Gratituesday - A nice warm home!

Today is cold and icy and just plain ICKY out there!! And so, today I am extra thankful that we have a nice warm home (though some would disagree, we keep it colder than many people do (the heat is set at 67 downstairs, 64 upstairs), but we like it that way thankyouverymuch, and it saves on the heat bill. Though we make up for it in the summer when we also prefer it cooler than most LOL). BUT not only am I thankful for the physical warmth of our home, but also for the warmth of family! I love the activity and fun of a house full of talkative little girls! From listening to the big girls pretend they're grown-ups (at last count, A has . . . 13 children, I think. She told me she plans to have 20 LOL).  To the chatter of Little Bit commentating on life . . . she likes to point out "messes" (that's easy to do around here), and remind us of our various body parts (eye, nose, head, mouth, teeth, and, of course elmo (otherwise known as an elbow)), and generally tell us every little thing that she sees, or does, or sees anyone else do. She's also quite the mimic, repeating everything her sisters say . . . that's not always so good, but *is* cute as can be! This afternoon L complained that puzzles were "bor-ring!" and Little Bit, while continuing to happily work on her puzzle (L was complaining because Little Bit wanted L to help her with her puzzle), repeated "bo-ing" hee hee.

I love the warmth of kiddos climbing up on my lap for a cuddle, or snuggling up with me. Last night Little Bit slept better than usual (certainly better than she had the last few nights, the worst of which, she was awake every 1/2 hour, yawn!), but she was cuddled right up against me, using my arm as her pillow, so cozy!

So, today, as it's a cold & icky day outside, I'm thankful for my wonderful family! Especially my 3 wonderful girls, all snug at home with me!

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

Weekly Wrap-Up - January 16

I seem to be running "late" on things again, sigh . .. oh well, such is life!

We had a busy week.  Daddy was essentially gone all week, so it was "just us girls". Snow we predicted on Tuesday/Wednesday so we made sure to get errands run on Monday in preparation for that (went to get milk from the farm and groceries from the store).

Tuesday was a kitchenish day.  The girls made bread in the morning (part of our health/nutrition curriculum) and then, when we ate the whole loaf for lunch, they made more (ALL BY THEMSELVES) to take to our neighbor, Judy's house for supper. We also made Spinach Spaghetti in the afternoon to take to  Judy's.

Tuesday evening was supposed to be my monthly book club at Judy's house. But because of the predicted snow, we postponed it (to tomorrow, but now we're supposed to get MORE snow (and ice) tonight & tomorrow, so we shall see . . .), so Judy & another neighbor (Denise), & I decided to have our own party. We got together at Judy's house for supper, and games afterward. It was a lovely evening. And then the girls & I walked home through a magical winter wonderland! It had been snowing the whole time we were there so the ground was covered, but it wasn't deep enough to be hard to walk. There wasn't a mark on it!! (have I ever mentioned how much I love where we live?) And the snow made it light enough out that we could see perfectly fine without a flashlight. So pretty!! Little Bit even walked home in it, she's getting so big :)

Wednesday of course, the big girls spent playing in the snow. I was kicking myself that I hadn't gotten the shed key from Rodney, so I couldn't get the toddler sled out for Little Bit to try. The big girls love their saucer sleds but I didn't figure Little Bit was quite ready for that at this age. So she and I snuggled inside and read books and watched "Emmo"  and "Bue" and Signing Times (which she asks for by doing the sign for "sign language").

Thursday Little Bit did get a little snow time while I hung the laundry (it was a pretty sunny day, but COLD) and such.

Friday, the girls & I packed up and headed to my parents' for the weekend.

We enjoyed celebrating Christmas with my grandparents, and visiting with friends.

And the big news, at least as far as the girls were concerned is  . . .

. . . they both mastered bikes without training wheels!!! They don't get much chance to ride bikes, since we don't have a good place for it here. And they've never been willing to even try. But this weekend at my parents, L decided she wanted to try. So Dad took the training wheels off one bike (yes, those bikes  are way too small for them, we keep their old bikes at Mom & Dad's), and of course, A wasn't about to be outdone, so she had to try too. But both of them were too nervous to "let" Mama or Papa let go of them (Little Bit was napping on my lap during all of this). Once Little Bit woke up & I took her outside to play, Mama and Papa were worn out trying to run along behind them helping hold up the bike. So the girls asked me to "help" them. And I did, BUT, as soon as I saw that they WERE balancing, I let go and ta-da, they COULD do it! We spent awhile working on being able to start and for some  reason, removing the training wheels also removed L's ability to steer, so she had to find that skill again, but all in all, it was a pretty quick, easy process. But by the time we left my parents' house this morning they were zooming up & down the driveway as if they'd been riding a bike for years!

