Homeschool: week 4

This has been a very busy week for us! A whole lot of new things and a very messed up schedule because of it.

History and Science have gone to the wayside this week. It's kind of unfortunate because we were supposed to start studying the Pilgrim's voyage. We are covering that in our Read-a-loud book, Almost Home so it's not too big of a deal. Plus, we will just pick it up next week, when I hope to have a better grip on our schedule again.

Math: Ryan is learning his 4 multiplication tables. Sean is reviewing factors, prime and composite numbers.

Language: Sean is writing a book report on Squanto plus continuing creative writing in his journal. He's learning a great deal on how to be descriptive and make his writing entertaining. I have already seen some great improvements. Ryan is still working on his capitalization rules and cursive.

We started Spelling words last week. Both boys are doing great with their spelling. I'm especially impressed with Sean! When we started homeschooling, 2 years ago, he was no where near able to do the grade level spelling words that Abeka offered. Abeka's words tend to be much more difficult than standard public school words anyway. This year he is RIGHT on level with his grade (6th grade). I have to work closely with him and make sure we stay disciplined in studying the words but WOW! he is blowing me away with how much he has grown!

Both boys their reading and comprehension have grown so much!! Especially for Sean, where that has always been such a weak spot for him. I'm very proud of them!

The reason why our schedule has been turned upside down this week, we have added a few "extra-curricular" activities to the batch. While we lived in Germany, it was so easy to make friends. Everyone lived near each other and just about all of us at church were in the same "boat", military living far from home so there was that camaraderie and ability to relate. Now, being back in the States, everyone is spread far and wide, busy with their own families, activities, etc. It's been harder to meet people or make friends unless you get involved in something. Church has been one good way, unfortunately we dont get to see very many of them outside of church.

This week started the PWOC on base (Protestant Women of the Chapel). We are neither Protestant nor do we go to the chapel but, hey, I'm a woman! LOL I decided to go and try and see what it was all about, maybe meet a few people. At least I was hoping to find some other Christian women to fellowship with. They have a nursery for the little ones AND a homeschooling room for homeschooled kids - that part THRILLED me! The boys just brought their school work with them and studied while I got some "adult" time. It also gives them a chance to relate with some other kids that are homeschooled as well. Impressively, they got a lot of their work done!

Then, today (Friday) was the start of the Homeschool Co-op on base. This is something I was excited about for the boys. They would get to meet some other kids, and get to participate in things like a computer class and P.E. Sean was a little intimidated at first because his class was the 6th grade and up. Most of the boys in his class looked at least high school age (he looked so tiny next to them, lol, I was nervous for him). But his first class was PE and when we left, he couldnt stop talking about how much fun he had. Ryan had a great time too, though he's at that age where it's hard to get details about what he got to do. I know he had a good time!! Elizabeth even got to participate in the PreK class. She did SOOO good, I was really impressed. She followed the rules and got to play. She had a great time! I'm not sure how long it will last that she will be able to go into that class, technically she is supposed to be in a toddler room. There was already talk about taking the toddlers into a separate class. :(

That's our week in a nutshell. Busy, full, but good week!


... this post is linked to Homeschool Highlights in MFW at Discover Their Gifts or 2 ladybugs and a lizard

Homeschool Week 3

We are already on week 3 of our school year! Now that I am getting my schedule down a little better and managing to balance things out, I want to start adding a weekly update on what we have been doing. Partly for fun, and partly for record keeping's sake I think it will be fun to look back on later on.

This year will go down as the worst start to a school year yet for us. With me being hormonally "nuts" and the boys having MUCH too long of a summer break, none of us were exactly enthused to get started.

This year Sean is in 6th grade (shock!) and Ryan in 3rd. We are studying Early American History and Animals/Plants in science with My Father's World. Everything else (math, LA, and Bible) with Abeka.

History: This week we learned about King James and the Jamestown colony. It has been very interesting. The boys have to write in their History notebook 1 or 2 sentences about what we have learned that day. Today we watched a History Channel video about the hardships the Jamestown colony faced. (Netflix stream videos are GREAT!!) If we have time tomorrow we are going to try and make a wigwam for a hands on project!

