Homeschool Wrap Up Week 26

Bible: We finished Know Who You Are, Live Like it Matters.  I ordered the Elementary Apologetics curriculum from Master Books for us to start after spring break.

Read Aloud: We read 3 chapters from Brady.

Geography: This week we studied Mongolia.

History: We read Lesson 2 of America's Story Vol 2 on the Story of Abraham Lincoln Part 1.

Music Appreciation: We completed lesson 4 of Music Appreciation 1 on Bach and the musical concept of Tutti.

Math: 4 lessons completed in MLFLE.

Language Arts: Anthony and Christian completed 4 lessons in Readers in Residence on Winn Dixie.I ordered Basic Language Skills from Master Books for Emmie to start after the break.

Spelling/Reading: The boys completed Step 9 in AAR Level 5.  I did not get to AAR with Lily this week.  Emmie completed lesson 41 in AAR Level 1.

Science: We finished lesson 1 in Apologia Anatomy and Physiology.  We checked on our lab experiment from last week, finished our cell drawings, made a cell mini book, did some vocabulary notebooking exercises, and built a model of a cell.  That was fun!

Other Activities this Week

Monday we had the 4 H cooking contest.

Tuesday the girls had gymnastics.

Lily is teaching Liam some piano.

Wednesday was Kid's Club.

Thursday we had piano, parent teacher conference at the school, ballet, and Lily's birthday!

Friday we had pizza and a movie at Chelsea's house.

Saturday Nick took himself to do some yard work for a couple from our church.


I was outside reading for a little bit and heard a very loud baaaa in my ear.  The children decided to take the goats for a walk....

It was a rough week. Parenting is hard.  Homeschooling is hard.  Some days/weeks are harder then others.  I really, really felt defeated this week by a variety of things.  On the day after my hardest day I opened up the Bible study to do for the kids and the verse it was focusing on was Galatians 6: 9" Let us not loose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary."

Next week we are on spring break!

I hope you had a great week!

Happy Homeschooling!

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4 H Egg and Dairy Contest

A few weeks ago, I posted about our county 4 H Bread and Cookie Contest.  Our second county cooking contest each year is the Egg and Dairy.  We try to do some recipes and learn new skills when we cook for the contests.  I am very thankful that as my children get older they can do more of these things independently. I know this will shock you, but it is a lot of work cooking with 6 children!

Alex started not feeling well Sunday night, so he did not participate in Monday's cooking contest.

Christian wanted to make a caramel pie he had eaten at a church potluck a few weeks ago.  We just changed out the cool whip on the recipe for real whipped cream (cool whip is not a dairy product.)  He won 1st place.

In the egg contest, he made a brunch pizza and won 1st place.

Anthony made French Toast for the egg contest and won 2nd place.

Lily made a Butterfinger Ice Cream Cake for the dairy and won 1st place.

Emmie made homemade Mac N Cheese for the dairy contest and won 2nd.  She was not able to attend the competition but we brought home her ribbon.

Nick made Mac N Cheese Pizza for the dairy contest and won 3rd place.  He was not able to attend either, but we brought home his ribbon.

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Review: The View From Rainshadow Bay by Colleen Coble

Book Description -" After her husband, Jack, dies in a climbing incident, Shauna has only her five-year-old son and her helicopter charter business to live for. Every day is a struggle to make ends meet and she lives in constant fear of losing even more than she already has. When her business partner is murdered, his final words convince Shauna that she’s in danger too. But where can she turn? Zach Bannister was her husband’s best friend and is the person she blames for his death. She’s barely spoken to him since. But right now he seems her only hope for protecting her son. Zach is only too happy to assuage his guilt over Jack’s death by helping Shauna any way he can. But there are secrets involved dating back to Shauna’s childhood that more than one person would prefer to stay hidden. In The View from Rainshadow Bay, suspense, danger, and a longing to love again ignite amid the gorgeous lavender fields of Washington State."

The View From Rainshadow Bay is the first book in Collen Coble's brand new series, Lavender Tides that takes place in Washington State.  The book draws you in very quickly and keeps you page turning all the way to the end.  Colleen Coble crafts a very good suspense novel without the need for it to be overly gory or graphic.  Several people do die during the story.  The element of romance is always a nice addition to her stories, especially since it is not overly romantic.  I really enjoyed reading about Shauna and Zach, and especially liked Zach's character.  It is a fiction suspense story, with a lot of suspense elements, so there are many parts of the story that seem a bit unbelievable but that's why it's fiction.  There were a few loose ends that I didn't think were fully resolved but this is a series with 2 more books planned and that could be why.  I looked forward to reading the other books in this series.

 Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book for the purpose of writing a fair and honest review.  I received no other compensation and all opinions are my own.  I am disclosing this in accordance to the FTC regulations.

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Homeschool Crew Review: Parenting Made Practical

Parenting Made Practical has several books and resources to equip parents with practical tips in how to raise obedient and respectful children.  Joey Link has more then 16 years experience in youth and family ministries and his wife Carla has a degree in social work.  The Links have worked in association with Growing Families Int'l for over two decades and travel across the country speaking at conferences and churches.  Over the last several weeks I had an opportunity to read and review one of their parenting resources, Why Can't I Get My Kids to Behave?

