The Homeschool Chronicles

First Day of Homeschool....Again

2010-08-23T09:46:00.001-07:00

It's been a couple years since I have home schooled. My older two attend school. Eden is a Junior at a Charter High School and Joey is in seventh grade and getting ready to attend the school Eden is in.

My youngest two, Jade 5 and Jager 3 will be home with me learning all the basics of life and having fun doing it! I am excited to start on this journey again!

On the agenda today:

Take a walk and get some fresh air

Wash the dishes together

Read a book

Make bread and cookies

Lunch

Rest time

Painting

Music time

Clean up

Dinner

Story

Bed

Nice full day of learning and fun!

Butterflies are among us!

2008-10-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

So school went great this week! The preschoolers have really learned their seasons and are very quickly grasping the concept of letters being separate from each other and not just a song. They can count separate groups of shapes and realize that when you run our of shapes you stop counting. But the most exciting thing this week was the arrival of our butterfly larvae. The School Fairy delivered them on Thursday, so we could all watch them grow, turn into a cocoon and emerge as a butterfly. This is my favorite project of the year. It fascinates the kids so much (and me).

This week we heard the story of the Three Little Pigs. It's funny because I grew up hearing a different version than the one we use for school. In this version the wolf eats the pigs who make their homes of straw and sticks. In the version I heard (probably cleaned up by a parent or grandparent) each of the pigs who made weak homes ran to the next strongest home until they all ended up in the house of bricks. I sort of like the version we read because it seems to me that if the wolf can actually get to the pigs it would be able to eat them and not have them run away. Then again it is only a tale.

Joey and I are slowly working our way through Beowulf. The story is amazing and the lanuguage is so fun to read. I'm so suprised by my son's ability to understand what it's saying. He's so smart! This week he asked me if I could teach him about fractions and amazingly that's what our math block focuses on. So soon we'll be learning about that. There are so many fun projects to do that bring fractions home.

Eden is still struggling a bit with all the extra homework she has and the lack of a social life it lends. I feel bad that she has so much work to do, but I know she can handle it. She's smart enough. We went to the West High game on Friday night and had a blast! Our team won, which made it even better and against the other hometown high school to boot!

It's been a good school week! Yay!

School+Life=Busy

2008-10-01T08:40:00.001-07:00

Well it's been a little while since I've posted, but only because life has been hectic. School with Jade and Jaeger is going so well. They both really seem to love it and they have learned so much. Since my last post we have done a painting reflecting the four different seasons and since then we all know the seasons based on their description. I didn't get a snap of Jaeger's or Jade's paintings before he left that day, but they were great. Here is a shot of my winter painting. Their paintings looked very similar. Pretty good for little hands.

We have learned letters A-C and are working on the letter D this week. Although they don't have them perfectly memorized they get the concept and will be ready to go further with their letters next year before they begin kindergarten. They both know that "A" makes the long "A", short "A" and "ahhhh" sounds. "B" makes the "Buh" sound. "C" makes "ssss" and "Ka" sounds. This week "D" makes the "Duh" sound. They like that one. We also know that "B" is the beginning of such lovely words as booger, butt and bellybutton. They recognize all of the basic shapes and can even draw some of them freehand, usually by accident. We know all the colors and are learning how two colors who meet in the middle magically make a new exciting color. We practice this only once a week now because they have it down already and it can get boring to do it everyday. Their favorite story to be told is Three Billy Goats Gruff. I do the voices for the goats and the GREAT MEAN TROLL and they love it. We take a walk every morning before we begin to get some fresh air and our energy out. Sometimes they'll pick up nice things to put on the nature table. It's been a much easier endeavor than I imagined it would be when I first started. I have two very rambunctious three year olds with strong wills and I thought they would be difficult to wrangle, but they have both been great. Obviously we have our moments, but all in all it's been a fantastic experience.

Joey is doing great as well. We got off to a slow start because I was so busy all the time. So we did a lot of math worksheets, handwriting practice and free writing. Now we are studying Beowulf. We have been for the last two weeks. It's an amazing poem and I'll tell anyone who has seen the movie that the book is nowhere near what the movie portrays and the language in the book adds to it's brilliance. Amazingly Joey understands what it's saying. Every once in a while if I feel the language was hard to interpret or if it looks like I've lost his interest I'll explain the passage in more simple terms, but mostly I read it to him as it is. He's excited to hear how it all comes out. He asks wonderfully engaging questions about the story wondering if Beowulf wins, what happened to Grendel. We both grossed out at the description of one warriors death at Grendel's hands. Brutal. Each day Joey writes passages from the book. While his handwriting isn't the most beautiful it is so much better than it was last year and the year before. It's especially better than when he was in school. You couldn't even read any of his writing out of second grade. We've really enjoyed this book and are about half way through. We are going to do some drawings to go with our passages a little later as an after school activity. Joey is also working on a great paint by number painting. He really likes working on it and asks if he can paint. Our neighbor gave it to me after finding it in a closet. I was going to do it for fun and Joey saw it and asked if we could work on it together. He's done most of it.

Eden is still very much enjoying high school. It's a lot of hard work, but she's doing well. We received her progress report in the mail and she had all B's and one C. The C was in drama class of all things. Go figure. The drama queen makes a C in drama. I guess she doesn't actually know it all. She is trying hard to pull all of her grades to an A, but I'm happy with a B average. That's fantastic for just getting back into public school and taking advanced classes. I'm very proud of her. She has joined three clubs: Christian Club, Drama Club and The Pink Ladies Club. No, not Pink Ladies like in Grease. This club will be fundraising for breast cancer research and awareness. She chose to join all on her own because her Grandma had breast cancer. It made my mom very proud. She likes all but one of her teachers. That's pretty good considering she has 6 classes a day. Right now we are just trucking along. I can't wait to see her report card and find out if she's done well. So far I'd say she's worked really hard.

On a more personal family note we decided the other night to just take a drive and on the way home Jerod decided ice cream cones were in order. So here are pictures of the kids eating their ice cream. This was Jager's first ice cream cone. Think he liked it?

Also, Joey has been playing soccer. He doesn't like it a lot, but he plays anyway. Here are some shots from his soccer games.

Progress Report

2008-09-15T06:59:00.000-07:00

Eden's progress report showed up in the mail on Saturday. As I opened it I realized what it was and I was instantly nervous. Here it was...the proof that homeschooling her was a good idea or not. Actually that's not totally true. Even if her grades weren't great I still feel that Eden found her confidence while being home schooled. She would never have been able to discover that if she had been harassed at school for the last three years. But, I still wondered, "Did I teach her enough to tackle these Pre AP courses?" Right now she has all B's and one C. The C is in Drama. Duh! Why??? That should be the one she has the best grade in. We talked about it last night and I encouraged her to realize that drama isn't just an easy course. It too needs serious consideration. Just because you like it doesn't mean you're good at it. It takes paying attention, taking notes, studying lines and being prepared the same as any other class. It too shows up on your transcripts for college. She agreed. I also made a vow to myself that I'm simply going to run through each course in the afternoon to prompt her memory of what she did that day and what needs to be done that night. I'm trying not to help too much, but help enough. I want her to learn to be responsible for her own things. It's really important to learn before college.

