, as Horton was sold to the circus for money, too!), eggs, excellence, encouragement, and eye care. We went to the Children's Museum with friends this week, and we also really enjoyed the Mrs. Wishy Washy series, The Poodle who Barked at the Wind by Zolotow, and our Stuart Little read aloud.

This week we also did some narrations from Bible stories. I will finish this post with these narrations, and will come back by tomorrow with a few more weeks worth :-)

2/17 I asked Jordan (she had turned 4 3 months prior), to tell me the story of Adam and Eve without re-reading it (although very familiar with the story, we hadn't read it for over a month at this point). This is her narration:

Eve got two apples, but they weren't good. They tried one, but they thought they were better than God!! And they had to leave the forest. The sun was sad. Before they ate and tried the apple, a man disguised as a snake said to try one of the bad apples.

They thought they were better than God.

1. {said very emphatically here} God made a person.
2. Made the sun
3. Made all the animals
4. Made Adam
5. Made the world.

At this point, I asked her how the animals got their names and she said, "Adam saw them and said what they were called." Imagine a "No duh, Mom" look on child's face.

Then I asked how God made Eve:

He made Adam go into a deep sleep. He closed up his skin where he took one of Adam's ribs and said, "Let there be a woman out of this rib," and then -- POP! -- a woman came!!"

Can it GET any cuter than that??? Well, maybe so. . . here is Cali's narration (just turned 3 at this point) of Noah's Ark:

He tried to find his animals. . . a hippo. . . an alligator. . . his Mommy. . . .

{Cali, did they get on something}

A Boat!

{Then what happened?}

He tried to draw a picture of Jesus. The End!!!

Here is Jordan's narration of Noah's Ark:

Noah builted an ark and he counted each animal by 2 by 2. And then God made a flood! Then they floated, and then he sented a dove out, BUT before that he sent a black bird out. Then he sent a dove out again and again and again and again!! Until the flood went away and they saw a rainbow!

IT"S NOT OVER YET!

The ark was on a mountain. Until they saw a rainbow over it -- it was HUGE! They couldn't touch it, but they were still happy. They still had food they could eat and water so they could drink.

Now Jordan's narration of the story of Joseph -- I think she got a bit confused between Jacob and Joseph, but that just made it all the more adorable, ha!:

Once upon a time, Joseph's Daddy Jacob was really old. He couldn't see. His father made him a coat of many colors! And then his brothers were ANGRY, they wanted one, too!!

And they saw Joseph and they ripped his coat off and threw him in an empty well, and they sold him to Egypt. But he was in jail, but he was still happy because God was with him! He got out of jail and the King of Egypt had a dream about skinned cows and fat cows; The skinned cows were eating the fat cows. And then Joseph came to the King of Egypt and he became the Prince of Egypt! And he pretended his brothers were spies, but he still loved them. And they became happy, too. And he hugged them really tight and kissed them. And then he told them that God stays with us and Jesus always loves us!

Now, just in case your heart isn't completely melted, here is our final narration by Cali on the life of Joseph. Remember, she just turned 3 at this point.

I want to be a firefighter that saves him!! {meaning from the well}

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I have a feeling it is mostly only family that is still around following this old blog, which is actually great because you all have to love me regardless of how well I keep this up to date, but if anyone else out in blogland is still around, I'd love to hear from ya!

Have a wonderful Tuesday everyone!

I am the Featured Homeschooler this week!

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:50:00 +0000

Good Morning :-)

I must tell you that I intended to start back blogging slowly, however my computer has been unwilling to turn on for the past few weeks! The only time I have to be online lately has been when Gregg is home from work at night with his work laptop, but it is important to me to reserve a lot of that time for family. . . and watching our newest passion: The Tudors, Season 1!

I did want to direct you to the interview I did with Heart of the Matter about our homeschool. We are the featured homeschool of the week!

I hope to have our computer fixed soon. . . it has been an interesting challenge to have our online resources so limited, but it has also helped me to keep my priorities in line. We have been having such a blast the past few months! LOTS of crafts (we are ALL finally at the age where we enjoy them lol), reading great books, nature walks, tea parties and science experiments inspired by the new PBS show Sid the Science Kid. I can't wait to share with all of you the MANY pictures we have taken!

Have a wonderful Sunday with your family. . . for us, we will be going to an Indian Pow-Wow in town and getting a wonderful introduction to our Indian unit next week!

Zoo Phonics: Heart of the Matter Giveaway!

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:17:00 +0000

I interrupt my Blog Vacation -- which I promise to come back from soon -- for this exciting announcement (he he)

Heart of the Matter Online, which happens to be the best online source for encouragement, information and inspiration for home education, is having an AWESOME Giveaway! Zoo-Phonics is graciously donating an entire Kindergarten Kit (valued around $300!) to a lucky reader.

As followers of this blog know, my girls know their letters and sounds. They have known them for over a year, thanks to the Leap Frog videos. Both have shown an interest in learning to read, Jordan in particular, but I have been hesitant to do much reading instruction beyond the videos. The main reason is because of cost, as we are in the midst of working the Dave Ramsey plan, but I have also waited because I was fearful of taking the joy out of learning. I love their enthusiasm for the written word and am very cautious to not cause that flame to flicker due to boring exercises and worksheets. Keeping our learning joyful is very important to me.

