Homeschool Mother's Journal 5/16/2012

      

In Our Lives This Week: Has A week gone by already? We've been enjoying the cooler weather. I know it won't last forever. In Central Texas there is a heat wave just around the corner. So we've been doing a lot outside. One place we frequent is Berry Springs Park. I never understand why more people don't go there. The trails are perfect for my kids to practice their bike riding and I can easily push a stroller on them also. Since it is also a nature preserve it is largely in its natural state, which gives us great nature walk adventures too.

 The trails are awesome! There are springs running through several places on the trail right now.











And some great nature sightings as well:

This picture doesn't do it justice, but it looked like someone had put green koolaide in the water.












In Homeschool This Week: We have one more week of school left! I'm ready to be done for a while. This week is mostly finishing up and reviewing what we've learned. Hopefully most of it stuck and will be hanging around in a few months when we get started again. Next year may be a challenging year as I will have Brylee doing preschool and Brooke will be old enough to want in on the action too. The good news is that Bodie will be in second grade. This year he has really been able to do some work without constant help so that should leave me more available for the other two this next year.

the clean up is worth the few minutes of entertainment!

What Worked and What Didn't: This past year I did more of the lesson planning. For me this does not work, at least right now. Bodie is going with Sonlight all the way this next year. It is a little more expensive, but it is worth it in my opinion. They have all the instructor guides and planning done for you. Not being naturally organized, planning the lessons for Bodie and trying to plan Brylee's activities too is just too much. Next year I will have Brooke and Brylee to plan out so I want Bodie's to be more simplified. In my experience with all the ideas and activities that Sonlight gives you to do with their curriculum I will still have plenty to do.


Things We Are Working On: Becoming more self sufficient is a big thing we are working on and it ties in well with our budget, which is another thing we are trying to stick to. For the first time in a long time we have a garden that is really doing something. I am starting to notice a difference in how much we are spending in groceries. We buy a pig every year after the kids around here are finish showing them for 4-H. They sell them cheap. We feed them for a month and have them butchered. This gives us pork for a while. Our chickens are providing all the eggs we need, and the garden is helping with the groceries. 

 

We are getting a few carrots. These don't stick around because the kids eat these almost right away.










The green beans are just starting to take off. We are getting a nice bowl full every day right now. My mom had a neighbor who went out of town and had green beans ready. We canned 21 quarts of green beans! That was a job, but I won't be buying green beans any time soon.







In a few more weeks we should be getting tomatoes and peppers so I am hoping to make salsa too!

I'm Cooking: Tying in with the budget thing also, me and several other girls have been cooking freezer meals every two weeks. It takes about the whole day, but then we have two weeks worth of meals and we don't have to grocery shop except for the basics.It has really cut back on how much we spend at the grocery store. We get a lot of our recipes from Pinterest. 

I'm Inspired By: Chris Graves and Mike Rainey, our pastors at NewChurch. They have been amazing at leaving their comfort zones behind. Just proves that coming out of the comfort zone creates growth. These guys just keep getting better and better every week. I'm still working on learning this!

I love these footprints, they won't be tiny long!

A monarch chrysalis!

In Homeschool This Week: Spring time here in Central Texas doesn't last very long. It goes from spring to summer quickly so we have really made time to enjoy nature this spring. It has been an amazing year so far. We have more butterflies and bugs than ever before......or maybe we are just noticing more. We spend some time observing and then Bodie writes in his journal about the things we have discovered. It's so much more fun to see these things in real life then just as a picture in a book. Here are some great things we've been able to observe. This year there have been tons of monach chrysalis everywhere in our pasture. When we found this one we made a point to try to watch it every day so we could see it when it came out. I'm mad at myself because I got a great picture of it the day it hatched, while still completely encased and I deleeted it by accident. So here is the blurry version, but you can at least see the color change. It went from bright green to clear with the colors of the wings showing through.

I wish now that we had stayed and watched the butterfly actually emerge, but I wasn't sure how long it would be. About an hour later I went back outside to look and it was already out and on the ground. It's wings were still really wet though so we were able to watch it for a while.

how cool is this?

 After a while Brylee got her hair close to the butterfly and it climbed right on . She was so excited. She thought it was going to be able to live there forever!

On to the next thing. Every spring we have dew berries that grow on our fence line. There are never too many, but the kids get excited every year. Between three kids we never make it back to the house with any left. They aren't quite as sweet as blackberries or as big but good just the same. I could make a pretty mean cobbler with them if we ever had any left over. 

Picking berries requires team work. This was Brooke's first year to eat dew berries. Every time her little mouth got empty she would squak and Brylee would fill her up again.


There is just so much to learn from observing nature and so much to talk about. It is a great way to teach them how all things work together and how everything has a function and purpose.

 Lady bugs are everywhere this year! Brylee loves it. She catches them and puts them in the garden. Need to think about getting a ladybug house.

another monarch chrysalis

Ladybug pupa

 Here are some other great things we have 
 been able to observe.











We get down in the dirt to observe somethings. We look over and under and in things......

some serious observing.