All of this being said here I have to be proud that she's getting all B's in the hard courses. It proves to me that not only did homeschooling bring her more confidence in herself, she did grasp what I taught her and I was successful in my endeavor to get her ready for high school. I almost didn't graduate high school myself. Not because I wasn't smart enough I was lazy and had no motivation. I wanted to do other things. But having never gone to college I felt judged sometimes by others about homeschooling. I would lose my confidence, especially when I got to a problem I couldn't solve alone. But I look back now and realize that I didn't let my lack of knowledge stop me. I found the right resources and used them to help me along. We muddled through it together figuring things out side by side. I think it helped Eden to realize that I don't know everything and that I have to work to get the answers the same as she does. It also helped her to see that I wouldn't simply give up. I was going to do all I could to find the right answer and how I came to that answer. When I would finally get it right I'd be overjoyed. It was a celebration. I really loved figuring it all out with her. I miss that.

I really do miss having her home with me. It's different not seeing her all the time. Because her homework can be so time consuming and with having club meetings after school some days and youth on Thursday nights our time is limited. I think we appreciate each other a little more. I know I appreciate all the help she used to lend with the little ones. I have the good life before. I never took advantage of Eden being here, but I would leave her in charge from time to time so I could run an errand. But it's time to start loosening that grip. Let Eden become who Eden will become. Because she's so smart, talented, personable, beautiful inside and out her possibilities are endless.

School Days, Gardening, Canning and fun!

2008-09-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

We are well into our school days now and all seems to be going great! We are having such a great time learning all about the seasons, shapes, number and even our letters. We've learned the magic two colors do when they meet each other. Our school fairy loves to visit, play tricks and leave gifts on our nature table during the week. Last Friday Jade and Jaeger received little bean bags to play with.

Joey has been reviewing some math and writing skills, just getting warmed up for all the neat things we will learn this year. Yesterday we made jalapeno pepper jelly. It's so delicious. Joey put on his gloves and helped cut and clean the peppers. He measured the sugar and vinegar and did all the stirring. I handled the canning, but he watched carefully to see how it was done. We learned a lot about keeping thing sanitary and the difference between sanitization and sterilization. It was a fun lesson. The nicest part is the peppers came from the garden we planted together last spring.

Basket of items from our garden

Jalapeno pepper jelly to share

We've taken video of the little one saying their abc's. It's so cute to watch them try to say the lmno part. They also count really well. See the videos below.

Our garden

2008-08-29T16:06:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me that we planted our garden last spring and I don't think we have any pictures of it on my blog. If we do it's from when it first began. Here's some pictures of our garden from beginning to now.

Our garden before we began planting

While we were waiting for the right time to plant we decided to do some paintings in the garden on the fence to entice our plants to grow.

Here is my painting of corn

Eden's carrot

Jade's painting....abstract artist

Here's a pic of three of our paintings...the tomato in the middle is Joey's

Our starts...almost time to plant

Sugar snap peas

Our tomato plant...so tiny then.

Our first planting of corn...we're on our third now

Picture of the whole garden as it began to get full

Our tomato getting bigger

Another view of our garden

One of our four sunflowers...very short here

This sunflower ended up being our biggest. It towered several feet above that fence.

Butter lettuce...these were yummy

Jalopenos....they're great to eat like this, but when they get red they are spicy

Our cuccumbers. These get huge and are so delicious

I have never liked tomatoes before. I love them now that I can eat them out of my own garden. We have made the best salsa out of these too.

Basil....if only you could smell this stuff.

Watermelon...you should see how big this is now. I can't take a picture of the entire thing. It spans the entire garden. We have about 3 or 4 melons on it now.

One of our melons....little bitty

Look at the hair on that corn. That has to be one of the most beautiful colors.

Our corn wasn't plentiful, but what we had of it was delicious

Getting taller

A bugs eye view

Sunflower

A pretty good idea of what our garden looks like today

First Week of Preschool

2008-08-29T15:00:00.001-07:00

We started preschool for my 3 year old, Jade and my friend's son Jaeger this Tuesday. I really wasn't ready, but had made myself a promise to start on that date and wanted to stick to it. With the school room organized enough to teach in and no real plan I dove in head first and did what came naturally to me.

While I use a Waldorf style curriculum to follow I have to modify it slightly. While my daughter Jade will be homeschooled for some time to come, my friend's little one would be entering into a public school come kindergarten. I want to make sure he's ready to succeed when that happens. So I take the beauty, the stories, the playfulness of Waldorf preschool and add in some basics. We talk about shapes, letters, numbers, colors. We begin each day with a prayer. We play different rhythm instruments everyday and practice counting while we beat out a rhythm. We take a break for snack and some fresh air and head back in to do something fun and artful.

We have a school fairy that watches over us each day we have school. She likes to play mischeif with out nature table by taking things off to see if we notice or she'll leave little presents for the kids if they've done exceptionally well for the week. Today she left a note and some Jelly Bellies.

We visited the Jelly Belly factory yesterday and took a tour to see how they make this yummy candy. We had a blast. My friend Tiffany, her two little ones, my two littlest ones and I drove to Fairfield for the day and had the best time. The kids were pretty well behaved considering the amount of time they had to spend in the car. We only had trouble on the way home with a little arguing. Otherwise it was a fun and interesting day. We learned how they make them, shape them, color them, flavor them, coat them, polish them and stamp them. We even got to see what happens when they don't quite meet the high standards that Jelly Bellies must face. They become a Belly Flop! How funny!!

Today we did some painting. It was fun and the kids listened pretty well considering they are only 3 years old. I'm attaching pictures to go with our activities this week.

I'd say for the first week it went well. As we begin to adjust to the rules of our school and to each other and our new schedules it'll get better and better. They are both so eager to learn new things. I love watching them learn something new and really grasp what they are learning. When I get to see that light come on inside it just makes my day.

Jade and I spent some time this afternoon just free painting. It was a nice time relaxing together. I asked Joey if he wanted to paint and he didn't. Today is his last free day at home before he starts school, so I think he wanted to take advantage of his time to himself. I can respect that. Attached are pictures of our afternoon paintings also. Three of them are mine and one is Jade's. She's very talented. :-)

Jade and her squares

Jaeger and his squares

Kids being silly kids

Board work

Jaeger not posing like a monster or something....He's just being Jaeger

Jade's painting today

Jaeger's painting today

My painting today

Of course we need a picture of Jager

One of my paintings from our afternoon painting session

Jade's painting from our afternoon painting session

My second painting from this afternoon

So it finally happened

2008-08-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

Another non homeschooling post, but I figure it's fair to keep up with what's happening with Eden too. So today Eden finally had a dose of not liking school very much. Her homework took longer tonight than usual and she got irritated. She was tired and just not having it. The questions came up about why she needs to take Pre AP courses if that is not going to be her career goal. Of course we answered her with the best answer we could and it wasn't good enough because at that point she wanted to hear that she wouldn't need them so she could stop working so hard. The thing is she can do these classes! She really can! If she was in normal English, Geometry and Biology she would end up getting bored and in trouble for talking etc. Both her grades and her bahavior will sit on her transcripts. College is not an option....it's a requirement. She wants to go to an arts college, but that's what she wants right now. How do we know she'll feel the same by the end of Junior or Senior year? She very well may still want arts school, but Jerod and I want her to think seriously about taking some business courses in college so she will have that backgroud to go with her arts degree. Also, it's something she can fall back on if her first option doesn't pan out. I'm not thinking negatively, just practically. Our daughter has talent in art, movie writing, directing, acting etc. She's only 13 and she really has a knack for it, but it's a tough world out there and even if she makes something of her art we want her to know how to manage herself. We want her to be smart enough to spot a bad deal. Yes, these classes are more difficult. Do I like having to sit with her and explain her homework to her? Do I like that I feel stupid that I don't understand what she is learning in Geometry? No! Actually I do like doing homework with her. It's time for us to spend together since she's so busy and I feel like we have fun with it. Especially when I do figure out what she's doing with Geometry and I feel victorious! I really do. Then I have an easier time explaining it to her. I think Eden expects that it will all come easy to her. The point is that she's learning and that's what it's about. It's not going to come as easily to her now because she's finally in a class that challenges her mind unlike any other time in school. Before she would get bored. It also doesn't help that this is a far cry from our homeschooling days. We have it easy here at home. The work is the same, but we are done mid-day, so it feels like less.