The reason I am intrigued about Zoo-Phonics, and this contest at Heart of the Matter, is because this product looks different than many others that I have seen! Below I have listed just a few of the things that I love about this product:

The body movement for each animal letter appeals to kinesthetic learners and helps cement the phonemic information into memory. My youngest, Cali, is a TOTAL Kinesthetic learner! This is one learning style that I can't totally relate to and am working on ways to bring this style into our living learning environment. I LOVE that this is a point they use to describe their product!!!
Phonemic patterns (at, bat, fat, sat, etc) are taught first rather than a random list of words (of, it, then, was, etc.) This just makes sense to me. . . is there really another way?
Phonics is taught as an integrated part of the language process.
Extensive literature lists are also included to accompany each of the lessons as well as teacher’s resources and audio/video/music selections. We love our literature lists around here! And I LOVE when I can integrate great literature into the lesson or theme!
The Readers are available in 3 reading levels that include short sentences or stories about each animal in the Zoo-Phonics lineup (A-Z). My girls, especially Jordan LOVE LOVE LOVE animals! I know this would make them excited to learn to read, by reading tales of their favorite animals! And I love that the levels build on each other.
There is a Signal Practice Video!!! I am definitely a visual learner and am so worried about teaching them incorrectly by saying something wrong or not showing them exactly as the writers of the curriculum intend. I love that I can see it to KNOW that I am doing it right!

As I said, these are just a few of the things I love about this product description! I also love the fun games that are included to make it a fun family experience. Really, you MUST go check out this product review at Heart of the Matter. . . Karin did an amazing job reviewing this product and if it is HALF as good as she described, then it would be a very wise investment.

Thank you HOTM for continuing to keep us updated on the tons of wonderful products at the home educator's disposal, and for blessing so many with your wonderful giveaways!

Getting through my thick skull

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:45:00 +0000

Good Morning Everyone!

What a week! In times past, when I would go several days without posting, it would be because of a natural disaster or a lot of running the streets. This week, however, we stayed home all day, everyday. So what has kept me from getting a start on my mountain of blog-catching up? My wonderful girls, the beautiful world outside our windows, and lots of baking, books and fun. . . and a little God-led heart change!

I have taken notice of a handful of times in my life when God has not only laid something on my heart, He has decided to back it up with completely changing my heart towards something. Other things, such as my self esteem or weight, He prefers me to work on, so I can "truly earn" my new mindset. Apparently, this one is either too important -- or I have taken too long to "Get it" on my own -- that He has decided to just change my heart and mindset immediately.

This week, our days were spent maybe watching 30 minutes - 1 hour of television during the day. . . period. I have spent maybe the same amount of time on the Internet daily. . . period. That includes checking emails, forums, websites and blogs! I simply have wanted to calm our days down, focus on each other and what is truly important. The radio has been on, we have done much dancing around and my house has never looked cleaner -- although this time it is with my girls help instead of putting on a video to keep them occupied! I know that they have gotten older this past year (and going from 2.5 - 3.5 years old and 1.5 - 2.5 years old is a big help), but I have made no secret of my struggle between keeping a house clean and having a wonderful day of learning and fun with my girls. I have shared my struggle with having preschoolers truly help me clean. . . maybe all this time it was ME that was causing the trouble. . . anyway I digress.

God has also finally helped me to figure out my "Daily Routine." My problem before was that I couldn't NOT get locked into a time scheduled routine. I would write things out and feel that they naturally led to "times" (such as an hour for cleaning, thirty minutes for an exercise video, thirty minutes to cook, etc), and they would also naturally flow at certain times of day (breakfast at a set time-- say 7:30-- and that would take 30 minutes, which would flow into exercising for 30 minutes at 8:00). I would read how it is better to just have a routine that would flow with the day, thus allowing for those "things" that always come up that cause me to feel as though I am trying to beat the clock or always behind. . . . but read about it as much as I would, it simply wouldn't happen. That changed this week.

What made it finally click? Apparently my intelligence in this regard is at a preschool level! What has made the difference is making a few picture charts for the girls that allow them to set up habits and know what happens when. It gets them so excited to follow and they read it all day! And I love that the pictures next to the words also give great reading practice. But it is best to keep it uncluttered, so there are no times. Simply a picture of a bed next to the words "Make Bed," and a plate of pretzels next to the words "Snack Time." We have followed this new picture/time-less routine all week and the result can only be what I assume those wise souls were talking about. . . Joy. Peace. Fun. Contentment. No constant checking of the clock or reshuffling things -- simply rolling onto the next thing on the chart. Sigh......

Besides the change in television and Internet, we have added in daily exercise and so far I have exercised everyday with the girls. . . so I am starting again, but this time since it is on my handy dandy picture chart that the girls read daily, I am thinking/hoping/praying that this time it sticks -- and when I am not "in the mood," I am sure my well-intentioned, must-follow-the-rules oldest will kick my butt. :-)

So, sorry to appear flaky this week in not posting. I will start doing better, as my plan is to start blogging at night while watching television with my husband, which he understands since it is simply my form of scrapbooking and I won't be surfing the web or anything. We also know that our family uses this blog as a means of keeping up with what is going on at Il Maniero (Italian for "the manor house," a new name we are trying out for our house, inspired by my recent obsession with all things Jane Austen. . . all the homes in her novels have a name. . . yes, I am a dork but it works and we have fun, so leave me alone lol).

I will post next week on our Transportation week which was a lot of fun, and begin the catch-up list previously posted.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend with your families. . . I know we will as both LSU and the Saints play this weekend! WOO HOO

Ok, let's try that again

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:36:00 +0000

Dare I say that I am back? :-)

I was already behind in posting things on this blog and all the events of the past month certainly haven't helped things! I will be posting throughout the coming weeks on the following:

Our Hurricane Experience -- We lost power the Friday it hit and got it back Tuesday afternoon. Since then it has been interesting trying to get back into a groove. While I will go into a lot more detail on that post, I will tell you really quickly that both my home and my parent's home (they live behind us) were spared any damage! Besides a few minor scares and inconveniences, it was actually a pretty great experience for us personally in that it provided LOTS of family time full of talking, reading, and memory making. We watched minimal television (we did have a generator and watched some things, like Saints football of course), and taught our girls (and myself) how to wash clothes with a washboard and hang a clothes line!

