Meet Tuba....

I realized that when I did my update on Monday I forgot to introduce our newest pet!

Meet Tuba.... the tadpole

He is an African Dwarf frog.  It was recommended in our Apologia Zooology 2: Sea Creatures of the 5th Day curriculum!  We ordered him in August but due to Texas heat they couldn't ship him until it cooled down (and thankfully they were able two in the couple of weeks of nice weather before it got too cold here...gotta love Texas!)

Alyssa came up with his name - Tuba!!  :-)

Oh and the fun is beginning - getting ready for our Thanksgiving camping!!  I made the homemade cranberry sauce today!  I went ahead and water bathed it so that it would keep and that is one less thing to have to fit in the fridge!  YUM!!!  It has been WAY too long since I have canned!  I really need to do it more often!  There is such the feeling of accomplishment looking at the beautiful jars of yummy goodness!!!  Why didn't I think to make more?!?!?  LOL!

I guess that last bit really didn't have much to do with homeschool...but oh well!!  It is our life! :-)

Until next time,
Kellie

A Quick Update

Hey!  Since I haven't updated in a couple of weeks I thought I would post a quick update!

Things are busy around here as usual!  We just got home from a a family Thanksgiving up in Arkansas with Daniel's family!  It was such a nice weekend!

We are gearing up for a week long camping trip with my parents the week of Thanksgiving!!  OH MY will it be fun!!!  We will be doing fun craft stuff such as Christmas ornaments made from twigs and acorns and such to glow in the dark play dough and slime, to of course smores around the campfire!  We will also be doing our BIG Thanksgiving dinner at the camp site!!  YUM!!!  It will be a full week of FAMILY fun!!!  I am so looking forward to this trip!!

In the past couple of weeks Alyssa has started reading!  WHOO HOO!!  She has started her first reader in the Pathways reading program and is reading like a champ!!!  It is kind of bitter sweet to know this is the last time I will hear my children learn to read!  This has been the biggest blessing of homeschool so far!  I am excited for other things that I will get to experience with them...but really don't know if anything can top watching your child learn to read!

I am gearing up for our Truth in the Tinsel for Christmas school.  I am also thinking of how to change school up just a bit for Christmas.  I really don't want to lose this rhythm we are in too much, but I also want to make it a fun and special time as well!  I know I will be able to come up with something (but first I have to get beyond this focus on Thanksgiving week camping trip!... Did I mention how excited I was about that?! LOL)

Anyways, here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks.


Here are Alyssa's latest letter crafts!

And her word caterpillar has not filled up HALF of the board!  She is really learning a lot of words and is doing VERY well!!!

Here are a few pictures from our weekend - we took at fun hayride on Saturday during the family Thanksgiving.

This first one is of Alyssa and her cousin Addison.  They have become such great friends!!  Every time we saw them on Saturday they were holding hands headed somewhere!  Alyssa was very sad to leave Addison Saturday night.  But we have decided that they are going to be pen pals! :-)  I think that will be great fun for both of them!

Well, I promise I will have lots of pictures of our Thanksgiving trip!!  :-)  And of course we still have two full weeks of school and another co-op class to get through before the trip so things will be busy between now and then.

Until next time,
Kellie

Friday Creative FUN School - ART DAY!!

So, what do you do when a tummy bug has claimed the second victim of your household and you have to cancel your Friday plans??  Well, today at our house we had another creative FUN school!!  Today was an art emphasis day - we made Fall decorations for our home!!!!  :-)

Even though I might sound very energetic and excited in the writing of this post, I will be honest and say that I am tired!  Yes we had fun and yes I am excited about the results...but this was a lot of work LOL!  I didn't plan ANY of it ahead of time.  This was all decided last minute when we realized we would be grounded to the house for the day.    So, I was having to plan as I went and was trying to figure out what we could do with the materials we had on had.  There was some impatience happening when I wasn't "preparing" something for them fast enough and there was a bit of whining as well.  I have to also admit that things got a lot better when I finally just let them have at the supplies and let them create something themselves.   I also realized that Seth was old enough to show him a picture of something and he was able to figure out how to make it!

