I didn’t manage a weekly wrap-up last week. I’ve been ill off and on for the past couple of weeks, and then last week, I broke my glasses!!! All is well on that front though, this week I got a replacement pair, though I’m still waiting on my prescription sunglasses (a needful thing in a state with at least 300 sunny days per year).
Anyway, back on February 7, we had another co-op day with our church homeschool group. This time, it was all about nutrition, manners, and physical activity.
My friend Aimee, one of our fabulous homeschool moms, was in charge of putting this one together, and she really made it fun! Here, she is teaching the kids what would NOT be good table manners, LOL!
Aimee discussed with the kids the importance of good nutrition, and of drinking enough water every day, especially living here in the desert.
The kids learned about the importance of good posture, and in this video, you can see some of them attempting to practice USING good posture!
After all of this, we moved to another room, where we worked on stretching . . .
Exercises . . .
And a game to work on good sportsmanship!
This is one of MY favorite photos of the day, two of our toddler friends! 🙂
So, this was a good homeschool day, in the midst of my not feeling well off and on. My kids really enjoy our co-op!
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You’ll find me sharing about homeschooling being a lifetime commitment, as opposed to a “season in my life”, and I sure hope you’ll find it interesting and informative. 🙂 To go and check out what I have to say on this topic, please click below, and while you’re there, check out the rest of the site as well!
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I am taking part in a month-long link up series called “The Virtual Curriculum Fair”, and this week, our theme is “Playing With Words: The Language Arts”.
When my older kids, “The Batman” and “The Artist” were little, I had no idea how to homeschool, and had no confidence in doing it on my own, so I went with a pre-written curriculum, or as I like to call it now, “school in a box”. While this DID give them a good foundation in phonics, it did NOT give “The Batman” the love of reading.
He has several disabilities which have always affected his ability to sit and just read for any length of time, and since it’s important to me that my children learn to love reading for pleasure, I backed off as soon as I was sure he COULD read.
Many years later, when he was a teen, “The Batman” discovered a Hardy Boys book in the library of the church we attended at the time. He began reading it and fell in love! Nothing would do but having all 66 of the stories eventually. In fact, that Christmas, he asked for a set of the first six books he’d seen at Sam’s Club. Of course, he asked for this about 3 days before Christmas, well after he’d made his wish list and I’d finished shopping. Add to that, we had a horrible snow/ice storm, which caused downed wires on our street, keeping us from leaving our block, as the city had it blocked at each end for a few days. Fortunately, I could go from our driveway directly across the street, into the parking lot of the Salvation Army Church, and go around the building, coming out on another street, allowing me to get to Sam’s Club. I made it there just in time to purchase the very last boxed set they had! Well, “The Batman” was thrilled! Ever since then, for each and every birthday, and sometimes Christmas, I have gotten him the next 5 books in the original series. We ONLY buy the original series. I really feel that the ones which came out as a result of the Hardy Boys TV show are not the books we’d like him to be reading, they are not, in my opinion, as wholesome as the originals, and definitely kind of dumbed down in comparison. Occasionally, I also order them randomly during the year as well. I order them from my local Barnes and Noble, to be delivered to the store, where I pay for them using my educator discount card. (You other homeschooling moms DO have a Barnes and Noble educator discount card, right? Because it gives you 20% off your educational purchases). In fact, “The Batman’s” 21st birthday is next week, and just yesterday, I ordered books 36 – 40 for him. Hopefully, they’ll all come in before his actual birthday!
In “The Batman’s” case, leveled readers did not work well to keep him interested and progressing. When he discovered the Hardy Boys, he was hooked, and now reads a large variety of things, from the Hardy Boys, to Star Trek novels, to Star Wars chapter books he’s been finding in our local library. He can now very often be found sitting for long periods, just reading for fun, something I had despaired of him ever doing!
