Tag Archives: kids

December 6, 2013 · 5:07 pm

Weekly Wrap-Up . . . Finishing With a Christmas Party!

Well, this week was a seemingly QUICK week! It seems like the week began just YESTERDAY!

You already know that “The Batman” and “The Artist” both are in the teen choir at our church, and they sang special music this past Sunday night.

During the week, in between packing up all of the autumn décor (now that Thanksgiving is over) and beginning to get the Christmas stuff out, we worked on “household management”, i.e. getting the house under control again, and catching up on laundry, lol!

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! 🙂

2 Comments

Filed under Church, education, family, home education, Home-school Group, Kids, Mesa Baptist Church, Weekly Wrap-Up

Tagged as children, Christian Faith, Church, Church Homeschool Group, family, home education, homeschooling, kids, Mesa Baptist Church, Weekly Wrap-Up

December 2, 2013 · 6:04 pm

Our Church Teen Choir

We have an awesome bunch of teens at Mesa Baptist Church, and Bro. Roger Grantham and his wife Aubrey are so great with the kids! Here they are in a video from last night, singing the song “Glory To God In The Highest” for the special music during the evening service!

I really want to give the Granthams a shout out, because Mike and I have two boys in the teen group and the teen choir. The Granthams have just been wonderful with them, really understanding of their needs, and helping where necessary so that the boys will do well in the group. They’ve even been willing to help with making it possible (in part by having along another couple, the Kuckartz’s, to handle things like medications and keeping “The Batman” on track) for “The Batman” to be included when they go to Winter Retreat, and hopefully summer camp next year, as well.

Thank you, Mesa Baptist, we love you! 🙂

As always, I’d love it if you would join 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 blog and never miss an update! And, if you enjoy this blog, please go to our Facebook page and “like” it. I’d sure appreciate it if you did! 🙂

1 Comment

Filed under Christian faith, Church, Kids, Mesa Baptist Church, Teen Choir

Tagged as children, Christian Faith, Church, kids, Mesa Baptist Church, singing, Teen Choir

November 29, 2013 · 11:10 pm

Weekly Wrap Up . . . Thanksgiving

This has been a busy, busy week! It began with finalizing my lists for Thanksgiving, as we were to be 15 for dinner! So, starting on Monday, the kids and I were working on getting ahead of the laundry and cleaning, among other things.

I was also working hard to finish assembling the base Christmas cards I’m working on for my Hairstylist, Jody Muniz! They are all completed except for adding the bling and stamping the sentiments on the inside! 🙂 I needed to get them to that point so I could put away all of my paper-crafting supplies by Wednesday.

On Tuesday evening, our church, Mesa Baptist held it’s Thanksgiving Feast at 6:00 p.m., followed by our annual Thanksgiving Praise and Thanksgiving service. During the service, our teen choir sang the special music. Both “The Batman” and “The Artist” are in the teen choir, and “The Artist” had one of the duets in the song, so watch for him in this video! 🙂

Thursday, my husband had to work a four hour shift in the morning, and then about an hour after he got home, our guests began arriving. My friend Rose (who actually happens to work with my husband), her husband Bill and their four children (Danny, Andrew, Ian and Ashley) arrived first, at around 11:00. She is a Pampered Chef consultant, and came with stuff to make a veggie tray and a relish tray, complete with Pampered Chef stuff to make and serve them with! We put those out for the football watchers, but it took a bit of time to get them to eat that along with the chips and dip, lol! She also did a lovely tossed salad, a Honey Baked Ham, dinner rolls, and brought two pies.

My friend Ann, her husband Charles and their son Charlie got here later in the afternoon. She had made delicious mashed potatoes, two kinds of green bean casserole, and brought three pies. We had spent Thanksgiving at their home last year. 🙂

I did the Turkey, Coconut-Pecan Sweet Potatoes, stuffing, cranberry celebration, gravy and brownies. I forgot to cook the corn I had bought, but there was certainly plenty of food without it!

