Our Homeschool Room

As I mentioned before we live in a cabin. Space is limited but we have a sunroom that I use as our school room. The picture above is the bottom four shelves of a wall unit that my husband built me for Christmas two years ago. It is from floor to ceiling. Bottom shelf on right has board games, bottom shelf on left has buckets of paint and leftover craft supplies. Second shelf from bottome continues with coloring books, more craft supplies, and containers of markers, colored pencils, etc. Third shelf from bottom has all history books.
Top shelf holds Bible and religion books as well as curriculum Grace will not need for a year or two. Second row of shelving contains all of Grace's indepent reading material. Third shelf has all art books and the space beside the art books is materials used for co-op classes.
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This shelf hold our workboxes and underneath is current materials we are using this year.

Here is our table, used to be our kitchen table. This is were we spend most of our day. We have two great windows that look into the woods to spots all kinds of plants, trees, and critters.

Lastly is our two baskets for library materials. One basket is fiction and the other non-fiction.

Mushrooms Here, Mushrooms There, Mushrooms Everywhere

When we left for church today we spotted alot of mushrooms in the woods beside our house. I knew as soon as we got home we would need to go take photos and meausre one big one that was there. This is a three hole punch and measures 10 inches, so the top of this mushroom was about 7-8 inches wide.
Then we measured top to bottom and it was 9 1/2 inches tall. This is the tallest mushroom I have ever seen.

On our trip into the woods we found this one also.

And this one.

Puzzle Picture

Our sweet Angel! Where does the dog end and the bear blanket begin?

Why My Blog is Named Cabin In the Woods

We really do live in a cabin in the woods in Georgia. Our own little piece of heaven.

Family Fun Fest Pics

Fireworks!

Crazy Hair!

Face Painting!

Fun!

Games!

Rides!

Busy Saturday

Originally Saturday was not going to look like it ended up looking. My son's car broke down last night and needed to borrow hubby's car to get to work this morning. Hubby needed to go to a work day at church and he had promised his motorcycle to a friend to borrow for the day, which would have left me and Grace without a car. But friend never showed up for bike so hubby took bike to work day. Me and Grace decided to go out for the afternoon. We went to McDonalds for lunch then headed to the big, nice, new library which is 45 minutes away. You can tell from my previous posts that we are a library loving family. We came home with dvds - two movies and two kid's french discs, books - cooking, beading, clay figures, fiction, homeschooling, and comic books. Loads of fun! Now we are headed out to a Family Fun Night put on by United Way. There will be food, games, music, and fireworks. Hopefully I can get some pictures for tomorrow's post.

Apple Chedder Muffins

Today we killed two birds with one stone as they say. We are studying the American Revolution and found a book at the library about colonial cooking. We also needed a book for cooking for our literature badge. Hence the two birds... Anyway ingredients were very easy - flour, sugar, cornmeal,butter, eggs, baking powder, baking soda, salt, apples, and cheese. They tast savory and sweet at the same time. I really liked them. Unlike Grace that tasted a small bit and proclaimed they tasted bad.

Keepers At Home

A couple of years ago I taught a co-op class with the Keepers at Home Book. For those that are not familiar with this, it is basically like a Christian Girls Scouts group accomplishing tasks to earn badges. We never finished the book and it was sitting on our shelf since. I thought it would be great to start including it in our workboxes with our daily work. The first section I chose to use is for the literature badge. To get the badge you have to read 25 books. You have to include books about cooking, nature, science, history, biography, poetry,and crafts. I decided to let Grace pick out short below her reading level so this badge would not take her a year to complete it. She chose crocheting, colonial cooking, insects, poetry, pyramids, and biographies on Annie Oakley, Pocohontas, and Teddy Roosevelt. We will also include some of the books we are already reading for history and literature.

School, Lunch, and Church

This morning rolled pretty well. We were able to finish Bible, Math, History, Typing, Liberty Kids Episode, and Spelling before lunch. Took a break for lunch and went to Zaxbys with my parents. Grace decided to go home with them and spend some quality time. I picked her up later in the afternoon and we had to finish Georgia History, Book of Centuries, and Science. In Science today we learned about the parts of an egg and how the chick grows. Loving the Zoology book about Flying Creatures. Love studying about birds. About to prepare dinner, nothing special, just sandwiches and chips then off to church we go. This Wednesday marks my second time of teaching the middle schoolers. Still a little nervous sometimes but working my way through it. Tonight our lesson is about peer pressure and I am taking a Bible board game if we finish up early.

