HAPPY EASTER

Happy Resurrection Day! 

So many people celebrate Easter but do they know THE reason for their celebration? It's not about the "Easter Bunny" or eggs or any of that. What it IS about is fact that Jesus Christ came to DIE for us on the cross. Even though we don't deserve it at all. He paid the penalty for our sins and three days later rose again. Resurrection Day, better known as Easter. 

Share the true story of Easter with your loved ones today with this FREE download from the Learning Parent. Have a Blessed Easter with your loved ones!

John 11:25-26 
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.

our school this week

Here we are at the end of March! Not very many weeks left of our 3rd grade year. Here's an update of what we did this week.

Kindergarten

This week was a bit slower as we had some fun visiting with friends and such.

Reading/LA

 Monday we finished up our Mm unit on the moon. Natalie, Hunter and I enjoyed Happy Birthday, Moon. Then Hunter painted his favorite scene from the book of Moonbear on the mountain "talking" to the moon. 

Tuesday was the beginning of our Ll unit on leaves. We talked about the sound L makes and had some practice writing it. We practiced finding words that begin with L and played a game to sort the picture cards for S and L. Natalie found a Go Fish game with capital and lower case letters with animals so the three of us had some fun playing that on Friday. 

Math

We are plugging away at our 100 chart and adding a straw to the jar each day of school. Hunter likes to try to write the numbers on the calendar and 100 chart. Some are tricky for him of course but others he finds quite easy! He practiced number 3 with the handwriting page. He did well but got frustrated with himself very easily.

On Monday we used the CUISENAIRE RODS and Cuisenaire Rods Alphabet Book: to make the letter M several ways and other pictures that start with m like man, mailbox and milk bottle. 

Bible

In our Bible lessons this week we learned how God is like the plant and we are the leaves. As long as we obey God and stay connected to the plant we will continue to grow and thrive. The alternative though is if we break away from God and want to do our own thing, we might think it's fun at first but we'll soon be withering away like a leaf separated from its plant. 

Adventures  

Bible

This week Chelsea started learning a new verse from the book of John and about Jesus being our shepherd.

John 10:14

I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.

Chelsea colored a picture of a shepherd with the verse on it to add to names of Jesus book. 

Reading/LA

 The goal this week was to finish our book Carolina's Courage. We have about half of the last chapter to finish. Chelsea was quite concerned about Carolina's doll when she traded it with the Indian girl! 

We read some poetry together this week and started a new book to read aloud called Mountain Born. We will have to catch up with the schedule a little bit since it seems our read aloud books get forgotten many days but so far we like it! 

History

This week we finished up reading about Abraham Lincoln and  did the notebook page for him. We also read  part of Red, White, and Blue where it talks about the Civil War and added that to our timeline. 

Science

For science we read several pages from First Encyclopedia of Science on gravity, hot and cold, force and energy. Wednesday proved the most fun when we used a pop bottle and a balloon to show how hot air expands and cold air contracts. First we ran the bottle under warm water and placed a balloon over the opening. Then held it down in a bowl of cold water.Everyone was quite surprised to see the balloon going inside the bottle! 

After we tried the cold water I boiled a pan of water. We emptied the bowl of cold water and poured the hot water in.We got a lot of laughs when the balloon instantly inflated! 

Math

In our math lessons this week we finished up the chapter on metric measurements. The easiest from this chapter was probably cm measurements. reading the thermometer was the trickiest part for Chelsea. since she's still figuring out how to switch from counting by tens to 5's where there's no number listed and then to ones. She's getting it with some practice though! 

It's been a fun week and I'm looking forward to seeing what next week will bring. 

Happy 9th Birthday Chelsea! 

 My big girl is 9 today! I can hardly believe that 9 years with my beautiful Chelsea Rose have come and gone! We've had our share of trials but SO many good memories along the way!