We had such a good time, and those who are into football certainly got their fill this year on Thanksgiving!

Here are some pictures of everyone having a good time together . . .

First up, My friend Ann, with her very fun hat!

Next, we have Charlie, dressed to root for his team . . .

Here is my husband Mike, with Ann and her husband Charles . . .

Here, “The Batman” is engrossed in a 3DS game!

Next, we have my friend Rose, her husband Bill, 2 of their kids plus “The Artist” . . .

My husband Mike, gabbing with Rose, Ann and Charles . . .

Two of Rose and Bill’s kids, plus “The Puzzler” at the Wii.

Well, that’s OUR weekly wrap-up, how was YOUR week? Why don’t you write about it and then go link up with the rest of us? Just click the graphic below!

As always, I’d love it if you’d join me on all of “My Journeys Through Life”! Just go and 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 love it if you did! 🙂

Learning Can Be Many Things . . .

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! 🙂

1 Comment

Filed under education, family, home education, homeschooling, Kids, special needs education

Tagged as children, home education, homeschooling, kids, special needs

November 20, 2013 · 12:44 pm

Our November Homeschool Group Activity . . .

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! 🙂

2 Comments

Filed under education, encouragement, family, home education, Home-school Group, Homeschool Group Monthly Activity, homeschooling, Kids, Mesa Baptist Church, Missions Giving

Tagged as children, Christian Faith, Church Homeschool Group, family, home education, homeschooling, Homschool Group Monthly Activity, kids, Mesa Baptist Church, Missionary Jason Herndon, Missions Giving

November 6, 2013 · 11:01 am

Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics . . . A T.O.S. Review

If you are looking for a hands on, Charlotte Mason Style Homeschool Science Curriculum with a definite Christian world view, you will certainly find it in Exploring Creation With Chemistry And Physics, written by Jeanie Fulbright and published by Apologia. This curriculum is written for children anywhere from kindergarten through grade six, and is perfect, in my opinion, for working together as a group, even in a multi-age group.

As reviewers, we were allowed to select any two of the notebooking journals which go along with the text book. Because I had hopes that at least one of my kids (“The Artist”) would be able to use the Regular Notebooking Journal, I asked for it . . .

Along with a copy of the Junior Notebooking Journal.

Because of a mistake in shipping, I actually received two of the Junior Notebooking Journals. Apologia was kind enough to replace the missing journals for those of us who received the wrong ones, and ESPECIALLY kind enough to allow us to keep the wrong ones! In the meanwhile, I was able to acquire two more Junior Notebooking Journals from other reviewers. 🙂 As it happened, this turned out to be a real blessing, because although “The Artist” probably CAN handle the regular Notebooking Journal, he definitely preferred the Jr. one.

The Notebooking Journals are very similar, but the Junior Notebooking Journal actually has a lot more in it for someone who likes art, and the Regular Notebooking Journal has significantly more writing to do, something “The Artist” gets balky about if he has to do it with handwriting as opposed to using the computer.

One of the best things about the Apologia is that when we use it as a read-aloud (and we do!), the text is very easy to understand, and there are plenty of good quality color pictures to go along with the text.

Spread throughout each chapter (Lesson) are boxes with the heading “Try This!”. It may be a small experiment, a game, or something else, but it always goes right along with what is being taught in that section. Some of the “Try This!” sections we have done are:

The 20 Questions Game, which teaches the skill of being able to describe the properties of matter.

Figuring out the volume of a small rock using the method discovered by Archimedes . . .

during which we discovered that this small rock from our yard came in at about 50 cubic centimeters.

We began learning about density using two eggs, two glasses of warm water, and one half cup of salt . . .

We learned more about mass, volume and density by seeing whether different objects would sink or float in a bowl of water . . .

And we also did one other “Try This” to learn about buoyancy. The idea was to build a foil boat, put it into our “ocean” of warm salt water . . .

then begin adding pennies (pirate treasure) to see how many it took to make the boat sink . . .

