Journey to Excellence

This month the kids and I are joining the gals at The Usual Mayhem , No Doubt Learning , Montessori Tidbits and Childhood Beckons in a collaborative effort to share our studies of the Polar regions and their animals. As my kids are obsessed with geographical studies, I was thrilled to be asked to participate. We will be focusing on the Arctic. For this first week we chose to study Denmark with our focus animal being the polar bear . Our first step in a geographical study is to pull up the country on Stack the States (iPad app) to learn it's capital, native language, and any other facts it provides. Then I print off a flag printable from Activity Village UK and the kids color it. These completed flags hang in our dining room while we are studying that country and then get moved to the clotheslines in Eli and Brynne's room. Like I said, they love geography. We found Denmark on the globe and then looked at some other maps online. Then we discussed where the arct...

Oh, we FINALLY got to our Virtual Book Club for Kids project for the month of December! We were going to do it before Christmas break but Brynne ended up with the flu that had us quitting school a couple of days early. We completed our lessons today and had a great time! This month's author was Jan Brett. We read the book Gingerbread Friends  by Jan Brett. (We also read The Hat , which was lots of fun. The illustrations in these two books are fabulous!!) Of COURSE one of our activities had to be making gingerbread men . We used the recipe directly from the pages of the book.  Our other activities included Gingerbread Math . And we had a great time with it! We used a printable called Gingerbread Geometry , and we used our pre-Christmas gingerbread house as our subject. I have kept it well after Christmas for this exact purpose. We have been learning about measurement in math, anyway, so these lessons flowed perfectly. We have been watchin...

We were going to start with a little bit of schooling today to gear up for our official re-start date on Monday. But .... they are playing so GOOD! And I have some additional housework I would like to get done to free up more of my weekend while Rick and Dawson's best friend, Antonio, are here. Sooooo ... we will resume school on Monday. Instead I thought I would share my READING GOALS for 2013 .... Yeah, there it is. Read. Just Read. That's my goal. I love to read. I go through spurts. Right now I am really into it, and I am sure it's because I have more time now that the holiday activities are over. I tend to read a lot this time of year. Instead of making a GOAL, that I may or probably won't may not keep, I am going to focus on my ACCOMPLISHMENTS at the end of the year. I have a spiral for each of the kids where I keep track of every book they read. I'm just going to start one for myself. Here's to a year of fun reading!!

Do you have a goal for 2013? Not a resolution, but a goal. Each year I try to come up with one word to describe what I hope to accomplish in the coming year. This year's word was actually easy. I didn't search for it, it found me. And, it really all started this past summer. I hope to continue it on through this new year. Many of you may already know the story, but please indulge me while I share with those who don't. My husband and I spent the past 10 years working toward the American Dream. He works hard as an engineer. I stay home with the kids. We built that big fancy house everybody always dreams of in the snooty neighborhood that everybody covets. Our kids were in the best school district. We all dressed super nice and had great hairstyles. We had just the "right" friends. And we hated it. We had been talking about selling everything and moving to Missouri where I grew up and where my family still lives. Over a period of three years we tried severa...

I will be linking up on the first of each month this year with Nicole at Journey to Josie . This is a fun way to show our ordinary lives on the first day of each month. It consists of taking photos of all of the normal activities of our day and then writing a post about them. If you would like to join along, link up with Nicole. Here are photos to chronicle January 1, 2013, for the Taulman family. This was actually from yesterday. But Eli and our neighbor built this by themselves. Yummy icicles! Speaks for itself, no? More icicles before the snowball fight. And it's ON! My sweet niece Ashtyn at the salon while my sister did my hair. Leftover Chinese food for lunch. What our back entry looks like when there is snow outside. Some necessities ... sweet tea and chocolate chip cookies. My new hair color and cut (actually it looks pretty much the same, just better!) Man I hate the way I look in mirror shots. And, no makeup. Can you...

It's the day for the 2012 Review posts. But I just can't come up with anything clever. And with the skewed way Google Stats works, actually identifying my "most popular" posts for the year is kind of a waste of time and isn't even truly accurate. Do I really want to re-read my whole blog to choose MY favorite posts from 2012? Nope. I know there is some value to identifying what's been done in the past to improve what will be done in the future. But that just tends to make me feel like I haven't done things good enough. And that's an emotional trap! So I have decided not to review 2012 and, instead, just think ahead to 2013. We will start back to school lightly on Thursday and then get back into the full swing of things in one week. We still have some relaxing to do! What will our homeschool look like in 2013? We will continue to start each day around 10 a.m. and end each day by 3 p.m. My day will start at 6:30 a.m. with my quiet time, my bike r...

Our week before Christmas was moving along perfectly! It was just what I had planned ... lots of baking and reading. And then ... WHAM! The flu hit Brynne. And everything came to a screeching halt! We got our first snow storm, and Eli spent a small amount of time enjoying it. But, it just wasn't the same without his sidekick (and it was FREEZING) so he didn't last long. We did read one special book that I'd like to recommend. I read that there is a reprint with updated illustrations. But, there was something special about that old book with it's old illustrations, that I highly recommend it. Brynne recovered from the flu right in the nick of time, so she was able to celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas with us (although she was moving a little slow). It ended up being a very Merry Christmas and we were happy celebrating it in our new home and new town. Journey to Excellence will be back in full swing on January 1st, so stop b...