 Chelsea is my big helper. She has such a serving spirit most of the time and it often amazes me. I'll come into the living room to find it straightened up or see her helping with the dishes in the kitchen. I often tell my husband that God knew what He was doing when He gave us Chelsea first! She is such a great artist and LOVE anything to do with arts and crafts and even photography. I know this is a great gift God has given her to use in her life and I'm excited to see what she'll do with it as she grows. She loves her brother and sister and is always happy to play with them. Of course she loves doing her own thing or playing with children her own age but you would never guess that there's a 4-5 year gap between her and her siblings. I thank God daily for my beautiful daughter. These past 9 years have been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds. Although she wishes to be 16 already I'm happy with her here and now at 9. Slow down time! 

  I just wanted so share some of my favorite pictures of her over the past 9 years. 

newborn at the hospital

1 year old

2 years old 

Chelsea and mommy at 3 years old

4 years old

5 years old.

 First day of kindergarten

6 years old on her birthday

7 years old 

8 years old being a monkey in the tree 

Finally here's some from her birthday party last Sunday. 

With her horse cake made by Grandma! 

opening presents

Cloth Diaper Giveaway!

For all of those out there who are into cloth diapers like me The Humbled Homemaker is doing an amazing cloth diaper giveaway! RUN over and check it out!

We started using cloth when I had my third and yes many people thought we were crazy. But I'm getting used to that by now. Our main reason for the switch was that they save a LOT of money! Just think 1 package of diapers a week for 2-3 years that is at LEAST $1500. If you buy cloth diapers you spend a few hundred up front but that's it. You're done buying diapers, unless of course, you're like most cloth diaper fanatics (myself included)  who like to resell and buy fun new prints! 

The other big draw to them for us was the environmental aspect. My husband and I already recycle as much as possible. When I saw a video from gDiapers about the fact that disposable diapers can sit in land fills for 500+ years I was disgusted! With cloth you don't have that issue! You are keeping tons of plastic diapers from being dumped into the landfills and not decomposing for hundreds of years! 

As with most things in life, it's not for everyone but it's a choice my husband and I made for our family andywe enjoy knowing that we are helping the environment AND our wallets by using cloth diapers! So head on over to the giveaway and see what they have to offer! 

March 22 weekly review

I'm back with an update for our week! Last week we didn't get much done since I ended up sick and sleeping the majority of 3 days away. We did finish up our unit on the sun/Ss and plugged along with math for Chelsea. To finish our Ss unit we made jell-o letters and read Moonbear's Shadow (Moonbear Books)! Hunter drew a cute picture of moon bear and his shadow and I wrote down what he told me about the story.

Here's our updates for this week!

Adventures

History

In history this week we learned about Oregon and Abraham Lincoln. We read about Lincoln's childhood from our history book and watched a video I got from the library called Meet the U.S Presidents, Abraham Lincoln. The whole family was interested in this movie, even my husband! They use a cartoon character of the president to tell his story and then many pictures of the president during different events in their life and presidency.

Science

In our science lessons this week we continued learning about solids, liquids and gasses and how things can change "state". We filled a plastic bottle with water and left it in the freezer over night to see what happened. Everyone was surprised that the water had not only frozen but had pushed out the top of the bottle! 

Experiment number two was to see what things freeze and how quickly. We poured a small amount of several things including milk, kool-aid, mustard, oil, vinegar, syrup and several others into an ice cube tray. We froze it for 2 hours then checked on them. Some things were frozen solid like the kool-aid and vinegar. The mustard sort of separated but the oil was cold but not frozen. We learned from our 

Science in the Kitchen (Usborne Science Activities) book that oil has to be VERY cold in order to freeze!

Experiment #3 was to wrap one ice cube in a cloth and place it in a cup and one without a cloth and place it into another cup. Cover both with plastic wrap and see which melted fastest. I even learned something from this one! The ice cube alone melted pretty quickly. Another lesson learned from our book. It melted because the air got to it while the one wrapped up didn't have air getting to it.

