On the 2nd Day of Christmas I blog over to you...

This fun day!!

Yesterday, Elizabeth was able to meet her K12 teacher in person at the winter social 2012.  In our area the children met up at the bowling alley.  They had a coloring poster for each of them to color on and then had a drawing for 10 of the K12 string backpacks.  Elizabeth was a lucky winner for the backpack.!!

Jacob didn't want to come with us...must be a 13 thing not to go bowling with your mom and siblings. Idk!  But we did have fun!  This bowling alley has the BEST fried mushrooms around and when I told Emily we were going she was so giddy about getting the mushrooms.  I was smart this time and bought our drinks as a pitcher of soda otherwise I would have been paying more for refills.  So we downed a pitcher of soda, two orders of fried mushrooms and a large pizza!

I bought the kids 3 games each because I figured the time will go by quickly and this would keep them busy.  But it was hard to keep Elizabeth at our lane and she was fluttering around talking to other kids (which is fine!) and trying to keep the attention of her teacher.  "Watch me", "Did you see that?" and "Can I go home with you"...which I feel makes a parent feel about an inch tall thinking we aren't doing something right that Elizabeth thinks her teacher can do better.  While I am sure that is not the case but that's what it feels like anyhow.  

About 10 minutes into the bowling session the lights turned off and cosmic bowling was ON like donkey kong! I know cheesy...but it sounded pretty good in my head to say that on here.  Emily wore the perfect shirt for this occasion.  Didn't plan for it to work out as good as it did...but it was awesome!

The other three have taken their holiday break a bit early.  So much has been going on to get ready for Christmas.  Some nice weather we have had with a few days of rain.  We are still recovering from the Christmas play days where the kids took part as banner carrier, offering bearer and in the homeschool handbell choir.  These days were proud mama, daddy, grandaddy and aunt days!  We even had a friend of ours come with us on 2 nights of the performance.  Everyone that took part in the play did a superb job!

If you would like to keep up with my cross stitching and learn about giveaways and how you can win for yourself or somebody else (great stocking stufferes right now!) Come check it out at:  http://yougotmeinstitches.blogspot.com/  I am posting a new giveaway tonight, become a follower and you are in!  No other strings attached...I promise!

And it wouldn't be a complete blog post if I didn't plug in Pampered Chef as well!  
This month I will be organizing a Pampered Chef Order of the Month Club.  Looking for groups of 12 who will commit to buying $20 in products + applicable taxes & shipping.  Each month a new hostess of the group will have the honor of earning the free products and hostess gifts!  Easy, right?  If you are interested in this leave a comment and let me know.
Yesterday was a long day with appointments and shopping.  But I came home to daddy and Jacob making potato chips in the deep fryer!  He used the Simple Slicer from Pampered Chef and raved over how easy it was to do!  "simple" would have been my word and the obvious word to use but I will take his "easy" anyhow!  The Simple Slicer is only $30 in the catalog and it adjusts to 3 different thickness selections.  See our potatoes??  Come visit me at pamperedchef.biz/rcj176

Random Acts of Kindness Thursday Study

I found out that there is a Random Acts of Kindness week but its in November.  Today is going to be our RAK day for teaching purposes.

We are starting with two verses from the Bible:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.” (1 Corinthians 13:4)
“He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done.” (Proverbs 19:17)


We are using these slogans:
•"Kindness can change the world." 

•"Kindness begins like a ripple of water"...  

                          

•"Kindness makes your heart glow!"

•"The kindness in people is reflected back to them."

•"I believe in the magic of kindness."

•"Practice random kindness."

http://www.kidactivities.net/category/Random-Acts-of-Kindness.aspx

Kids are choosing which slogan they want to do and are going to be making a mini sized poster (blank printer paper).

I wrote the 6 slogans above to give them a choice on which one they wanted to do.

Before the poster they are writing on lined paper 10 ways to be kind for them to start brainstorming.

What triggered this idea (well, God of course) was two things as I walked in the house from being at Walgreens.  1.  Early this morning Jesse was a genius!!!  Elizabeth doesn't spell very well (neither does he) but this was something he could do for his sister.  He got on the desktop computer and made a folder on the main page with her name on it and inside of the folder were websites that she goes to a lot.  This saves everyone in the house time to have to spell out the whole website for her so now she can just click and go!  2.  Again, I came home to Jacob making ramen for Elizabeth.  Just because he wanted to.  Not sure if she asked him or not but this isn't a normal thing for him to just go and do.