In case you were wondering, it took 56 pennies!

In the main text-book “Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics“, there are 14 lessons. The breakdown of the lesson plans are in the Notebooking Journal and the Junior Notebooking Journal, with the suggested pace of two days per week, doing one lesson per week. As usual, we are slowing this down quite a bit, in order that all of my children can really get as much as possible out of this curriculum. I think that’s one of the best things about homeschooling, the fact that we can go at our own pace, tweaking here and there as needed to accommodate the various special needs my kids have.

There are also a multitude of lapbook style things in both of the Notebooking Journals for the student to cut out, fill in, and then glue to the appropriate page of their notebook. We are just getting ready to begin one of them, in fact!

There are vocabulary activities, such as crossword puzzles, word find puzzles, match-up sheets, vocabulary puzzle pieces, etc, and, should you need them, the answers are all in the back of the Notebooking Journal!

Here are just a couple of pictures from our Notebooking Journals:

From the Junior Notebooking Journal, you can see that my kids are not carbon copies of one another when it comes to coloring!

Here is the one picture I managed to get of “The Artist” beginning a crossword puzzle in the regular Notebooking Journal, before going back to the Junior Notebooking Journal, which he very much prefers! 🙂

Apologia is a good fit for my family, and we will continue to use it, but with one small adjustment in addition to slowing the pace down quite a bit. The only other change I will make is that when they have a copywork page with a Bible verse, I will be having them use our King James Bible, rather than the version used in the curriculum. As my regular readers are aware, that is my one pet peeve with Christian homeschool curriculum, it is mostly written using other versions these days. I would love it if this were offered with the option of being published using the King James Version for those of us who will use no other version of the Bible. In the meantime, I guess I will just continue to adjust for that by typing the verses out from the King James Bible and then adhering them to the Notebooking Journal over the other version.

The Textbook “Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics” by Jeanie Fulbright can be found here at the cost of $39.00.

The “Chemistry and Physics Notebooking Journal for Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics” can be found here for $24.00.

The “Junior Chemistry and Physics Notebooking Journal for Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics” is available here for $24.00.

My children and I are very much enjoying this Homeschool Science Curriculum, and I hope you will, too!

To find out what other Schoolhouse Review Crew members thought of “Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics“, please click on the graphic below!

As always, I would love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys Through Life”! Just go to the “sign me up” button at the top of the blog and enter your email information. Also, if you enjoy “My Journeys”, please, go here and “Like” our Facebook page. Never miss an update again! 🙂

1 Comment

Filed under Apologia, Christian faith, education, family, home education, homeschool products, Homeschool Science Curriculum, homeschooling, Kids, Lapbooking, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post, special needs education, TOS Post, TOS Review

Tagged as Apologia, children, Christian Faith, Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics, family, Hands on Christian World View Science, home education, homeschool product review, homeschool products, Homeschool Science Curriculum, homeschooling, kids, Lapbooking, Notebooking, Schoolhouse Review Crew, special needs, TOS Review

November 1, 2013 · 1:00 pm

Weekly Wrap-Up . . . Oh What A Busy Week We Had! :-)

I think that Monday was the ONLY day we stayed at home! Tuesday, as I posted earlier in the week, Our church homeschool group had a field trip to McCall’s Pumpkin Patch, in Moriarty NM, followed by Ladies Bible Study at church that evening for me.

Then Wednesday of course, “The Batman” and “The Artist” had Teen Choir, after which we had Bible Study and Prayer Meeting at church. On the way home after church, we needed to stop and buy milk, because nobody had told me the day before that we were almost out (I don’t drink it, so I didn’t know).

Last night, our church had the annual Chile Cook-off and Fall Festival. I’ll be doing a post in the next few days with pictures from that, but here’s one picture of some of the Chile entries before we began sampling! 🙂

This morning, our church homeschool group met for our November activity, which was a missions project, as our missions conference is this month. We divided into groups, three families per group, and we each filled a box with gifts for our assigned missionary family, along with a box for one of our college students who are away at school.

