Almost a new year

It is almost 2013 so I thought I would give an update on our family!

Lily who is 7 1/2 got lots of horses for Christmas. She also got a new American girl doll. I love to see how she is changing with age. A year ago, she had no interest in dolls, but now she loves the story lines that she can create with the dolls. She also loves all of the Just Dance games on the Wii and our new karaoke machine. Lily has been busy for the past few months learning how to sing properly. We have loved watching her perform. Next we are going back to practicing our violin.

Eli is almost 6 1/2...about another month. He loves the new camera he got for Christmas. He also loves drawing and building things. He really has an artistic side. He did singing lessons with Lily also over the last two months and that really helped him with his shy personality. December was a big month for him. He learned how to tie his shoes and started reading much better. We are thinking about doing swim lessons soon. He really wants to learn how to ride his bike and swim this year.

Valerie is about to turn 5 years old in just 5 more weeks! She is getting big. She loves her dolls. She always has. She is my most girly and delicate child. However, her humor is all her Daddies...need I say more! "Burp!" She just did ballet and loved it. She was still very shy on stage and not the most graceful, but she loved it! She also wants to learn to ride her bike and swim this year.

Caleb is 3years old and has fallen in love with singing and dancing. I would not have guessed that a few months ago. Now he is the first to ask to dance or do karaoke. He is still the most boyish though and loves balls and cars. He goes to preschool now and loves it. He is getting so social as long as nobody takes anything from him. Then he needs a little break. Oh and he loves his naps.

Daphne is 2 1/2 now and such a ball of energy and way too clever for her own good. The other day we told her she could bring her blankie with us on a car ride. She came to me with it and a big grin. She said, "I just bring my blankie." I look at the blankie and there is light shining through. She has hidden my ipod in it so that she could also take that on the trip. Daphne loves singing every song and nursery rhyme. She loves counting until she gets to those tricky teen numbers and mixes them all up. It is cute.

As for Jason and I, Jason is still the manager of Oxifresh, but he also started a new job at Office Concepts. He does printer and computer repair there. He is also still doing college classes so he is super busy. We are proud of all of his hard work for our family. I am doing good. Mostly exhausted with five kids, but I love it! I love homeschooling even though I feel very exhausted this year with so many learning needs to meet. I am also tutoring every Monday at CC. This year, my goal is to find extra ways to bring in money and get us a new bigger house. A girl can dream!!!!

Homeschooling...our recent challenges

I have spent the last three years telling people how easy and fun homeschooling is. I enjoy encouraging people and I also completely believe this. However, the last three months of school have changed my perspective a little. I think I am getting to see that there are challenges in everyone's homes and I only was able to see the perspective of homeschooling through my individual circumstances.

Up until this year, I only had Lily to homeschool. Lily learns very quickly and loves everything about learning and showing off. Yes, she has her moments like any child, but overall she makes homeschooling a very easy experience. This year has changed us. This year I added in homeschooling Valerie. She is much more challenging as she shuts down when she doesn't get things easily. She wants to do well, but everything has to be just perfect for her to feel able to do her work. It has been very frustrating. Also kindergarten is the most hands on year for my lesson plans so I spend a lot of time on her projects with her. Also Lily is now doing third and fourth grade work. She needs a little extra help with understanding new topics. We were working on diagramming sentences and knowing all of our parts of speech this week. We are also working on measurements and multiplication. Don't even get me started on all of our writing projects.

Another new challenge has been having five kids this year. Having two little ones around while we homeschool keeps me very busy. I am constantly cleaning up after someones mess and trying to keep them entertained with little projects while I hop back and forth from Lily and Valerie's work. Then Eli gets home from public school and I have to do homework with him so really I am educating all through out the whole day!!!

Yet another challenge is all of the appointments that come with five kids. We have speech for Val and Caleb, dance for Val, voice lessons for Lily and Eli, and there are always doctor and dentist appointments.

Then may I mention that we started really learning the classical model for education this year. It does make things easier in some ways, but really, I am still not use to changing my lesson plans and using less of a curriculum approach. So really, I feel like we are constantly playing catch up and trying to learn our material. It is a challenge for me as I am not use to memorizing or thinking this hard. lol We also have presentations each Monday that take time to plan and work on.