So that's what we are facing right now. It'll get better in a week or two and she'll be used to the schedule. She still likes school just fine, so we haven't lost ground there. Thank God!

Eden's First Day of School

2008-08-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

So I know it isn't part of the actual homeschool journey, but it does play into our daily life. Eden started her first day of high school yesterday. It was her first day back to regular school after three wonderful years of homeschooling her. All day long I worried for her. I wanted her experience to be wonderful and all she had hoped it would be. It was.

Our day started out rocky. We had backpack issues because the brand new one she had gotten didn't fit her things and we knew she'd need more room by days end. So we had to dig out an old one and of course it was pink. It used to be one of her favorite colors, but as she's gotten older she had decided she doesn't like it anymore. So here she is her first day of school coming in with a backpack she hates. That's not really a big deal in the scheme of things and she was a great sport about it as she usually is. Then her ride was late and I wasn't sure she was coming at all, so we had to rely on Grandpa to get her there and she ended up being late anyway. Thankfully they were understanding about it since it was the first day of school, so no tardy on her record. As Grandpa pulled away from the curb my friend Tiffany arrived apologizing for being late. She had hit that morning school traffic and didn't anticipate how long it would take to drop off her son and get to our house to pick up Eden. But it turned out it was God's doing since Eden accidentally left her report on the table that was due on the first day. So Tiffany loaded us all into her car to take me to school to drop off her report. God works in great ways.

All day I thought about my oldest baby on her first day of high school. I reflected on many of her firsts. I still cannot believe she's old enough to be a freshman. It just blows my mind. She's such a beautiful young lady inside and out. But I wasn't only nervous for how she'd do socially, but academically as well. I taught her for three years and now it was time to prove it was a job well done. I had decided several months ago to put her in Pre-Advanced Placement classes because I know Eden can do them. She has the brains to do them. It will help her immensely with college when she gets there. I finally had to tell myself that if she doesn't do well in those classes that it's OK. It doesn't mean I was a bad teacher. She learned so much more than just what books could teacher her while home with me. Her self esteem was mended. She was pulled out of school after 5th grade having stomach cramps from nerves and having gnawed off the skin on her fingertips. Kids had brutally teased her and yet she still made Principal's Honor Roll. At home she was able to relax and really absorb all she was learning. I feel she learned enough to take on the challenges high school offers.

When she came home and told me about her day I was so proud of her. She kept to herself some, but not to the point of being a loner. She listened to what her teachers had to say in each class and didn't get distracted. She had made a friend at a BBQ before school started who was in her Spanish class. They were to meet for lunch, but Eden couldn't find her in the sea of people in the cafeteria. Eden say a boy eating his lunch alone, so she walked up and asked to sit with him. They talked all through lunch. When I was a kid I don't think I would have had the guts to do that. When I told Eden that I was so proud of her for it her response was "I know what it's like to sit and eat lunch alone. It isn't fun." Wow! She told me all about her classes and teachers and she's so excited. She wants so badly to do well. Getting good grades is so important to her and I'm so happy about that.

I really think she's going to be just fine this year. Of course I'll always worry about my kids, but she did great yesterday. I'm so happy and proud.

Getting Ready

2008-08-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

Well we've been working hard on getting our school room ready for our first day of school. Instead of a school table we are going to use individual desks. I found an old desk at a shop here in town that has the top that opens and closes with the chair that's attached. It's painted like a white cow with black spots. It's so neat! That will be Joey's desk this year. We found a cute wooden table and chair at a garage sale that's just perfect for Jade. Eden's aunt Lisa and aunt Heather found another desk that they purchased for us. I'm just waiting on Jerod to make arrangements to pick it up. We did quite a bit of rearranging in our school room. It's going to be a fun room to teach and learn in this year.

I have two preschoolers and my 5th grader. This year I will be using the 4th year Waldorf curriculum for my son. We get to study all about the Norse myths this year and I'm so looking forward to all the wonderful stories. With my preschoolers I'm using Waldorf too except that I'm using a mixture of preschool methods along with some 1st year lessons. I'm only doing so because I have a boy I'm teaching who will enter a main stream school for kindergarten and I want him to be prepared. So we aren't putting a lot of pressure on learning the letters and numbers, but we are going to tell stories about them and get to know them some. We will also do a lot of playing, cooking, cleaning, coloring, painting and fun things. It's going to be a fun year.

My oldest got registered for high school on Wednesday. She received her student ID and she's very proud of it. She has her PE uniform, so she set. We received her schedule too and it's in perfect order. She has all of her core classes interwoven into her electives. It's great! She ends her day with drama class. What a great way to end the day!

So now all I have to do is finish up the school room and plan our days out and we are ready to roll. I'm so looking forward to getting back into the rhythm of school.

Where have I been?

2008-07-27T14:23:00.000-07:00

I almost forgot I even had a blog here. I started out great last school year writing about our journey and then then journey got busy and the blog had to go to the wayside. But I'm back a little here and there. School went great last year and this has been a busy fun filled summer. My oldest, Eden will start high school next year and instead of homeschooling she wishes to attend school. So she'll be off on her own adventures next year while my son, Joey homeschools for 5th grade and I start preschool with Jade, our three year old, and her friend Jaeger. Preschool in the am and Joey in the pm. It's going to be a busy year but I expect it's going to be great fun with lots to talk about. Hopefully I'll be able to keep our blog up this next year.

Wow what a long break

2008-01-14T09:08:00.000-08:00

Here it is 2008! It's been months since I sat down to blog about our fun with school. We've just been so busy around here for so long! Well I'm back for a while since we don't have a lot on the schedule and I'm working less. I should be able to get more posts up each week.

Since October we have done so many fun things in school. We've painted, knitted, done weaving and I've even started planning our backyard garden. I got my hands on some raw wool and we cleaned, carded and needle felted with it. When I opened the box it came it I thought the farm had come to us. We had a lot of fun watching it transform. Joey, ironically, made a sheep out of his and it looked great!

We've done several science projects, but one of our favorites was when we made meringue out of egg white by hand and butter from cream by hand. It was a lot of hard work, but the kids got to see and taste their science projects. Now we make most of our butter from scratch. It's so easy and actually less expensive. Go figure!

Christmas came and we took two whole weeks off and it was wonderful to have some time away from school and prepare ourselves for the new year. I felt renewed and ready. We are now in our second week of grammar, literature, spelling and writing. It's fun to have Eden write stories by the book because she loves to write anyway and it helps put structure to what she loves to do. It makes her writing that much better. Joey is learned about nouns and verbs last week. This week we are moving on to adjectives and adverbs. We are also learning all the silly words that aren't spelled the way they sound. Joey is great at it! We've even written a poem together. I'll post a picture of it once Joey gets it down in his lesson book and illustrates it.

Well, that's all for now. I'm glad to be back and posting again.

School keeps us busy!

2007-10-10T06:46:00.000-07:00

Wow I can't believe it's been over a week since I've posted something new. The time just flies by!

Last week I was sick with a cold and Jager got another mysterious fever and didn't feel good for a couple days. Needless to say we didn't get as much done for school as I would have liked, but we did manage to get some learning in every day.

