Clouds

Today's Nature walk was all about clouds. Abigail has been so funny lately while we are driving, saying she can see all kinds of figures in the clouds. Today, she saw nothing. And wasn't much excited about the clouds. She did find a stick however, that kept her wild imagination going the whole time we talked about clouds. Nathan was more on the side of the stick as well. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

Looking up at the sky to see what kind of clouds we have in our sky today. It was a little bright.

We learned on NOVA all about different cloud types. We're pretty sure ours are Stratus and Cirrus clouds. Yeah for crafts! The kids did get into this.

 Cute mug!

Fancy Tea Party

There's very few things more adorable than little girls dressing up all fancy like for a tea party hosted by their Grandma. Hair curled, makeup on, pretty necklaces. Oh it was too much fun!

 Rugged boys with their fancy girls.

Prettiest girls around! 

Grandma's are the best!

Tired

All moms are tired. Right? Yes, they are. Nothing new here, so I won't complain. Instead, I'll just embrace the years ahead of being tired.

Today I was motivated to step up my "school" room, which is really just my family/dining room. I needed it to look more school-ish. The problem is, I don't have the space for all my grand ideas, but I'll make due with what I have. For now, this is going to work so we make sure to NOT keep skipping our morning devotionals. I feel those are so important to set the right mood for studying. And for some reason, I keep forgetting to start our day with that most important part. Not. Any. More. This flag is really going to help remind me that we have a little routine to start our day off on the right foot.

The wall time line is our History lessons for the year.  It's actually, "His-Story" that we'll be learning and studying.

Today we went on our nature walk. We looked for rocks. Not hard to find in our part of the world. I thought the kids found some pretty cool ones.  But since we didn't find any blue or orange ones, Nathan colored a couple to make sure we had them. It was fun to discuss the differences and similarities. Why some are soft and smooth, and others are rough. Some have lines and others have spots.

Ever the posers.

 Getting right to work to document what we found. I hope I can keep this up. I've certainly hit the waddling faze of my pregnancy so it's a good thing we can take our time on these walks.



I think next week we will have to do a cloud nature walk. Abigail is so into finding animals in the clouds. It's hilarious to hear what she can "see" in those clouds!

Family Leadership Academy

Yesterday was our first Family School Co-op. Boy oh boy, it was AMAZING!!!! It's everything I've hoped for for my kids in this home school experience. Opportunity for new friends. Opportunity to participate in classes that will help them to stretch, think, grow. Opportunity to express themselves. Plus, it's pretty great for me too. I met so many wonderful mothers. All on the same bandwagon as me. All like minded. All wanting the same kind of future for our children. So, so, so great!

Do not be fooled by their lack of excitement in this picture. They were over the moon excited and nervous! Their mama was running late and was a bit of a grouch getting us out the door. I think that is more the reason why their faces don't express tremendous joy!

The following are just some random shots I took. This is going to be a fantastic part of our homeschooling experience this year.

Abby's first class is outside in the grove. The kids learn hands on and run around. It's a dream place.

 

Hannah & Nates' Core class

 

 Hannah's Math Facts class

Cute girls for Hannah to make friends with.

Knights of Freedom class for boys 8-10.

 Montessori class. Love. Love. Love.

Kindermusic

 One class that I wish I were taking. Taught by one of the outstanding fathers. Lucky teenagers!

 All the moms - minus me because I was late!

Kids schedule
9am Opening Circle (devotional)
9:30am Core Classes for all the kids, divided into age groups
11am lunch
Noon H: Math Facts
          N & A: Fun and Games
12:45 H & N: Exploring Art through Literature
          A: Reading Readiness
1:30 H & N & A: Pinterest Crafts
2: 15 H: Women in Literature with Me
         N: Science experiments
         A: Nibble & Scribble

The day ends at 3:00 and makes for a very long day. Joe is going to be hard, but he and I will have to adjust. I think he napped on me for about 30 minutes for the entire day. It was rough, but we'll manage somehow. It is so worth the sacrifice it's going to be to make sure Hannah, Nate, and Abby get to participate in this. I'm so thrilled for them!