So after saying all of this, I want to encourage my friends that God knows the circumstances that we are each in and we are so blessed to have our children near us. Sometimes I worry too much about falling behind and not teaching enough, but really my goal for my children is for them to love the Lord with their whole heart. I know that if they have that and they watch Godly examples that everything else will come out of that. God will bless their lives. Relax more and enjoy these moments! I am so thankful to spend each day growing closer with my children. I think now that I will go lay out a blanket in the back yard and read a great book to my kids. Learning should be a beautiful process and not all work!

Update on my daughters

Here is a little update on my beautiful girls!

Lily- I love age 7! She can do so much and participate in so much. She has been busy learning violin (if I can ever remember to have her practice...oops). She is also wanting to get into drama classes. This summer she has been at the Creation Xpo Science camp and at James Rivers Kids Camp. She loved both experiences. She is definitely a child that loves being with other kids and she loves trying new things. She also had a great time at vbs. She keeps me so busy. She is also getting an allowance now for keeping her room clean, cleaning the table after each meal, putting away laundry, and helping with a happy heart whenever asked!

I have started to see how sensitive her little heart is. Yesterday at church, she dressed up in red, white, and blue for their Olympics fun. She told me when she got home that everyone who was dressed up went on the stage and nobody laughed when they saw her outfit. She was sad about that. I told her that I didn't know we were suppose to be funny and that we will try harder next time. She recovers quickly from disappointment, but it is still hard to see her when she gets crushed or disappointed!

Valerie- My four year old or as she would say, "I'm almost five!" (not)! She is still my shy little cookie, but she really loves participating. It was fun watching her at vbs. Each day she struggled with letting go of me and she normally had a worker hugging on her, but she loves doing activities. She won a kindle and a new bike at vbs so she is a happy little girl right now. She is also getting braver with her learning. She is normally scared to show off what she is learning until she is really good at it, but she is getting better. She is also excited about speech starting up in a couple of weeks!

Daphne- What to say about her! She is 2 years old now and getting potty trained. She is doing really well at it! We have been working since Monday and she has been having one accident a day and that is with us going to friend's houses and the park, etc. She is such a smart little girl. She loves singing, "Ring around the rosie". That is her favorite. She also sings "Twinkle Little Star" but not very well. She is trying to sing her ABC's. It is cute! She is not very big on performing for the camera though! :)

Our whole family is enjoying summer, but getting ready and prepared for a new school season!

April and May School Fun!

It is the end of the school year and it has been such a great year! The end of the year has been filled with fun events so I will highlight those here!

 We had fun at the end of the year celebration at Classical. They did fun doing science and measurements with gummy worms.

 At New Life, we got to play some games. Lily brought her Disney guessing game.

 At Classical, her class got up and did states and capitals. They did a great job!

 Lily also got a certificate for doing well!

 At New Life, we went on a field trip to the fish hatchery in Branson.

 We also went to the 50's diner with all of our friends!

 Valerie has a very fun teacher at New Life who loves science and hands on fun. She helped Valerie to make this and to then find and sort on their nature walk.

 Brooklyn and Lily made "God's eyes" when they were learning about Mexico for Cinco de Mayo.

 We also had a special spanish teacher come and fly us to Mexico to learn some of the language.

 The girls loved learning the words for happy and sad!

 They also enjoyed making this face to remember the words for face!

 No Cinco de Mayo celebration is complete without a pinata!

 We also went on a family camping trip with our cousins and grandparents to learn about the great outdoors!

 Fun day at the zoo to learn about animals!

 We brought lots of friends along! :)

 The last day of New Life Homeschool Co-op involved lots of fun games and we got awards from our teachers. I love the words that they wrote on the back of the award for my girls!

 The girls had such great teachers! They were so blessed.

 Here I am with my girls on the last day of school! We will miss our teachers and friends, but we are ready for summer!!! :)

March Homeschool Fun

March Fun!

This month was one of the craziest of the year. We were so busy with foster kids visiting and both sets of cousins visiting during their spring break. The amazing part is that we still stayed up on our homeschooling with just one week of spring break that we actually took. Here are a few things that we did this month.

