Weekly wrap up

This has been a good week at our house.Everyone has memorized our scripture about loving one another and serving one another. My younger son Justin is really taking it to heart too! Yesterday he asked me to get him some milk. I told him that he was big enough to do it himself and I’ll be darned he said “But mom our scripture says to serve one another!” LOL! I got up and got him some milk! Hahahaha

Isaiah has almost finished All About Spelling level one.We have been playing a reading/spelling game together this week. I ask Isaiah to spell a word and his younger brother Justin to read a word and if they get them right they get a chocolate chip :0)

The best part of the week was finding out that my hubby will be here for his leave two whole weeks earlier than we thought he would be :0) It has been almost seven months since we have been together and we are all freaking out with excitement! We also baked some cakes together for Isaiah’s Blue and Gold banquet(boy scouts). The boys baked and decorated with very little assistance from me and both had a ball!

Feel free to check out how everyone else’s weeks gone at Kris’ blog Weird, Unsocialized homeschoolers.

What I have learned about Charlotte Mason So Far…

I am really excited to be learning more about Charlotte Mason and her educational philosophies. I find it interesting that although I have been homeschooling for a few years now and have heard of Charlotte Mason numerous times, I’ve never taken the time to learn more about homeschooling in the Charlotte Mason methods.

So far the things I have discovered that I love about CM are –1st her methods of oral narration.Teaching our children to listen,really listen and to be able to organize there thoughts and tell us what they learned.

I am also 100% with her on the living books VS Twaddle!! LoL I love her term “twaddle”. There are so many books out there today that are not worth the paper they are printed on. Since when did childrens authors decide that our children are “stupid” and so we needed to “dumb things down” for them?? I am just like every other homeschooling parent I am sure in the fact that I LOVE books. A good living book can draw you in and teach you so much!

Another area I find interesting is her take on doing Artist studies as well as composer studies. I’ll be honest with you. I am not really an artsy type of person. I think there is some beautiful art out there. But I myself am not artistic at all.I enjoy classical music and religious music, but I am not remotely musical myself. So these are two things that tend to get neglected in our homeschool. What I like about Charlottes ideas are that they are simple. They are things I can do.

Charlottes idea’s about being out in nature and studying nature hit home for me. I love to be in nature and it is also my favorite area of science to study. I think its sad that so many children today are so over scheduled that they have little to no time to be out in nature observing and enjoying the world around them.They spend 7 hours inside there school building just to come home to homework, lessons, sports practice then time for bed!

I look forward to sharing more about Charlotte as I read and learn more. As well as sharing our plans for implementing some of her ideas into our homeschool!

The flexibility of homeschooling

 I had a full day of school planned today. Religious studies, grammar,math and spelling too. On top of all that I planned to exercise, bake two cakes with the kids (which you know takes twice as long as doing it yourself), allow boys to decorate said cakes AND attend a Blue and Gold banquet for scouts…

Well the day actually ended up looking more like this..Baked cakes, grammar, feeding baby and bathing all four kids, exercising, decorating cakes, talking to dad on the computer and attending the banquet.

The wonderful thing is the kids learned and things were accomplished =0) I know that because homeschooling is part of our way of life that we can just go with the flow of what comes and not stress over something we may have “missed”. There is always time to do that lesson tomorrow.

My New Do’

I just wanted to write a fast post showing off my new haircut. I LOVE getting my hair done!I have changed my hair so many times over the years. I’ve had shoulder length curl’s, a straight chin length bob and hair as short as most mens(no joke).Its been brown and red and highlighted too. So here is my new hairdo, for now!

the side view

 

and the other side =0}

Weekly weigh in

Well I really don't want to post this weigh in =0} I gained three pounds in the past two weeks. I basically lost my motivation for a while. I let some stuff going on interrupt my commitment to being healthier.

I have been struggling with staying motivated and had to just decide whether the work and discipline was worth the result. I have decided that it is =0} I’m back in the swing of it! Today I have exercised I did 20 minutes on my treadmill while listening to an audio book and have done really well on watching what I eat.

