Friday, August 14, 2015

6 Weeks Done!

Weekly Wrap-Up
I cannot believe how fast the first 6 weeks of our school year have gone.  The kids are so excited (and I'm even more excited!) that next week is our break week!   Here's what we were up to this week.
 
MJ - 7th Grade
 
Bible: Mj is using Apologia's Who is My Neighbor?. We talked together about how Jesus came to serve others and the example He left for us. We talked about how MJ can apply that in his life this week.
 
English: Mj learned about researching skills.
 
Math: Mj worked on prime numbers and greatest common factors.
 
Science: Cells, cells, and cells! The focus this week was on aerobic cellular respiration, anaerobic cellular respiration, and photosynthesis.
 
World Studies: Mj finished the chapter on the China and the Mongols.
 
Poor MJ, I didn't get any pictures of him.  Most of his work this week was independent. 
 
Jadyn - 2nd Grade
 
English: Jadyn's been working on nouns.  She learned about common and proper nouns, how to make nouns plural, and how to use commas with items in a series.
 
Math: Jadyn worked on fact families and how to solve word problems.
 
Reading: Jadyn loves All About Reading.  And I do too!  I'm so glad we changed to this program this year and that we started with Volume 1.  It really has given her confidence.  She's starting to get into some difficult words for her, but I don't see the frustration that I saw last year!  This makes me so happy!!!!  If you have a dyslexic child and are looking for a reading curriculum, check out All About Reading!
 
Spelling: We are loving All About Spelling, too! Jadyn's using volume 1 and her spelling has improved immensely! Yesterday, Jadyn was working on "c" & "k" and which one to use at the beginning of a word that makes the /k/ sound. She has always struggled with this, but the way All About Spelling taught it - it made sense to her and she was getting it! Yay!!!!!
 
 
Science: Jadyn learned about living things.  We talked about what living things need.  We also talked about metamorphosis and life cycles.
We watched some cool YouTube videos about the frog's life cycle. 
Jadyn also enjoyed learning about the butterfly's life cycle.  We enjoyed watching some YouTube videos on that, too.  Seriously, what did we do before YouTube! =) 
Heritage Studies: Jadyn finished her chapter on community.  We talked about community leaders and community helpers.
I wanted Jadyn to understand that her house is in her neighborhood, which is in her community, which is in the city Miami, which is in the state of Florida, which is in the country USA, which is in the continent of North America, which is in the planet Earth!  This was a great craft for her to understand that concept!  Thank you Pinterest! =)
 
Art: We all love HomeArt Studio for our art lessons!  Today Jadyn learned about the art of George Rodrigue. They did a painting to resemble his painting called blue dog. I think hers is a pretty close replica! ;)
Gabe - Kindergarten
Reading: Gabe is using All About Reading - Pre Reading.  This is a great program for him and he is doing pretty well! He has learned his uppercase letters up through "X".
Review time with magnets!
Working on how many claps (syllables) are in a word.  He loves doing this.  Yesterday he would say the biggest words he could think of and just clap them out!
Math: Gabe learned his numbers through 10!
Seeing if the number 7 is bigger or smaller than 8.
Putting the numbers in order.
Extra Cuteness!
On Wednesday, I registered my kids for Awana for this coming year.  Gabe is so excited to be a "Big Kid" and move up to Sparks!  He wore his Sparks vest all day Thursday and looked through his book any spare moment he had!
 
Job - TotSchool
Job is a man constantly in motion.  He really does not sit still for long.  Usually you can find him running around outside being all boy while I'm doing school with the older kids.  He loves to come in and watch a YouTube video with us.  He's been looking for tadpoles every day since we talked about the frog life cycle.  We find lots of frogs in our back yard, but we're not close to any water where the tadpoles would be. He thinks they could live in puddles! ;)
 
I try to have hands on stuff out for him to play with during school time.  One day, he actually sat still and played with his Wok and Roll game.  Yay for some motor skills work!

Together Time
The kids are loving our Grapevine Bible Study.  We started at Creation and are now through the creation of Adam & Eve.  The kids love drawing along with what I'm reading from the Bible.  We have some good discussion afterward.  Jadyn told me that she didn't realize that God breathed into Adam the breath of life. She was excited to learn that.
 
Our Road Trip USA study has taken us this week to New Hampshire and New Jersey.  We enjoyed pancakes for dinner the one night to celebrate New Hampshire's syrup making! =)
 
I love these moments where I find all the kids playing nicely together.  I wish it happened more, but I'll take what I can get.
 
We did it! 6 weeks down and now we get a 1 week break!!! Yay!!!!
Check out what other homeschoolers are doing at Weekly Wrap Up.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

14 Years

Fourteen years ago today, I married the most amazing man in the world.  Seriously, fourteen years has flown by.  Standing in front of him, I never could have imagined what our lives together would hold - the ups and downs we would go through and how much I could love a person.
 