Scooter Wins

Yesterday in the late afternoon Grace had a tumble with a scooter and the scooter won. Scraped up both knees, one of them pretty badly and one palm. Her palm hurt her so much today it was hard for her to do much writing. We did the best we could with the situation. Going through alot of band aids. I don't think she will be riding the scooter on the concrete again for a long time.

Georgia State History

We have started a study about the great state of Georgia. At this point we are on lesson 9 I think and have started moving into some of the history of Georgia. Today's lesson was about the first inhabitants of Georgia which were the mound building indians and in our area when Desoto came through looking for gold he would have gone through the area that the Cherokee Indians lived. There are three famous places in Georgia that are historic sites where you can visit the mounds. The most famous of these is the Etowah Indian Mounds found in Cartersville, Georgia. We hope to go visit them in the next couple of weeks. Today we went and visited a indian mound that is located just minutes from our house, The Nacoochee Indian Mound. Most of these mounds were used for burial or ceremonies.

Kicnic

Each year our homeschool group hosts a kicnic to start off the new school year. It usually consists of food and swimming. Luckily my pastor runs the local church camp and lets us use it each year. This is also a time where we invite families from the community who might be interested in homeschooling to meet us and ask any questions they might have about homeschooling. Today was fun. Lots of food and fellowship.

Yeah, Friday!!

We woke up this morning in a slow way, but needed to get alot accomplished in a short amount of time. We did do school this morning, quickly. Bible, math, history, science, grammar, Ranger Rick magazine, reading, and a liberty kids episode. Cooked lunch then headed to bank and post office and finally to the destination we had been working towards for three weeks. We are close to a family in our support group and have been trying to get together for about three weeks. First her family was sick then my aunt passed away. Usually Fridays are the only days that really work. So today we went to play, talk, and swim. Stayed until 5:00, left relunctantly and came home to meet hubby to head out for dinner and grocery shopping. Went to the new Super Walmart in Cleveland for big groceries. This new store cuts our drive time in half. Yeah!!! Now I am catching up on blogging and reading and hubby and Grace are watching Coraline for the 2nd time in two days.

Warrior Cats

As I have mentioned before Grace is crazy over the Warrior Cat series. Here are some of her creations. She loves creating cats and making up warrior names for them.

More School Fun

Workboxes for today:

1. Bible
2. Liberty Kids Episode
3. Math
4. Literature with written narration
5. Fill in Weather Chart for Georgia History
6. Spelling
7. Grammar
8. Cursive
9. Shortbread Recipe
10. Dk Eyewitness Book about American Revolution
11. Independent Reading

History and Science

Today we finished the nesting chapter in our Zoology book about flying creatures. One more chapter about birds then we are going to take a break from this book until the spring to study insects. I have a few science lapbooks and I let Grace look through them this afternoon to pick our next science topic. She picked gravity. So I am looking up different books to get from the library to compliment this lapbook. In history we continued reading Mr. Revere and I and Grace also read from If I Lived During the American Revolution. We took a trip to the library this afternoon and picked up some books and four audio books to use for our trip to Kentucky to listen ont he way there and back. It will be an eight hour trip each way. We also have one other audio book from the Narnia Series to finish. Heading over to my parents for dinner tonight. After dinner this will be my first night leading the middle school class. I am kind of nervous. Hoping everything will go well. I will let you know when I return.

Another Exhausting Day

Me and my mom went to Emory today to get her test results. The results weren't bad but they weren't great either. The ultrasound showed two nodules in her neck that are believed to be recurrence of the thyroid cancer. But the good news is her chest scan is clear. She has had 4 previous surgeries to remove these recurrences. It has gotten to the point that the nodules are very close to her vocal chords and trachea. Surgery might not be an option this go around. The oncologist is scheduleing a ultrasound guided biopsy to confirm that the nodules are cancer and not just scar tissue from previous surgeries. We are also looking at a new drug that attacks the cancer cell and turns the switch of the cell off so they will quit growing. Amazing what science is producing these days.