Here are our packages, with the kids in our group . . .

I’ll do a full post about that later, too, with more pictures. Meanwhile, that’s how our week has been, and now I am finishing this post, doing laundry, getting things together for a Close To My Heart Gathering being held tomorrow, and then getting my ministry card that I do each week made.

So, how was YOUR week? Why don’t you write about it on Fridays and join the weekly wrap-up linky? Just click the graphic below to find out how!

As always, I would love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys Through Life”, by entering your email information in the “sign me up” button at the top of the blog. And please, do also go here and “Like” our Facebook page! 🙂

If You Were Me and Lived In . . . A T.O.S. Review

We were sent four cute little books from Carol P. Roman with Away We Go Media to review in our homeschool.

We received:

If You Were Me and Lived In . . . South Korea . . .

“If You Were Me And Lived In . . . France . . .”

“If You Were Me And Lived In . . . Mexico”

and . . .

“If You Were Me And Lived In . . . Norway . . .”

The author was also kind enough to gift us with an inflatable globe, a couple of pencils with international flags printed on them, and a play passport set, all of which my boys thought were very cool, most especially the globe. 🙂

These books are the beginning of a series of books that can be used to introduce other countries and cultures to younger children. They are intended for children ranging from Pre-K through age 8, but my kids enjoyed them as well.

They range in price from $8.99 to $10.79 in the paperback editions, which is what we received, or $.99 to $1.99 in Kindle format, which some of the other Review Crew Members received.

Each of these books follows the same basic formula. It is a short book, approximately 25 to 30 pages long, exploring the culture of a different country.

At the very beginning, we get a picture of the country featured in the book, which has a star marking the capital. Then, we go right into the little story with a boy and girl pointing to their country on a globe. This is followed up by talking briefly about the capital city, and a picture of a scene from that city. Next, there is a picture of the boy and girl in a scene relating to where they are, and talking about three different names you might have if you are a boy, and three names that would be popular for a girl in that country. Next, along with a cute picture of the children doing something with their parents, we learn what you would call your mom and your dad in that language! From there, we next see the children in a place of business, and we discover what their money is called, what they might be buying there, and what the business would be called in their language. In the different books, we learn about a popular sport, a favorite vacation place, a holiday, special things they might eat, and their school. All of these things use words in the language of the country the book is covering.

At the end of the book is a page with a glossary of all of the foreign language words. This is perhaps the one thing I would change, I would have preferred to have the translations perhaps within parentheses right next to the actual words, that way, we would not have needed to go back and forth every time we came upon a word in a different language. 🙂

we did do our best though, to try to guess what the words meant, and occasionally, we were actually successful!

I think these books are nicely done, and very cute. As it turned out, they were a bit young for my older kids, but my twins like them, and I’ve seen them reading them again. And, the bonus is that all of the boys were looking for, and finding the different countries on the globe and on a map we have from a previous review. 🙂

To read what other Schoolhouse Review Crew members thought of these books, please click on the graphic below!

As always, I would just love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys Through Life”! Just enter your email information into the “sign me up!” button at the top right of the blog, and please, also go here and “like” our Facebook page!

2 Comments

Filed under Away We Go Media, education, family, Foreign language homeschooling, home education, homeschool products, homeschooling, Kids, Language Arts, Learn to Read, read-alouds, Reading, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post, special needs education, TOS Post, TOS Review, Ultimate Blog Challenge 2013

Tagged as Away We Go Media, children, family, home education, homeschool product review, homeschool products, homeschooling, kids, Schoolhouse Review Crew, TOS Review, Ultimate Blog Challenge 2013

October 30, 2013 · 3:50 pm

A Day At McCall’s Pumpkin Patch!