So all in all it was a fun day and we got a lot accomplished and I think, my kids especially, will look back on this day and remember it with fond memories!

And Granny brought supper this evening and played games with us so that was a nice end to our big day!!

And since it is creative school - we of course used the creative mode on the camera again :-)!!

Here are some fun pictures from the day!

These first shots are of the kids working on their various projects.  (and yes they were in their pjs all day...I mean it was a sick day right?!? LOL!)

 WOW! What a mess on the table!

Oh - and we got in a little nature study too!  The kids found a praying mantis as they were working on their stuff!!!  (and were so very excited because they have been watching a Wild Kratts episode about mantises recently and were excited that they could rattle off a lot of different facts about these creatures!)

So here are our finished products!!

1st up - our wreath.  We actually made the wreath last year.  We just added the sign and a couple of details to the wreath.

Here is our table all ready for fall!!  We have my glass pumpkin full of acorn beads - which I have had for several years and LOVE!!!  With it we put the modge podge leaf jar that Seth made today!  (and looks REALLY pretty with a candle burning inside of it!)

Here is a view of our buffet table!

Aaron made this button pumpkin picture!!

I made this bling sign!!  I purposely did not use "fall" colors ... I want to leave this sign out all year so that we can be reminded to always have a grateful heart and that giving thanks is an every day thing...not just a once a year thing :-)

This sign we made a couple of years ago but the kids made the paper bag trees today (there are two more in front of Aaron's pumpkin picture...they just didn't come out well in that picture)

Here is a view of our fireplace...

Seth made this scarecrow!!  I showed him a picture (from Pinterest of course) and told him to make it...he did an AWESOME job I thought (oh and the Happy balloon at the top was his own addition LOL)

Here is our turkey.  The kids made the popsicle stick "feathers".  I thought he looked quite unique!

Here is our Give Thanks board.  This picture does NOT do this justice - it looks much better than it does in the picture.  We spray painted two pieces of board yellow with a splatter of red on top.  We then modge podged the letters (they are metallic paper letters) and leaves... it really turned out nice.

Here is our owl and birdhouse.  Poppy (my dad) made this bird house for one of our trees outside but the limb it was on came down in one of our recent storms.  Well we decided to spray paint it today and modge podge leaves on the roof and put a pumpkin on the front.  I then made the owl to sit on the perch.  Beside it you can see a yarn pumpkin tha twe made a couple of years ago.

I just LOVE how this bouquet turned out!!  Aaron made all the button turkey faces that we hot glued in the middle of these fall flowers!  So cute!

Here is Seth's button picture - it is a turkey!  :-)

Here is Alyssa's button tree picture :-)

Here is our piano with all it's goodies.

Aaron made the paper bag scarecrow all on his own.  We made the indian and pilgrim blocks a couple of years ago.

Seth made this paper bag scarecrow and the pumpkin and turkey block were made a couple of years ago.

Ok so that was our creative ART day!!

I figured since it has been a couple of weeks since I posted that I would post a few other things that we have done over the last couple of weeks!!

LOOK at Alyssa's sight word worm!!  Man is it growing!!  She is doing so well with her reading.  We are just a couple of weeks away from her starting her first reader!!!

We talked about sea turtles and added little egg carton sea turtles to our ocean box.

This last Monday was a very rainy Monday morning.  As soon as I opened the school room Anna ran in and decided she was not going back out there!  (she thankfully has found a spot up under the porch where she can get out of the rain...but still decided she had enough of that).  She laid on a blanket at the door and SLEPT the entire morning...I mean she was OUT!  She did not hardly move!  In fact Alyssa was putting all kinds of blankets and stuff on her and it did not phase her one bit.

