Earth Week 2013

Yes, Earth WEEK. :) I didn't want to leave it to just one day here.
SO, here are some things we did during Earth week.

We painted our earth (while Olivia napped)  :) which they LOVED doing.....

We did a free booklet I found on Earth day.... where we learned about earth and pollution.
You can find that here: http://www.thecurriculumcorner.com/2013/03/16/earth-day-activity-booklet/
It also helped in getting Audrey interested to find different places on the globe.... and while they colored some of the pages, I read to them about planet Earth from our Usborne Science Encyclopedia.


Audrey and Isabelle especially enjoyed watching the Earth dvd by disney:


We also read many books - one that I had won just a few weeks earlier at an Usborne party! We read just a little bit each day during lunch :)



Where does the Garbage Go helped the girls realize how important it is to recycle, what a landfill looks like and how we can use items so we don't put so much in the landfill!


Every Day on Earth was one of our favorites! It's filled with many facts and broken up by category. Every day each of the kids picked a category and we read a fun fact.


Eliza practiced reading to us with this book:


and finally, one that Isabelle LOVED:



We tried doing a paper mache earth, but it didn't turn out how I wanted, so we tossed them! Maybe we'll try again next year!

HOMESCHOOL RESOURCES

Just posting sites I have come across and want to access easily :)
OR curriculum I'd like to look into further.


http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/bored.htm - Boredom Busters / Activities


BIOGRAPHIES
http://www.youtube.com/show/muffinstories


SPELLING / VOCAB
http://www.spellingcity.com/


READING
http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/easychapter.htm  - Easy Chapter Book List


ART
http://www.seethelightshine.com/ - curriculum

http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/ - curriculum / blog, free

http://www.thatartistwoman.org/ - free

http://www.youtube.com/user/PaintBasket - free videos


HISTORY
http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/history.htm - Literature to Supplement History


SCIENCE
http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/sciencebooks.htm - Living Science Books


FREE WORKSHEETS & PRINTABLES
http://www.tlsbooks.com/ - worksheets

http://www.usa-printables.com/ - history, places, etc coloring pages

UNIT STUDIES

http://www.freehomeschooldeals.com/free-butterfly-resource-unit/ - over 50 free butterfly unit study resources

2012 Year In Review

Here's our 2012 Year in Review!
The captions are funky on it, sorry about that!




All these photos are shared on my google plus album - if you're friends with me on FB you should be able to see each photo separately! :)

Merry Christmas Everyone!

As Time Flies By

I can't even believe how time has been flying by!

My Beautiful Audrey is now 7.....  S E V E N!!!  I can't believe it.  I'll do a little post on her party here soon.

It really seems that the days are flying by faster and faster. Well, some days seem like they go on forever and they'll never end :)  But then when I look back, I wonder how we got to where we are now?!

HOMESCHOOLING -

AUDREY
is in Unit 4 and almost finished with it already. That means we are almost half way! YAY :)  She learned all her Old Testiment books. Knows the heading and how many for each (Books of Law, History, etc.) and now she's studying the New Testiment books.  Here's a little clip of her singing her OT books.


ELIZA
is working hard on her reading! She's been doing 2-3 lessons a day from the "Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons" book. and it's going really well! She is almost done with her Kindergarten books. Minh Lee and I have agreed to start her on 1st grade work when we return from our trip to Malaysia. She is also learning the OT Books, just because Audrey is :)

ISABELLE
is finally singing the alphabet! She has known her letters for a super long time, but she wouldn't ever sing them with me. finally this last week she started singing it on her own in the van, without my prompting - yay!
I also found out last week that she knows her numbers, not just saying them or counting, because she has known how to count to 13 for quite a while, but if I hold up a number she can tell me what it is! yay, Isabelle! Her favorite thing is her '20 minutes' on the iPad, reading the same book over and over and over again, usually any book about owls or foxes and the book "Yoko" by rosemary Wells. Yes, she still LOVES owls. :) so cute.

OLIVIA
will soon be 11 months.... how did a year go by so quickly!? She is crawling like a pro and cruising along furniture... trying to stand up almost all the time. My favorite is when she holds onto something while standing, lets go and squeels and then hangs back on, then repeats :) It's just adorable how she finds letting go such a thrill. :)

There's our updates!!!
Ta Ta for Now! :)

10 Years!

10 years ago, I said "I DO" to my handsome Malaysian Prince Charming! It's been a fabulous 10 years!!!
He surprised me with a photo session with Brianne Nichole Photography! I was Shocked and so Excited! He knows exactly what I find important - I LOVE photos :)

He also took me out for dinner, unfortunately we had to box it up and go because I wasn't feeling well. BUT my mom watched the kids the next night so we could go out to see Pitch Perfect (awesome movie, btw!)

Thanks Babe for an awesome 10 years! I'm looking forward to what God has in store for our family!

Homeschool Update!

YAY! We are so excited - Audrey has finished her Unit 2 and moved on to Unit 3 now! We are right on track - so that's awesome!  I let her start her "cursive" book last week and she is loving that. She knew how to write some things in cursive, but is practicing all the letters now and absolutely loving it. Eliza even is wanting to join in - so I may allow her to do some as well - when they are interested is the absolute best time to teach them!

Eliza is still doing really well with reading, we are continuing the All About Reading, but she's actually liking the "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons" better right now! So, we're doing that, which is what we used with Audrey. Eliza is having SO much fun with it that she's wanting to do 2-3 or more lessons at a time! Makes it so much fun :)

Isabelle is reviewing her letters, which she knows already. and we are working on numbers, which she doesn't know so well. She can count, but doesn't know the numbers when looking in a book as well as I'd like! She still loves practicing writing her name, so we do that too. Lots of reading, which she loves. She could sit and read certain books over and over and over. I think once I read a long book to her 5 times through in one sitting!

AND now that Olivia is crawling, she's our professional 'get into everything' one :)

There's our update!

God's Protection and Beauty

I'm Thankful today for many things, but especially for God's protection and beauty. He is soooo marvelous! He does so many things to show us He loves us, even when we don't realize that thing would make us feel that way.

This weekend there was an incident where Isabelle woke up at 3am and wanted to "sleep with Grandma", so I took her in to my mom, who was sitting up in bed. I went back to bed and smelled something funny.... sat up, still smelled it. Asked ML "do you smell something - like it's burning?" and I got up to smell around to see where it was coming from. Out in the hallway my parents were awake also and My dad was checking the furnace. It was super hot to the touch, so he turned it off. Little did I know that because I opened the door to take Isabelle into my mom, she was also able to smell the burning, AND she was awake and sitting up when I went in there because she couldn't sleep, all she could think about was God's protection.  Coincidence? NO - Total God thing! Thank you God!!!

Also, this morning as I was heading to set up for my weekly CBS morning group, I realized that my group gets to see the amazing beauty that God created every time we meet, because we are in the library of the church and there are HUGE floor to ceiling windows there! How amazing is that? I feel so privileged to be there and not in a room with no windows! :) So much so that it brought tears to my eyes. WOW.