The end of Week 1

Well, yesterday was pretty much a flop. I woke up in a bad mood, got in a tiff with Hannah and watched her giant tears rip into my heart. So, we didn't do much as far as lesson goes yesterday. We read books and went to some pretty cool parks. It didn't fix everything, but it did help take the edge off some of the tension. I have to gear up for reality that some days are going to be plain ole hard! And others are going to be great! Today was GREAT!!!!

Yesterday at the park

Man I love these kids. And because today went so much better I can say that I'm really, really, really, happy to homeschool them.

Fridays are going to be a day off normally. We will go to the library, go on fieldtrips, and do my grocery shopping, but no school lesson. However, since we didn't do one yesterday we did have a lesson today. Hannah even said to me, "mom, I'm really glad you're homeschooling us. This is fun". Thanks to a little prayer and devotional this morning, things were so much more smooth today. I do want to get in the habit of regular library trips, so we headed out first thing after breakfast and devotional. We came home with a bag full of books and the kids sat quietly reading/looking through their books while I got Joe ready for a nap and made lunch for everyone. It was almost too perfect.

Our lesson: Our Family Learning Tree

I'm no artist and the truth is, Hannah can really draw much better than me. We went outside and looked at trees and talked about the different parts of trees and how there are lots of trees in the scriptures, ex: Tree of Life, Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. Then we talked about the roots on a tree and how they are the strength and that's what we want for our school this year. We want our roots to go deep and have fun learning all year long. So....after we talked about the 4 r's, or ways that we will be learning this year, we decided to put it to action. Aaron caught and killed a very large spider last night and pinned it for the kids to look at this morning. They were totally enthralled. I was totally not, but we ran with it. We decided to #1Research it and discover what kind it was. (Um, it's a Hobo and we'll be spraying pronto!) #2Reason, why did Heavenly Father create spiders. Most of us are scared silly of them and some are even dangerous, so why? When I explained that spiders actually do a lot of good like eat bugs, we could see the wisdom in their small creation. #3Relate, maybe there really is a purpose and a plan for all things that are created. What might our purpose and reason be? And #4Record - scary, ugly, and oh so fascinating.
*Aaron says I'm mistaken on this being a Hobo. Phew! We are still going to spray right away!

Nature Walk

Today we went for a nature walk to start out our morning. I bought each of us nature journals to document our findings each week.

We stopped by the park to look for pine cones. We played more than we looked.

Our findings.

 Abby's pinecone.

So excited to see these fill up this year and how they improve.

After our core lesson on History, (which is awesome and I'm so excited to learn along with my kids) we took the rest of the day off and swam in the pool BY OURSELVES!!!

1st day of homeschool

I was up and at 'em this morning. Eager and ready to start our first day of school. The kids woke up in good moods, I had a shower, Joe slept mostly through the night. It was going to be a great day! After all, the day before was one of the worst to date, so today could only be better. And great it was. I'm calling it a big success. As other children were hustling and bustling to 'regular' school, we were relaxed, but just as excited here...well, at least I was. We started it off with our morning devotional, something I took a break from over the summer. Without documenting every detail of our lesson/day, I'll say the kids did pretty well. I think Hannah was a little bored and she did mention a couple of times that she is sad not to be going to 'regular' school. Stab to the heart, I felt the sting and feel sad for her but I know as sure as anything, that this is right for us, at least for now.

 We did enjoy the crowd less parks that will be nice to take advantage of all school year long.

I'm so excited to be apart of the  Family Leadership Academy that we will meet with every Monday and go on Field Trips with every other Friday. The kids will participate in the core subjects in the morning; Geography, Art, Music, Literature, Science, History. And then extracurricular classes in the afternoon. Abigail is taking a Reading Readiness class, Hannah is taking a Math and Art class, as well as Nathan. They will also be taking a Theater/Dance/Singing class and Tae Kwon Do. There's around a 100 children apart of this organization, so they will make lots of new friends.

But now, I must go to bed. I'm completely worn out from today, but in a good way.

Juice Stand

Finishing the summer off with a childhood must! They made nearly $5 and I was so thrilled with their entrepreneurship skills. (We are teaching them young).  Abby was yelling at each car that drove by, "Only 10 cents". Man alive, they were cute!