Science: We have learned out scientific classification. And now learning about Vertebrates - looking at all the different Vertebrates in God's Kingdom! We also took a field trip on Tues to the National Aquarium seeing some amazing vertebrates and invertebrates too. ;)

Math: Sean is reviewing long division and divisibility rules. Ryan is learning his 2-4 multiplication tables.

Lang Arts: Sean is working on using his senses for Creative Writing. Ryan is learning types of sentences and capitalization rules.

Bible class: We are reading about David hiding from Saul. His ups and downs and how God always provided for him and kept him safe. We are emphasizing on the difference between David and Saul. David waits on God to take care of things while Saul tries to take matters into his own hands.

Reading: Sean is reading a book about Squanto, which he will be writing a book report on next week. Ryan is reading about Vikings. He has proved his reading skills to be good enough that most of the time he is reading on his own! For a read-a-loud, I'm reading a book called Almost Home it is about the pilgrim's persecution and hard voyage across the sea and eventually setting up their colony in America. A very good book that is summing up a lot of what we are learning in History class.

OH! and let's not forget Elizabeth. This week she has been learning to go on the potty!! She is doing such a great job!! She stays dry all day thanks to her motivation to "don't pee on the Princesses" (her princess decorated pull-ups). Though we have some work to do with getting number2 in the potty. ;)

Our NEWEST surprise!

We are expecting a new member of the family!!!

Today we had our first ultrasound. I was holding on posting anything on the blog until I had some pictures to share.

The ultrasound technician was very good and gave us lots of pictures to share!

A little profile

Holding her hands up over her head.

and on her face...

There's a little face looking at the camera.

OH! and did you notice I said "HER"!?! Yes, we have another girl on the way!
We're so excited! This is the first time we've ever been able to know the baby's sex before he or she was born!

My OB doctor wanted me to get an ultrasound early because he was thinking I was measuring a month ahead of the dates I had given him. So we had to go into Baltimore (John's Hopkins hospital - it's like an AIRPORT in there). The baby is measuring right on time with our dates according to the Ultrasound tech so I am about 17weeks. We can expect baby to be here sometime in February!!

Since we were already in Baltimore, we decided to take an impromptu trip to the Baltimore Aquarium. Because it wasn't a planned trip we had no cameras or anything (sorry) but all of the kiddos loved seeing all the fish.... especially the sharks!!!

Settling in Update

After visiting Niagara Falls.....

And our family in New York.....

Finally, we are here at our final destination: "home" for the next three years! Actually it feels like we have returned "home" after a three year vacation since we were here just before we went to Germany. That mostly has to do with the fact that we are now living in the exact same house we moved out of three years ago. It just so happened that our old house was available for a new family and we had a very agreeable housing representative that made it possible to move back into this wonderful house! All thanks go to God though, because it is obvious only His hand could have made all of this possible.

Though we are back in our most favorite house, we are still waiting on our household goods to get here. Trust me though, sleeping on air mattresses and trying to cook dinner with one pot and paper plates is nothing compared to staying in a hotel room. They are predicting our stuff to get here at the end of the month. Good thing I packed our school books in the pre-shipment, much to the boys disappointment, that has already arrived. HAHA!

We think we have found our new church. We haven't joined yet, we're taking things slowly, but so far we have enjoyed each time we've spent time there. It is a small and intimate church, much like our family in Germany, with its own charm. The pastor and his wife have 7 children (6 of which are boys) and our boys hit it off immediately with their boys. It seems most of the children are home schooled in that church as well. There is a whole lot of love and support there.

For now, that's it for the updates but stay tuned, we have several surprises up our sleeves and new things to tell when the time is right. But for now I have to go wrangle these kids up for bed because we have an early, busy day in store tomorrow.

The Creation Museum

As we are traveling across the U.S. we took a break here near Cincinnati to go to the Creation Museum!

