Journey to Excellence

In our regular life this week… I am going through a little period of discouragement right now which, unfortunately, leaks into everything I do. My walks have been really great. The exercise and fresh air helps a lot. I've just spent a lot of time in my Bible, praying, listening to worship music, and trying to look at the positive sides of everything, while giving it all I've got in every area. Still .... Dawson is working hard at his new job. I heard (via my sister who read it on Facebook .. I hate that) that Kyndal will be running track at her school this year. She has never run track before, so I am glad to see her try something new. A very exciting thing happened for Brynne while eating lunch at Co-op on Thursday ... her other front tooth fell out! I have officially lost my last baby. Once they lose their two front teeth, it's all over. In our homeschool this week… This was another great week with lots accomplished! Bible ~ We moved from the n...

Last year Dawson and I used an Apologia Educational Ministries product for Biology. And it did not work for us. It was too textbook ... too wordy ... too clinical ... to, well, school!  I even posted about how ashamed I was that we didn't like the curriculum. I received encouragement from many other homeschoolers that I should try the products for my elementary school kiddos. I was sure I wouldn't like it. Then, when we were given the opportunity to review some of the texts from the Young Explorer Series from Apologia Educational Ministries , I decided to heed the wise counsel of those before me and requested Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day by Jeannie Fulbright. We received the hardback text and the Junior Zoology 1 Notebooking Journal  that accompanies and enhances the text. We decided to follow the suggested schedule set forth in the beginning of the notebooking journal, and did two days of assignments per week. This schedul...

Well, this one is late! We had such a beautiful weekend here this weekend that we spent it outdoors doing gardening and yard projects. I didn't have my usual day of sitting in my chair, catching up on DVR'd shows while planning lessons, inputting grades and posting my wrap-up. I am starting this week feeling behind! While Dawson is working on some vocabulary cards for our new read, Swiss Family Robinson , I thought I'd work on my wrap-up. Dawson ~ 8th Grade We finished up our unit on The Middle Ages last week, and that usually means watching some videos and doing some cooking. We watched King Arthur and Tristan and Isolde and Dawson cooked spaghetti with garlic and herbs and herb tomato crostini for our family for dinner on Thursday night. He took lots of tests to finish the unit, two language arts review tests and his Science test. I typically prepare a study guide for Dawson on his units and then a pretty difficult test. This science one was over plant scien...

Our For the Birds study has been more than fun and educational ... it has set the pace for how we will do studies from here on out. We have found that the best way to learn for us is to take a Focus Book and build our lessons from it. We only have one more book to complete our series. Then we will be moving on to a three-week series on Easter. To see the entire series of For the Birds lessons, you can go here . Next week we will read and do activities based on the book The Perfect Nest written by Catherine Friend and illustrated by John Manders. And here are the activities we will be doing ... * Making an edible nest . Thanks, Stacey, for the great idea! * Making a beautiful nest by making a small yarn bowl and adding blown eggs. * Providing nest balls for our feathered friends. We will use old onion and apple bags, fill them with yarn, cotton, string, scraps of fabric, etc., and hang them outside for the birds to use in building their nests. * Watching a live eagle...

This was one of those weeks where it was busy and ordinary all at the same time. Dawson ~ 8th Grade Dawson's week was one of mostly mechanics .. getting through the lessons so that Spring Break could begin. He did well all week, worked hard and did thorough work. But, he didn't really do too much exciting work. Probably the highlight of his week was an accident. We were studying the Battle of Hastings and read about the Bayeux Tapestry . We decided to look it up, and when we did we stumbled upon a "Bayeux" Tapestry generator . Dawson sat down and started playing with it and generated a few scenes out of the book we are reading, Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray. Additionally in history we learned about the establishment of the middle class in Middle Ages and the Magna Carta. In science we studied biomes and how herbs were used for medicines. We also received our greenhouse from the CSN giveaway I won so we moved our herb seeds into it and put it i...

I can't believe we are almost done with our bird unit! It has been so fun! Not only have we learned about different birds, but we have learned about many other things like adoption, the state of Oklahoma and this next week we will touch on the topic of homelessness. Our focus book will be Fly Away Home written by Eve Bunting and illustrated by Ronald Himler. I have checked out several books from the library on homelessness and we will have many discussions about it. We will do a maze to help the puppy find his way "home", found here . And we'll do the birdhouse maze found here . We will also start discussing the importance of our birdhouses and will do some shopping for a new birdhouse to hang from the Shepard's Hook I scored on a recent dumpster dive. And as "chance" has it, our Homeschool Coop has a cool field trip to the airport on Thursday. We will take off the next week for Spring Break and then when we get back we will start discussi...

A lot of people post about the February homeschooling blahs, but I really don't feel as though I have had them. I have a great deal of excitement about what we are learning. And the kids seems to, as well. But then mid-week this week I hit a brick wall of exhaustion. And on Thursday I called school OFF on account of rain (and when I say school, I mean our homeschool and I kept my two public school kids home ... and it really was raining.) We took a pj day. I sat in my favorite chair and got caught up on some DVR'd shows and some computer work. I felt much better and was ready to go again on Friday. Here's what we did on the other four days ... Dawson ~ 8th Grade We are moving strong through The Middle Ages . It's pretty interesting! This week we learned about the fall of the Roman Empire, the attacks of the barbarians, the reign of Charlemagne, and the rise of the feudalistic society. Yesterday we wrapped up our week by watching a video from The History Channel In...