Eden's Algebra is going great! We are flying through her lessons. She's such a wiz. We get to do review problems from past lessons everyday. It's getting fun now because we are farther in the book and I will throw a problem in from a lesson we did in the first week of this block and Eden will say "Hey! We haven't done these in a while!" But she knows just how to do them. She's only gotten stuck in one area and it's mostly just because she needs to memorize measurement conversions to make it easier.

Joey has learned all about the sundial, calendar, we made a water clock last week which was fun because when we originally started we filled up an empty milk container whose top was cut off with water. Then we poked a hole in the bottom front to let the water drip out, but it didn't drip; it streamed! We would never be able to do the lesson like this because in the half an hour we'd need to wait to make the next time mark the water would have been gone! So we taped it up and made a smaller hole. Between that hole and the water we were losing thorugh the tape not sticking well it ended up being just right! It was so fun. Joey learned how to multiply with two digits, three, digits, four digits...He learned about time zones and that his Grandpa Bill lives in West Virginia which is a few thousand miles away from us here in California and that when it is 7pm here and we are just getting done with dinner they are already in bed.

Yesterday we decided to take school on the road and have it at the park. Every Tuesday is "Park Day" for our local homeschooling group, so we figured we'll just hang out there all day. It was a nice change of scenery for us, although the other kids at the park were a bit of a distraction. I wrote a huge multiplication number on the sidewalk in chalk and had Joey solve it. He did well, but needs some work lining up his numbers as he solves. We usually use graph paper for that. All in all our day turned out great and we did manage to have a full school day and a lot of fun! I'll post some pictures later when my camera battery is charged :-)

Math is fun and so are caterpillars!!

2007-10-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

Last week we finished off our first math block and I'd say it went very well. It was tough, though, because I was teaching two different subjects to two different kids. The days went a little longer than the block before, but all in all I think the schedule worked out fine.

Eden and I worked mainly on review for Algebra going over fractions, area, obtuse and acute angles etc. I teach her the lesson and then she reviews it the next day by doing several of the problems on scratch paper and then transferring them neatly and decoratively into her main lesson book. She also writes any vocabulary words that come up in our lessons into her lesson book. We cover three algebra lessons a day in her book by teaching it in blocks this way and it really sticks. It never stops amazing me how much better their retention is by teaching this way. This week we have moved onto the total surface area of a right solid and I'm sure many other fun things to figure out. I'm loving the algebra. I was never good at it in school, but I really seem to understand it now and what I don't understand I've had a great time trying to figure it out. It probably helps that I'm not under a deadline to turn in my homework or cram for a test. :-)

Working on the board is so much more fun than doing problems in a notebook any day!

Joey and I finished up his sundial last week during our study of time for our math block. We had school at night last Thursday and talked about how the Egyptians told time back when Moses was alive. We set up our sundial as best we could since we couldn't see the north star. We got up the next day to watch the sun rise. I made homemade hot chocolate with fresh whipped cream. It was chilly, but we had a lot of fun just hanging out in our pj's talking about what our day would be like and our upcoming weekend. Once the sun rose and we were able to get a shadow from the sundial we began marking off the time with a glass stone and I would write the time in chalk so we could look at it again another day and see if the time stayed the same. It didn't.

Here is our sundial. Joey decided to decorate the dough I made to put the stick in with some of the glass stones. Very pretty!

Eden and Joey sit on the little bench sharing a blanket while drinking their hot chocolate as we wait for the sun to rise.

The babies weather the cold wind blowing in the morning. where's our hats Mom!!!

Who needs a hat? Not me!!! I've got my nice soft blanket and my sissy by my side.

Can you say "sleepy"?

The first signs of light!

Up comes the sun!

Even brighter still!

When I got home from work last night I found that we had adopted a furry little critter. He doesn't have a name yet from what I understand so we'll just refer to him as the caterpillar. The kids found him outside while they were playing. At first he was in a plastic storage container with just some grass and one rose petal. I guess we woke him from his slumber when I got home and wanted to see him because while I was looking for ideas on what to feed him Jerod held him and then put him back into his box where he quickly began to munch through the rose petal. Hmmmm, I thought....."Go get some more rose branches and make sure they have flowers on them" I told Jerod "because he has to stay fed and alive until May before we'll see a cocoon out of him."

Here is some information I found about our new friend:

Ecpantheria scriboni (His formal name) caterpillars, which are densely coated with coarse black setae (hairs) of equal lengths, curl up in a ball when disturbed, revealing bright red inter segmental rings. The small circles surrounding the spiracles are also red.

Woolly bear or fuzzy bear caterpillars are often found in the fall after they have left their food plants in search of a dark and sheltered spot where they can hibernate as larvae for the winter. When spring brings its warm sunshine, the caterpillars again become active, feeding for a brief time and then fashioning cocoons out of silk and body hairs.
Tiger moths usually emerge from cocoons two to three weeks later.
The caterpillars feed on a variety of food plants including forest trees, shrubs and low growing plants. Hibernation is usually over in northern portions of scribonia's range in May. The caterpillars feed briefly, spin their cocoons and then emerge a few weeks later as adult moths.

Very interesting huh? Well I think that this is quite a bit to absorb for one blog and I think I've covered it all. Let's keep our fingers crossed that our furry friend makes it through the winter and we get to see him turn into a beautiful moth.

Many new things....

2007-09-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

Wow! It's been a while since I've had a chance to post some really neat things we've been doing.

Last week we finished up our first block which was Hebrew Culture. We made it up to Abraham's birth. We'll probably cover that again since it didn't get full study. We also finished up our study of The Tower of Babel by drawing really neat pictures in our lesson books of the Tower after God decided to confound the languages. They came out great! I'll try to add pictures of them soon.

Friday evening my friend, Karen, and I headed to Sacramento for the fall Waldorf conference. It was my first time going and Karen's been many times before. It was a wonderful trip! The Waldorf School where the conference was held was so beautiful. It's tucked away along the American River and the grounds are so lush with trees, bushes, grass, flowers etc you feel like you are in a hideaway place instead of in a larger metropolis. I had the opportunity to meet so many neat people and heard so many experts speak about our brains and our children's brains I thought my brain was going to explode. I discovered so many new ways to nurture my children to help them learn and grow to be well rounded people and to help their brains develop in a way that is more natural for them. I love the Waldorf curriculum and it was so reassuring to hear one of the speakers state that on average studies have concluded that Waldorf educated students graduate from high school with more knowledge than public/state educated students simply because of the way Waldorf educates. I chose Waldorf for Joey because I knew it would help him dig deeper into subjects he might otherwise reject because he has fun learning it and the lessons are brought to life through the methods of teaching. I chose to block teach Eden the way Waldorf suggests so that each subject can really get into her head because we don't bounce from one thing to another. I feel it is setting up a great foundation for when she enters public high school next year. It really made me feel like I made great decisions for how I home school my kids.

I took several pictures of the campus where the conference was held. It was held at the Sacramento Waldorf school in Fair Oaks, California. Here is the view of one of the buildings on campus from the gymnasium. Remember when viewing these photos this is a K-12 campus. It looks nothing like any school I've ever attended.

Here is a picture of a stained glass window in the gymnasium building.

As you exit the gym and to the left you will find this beautiful area.

Coming and going from the parking lot you will find an interesting Labyrinth made from stones.

Here is another photo of the labyrinth

This week we began our math blocks. Joey is studying time, linear measurement, volume etc. and Eden is beginning Algebra 1. It makes our days longer when they are studying separate lessons, but we are really enjoying math. Joey is currently working on making a calendar of the year. Eden and I do a lesson together on the board to learn it and the next day before our main lesson Eden works independently on assigned problems that she figures out on scrap paper and then copies very neatly into her main lesson book and then takes time to highlight each problem with art. It's so fun figuring out the answers to the problems together. I get to learn all over again!

