Spelling!

I am not the greatest speller (maybe not that bad but I type super fast and I get caught up in typing) so I just want to say, sorry when I spell things incorrectly...I forget to proof because I am writing these posts so darn fast...BUT I have noticed a new spell check on this blog site that I will try to remember to use....For You MOM!

More first day of school!

Of course I forgot to mention a few things...the outfit Emily is wearing is her "first day of school outfit."  Just the two of us went to Target and I let her pick out any outfit she wanted...just for kicks!  We also enjoyed some Astronaut Ice Cream after our nature hunt...it had nothing to do with our day but it was a fun and refreshing surprise after getting hot and sweaty!  I had been saving it for awhile for something special!

Our First Day of School

I called it our first day of school because I wanted to go ahead and kick it off but we haven't quite had a "full on" "get every subject in" yet...I've had to start slow with reading, writing, arithmetic, and grammar and hold off on the science/history/geography because we haven't purchased the books yet....its coming but I figured I can do a lot of the science, history, and geography on my own anyways...

Our first day looked like this:

Mommy and Emily did our Quiet time and prayer journal
We all ate breakfast and got dressed
Everyone loaded up in the van
We drove to Dorothy B.Oven park and had some special time outdoors. I love that park because it is free and beautiful!
I spread a blanket out and we prayed and thanked God for the freedom to choose homeschooling for our family. We thanked him for our freedom and special moments that we will have as a family. Then I gave the kids a treasure hunt. There were 10 things they had to find. They also got a special book that I am calling their nature journal that we will take whenever we go outdoors! They had to find the 10 things and either draw them or write about them. They each got a set of colored pencils. They loved this. It was fun exploring and Molly walked all over as the big kids found their special places to draw or write. After they finished, we got out what I am calling their Heroes of Mission book. It is a book of true stories from the lives of Christian Heroes such as Martin Luther, Dwight Moody, Harriet Tubman, John Wesley and so on...We read about Gladys Aylward, a missionary to the Chinese. She took over 100 children over the mountains near Yangcheng China by herself in 1940 to safety into the next province after she was told that she was not "qualified" to be a missionary!

We said goodbye to our park and came home. Molly slept while the big kids and I did our "peacemakers" study. After that John Daniel colored while Emily and I did language arts and math which only took us about 15 minutes. I learned 2 things...I need to gather all materials and have them out and organized for our time together and that in the beginning, we can do more than one lesson...except Math work sheets. Emily gets tired easily doing Math worksheets..I think I need to get some hands on stuff for her in math but she flew through the language arts in like 5 minutes. We probably could have done 3 lessons. I feel privileged that I am getting to know her strong points and her weaknesses...and mine for that fact. I have learned over the past month, for example, that I am a very visual learner...need to do something hands on before it clicks! So we had a successful first day...second day of school ended up being home EC with sewing classes and then today was Math and then Swim party with John Daniel's class...tomorrow will be a long school day...oh the flexibility!

Because I'm such a slave driver....

one more quote...it makes me feel better about working my poor children to death!

"Mothers who are maids raise lazy children."

Lindafaye

In light of my new schedule...

I really like this quote from another blog I recently read by a mother with 11 children....

"Spontaneity is more appreciated when it doesn't occur on an hourly basis."

Cheaperbythebakersdozen blog

Our sphinx moth

We found these amazing caterpillars on our tomato bushes about 1 month ago. They looked like part of the leaf and were huge! They kept chomping away on the bushes and we ended up finding like 6 of them. We took the biggest two and put them inside my mom's butterfly cage. John looked them up on the Internet and found out they were sphinx moth caterpillars called a green horned caterpillar. They were really amazing. John found out that they bury themselves when they are ready to go into a cocoon so that was a little harder to accomplish inside the butterfly cage. We put some soil down in the bottom and they immediately started digging down in the soil. I really wasn't sure that they would do but to our surprise this morning, there was a big brown sphinx moth hanging on the side of the netting. We were all so excited. Our work with feeding them more tomato leaves and putting soil in the bottom had paid off. Now to let Mr. Moth go....First science project complete and all the info and pictures go into our science book!

My schedule

This is my schedule that I have written out for myself and the kids..I'm still tweaking it a bit but here is my life, day by day, hour by hour, 30 minutes by 30 minutes :) Keep in mind that when I work or we have an extra activity or practice...things aren't this exact...this schedule exists in its entirety only if we don't do anything else but stay on our property! (which funny enough, doesn't happen very often.) But I have found that even following this schedule loosely...makes for a better day and for the first time in a long time...my laundry is totally caught up and staying that way!

P.S. The kids asked, "Where is Daddy's Schedule" in which I replied, "Daddy is the boss, he gets to make his own schedule." "He can join our schedule when and if he wants."