 


Why Can't I Get My Kids to Behave? is an 147 page paperwork book that was written to parents of children in the age range of 2-12 years old.  This book is meant to be a practical teaching tool with tips on how to teach your children to obey.  The book has 9 chapters:

Why Can't I Get My Kids to Behave?
What Obedience Is
The Parenting Toolbox
What Obedience is Not
First Things First
Keep Plugging Away
Do Compliant Kids Exist?
Don't Use This Toolbox!
It's Not Too Late

Each of the chapters are broken down into smaller sections so although the chapters are not incredibly long there are many natural stopping places.  There are built in real life scenarios throughout the book that people can relate to.  They also show many success stories from people that have used these methods with their children.  Why Can't I get My Kids to Behave? is not simply a list of do this, don't do this but instead shows what obedience looks like and doesn't look like and what kinds of tools parents do not want in their toolbox.  It also shows what kinds of tools parents should put in their toolbox and how to use those tools.  It also is very encouraging suggesting that parents work on one thing at a time, rather then making them feel overwhelmed with the idea of trying to fix multiple issues at once. 

I am  a homeschooling mom of 7 with children ranging from 7-21 and an 8 month old grandchild.  I am not new to parenting, but I know there are always things that we can learn to make our jobs as parents easier, or there are times when we can gain some fresh knowledge to bring new insights into our home.  Every child is different.  Some may never struggle with obedience and then there are others....Many of the suggestions in the book are things that I have used with my children, although there were a few things that I didn't necessarily agree with that may be things that work for other people.  I found the section on different temperaments very interesting and I was reminded that I give reminders too often. I also needed the reminder that I need to be consistent in my parenting even when I am busy. 


Members of the Crew reviewed a variety of resources from Parenting Made Practical including: Taming the Lecture Bug and Getting Your Kids to Think (book and video), Navigating the Rapids of Parenting (video), What Every Child Should Know Along the Way (book), and Dating, Courtship, and Choosing a Mate...What Works?(video)

To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!

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Homeschool Wrap Up Week 25

We were so happy to see the sun this week and were able to spend lots of time outdoors!  We also had a lot of fun diving into our new science curriculum!

Week 25 in our Homeschool

Bible: We read 4 lessons in Know Who You Are and Live Like it Matters.  We should finish it up next week.

Read Aloud: We read 4 chapters of Brady.

Geography: Our country of study for this week was China.  As part of the study we watched a really cute video on Giant Pandas in the wild.

History: We read chapter 1 of Vol 2 of America's Story which was on some of the causes leading up to the Civil War.

Music Appreciation: We completed lesson 3 of Music Appreciation 1 on Bach

Math: Christian finished his book on multiplication and picked up where he left off in MLFLE.  He is still working on practicing his multiplication tables.  Lily, Emmie, and Anthony did 4 lessons of MLFLE.

Language Arts: Anthony and Christian completed 4 lessons in Readers in Residence on Winn Dixie. 

Spelling/Reading: The boys completed Step 8 in AAS Level 5.  Lily completed lesson 27 and 28 in AAR Level 4 and Emmie completed lesson 40 in AAR Level 1.

Science: We started lesson one of Apologia's Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Physiology.  We are following the suggested schedule in the notebooking journals.  We read several pages, started drawing a diagram of a cell and did two Try This experiments. 

Other Activities this Week: 

While waiting for Nick and Alex at a 4 H meeting Monday afternoon, the rest of us went to the park and walked the nature trail and the walking trail.  It was a little of 1.5 miles.  It seemed like forever since we had been on the Nature Trail.  It was a pretty day!

Tuesday the girls had gymnastics and Nick had youth.  Lily has mastered her standing back tuck and Emmie has mastered her round off back handspring.  I would post the videos but I know my internet would not cooperate.  Especially since I have delay right now and all I am doing is typing.

Wednesday we had Kid's Club.

Thursday Lily Emmie and I went back to the park in between the time we had to drop Nick off and head for piano.  It was another pretty day!  Ballet was cancelled.

Friday Nicholas took his road test and is now a licensed driver.  That is a good and bad thing ;)  The car needs a little TLC and hopefully in a few weeks he will be able to take himself back and forth to school.

Saturday we went to Texarkana and went to iJump, an indoor trampoline park that has trampolines, dodge ball, basketball, iNinja course, climbing walls, indoor play area, and more.  They had fun in their hour to play.

I  don't know about you  feel like I've lost an hour!!

I hope you had a great week!

Happy Homeschooling!

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Books We Read in February

 I'm trying to find some new series for the boys to read.  It's not easy looking for books these days, you never know what might be in there and I cannot read everything before they do.  It's hard to keep them in books!  The library had some Chuck Black books we may try those out this month.

Read Alouds for February

Morning Read Alouds:

Merriweather Lewis Off the Edge of the Map by Janet and Geoff Benge
Brady by Jean Fritz

Evening Read Alouds

Ember Falls by SD Smith (waiting for Book 3 to come out)

The Paper Boat by Trish White Preibe and Jerry B Jenkins- This was the third book in the series.  We had read the other two quite awhile ago and forgotten about it but when we were looking for something to read decided to finish the series.  We were not that impressed.