We first went into the Planetarium (sorry no pictures allowed) but it was a GREAT show! It displayed how great the universe is and how BIG out God is! All of us enjoyed it (Elizabeth too).

Then on to the fun dinosaurs!

The boys were given a scavenger hunt to do as we went through the museum. Here they are filling in their "finds" in the Old Testament display: that's Elijah, Moses and David there in the background.

Then we moved on to the Garden of Eden, you got up close and personal with the animals and dinosaurs there. The displays were beautiful! Notice the dino eating fruit, this is the "before the first sin" scene.

Here, is the "after the first sin" view. This dino was fully animatronic. I wish I caught Sean's facial expression the first time he heard it growl. It was great!! Elizabeth was concerned about the dino with a "boo-boo" - you know, the one about to get eaten.

Adam and Eve and family:

They had a great Noah's ark exhibit. In the future they have plans on making a full size Ark to go into and view instead of dioramas.

Ryan riding his favorite type of dino!

And Sean too! We tried to put Elizabeth up there but she was too afraid.

Outside they have a huge garden with petting zoo.
The boys took a Camel ride (twice).

This tortoise was amazing! Ate right out of their hands!

Elizabeth loved all of the animals

These two are a zonkey: zebra donkey mix (the lighter colored) and a zorse: zebra horse mix (the darker). They were incredibly sweet!!

We had a wonderful time and definitely would recommend anyone to visit. We will probably be back.
Oh and they had a HUGE book store at the end, all of the books and home schooling curriculum Answers in Genesis sells. We could have spent WAY too much money there. It was great to thumb through some of that material I had been debating to get for school.

Visiting Nana and Pop-Pop

We made it home!
God has been good: gave us a safe, smooth flight back to America and we have had a wonderful (storm free) time with Nana and Pop-Pop here in Oklahoma.

We have gone swimming, did a little practice bike riding, and even some fishing.

The boys are up early in the morning here at a doughnut shop on their way to go fishing.

We had to take a quick stop at the bait shop to get some minnows.

Sure, we lost a few fish....

But we caught a few too..
Sean's catch:

Ryan's catch:

We went fishing on a little pond that was a part of a friend of Nana and PopPop's property.
There was an adorable, curious little colt that wanted to come fishing too.

He was so friendly, and apparently liked the taste of our van as well...

What a great time we've all had! Tomorrow we start on the next leg of our journey: traveling through the USA, stopping here and there to see some sites.

Keep us in your prayers for our safe journey and we will update again as soon as we get a chance!

Our Last Days in Germany

We've have been very busy our last week here in Germany. Of course, there's the normal packing out, cleaning house, checking out stuff to do; we've also been saying good-bye to a lot of dear friends whom we will miss.

On Saturday, we went to a place called Sensopolis to say good-bye to a good friend to the boys. This place is a giant warehouse full of things for kids to touch, jump on, climb on, hang from... a child's dream!

They have a giant spaceship, a climbing tree house sort of thing.....

a castle with all sorts of fun things to explore. Elizabeth with fasinated with the sleeping king who had a bed in the clouds! lol

It was hard to capture those boys on camera, they were zipping and zooming all over the place. I finally was able to get them to sit for 1/2 a second to snap this picture.

For Memorial Day, we had our annual church picnic. This time we all drove about 45min south to a little castle. Castles are all over the place here. You have to watch the mountain tops and you usually will either see a castle or the ruins of a castle up there somewhere.
This castle is called Lichtenstein. (click the link to learn more about it)

Mrs Thornsley told me later, these little gargoyles under the bench here were there to "look" up lady's skirts..... : /

The boys waiting for our tour to start, that bridge there was a little riggidy... didnt give me a warm and fuzzy feeling walking across.

This armor here was just about the right size for the boys to fit into. LOL

A little chapel inside.

I missed what room this was but, like all the rooms, was decorated from floor to ceiling.

View from the window.

The Knight's Hall.

Everyone outside exploring after the tour was over.

After, we drove a little further out to have our picnic.

The adults all rested in the shade.

And the children all had a massive water gun fight.