Our Camping Pictures, lapbook and recap -- Yes, I know dear family members/readers, that you are chomping at the bit to see ME camping, much less the girls delight in the whole experience, and it is coming I promise!
Horse Week pictures -- We had so much fun with this unit! It lasted two weeks technically, but with Gustav hitting in the middle and having my brother and his adorable girlfriend here for one of those weeks, we still kept it pretty simple and fun. We have a lapbook, fun pictures of all the books we devoured and of course, our pictures of our family trip to the Race Track to see the horses up close!

Trip to San Antonio -- Wow, that trip was awhile ago, huh? But it was fun, educational and definitely one I want to document. We visited the Alamo (which has a really cute treasure hunt for the kids to make it fun) and the Riverwalk.

Butterflies -- Just because I am so upset with myself for not posting the pictures of that unit since it was one of the girls favorites, I will post the pictures from this unit that we did I think back in June?? Wow, talk about BEHIND!
Olympics/China -- I have pictures of our Lapbooks and of course, our Harris Family Olympics! There are SO many pictures though, that I want to use one of those cool slideshow thingys but every time I try to upload pictures into it at photobucket, it doesn't work. Any experts out there willing to help a sister out, please let me know!
Children's Museum -- Ok, this trip was back in May!!! But again it was a fun family event that needs to be documented!
Anything else that comes up between now and then!

But for now, I am off to clean up a bit and then have fun with my girls :-) I will leave you with these pictures of the breakfast Jordan made for us last week! The day before, she had woken up REALLY REALLY early and had decided to feed herself Tootsie Rolls for breakfast (we have a Tupperware container in the pantry with a few treats leftover from potty training). That day, I put some pop tarts, cereal and raisins in Tupperware in an easy to reach cabinet for her to have easy access to in case she ever did it again. . . well the very next morning, she woke up like at 5am or some ridiculously early hour.

I heard her in the hall bathroom (which is right by our bedroom), telling herself that she had an idea -- Pop tarts and Raisins! I got up a little while later, unable to sleep, and was greeted by a wonderful surprise! She had placed 4 paper plates on the table, with a pop tart next to each plate, sprinkled with a few raisins and the grand finale, a solitary Marshmallow on each plate (left over from our camping trip)! She yelled "Surprise!" and was just so happy with herself! It looks like my 3 year old is a budding cheff-er (her words) after all :-)

Have a wonderful day and I will be back soon with my mountain of updates and posts!

On Second Thought, Scratch That. . .

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:21:00 +0000

Yesterday I was so proud of myself. I finally got online to update our family and blog-world friends on what we have been doing and just knew that I would be back to regularly scheduled programming, blogging wise.

Then, this Ike mess started. Being from New Orleans, my family and I feel pretty prepared for this storm. We are in the extreme NW Houston area, so we are actually being advised to stay put and not evacuate. The main concern is 40 - 60 mph sustained winds that should begin hitting us tomorrow. Gregg is currently on his way home and we will start gathering supplies in case power goes out.

So, all this to say, I guess I am not "Back" like I promised yesterday. Once the storm is over, I promise to post the pictures of our camping trip (I have had several family members politely hounding me, LOL). I should be back online by Monday.

Until then, have a wonderful and safe weekend with your families!!

We're back :-)

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:23:00 +0000

I want to thank everyone who has emailed me to check in with our family. I know we have been silent for awhile, but it has been for great reasons.

The tragedy that my friend is going through did rock our family. My husband has never met Marsha or her family (we kept saying we would all get together and we would try to make plans, but you know how that goes. . . ), but this affected both of us. We have both been actively praying and turning to God, trying to get any lessons He wants to teach us from this experience. So far, that has meant A LOT of family time and reaching out more at our church. One thing that touched us was the amount of support they have locally from their church family, and we realized that since we changed churches a few months ago, we haven't really met many people there (besides my wonderful parents who go with us!) . . . we wondered who we would call if a situation like that would occur in our family. As it turns out, our church is holding a meeting this Sunday to create new small groups, this one particularly for Married Couples! We are praying that we will be able to make some friends and establish relationships through this new group.

As for the family time, we have been BUSY! I will make separate posts about all of the things we have been doing, but I will quickly summarize here. The week of Christian's passing, we were in the middle of a Camping theme. Monday and Tuesday we read lots of stories about camping, made a make-shift tent with blankets and pillows in the living room, and watched some fun camping cartoons. Tuesday evening, while I was driving to Marsha's house, Gregg wanted to do something special for the girls to wake up to. . . I think we all felt the need to hug our children closer and let them know how much they are loved. . . so he put up the huge tent in the living room. He added a lot of soft blankets, sleeping bags, pillows and stuffed animals. He also laid all of the books out inside. It was very nice and the girls were definitely excited to wake up to it Wednesday morning! That evening we decided to take the girls out to dinner -- I was in need of a family night -- so we went to Pizza Hut. Not five-star dining but come on, they are preschoolers! We were so impressed by how well they did in the restaurant. . . we kept flashing back to what seemed like a short time ago when they would be climbing all over the place, not wanting to sit still, and crying. They grow up so fast, don't they?

Friday afternoon we set out on our camping trip. It was a hard decision to make for me, as that was the same night they were holding the viewing for Christian, but the major thing that we are taking from this experience is how important family is and how quickly things can happen. I knew Marsha would understand and want me to keep the date with my family. The girls were really excited! I will be posting pictures from that night soon . . . and I must say that my first camping experience, even in the midst of extreme Texan heat, was a great success!

Last week was all about HORSES! My girls love horses so we started a two week unit on all things horse and pony. It has been a blast and this weekend we took the girls to the Sam Houston Racetrack -- not to bet, but to see the horses. :-) We had a great time, and I am loving the idea of incorporating these fun family events into our units! I will have lots of pictures coming from that week!

This week we are continuing our Horse week, but we also held our first Preschool Co-Op meeting in our home on Monday! The girls are SO excited! I am a little nervous about leading so many children (what works for us may not work for others), but the girls are making lots of friends. Currently there are 7 families total with 15 children, and I think one more family will be joining us. Ever since they left, the girls have been asking for their friends to come back!!