Paintings

2007-09-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

We did some awesome paintings this afternoon. We painted covers for our 7 days Creation main lesson. We did the face of God. They came out simple and beautiful if I do say so myself.

This is Joey's face of God. It's a blue wash with paint pulled out with a dry brush in the shape of a face.

Here is my picture of the face of God. You can sort of make out the face. The pictures I took don't really do them justice.

Here is Eden's

I let Eden free paint and this is the painting she did. It's amazing! She's a great artist.

The Tower of Babel

2007-09-19T11:02:00.001-07:00

Today we studied about Nimrod and the Tower of Babel. Nimrod did not walk with God and he convinced those who followed him to build a tower to the heavens to reach God. These people were excellent at communication and could pretty much accomplish anything. God saw how far they were getting with the tower and decided to confound their language to make their task impossible because he didn't want them to reach heaven. None of us are worthy to reach heaven especially Nimrod and his followers. With their languages confused God dispersed them about the earth.

Along with this lesson we each had to go into a separate space and draw a picture of something we wanted to build with the various blocks we have in Jade's toy box. I told them to make them fairly simple. Then we all had to work together to build each persons building without looking at the picture and each of us speaking in a different "language". Eden could only speak in "O" (oooo, owww, owe), Joey in "A" (aaaaa, awww, ay) and I in "E" (eeeee, ewe, eh). We had to try to convey to one another how to build each structure. I went first and I had the kids do a basic pyramid of blocks. At first I was trying to tell the kids to pull a certain type of block out of the basket and it took a while to get going. Then I started laying the blocks out and asking them in my language to lay them as I did. We eventually go the structure built, but it took much longer than it would have if I could have simply said "put the blocks like this".

Joey's structure was next and when we did his I kept trying to put different blocks on top instead of the blocks he wanted us to use. We all had a hard time understanding. Again we accomplished building the structure, but it wasn't easy

Eden's was last. In this picture you see Joey trying to place a big block onto Eden's structure and clearly it didn't belong as you can see from Eden's reaction. Hand motions played a huge role in our communication.

Eden's structure was more complicated to build than Joey's or mine. Here is a picture of her structure completed along with her original "blueprint". Hers took us much longer to complete and we couldn't accomplish the steps on the side she had originally wanted. This was an interesting and fun activity and I think both kids really grasped the frustration the residents of Babel must have felt once they couldn't communicate well.

The Rainbow

2007-09-18T10:41:00.000-07:00

Today we continued our lesson on Noah and the Ark. We read about the flood waters receeding and about how the dove was sent out several times over several weeks until it did not return meaning there was now dry land on which to live. The legends book has a story that says Noah would not disembark until God promised not to cause such destruction on the earth in such a manner. God stretched a rainbow across the sky as his promise to Noah and the earth that He would never destroy the earth by flooding it completely again. The Bible also tell us that God sent the rainbow for this purpose. So today for our writing exercise we wrote out the Bible verses for God, Noah and the rainbow and then we did a picture of the rainbow while doing a study in color. We only used three colors to make the rainbows you see in the pictures; red, blue and yellow. The wax blocks we have blend so beautifully!

We then read about Noah's sons and the curse that Noah placed upon Canaan because of what his father Ham had done to Noah while Noah was in a drunken state.

This is Joey's picture of the rainbow. Again I'd like to say we only used red, blue and yellow to make these. Really neat!

This is my rainbow picture. This was so fun blending the colors and watching them come together. Not only did we make a beautiful picture for our main lesson books, but we also got to experience a true sense of art by blending two colors to make one.

This is Eden's rainbow. Eden's orange came out so vivid. I really like how well she was able to blend the yellow and red together to produce that bright orange.

Eden's Reciting The Plowment

2007-09-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

Eden reciting the poem The Plowmen. Joey recited one as well, but it seems to be too big to post. I'll keep trying, but in the mean time didn't want anyone to think he didn't do it as well.

Noah and The Ark

2007-09-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

Both Friday and today we discussed Noah and the Ark. We read a story and Bible verses telling why God decided to destroy the earth and only save Noah and his family. The Bible describes the number of each kind of animal they are to invite onto the ark. The legends story tells it that Noah was to take seven pairs of certain animals for food and sacrifice as well as one pair of every other animal. The way to decide which pair from each species to take was to watch their demeanor as they came to the ark. If they got to the ark and laid down then they were the two in that species to come aboard. If they stood they were left behind. That is how they were to be sorted. When the waters began to rain down and rise from below it took one full year before the whole flood was over. The kids and I discussed how it is often misinterpreted that it was 40 days and 40 nights, but the 40 days and 40 nights explain how long it actually rained. It took much longer than that for the waters to subside. According to the legends book they sent a raven out first to find dry land and he became occupied with eating and so they sent out the dove and the dove was to return with the olive leaf. It was an interesting story because it really brought home how very long they were on the ark with all of those animals.

Today we read the Bible verses for the construction of the Ark. When we were done reading about it we went to the ball field and measured it out using the measurement the Bible called for. God told Noah to make the ark 300 cubits long, 50 cubits breadth and 30 cubits height. A cubit is about equal to 18in. So 150 yards is about how long the ark was. It looks huge when you are standing on one end and someone else is standing on another. But then you imagine it filled with the number of animals it had in it and suddenly it seems so small. It really made the ark seem real when we could see it's size.

Friday we did pictures of the Ark. This is mine.

Here is Joey's. He did a great job following my directions and example.

This is Eden's. She's an excellent artist! We also changed our nature table to reflect fall coming soon. The evenings are getting cooler and the days warm, but not blazing hot. It's obvious fall is around the corner.

Rosh Hashanah

2007-09-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we studied the celebration of Rosh Hashanah. We tried our best to celebrate it traditionally. Rosh Hashanah literally means "head of the year" and refers to the Jewish New Year. It is considered the most solemn day of the Jewish year. Rosh Hashanah begins The Ten Days of Repentance ending with the holiday of Yom Kippur (which we will study).

We actually began a day late. It begins the night before at sun down. We began at sun down last night. I lit the Shabbot candles, which I found is traditionally done by the woman of the house. It is custom to bring certain foods to the table in celebration of the new year. I chose to make a chicken soup using leeks and Kosher noodles. Our meal was not Kosher, but the kids understood the importance of the food being just right for the celebration. We also had unleavened bread to serve as well as bread to represent the Challah bread traditionally served. Round Challah bread represents rounding out the year. We also dipped apples in honey in the hopes of having a "sweet year". It was a really fun celebration and the kids were excited about it too because we didn't have school at all in the morning. We cleaned up the house and had some free time. Our lesson was the celebration and Jerod got to be home with us for our school time. It was neat to all talk about the traditions etc. One tradition we didn't get to participate in was blowing the Shofar. A Shofar is a rams horn used in Jewish celebrations. It is blow 100 time over the course of Rosh Hashanah. We did show the kids a picture of several of them so they had an idea of what they were. We may still try to get one for our other celebrations this year.

All in all our first Jewish celebration went well. We are Christian, but it is so neat to take a peak into another culture and another religion. Studying Hebrew Culture is great too for us as Christians because we get to really dive into the Old Testament and pick up on some of the theology and legends behind it. We read stories from this Legends of The Bible Book when we are done reading the Bible and the stories are so beautiful and a really fun way to bring to life what actually happened. I have found that through the Legends book the kids really grasp the events that took place in the Bible even though the legends are simply, well, legends.

Here we are enjoying our celebration meal

Our apples and honey...yum!