Book Review: On This Day in Christian History by Robert Morgan

Booksleeve.com sent me the book On This Day in Christian History by Robert Morgan to review. This book is a daily devotional that tells a brief story about a famous person in Christian History for every day of the year. The person was generally born on, or had something momentous happen to them on, that date in history.

I was excited to get this book to use with my children to help them (and me) learn about famous Christians from the past. I realized, as I read through it, that I would need to preview the stories. Most are wonderful, but a few deal with infidelity and such that are more "adult" topics than I want to get into with my children at this point. Overall, they are enjoying the stories about famous Christians though.

The daily readings are short and filled with good information and a nice devotional thought. The accompanying Bible verse generally seems to be a paraphrase of the actual verse, which isn't my preference, but overall, this is a great book for daily reading.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Homeschool Review: Easy Classical

As part of the TOS Crew, I was asked to review the Early Modern History Schedule from Easy Classical.

This is one year of their history schedules for the Primary grades. It's abit different from most of our reviews in that it's just the schedule. There was no expectation that we purchase all the resources to actually USE this schedule, just review it and give our thoughts on it. So I'm going to do this in abit more of an "outline" format than I typically use for reviews. I'd also like to point out that many other people will also be reviewing this product today. Their reviews, along with mine, will be linked to the TOS Crew blog. Some of these people have used some of the suggested resources in this schedule and will be able to give a different perspective on it than I can.

• What it is:  A schedule for one year of history.
• What's included:  A weekly schedule for 36 weeks, including recommended books to read, quiz questions, writing assignments, projects, etc. Also included are "drawing lessons" of sorts that are used throughout the schedule.
• The schedule is available either as a download ($29.95) for a notebook ($35.95). We received the download version to review.
• What else you need: This is just the schedule, all teaching supplies (textbooks, etc.) must be purchased (or perhaps borrowed from the library?) separately. A list of recommended supplies is on the website, here. Note that they suggest choosing the resources that work best for your family, so you may not need ALL of these.
• How to use it: This is a schedule to take all the guesswork out of lesson planning. For each week it lists specifically what reading, writing, projects, etc. to do which day, Monday through Friday.
• Age range: This is for K-6, my understanding is, with this approach, world history would be re-visited again in grades 7-12. I would assume younger children would enjoy some of the read alouds and perhaps easier versions of the projects. For older children, I assume there is a similar resource (if not from this vendor, somewhere out there) for the second time through world history, but if not, they could participate in this, with additional, more in-depth information added.
• Learning/Teaching Style:  This is specifically designed for the classical style, as indicated by the name of the company, hee hee. I think other styles could adapt it. For example, since I have it, next time we're studying this period in history (explorers through 1815) I will likely refer to it for ideas. My kids would enjoy the drawing, we would pick and choose from the read alouds, etc. 
• Teacher preparation required: This is just the schedule, the teacher/parent is still going to need to purchase or borrow the books, etc. However, having it laid out WHEN you need each thing and WHAT you need is going to cut down on the time needed in planning/prep. Also each week includes a "shopping list" for the next week, so you know ahead of time what you need to get together.
• What do I think about this product?  Obviously, it's not designed for our learning/teaching style. We're about as far from classical homeschoolers as you can get LOL. That said, we actually used a similar schedule a couple years ago for history. It was a US History schedule designed for around 3rd grade, so required alot of tweaking, but it was nice to have the basic timeline laid out for me and have suggested books and activities for each week. I can see this schedule working well for us the same way, as a rough guide. I haven't looked at the books, etc. but just reading over the schedule, I can say that people who use this schedule as it stands spend a LOT more time each day doing "school" than we do. I'd venture to guess that following this schedule, as it stands, we'd spend significantly longer doing history than we currently doing all of our school. Is that good or bad? I don't know, it's just a different style, it wouldn't work well for us, I'm sure it works beautifully for those who follow the classical model for homeschooling. For ME, it seems expensive for what it is. Yes, it's a lovely convenience to have everything laid out for you, but for the price, I can do my own planning/scheduling. For a new homeschooler feeling overwhelmed, the cost is probably completely worth it! 
• Other products from this vendor: Other schedules (history, science, main, and complete), writing guides, geography curriculum, and copybooks.   

Disclaimer: I received a download of this schedule in exchange for writing this review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

Traditional, Shmaditional!

The Blog Cruise is Cruisin' again, after taking a break over the holidays. This week's topic asks, "Do you follow a traditional school schedule?".  I bet my regular readers can answer that question without me saying a word! But . . . you know me, give me something to babble about and of COURSE I'm going to babble!