So that is what we have been up to. Busy, but really, really good! How about you? I would love to hear what everyone else has been up to for the past two weeks. . . I have so much blog reading to catch up on!

I will be back soon with all of our pictures!

There Are No Words. . .

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:44:00 +0000

It has been a surreal 14 hours.

My dear friend Marsha called me last night around 8:00pm, living every parent's worst nightmare. She told me that her youngest son, little 3 year old Christian, was missing. I was at a loss for words then, and still am. As the night dragged on, she continued to call me with updates. For a small window of time, it appeared as though the worse case scenerio had been ruled out as a possibility, which alone was cause to give praise, and hold onto a little bit of hope.

Unfortunately, that glimmer of hope faded at 10pm when she called again to tell me that her youngest son, her baby, was gone. I was in shock -- still am. The entire night, while I was wanting to go there and hug her neck and offer my support, I also did not want to overwhelm her. . . many of us "Marthas" know that it is easy to fall into the role of taking care of others, and I wanted her to be concentrating on her family and the many friends already with her. However, after that last call, I couldn't stay home any longer.

I got in my van and drove the 45 minutes that felt like eternity. What would I say? What could I possibly do? The answer - - nothing. No words can help in situations like this. The only thing that matters is that we let our loved ones know how much we care for them, and that we are there whenever they need us. I pray that Marsha knows that.

Marsha is an amazing mom. She homeschools her two older boys and was excited for Christian to start preschool this year. She is the most hilarious person I have ever met, is beautiful inside and out, and has an amazing faith. I know that God is with this godly family, but additional prayers are certainly coveted at this time.

If you would like to read a lovely tribute to this ADORABLE little boy, and send any condolences, please visit our tribute at Heart of the Matter, Celebrating the Life of Little Christian "Dozer" Drews. My home address is listed there for any cards or well wishes you would like to send.

Go and hug your children

My family in pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:16:00 +0000

This blog is my digital scrapbook -- I am GREAT at taking pictures. . . getting them printed and put into a photo album, not so much.

This blog helps me to keep some of these wonderful pictures and memories stored, and allows me to share them with relatives who live across the country (ok, mostly in Louisiana, but with gas prices, it might as well be on the other side of the country). So I hope you don't mind me sharing some family pictures we took this weekend.

Mom, Ryan, and Dad

My family is very close. My parents have always put a priority on family, with an importance on celebrating the holidays, lots of vacations, creative memories, silly traditions, and just plain silliness in general. While no one's family is perfect, if I can create the same loving and accepting atmosphere in my own home, I will have succeeded as a parent.

Me and Ryan

I absolutely adore my brother Ryan. He is seven years younger than me and as a result, I have always been very protective of him. Our favorite story to tell is when he was first learning to ride his bike on the busy street in our neighborhood. He told my mom, "Please don't tell Rachel. . . You know how much she worries about me!" Yeah, I can be like his second mom at times, but I love him to pieces and that is what counts! My master plan involves him marrying his current girlfriend (who is just like me, therefore is PERFECT) and having them both move to Houston. Hey, it could happen.

Ryan is "technically" Jordan's godfather, and Cali's godfather is "technically" Gregg's very close cousin David, but with the girls being so close in age, we have decided to call all the godparents "Paran" and "Nanny." (I realize I am probably showing my Cajun heritage here with those names. . . and maybe even with having godparents at all?) Anyway, both of my girls love my brother -- probably because he is just as silly as me!

As you can tell from these pictures, my entire family loves to laugh. . . and we all love to tickle each other. Apparently not all families do that, based on the interesting looks we get from other people, but maybe we just all rate "Physical Touch" high as a Primary Love Language. Regardless, tickling leads to laughing which is the main goal. Life is just so much more fun when done with a smile and a laugh, don't you think??

My Budding Musicians. . .

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:04:00 +0000

My girls LOVE Music! They love listening to it, they definitely love dancing to it, and love to play it! While they have always enjoyed music, it was during our unit on Berlioz the Bear, when we really learned about the orchestra and the various instruments, that I really noticed how much they enjoyed it.

My parents live next door and this weekend, when my brother was in town, we spent a lot of time there. My brother is the musician in the family -- he can play just about any instrument you can imagine, he writes his own music, has been in numerous bands, and has even produced a CD where he not only sang all the lyrics but played every single instrument in the background! I will be relying on him for the music portion of our curriculum in future years! They enjoyed showing off their "skills" for their "Paran Ryan" this weekend. :-)

If you asked my girls they would probably list the flute, violin or trumpet as their favorite instruments, but whenever there is a piano or keyboard, they run for it. They get the biggest kick out of banging on the keys and singing at the top of their lungs -- and I get the biggest kick out of calling it music class for the day!

A Camping we will go. . .

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:40:00 +0000

Yes, we are going camping, and the girls are SUPER Excited! While I was a Girl Scout, and did do a few camping trips that involved platform tents, my favorite "camping trips" with the troop were in hotels, so I am pretty excited, too! :-)

Being sick last week apparently caused me to lose my mind because I forgot to order any books until Thursday evening. . . so we will be adding to our unit table throughout the week as the books come in, but maybe this will be fun -- "What will there be on the table this morning?"

This morning, they had several books, and we have read almost all of them (my voice can't handle Amelia Bedelia quite yet, I am hoping my cough will be gone to read such a long book later in the week). As soon as they saw the books, they grabbed all of them (and the sleeping bags), and brought them to the sofa for us to read! After we read the stories, we laid the sleeping bags on the floor, climbed in and watched The Sneetches for their roasting marshmallows by the campfire and then Bambi. Since we will be in the park camping, I decided to also tie the woods, nature and woodland creatures into the unit. My favorite book for this is Play With Me by Marie Hall Ets. In it, the little girl is upset when all the animals run from her, but then realizes if she is still and quiet, that they will come back and "play with her." I thought it would be good to remind them of this before our trip this weekend!