Bread

Soup made with leeks and German Kosher noodles. I made the stock homemade from chicken, leeks, onions, carrots and cabbage, sea salt and pepper. I strained it and then added the chicken I pulled off the bone, sliced carrots, leeks, cabbage and noodles.

Descendents of Cain

2007-09-13T07:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday our lesson began with our review of Cain's descendents. We talked about who they were and what they brought to the world. Then we did a picture showing the line of Cain's family.

Then we moved on and read about Noah's birth. In the Legends book we read that when Noah was born he was so beautiful that his own father, Lamech fled from him back to his father, Methuselah claiming he had a strange son. Lamech said he resembles the children of the angels of heaven. Methuselah went to Enoch, his father to inquire about his grandson. Enoch explained to him that Noah was special. Enoch explained the destruction that would come into the world and that Noah and his children would be saved and the earth would be cleansed from all inpurity. The world changed when Noah arrived. When he was born all returned to its state preceding the fall of man meaning the earth began to produce as it should and the animals again began to obey man helping them till the earth. It was a fun story to read.

Today we will study Rosh Hashanah. I'll write all about it soon!

Cain and Abel

2007-09-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

It's not even noon and we are done with school! Aw the joys of homeschooling.

Today we did our review about Cain and Abel and their offerings to God. How God accepted Abel's and not Cain's and why. To bring it home I had the kids each pick something they love that they would be willing to offer to God knowing it would never be returned. At first I think they thought it would be easy, but it took them a while to decide. Joey eventually picked his favorite Oakland A's hat. Eden gave up her boom box that she loves to listen to the radio on. I gave up my ring my best friend Donna gave me. All of these things mean a great deal to us and we left them on our nature table for our school fairy to deliver to God for us as an offering of our love and thanksgiving.

Next we wrote a Bible verse about Cain and Abel and then did drawings that show the differences between them. Abel being a shepherd and Cain a harvester. Then we read stories about Enoch and Seth. Jager is still not feeling well, so we called it a day after that. We may do some handwork this afternoon.

This is my picture of Cain and Abel

Here is Eden's drawing. She has never done shade drawing before and she did a fantastic job!
This one is Joey's drawing. He did a great job drawing his people. In fact I've seen drawings he's done of people before and they are usually stick people. His garden for Cain is excellent too!

Quick Post today

2007-09-10T22:41:00.000-07:00

So very quickly a note on Soccer from Saturday. Eden's team won their game 3-2 and Eden did great! She got to play quite a bit and she took a bit of a beating. She was sore afterwards.

Joey's game went well even though they lost 5-1. Joey played defense the entire game and by the end he really seemed to get what he was doing. We talked about it in the car on the way home and it was cool to actually feel like I understood the sport and was able to give him some pointers. A real bonding moment!!!

So today Jager was sick, but we did school anyway. I thought we'd have to miss out on a lot, but really I only had to cut circle time down a bit. Today's lesson began with an apology letter written by Eve herself concerning the events that took place in the garden between her and the serpent those many years ago. She explained her side of things. It was neat to see the story brought to life for the kids on a scroll I made to look really old. Then we did a drawing that depicted Adam and Eve leaving the garden after being banished. A little sad, but it was a neat way to picture what they were leaving behind and walking into. The land outside the garden so barren and dry. The pictures turned out great.

We then moved on to discuss the first murder. I was certain this would be a hard subject for Joey. I knew Eden would get it, but as soon as I mentioned Cain and Able Joey was actually the one who said "Isn't Cain the one who killed his brother Abel?" I assumed he learned it at church, but come to find out he actually learned it himself while reading his Bible on his own, which he does often without prompting. We discussed quite a bit about why God accepted Abel's offering to God and not Cain's. Abel's offering came from his heart and from his hard work of raising his flock. Cain offered fruit which God gave freely in the garden. Cain's offering was really just Cain giving back to God what God had given him. Not really a sacrifice. Then we moved on to the murder and discussed why Cain murdered his brother. We discussed the idea that Cain may still have thought of things as they were in paradise. After all Abel was not only the first murder, but the first true death. Until then they couldn't understand fully what that meant. Cain's anger overtook him and he took his brother's life without realizing that he'd never come back. God punished Cain severely and Cain did not really speak to and know God after that. The kids and I agreed that no punishment is worse than not having that ability or want to speak to God.

That pretty much concluded our day because of Jager not feeling well we decided that would be enough. Tomorrow's lesson is going to be really neat. I'll post about it once we are done and hopefully Jag will feel better so I can get some pictures of our work. The kids have done some fantastic drawings and their handwriting gets better everyday.

I guess that wasn't a quick post after all :-)

Soccer today

2007-09-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of soccer! I'm so excited. Eden and Joey both play today. Eden at 8 and Joey at noon! More about how it goes later.

Good luck kiddos!!!!

Eden reciting the poem Naming the Animals

2007-09-07T18:31:00.000-07:00

Here is the video of Eden reciting the poem. She did such a great job! So neat watching them learn this and know it in just a matter of a couple days.

Joey reciting his poem Naming the Animals

2007-09-07T18:14:00.000-07:00

Here is the video of Joey reciting his poem. He did really well considering we read it the first two days and only started to memorize it yesterday.

A Play About Eve

2007-09-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

Today is Friday.....ahhhhhh. It's been a good busy week and it's come to an end nicely. We didn't have a lot of problems this week with behavior like we did the first week. It seems that we are falling nicely into a routine.

This week we finished the final days of creation and talked about the day God rested. It's been so interesting to talk with the kids about the first days of the world. Their ideas about what it may have been like are so beautiful.

After circle time we did a play I put together using the story from yesterday and part of the story from today about Adam and Eve. Eden played Eve. Joey played Adam and the serpent. I played narrator and God. It was a lot of fun acting out the parts. We goofed around a bit, but the story really seemed to hit home while we each did our parts.

Here Adam and Eve admire the beauty of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Eve talking to the serpent as he tricks her into eating fruit from the tree

Eve eats the fruit from the tree....

Then shares the fruit with Adam who also eats it

They cover themselves after eating the fruit

Early Morning Friday

2007-09-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

It's 6:30 and the house is still quiet. Friday mornings are the only mornings I let the kids sleep later and eat cereal for breakfast. Monday through Thursday I cook a hot meal to start their day. They help with that also. It's a chance for them to learn how to cook a few things, plus it's fun to all be in the kitchen together. But this morning it's quiet and there's only the sound of my coffee pot dripping way too slowly.

After doing the lesson planning for the 7 days of Creation I had a block. I couldn't figure out what to do with the lesson plan in front of me. I have every lesson written down, but not the details. I hadn't gotten that far yet. Then my friend Karen inspired me to make the story from our lesson from yesterday into a play. I decided to use it as our review. Great! Now I have something to teach with! Then it needed to be typed out. I had to take the two stories we used in our lesson, combine them and make them into a play format. Wow, that was a lot of work. As I sat here typing away and thinking about what parts I'd give to who I was also thinking about all of the things NOT getting done in my house. I wasn't cleaning and I'll tell you after the last two weeks of school this house needs it. It really bothers me when the house gets messy. I don't like things undone. As I sat here letting it nag me in the back of my mind, I forced myself to remember that I have four kids who all need my attention. All four of those kids are with me all day long. Nobody leaves for school making a quiet home to simply do housework in. Three of those four kids are capable of destroying a room in 2.2 seconds, especially Jade.