One of our twins, “The Puzzler”, was eight when we adopted him and his brother. They could not read much, other than their names. While his brother “Mr. Loquacious” really is not all that interested in reading (although he can read better now than he lets on), “The Puzzler”, after the curriculum in a box pretty much failed him, ended up virtually teaching himself to read, using the Sunday comics. No, I’m not making that up. He wanted to read them so badly that he would sit and puzzle over them for hours. he would occasionally ask what a word was, and we’d tell him. Sometimes, he’d ask the same word again the next time, and we’d tell him again. Now, he reads them on his own, rarely asking for help with a word, and reads many books, as well, including books which are really beyond where he is. He simply puzzles out the words, and asks for help when necessary. He LOVES to read now. 🙂
“Mr. Loquacious” is still not interested in reading much on his own, but I know he’ll get there, when he is ready. In the meanwhile, we do lots of read-alouds. 🙂
“The Artist”? Well, once he learned to read, I never had to worry about him enjoying it again. He will sit and read for hours, either fiction or non-fiction, as long as it’s within his interests. For non-fiction, he just loves anything science related, especially natural science. He has also developed a love of writing stories, a very good off-shoot of loving to read.
I’m here to tell you that you don’t ALWAYS need a pre-written reading/writing curriculum. Some children do thrive on those, but if yours doesn’t, perhaps a looser, more relaxed method, such as what we have been doing, would work wonders.
All four of my boys love our regular trips to the library now, and choosing their own books their books, even “Mr. Loquacious”, who usually won’t sit and read.(though I retain veto power over choices), and all four of them love to come home and read
To find out more about the Virtual Curriculum Fair, and to read what other participants are doing, please click the graphic below . . .
As always, I’d love it if you’d join me on all of “My Journeys Through Life”. Please go enter your email into the “sign me up” button at the top of the blog, and never miss an update. If you enjoy “My Journeys”, please go to our Facebook page and “like” it. I’d sure appreciate it if you did! 🙂
So, you already know that this past Sunday night our two older boys, “The Batman” and “The Artist” were in our church’s annual Christmas play. On Monday and Tuesday, I concentrated heavily on laundry and working on finishing up our Christmas cards, which I was making, so I could have them done to bring to church Wednesday. I made it, yay! 🙂 We also needed to be at church early that night, as “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” were singing special music as part of the newly formed group “Cadets For Christ”. Here is a video of their song . . .
Thursday morning, I worked on addressing cards to be mailed out, so that we could get them mailed on our way to homeschool park day. Along with that errand, we stopped at the library to pick up a DVD I had on hold, Mary Poppins. Can you believe, my children have never seen it? Well, since we left the house before lunch, I did stop at McDonald’s near the park and got everyone burgers from the dollar menu. Except for me, I can’t eat them, so I got a grilled honey mustard snack wrap. 🙂
Ah, park day! It is so grand living someplace where we can go to homeschool park day, on December 19th, NOT wearing winter coats!
Here is “The Batman”, he was playing catch with someone, and between throws . . . and do you see the beautiful mountains in the background? 🙂
And here is “The Puzzler”, also playing catch!
“The Artist” was wandering with friends, and “Mr. Loquacious” never stopped moving, so I failed to get pictures of them.
“Mr. Loquacious”, who I suspected was catching a cold, but had insisted he was “fine” and wanted to go to the park, definitely has one now. He’s sneezing some, but he’s still running around playing and acting normal, so I think he’ll be just fine.
Today is Friday. Do I have my Christmas shopping done? No, I do not. 😦 So, this evening, “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” will be hanging our with their dad. I will be dropping “The Batman” and “The Artist” off at their Youth Pastor’s home, where they will join the rest of the teens caroling, and then having their Christmas party. Since I do all of my grocery shopping fairly near to their home, I will get groceries while the boys are there, then pick them up. That way, I have them handy to unload the car at home (smart, yes?). This frees up tomorrow, when I will be able to shop alone, and get the Christmas shopping completed.
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You know, I ALWAYS forget how busy it gets this time of the year, until it DOES get busy this time of the year, lol!
In between planning for Christmas day (we have invited a large family from our church for dinner on Christmas), doing regular household STUFF, trying to figure out the best way to give each of our kids at least one thing they really want, and then fill in around the edges, we have had a church homeschool party, I have had a reviews due, had an order of cards to complete, and am even now waiting for a FedEx delivery of materials to do a new order for the same person!
