Where are YOU on the food chain?

Ah... love the smell of fresh baked cookies. Especially when I am not the one having to make them, bake them and clean up the mess after them.

We went on our first field trip of the year, and it was to a local company called Bud's Best Cookies. It was so much fun! We got on a "train" and were ridden around the factory. The girls thought it was so exciting to see the cookies being cut out, "Mom, there are TONS of cookies in there!", to going through the huge oven and getting to ride on the conveyer belt. Unfortunately, because of the company also packaging for other "name" brand companies, we were not allowed to take pictures of the inside of the factory. But, here are the girls getting ready for the tour:

Aren't those hair nets cute?!

The main curriculum that I use, My Father's World, uses a book called Drawing With Children (see sidebar). We are having a lot of fun with it, and I am so proud of the girls and what they are accomplishing. Here is what they created today:

Brianna's Bird with Berry on a Limb

Kirsten's Bird on a Limb Full of Berries

In science, we have started a study of animals, and have been talking for the past few weeks about how animals live. We learned about where animals live, how they can protect themselves or hunt using camouflage and today we learned about what they eat. The girls had lots of fun making a mobile of a food chain:

I was so surprised when Kirsten told me the the owl ate the mouse and the mouse ate the nut. This was before we even started the lesson! (Yes, little things excite me ;-) ) It was also fun helping them say herbivore and carnivore. That was some tongue tied fun!

As a side note, and because I can hear it now and it reminds me, I found at the Teacher and Parent Store a CD called Beethoven's Wig. The girls have been listening to this almost nonstop now for almost a week! It is really great, and if you want to intro classical music to your dc, then I recommend getting it. There are four of them, and we only have the first, but I am hopeful to get the rest soon. They are at the library, too, so I am going to get them from there until I can buy them. Here is a link to check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Beethovens-Wig-Sing-Along-Symphonies/dp/B000060OLA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1253676428&sr=8-1

Just so you know, Beethoven's wig is VERY big!

What a Summer!

Whew! Even though I know that summer hasn't officially come to an end, I am going to declare it over at my house. Now that school has started back around us, and ballet lessons are on again, it is time to STOP all the hectic running around. I am ready for the cooler days were you stay inside and cook comfort food and have hot chocolate.

We have had a fabulous summer this year. We even got in some school work! When I decided that we would school year round, I didn't realize how hard that would be to do during the summer. The call of the outdoors is just too strong for in depth, serious studies. (That, or I am just a pushover for anything more fun. I'm blaming it on the outdoors.) We had our scheduled family vacation in Gulf Shores, AL, which was a BLAST! The girls are still bemoaning that we are here and not there. "I wish we were at the beach RIGHT NOW, Mom." Check out the pics by following the link on the side bar to our family photo album.

I had for almost a year been telling Michael (dh) about wanting to go to Little River Canyon in north east AL. For some reason, he had been resisting going, and then schedules get in the way, and weather... Last month I finally got him to go. Once there, you would have thought it was all his idea, and it was me, ME mind you, that had kept us from all the fun. It so inspired him that after our day trip, we came home, got tons of camping gear, and back to the canyon we went for an over-nighter. This was my first time camping, and the girls', and I have to say... They LOVED it! Me... not so much. Well, it was ok, I just didn't like the yellow-jackets landing on my food while I was cooking it (yes, that is WHILE it was being cooked), and then swarming us while we were trying to sit down and eat it. The girls and I took shelter in the tent to eat, and Michael stayed at the picnic table with the wasps. He was probably asking God why He thought it so funny to surround him with just girls. My husband is an Eagle Scout, and has a wife and two daughters. Poor him. The only other male in the family is a cat, and I don't see the scouts letting him in, no matter that he's male.

Anyway, after dinner, we sat down to have s'mores! Well, they had burned and/or undercooked marshmallows, and chocolate with gram crackers. Me, I had some Aleve, and a great desire to pack up and go home. I hate having headaches; they ruin all the fun. The girls loved "cooking" over the fire, and we had a time of telling them to stop running so close to it, "You're going to trip and fall into the fire!" Kirsten was bound and determined to do just that. She kept tripping over the big rocks of the fire pit and taking my heart with her.

Finally, it was time to go to bed. I don't sleep well in the best of circumstances, so being in a tent in the middle of the woods with all the BUGS around. Well, there was plenty of sleeping going on around me, at least. Then, the ants came. These big, black wood ants. I don't know if there were any around Kirsten, as she was on the other side of the tent, but Brianna was beside me, and I kept getting them off of her. I don't know if it was ten or the same one coming back for more, but it was annoying. I think it was just the one, because there ended up being one in the bed with me and Michael. It decided to have a taste of my leg, and the whole canyon got to hear me sing. It kinda got tore to pieces during all the limb flailing, and I didn't see anymore after that. Surprisingly, the girls just slept right on.

The next day, we packed up everything back into the car, and headed out to the swimin' hole. There are several places to go swimming down in the canyon, and we were fortunate to find the best one on the first try. It is about a 15 to 20 minute hike down, but so worth it. There is a pool about ten feet deep, and a huge rock to jump from. We have pictures, so check them out. We went up to the falls to swim, too, but the camera got left in the car. Bummer. We really did have a lot of fun, and I hope we can do some more camping before the weather gets too cold. If not, there is always the spring.

I finally got us back into some kind of schedule at school. I discovered a scheduling system through some of the homeschool forums and blogs that I follow called workboxes. I have set that up and it seems to be working very well for us. I will have to take pictures and post them on here. It has mostly solved the problem of when do I do what with which child. All the things that we do together are done first during a "Group Time", like singing our hymn of the month, Bible, memory work (right now it is still the pharaohs of ancient Egypt), history or science, a read aloud, and art if we have it that day. Then, we move to the workboxes. Those have the things they can do independently and those that have to be done with me. It took a while to figure out how to fill the boxes so that there wasn't an overlap of working with mom boxes, but for the most part I have that figured out. Not always, so I have to tell one or the other to do something else quietly (what's that?!), or move on to the next independent box. However, so far, we are getting a lot more accomplished and having fun doing it.

Well, now that summer is over here, and school is back in session, hopefully I will be able to keep up with the posting. We shall see!

Mom, I Can't Believe I'm in First Grade Now

It's finally here! The first day of First Grade! What a day. I will say, it was not as exciting as I had planned in my head. You know the dreams you have while poring over new curriculum... they will LOVE this! and they will LOVE that! Oh, how reality comes and bites us in the, well.

We did have a good first day. The problem is figuring out the timing of everything. I know that we will be doing Bible first every day. When am I supposed to do spelling? English? History? Math? Where does it all fit in? And how do I teach two different levels at the same time???? Thankfully, a lot of what we are doing this year can be done together. Bible, history, science and some math and English can be done together. However, handwriting, most math, reading, spelling, phonics, ok most of the language arts have to be done separate. How do I keep one occupied while trying to work with the other? All things that will get hashed out as we go along this year. The beginning of K wasn't very smooth, either.

I started out with a plan this morning, but it quickly fell apart. Kirsten's attention span isn't long enough to work on same subjects/different levels right now. I think that tomorrow I am going to begin with Bible, put Brianna to work reading for her Summer Reading program, and work with Kirsten on her things before bringing them back together for our science lesson. After that, Kirsten will be free to go and Brianna can have her turn with me. We will see how this plays out tomorrow.

Until then, is it normal to squeal with delight when the mailman comes? (I have more books for this year on the way. Oh, the anticipation...)