Gearing Up For Another School Year!

Wow!  My hope was to be faithful in updating this blog but it has been months since my last post. During these past few months we finished up our first year of homeschooling, went on a few vacations, returned as youth leaders in our church's youth ministry and are now just a few days from starting our second year of homeschool. This year David will be joining us!  I will be teaching a 2nd, 4th and 7th grader. We had to move our classroom to the dining room because our room last year would not accommodate another student. The plus side is that my husband gets his office back!  Our new classroom gives us more space and turned out better than I could have imagined!  Isn't it cool??

Not only do we have a new room, but we will be using a new curriculum for the older two. We chose Trail Guide to Learning. This curriculum allows the boys to be learning the same subject matter but at their own grade level. It is history based and covers all subjects except math. We will continue to use Math-U-See for that subject. I am so excited and so are my students!!  Praying for another wonderful year!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!!!

We have been very busy around here with school, basketball, Christmas programs & recitals.  David has also been very busy with the Christmas lights!  God has blessed our Christmas Decor business with another amazing year and we are extremely grateful!  Here are a few photos of what we've been up to over the last few weeks!

Peanut Butter Christmas

Church Christmas Program

"Davey" played by David .

"Joshua" played by Devin

Our Miss Hannah sang beautifully in the children's choir!

 Very First Piano Recital

David played "O Little Town of Bethlehem" &

 "Angels We Have Heard on High"

Devin played "O Come All Ye Faithful"

Hannah played "We Three Kings of Orient Are"

 

Calvary Crusaders

 David is once again coaching the elementary and varsity teams for Calvary.  Both boys are playing this year and having an amazing time! 

David's Last Christmas Program at Calvary

He is the one in the teal shirt and tie!

Autumn Shenanigans!

We are starting to wrap up our autumn activities and look ahead to the holiday season, basketball season, and the Christmas lighting season!  All of these will keep us very busy in the coming weeks, but, I wanted to share some pics of activities we enjoyed over the last few weeks.

We enjoyed another trip to Curtis Orchard with our friends, the Barnharts.  We couldn't pass up another round of apple donuts and cider...YUM!!!  We then went to the pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins.  

 

 

 Here we are at "Trunks of Treats" dressed as the S'mores!  We took 2nd place in the trunk decorating contest and used our gift card to purchase a new family movie!

 A sign that fall is coming to an end shortly...the squirrels have started to gorge themselves on our pumpkins!  They have been taking bites out each day and today they were finally caught in the act!  Stinkin' squirrels!

Election Day

For the last month we have been learning about the election process with our friends, the Barnharts. Miss Emily took the time to research and teach the kiddos about our right and privilege to vote.  We put together these amazing lapbooks to show all that we have learned over the last month.  We took Devin and Hannah with us to vote this morning so they could see how a polling site is set up.  They took their lapbooks to show the election judges and even received their very own "I Voted" sticker to place in their lapbooks!  It was a great experience for all of us as we exercised our right to vote in this great country!

Watching a video about the different types of government.

Taking an oath after filling out their pretend "voter's registration."

Looking through books about the election process.

Miss Emily is teaching about the qualifications required to hold an elected position.

                              Please be sure to Vote!

Our First Report Cards!

Well, we did it!  We made it through our first 9 weeks of homeschool!  I am so proud of Devin and Hannah for their hard work!

Straight A's!!!

Straight A's!!!

September Happenings!

My apologies for taking so long to post this blog!  We have been so busy!  We've also been dealing with colds and allergies so I had to put blog updates on the back burner for a bit.  We are still having a wonderful time learning at home!  We celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday in September by working on a lapbook that had all sorts of fun information for us.  We read books, watched a movie and went to the apple orchard to have apple donuts and apple cider.  We even invited David and David William to join us!  On one afternoon we had an apple tasting, estimated and counted the apple seeds inside of an apple, decorated apple cookies and even made some homemade applesauce in the crockpot!

 All in all, we had an exciting month learning about plants and the fruits they produce.   A great time to talk about Johnny Appleseed and his passion for apples!  In a previous post, I put up pictures of the kids planting seeds.  Only our lima beans started to sprout.  :(  But, we gave it a good try and had fun!  The kids checked their lima beans everyday and gave me daily reports on their progress.  They were thrilled to see the changes that took place on almost a daily basis!  Our sweet Aunt Ina gave us another idea that we will try in the spring...growing grass seed on a wet sponge!  Once the grass starts growing, the kids can give the grass "hair cuts."  We look forward to that experiment!