Tuesday evening, the kids and I FINALLY decorated the poor naked tree that had been standing in the living room for several days . . .
In the midst of it all, I try to keep in mind the real reason for this season. We still have things going on at church. Sunday night, my younger kids, “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” sang with the Sunshine Kids Choir for the special music, as you can see in the video below . . .
Wednesday night, I was on schedule as back up for toddler nursery, and one of the ladies on the schedule had sick kids, so I took her place. I like nursery on Wednesday nights, plus, I was working with a young mom with whom I very much enjoy spending time in conversation, so, win-win! 🙂
Yesterday, we had another homeschool Christmas party, this one with our Thursday park day group. We really had fun! We did potluck, I brought pizza casserole and Totally Bad For You cake (chocolate/peanut butter), for which I was a finalist in the Flint Journal (Michigan) “Merry Indulgences”bake off way back in 1995.
The cake . . .
and the extra frosting to snack on later!
I love potlucks here in New Mexico, we are getting to try lots of stuff we’ve never had before! Some of the things brought were sopapillas, black beans, tortilla rolls, some kind of chili that was really good, and bunches of other wonderful tasting things! We find this variety in our church potlucks as well, and are enjoying it!
As you can see, there is an abundance of food here (and I THINK I took this picture before more people arrived with even MORE food! . . .
Doing what they do best . . .
“Mr. Loquacious”
“The Artist”
“The Batman” and “The Puzzler”
Making ornaments . . .
Here are the final products!
Later on, we had a white elephant gift exchange, which is always a lot of fun!
All in all, though this is a busy time, we have been having lots of fun! I hope you are finding time to have fun, yet still keeping your focus on what we are really celebrating here, the birth of our Lord, without whom there would be no salvation.
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We’re taking things easy during the holidays, so no “formal” schooling is going on, but the boys did a lot of reading and viewing educational programs.
Today, though, was our church homeschool group’s Christmas party! As we arrived, we were greeted by “Mrs. Peggy”, who had organized everything for us. We began with some Christmas songs, and all of the kids happily sang along while “Mrs. Peggy” led . . .
Then, we had a story called “The Christmas List”, which I’d never heard of, but I really loved it!
Next, each of the children who had prepared something was invited up to perform. “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” decided to quote a Bible verse about Jesus’ birth, as you’ll see in this video . . .
“The Artist” played “Angels We Have Heard On High” in this video . . .
and “The Batman played “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” in this video . . .
I’m thinking that we better spend some time practicing before we go back into lessons after the new year, as none of us has practiced in about a year and a half, not since before moving here to New Mexico! 🙂
Next on the agenda, we had visitors, Joseph and Mary, to talk to the kids about their journey to Bethlehem, and the wonderful birth of Jesus . . .
Followed by another story, “The Tale of Three Trees”, which I HAD read before, and still love!
“Mrs. Peggy” had arranged for the kids to decorate sugar cookies. They each got an angel and a “ninjabread man”! 🙂
As you can see below, once they were done decorating their cookies, the PIZZA arrived, so everyone had lunch!
Finally, the kids each got to go find their gifts. Here are my four boys looking for theirs . . .
To wrap everything up, we got all of the kids to sit in a group by the tree for a picture. Don’t they look like they had a fun morning?
How was YOUR homeschool week? Why don’t you join us at the link up and tell us about it? To find out how, please click the graphic below . . .
As always, I would love it if you joined me on all of “My Journeys Through Life”! Just go enter your email information into the “sign me up” button at the top of the page and never miss an update! And, if you enjoy “My Journeys”, please go to our Facebook Page and “like” it. I’d sure appreciate it if you did! 🙂
And it has been such a blessing to our family! We have reviewed approximately 50 products and/or curricula, much of which was new to us, and much of which we had heard of, but never really had the budget to buy it without checking it out thoroughly.
The Schoolhouse Review Crew recently voted for the Blue Ribbon Awards, given to the top choices from all of the products reviewed this year, and the results were announced this morning on the Schoolhouse Review Crew Blog.
Many of the crew have decided to publish our own posts telling you about our favorites from this year, and I am no exception, so here we go!
