Journey to Excellence

In our regular life this week… I started off my week in Portland, Oregon, visiting my brother, sister-in-law and sweet baby niece, Bell. My parents and I had a great time getting to know our newest little family member. Rick took the kids on a special weekend back to Oklahoma to visit friends and have some fun staying in a hotel. Kyndal and Dawson also went back to Oklahoma to visit some of their friends and to go to their orthodontist appointments on Monday. Everybody made it back home by Monday (me at 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning). After we all recuperated from our fun-filled weekend, we spent the rest of the week doing the norm ... church on Wednesday night and relaxation on Thursday night and tonight. It's been very cold, so snuggling in at home has been a necessity. In our homeschool this week… Tuesday was an educational computer and iPad app day since I was recovering from my weekend away. We got back into the full swing of things on Wednesday. We are now ...

As "normal" as last week was, this week was the total opposite! We started out Monday by declaring a Snow Day! We got a little over an inch of good snow Sunday night into Monday. And, since it will likely be all we get this year, we decided to call off school for the day and play in it! Tuesday was Valentine's Day. Eli had his class party that afternoon. Dawson, Brynne and I spent the morning watching some subject-based videos. Dawson watched "Frontier House" and Brynne watched the "2012 Westminster Kennel Dog Show" . They also each did a Valentine activity. On Wednesday, they finished their videos. I branched out this week and created a collage of our activities for Collage Friday with Mary at Homegrown Learners . I used a free App for my iPad called PicCollage . For some reason I have been reluctant to try collages. But, with this, it was just too easy. 1. Our family gathered together on Tuesday night and each painted a canvas, anyw...

This past Saturday our whole family spent some time together at the Blue Bell Creameries Taste of Summer Open House (with about 15,000 other people). We had all-you-can-eat ice cream, did some crafts, "milked" a "cow", and went on a self-guided tour of the ice cream factory. We had so much fun!! So I decided to carry this theme through our week. The temps have been in the 100's this week, so staying home and indoors was vital! The big news of the week was that Eli finished his Summer Reading Program with a bang by reading all of a 64 page book in one day. It was his decision to do it, and he was so proud of his accomplishment! So was our whole family! We are going this afternoon to pick up his prizes from the library. On Wednesday, Brynne and I went to her Co-op Summer Playgroup and we made barrettes . It was fun! This small group has been such a blessing to the moms and kids! Yesterday we tackled our ice cream unit . We made baggie ice cream, rea...

At our Co-op playgroup today, the little girlies just played and played. They had out kitchen stuff and dress-up outfits and babies and the moms (the real moms, that is) had lots of time to chat. When we did get them corralled, we made ribbon braided barrettes. We had the girls do their best to practice braiding, and then the moms wielded the hot glue gun to roll up the braids and attach them to alligator clips. They turned out sooooo cute!!!

We are a part of a wonderful Homeschool Coop. During the summer season our Coop will have available group activities on Fridays. However, I was really hoping to help Brynne form some closer friendships with girls her age. Because of that, and because it's sometimes easier to coordinate events in smaller groups, four other moms and myself formed a Play Group to meet on alternating Wednesdays. Between the five of us we have seven girls who are right at the same age and four additional siblings. We met for the first time today at our house. Our plan is for the moms to read and discuss the book Seasons of a Mother's Heart by Sally Clarkson. The hosting mom will plan a craft for the kids/moms and provide snacks. And, of course, the kids will have plenty of time to play. Because we are library freaks here, and because it's fun to have new stuff, we made fun new personalized library bags for the kids. The girls picked out their designs and helped spray the bleach. The moms ha...

We had a great week this week! I think we have finally hit our stride. Pretty good considering we are three quarters of the way through our school year, huh? We have tweaked and changed and come up with a schedule that works pretty good. I think we are all happy with it! Our schedule is working great for us. And it's not at all how I set out to do school when we started this journey. It's amazing how much I have changed in this process so far. Dawson ~ 8th Grade Things were seeming a little stale in Dawson's studies of The Middle Ages , so I made sure he had some other activities to do this week. He drew a Cartoon castle . He made garlic chive cream cheese spread and dill veggie dip, using fresh herbs . We studied the Black Plague , and I wanted to demonstrate it to him. I found a simulated game, but tweaked it a bit. I drew a map including five cities our character traveled in Adam of the Road . I then took 50 lima beans and put them in a lunch sack. On 15 ...