Family Vacation 2013 Holden Beach

We enjoyed our vacation last year so much that we decided to go back and do it over again this year! We went with the same 2 families back to Holden Beach. We rented a different house this year, and I think we all agreed that this house better fit our needs. Once again, the weather was perfect and we had a great time.

our home for a week

Hattie busted her lip on the 2nd day of vacation

I think the men enjoyed some down time

the boys were together 99% of the time

the boys enjoyed sleeping in

Sarah: "This is the biggest smile in the world."

Thomas caught a tiny fish

We enjoyed spending time with our friends

Sarah trying to save Thomas from this gorilla

Its rare that I get a picture of all 4 kids together

Brave kids LOL

We seen a man struggling with his fishing pole for a good while, and decided to hang around to see what he caught. It was well worth the wait to see this sting ray.

Another man caught this shark and we hung around for a minute while he set it free.

the day we got to the beach we got to see some baby turtles making their way to the ocean

This was taken on the bridge going onto the island

We said goodbye at Cracker Barrel

All the kids together 

Thanks for stopping by to hear about our vacation!

September 16-20 Weekly Review

I told the kids at the beginning of this week that we were having a catch up week. The reaction on their faces was priceless. They thought I was saying "ketchup". We weren't really behind on anything except for the Prairie Primer work. We did, thankfully, get it all finished by Thursday. However, now we are behind on our Apologia Astronomy projects.

Before I even begin on posting about 

our week....it's gonna be short and sweet

 because we are leaving in the morning for 

the beach and I only have about 1/2 of our 

things packed!! I wanted to get this written 

before finishing up the packing.

The only time they sit at the table together is to eat, and do their daily notebooking journals.

Thomas:
We are working on Level 1 in All About Spelling, not because he cant spell the words {that part is easy}, but learning every sound of every letter has taken 4 weeks. I think now that he has the phonograms down pat, we'll fly through the rest of  level 1.

Here are a few pictures from his spelling lessons this week:

Phonograms mastered!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thomas and Sarah listening to me say the sounds of letters and they would write the letter I was sounding out.

{ks = x}

Our  neighbor came over to play and helped sort the letters of the alphabet.

Thomas had some birthday money and spent it on this bracelet making loom.

Nathaniel:
Nathaniel finished lesson 2 of Math U See Alpha. He was proud that his test was "easy", and that he got $5 of school money for doing so good on the test.

In his reading, he's still moving pretty fast. We are still doing double lessons on most days. He has started adding a reader to his lessons, and is not complaining  about the work being hard.  

I noticed the boys accidentally matched their clothes one day and wanted to take a picture. Of course, Sarah wanted in too.

Nathanael {our friend}, Nathaniel, and Thomas

 Sarah:
 Sarah didn't work on a letter this week. She played with blocks, shaving cream, colored, and played on her leap pad. 
She loves butterflies and I found her a butterfly picture to color. She usually picks markers to color with, but we won these crayon rocks and she was anxious to try them out. She enjoyed coloring with these cool "rocks". The boys really enjoyed them too.    

I picked up this dry erase board and she's had a lot of fun drawing on it

Sarah's turn to pick a name from the prayer pail

Hattie:
Hattie is really enjoying the Leap Pad letter factory movie. She tells me every day that she wants to watch the "E Room". It amazes me at how fast little ones learn and catch on. She played with blocks and shaving cream this week too.

 **********
We are excited about out vacation next week and I hope to get lots of pictures to share!! 

September 9-13 Weekly Review

I got my planner in the mail on Monday of this week and was very excited and anxious to try it out. So far I really like it. There are two things I would change and that would be:

1. have a better way to open right up to the week I need instead of having to keep the planner open at all times
2. have a place to write little reminders of things I need for each day

Other than those.....its a really cool planner!! I love the design, and that it's spiral bound. I love how its designed just for homeschoolers too.


Here's what my 1st planned week looked like. I highlighted after completion, and circled when we didn't get a task completed for that day.

*********************************

 Together:

Like the weeks before: we pray, read from the Bible, do a little devotional, and read a Bible based story every day. Then we work on the calendar, and the daily learning notebooks together. The kids have really enjoyed these so far.

Other things we work on together:

Prairie Primer week 3:

We looked a little bit every day at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Country book. The kids enjoyed seeing pictures of what it was like to live back then and to see examples of things like the cabins and flowers talked about in the book. 

We learned about wasps stings and how to treat them. Once again I learned something too.......I learned not to pull a stinger out with tweezers but to scrape it with a card or knife because pulling the stinger out will release the venom into the body~my poor kids.

 Apologia Astronomy:

This week we started lesson 2 on the sun. We've learned a few interesting things about the sun:

1. if you stare into the sun, you can go blind and not even feel it because you dont have pain sensors in your eyes.  
2. if you were standing on Pluto it would still be dangerous to look into the sun 
3. the sun is like a big ball of fire that God put in the perfect place so that the earth would get just what it needs from the sun. 

We practiced doing these 2 things {revolving, and  rotating} and we all got a little dizzy. 

And for the fun part of this week, we melted chocolate with the sun, and a magnifying glass. All the kids enjoyed this!!

*********************************

This week went by really fast! We doubled up our work on Tuesday so that on Wednesday we could have mostly a free day~we still had to do just a little work.

I put tabs on the pages that we need to do and here's what the shelf looked like after lunch on Tuesday from doing double the work.

Thomas:

Thomas had a birthday this week!  He turned 9 years old. He did get to have a break on his big day, but he still worked the rest of the week.