Math

Last week we finished up the chapter on polygons and solid figures. This week we've started our way through the chapter on metric measurements. She's picked up on things pretty quickly and has been great about doing her math pages with very little help which is a very nice change! 

Reading/English

For reading we're working our way through Carolina's Courage. We were supposed to finish this week but after our impromptu break last week we should be done by the middle of next week. I found a tip online for helping children learn to solve longer words. Take a pencil and draw lines between the syllables  This breaks things down enough for them to realize to look at the little parts instead of feeling stumped by a BIG long word! It only took me doing this a few times and now she's starting to try them on her own. Progress! YAY!

Chelsea has been reading more this week and we have a trial of Reading Eggs/Reading Eggspress and she is loving it! There are ton of books to read in the "library" and comprehension questions with a reward for a job well done. I'm loving the fact that she is wanting to read more on her own now.

For our English lessons we have been working on letter writing using the prompts in our book 

Primary Language Lessons. She has the format down but we are still working on her ability to form her thoughts into complete sentences and then get them onto the paper. Thursday was a conversation about what she would do with a piece of land as far as where to place things like garden, fruit trees, flowers and what kinds of each. Chelsea then drew a picture of how her land would look.

Kindergarten

We started unit 2 on the moon and letter Mm this week. It's been a lot of fun to learn facts about the moon and do some fun projects like our moon cake! We also learned in our Bible lessons that we are similar to the moon. The moon doesn't have it's own light but gets it from the sun. We don't have our own light either but Jesus DOES! If we have accepted Jesus His light shines through US and we can be the light of the world. 

Hunter mixing the flour and sugar

our three "craters" filled with oil, baking soda and vanilla

the finished cake dusted with  "moon dust" aka powdered sugar. Yummy! 

Reading/LA

Hunter has worked hard this week on learning to write the letter Mm ! He picks up the letter sounds easily once introduced and quickly worked through the worksheets where he had to find the words that start with m and the page that had words for s and m. Handwriting is proving to be a bit tricky as he gets frustrated easily. One trick I figured out to help him with capital M is to remind him to make it pointy. Then the little m's are the fun ones with the curvy hills! 

On Thursday we played our letter concentration game. Afterward, Hunter and Natalie both made M's out of yarn on construction paper.

Preschool

We don't do much "formal" preschool but I do have some Rod and Staff preschool workbooks around. Natalie has been busily working on hers this week while the bigger kids do their school work. She also tags along for a lot of the other activities from kindergarten and adventures. 

March One Word Update

Here we are mid March! We've had a lot going on around here lately! Here's an update on my 

goals for this year.

1. Bible Reading.

Still plugging along! Still having to play catch up some days but keeping up pretty well! I've finished Leviticus and am in the middle of Numbers. Also read Hebrews last month. It's been very interesting and fun to keep up with my daily reading.

2. My Home

Still struggling with this! My husband is amazing and helps a LOT but I really need to get things straightened around. Our laundry plan was working well until the dryer stopped working 2 weeks ago. It took a week to get it working again thanks to my father in law who found that it was a bad breaker. Now we're still playing catch up on the laundry!

3. School

Things are going pretty well! God has provided once more and we received the last of our school books for next year thanks to my dad who would do anything for his grand kids. I don't like asking for help for school materials. I feel that it's our responsibility since we choose to home school. But Grandpa wants only the best for his grand babies and didn't want me to have to switch to a free program which I was willing and had planned  to do.

 Other than this week since I've not been feeling well school has been going well and we're on track to finish 3rd grade in early May. I've started kindergarten with my son who is always ready and eager for school work. It's been a lot of fun so far with him!

Weekly Homeschool Update 3/4-3/8

First week of school for this month has been finished! I'm getting used to teaching two children and it's going pretty well! We have some crazy moments where everyone is vying for my attention at the same time but overall it's not as bad as I'd thought! 

