Traumatic Morning But Ended on a Happier Note

For a Memorial Day Holiday it started with rain the entire night and morning. We decided to just stay in and read, paint, draw, etc. and relax. The dogs started barking in the late morning and I went down to check out the culprit. You have to understand that my dogs, bark at everything including leaves falling from trees, so I didn't figure it was much to get excited about. When I reached the kitchen and looked out the window I found a big brown dog in bunny's pen and another dog near by. I immediately yelled for Scott and I opened the door to start yelling at the dogs to leave thinking bunny was probably under his hutch where he likes to sleep. But I immediately saw his lifeless body in the corner of the pen. The neighborhood dogs had killed him. Grace was destroyed and me and Scott weren't much better. Scott got in his car to find the dogs because we had never seen the before. The owners ended up living about four houses down from us on the main road. They normally have the dogs on chains or leashes when walking but they got away from them this morning and ran off. They were very sorry and offered to get Grace a new bunny ( we probably won't do that again - bunny was a stray that just happened in to our yard almost two years ago) but Scott did tell the owners if the dogs come back in our yard (because we have a really small dog in our backyard fence that we don't want harmed) they run the risk of consequences. About this time our son came home and today is his 20th birthday. We celebrated with a pizza lunch and cookie cake for dessert. The family party will be next weekend when we also celebrate Grace's 11th birthday. It was good to have the birthday celebration today because it got our mind off of bunny for a little while. Tonight Grace will go to her first practice for The Wizard of Oz. Interested to see what kind of costume we are looking at purchasing/making.

Monster Moth

After church today we went to McDonalds for lunch and this is what we saw on the door. Huge legs and body. In the picture below we put a cup beside it so you guys could get an idea as to the size of this moth.

All About the Art

Tonight we went to a reception at a local art gallery that has some of of Scott's art work displayed. Every six - eight weeks they change it up and add new pieces from each artist. Scott had three pieces to contribute. Unfortuantely you can't take pictures inside the gallery and I can't seem to lay my hands on the memory card here at the house. If you are interested in viewing some of his new works you can visit him at http://www.artofscottk.blogspot.com . The picture above is a book I have been eyeing for a couple of months. Each time we go to a reception I see it and this time I actually had the money to purchase it. It is Wildlife Whimsy by Milton Lewis Smith and illustrations by Patsy Lewis-Gentry. It is kind of like a field guide but also a book of short stories about encounters with the wildlife. I hope to read through it with Grace for Nature Study in the new school year.

The picture above is another drawing by Grace. She has become interested in hands lately. In her art classes she has been working with shading and perspective. It was good to see her do a little bit of shading in the hand. Pencil drawings are really hard to get picture of and show up the detail.

Answer

For those that asked about the beaver - no he is not real. But funny you should ask because we were walking back from the salamander catch and the kids reached the table before some of us adults. One of the kids ran back to us and yelled "There's a beaver on the table", of course she didn't mention it was stuffed.

Field Trip

This year we haven't been able to go on many field trips due to a number of reasons that I won't go in to now. But today we did and it happened to be the last trip for our support group for the school year. We visited Smithgall Woods for a beaver talk and salamander catch.

The kids had a blast catching salamanders in the creek. Grace caught three. We learned that Georgia has the most species of salamanders - 51 - in the United States and that the Southeastern United States has the most species in the world.

It was great to see some of the group members and hang out. The talks were very informative and the kids really had a great time.

180 = Done

Yeah! Yesterday was our official last day of school. In Georgia the requirement is 180 days. But as I mentioned before we will continue some school throughout the summer. We have a few things we really need to review so we won't forget them and some books to finish. Finished all the actual math curriculum but purchased a review workbook to go through plus some review of fractions so she won't completely forget it. Some of the read alouds and books I want her to finish are Young Brahms, By the Shores of Silver Lake, the second book in the Percy Jackson Series and lots of history choices. I think next will be the California Gold Rush. Also we have recently started Easy Grammar and she has learned so much with it I don't won't to stop for two months and risk her forgetting everything she has already learned. Of course Bible will stay too. Probably regular school for us will start back up the second week of August unless drama camp doesn't happen then it will be the first week of August.

