Why We Love Homeschooling #101 & 102

You can come to class wearing your slippers ...

... and your fedora!

5? Really? It can't be!

Because of Bible Study tonight, we celebrated Elle's 5th birthday last night!  I can't believe she's 5!!!

It was a Princess night!

Her favorite Princess movie - Sleeping Beauty!

A beautiful night to celebrate a beautiful little girl.  She's becoming quite the little lady and is so much fun to be around!  I can't wait to see what 2010 holds for all our children!

My baby is "Free!"

Last week my baby turned 3!  Gotta love the fingers for 3!!

He sleepily stumbled out of his room on the morning of his birthday and asked me, "Am I free now?" 

He kept changing his mind in regards to what or who he wanted on his cake - Spiderman, Buzz Lightyear, Lightning McQueen and finally Thomas.  I told the bakery to just leave it blank and I'll add a toy that night.  I asked for the big red thing on the cake too, its supposed to be a balloon. 

At suppertime, I asked him what he wanted on his cake.  His final answer was Thomas, so I went into the playroom and found our little Thomas train.  Colin beamed as his cake came over saying, "Now I have another Thomas to play with!"  Oops!

Christmas Tour

Last year, I invited you to come again and enter through our kitchen.  So, that's where this year's tour will start.  I purchased these two wreaths, which I just simply adore, and hung them from the top of my window trim with small nails.  After looping the ribbon onto the wreath frame, I added a grommet to hang the ribbon onto the nails.  I think I'm in love!  I can picture wreaths here all. year. long.  Except, I don't think it will be so nice when opening windows - so it may just be a winter-thing! ;-)

I made the shorter candle by hot gluing cinnamon sticks to a candle and then finishing it off with some cute ribbon.  The taller candle has ribbon wrapped around it with a piece of artificial berries tucked inside.  The candle stands and topiary are all from Southern Living at Home, some of my favorite pieces!!

Need a quick idea to spruce up your cooktop? I placed a seasonally scented candle and surrounded it with various nuts. It's simple to do, but I always get lots of comments about it.

Another simple idea is these plate racks. I have 4 plates that coordinate with the wall hanging my mother made me. I swap out the plates each season for a new and fun look.

I wanted to find a special little place for a gingerbread nativity set I purchased after Christmas last year. What better place than the shelves in my kitchen!

Here's a closer look at the top two shelves.

Leaving the kitchen and entering our family room, you'll find our entertainment center.  On the bottom shelf is our Advent Calendar as well as our Advent Nativity set - which I absolutely LOVE!  Hanging on the side of the shelf is a stocking I made for my hubby a long time ago and peeking out from inside it is Charlie, our Elf on a Shelf from the North Pole.  The two pieces of pottery on the top two shelves are from my hubby's place of employment - wonderful keepsakes!

The other side of our entertainment center.  The wreath is on a wreath stand (another thing I am absolutely in love with).  I think they give you so many more options with wreaths.  I purchased mine, here.  I decided to add my Easter egg to our Christmas collection this year, too!  Because you don't get to Easter without Christmas!

And at the top of our entertainment center, is my Willow Tree Nativity.

Turning around, you'll see our Christmas tree and mantle. Our tree is decorated with Hallmark ornaments that date back to 1980. I've continued the collection with my children. You'll notice another wreath stand on my mantle; I just couldn't put a nail in the stone!  At Christmastime, I replace my silk flowers on the red sconces with these little evergreens.  The stockings were made by my mother-in-law.  They are similar to the one that I made my husband ... and I have one half completed sitting in a basket! :-D

Inspired by Just Mom, we created our own set of "JOY" letters to hang above our "window mirror." I wanted to find bigger letters, but all her readers must have gotten to the craft store before me. :-(

Around the corner from our family room is our living room. Here's a little tree that my 3 year old enjoys playing with. Isn't it obvious? ;)

The other side of the living room entryway.

Our front door.  We get so much wind at our house that I cannot hang wreaths outside.  :(  So, we settle for hanging them inside!

This is our living room where Quintin and Elle have their salt dough nativities displayed.  They both made them at our homeschool co-op.  Quintin made his 2 years ago and Elle made hers this past fall. In the middle is a picture of a snow-mail-man delivering mail to a little girl named Hannah.  Hannah's family attends our church and last year she was diagnosed with cancer.  Her Christmas wish last year was to receive lots of Christmas cards.  She received well over 157,000 cards!!  A local artist created the picture and they have raised lots of support for many other children battling cancer.  Hannah passed on to be with our Lord this past June, at just 5 years old.  We were sad but we also rejoiced as she joined her mommy up in heaven!  Her mother passed away when she was a toddler.  This picture is very special to us!