Alyssa completed a couple more letters for her alphabet book too.

Well I think that is it!!  I am going to bed - I am tired!!!

Until next time,
Kellie

Friday Creative School!!!

Ok - so I tried something new today that I think we will continue to do as the school year progresses!  :-) We were actually home today with no plans!  We don't normally school on Fridays because we have co-op classes every other Friday so I thought it would be just easier to schedule all Fridays off.  But there are some of the non co-op Fridays that we don't have any other plans...so why not have some FUN school, right?!?!

Today we focused on Reading!  I have ideas for math days, science days and even history days in the future!  :-)

I gave the kids different challenges and got pictures (YAY!) of them doing these challenges.  When I went to take the first picture I realized my camera was on creative mode (takes several shots - using different creative filters for each shot).  I went "oh no! It is on creative mode!"  and Seth replied "well, it is creative school...maybe we need creative pictures!".   Oh how I like how that boys thinks!  So all the pictures were taken on creative mode and I chose the best one for each picture to put on here!

So I will explain each of the challenges below and then post the creative pictures taken for those challenges!

BOYS CHALLENGE #1
The first challenge I gave the boys was to find a short book to read and then when they were done to create one of the scenes with their legos!

The first picture shows them reading their books!

The next pictures show their lego creations.

ALYSSA'S CHALLENGE #1:

So Alyssa's first challenge was to spell all the sight words she has learned so far using her flashcards and letter tiles.  (oh and we set up a table outside for her to do this on).

When Seth finished his Lego challenge he came out and helped her finish her challenge.

BOYS CHALLENGE #2:
For the boys second challenge I made a book title scavenger hunt!  I came up with 6 different words to find in book titles (boy's name, animal, a place, a color, a number and a verb).  They could look on any of the bookcases in the school house or in their bedroom to find book titles that fit these categories!  And I got the excitement I was hoping this caused.  When Seth yelled out "OH WOW!  I didn't know we had this book!!"  I realized that my goal was accomplished.  I wanted the boys to look and see and remember all the different fun books that we have to choose from!  :-)

ALYSSA'S CHALLENGE #2:

For Alyssa's second challenge we set out a letter tile for every letter of the alphabet on the table set up outside.  She had to go on a scavenger hunt to find items that had beginning sounds of as many letters as she could find!

I was really impressed with her creativity.  She used a little crocheted blanket that she had as a 'quilt' for Q.  You can also see in this picture her piece of broken plastic for P and rope and rock for R.

In this picture you can see her ball for B, cup for C, doll for D and flip-flop for F.

When the boys got done with their scavenger hunt they came and helped her finish.  They finally decided to spell words for the letters they couldn't find anything for.  They spelled 'egg' for E, 'up' for U, 'x-ray' for X and 'zoom' for Z.  Oh - and Alyssa also found a yellow cup for Y.

CHALLENGE #3
Ok for the last challenge I told the boys to get a book and their timer (they each now have a timer that they use for school) and to find 4 different places outside to read at for 10 minutes.  This gave them 40 minutes of reading!  :-)
Alyssa was just told to take her books she likes to look at and find several different places outside to look at them at.

Spot #1

Spot #2

Spot #3

 (this is on the porch coming off the side door...can't really tell in this pic...but I LOVE this pic!!)

Spot #4

And I also got a couple of pictures of Seth reading with Anna!!  It just melts my heart to see a boy reading with his dog!

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Our creative school day isn't quite finished.  We are going to finish it tonight with star gazing!!!  :-)  We had a cold front come through last night so we are going to have a super clear night tonight - on a Friday night when we don't have to worry about waking up early tomorrow!!  The kids are so excited about this!

So I am going to rest for now...my allergies are still giving me fits!  It didn't help to be outside all morning but it was just too pretty to NOT be outside!!  And I wasn't going to let allergies get in the way of memories being made today!!!  :-)

Until next time,
Kellie