While watching Bambi, the girls wanted to make a tent. We do have an outdoors tent, and we have a large castle tent upstairs, but what is the fun in that? So I took out a large blanket and grabbed two chairs. I draped the blanket over the sofa and two chairs, secured the blanket in place by large pillows, laid down a floor of sleeping bags and more pillows and voila! An indoor tent! The girls are LOVING this right now!

There are several camping episodes of their favorite shows saved on TIVO that we will watch throughout the week, as well. That is definitely a plus of planning so far in advance and knowing what units are ahead -- it makes searching TIVO that much easier.

We will continue to read the stories throughout the week before leaving for our camping trip on Friday. We have a YUMMY menu planned and we are really looking forward to it!

So that is our week ahead. . . any ideas or suggestions for this unit, or for good "scary stories" that aren't really scary (all the characters in the stories talk about telling scary stories and I am at a loss in this department!) I'd love to hear them! I'd also love to hear what you are learning this week!

God Directed Lessons

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:52:00 +0000

This summer, I began a much lighter and enjoyable approach to our homeschool preschool. I am taking wonderful unit studies, along with my children's delight directed topics, and using them as jumping off points to create a fun learning environment.

What this has meant for us is not following the traditional FIAR approach of Monday - Social Studies, Tuesday - Language Arts, Wednesday - Art/Music, Thursday - Math, and Friday - Science. Instead, I am pulling together TONS of books and fun videos, reading whatever books they ask for (attempting to read each book at least once), and going over lessons as they come. There are several topics I go into the unit wanting to cover, and there are several topics that come as a complete surprise -- either resulting from something the girls ask me, or coming from a God-inspired moment. Often, this has also led to multiple units happening simultaneously!!

An example would be a few weeks ago. I believe at the time we were learning about Kangaroos. One day, after reading our books, we decided that for our movie time (this summer, we started a tradition of cuddling on the sofa together after lunch for movie time several days a week) we would watch The Land Before Time: The Time of the Great Giving. We had never seen this movie before, but really enjoyed it. The story is about a bunch of dinosaurs who are struggling because their water supply had been cut off. As a result, there is a water shortage and the trees in the valley were dying. Toward the end of the movie, lightening struck one of the dry trees and started a fire.

As the movie was ending, it started to rain at our house. We turned off the television, pulled up all of the blinds, and sat next to the windows, watching the rain. We talked about how that fire was started and talked about our trees and plants that had plenty of water and weren't dry at all. That led to conversations about what plants need to survive and various weather topics.

The next morning, we looked out our back window and saw a man climbing my parents' tree. . . I had totally forgotten that they were having it cut down! The week before that, we noticed that the needles were all very orange and brown, in comparison to the neighbors' trees that were lush and green. It continued to get worse throughout the week and it was obvious that the tree was dead. So that it wouldn't become a hazard (like the dead trees in the movie!), they had arranged to have it cut down. . . it was just a total coincidence that this happened the day after our big discussions about this type of thing! So lessons were scrapped for the morning as we sat next to the window and watched the tree being cut down.

Watching the process led to more conversations on what plants and trees need to survive, why that tree was dangerous and needed to be cut down, the observational differences between that tree and surrounding ones, how the man was being safe while climbing the tree (an intricate system of straps and rope), the tools he was using, and the process of cutting down the tree itself! We were just amazed by the entire thing, capturing it all in pictures -- much to the amusement of the workers!

That was just a two day mini-unit, but I just love how these things come together. . . and this is just one of several mini-units that have resulted the past few months. Being open to the world around me, my environment, the girls interests and questions, events that are happening and divine inspiration has led to exciting moments in our homeschool, and I pray that I can continue to be as open to His gentle leading throughout this journey!

Dogs and Cats and Birds, oh my!

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:48:00 +0000

My apologies for not updating last week! I have Bronchitis and just about all of my energy went to spending time with the girls :-) I will be posting a final recap of our China/Olympics unit soon with pictures of our lapbooks and a slideshow from our Harris Family Olympics (we had a blast!)

Last week we learned all about PETS! There are tons of animals that fit into this category and it was my intention to become familiar with all of the different types of animals that people keep as pets. Last Monday morning was spent finishing up our Olympic lapbook and driving to the library to pick up the remaining books for our unit, so this week was a bit different -- Jordan helped me set up the Unit Study Table and had so much fun! Cali had fallen asleep during the drive and continued her nap on the sofa. I asked Jordan if she wanted to watch a video while I set the table up (and be surprised by the finished result) or if she wanted to help. . . She got so excited that she could help set it up and was very proud of herself!

We pulled together all of the books and videos, as well as a few toys. Jordan had fun looking at all of the items, grouping them together and trying to make them look pretty. After the table was set up, we had enough time to take a few pictures before we dove into all of the books! We read and learned about dogs, cats, birds, frogs, lizards, iguanas, turtles, horses, fish, chickens, salamanders, bugs and ants! We read so many wonderful books, many were re-reads, that I will just highlight here our FAVORITES!

Cali -- loves anything Clifford, and she likes the Biscuit books a lot. She also really enjoyed re-reading Harry the Dirty Dog and Angus Lost, and especially loved the videos that went with the books

Jordan -- Loved re-reading Harry and Angus, and was excited to see the other two books in the series as well (Angus and the Ducks and Angus and the Cat). She also LOVED The Perfect Pet, although I admit my humorous antics during the read alouds probably helped. . . I couldn't help it, this story was so funny! It is about a girl who resorts to having a pet BUG because he wasn't too big or loud and didn't jump, scratch or shed! Finally, she really enjoyed The Berenstain Bears' Trouble With Pets and Sesame Street Puppy Love, a Little Golden Book. I loved these books, too, because they really showed the work that is involved in having a pet.