On a lighter note we didn't do much school today because I was gone all day with my mom. If I didn't mention it before, it takes us three hours of road time to get to Emory and back home. Grace did go to Trinity today and attended her drama and handicrafts class. She also got to spend time with her grandpa. This evening she is creating another blog, this one about the Warrior Cat Book Series. If anyone is interested in checking it out - www.homeschoolblogger.com/lifeofthewarriorcats. She is reading the series and has started the second book in the series and will be reading her 30 minutes or more tonight before bed. I guess you could still call this a school day with everything she has done. She also created some drawings of her own named warrior cats to hang in her room.

Monday Happenings

Boy was it hard getting up today. After the exhausting weekend we didn't get started with school until 10:30 this morning. I only filled 9 of our 12 workboxes. Narration is going very slowly. Grace is having a hard time listening to an entire chapter and then writing about it. We may have to go with less than a chapter to narrate. This is what we had in our workboxes today: Mr. Revere and I, Georgia History, Math, Spelling, Reading, Typing, Liberty Kids episode, Writing, and Bible.

Tomorrow I take my mom back to Emory. We will get test results to see if there is any cancer left in her body. My mom has been dealing with recurrent thyroid cancer for about 7-8 years. There was a woman at my aunt's funeral that came up to my mom and told her that God had told her that the cancer was gone this time and then they laid hands on her and prayed. We didn't know this person and still don't know who it was.

Recovering

The past few days have gone by in a blur. Words to describe: draining, exhausting, joyous, sad, grief stricken. I say joyous because I know she is no longer in pain or sick and is right where she wants to be. Friday night was the viewing for my Aunt and Saturday the funeral. Saturday was about a 12 hour day for all of us. After the funeral, meal, and burial service we all returned to my Aunt's house. She had prepared for every member of her family a letter, card and gift bag with items that she wanted each of us to have that were important to her. In my bag was my grandmothers 35th wedding anniversary ring (my grandparents passed away 18 years ago). There were other items also, but my grandmother's ring just blew me away. It was so thoughtful of her to think of what we would be going through and trying to make it a little better with her words. I will miss her terribly.

Sad News

My Aunt passed away tonight. I have spoken of her and her illness a few entries back and also on homeschoolblogger before I switched over to blogger. She was an incredible woman. One of the most godly woman I have every known. It is so hard to think of life without her here with us. But she was so ready to go and not afraid at all. Please pray for her children and our family. The funeral will probably be on Saturday, so this will be a very tough weekend. Grace is taking this especially hard.

Food Pantry and School

I thought I would take a picture today of our work space. Since we worked at the food pantry till 1:00 we had a shortened school day today. Here is what was in our workboxes:

1. 1. Bible 5. Spelling
2. 2. Math 6. Liberty Kids Episode
3. 3. History 7. Independent Reading
4. 4. Typing 8. Science

The picture above is Grace working on a paint by numbers set while she is watching an episode from Liberty Kids.

Our church started a food pantry about 5 months ago. The food pantry is open once a month and today was that day. We handed out 100 boxes of food. Next month we will add a clothes closet that will be open at the same time. There are two other churches that have food pantry. So between those two and our families can get free food every week of the month except the last week. I usually help families fill the form out to receive their boxes and Grace helps people to the cars with the boxes. It is always blessing to get to work at the food pantry.

First Day At Trinity

We have a private school in our community called Trinity Classical School. This is an accredited non traditional Christian school. A student can attend 2, 3 or 5 days a week. Core classes are taught on MWF and Fine Arts classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Over the past three years Grace has taken a couple of classes. She has attended chorus, piano, and drama. This year she choose drama again and added handicrafts. Today was her first day and she was so excited because she gets to wear a uniform and carry a book bag. These things are so important to kids her age it appears. In drama we will be first performing some short Christian plays and then we will move into our musical Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. In the spring we will be performing another musical, The Music Man. For those of you who follow Charlotte Mason Methods you know what a Handicrafts class would be all about. In our handicraft class it is broken down into 4 quarters. The first quarter is all kinds of Christmas crafts, then cake decorating, after Christmas it will be crocheting, and at the end of the school year will be macrame. She had such a good time today and can't wait to go back on Thursday. I stay because I volunteered to be a teacher's helper in both classes.