I’ve decided that since eating healthy is my biggest struggle that I am going to make it as easy on myself as possible and not bring things into the house that I know will be hard to resist.No more Oreo’s in the house =0} I have to say that I have been really uplifted and inspired by reading about everyone else's weight loss journeys over at Kris's blog.

I’m looking forward top a good week and my goal is to get off the three pounds I gained by next Tuesday!Wish me luck!

The military changes things

Being an army family affects every aspect of our life. It affects  where we live, when we are together, when we are apart, how often we can see our extended family and our homeschool.

I have been thinking a lot about that last one in particular lately. Right now myself and my four kiddos are living in a little apartment in our hometown.My darling soldier is deployed to Iraq. We have been blessed to be able to be homeschooling near our cousins who also homeschool.My sister and brother in law and their five children live about 10 minutes down the street =0} We have been able to have some really fun times together during this homeschool year.

In just a few months the kids and I are heading back to the Pacific Northwest in preparation for Dad to come home.We can’t wait for him to get back and are very excited for the move! The issue I am having is the fact that after much prayer and planning I have decided to switch up the way we do some of our homeschooling.New curricula must be bought, the next level of some of the ones we currently use as well. I’d love to start implementing some of the new techniques I am interested in too,BUT the more I buy right now the more I have to pay to ship in four months to our new home! =0} So the question is do I put things off and begin our new ventures once we have moved or do I order away, start now and pay for shipping later??

I hate knowing that there are changes I want to make and just sitting around not making them. Then again my practical side tells me that paying shipping for the new products ONCE is enough..what is a Army wife to do!?

Weekly Wrap Up

This is my first weekly wrap up which is so cool! I found this on Kris’ blog. Check out the guidelines and how to’s of the weekly wrap up HERE.

This week has had a bit of everything going on! A bit of book work, work on behavior, planning for the  MidWest Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati(WooHoo) and the like! I wont take the space here to explain all of the curricula we use or how we generally “Do” school. I did that all in a post you can read HERE.

We were able to get through all our spelling this week. All review of doubling SS,FF, and LL as well as K and CK at the end of a word.Spelling doesnt come so naturally to me or my son so we tend to do a lesson then practice practice practice! Grammar was a breeze with Isaiah doing his lesson each day on his own.Currently working on finding the subject of the verb in a sentence.

We introduced a new concept in math this week. Subtracting two digit numbers with borrowing. Isaiah is picking that up fairly easily.The interesting thing I have noticed with Isaiah is he does not like to use manipulatives! In the lesson they have you first show the kids with dimes and pennies how to do the subtraction.That just annoyed Isaiah to no end. He told me “Mom just write the problem and tell me what to do!” So thats what I did! Hahaha!

This week we have been working on memorizing  Mosiah 4:15. Now if your not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints then you probably wont know this one since it is in the Book of Mormon.Incase your wondering what the Book of Mormon is or a bit about the LDS church feel free to check out the site LDS.org So I’ll share it with you here: Mosiah 4:15 “But ye will Teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another.” This has been a concept we are trying to focus on here at home.Showing love and serving each other. The hymn we are working on learning focus’ on that concept as well. It is called “Love At Home” which you can listen to HERE.

Our unit study this month is about technology. Isaiah is a science buff and loves anything electronic and robotic =0} The highlight of the unit study this week was taking apart and identifying the pieces of a computer that our wonderful grandma and grandpa donated to the HS cause =0}  We have learned about motherboards, resistors, PCU’s and lots of other neat stuff. We had a field trip with our cousins this week. They also homeschool so it makes for lots of fun!My sister and brother in law took my two boys Isaiah(8) and Justin(5) and their three oldest Makayla(8),Joseph(5), and Emma(4)to the police department. I got to stay home and play with my younger two Hannah(2) and Alyssa(3 months) as well as with my two nephews Daniel(2) and Oliver(1)!

Today is Friday and NOTHING has been done!We all have colds and so planned on today just being a laze around the house kinda day! The big excitement was seeing our FedEx man! He delivered a big old box with some educational games and also some puzzles that I had ordered last week.So we’ve had fun with those all afternoon! I hope everyone else had a fun/crazy/educational week too!