I thought about trying to compare and contrast traditional school schedules to what we do, but I think instead I'll just share what works for us, and leave it at that:

Our yearly schedule is very . . . variable. Our travel is mostly dependent on Daddy's work. He travels around the state of Pennsylvania as part of his job and sometimes, depending on where he's going and when, we tag along (he's going to Erie next week but driving 5+ hours in snow isn't my idea of fun so we're not going along on this one). Because of that variability, we school year-round. That way when we DO travel, there's no worries about "missing school", though really, the vast majority of our traveling is also "educational" so it's not a big deal.  Perhaps a bigger issue is that learning is a way of life for us, we are always learning, just as we try to eat every day and sleep every night and . . . you get the idea.

Our weekly schedule is also designed to work around Daddy's unpredictable work schedule. He usually works Sundays and then theoretically has at least one day off during the week to make up for it (technically he should have 2 days off during the week since his office works Mon-Thurs, but realistically, we're lucky if he's home one day besides Sabbath). So, rather than "doing school" Mon-Fri and having to "do school" when Daddy IS home, and not doing school on Sunday when he typically is NOT home. We typically school Sun-Fri, but most weeks there's at least one day when something comes up and we don't "do school" if not, then Fri ends up being a free day, though some weeks, if we've had lots of non-school-time in the previous few weeks, I might go ahead & have all 6 days include school time. It all evens out. . . 

And finally, our daily schedule. Our scheduled "school time" is generally an hour or two in the morning, right after breakfast. This is when we do read-alouds, copywork, things like that. If we want to do things that are easier without Little Bit's "help" we do them during her nap. Car time generally means books on tape or other audio resources (lately we've been enjoying learning about creation science and the history of evolution/creationism by listening to Jonathan Park CDs). Bedtime means Sabbath School lessons and a "fun" read aloud (that often teaches some history or something, shhh . . . don't tell them they're learning LOL).

It works for us, and can bend as needed to meet the demands of our schedule. 

Weekly Wrap-Up: January 9

We've had an eventful week.

We started our nutrition study this week. We're using Vintage Remedies for Girls, so this week, we read the first chapter, learned about "real foods" (vs. prepared foods and such). Then we took a field trip to the grocery store (somehow calling it a field trip made them much more excited about going grocery shopping LOL), and looked at labels and things, as well as purchasing the ingredients we needed to make Pasta Primavera (the recipe they chose from the choices listed for Chapter 1).  Then of course, we made the Pasta Primavera for supper. Despite including vegetables like zucchini that they CLAIM they don't like, hee hee.

So that was a hit!

On a less great note, A managed to get her finger smashed in the electronic sliding door of our minivan. She & L were fighting over who got which seat and I was still in the house gathering up Little Bit and all the "stuff" that we seem to drag with us everywhere. So I'm not completely sure of what happened. The door is SUPPOSED to have sensors that automatically reverse to avoid such things. I think she was holding onto the door jam, so it was JUST her finger in the door & it was too small for the door to "register" until it had pinched her pretty good. I'm pretty sure it did NOT completely latch, or it would have broken her finger. She came back inside and we put ice on it & gave her homeopathic arnica (I SWEAR by this for bumps & bruises!!!!) and her finger never even swelled up or turned black and blue. It DID bother her for a day or two, and still feels bruised if she pushes on the finger nail, but it could have been MUCH worse.

Thursday night was our first "date night" under our new schedule of dates. Our friend, Starla, came over to watch the girls while Rodney & I went out ALL BY OURSELVES!! When we got home, Starla was sitting in the same chair she'd been in when we left, with all 3 girls on her lap. She said she'd been sitting there the whole time, hee hee. Said Little Bit didn't even seem to notice we were gone, so that was good (I wasn't sure if it would be problem because she doesn't know Starla very well, but guess it wasn't an issue).

And as you might have guessed would be a part of our week, from the picture at the top, we woke up Friday morning to SNOW!!! I think I had mentioned it briefly to the girls but they hadn't really picked up on it. Little Bit noticed it first. She woke up, chattering, as usual, then suddenly glanced out the window and her eyes got big and she said "nooooo" (not to be confused with "no" (no) or "no" (nose), the 3 are all distinctive but I can't figure out how to differentiate them in writing). A few minutes later I heard the big girls wake up & realize it had snowed LOL.