At New Life Homeschool Co-op, Valerie has an awesome science teacher. She sent the kids home with bulbs to grow and books to keep track of the growth of their flower. At the bottom of the page, is a picture of her flower when it bloomed!

Lily has been studying the state of Washington. Here is a copy of her three paragraph paper on the state before she edited and re-wrote it! We are working on the editing process this week!

We also had fun at a kite festival. We made hats and had Chinese snacks.

The girls had fun decorating their kite.

 Their kite flew great! It was the perfect day for it! The kite only lasted a few days though. It got stuck in Lily's bike tire!

 Our co-op took a fun field trip to Sac River Stables to ride and groom horses! Very fun!

Here is Valerie's beautiful flower!

Spring is a hard time in the area of school. Kids want to be outside and need change. I looked through Lily's curriculum and she is way ahead in reading and writing. For the month of April, I plan to double up on math and history! I think Lily will enjoy that for a period. I want her to read and write more for fun right now! :)

February School stuff!

We signed Valerie up for an art class at Noah's art. She loved it! She is such a good little student and listens so well to her teacher. She had a lot of fun with this.

We took a fun trip to the Discovery Center in Springfield. It was the free day which always makes it more fun for me! The kids all had a blast discovering new things!

We have been doing a science unit on the digestive system so it was fun for them to add some hands on activities to that learning.

Lily's favorite part was writing a little article for the news paper!

 At Classical Conversations, they learned about cartoon illustrators during art class. Lily made this cartoon! So cute!

Junior Bible Quiz is over for the season. It was a lot of work, but Lily misses it and can't wait for next year! Lily and her team mates wer so shocked when they won first place for their division. Lily won fifth place for her age group.

At New Life Homeschool Co-op, we had a fun field trip to Ruttledge Wilson Farm. The kids loved petting animals and hearing stories about farm animals!

These are just a few of the fun things we did in Februrary! Lily also learned how to subtract by borrowing and is working on fractions and measurement. In reading, we read Alice in Wonderland. It was a very challenging read with new vocabulary. She really loved it and we celebrated by watching the Disney cartoon version.

January School Stuff!

I like to have a blog every month with just a little of what is going on with the girls and their school experience. For whatever reason, I had a hard time getting these pictures to download so they may not be in the right order.

January has actually been a very fun month. The weather has been unseasonably warm so we have been outside a lot and we are loving that!

We also joined a new homeschool co-op. It is called Classical Conversations and their are many of these all over the country. That is great if we ever move. We go every Monday from 9am-1pm. The curriculum is very challenging, but we are really enjoying it. There is a lot of memory work. They also have art and science experiments each week. They also do presentations each week. Below is a picture of her doing geography!

We are still doing New Life Homeschool Co-op. Both of her teachers, were also public school teachers and she is learning so much there. Below is a vinn diagram she did on plants and animals.

Lily also started violin this month. We are enjoying it, but it is expensive and it is hard to get into the idea of practicing daily. I really do hope that it gets easier! lol

Below is a project that Lily did for me. For art, she copied the cover of a book that she had on Abraham Lincoln. Then she wrote what she learned about it him from the story. I think she did an excellent job!

This is one of her art projects from Classical Conversations. She is learning about a different artist each week and then trying her hand at their style of art! Isn't it beautiful!

Valerie enjoys both co-ops too. Here she is with some of her little friends, Addie and Josie, learning about shapes!

She also made a collage the other day at co-op. Her daddy was quick to ask her why she put a football player on her collage. She said, "For you Daddy!" Isn't that sweet! So I asked her what she put on there for me. She replied, "I guess Jack the Elf!" Sure, like I believe that! lol

Valerie really enjoys writing. That is her favorite thing to practice at. She wrote her abc's for the first time with no help from Mommy. Oh wait, she did copy it off her chart though! :)

Lastly, we had a fun field trip in January. Oh wait it is February 1st! Oh well, it was suppose to be the January field trip! We went to Noah's Art! They did story time art for our group. They read, "If you give a Mouse a Cookie!" Then the kids made mouse ears, cookies, little mice, and painted with water color to find hidden pictures. They also had stations set up for making bead necklaces and collages. It was very fun!

Here at the end is just a picture of Lily with her wonderful violin teacher!