Thank you for visiting.  If you haven't done so already, head over to The Nesting Place to see many more beautiful homes and Christmas tours!

Has it really been 1 month already?

Well, golly gee, I'm pretty torn up about it too!

Cookie Exchange

Today, Short Stop is hosting a cookie exchange.  I just had to join in and share my three favorite cookies.  I loved them since I was little and it doesn't feel like Christmas if I don't make these!!

I've posted them all on my cooking blog, but here are the links.

Fudge Meltaways

Chocolate Crinkles

Coconut-Chocolate Meringue Bites

Click on the above names to see the recipes, and be sure to see MANY more at Short Stop's blog!
These are my favorite cookies - let me know if you try them!!!

November's Thankful Tree

Every November we do a Thankful tree, adding a leaf each day with something we are thankful for.  And every November, I'm scrambling to cut out leaves and usually getting annoyed with the process.

I thought ahead this year, and in October, we gathered up some pages with leaves printed on them and pulled out the paints.  The kids had a wonderful time painting them!

It was more work than usual, but after getting them laminated at a local teacher store, I'm hoping we can reuse them (as long as I don't forget where I put them!)

We had a few too many, so before laminating them, we sent some to a friend who had mentioned all the pretty leaves in her yard had already fallen off the trees.

Rather than starting at the beginning of the month, we waited until 2 weeks before Thanksgiving; that way each child could have a leaf every day.

It's a little hard to see, but here's our tree!

I think my favorite this year was Quintin's thankfulness for "new teeth!"

Happy Birthday Bubba!

It's hard to believe that in this picture, Elle is 2, Colin is 6 months and Quintin just turned 5.  It's even harder to believe that Colin is turning 3 today!  Happy Birthday Colin!!  Our children are 7, 4 and 3!  But only for  a few days, because Elle has a birthday coming up soon too!

Practicing the "3" fingers! :)

It's okay, you can wish me a Merry Christmas!

Now customers have a voice - Stand for Christmas

I thought this was a very cool campaign!  Let's keep Christ in Christmas!!

Grrrr!

Nope, I'm not on vacation this week, but I wish I was! ;-)

Both computers got infected with yucky stuff but thankfully they are both back in *my* posession!

Being off the computer this week has allowed me to get lots accomplished!  Who knew? :-P

Hoping to share some fun things with you next week - because I even have my camera back now.

So far so good.  Oh wait, last night the cd player wouldn't eject my cds ... grrrrr ... electronics!  Can't live with them, can't live without them ... well, unless I convert and join my Amish neighbors!

Enjoy your time with loved ones and ...

Solar System

Since I don't have my camera right now (waiting to hear back from canon - still under warranty, but need to find out the cause of the problem before I know if it will be a free fix or not) I thought I'd share some pictures from an older unit, solar system, we did a few months ago - obviously, the kids are in SHORTS!!!

We continue to work through The Weaver Curriculum.  This is one of the chapters that made me love The Weaver even more!  The Weaver curriculum is unit study based, meaning that when you study the solar system, you study it in Bible, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts and Creative Writing.

My favorite Bible lessons have come from this chapter.  Below, I'll share some from the curriculum.

Weaver Bible Background: "When Abram was shown the stars in the heavens, he was told to count them.  He could not do this, for they were innumerable.  The size of the universe is incomprehensible to man.  Which of us can understand the distance to the sun?  We have an idea of the distance to the moon, for man has traveled there.  Yet, the distance to the moon is just a small percentage of the distance to the sun - very inconsequential!"

My favorite part of this entire Solar System chapter was the application that we serve a big God, a great God.  A hint of His size is shown in the universe.  Remember, this is His creation!!

The bible lesson led us in an activity that made a HUGE impression on all of us.  We went out to the end of our driveway and followed the "steps" in marking off the sun and plants.  It would have been nice to have had actual pictures of the planets on the signs, but time was crunched that day and they didn't get made.  In fact, I was happier to have the names, as it was much easier for us to read from far away.

From the sun, looking back.  If you look very closely, you can see a white paper in the woods.

Here, let me zoom that in for you!  That's Quintin and Neptune!

We finished the chapter with a poster of the planets.  (I took these pictures with the camera in the laptop.)

Each planet has a paper with the planet name, how many moons and rings, as well as the number of days or years it takes for that planet to travel around the sun.  The scale of planets is off, I know, but the hands on work in this chapter has helped retain so much of the info.  A very fun chapter for us all.

Currently, we are working on the body systems.  Hoping for a fixed camera to make its way home soon so I can share what we're learning!