Once we'd done boring things like eating breakfast and doing chores, of course the big girls wanted to go out in the snow. And when they started talking about going outside Little Bit got excited too. So I decided to take her out for a little while. I hunted down her snowpants and boots and we got her all bundled up and I took her out. She was SOO funny, she's abit of a neat freak (poor child, lives in OUR house, how WILL she survive?) and found it very disturbing that the snow sticks to her boots, hee hee. And then she touched the snow and was equally disturbed that it sticks to her GLOVES. So all in all, the Little Bit snow experience wasn't a huge success. It was getting close to naptime and I *think* the toddler sleds are still in the shed (though it occurs to me as I type this that they might be in the basement), and Rodney has the key to the shed (I hope, because I haven't seen it since he had it last . . .) so we didn't try sledding, that will have to wait for another day . . .

I think I mentioned last week that we've been talking about rearranging the girls' room so that they can sleep on the floor instead of the loft, and eventually Little Bit can join them. Yesterday, we finally did some rearranging. I was just going to do the "first phase" and move the toy shelf against the wall so that there was a larger expanse of floor space under the loft, and then let them continue just sleeping on folded blankets until we got new (smaller, more futon-like) mattresses to use on the floor (and then move the regular mattresses that were on the loft out of there completely). But Rodney was home, and willing to help move the mattresses, so we went ahead & moved them down onto the floor. Probably a good thing, they took up more space than I would have thought. Unless the futon mattresses I was planning to get are narrower, I don't think we can fit 3 across in the space I was planning to use. So now we're thinking about treating it more like one king-size bed, and just have the 3 of them all sleep on it, we shall see . . . for now they're thrilled to have their beds down.

Once we finished with that, the big girls set to work up on the loft, which suddenly seems to have SO MUCH room with the mattresses gone. They decided to make one side "American Girls" and the other side "Schleich Town".  They haven't set up the Schleich stuff yet, but have at least a good start on the American Girls. I was too lazy to climb back up onto the loft to get a good shot of it, so you'll have to settle for A's dolls that are set up in the back corner. The pink princess boxes came with disposable diapers in them, when I saw them at Walmart right before a bunch of our travelling (when I knew we'd be using disposables for Little Bit anyway), I grabbed 2 of them, thinking they'd work well for the big girls to use to store things in. With the rearranging, the girls decided they would make good "sofas" for the American Girls.  Not especially in keeping with the "era" of the dolls  (Colonial, 1800s New Mexico, and Depression era) BUT it works . . .

And finally, some cute Little Bit notes:

The picture is terribly blurry (she just moves TOO FAST for my phone camera LOL), but I had to capture her "fashion sense". She was running around nakey (as is her norm), and suddenly decided she wanted to "get dressed" when I didn't immediately go find her some clothes, she went upstairs and got the lavender sweater out of her drawer and brought it down for me to help her put on. Then she found her (too big) periwinkle fleece pants (I've been putting them on her if we go outside here at home. Her boots keep the extra length from being an issue and them being fleece means they're warm AND water-resistant in case she pees, though that's not really an issue any more) and put them on. And finally found a lavender straw hat that's been in the girls' dress-up stuff forever, but at some point moved down to Little Bit's toy drawer. And there you have, our little fashionista!

She pronounces "sock" with an f sound instead of an s . . . I do a double take every time she says it, but she IS saying sock, I promise!

On morning this week, she woke up and sat up, and I didn't open my eyes right away, so she patted my arm, and when I did open my eyes, she put her hand up by her cheek and did a little wave and said "hi" with the cutest little grin. THEN she asked to nurse LOL.

She loves songs with motions, we sing songs like "This Little Light of Mine" and, one of her favorites . . . "The lightning flashes and the thunder goes BOOM!!" in the car. She also likes "With Jesus in the Family" and is quite opinionated on who we sing about when, hee hee. I wish we sang more of the fun cradle roll songs in Sabbath school here, I think she'd really enjoy them.

When I ordered this year's My Bible First lessons for the big girls, I decided to order the MBF Cradle Roll lessons for Little Bit too. The big girls use MBF in Sabbath School but for some reason (perhaps my biggest complaint against MBF, LOL) they don't make a quarterly for Kindergarten & Primary, just the weekly papers. So, if we're gone a week and don't remember to get the paper in advance, we don't have the paper. After the first couple months that we were here I decided it was worth the money to just order our own set of the lessons (they're only like $9/quarter) and then we'd have them all. Now that I have my handy-dandy binding machine, I bind each quarter's papers into their own "quarterly" and it works wonderfully!  ANYWAY . . . our church doesn't use MBF for Cradle Roll, but I haven't been overly impressed with the lessons they DO use, and we don't always get them, and generally don't get them until at least a week or two into the month and there are no pictures and it's not chronological . . . so . . . I decided rather than trying to struggle along with those lessons now that Little Bit's old enough to have a lesson, to just get the Cradle Roll MBF and use that here at home. It's not ideal, since it doesn't get reinforced at church, but I think it's still a better option for us.