Adventures in My Father's World with Chelsea

History

For history this week we learned about Wisconsin and Iowa. We were all surprised to learn that Wisconsin is one of the biggest farming states in the country! At the end of the week we learned about why people started going to the children's favorite state for the California Gold Rush.

Science

Our reading for science this week taught about atoms and molecules. We read from theFirst Encyclopedia of Science (Usborne First Encyclopedia) and checked out some of the fun things on their website to learn more about the millions of little atoms and molecules that make up everything around us! 

Math

Plugging right along in our math book and on track to possibly finish a week earlier than planned! We finished our chapter on money and have begun working with polygons, counting their sides angles and vertexes. Later in the week Chelsea learned about the difference between regular and irregular polygons and how to recognize them.

Reading

Chelsea started a new book this week that actually fits perfectly with our history study of pioneers going west. The book is called Carolina's Courage It's about a little girl and her family as they move out west to Nebraska.Still working with Chelsea on sounding out longer words. She gets frustrated easily but made through the reading assignments this week. Reading comprehension is getting much better! Even she has learned to stop after a few pages for me to ask her some questions about it. These smaller chunks material really helps her instead of trying to read a whole chapter or several pages and then remember it all. Glad to be making progress! 

Kindergarten with Hunter

On Monday we finished our creation unit and started our first letter unit, Ss for Sun! 

Bible

Just as the sun gives us light Jesus explains that He is the light of the world. If we follow Him, He will show us how to live our lives the way God wants us to. 

John 8:12

Jesus said " I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." 

Math

This week we started filling in a 100 chart. Each day of school we will add another number to the chart. We also have a jar of straws. A new straw is added to the jar each day of school. 

We are working on calendar skills as well. Each day I fill in the number for the date. we talk about what day it is, yesterday and tomorrow. Hunter circles the date with a color crayon that I ask him to find,

The number one was practiced on the handwriting worksheet. Another page he did had him trace a cup for a circle and make it into a sun! He traced a penny and traced the 1 and cent sign. 

Reading

We talked about the letter S and the sound it makes. He practiced writing the letter S and cut out our picture cards that started with the s sound. We sang a song using our alphabet flash cards that used the letter sound and the object/animal on the card.  All of them enjoy the foam letter puzzle from Lauri! To end the week we played an alphabet matching game where they had to match the upper case and lower case letters.

Science

Since this unit is on the sun that's what we learned about! We learned that the sun helps us to see where we are going during the day. We read Moonbear's Shadow (Moonbear Books) Hunter and Natalie absolutely love this book! We read it several times this week and they keep coming back to it. It teaches about shadows made by the sun and Moonbear tries to get rid of his shadow when it scares a fish away. At noon there's no shadow left and later in the day he finally catches the fish when Shadow isn't in the way anymore. We may have to get this one for a birthday present! 

On Friday we made a sun dial! We set it on the patio early in the morning and traced the shadow from the pencil in the middle of our dial. Later on Hunter was surprised to see that the shadow had moved and he traced that one as well as a few others throughout the day.

Art

Everyone was very excited when mom got the paints out! It's been a long while since I've done that and they all had fun painting a sun!! 

Hunter

Natalie

Chelsea

It's been a FUN week! The more we use of My Father's World materials the more we love what this curriculum has to offer! I pray you've all had a blessed week as well! 

Exciting week!

Wow! This week has been great but full of surprises! I''m amazed at how God provides for our family even when I sit and worry about things.

First news is that our cat had kittens! We didn't even know she was pregnant! She had 2 babies late Sunday night. We didn't find them until my husband heard meowing in our bedroom closet. He went to look and found two kittens with mama Chloe! He woke me up since he wasn't sure what to do with them. Mama cat was amazing and has been great in taking care of them. The kids all are in love with these little kitties! 