I want the children to grow up and do things for themselves and others without having to be told to do it.  Take some initiative.  The feelings you have in your heart are way more powerful than someone praising you for doing something.  Not all the time will you get praised therefore you should be able to praise yourself with a pat on the back.

I will add pictures of their posters when they are finished.

We are still honey-mooning...

As we continue studying the moon phases we read the verse Psalms 8:3  

When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—

                      the moon and the stars you set in place—

The kids and I continued on through Genesis 3:20 with their bible lesson and did a crossword puzzle.

I found a website called Teacher Vision today.  But they only allow you to see 5 things before you have to buy a subscription to the website.

I used those free views pretty quickly.  I found that our project we started yesterday was too hard for Elizabeth to keep up.  Went to that website and printed out a couple of moon printables for her.  That way she is still studying what we are just on her level.  She has been cutting and using glue to fill in sentences with crescent words and a page on moon phases and matching.

The older kids are learning about the phases of the moon.  Observing and naming the current phase of the moon, the elongation and how it can be estimated with the sun's rays.  Within today's lesson is some basic geometry with right angles and 45 degree angles. Worksheet

Prayer sticks for today were to pray for my cousin's daughter Addison, my brother in law Bill,  Jacob's friend Dominique and my sister's daughter Brooklyn.

And the Bible lesson for today is...

John 1

 ¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
 ²The same was in the beginning with God.
 ³All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

I have the week set out for our Bible lessons.  Elizabeth has a coloring page to do while we are working on the other pages.  Here is what we are working with for these lessons.  Bible Lessons

We may take a detour this week to work on moon phases as a whole group.  I found that Discovery Education has a lot to offer and the kids need a distraction thrown in and work on team building.  Not sure how but at least they will be building moon phases.

These are both free resources.

Here is a freebie that someone shared with me yesterday.  Betty Crocker's 2011 Fall e-cookbook!!

Homeschool Planners

I figured I would blog about this before I lose the website again.  I don't buy planners because I like making them my own way and use different ideas and I am very ADD with this.  But I came across a website that I liked the front covers that they offered.  I mean I really liked it.  Now ready to sit down to print it and I can't find it!  I looked everywhere...thankfully for only 3-4 minutes.  But I found it!! !Yay!
http://new-bintexas.webs.com/freecurriculumplanner.htm  there are different options here but I liked the blue and yellow one.  I think it is the last one.  Anyhow,  they have 12 month calendars at a glance that I am going to print for the backside of the binder.  There are other places that offer free planning pages such as Donna Young's site  http://donnayoung.org/index.htm  she offers more than just home school planning sheets.   Here is another site
http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/gettingorganized/planner.php

Check out New Beginnings and see what you can creatively put together!

Prayer

I saw this on Facebook but the person who posted it borrowed it from someone else...so I have no idea who the original author is to this but I know its not me. But the words just stood out to me and it made every perfect sense to the problems of the world. Remember how in the big beauty pageants they would get up there and say "world peace"...does everyone not know that Jesus is the reason for the Season? That doesn't just go for Christmas. He is the reason for everything all around us.

A little girl wanted to know what the United States looked like. Her Dad tore a map of the USA from a magazine and then cut it into small pieces. He told her to go to her room to see if she could put it together. After some minutes she returned and handed the map correctly fitted and taped together. The Dad was surprised and asked how she had finished so quickly. She said, "On the other side was a picture of Jesus and when I put him back then our country just came together."

This came from a child's voice...what is that saying, "from the mouths of babes".

This we are focusing on prayer with the children. How to pray for people while using our prayer pail and what to pray for. And then we are also going to teach them how to pray at dinners. Jesse did a family dinner prayer that was very innocent and unknowing of what he was actually saying and I am glad that he opened his eyes and wasn't embarrassed but some of us couldn't help but laugh on the inside. We may abandon all our normal classwork to work on Prayer this week. Its so nice to homeschool and have such flexibility

.

First Giveaway!!!

Watch later today to see what the surprise giveaway will be today!!  There will be several ways to enter!!!  Keep Watching......

What about you?