So, starting with this new year (we were a few days late, I was late getting the order in and it took longer to get here than usual because of the holidays), we're reading Little Bit's lesson each night at bedtime too. She's SOO cute! I need to get a video of her saying her "memory verse". She still doesn't talk much, but will try to repeat most anything if you ask her to. So we go one word at a time and she "says it" after me. But in most cases not so that anyone would remember it. BUT last week, her memory verse was Gen 1:1 and then partway through the lesson, it has you read that verse again. So we'd said her mv at the beginning, and then I was reading her lesson. When I read the verse, she said "Genesis" (not clearly, but the same way she said it when repeating her mv)., so she's getting it . . . one thing I like about MBF is that the cradle roll is a 1 year cycle, so at this age where she changes SO QUICKLY, it will be reinforced each year as they are developmentally ready to understand so much more (also helped in my decision to buy it, since I only have to buy 4 quarterlies and they'll last us until she moves into Kindergarten LOL).

And that was our week.

Homeschool Review: Homeschool Day Book

The state we live in doesn't require that children be in school until age 8. So, we haven't had to start reporting our homeschooling yet. But in a few short months, we'll have two 8 yr olds in the house and a few short months after that, we'll begin our first year of "real homeschool". And I have to admit, having to actually KEEP RECORDS has kinda got me nervous.I've looked at a TON of different ways to keep track of what we do, both paper versions and computer versions. And while there are alot of good programs out there, I haven't found anything that works for US! Many of the programs assume you actually know which days each week you'll be doing what, and if you don't do things as planned it messes everything up. . . The paper versions either don't have enough room for my tendency to "babble" (you're shocked to hear I babble aren't you? Ha!), or it asks for too much detail and I can't keep up. NONE of the options I've looked at handled the fact that we do MOST of our schooling together - so keeping a log book for EACH child = double writing/typing. But there are some things that they do at different paces or one opts out of or whatever. Plus, as Little Bit gets older, we'll do some things as a family, "tweaking" it as needed for the age difference, but obviously she'll do some things separately. And then there's the fact that we "do school" for an hour or so, but they are LEARNING all the time. We often go long periods without doing any math during "school time", but they're learning fractions when we cook together, and doing math when they want to figure out how old Little Bit will be when they're 18 or 25 or 50 (their imaginary play is quite fun to listen to LOL). So we needed a way to keep track of at least SOME of that too.

 And then, a few days ago, I heard about the Homeschool Day Book. THIS is just what I need! It's a simple program that lets you record what you DID. And you can set up whatever subjects YOU teach (and/or your state requires that you keep records of) and YOUR children. And then for each entry, you check off all the children who participated and all the subjects that were covered.  And then you can print reports (or view them on the computer, or save them as a .pdf or excel file).  The program is set up that you record how long was spent on each item as well, and if you do that, then you can get reports for time spent. I will be intentionally NOT filling in the time since my state requires that we track days OR hours and I don't want there to be any question which I'm tracking (days), plus it saves me having to keep track of how long we spend on things, hee hee. But I *can* print off an attendance report that will show that we've met our day requirement. I can also print reports by subject to include information in our portfolio showing that we've studied the required subjects during the year. And of course, have the information on all subjects for my own records. This is a great little program, that does just what I need it to do!

One thing I wish it did is to let me choose multiple, but not all, children and/or subjects. So that I could print out a report for my two older children without including Little Bit. Right now I can either print out a report including all 3 children, or separate reports for each child. Especially useful would be to be able to print a report showing activity for the subjects required by the state, but not our "electives". Again, I can print a report for all subjects or individual subjects. Not a huge deal to have a separate report for each subject, or to print a report for all subjects and just use the information for those I need in our portfolio, but it would be a nice feature.

A more complex change would be to somehow have it on my Android (smartphone). I'm not sure how that would work since it's not a web based program, but it sure would be nice to be able to input entries on my phone on days when we're gone all day doing alot of things. Until then, I'll probably still make notes on my phone (probably in Evernote), and then transfer those to my Day Book when I'm back to my computer. But again, it would be nice . . .

This is such a great concept, it works equally well for unschoolers or classical homeschoolers (and everyone in between)! I'm so excited that someone thought to do this, and the timing is perfect for me, gives me time to play with it the rest of this year and be all ready to go next year!

Disclaimer: I wrote this review in response to Homeschool Day Book's offer to provide a permanent license, free of charge, to any bloggers willing to write a review of the trial version. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

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