Monday Morning Back to School Blues

When we started school this morning, I thought it was going to be a bad day. Grace was just not in to it. I dragged her through her first three subjects - Bible, Spelling, and Typing. As I mentioned before in my other blog we are using workboxes this year. As we made it to the 4th box everything started improving. Until we reached the dreaded written narration. Grace does not like to write!!!!!! But I am committed that this year Grace will write two written narrations a week. One for history and the other from whatever we are reading in literature. Today was history. I let her decide if she wanted to write from what she read in If I Lived During the American Revolution or what I read from Mr. Revere and I. Of course she choose the easier which was what she was reading. Right now she is only writing about a paragraph. I hope by the end of this year we can get to two - three paragraphs. After writing the narration she came aruond and did every box willingly and happily. So she did end up earning herself a prize for the day from the prize bucket. I know she is 10 but she is really driven with a reward system. Make that a short term reward system. So a small dollar store prize each day works very nicely. Here is what was in our workboxes for today:

1. Bible
2. Spelling
3. Typing
4. History
5. Written Narration
6. Crossword Puzzle
7. Math
8. Make,write, and address a card to a friend
9. Georgia State History
10. Science
11. Geography Terms
12. Independent Reading

Sad Times

In my other blog I had discussed many times the journey of my Aunt with terminal breast cancer. Yesterday afternoon we got the call that it was time to come and say good bye. This woman is the most godly woman I know and is really ready to go and sit at the feet of Jesus. But it is really hard on the rest of us. She has 4 children, 2 step children, and 19 grandchildren. When we arrived there was a house full. My mother is taking this very hard because this is her little sister we are talking about. My aunt is having trouble breathing now and her respirations were 10 per minute when we left last night (my mother stayed). We are all a very close family and this is really killing us. I haven't heard anything the morning so I am sure everything is the same as last night. It is hard just sitting around waiting for someone to die. Grace was very upset last night, especially because I didn't take her with us. But none of the children were there and I know my Aunt would want the children to remember her as a vibrant person, not what she is right now. It is hard! It is incredibly hard to say good bye to her last night. She is in and out of it because of all the morphine she is on but still pretty lucid in what she wants to say to each person. Please keep her family in your prayers.

Plans for the Week

This week proves to be a very busy one:
Monday - School, library Visit

Tuesday - School, Fine Arts Classes at Trinity, Pick up Nephew and Babysit

Wednesday - School, Help at Food Pantry, Church

Thursday - School, Fine Arts Classes at Trinity

Friday - School, Playdate, Volleyball Game at Church

Queenhomeschool Favorites

I have mentioned on my other blog how much we love the products from Queenhomeschool. In the picture are ones that we are currently using or will be using soon.

• Spelling Through Copywork
• Learning How to Learn
• Pictures in Cursive Book E
• Language Lessons for the Elementary Child Book 2
• Study Guide for Mr. Revere and I

My Crew

Well, two of these our mine. Travis is 19 on the far left and Grace is 10 and in the red shirt. The other two are my niece and nephew. This was a trip we took recently for the extended family to have dinner at IHOP. We don't have a IHOP in our town and had to travel to another town about 45 minutes away. This was a special occasion, we were celebrating Travis getting his diploma. We also all had a really good time together.

Fall Kick Off for Our Church

Today was our kick off for the new year at church. After the 11:00 service we had a picnic up at the church camp and all the kids and adults if they wished went swimming. It was a wonderful time of fellowship but very hot. I almost wish I had brought my swimsuit to get in. I said almost! I have gained 13 pounds over the past year and it is really showing. Just can't seem to get myself motiviated to do much about it. About 3 years ago I lost 20 pounds. When I lost it I gave all my bigger clothes away, now I am wishing I had kept them because I can hardly fit into anything I have. Grace decided to leave the picnic with a friend so I have the house to myself. Of course a perfect time to work on my new blog.

Our Favorite Poodle

Here is our favorite poodle. Of course this is our only poodle. But we love her very much.

New to Blogger

I have decided to move over to blogger from homeschoolblogger. Blogger is so much easier to use, especially with adding pictures. I should probably introduce myself. My family lives in the Northeast Georgia Mountains. I have a 19 year old son that is finished with school for now and works full time. I also have a 10 year old daughter and we have just started the fifth grade. We have been homeschooling for three years and mostly use Charlotte Mason Methods. My other blog is www.homeschoolblogger.com/cabininthewoods if you would like to check out some other entires I have made over the past 1 1/2 years. It is late and I will publish more information tomorrow.