 

• Thomas worked on his Life of Fred Math Apples book and is almost finished. This is usually the very first thing he wants to do from his workbox. He thinks Fred is funny and silly. He also worked on his Singapore math and is still reviewing what he learned last year. 
• He's learning capitalization rules and correct punctuation marks in his language lessons. 
• He's still working on learning the phonograms in All About Spelling, but almost has them all learned. The vowels are tricky! 
• In his reading program he's still on the biography genre, and is reading about Amelia Earheart. He likes that she's a little tom boy and is very brave. He is almost finished with this book and is excited to move on to the adventure books next.
•  In his cursive writing book, he's learning/learned the letters: r, i, t, u, and p {I think that's all so far~just going by memory}. 

 Nathaniel:
 Nathaniel insisted that since it was Thomas's birthday this week that he should get to have a day off too, so he decided to double up his work as well. 
We are focusing on his math and reading and he's in lesson 2 of Math U See Alpha. He watched the video that went with the lesson and said it was easy and went right to work writing the numbers 1-20. In his reading/phonics he's working on blends and reading 3 letter words. He's enjoying this program and feels confident in what he is assigned. To see him happy, makes me overly happy! He has different activities every day with his phonics...some days its reading, some days a game and even some cutting/pasting action!


Sarah: 
Sarah worked on the letter I this week. She had a lot of fun working and building. She has a few papers each day that I get ready for her to work on, some days 1 is enough and other days its 5 or 6.
 I put Sarah's papers in this shelf on these trays and she pulls them as she wants to do them.

 Then once she's finished I hang them up on display.

She takes her work seriously!

Extras:

This is what the school room looks like after we've been working all day.

Sarah and Hattie playing in the floor.

         *********************************
 We started a homeschool co-op this week also, and the kids had a lot of fun! Thomas is taking a spanish cooking class and a science class;Nathaniel has a writing/art class and a science/math class. Sarah is in the preschool class,and Hattie is in the nursery. After lunch, they have PE and the kids had a lot of fun with that too!
 

Thomas's 9th Birthday

 September 11th is a special day to America,

 but on September 11th, 2004 at 5:36 a.m.,

 it became even more special to me. It was

 the day  I became a Mommy.  My first born

 child, a baby boy named Thomas made his

 appearance. He weighed 8 lbs 12 oz

 and was 23 inches long.

He was our pride and joy!

1st birthday

3 years old

5 years old and acting like a "Cross"

6 years

and today, he's so happy to be 9

Thomas wanted to meet his daddy for lunch so we drove {around an hour} just to eat lunch with him. Then I took the kids to sweet frog which Thomas loved. I bought him a few odd things at the Dollar Tree {a laser light, a whoopie cushion, and some silly spray}. He got most of his school work done yesterday so he could have today to play with Jeremiah, which he is doing now.

I can honestly say that Daniel and I have been blessed to call this little boy our own. He loves the Lord, and his a very giving, honest, and friendly person with a silly side to go with it. My prayer is that he has many many more birthday's just like this one.

September 2-6 Weekly Review

We've just finished our 2nd week of school and I'm already falling behind on blogging.  This week was much better than last week, and I'm expecting this next week to be even better!

I still used the sticky tabs for my planning with a few notes written on notebook paper, but I ordered the Well Planned Day Planner and am really looking forward to putting it to use. {Affiliate link below}

 

{My Affiliate Link}

*********************** 

All together:

     All the kids worked on their daily learning notebooks together after we prayed each morning.

Nathaniel working on the date {with a toilet paper roll on his arm}

Nathaniel loves coloring this little guy everyday.

 

 

 

 

Not sure why Boots looks so disgusted LOL

Prairie Primer:

The boys worked on week 2 of  Little House in the Big Woods.  They listened intently every day to the chapters and loved the activities that went along with the reading.

A few of the highlights were:

     * We watched YouTube videos of how maple syrup is made, and I will admit.....I had no clue that maple syrup came from the sap of a maple tree.

   

   *We also watched a couple of YouTube videos of people squaredancing. 

    * Hasty pudding......sounded gross, but was super easy to make and actually tasted pretty good {to Nathaniel and I, Thomas said "disgusting"}  

making hasty pudding just like Grandma

  

Here's the final product, it tasted like grits without the grit.

Nathaniel ate a bowl full of the hasty pudding!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thomas:

     Thomas is really enjoying the Life of Fred math book. I read him a chapter a day, and he answers the questions. A few things covered so far: Archimedes, 2y+4y = ?, spelling February and Tuesday, and learning where Kansas is on a map. In his Singapore math book he is still reviewing from last year.

working on word problems in Singapore math

In language/English he is working on telling/declarative sentences, asking/interrogative sentences, capitalization, and punctuation.

We are stilling working on the phonograms  in All About Spelling. The vowels are pretty hard on both of us to remember, but we are working on them each day.

putting the letters in order getting ready to play a game

Nathaniel:

     Nathaniel is working on lesson 1 in his math. He is just about ready for lesson 2.

they HAVE to be just right or he's not happy

 He is also doing really well in his reading. He's been doubling up the lessons thus far, and says its really easy.

coloring the blends

Nathaniel has also been drawing quite a bit in his free time, and is very proud of his work:

This is how I find him when he's taking a break

Sarah:

     Sarah worked on the letter E all week. She enjoyed working on the activities and almost every day asked for more work.

Sarah's first color by number

Display of Sarah's work

Sarah and Boots playing

Hattie:
     Hattie has enjoyed coloring, drawing, watching the Letter Factory DVD, and just playing with her siblings.

Nathaniel dressed her up =)

Hattie loves to draw and erase