Our favorite snuggle time movies this week were 101 Dalmations and Lady and the Tramp. We also watched a lot of My Little Pony throughout the week, while playing A LOT with all of my old ponies. . . and talking about how many people have horses for pets as well. Jordan is in a very big pony/horse kick right now!

I had planned on taking a trip to Petsmart again, one of our favorite FREE Field Trips, but we didn't make it. . . however, I totally recommend this trip to anyone else planning their own Pets Week!

Next up is our Camping Unit, ending in a fun family camping trip this weekend! What are you learning about this week??

Update on Mission: Potty Training

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:07:00 +0000

I have been asked by MANY people for updates on how the potty training is going! I have been sick for the past several days, or I would have updated sooner, but let me brag on my girls a little now :-)

Things are going WONDERFULLY!! I am so happy and surprised and sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop! Jordan, who had been trained last year and just totally regressed, picked it up right from the beginning and except for a handful of accidents that occurred while running to the bathroom, she has been accident free since beginning over a week and a half ago! Including bedtime!! Cali was totally new to this but is doing amazingly, too. She hasn't had an accident, including at bedtime, in a week!!

There are several things we did differently this time that helped a lot, and I really think training them together worked nicely for us -- they motivated each other and cheered each other on, which was just so cute! Here is a quick break down of what we did:

We started, Saturday morning with two potty chairs sitting in our living room. With the entire family home together and with the Olympics on, it was just easier to move the chairs into the room we would all be in anyway. Having the chairs in close proximity was key. I had checked out 6 "potty" books and 5 "potty" videos. We watched each of the videos on Saturday and read the various books. While most of the videos were decent, there were two that were HUGE hits! Potty Power and Go Potty Go! are AWESOME!! They have catchy songs (that my husband and I still find ourselves singing unfortunately) and really play up the whole "Big Kid" thing. Often they would ask to watch these videos over and over again and they loved sitting on the potty while watching them. Jordan immediately picked up on the "feeling in my tummy" that they talk about that is a clue to let you know you need to potty, and it was over at that point -- she has got it down!

For naps and bedtime, we put one pad under their fitted sheet "just in case." Cali is sleeping in her training pants with a vinyl cover placed over it. For Jordan, as I had mentioned before, the vinyl pants were a bit tight, so we did try a recommendation from one of the comments on that post which was to put a pull up OVER her regular underwear. We only had to do that for a couple nights, however, and have since been putting her down with just her regular underwear and it has been great!

Daddy got Jordan a new package of pretty big girl underwear which she loves and that has helped a lot, too. We haven't done stickers or anything like I did with Jordan last year, but we have been doing treats when they go potty -- I had a stash of left over Halloween and birthday party candy and they are able to pick a treat (usually a tootsie roll or peppermint, with the occasional tootsie pop thrown in) whenever they make it to the potty. Calling grandparents when they went for the first few days was also a fun incentive, as well as whenever MamaRosie or Crawdaddy (my parents) would come over and bring them treats for being such big kids!

Supplying them with a lot of liquids, frequent potty trips, asking if they had "dry pants or wet pants," and making it light and fun all worked wonderfully! Last year when I worked with Jordan, I used a system that claimed you could be trained in a day and encouraged you to have them do practice runs to the potty ten times in a row every time there was an accident. This resulted in tears of frustration from both of us and looking back, I can see made the process miserable. We didn't do anything like that this time. When an accident happened, we brought them to the tub and cleaned them off, put them in clean underwear, told them how nice it felt to be in clean and dry pants and had them help clean it up occasionally. Much easier for me and much better results!

We did have a fun hiccup in our plan, however, when my wonderful Heavenly Father thought He would show off His sense of humor by giving Cali a touch of a stomach bug during this process, but she handled it so well (and for the most part, so did I), and in hindsight I think the frequent potty runs and slight accidents that resulted from the 48 hour bug helped her to learn the process even more!

Yesterday was a great test. We decided to temporarily go down to one vehicle in our efforts to work the debt snowball and get out of debt. We sold Gregg's truck and yesterday was when we actually finalized the transaction. I needed to drive across Houston, over an hour drive with traffic, to pick him up. When we were almost there, Cali started telling me that she had to go potty! I knew Gregg was waiting for me, but I didn't want to test Cali's bladder, so I pulled off as soon as we could and the three of us went into the gas station bathroom. She was very proud of herself :-) She told me she had to go again when we got to the couples house who was buying the truck and again, success! Jordan decided to wait until we had been back in the car driving home for five minutes before telling us that she had to go, but that was one extra stop I was happy to make. Even after eating dinner in the car, including drinks, they arrived home over an hour later completely dry. . . WOO HOO!

They are now both in regular "big kid" underwear (no training pants and certainly NO Pull-ups!) and are going to the potty all by themselves. I am sure that accidents will happen but I am very very very pleased with the results already!

Thank you all so much for your prayers, advice and shared stories. It inspired, encouraged and motivated me, and also gave me quite a few laughs :-)

Favorite Books and Curriculum - HOTM Meme!

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:19:00 +0000

Welcome to the Heart of the Matter Online meme. Every Friday we will feature a different topic for our meme. Mr. Linky is set up below so please share with us your Favorite Curriculum or Books! With the new school year beginning it would be wonderful to hear why your curriculum works for you, new ideas you're looking forward to trying, or really great book ideas you would love to share.

I have had a lot of fun reading everyone's posts for this Meme. We are in our second year of homeschooling preschool so while we haven't tried a ton of products, I have looked into several and we know what we like/works for us :-)

My favorite would have to be Five in a Row! What a wonderful curriculum! We don't follow it exactly as planned but use their reading lists and pick and choose from their MANY lesson options. We supplement with items and units found at Homeschool Share, and I also write a lot of our lessons myself. We love themed Unit Studies (which is totally stating the obvious for any of you who have visited more than once, ha!)

I also LOVE The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach by Robin Sampson. I love this approach and will be implementing SO much of it in our schooling. I love her 4 steps and all of her ideas for doing this delight directed approach. This totally fits in line with our family's vision for homeschooling.

