Happy Birthday Sean!!

Sean had quite the celebration this year for his 11th birthday!!

On Saturday we told everyone to get dressed, we're going to the mall! The boys started groaning (especially Sean), they were hoping to lounge around the house all day. Dennis and I exchanged smirks because they had NO idea that we were really going to Medieval Times!!
(I know that picture isnt showing up so well, looks better if you click on it to see it full size)

Boy were they surprised!!!
We got the celebration package which included our pictures, Sean got to be knighted and we got cake with dinner!

While we were waiting for everything to start, we played with the camera a bit. Elizabeth said this was her "bad guy face"

Then, of course, the boys needed to give their "bad guy faces"
(haha notice Dennis in the background there)

Sean's "bad guy face", I dont think he has it in his heart to be "bad" ;)

I didnt get any real good pictures of his knighting (had to bring the small pocket camera)

But at least we got this neat picture and certificate to remember it by

The show and food were great!

During the show, you are at a particular colored table and you are supposed to cheer for your knight who matches your color. When the knight scores in the "games" he receives flowers from the princess and then he tosses his flowers to the girls on his team.

Elizabeth received a flower. You should have seen her face light up!!!
Look at that smile!!

She loves her flower!!

We opened presents and had cake on birthday day (today). The cake was a complete disaster (too bad I didnt get pictures). One of those disasters, that are so bad, you just cant help but laugh. BUT it tasted good, so that's what matters, right?!

Presents are never a disaster!

The theme for this year was definitely WWE wrestling!

Sean (and Ryan) were more than pleased!!!

Happy Birthday Sean!!!

Homeschool Week: 6

History: This week the boys learned about the Puritans who started the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Roger Williams who started the Rhode Island Colony - the first with true religious freedom.
The boys learned also learned how the children in those days learned to read with a hornbook. They made one for themselves.





Science: We talked about marsupials, what a neat bunch of animals they are. Did you know that when they are born, some are about the size of a grain of rice? The amazing thing is that they crawl up their mother's fur, so small and helpless, and find their way into the pouch. Really neat! For some reason, I always thought they were born right into the pouch.

Art: We got new art books this week. The art book we were using was a hold-over from last year. A good book but I wanted something that would teach them more techniques in art than just "copy this artist". We got our books from Abeka. Each child- Elizabeth too- has their own age appropriate book so they can master their artistic skill.

This week, the boys learned about primary colors and made color wheels.



Elizabeth learned about colors too. She made a crayon pouch and we cut out little paper crayons to put in it to practice her colors.

Speaking of Elizabeth. I came across this neat teacher's display at Michaels for sale the other week. It comes with a big colorful calendar, some seasonal decorations and this weather chart. She gets to change the square out each day so she can learn about the weather. Notice, it's raining..... again.


Math: Sean continued working on factors and started a review on fractions (fun!). Ryan is continuing his practice with division

Language Arts: Both Ryan and Sean are practicing using commas in their sentences.

Reading: We finally finished up Almost Home for our read-a-loud book. It's a real tear jerker towards the end. Do you realize how hard it is to read aloud and hold back tears at the same time? Maybe it's just my hormones! ;)
I added an additional, unplanned, book to our read-a-loud list this week. We started reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Since we were learning out the Puritans, I thought this was a great addition. The setting is during the famous witch trials that the Puritans held during the late 1600s. Right about the era we are studying now.



Ryan is reading Riding the Pony Express. Kind of self-explanitory but it's a book about a boy who rides the Pony Express. A little bit off our history subject but not a lot of Ryan's readers this year stay with us there. It's more about getting him exposed to different books.



Sean's books are staying more with our history subject this year. He started reading A Lion to Guard Us this week. It's about 3 children on their way to the Jamestown Colony in America to meet their father after their mother had died.




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

Homeschool Week: 5

This morning was chilly and none of us were motivated to leave the house, so we decided to skip the co-op today. Low and behold, I find out later that there IS no co-op today because they have scheduled a field trip. Good thing we didnt go! Though that will teach me to look closer at the schedule and not just assume.

Instead of co-op we decided to do ART this morning (after our spelling test)!

Today the focus was on the "shapes" of objects. They had to cut out the shapes (without drawing) of the objects they wanted in their scene. Both boys chose wild animals as their object.


Sean has a red panda, here, carrying hay back to his "home"


Ryan has a Rhino (of course) and a tiger, they're getting attacked by an Indian who is across the river there shooting arrows.


Elizabeth did some art too. She used scissors for the first time! She did a great job and was so proud of herself!!



This week in school:

HISTORY: We studied the Pilgrims and the Mayflower Compact.
Here's a sample of the notebooking pages the boys work on. We discuss together what we learned after each lesson and write up a short narrative.




On Thursday we watched an episode of Drive Thru History that visited and talked about the places the Pilgrims came from and of course Plymouth, Mass.


We're still reading Almost Home for our read a loud book. Which is about their trip across in the Mayflower. It was really neat seeing all of the people we are reading about in the book show up on our History pages. And seeing their names signed under the Mayflower Compact.


Science: We are continuing our study on the Animal Kingdom and mammals. This week we talked about the different Primates and Aquatic Mammals. The boys loved learning that not all Primates are "monkeys" and how to tell the difference.


Bible: We finished up learning about David while he was hiding from King Saul. Our Hymn for this week is Leaning on Everlasting Arms

Language: Sean finished up his creative writing unit last week and is back to grammar (he's thrilled, not really). He is reviewing Capitalization rules. Ryan has finished up his week on sentence types and capitalization. He did great on his test!

Math: Sean has been working on Greatest Common Multiples and Least Common Factors. He does much better on those than I ever did in school - I always hated that! Ryan is learning the mechanics of division and still working on memorizing his 2, 3, 4, and 5's in multiplication.


Reading:
Sean is reading Om-Kas-Toe, he should be finishing that up on Monday.


Ryan has finally finished Viking Adventures! There were a LOT of chapters in this book, but they werent too long. It just took a lot of days to finish. Ryan said that he enjoyed the book though.



We had a pretty good week!!

PS here's a quick Chloe picture for you! I couldnt resist... I think she wants to play piano. :)



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

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.