Journey to Excellence

In our regular life this week… As it was a COLD week, we stayed in the house unless it was absolutely necessary to leave it! I usually love winter. But this year I am just over it. It's probably because heating our house is a challenge. I looked ahead to the 10 day forecast and see more frigid temps and precipitation. Yuck. AND it has already started to ice … so it's possible all of our weekend plans will be cancelled. With the cold weather, we got caught up on some shows we had DVR'd, and I did some reading. Collin came for a mid-week visit. Otherwise, it was a quiet week. Except …. when I heard the dogs outside barking yesterday (nothing new) and went out to shush them, I heard one who sounded in distress. They had gotten into my gardening area and Buck had gotten his head stuck between the chain link fence and the gate. He was trying to pull his head out and crying. The other dogs were frantic and attacking me while I tried to get him out. The gate is padlocked...

The three winners of the coupon for a FREE 75 oz. bottle of Purex Mountain Breeze laundry detergent are … Dawn Stokes Keenan-Banks, Wanda McHenry, and Amy Jorgensen! I have e-mailed each of you so that we can exchange mailing information. Thanks so much to everyone for entering and, especially, to my new followers! I have another giveaway coming up on Monday, so check back!! And remember that in the month of February, the Purex brand will be making donations for every bottle of Purex laundry detergent and fabric softener purchased. You can read all about it by going to www.purex.com/make-a-wish. Have a great weekend!

What do you do when everybody wakes up with minor ailments and just feels icky (it's that time of year)? You declare it a Couch School Day! We stayed in our pjs and robes all day, bundled up in blankets, and did school on the couch (and in the comfy chair). We started our day watching a claymation movie called "The Adventures of Mark Twain" on Netflix since we were studying Missouri today. That led to a discussion about Halley's Comet, so we watched some videos on Youtube . Pretty cool. After doing our Missouri notebooking page and watching "The States" on dvd, we grabbed all of our regular worksheets and got to work (math, spelling, cursive handwriting, and grammar). We finished up a module in science on the computer and wrote some problem/solution paragraphs. Finally, we snuggled up and read out of Henry and Beezus and then read out of our own books. We sipped hot tea and rested and by the end of the day we were all feeling a bit...

Dinner. It has become a struggle. Our lifestyle is so completely different than it was a couple of years ago. Back then I fixed dinner every night of the week and on the weekends we ate easier meals. I always felt that it was important to have a good meal waiting for Rick when he got home from a long day of work. Living here in Missouri I have kept up that schedule for the kids, but also added cooking full meals on the weekends because Rick is here and I want him to have home-cooked meals when he is here. The problem is that Dawson works a couple of nights a week from 5-7 p.m. and, oftentimes, eats dinner at work. Brynne has basketball practice a couple of nights a week from 5-7 p.m. so she eats something before she goes to practice because she isn't hungry enough for dinner and once we get home we just eat something easy because of lack of time. And Kyndal doesn't get home from school until 8:30 p.m. on Thursdays. I could fix dinner super early, but we really aren'...

Make-A-Wish grants the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope, strength and joy. Kids say wishes give them renewed strength to fight their illnesses, and their parents say these experiences help strengthen the entire family. Based in Phoenix, Make-A-Wish is one of the world's leading children's charities, serving children in every community in the United States and its territories. With the help of generous donors and more than 25,000 volunteers, Make-A-Wish grants a wish somewhere in the country every 38 minutes. It has granted more than 226,000 wishes since its inception in 1980; more than 14,000 in 2013 alone. Visit Make-A-Wish at wish.org to learn more. To honor the millions of children whose clothes they help keep bright and clean every year, the Purex brand is teaming up with Make-A-Wish to bring bright wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions. Purex brand will pay 5 cents per bott...

We had another great couple of days in the Midwest with our Road Trip USA unit study. We visited Indiana and Michigan. Indiana As always, we started out our studies by going through the materials in Road Trip USA and coloring our notebooking page. Then we went on to watch the segment about Indiana from "The States" dvd. We focused our lessons on the Wright Brothers and the state flower of the peony. The kids watched an Animated Hero Classics video on the Wright Brothers and then the bonus material from Flights of Courage titled "The Wright Brothers' First Flight". We used the book Super Simple Paper Airplanes  by Nick Robinson to make a couple of planes. Finally, we made some coffee filter peonies . Michigan Again for Michigan we read our Road Trip USA materials, colored our notebooking page, watched the Michigan segment of "The States", and read Michigan Facts and Symbols . The kids were very taken with Michi...

Today is the last day to snag some cheap Purex laundry detergent at Dollar General. Through today, each 75 oz. bottle of Purex laundry detergent is $3.25 (that's a savings of $2.25 per bottle). If you have a $5 off $25 coupon to use today, you can grab 8 bottles for $21 plus tax. That is a great deal! I got mine last Saturday. Now that I am a Purex Insider, I have the opportunity to pass along some even more great deals, promotions and some coupons for FREE laundry detergent! Check out my post on how you can win a free wardrobe and a year's supply of Purex laundry detergent . And come back on Monday when I open up a Giveway for FREE detergent!!

In our regular life this week… More up and down weather this week. It was 60 on Sunday and about 20 on Monday. Then Tuesday was about 40, as well as Wednesday. Then on Thursday it was 15. This weekend it will be back up in the mid 50's on one day and then about 15 the next. Geez!! In our homeschool this week… Although we had some up days and down days because of not feeling good one day, we still managed to accomplish all of our work. We just had "Couch School" on Wednesday. The rest of the week was fun and a lot was learned! Bible - We learned all about the first Temple .. it's size, purpose, what it was used for, etc. Grammar - We learned about common and proper nouns, possessive noun adjectives, and titles of respect. Handwriting - We completed another 5 lessons in Handwriting Without Tears Cursive Success. Spelling - Our words this week use the suffix -ly . Both kids did great, and only one word was missed on the final test … patiently. ...

What a great week this has been focusing on the things in our homeschool that make us successful. I have enjoyed reading the blogs of some of my fellow Crew Members to hear what things make their days go more smoothly. I hope that you have enjoyed this Blog Hop. This last essential is one that I have realized was the motivation for why we started homeschooling in the first place. It is also what prompted the title of this blog. In February of 2010, we made the decision that we should begin our homeschooling journey. It all started with Dawson (our now 17 year old high school junior). Kyndal was able to navigate the waters of public school without any problems. Dawson, however, struggled with the strain and stress of perfection and being lost in the big crowd. As we were struggling, as well, we followed his lead (actually, his begging) and brought him home for school for two years so that he could pursue Excellence instead of perfection. I encourage you to travel back with...

We are already on Day 4 of the Schoolhouse Review Crew's Homeschooling Essentials Blog Hop . I hope that you have picked up some good tips for essentials that might make your homeschooling experience a little more pleasant. In reading some of the other participants' posts, I know I have! Our essential item today is a big one for us! Last year we would start at the top of our planner page and work our way down. But Eli doesn't like spelling or any kind of writing, so I noticed that he started to stress about about them when we were doing subjects that he did like. And then I noticed Brynne start saying, "Oh no! Math is coming up!" We couldn't even concentrate on the subject we were on for the anticipation of less-desired subjects that were next on our list. So we stared "D"rawing Sticks. I just took a simple mason jar and attached a little ribbon around it. I used large craft sticks and wrote each of our subjects on them. We start each mo...