After seeing someone post about Sally Clarkston's website I found an interesting way of looking at things.  She states that she has always told her kids "I have always told my children that if you stand up to lead, you automatically become a target."  This makes so much sense in our world.  It doesn't matter if you are a child or an adult.  We are all God's  children trying to make our way in this world  We all want to make our own footprint here but with doing that comes persecution.
When we made the decision to homeschool all of the children this year and not just Jacob...we fell to many a comment against us.  I was warned by our homeschool support group leader to expect this.  Not just comments, but illnesses and other difficulties...they are all not God's doing but just a distraction.  
We are so far ahead in our schooling that us taking this week off from school will not hinder us at all.  I have been under the weather for awhile now and just couldn't do anything this week....plus, I need ink!! I think we go through a cartridge of black ink a week.  Fine...and a new dry erase marker.


How are you raising your children?  Thank you Sally for writing things a little simpler to uncover our eyes.


Here is the website that was shared on fb:http://www.itakejoy.com/are-you-raising-warriors-or-refugees/

Cool weather is coming

Have you dusted off your crock pot or slow cooker yet?  About this time I start getting antsy to bake and make chili...I LOVE CHILI!! I would eat it year-round but the family wouldn't.  This is one of my favorite websites http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/ where there are tons or recipes to choose from.  I believe most is gluten free too.  I had bought the cookbook but let someone borrow it and it never was returned :(  It is sadly missed daily in the slow cooker season.
A friend of mine swears by this recipe  http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2009/02/asian-peanut-butter-pork-crockpot.html  I am one day going to set off on my day to make this and see if my family likes it as well as her family does.  Take a look around and check out their recipes and see if some can be adapted for yourselves.  I know in our family a meal that can be cooked without much prep and constant "needs" is great for us!  I am still looking for the book 101 things to do with Ramen or something like that.

Not much going on today except that I will be giving the kids some paper to write down who they would like to add to the prayer pail.  If anyone else would like to make the same thing I would love to see your pictures too!
I posted a picture last night of what it will look like.  I will post later on what ours looks like.

Brand New Week...

Last week was a bit of a whirlwind for our family. We are a family of 6, most of the time. Usually more are here.Here is our Easter picture. I think this is the last family photo we have had...hmmm, time for a new one!
New year and the kids have passed to the next grade. Jacob to 6th, Emily to 5th, Jesse to 3rd and Elizabeth Anne to 1st. We were so excited for Jacob to move on to Middle School. He is such a bright young man who soaks everything up like a sponge but at a faster rate. Middle school was our hope for a challenging year for Jacob. All throughout elementary school Jacob did well on his tests but something was missing in the classroom. His class work grades were awful and so were his homework grades if he decided to turn it in at all. Something is just not right for a child to have a high averages on his state testing but still in the same classes as his peers. My emotions had me crying for two days as I feel that the system has failed him. I feel that we have done all that we can to help the system and guide them to how Jacob needs to be taught. But they didn't listen.
Last Wednesday, Jacob hopped on the school bus like normal. But the day was far from normal. I arrived at the middle school around 9:30am to withdraw him from the public school. Where was he going? I don't know! What were we going to do for education? We didn't know. But we knew that he didn't belong there. He wasn't adjusting to the middle school day. He was so used to elementary school for 6 years, same friends, familiar teacher's faces....the transition didn't go well. I do believe the middle school is a very good academic school though. I have heard many good things about this particular school, especially about the band program. Emily will be going to this school next year.
We are waiting on the paperwork for enrollment into Gateway Christian School. An umbrella church-related school for homeschooling. As soon as it gets here I can fax it in for immediate enrollment. We are pulling from different areas to fulfill his curriculum. The only thing I am lacking is a good math book. I am going to try and call the school's central office about math books to rent/purchase. We will be striving to catch him up to his real ability and do 2 years in 1 this year. I can now see that he probably should have moved up a grade in his early school years. Just my opinion though. He catches on to things really quick.
Surprisingly, the other children have not asked to stay home for school. We did, however, let them know that it wasn't an option for them at this time. But you know how kids are...
I was blessed to find out that our church has a homeschooling group for support.

So, I will be "One Homeschool Mom" for now and will be busy from here on out. (As if I wasn't before now) I wonder how others first began and how your situations occurred? I know that some start their children's education at home and some not.

Tomorrow is a full day so I should probably get some rest...