And sometimes........

we have to even get a bird's eye view!

learning to observe things just like brother and sister.

Bodie's journal entry about butterflies.

http://www.thehomeschoolchick.com/about-the-homeschool-mothers-journal/

Creepy Critters and More

Yikes!!

In Our Lives This Week: Let's just say I had more excitement than I need or want to have for a long long time. While reading to my kids I heard a scratching sound coming from under my sink. When I opened my cabinet my son yelled" It's a rat!" When I bent down on his level I saw two beady eyes looking at me. After slamming the door and jumping back my brain registered the fact that that was no rat!!! I had a baby oppossum under my sink. I can't describe the amount of horror I felt on realizing what was under the sink. A rat certainly would have been bad but this seemed a lot worse. Thankfully I have great neighbors that are always up for gross things. They came over with a cat carrier and gloves. I could not believe she was just going to grab that thing with her hands! She did!

learned about the pull of magnets

In Homeschool This Week:  Not a terribly exciting week this week as we are getting closer to finishing up. My creativity has been a little stale because we are trying to buckle down so we can get finished on time. But here are a few fun things we did:

Sensory play

a little paint fun.

Places We Went: I haven't been anywhere without my kids in a super long long time. Decided to fly up to Washington and visist my friend, Chris, who just had a baby a few weeks ago. I enjoyed it so much. I flew into Portland and drove the rest of the way. It was beautiful......and quiet! 

Mt. Hood

how beautiful is she?

The mountains reminded me of Colorado. I love Texas, but miss the mountains.













Such a sweet baby, it's hard to believe mine were that small not so long ago.

Colston

This guy was such a sweetie, never hardly made a fuss. I guess after recovering from Ecoli life looks pretty good to him.

Charlese and Sienna

I enjoyed their sweet spirits. Charlese enjoyed trying to gross me out.......she succeeded a few times. Sienna reminds me of Chris.

last but not least, one super tired but beatiful mom!

poor guy

Other Fun Things: Spring time means there are a lot of things going on around our place. We are raising Boer goats as a way to bring in some extra income and let the land benefit us somehow. It was time to give annual shots, trim hooves, and band the boys.

they knew somethng was up

takin down the big guy.

All in all a pretty good week here!

You can't tell in this picture, but these were Pelicans. (tons of them)

In Our Lives This Week: Spring is here. We have had some really great rains that have made our garden explode. If it keeps up maybe we will actually get some crops this year. We sprayed our weeds and our grass in the pasture is taking off and growing good. The weather can't be more beautiful right now. We are trying to get out in it as much as we can knowing the heat wave is right around the corner. Here are a few pictures depicting spring time.

Out tomatoes, peppers, and beans(background) are really taking off.

In School This Week: In my last blog I had bought butterfly nets for the kids, not knowing that our letter of the week was going to tie in so well.

We put butterfly stickers on all the N letters. It turned out cute!

It ended up being a very fun week for Brylee. She loves butterflies and bugs.










                                                                                    

shadow matching

Brylee has learned most of her colors and knows the Abc song now. She can indentify most of her letters. We are still working on the sounds they make and her counting. So we decided to make a counting chart with bugs and butterflies. 

 Here we are putting the numbers on her chart. She is still learning that they actually have an order to go in. I called out a number and she would have to pick it out of the pile. Then I would see if she knew what came next. After we got all the numbers glued down, then came the fun part!

 Of course her favorite part was picking out which stickers to put on her chart. Mom's favorite part was having her show me the ones that matched and counting the bugs together!


 Since we were doing Math you would think I would have counted the stickers ahead of time.  Let me tell you I was sweating as we got to the end, afraid I wasn't going to have enough stickers.

Cheshire cat!

Here are a few more things we did:

color chart

Other things we did: Bodie had his President's challenge again this year. What a difference a year makes. Although he did not make the times in all five challenges, he tried harder and had more focus this year. 

 For someone who likes to lecture his three year old sister on the proper way to do a pushup, I am amused to get this picture. Get that butt down, Bodie!

The shuttle run

 

 

 

 Here they are lining up for the stretch. Each age has to reach a certain distance with their hands and hold it to the count of three.

 Here they are lined up for the quarter mile. Bodie made this in 2 mins 19 seconds, passing this event. Last year he walked the last half, talking to a girl. 

The pushups and situps: He got no where close to the needed amount. He will not get a president's challenge award, but will get a participaters award like he did last year. He had fun and worked hard at it. 

I haven't gotten any picture's of Bodie's work lately so I'll try to focus on that for my next blog. He is doing really well. This year I have more freedom to work with Brylee because his focusing power is better. I can explain something and he is able to work on it independently some. This is going to prove invaluable in the coming years with Brylee taking on more work and Brooke coming up behind as well. I love that Bodie will sit down and read to both of his sisters. Today I was showing Brooke a tree and we were touching the bark. He started right in explaining to her that the bark protects the tree and telling her what kind of tree it is. It is sweet and those are moments I cherish. 

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