During this time, my mom was very sick.  We didn't even know if she would be able to be there or not.  We had all sorts of plans in place for all the scenarios that could happen. The night of the rehearsal my mom couldn't be there, because she was too sick.  But my wedding day reminds me of God's gracious goodness to my mom and me, because on that day she was the best she had been in months.  She remembered things and looked the healthiest we had seen her. She was looking forward to my wedding day almost as much as I was.  Every doctor appointment I would take her to or every nurse that would come see her at the hospital and every visiting nurse knew all about my wedding because she was telling them all the plans she could remember.  I'm so grateful that my mom was so well on our wedding day. We had no idea, but a month later she would be in Heaven with her Savior.  God was so good to give my mom and I this wonderful memory together!
 It's fun(ny) looking at how people have aged in 14 years!  The little girl in white with the blue bow is getting married this weekend! She was in our youth group when we were youth group leaders in PA.  Time sure does fly!
 
 We had such a beautiful day for our wedding and a beautiful place in Hershey to take pictures!
 Our wedding party! A beautiful group of family and friends!
 This is probably one of my favorite pictures from that day. 
 We were a bit late to our reception (4 hours) because my bridesmaids got lost on the way to where we were taking pics. So when we got to the reception we had to quickly cut the cake because it was starting to melt. My husband smashed the cake in my face, so I had to return the favor!
 Getting ready to leave for our honeymoon! So many fun memories of that day.  I love looking back through our wedding album and video!
And because 2 people fell in love, we have this beautiful family that God has blessed us with! Oh what a difference 14 years makes! ;)
 
I love the words to Josh Wilson's song "What a Mystery" and I think about it every year on our anniversary.
 
"There was a garden, there was a man,
He was so lonely, but God had a plan,
God had a plan.

He fell asleep but, never could dream,
He'd wake up to the most beautiful thing
He'd ever seen.

But there she was, and there you are.


What a mystery
 Somehow you and me
Are a picture of a greater love
That someday we will see
 Oh, what a mystery

The good Lord is working to make my heart new,
And I am more like Him when I'm with you,
When I'm with you.

Oh, you are so patient, you are so kind,
You are my favorite way that God shows His light in my life.

 What a mystery
 Somehow you and me
Are a picture of a greater love
That someday we will see
 Yeah, what a mystery

And day by day we'll chip away
All the things that don't belong,
Every shadow, every wrong,
Until we find deep down inside
The glory we forgot, the image of our God.

 What a mystery
 Yea somehow you and me
Are a picture of a greater love
That someday we will see
 Oh, what a mystery "

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Two Weeks of Fun & Learning

Weekly Wrap-Up
I wasn't able to blog about our week last week so here's our last 2 weeks of school.  Can I say how much I enjoy homeschooling - the flexibility, the teachable moments, the laughter and silliness, the fights (ok, maybe not everything LOL).  Here's some pics from our past two weeks of school.
 
 
Gabe has been loving when I get the bananagrams out.  He puts all the letters that he knows and organizes them.
My husband was able to take a day off so we did everything that had to do with the letter B that day.  So we hit the beach! (I love living so close to the beach!)  Mj enjoyed making sand creatures.
Gabe wrote his name in the sand.
Beautiful day at the beach with our family!
Jadyn flying high with some help from her daddy.
After the beach, we went bowling!
We've been enjoying our Road Trip USA curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Last week the kids made blueberry muffins to celebrate Maine's state berry.
Jadyn loves All About Reading!  She had fun with this hands-on activity.
Jadyn had a science experiment.  She had to see which paper would be hotter. The black paper hit 120 degrees after an hour! It was definitely the hottest!
Mj has been learning about diffusion so we had to do some fun experiments about it!
He also did an osmosis experiment with gummy bears.  I won't say how many gummy bears were eaten while the experiment took place! ;)
Why yes, we do go to the beach twice in 1 week!  We got to go with some of our friends from our co-op and we all had so much fun!
I saw this idea on pinterest and thought this would be a great art project!
Gabe working on his flashcards to review his letters.
Job & Gabe watching a "P" video on YouTube.
We love What's in the Bible?.  The kids learn so much about God's Word and His rescue plan for us while having fun with the characters. They also love the coloring pages!
Gabe enjoying some hands-on counting.
Circling letters and making them into aliens is fun when you're in kindergarten!
Having some learning fun with our edu-blocks!
Working on number recognition with a game!
Jadyn thinks this is a comfortable way to do her math paper.
My poor Job had to go to urgent care on Wednesday night.  He's got bronchitis and was pretty miserable.
Mj's experiment on turgor pressure.
Mj made some yummy gourmet burgers and baked fries for dinner all by himself.
With some meds in him, Job became a ball full of energy!  I guess he's back to normal!
Gabe making the letter "T" with his body.
Brothers having fun playing together and learning.
Gabe loved working on his dot number patterns with this big dice!
The kids love finding creatures in our back yard.  They found a tree frog and were studying it.  We came inside after he finally jumped away from them and couldn't be found and studied all about frogs!
Creative play! I love it!
We love the HomeArt Studio DVD's for art.  Gabe made a happy sun and learned about mixing colors.
Jadyn learned how to overlap and made this beautiful watermelon watercolor painting.
A couple of weeks ago we made bird feeders.  We've had pigeons and blue jays visit our bird feeders, but these 2 pigeons have been faithful about coming several times a day for a snack.
So that was our past 2 weeks.  You can check out other homeschoolers weeks at the Weekly Wrap Up.
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