I really enjoy homeschooling my kids. I love this so much. My children's education is of the highest importance to me which is why we chose to home school in the first place. When I was finished putting their school day together it was late and time for bed. I shared the play with Jerod to make sure it ran through smoothly and off to bed I went without accomplishing any housework. I laid there for a long time trying to sleep and was struggling to do so. My friend Karen's husband sent me some awesome coffee and it got here in the afternoon, but I had to try it, so naturally my brain was on overtime while I lay in bed from the extra caffeine boost. As I laid there I realized I had accomplished something far greater than a clean house. By the end of the day today my floors may still need mopping, but I will have accomplished teaching my kids a valuable lesson about Hebrew culture that intertwines with their Christian beliefs along with a little math, a neat poem and they'll get the experience of acting out parts in a play. Their brains will expand and let in all this information and I will have been their teacher.

Busy day today

2007-09-06T17:04:00.000-07:00

Wow! Today was super busy. We started out with our normal circle time. We memorized more of our poem, Naming the Animals, and I plan to video both Eden and Joey reciting the poem tomorrow. We did some mental math and again I'm amazed by how well both Eden and Joey do at this.

Because we didn't paint today I took some pictures of the kids writing out their verses on their paintings from yesterday. We did our review of yesterday's lesson by writing out the Bible verse for the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Our lesson today was about the creation of Eve. We read the Bible verse for her creation and then we read a story from the Legends of the Bible book. Again I want to explain that the stories in this book are just stories. Today's story explains that God gave Adam a wife before Eve, named Lilith. She was said to have been created at the same time as Adam, but flew away never to come back to him. You can interpret this story, as with any other, in your own way. When we discussed the story after reading it we came to the conclusion that God may have created a wife for Adam the day he was created along with the other animals and that quite possibly she was a bird of some sort because of the way in which she exited from Adam's life. God saw that it would be better for Adam's wife to be created from him binding her to him. Also, if God created her while Adam was in a deep sleep he would not witness her creation and would love her more for not knowing what it was like. It's a very interesting story.

We also read the story about Eve and the serpent. After both Adam and Eve were told not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the serpent decided to tempt Eve. She fell to the temptation and ate from the forbidden tree causing the certain death of all humanity. In the Bible it is said that Adam is with her in the garden while the serpent tempts her. I do feel that Eve carries a huge burden that should not all rest upon her shoulders. Adam was punished too and yet Eve is thought of to be the total cause of the first sin. If he was there then why didn't he stand for his wife against the serpent. God only know. :-) So this was our lesson today.

After our lesson we had lunch and headed out to my friend Karen's house to do a little handwork together. Today we made our knitting needles and the knobs that sit on the ends of them.

Joey and Eden work on writing their Bible verse.

Joey working with clay to make the knobs for the ends of his knitting needles......Yes, boys can learn to knit.

More fun with clay.

Eden, our friend, Jack, Joey and me.

Eden working on her knobs for the ends of her knitting needles.

Joey is so goofy! We really had a lot of fun!

One of Eden's ends for her needles.

Another look...

Eden's knitting needles. We made them out of dowels cut short, sharpened with a pencil sharpener (not to sharp), sanded, rubbed with beeswax, polished with a towel and topped with the baked clay ends made to fit.

Mine are lady bugs

Joey's are green and brown. They all came out so cool and really show our personalities!

And God Rested

2007-09-06T07:47:00.000-07:00

"Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he placed the man he had created. And the Lord God planted all sorts of trees in the garden-beautiful trees that produced delicious fruit. At the center of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Genesis 2:8-9

Yesterday we reviewed day 6 and then we moved on to talk about day 7. The seventh day is when God rests after all of his hard work. He deems this day holy. In the Legends book we are reading it tells a story about how everything on earth praised the Lord on the seventh day, each creature having it's own song to sing. One of the creatures is the grasshopper who sings praises to God even knowing he would die. He is to be an example to us as humans that we should be happy and thankful even though we know it is our fate to one day die from this world.

Our poem to memorize this week is called Naming the Animals by Anthony Hecht. It goes with the sixth day when all of the animals are created and Adam has to name them all. You imagine all the animals walking before Adam as he points and names each one.

Having commanded Adam to bestow
Names upon all the creatures, God withdrew
to empyrean palaces of blue
That warm and windless morning long ago,
And seemed to take no notice of the vexed
Look on the young man's face as he took thought
Of all the miracles the Lord had wrought,
Now to be labeled, dubbed, yclept, indexed.

Before an addled mind and puddled brow,
The feathered nation and the finny prey
Passed by; there went biped and quadruped.
Adam looked forth with bottomless dismay
Into the tragic eyes of his first cow,
And shyly ventured, "Thou shalt be called 'Fred'."

Below are our paintings for today. God placed two trees in the garden of Eden and so we painted a picture of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is the tree in the garden that later on Adam and Eve are instructed not to eat from.

This is my painting of the tree

This is Eden's

This is Joey's

We also worked on learning music for playing the recorder today. We did some review of the lesson we had last week and then moved on to a little more music theory. We basically have learned where all the notes lie, what whole, half, quarter and eighth notes are, what the staff is, measures, treble clef, tie, end of music etc. Next week we will finally learn how to hold the recorder. This is a picture of some of the things we learned. The kids really like this and have caught on well!

After the long weekend

2007-09-04T21:42:00.000-07:00

It's the day after a long weekend and I'll tell you it was hard to get going today. But we did. Before school started Joey and I put together the ingredients for spaghetti sauce and got them in the crock pot. The sauce came out great when it was done. Eden helped make breakfast. Today we had eggs, sausage and hash browns. Eden made the scrambled egss. They were excellent!!!

We started with circle time as always. Then we reviewed day 5 and a little of 1-4. Our main lesson today was day 6 of Creation. Day 6 is the day God created all the animals (aside from birds and fish), as well as man and woman. Today's paintings represent the creation of humans. After our lesson we went to park day which is our normal Tuesday routine. The kids had a lot of fun playing outside and I really enjoyed just talking to the girls for a while. It's one of the most peaceful times of the week (sometimes). When we got home we did some needle felting.

This is my painting. Can you see the two people?

Here is Eden's. Her people are very obvious.

This is Joey's. One person on his painting is sort of blended into the background, but you can see the other one.

Day 5

2007-08-31T19:36:00.000-07:00

This morning when I woke up my two year old, Jade was already awake and ready to start her day. I started my coffee (I can't live without coffee and I'm a coffee snob). While it brewed I started opening up our school room to give it a chance to breath in the small amount of cool air our mornings produce these days. As I opened up the door that leads to our backyard Jade walked out. As I began to turn away I hear her exclaim, "Wook at dat Mom!!! Wook at dat!" I walk back outside to find her pointing in amazment at the morning sky. The picture below is what Jade was showing me. Even to her this scene was extaordinary. It looked completely different than the rest of the sky this morning and it was set directly out our door for us to see. Had we have walked out our front door we may have missed it completely. It was the kind of scene I needed today as our week wound down. To me it was a gift from God for my job well done. It wasn't there in time for the big kids to see. Just me. I was lucky to get the picture with how fast it faded as the gentle breeze blew it into abstraction.

Today I am posting more than just our paintings. I took pictures through the morning of the activities we participated in. I thought it would be neat for those who read the blog to see that we do more than just paint.

Joey took this picture of Eden and I. We have been doing our circle time outside since the weather is warm when we get up.

Brothers. Notice Mystic in the back.

Jade spreads out the nuts we use in our game.

Here have one......

If you read my blog yesterday you know about the game Eden and Joey are playing here. So funny to watch them do this. Eden could pitch for the Majors with her feet!!! She can get a nut all the way into the middle of the street using her foot with her eyes closed! Weird talent, but hey.....