Yesterday, we spent the day at McCall’s Pumpkin Patch with the homeschool group from our church. It is about an hour away from where we live, but it turned out to be worth the drive!

Here is our group . . .

I, of course, totally messed up and didn’t get any pictures in the actual pumpkin field, but here we are in the hay wagon for the ride there and back, shortly after we arrived . . .

First, here is “The Batman”, “The Artist”, one of their friends, “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” . . .

And here I am, with one of my friends, the grandmother of the extra boy in the previous picture!

There were a lot of really cool opportunities for fun photos.

Here are all of my boys with my friend’s grandkids in one of the teepees . . .

Although I forgot to take pictures when they were choosing their pumpkins, we did find some really nice arrangements that were PERFECT for photos!

There were these very neat antique trucks filled with hay and pumpkins . . .

An antique tractor . . .

This cool hay wagon . . .

The Soda Wagon . . .

One of my favorites, the giant rocking chair!

I liked this spot, too . . .

They had a “corn bin”, which was like a sandbox, but filled with corn kernels!

“The Puzzler” . . .

“Mr. Loquacious” . . .

“The Artist” . . .

“The Batman” . . .

“Here is “The Artist”, letting the younger kids bury him in the corn!

Here, “The Batman” is feeding the goats . . .

And last but not least, here we all are, being the farm animals!

As you can see, we had a really good day, with lots of time walking around in the fresh air. It was a beautiful day, and so nice to be doing this at the end of October, and NOT needing winter coats! 🙂

2 Comments

Filed under Christian faith, Church, education, family, home education, Home-school Group, Homeschool Field Trip, homeschooling, Kids, McCall's Pumpkin Patch, Mesa Baptist Church, NM, Travel, Ultimate Blog Challenge 2013

Tagged as children, Christian Faith, family, home education, Homeschool Field Trip, homeschooling, kids, McCall's Pumpkin Patch, Mesa Baptist Church, new life, Ultimate Blog Challenge 2013

October 29, 2013 · 4:08 pm

Reasons For Homeschooling . . .

I came across this really good article “Comparing Homeschooling vs Public Schooling: Ten Reasons For Homeschooling (A Public School Teacher Tells All)“. I think it’s well worth reading, so I wanted to share it with you.

Some of MY reasons for homeschooling are:

It is the absolute best choice for my kids. That is more important than making the best choice for ME.

My kids are not being indoctrinated with a secular worldview.

My kids have a variety of special needs, so homeschooling allows us to work at their own paces, and in the ways they each learn best.

My kids do NOT need the sort of “socialization” found in schools, whether public or private.

We are not tied to a formal schedule. We can take off days for other things as we wish to do so, and we can work school in around life, as opposed to the other way around.

I’m sure if I sat here and thought about it, I could list a whole bunch of other reasons, but these are just the ones that came to mind right now.

Whether you homeschool, or your kids are in public or private school, I hope your choice is being made solely based upon what is best for YOUR children, not based on what other people may think of your decision. It’s not their decision, it is yours. Make it count.

1 Comment

Filed under Christian faith, education, encouragement, family, home education, just me, Kids, special needs education, Ultimate Blog Challenge 2013

Tagged as children, choices, Christian Faith, family, home education, homeschooling, kids, lifestyle, special needs, Ultimate Blog Challenge 2013

Tag Archives: kids

Weekly Wrap-Up . . . Finishing With a Christmas Party!

Our Church Teen Choir

Weekly Wrap Up . . . Thanksgiving

Learning Can Be Many Things . . .

Our November Homeschool Group Activity . . .

Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics . . . A T.O.S. Review

Weekly Wrap-Up . . . Oh What A Busy Week We Had! :-)

If You Were Me and Lived In . . . A T.O.S. Review

A Day At McCall’s Pumpkin Patch!

Reasons For Homeschooling . . .

Email Subscription

Archives

Categories

Blog Stats

Tag Archives: kids

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Email Subscription

Archives

Categories

Blog Stats