If you click on the title of any of the following, it will open my review in a separate window so you can refresh your memory as to why we liked it. 🙂
As I said, we reviewed nearly 50 products this year, and it has been hard to narrow it down to what we will be using for our homeschool this year, and what will be set aside for future use. I’m going to tell you what we are now using as our homeschool curricula!
“Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” will be continuing on with Reading Kingdom at least twice a week, along with Math Rider and Adventus, both at least twice a week.
“The Artist” will be continuing his way through Writing Fiction (In High School) by Sharon Watson on a weekly basis, and will be doing A+ TutorSoft, which we like so much that we purchased the remaining grade levels for him and for the other boys when they are ready! 🙂
I will be continuing TouchMath with “The Batman”, “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” until they complete the level we were reviewing, and then they will move on to A+ TutorSoft.
Everyone will be working through America The Beautiful by Notgrass. We really, really enjoyed this one, and it works for us in the area of history, geography, and social studies. We will also be using our God‘s World News subscription in our homeschool, as well as games we reviewed, such as The Presidential Game and Chess House, both of which our children thoroughly enjoy using! All four boys will continue with VocabularySpellingCity for language arts.
All in all, without the blessing of being a member of the Schoolhouse Review Crew, I think our homeschooling would not be as enjoyable as it’s becoming, not to mention the friends I have made as a result.
I am also very happy to announce that last night, I received my email inviting me to be part of the Schoolhouse Review Crew again for the year 2014. To read a bit about what membership means to me, please go here. I can hardly wait to see what products we will have waiting for us when we start back up again in January! Until then, dear readers, I’ll just be writing about what’s going on around here, along with possibly my thoughts on current events and things in the news.
As always, I would love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys”! Just go enter your email information into the “sign me up” button at the top of the page, and never miss another update! Also, if you enjoy this blog, please go to our Facebook page and “Like” it! I sure would appreciate it if you do! 🙂
And does not come from textbooks only! Here is “Mr. Loquacious”, working on a structure made with his sports trading cards . . .
He is learning patience (it keeps falling down), he is practicing engineering, he is designing.
In the end, it turned out he was simply preparing a place for his hot wheels cars to crash into and destroy, but I failed to get a picture of that, lol!
As always, I’d love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys”. Just enter your email information into the “sign me up” button at the top of the page and never miss an update! Also, if yo enjoy this blog, please go to our Facebook page and “Like” it. Thank you! 🙂
Our church, Mesa Baptist Church has a thriving homeschool group, and each month during the “official” school year we try to have an activity or field trip. You have already read about the trip we made to McCall’s Pumpkin Patch in October, and now I am going to tell you what our November activity was!
Since our church was having our annual Missions Conference this month, our homeschool activity centered around missions. One of our very organized ladies, who just happens to be one of my favorite bloggers (her blog is The Ministry Mama) put the whole thing together for us!
We divided up into three groups of families, with each group taking one of the missionary families that would be here for the conference, and each family was also given one of our college students who are away from us for school.
Our family, along with two others, got the Herndon Family. They are missionaries to the Zuni and Navajo Indians here in Mew Mexico.
This is an older picture that I found online . . . the Herndons have six children now!
Each family provided a gift for Mrs. Herndon or her husband, and two of their six children. We took the two youngest children, and I got them appropriately aged baby toys. 🙂 I also made a set of notecards and a notebook for Mrs. Herndon.
For our college student, one of our young men who has gone off to his first year of Bible college in Fargo, ND, we filled a box of goodies!
Here is a picture of the kids in our group, with the missionary gift already completed, and the college student gift still open in front of them . . .
Here is part of one of the other groups . . .
And last but not least, the third group, at least the moms, having been abandoned by their children at picture time, lol!
After we did the boxes, my friend The Ministry Mama led the children in singing missions songs, gave them a little lesson on missions, and told them her personal testimony of having been called to the mission field, and how God changed that call when she was in college.
After all of that, we ate lunch!