Second is that on Monday night my phone rang. Minutes before I had sat worrying about the new vehicle we need for our growing family since our Taurus is already packed and all the baby stuff we still need. On the phone  was a staffing agency calling for my husband. They had a job opportunity! After over a year of praying and looking (and me worrying even though Philippians 4 tells me NOT to!) God has provided him with work! Orientation was Wednesday and he jumped in with both feet into ten hour shifts plus Saturdays. I'm amazed at how much God provides for us. Last year was rough for us financially and then I got pregnant later in the year (that news next ). 

Third and final piece of news for our family this week is that I had my ultrasound on Tuesday! I was 19 weeks and 6 days. The entire pregnancy I thought this baby was a boy. My morning sickness, tiredness and fruit cravings were almost identical to my pregnancy with my son. The tech took his measurements and kept going back to see if the little one had moved so we could find out what we were having. Legs were crossed for a while and when they weren't this baby just wasn't cooperating! 

Finally after much coercion by the tech he was able to find out and there it was plain as day on the screen. I was completely shocked that my prediction was WRONG! I'm having a third, beautiful baby girl! I don't know that i's completely set in still 3 days later. All this time I was sure it was a boy. My kids ALL wanted a brother. God chose this precious girl for us though and we explained that to them. 

The disappointment quickly faded into excitement as they realized they would have another sister and better yet that THEY had helped pick her name! We had a hard time finding a name we agreed on so we asked the kids. We had a unanimous decision for Allie! Wanting a fuller name for her my husband mentioned Alison right before the ultrasound. So our third baby girl will be Allison Nicole! We use family names for middle names and my best friend whom I met two years ago has become like a sister to me. We tossed around a few other names but hers is the one that stuck for the middle name. I can't wait to meet my little Allison Nicole in July! 

This has been an AMAZING week in our house! How has yours been? Link up and share with Fellowship Friday on Christian Mommy Blogger!

February Recap

February has come and gone and I haven't posted in a while. We had computer problems but are up and running now! Here's an update of our home school for last month.

Science

We learned about the human body and our senses! We tasted things like sugar and coffee in different spots on the tongue to see where they tasted bitter or sweet. We read books about the body and senses and also tried tasting two different beverages while holding our noses! The Magic School Bus Explores the Senses was a favorite!
 

Math

In math we worked through a chapter on geometry. Worked on things like perimeter and area as well as concepts of angels, rays, horizontal and vertical, parallel and intersecting lines.

Once we finished up that chapter we moved onto counting money! Chelsea has a hard time switching between the coins but with help from a you tube video and some online practice we made it through and she's starting to get better at it!

Reading

The Boxcar Children was finished and we started using some reading activities from Easy Peasy's website.I really like this website because it has Everything all planned out day by day. It's written so children can go to it, find their day and complete the activities individually if they are independent workers.  

History

In our history lessons we continued going through the states and learned about Samuel Morse and Morse Code and even tried it out a bit! We learned about Florida  Texas, Michigan, Arkansas and a few other states. We were all surprised to find that we had several things in our home from Kellogg's cereal, Bessel vacuum and a Ford car that ALL originated in Michigan! 

Other Fun things

Our home school group had a Valentine's day party! Even though mom messed up the time and we were WAY late we still had fun! The kiddos got to decorate a bag for valentines, have yummy snacks and color some fun Valentine's day pictures before passing out the Valentines' day cards we brought. At home we decorated some yummy heart shaped cookies! 

The Big News

We ordered My Father's World Kindergarten basic package along with CUISENAIRE RODS SMALL GROUP 155/PK and the Cuisenaire Rods Alphabet Book.
  .
Hunter was SO excited when we got it that he wanted to start right away! SO instead of starting this summer like the original plan, we started already! He asks for school first thing in the morning, often even before breakfast! His excitement for learning is contagious and making the girls want to learn as well! It looks like MFW K will be as wonderful as their Adventures program has been this year! 

We are just about finished with the intro section on the Creation story and will be starting our first letter unit on Tuesday on the letter S for Sun. I'm excited to see what my eager little man will learn this month!