4x4 is 16, 4x5 is 20....While they recite their times tables they have to pass the nuts from hand to hand and from one to the other. It keeps the rhythm.

We play a game similar to the electronic Simon game, but with maracas. Everybody needs maracas!!!! Its a game to help stimulate the memory because a whole sequence is done by one person and the other has to copy it. It's fun and Eden stumped me several times. Thank you Lisa for the maracas!!!!

See the concentration! The kids are better at this than me.

It took Joey a couple tries yesterday to get the feel of the game, but today he loves it!!

Ring around the rosey.....Just a way to get Jade involved

Writing our Bible verse on our painting from yesterday. It's our way of reviewing the lesson from the day before and a way to practice our cursive writing.

More writing....No classroom is complete without a cat sleeping on the table. Make yourself comfy, Mystic!

Our lesson today was the fifth day of Creation when God populates the earth with every type of fish and every type of bird. Our paintings are of the birds in the sky.

Here is Joey's painting

My painting

Eden's painting

Creation Day 4

2007-08-30T12:49:00.001-07:00

Today went much better than yesterday. After Jerod spoke to Joey about the importance of good behavior during school things went much more smoothly.

We began our day with our circle time which I think sounds so young for Eden, but we include activities for everyone to do and she really enjoys the time. We pray and learn a poem. We do some fun games. Then we throw in some times tables and some challenging mental math problems. Well, I thought they were challenging. Despite Eden's resistance to math, she's a wiz at it and she buzzes through the questions I recite to her. She doesn't work any of them out on paper. It's amazing how much she retains with math. Joey does the same thing. Obviously his questions are geared for a 4th grader, but he just answers in a snap. They don't need to be too challenging I guess. They're really just used to keep their mind sharp.

Our main lesson today was on Creation Day 4. This is the day God gave the earth the sun and the moon. One to rule the day and one to rule the night and to separate the light from the darkness. We read a story after we read the Bible verse which comes from a Legends of the Bible book. The story that goes with this part of Creation is really quite cute. It basically states that when God originally created the sun and the moon they were given equal power. The moon speaks to God stating that with so many things God created there was one more powerful than the other. For example, water is more powerful than fire because water can quench fires. The moon gives a couple other examples of this in his speech. The moon then states to God that He created the sun and the moon and it would only be fitting that one was greater than the other. This makes God angry because God can see that the moon wishes to be the more powerful one and he punishes the moon making it's power 1/6 of the sun's. Then the moon is sorrowful and begs God for mercy, so to speak, and God provides that mercy by stating that in the future world the moon's power will be restored full strength. Instead of simply being thankful the moon decides to inquire what the sun's power will be in the future world. This angers God again because the moon obviously is still worried about power, so God commands that the sun's strength in the future world will be increased 7 fold. The story goes on to explain in more detail how the sun travels and the angels that accompany it through its journey etc. It also states that at the beginning of each journey the sun and the moon beseech God to relieve them of their duties because they no longer can bear witnessing the sins of man. The story goes on to talk about why the sun continually becomes weaker as time goes by etc. It's a really beautiful tragic sort of story and we all liked it very much. So today we did a painting showing the pale moon and the stars in the night sky. They turned out really neat and we really had a lot of fun today.

Eden's painting.

Joey's painting

My painting

Jade's painting. She used two colors today.

Day 3

2007-08-29T14:23:00.000-07:00

Today was a little rough, to be honest. I had an issue with my son, Joey today. He was very fidgety and argumentative. It was tough getting through our lesson. Plus, it's extremely hot today and our school room is not air conditioned. We eventually made it through and our paintings came out beautifully. I must say my kiddos are so talented. We've had a lot of fun learning about creation and making it so real by painting what it may have looked like.

We started the day, as usual, with a prayer and circle time which consists of activities age appropriate for Jade all the way up to Eden. Today we tossed assorted nuts, in their shells, out onto the sidewalk (we've done something with these nuts each day). Then I had Eden and Joey stand on either side of a line in the sidewalk. All the nuts were on one side of the line. The object of the game was the person on the side with all the nuts had to pick them up with their feet and pass them to the side the other person was standing on. The person on the other side had to then pick them up or kick them back over to the other side. Easy enough.....until I made them do it with their eyes closed. I also had them pick them up with their eyes closed by hand and pass them to the other. They couldn't see where they were handing them or where they were coming from. It was fun watching them figure out ways to get them where they needed to be.

Our lesson today was on the third day of Creation. This is when God made vegetation upon the earth. We also read an interesting legend story about the third day that not only talked about the vegetation here on earth, but the vegetation found in Paradise. It sounds so beautiful. After our lesson we painted pictures of what the earth may have looked like those first days with vegetation.

This is Eden's. I like how you can really make out the trunks of the trees and how the sun shines through.

This is Joey's painting. I like how his trees look like they are closer to us than the vegetation around them.

This is mine.

Jade experimented with blue today. Tomorrow I may let her mix her paints together to make different colors.

Creation Day Two

2007-08-29T06:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we studied the second day of creation where God separated the two waters to form sky and water. As we will do each day with started with a circle time which consists of a prayer to begin our day, a poem (This week its Spring Prayer by Ralph Waldo Emerson), a few games to bring our minds center and some mental math problems. This week the weather has been really nice in the morning, so we've done this outside.

Then we enter the school room and begin the lesson. As I said yesterday was Creation Day 2. Below are our paintings that followed the lesson depicting what it may have looked like when God separated the two waters.

This one is Eden's.

This is mine

This is Joey's

We let Jade explore with red.

First Day of School at last

2007-08-27T10:51:00.001-07:00

Today was our first day of school in our new school room. I've decided to blog with pictures to show how it went.

This first picture is of my husband, Jerod cutting the ribbon into our new school room. I felt it was fitting that it be him since he put the most time and energy into building it. We had a little bit of a ceremony to make it more exciting for the kids.

Here are Eden and Joey sitting at the school table with their new pencils they received as a first day of school gift.

Here's our Jade coloring on the chalk board. We placed it low so she could have fun using it.

Here's Jager just sitting here with all the excitement swirling around him. Here we are ready for our first day!
Our first lesson today was about the first day of Creation. We are studying Hebrew Culture for our first 4 week block. The first day of Creation consists of God making light, so we did paintings depicting what that may have looked like.

This one is Jade's. She is only given one color to paint with at a time. Since our study was on light I though yellow was appropriate. Our budding artist!

This painting is Joey's. I like how his light intertwines with what was once the darkness!

This painting is Eden's I like how the light seems to flow onto the page from somewhere else.

This is mine.

After reading the Bible verse and making our paintings, we took a walk and picked up things that remind us of the season. We came home and read books. Afterwards we worked needle felting. Now we are getting ready to make lunch together. So far it's been a really great day!

Almost time...

2007-08-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

It's the Saturday before our school year begins and there are still many preparations to be made. Our Schoolroom is getting a coat of paint before the furniture we've been collecting all summer can be moved in. School books, crayons, paints, paper, play silks, yarn knitting needles, jump ropes and nature table supplies clutter our kitchen table in waiting for their places in our new room. The excitment I have felt all summer for this new school year to begin is at it's highest. I just know Sunday night I'm going to find it hard to sleep just like when I was a kid waiting for Christmas morning.

Some moments I feel ready to begin and others I feel inept. It's our first year privately homeschooling. Which means without a charter. I stepped out on my own to teach a Waldorf education to my son, Joey and because of problems with the Charter school we attended (http://tracypress.com/content/view/10765/2244/) to teach state standard education to my daughter, Eden. It's taken a lot of work, money and prayers to get ready for this year. It's exciting, but I'll admit it's scary too.

So the adventure begins!