I think it was a fun, productive morning! Our children learned more about missions and giving, and we all had a good time together as well. Bonus! 🙂
As always, I would love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys”! Just enter your email information into the “sign me up” button at the top of the page, and never miss another update. And please, if you do enjoy this blog, go to our Facebook page and “like” it! 🙂
When I was offered the chance to review French Essentials in our homeschooling environment, I thought about it for a little while first. My kids and I have been trying really hard to learn another language, but I thought it would be fun to take a break and see how we would do with French.
For this review, we received the Full Access Online Program, which has given me everything they have to offer. You can purchase the Full Access Online Program for $149.95, which will give you every one of the modules (there are four so far, with module five on the way), for a total of over 90 lessons and an entire year to get them all downloaded to your own computer! This is a savings of over 57%, as opposed to purchasing one module at a time for the cost of $69.95. Also, with the single modules, you get only 90 days to get all of the lessons and workbook materials downloaded to your computer.
“French Essentials is a complete, downloadable French curriculum with online features that include culture, fun exercises, lesson tests & more.
Designed by experienced French teachers specifically for home learners, it is clear and easy to use and does not require previous knowledge of French. The well designed lessons teach French in an easy to follow, gradual, step-by-step method with video & audio instruction that allows students to interact with the language in a fun and engaging way.”
French Essentials takes your homeschooler through all four language acquisition skills:
reading
writing
listening comprehension
speaking
They use a multi-sensorial approach, beginning with audio. We were able to read the lessons, then click on various characters, letters and words in order to hear the correct pronunciation. These sound files are embedded right in the pdf that we downloaded for each lesson.
Also embedded in the pdf lessons were little videos of a French-speaking teacher giving us time to “watch, listen and repeat”.
We also were able to download the workbook and workbook answer key for each module, which give us the opportunity to practice our reading and writing with the printable exercises, which are there to help us to reinforce speaking and comprehension as we learn to correctly understand the grammar and sentence structures in the French language.
In addition, included in the package for registered users are the following components:
Online quizzes, learning activities and French Culture. The online quizzes include things like online flash cards, listening comprehension & spelling, 2 challenging games (Scatter & Space race) and a test section that gives parents 4 different evaluation options.
In their own words, here is how they began this endeavor:
“We began as a small tutoring service which came about through requests for tutoring from friends in the homeschool community. This eventually led to the development of a DVD French curriculum for home use. In August 2010, in order to make it more affordable and accessible, French Essentials was converted from top to bottom into a new downloadable format and http://www.frenchessentials.com was launched.”
If your child (or you, for that matter!) have had any exposure to the French language, there is a placement test you can use here in order to find out where you need to begin. WE began at the very beginning, of course, lol!
Here is what you’ll see when you log in after purchasing . . .
You can also go to the online exercises . . .
Or to the section on French culture!
If you go here, you can see a sample lesson from module one, and here is a sample of one of the videos, also from module one . . .
For more information about how the program works, what you can expect, and several sample lessons and videos from later modules, you can go here
What I like about the French Essentials Full Access Online Program is that as I said above, it has allowed me to download everything to my computer. I like that the sound and video files are actually embedded right into the downloaded lessons, enabling us to read it, hear it, see it, and say it.
What I didn’t like was that for some reason I couldn’t do either the sound files or the videos on the laptop computers my boys use for homeschooling, so we had to crowd around my desktop (which is newer) for our lessons. I had no problem at all on my desktop when I was prompted to install needed programs in order to use the sound files and videos, but on the laptops, I got nowhere.
While my kids were able to follow the read it, listen to it, view the video, and then repeat what was being said, at this time the worksheets are proving to be too much for them. But as I’ve said before, I often need to tweak homeschool curriculum to accommodate their various special needs, and it is my hope that a little later on, they’ll be able to handle them. 🙂 Right now, though, I’m hearing an awful lot of “French is too hard, Mom!” 🙂
I believe this is an excellent program, especially for the home learner. In fact, even though this one turned out to be a bit too much for my kids, it isn’t too much for me, and I think I will continue on with it myself to see how much *I* can learn! 🙂
To read all about what my fellow Schoolhouse Review Crew members thought of French Essentials, please click on the graphic below!
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My Journeys Through Life . . . Herding Cats In New Mexico! 