While I can go on and on about my favorite books that I have read regarding homeschooling, the other book that is a "can't miss" would be Real Learning by Elizabeth Foss. A very practical, modern approach to Charlotte Mason. While it is written for Catholic homeschoolers, I have found that all of the ideas in her book are applicable to any denomination and is just a breath of fresh air for creating a beautiful and unified family.

For more great reviews and favorites, you have to check out HOTM's Meme!

Our Olympic Week

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:15:00 +0000

This week has been so much fun! When we decided that Gregg would be taking a week off of work to help with "Mission: Potty Training," we thought it would be perfect timing to do it during the Olympics, and we were right. Having him here has not only lessened the burden in the potty training, but we have had a lot of fun teaching the girls together this past week!

Friday evening, we watched the Opening Ceremonies and had a carpet pizza picnic :-) The girls watched parts of it, and then we paused it (I love Tivo) to put the girls down and finish watching it without continually rewinding it to hear what the reporters just said! Saturday and Sunday was a light introduction to the Olympics and China by simply watching some of the coverage and pointing things out -- the majority of the time we were focused on potty training, which I will talk about in another post :-)

Monday is when we began our unit on China and the Olympics. We had covered China for two weeks earlier this year (posted here, here and here), so we chose to focus on panda bears for this unit and just recap all of the earlier information while reading stories like Ping and The Story of Chopsticks, and looking at pictures of China. I was BLESSED to win the Geography section of the Homeschool Share Blast and one of the prizes was an awesome prize pack from Jimmie that included Chinese money, post cards, Olympic stickers, Chinese character stickers, artwork, Chinese snacks and bracelets, decorations, map, and several other items. . . it was awesome! Those items filled in the majority of the fun decorations on the Unit Study Table (along with our fun dragon and tiger puppets Gregg had brought back from China that are shown hanging from either end of the bookshelf).

On Monday and Tuesday, our focus was China. We read the stories and did a lapbook on pandas. We made a fan craft from Ni-Hao Kai-lan and learned more Chinese words. We looked at pictures from Daddy's trip to China and looked at the Flat Stanley pictures he had taken of the girls that made it look like THEY were in China! We also began our Read Aloud, The Hour of the Olympics. We have had a lot of fun learning more about Panda Bears and I have been impressed with how much they remember. It has been fun showing them some of the snippets of video from the late (late, late, late) night coverage of the Olympics that included, a few days ago, an adorable segment on panda bears :-)

Wednesday we began discussing the United States of America. We got out a few flags, talked more about it in detail and looked at it up close, and we went over the Pledge of Allegiance and The National Anthem. We talked about what "indivisible" means, discussing how our family is also "indivisible", and we divided our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I also showed them the Pledge in Sign Language (one of the very few things I remember learning in Girl Scouts in the fourth grade!). They quickly picked up on how to say "America" in ASL and are having fun with that! Then we sang the National Anthem, talked a bit about it, and then hopped on Youtube. We listened to our country's best singers perform the anthem at various football events, listened to an adorable 6 year old sing it, and found an awesome video of a 3 year old girl say the pledge in English AND Spanish! We are definitely saving that one! The girls loved it :-)

Wednesday night was our Chinese party. We made Chinese lanterns from Nick Jr.'s Kai-lan site, put chopsticks on the table that Daddy had gotten for us in China, and dressed up. Cali wore a silky kimono that my mom had made for me when I was a toddler and Jordan wore a Chinese shirts with tons of Chinese characters on it. Daddy wore a Karate Gi and I wore a Chinese robe :-) We ate yummy homemade Chinese stir fry and dumplings. Our dessert was red, white and blue Popsicles! After dessert, we watched the Olympics while making some more Chinese crafts including a "fortune teller" from Kai-lan (I remember making these all the time when I was younger!) and origami art including a grasshopper, flower and Chinese tiger (ok, Daddy made these mostly but we all "ooh'ed" and "ahh'ed").

Thursday we reviewed what we had discussed the day before. Gregg and I had fun with the fun $1 bin Target finds that quiz you on all of the states (dry erase placemat that we used to test ourselves on states and capitals. . . let's just say that DADDY will be teaching all three of his girls this stuff) and looking at an old Fisher Price map that I had when I was little that shows every state's capital, landmarks, scenery, famous people, and fun facts! Unfortunately I woke up with a horrible headache and Gregg sent me to bed around noon, which I happily listened to, assuming I would take a quick cat-nap. Around 5:45 pm, the girls hopped on the bed to tell me it was time to wake up LOL! I guess staying up till 3 am the past few nights watching the Olympics coverage and then waking up at 7 am to bring the girls to the potty had finally caught up with me!! The girls had a blast with Daddy though, who was MUCH braver than I was and brought them to Wal-mart (remember we started potty training on Saturday)! Since it was a lazy day, we decided to celebrate America by eating some of America's finest -- pizza rolls and macaroni and cheese. Let it not be said that we don't provide wonderfully nutritious homemade meals here, HA!

Today we will be doing a few flag crafts and finishing our lapbook on the olympics (I glued two file folders back to back, so on one side you have a traditional red lapbook on China and panda bears, and on the other side you have a traditional yellow lapbook on the olympics). We will be going over the Olympic Oath, medals, looking at our various books and fun links and talking more about the different sports. Tomorrow we will have the Harris Family Olympics and an olympic celebration, complete with Olympic cake and then Sunday will just be a fun review!

I will post pictures of the Family Olympics and the completed lapbooks soon. How is your week going???

Striking a Balance

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:39:00 +0000

Balancing my many roles of Wife, Mom, Teacher, Maid, Cook, Friend, Daughter, Sister and Writer is something that I struggle with daily. From the emails I receive, I know that I am not the only one with this dilemma. It seems to be one of the things all women have in common – the quest to find balance in life and hush the never ending to-do list in our minds. As homeschooling moms, on top of all the other balancing acts we are performing, we also have to find a way to balance the busyness of the day and all the items on that to-do list with the fun moments that truly make the entire journey worthwhile.