The Door in the Dragon's Throat by Frank Peretti- Not at all what I expected.  They liked it but I'm not sure if I will look for more.

The Girls Read Alouds

I usually do a picture book for them after reading from the boys read alouds, but Lily really wanted Emmie to hear the Circle C Beginnings Books because Emmie is not ready to read them on her own so I have been reading through those.  Lily things Susan K. Marlow is the best author in the world. In February we read

Andi's Pony Trouble
Andi's Indian Summer
Andi's Fair Surprise

Lily's Books
Circle C Stepping Stones
The first two Samantha American Girl Books
Scooby Doo

Christian's Books
Gregor the Overlander all 5 books in the series

He finished Charlotte's Web (school assignment)

Anthony
Finished Charlotte's Web
How to Twist a Dragon's Tale

Alex's Books
Lord of the Rings (I have to confess you know how much I love to read to my children but even though they wanted me to read these aloud, I cannot bring myself to do it.I read them aloud once to Chelsea years ago and it was the most painful read alouds ever and took me forever!!)

Nick's Books
He finished The Art of War (school assignment) and started Julius Caesar (he's not really excited about reading that one.)

Mom's Books
Parenting Made Practical (review)
The of Highland Hall. The Daughter of Highland Hall, Refuge at Highland Hall by Carrie Turansky
 Sisters of the Quilt Series by Cindy Woodsmall
Room for Hope Kim Vogel Sawyer (not the first time I've read that it's one of my favorites)

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Homeschool Crew Review: CursiveLogic

CursiveLogic was developed by Linda Shrewsbury after she worked with a young adult who wanted to learn how to sign his name. By studying the cursive alphabet she discovered a pattern that she had never noticed before and developed a method that allowed students to be able to learn and master cursive. For the last several weeks we have had an opportunity to use and review the CursiveLogic Quick-Start Pack and The Art of Cursive.
The CursiveLogic method teaches letter groups that have similar shapes.  Each of the shape strings uses a different color and a chant that describes the writing motion the student uses when forming the letter. Instead of teaching letters individually students start learning to connect the strings of letters right away.  They learn the lowercase alphabet first in about four weeks. Then they use the next six weeks to learn the capital letters and reinforce skills already taught. 


The CursiveLogic Quick-Start Pack includes the 112 page spiral bound workbook and a 50 minute webinar explaining the CursiveLogic method step by step.  The workbook contains all of the teaching instructions and the pages for the student to write on.  It also has 3 dry erase pages for repeat practice. The book is consumable and you will need one for each student.

After purchasing the Quick-Start Pack you will receive an email within 24 hours with the webinar link.  You have access to the webinar for up to 6 months after the purchase date.  The webinar takes you step by step through the CursiveLogic method.  It takes around 50 minutes to watch.  It is streamed and can be watched on any device that has an internet connection.  I watched it from my phone.  It really is only necessary for the teacher to watch the webinar but if you have an older student they may be interested in watching it as well.



The Art of Cursive is not a curriculum.  It is a coloring book with cursive woven throughout it.  It has 4 brief lessons on the lowercase cursive alphabet and a reference sheet with the capital letters.  There are 27 different pictures to color with corresponding sayings to trace and write.  The Art of Cursive is for adults or students who have completed the CursiveLogic Workbook.  The pages in the book are very thick allowing you to use markers or gel pens and they won't bleed through.  I used the Art of Cursive myself.  It was fun to color and practice my writing.

I have been using CursiveLogic with my 14 year old son.  He learned some cursive when he was younger, but without practice has forgotten most of it.  Several weeks ago he needed to sign his name on some paperwork and commented that he wished his writing was better.  Right after that we had an opportunity for this review.

This is the second time I have reviewed CursiveLogic.  The first was back in 2015 with my son Nicholas.  The workbook has been updated since then, but the method is still the same.  One of the biggest improvement is the way the book is set up.  Rather then flipping back and forth on the pages, all of the lowercase lessons are on one side of the page and then when you start the uppercase letters you flip the book and work on the other side of the page.  Also instead of labeling the lessons with 1.1, 1.2, 1.3,  etc..they are labeled Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.  

The CursiveLogic method makes so much sense I can't believe that children haven't been learning this way all along.  I hate to state the obvious, but it is a very logical way to teach cursive.  Grouping similarly shaped letters together and color coordinating them while teaching a chant to form the letters was a brilliant idea.  The process is simple and can be done in minutes a day with no frustration.  Older students really can work through the book independently and after just 10 weeks master the cursive alphabet and have beautiful handwriting.  Even the design of the book is wonderful.  I love spiral bound books because they can lay flat on the table.  This book has the spiral binding at the top so it will not get in the way of writing for left or right handed people.

I would recommend CursiveLogic especially if you have an older child that never learned cursive or that needs a refresher.  It simplifies learning cursive allowing them to learn quickly and the lessons do not take much time to go through.  It would also be good for younger children that are just learning.

CursiveLogic is offering a 20 % discount through the end of March!

To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!

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