As we bring this series on experiencing joy to a close, I only thought it appropriate to address ways that we can practically participate in those family traditions and rituals while still fulfilling the other roles our families need us to perform. The first step I took to strike this balance was something I learned on a retreat I attended late last year. My sweet friend Chelsea told me that she was completely exhausted just thinking about my day and all the things that I tried to accomplish . . . and the guilt that I carried around from not crossing all those items off of my list. She helped me to see that to have peace and joy in my life, what I needed to do was become intentional and plan. I needed to figure out what REALLY needed to be done around the house, the activities I needed to be a part of (if any), and how many from-scratch gourmet meals I needed to fix each week to feel good about myself. Most importantly, I needed to get my husband’s input. Then I just do what is on his list! It is wonderful if you can be Mommy Mrs. Perfect, but for the rest of us, the important thing is that your family knows how much they are loved. Wendy told me something that has stayed with me, “One thing’s for sure, my dear children do not worry about cleaning, mopping, laundry, dishes, etc; But they will say, ‘Mom, you didn’t sit with me and talk’ or ‘Mom, you don’t play with me.’"

Secondly, I put all but one of my yahoo groups on “no mail.” Those groups can be invaluable in the wisdom you can receive, but that wisdom is also provided by searching the archives. Chances are that they have discussed every topic you can think of at least twice anyway! Stopping all those emails from coming into my inbox every morning immediately lightened my load and helped calm me down.

Now, I’ve only been a Mommy for 3 ½ years so I thought it best to get insight on this balance thing from some much more seasoned veterans. An overriding tip was . . .

To read the rest of this article, please visit me at Heart of the Matter Online.

A Rosary Bead, Cali, and our $75 Emergency Room Field Trip. . .

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:16:00 +0000

Oh, my beautiful, curious, daring and keep-me-on-my-toes daughter, Cali. Mommy loves you. Your giggle and smile can light up a room. But you also have the ability to stop my heart in an instant with your adventurous nature!

Let me share with all of you the fun day we had yesterday! We were gearing up for our week ahead learning even more about China (we had a two week unit earlier in the year that the girls loved) and about the Olympics. We were getting ready for the Saints opening game last night against the Cardinals. It was a good day :-) Then, for whatever reason, I felt led to look up my youngest daughter's nose. I don't know why I felt this desire, but for whatever reason I proceeded to put said child on my lap, tilt her head back and look up. And to my utter surprise, I saw. . . something.

"Cali, what is that in your nose? Did you put something up your nose, baby?"

"Uh huh."

"You DID?!? What is it?"

"(gibberish)" Now I can normally decipher my beautiful two year old's speech with no problem, but as luck would have it, that was not the case this time.

PANIC!

I pick up said daughter and lay her down onto the kitchen counter and get a closer look. It looked like a holly from a Christmas ornament but that couldn't be because we don't have any decorations up (while I was really late in picking them up, luckily they have long been put away by this point). I tried grabbing it with my fingers but that appeared to push it further in, so I immediately stopped. I called my mom and she recommended those bulb syringes. Tried it -- Nothing! My father was outside in his yard so he came over to try to help and we tried tweezers -- with her little bitty nose we saw that whatever we did, it would end up pushing it further back, so I called Daddy and loaded the girls in the car and started the drive to the Emergency Room.

Oh the joys of parenting, huh? Cali fell asleep on the drive to the hospital and stayed that way for the majority of the visit, luckily :-) I should say that she was not in pain or uncomfortable at all during this process - the only way I knew there was something up there was because I happened to look! They got us back pretty quickly and the doctor used his nifty tool and had it out in a matter of SECONDS. What was the object she shoved up her nose?? We were all sure it was a crayon, possibly a broken Mardi Gras bead. . . but no. My daughter had found a rosary my grandfather had brought me back from the Vatican during a recent trip to Italy and was playing with it a few days ago. Upon getting it back from her, I noticed that she had broken it but it looked like two beads had simply gotten unattached and I just put it up to fix later. If I would have looked closer at it, I would have figured this out much sooner, I am sure. Although we go to a Methodist congregation now, YEARS of saying the rosary would have led me to realize that a bead was missing from one of the decades, but I did not, so here we are two days and a $75 copay later with a bead stuck in my daughter's nose. FUN!

We did give one of the doctors a laugh, though. When we were waiting in one room getting our information put into the computer, Jordan looked around and asked, "Is this a baby hospital?" I told her it was where babies are born, in fact it was the same hospital that Cali was born in. She then asked if we could see the babies, and I told her that if they were good, that we would take them to the nursery after they got the THING out of Cali's nose. That made Jordan smile, and then she asked:

"Will we see the alligator?"

"Um, WHAT?"

"The baby alligator and baby Cinnamon."

Luckily I enjoy Noggin as well, so I knew she was referring to an episode of Blues Clues where Mr. Salt and Ms. Pepper had baby Cinnamon at the Baby Hospital. All the characters visited the baby and saw the other babies that included a variety of animals and condiments lol. So, I then had to explain to Jordan, much to the amusement of the doctor in the room, that we would NOT be seeing any condiments, spices or animals in the nursery upstairs!

She was still excited, though and it was great motivation to listen and not touch anything in the room they brought us to that was FILLED with fun looking gadgets. So after everything was done, we drove around to the front of the hospital, rode the elevator up to the nursery and excitedly looked through the windows and saw. . . a TON of empty beds! Yep! Were no women having babies yesterday????

I was so proud of the girls, though. They were disappointed but handled it beautifully. They walked out and we had fun on the elevator ride and told them that we would come back soon, and that satisfied them, thank goodness!

So that was our fun field trip to the Emergency Room and Hospital, and our story about Cali and her Rosary Bead.

Have a wonderful weekend!!!