A Secret

Okay, I am going to admit something here that alot of you may be shocked about. I know alot of homeschoolers don't watch TV, don't even have cable. We are actually working on that, probably ditching the cable in 1-2 weeks getting a roku box and just watching Netflix live without those commercials that your kids have to sit through that you would rather them not see. But that's not the secret. I love TV programs. Always have. I don't watch things that I would have watched in the past though. I gave up rated R movies a couple of years ago and haven't really missed them. I watch alot of BBC shows on Netflix from England. But one of the television shows I have stuck with for the whole run is "Lost". Last night I watched the two hour finale and it was great. It ended just like I thought it was going to and the great thing about the ending was it gave you the impression that they had all died and gone to Heaven. There was a bright light. It was great to see all the cast back together again like a reunion. Very moving. Ended it just like it should. I hope that some of you out there won't think any less of me for my TV viewing habits. I don't watch anything during the day or early evening, usually once the house is quiet I pick one or two programs to watch before bed. I usually crochet, quilt, or cross stitch while watching. If there are some other TV watchers out there - what are some of your favorite programs?

Time

This is our first week where we really don't have to be anywhere else. What I mean is, since the end of August last year every Tuesday and Thursday we were a Fine Arts classes for three hours. It will be nice to be able to relax and not have to be somewhere in the mornings on those days. Of course she still has a private art lesson once a week and volunteers at the library one morning a week. I have totally overbooked us for the summer starting in about three weeks. Great things just keep popping up that we can do. It all started with the acting bug and Grace auditioning for Wizard of Oz - got a bit part and rehearsals start next week but doesn't get intense until mid July. Last summer she went to Mosaic Arts Camp held by another church in town - only $25.00 and she wanted to go again, this time she will be taking pottery, sculpting, and Art II and that is in June. Next she asked me if another church in town will have Eden Art Camp like they did last year - well we got home and there was an email about Eden Art Camp. Signed up for it in the beginning of July. We learned yesterday that there will be a Volleyball camp to get ready for the volley ball season in the Fall that we will be attending in July also. Last but probably not least the teacher I helped with drama all this past year asked if I was interested in helping her with a drama camp where the kids will do Christian dramas. Of course I couldn't say no - that will be in August. So as you can see we will have no time again. Also all through the summer she will be doing the private art lessons and volunteering at the library. Grace's gifts are in the arts, so I try to let her do as much as she wants in those fields. Sometimes academics take a back seat but isn't that why we homeschool, to give our children a chance ti excel in the things they do well.

Geeky Homeschool Mom

Just like all other home school moms out there, this time of the year is probably a favorite for many. Planning time. Looking through catalogs. Purchasing items. I feel like I should be wringing my hands together and laughing a maniacal laugh. Anyway - thought I would share what we have come up with for 6th grade year that will start in early August. We will be doing summer school but will only include: math, history read alouds, literature read alouds, reading and grammar. We will finish up our nature studies of garden plants too. First I will show our weekly schedule and in another post specifically what we will be using for each subject.

Monday
Typing
Visual Memorization
Math
Spelling
Bible
Scripture Memorization
Literature
Narration
History
Science
Grammar

Tuesday
Nature Study
Hymn Study
Cursive
Math
Dictation
Bible
Scripture Memorization
Literature
Story of the World readings
Science
Writing

Wednesday
Artist Study
Art
Cursive
Math
Spelling
Bible
Scripture Memorization
Literature
History
Science
Grammar

Thursday
Composer Study
Foreign Language
Math
Dictation
Bible
Scripture Memorization
Literature
Story of the World readings
Science
Writing
Geography - map drills

Friday
Missionary Stories with the Millers
Foreign Language
Math
Spelling
Bible
Scripture Memorization
Literature
Narration
History
Science
Grammar

One afternoon a week will be drama, another afternoon will be private art lessons and in the Fall a few will be devoted to volleyball (which is forming a new team at Trinity Classical School).

Feeling Better and Some Random Pics

Thanks so much to everyone who commented and calmed my nerves. A special thanks to one of my teacher friends that researched for me a different test to pursue that looks much easier. Also Grace can take the test with her. We finally finished all our final performances for choir and drama. The above pic is their performance of Hamlet at the local library for some senior citizens and students from a small local private school. We are very glad to take a breather. The pic below is Grace's final two projects from her handicraft class. I have been working on our schedule for next year and what subjects we will under take. I am very excited about the new year adding in a foreign language (just for fun). I hope to post our plans soon once everything is finalized. Thanks again for all the nice comments on my previous post.

Freaking Out!!!!!

Grace will have to take the California Achievement Test at the end of next year which will be her 6th grade year. Our state requires us to take a test every three years beginning in 3rd grade but we don't have to turn in the results. Kind of crazy, huh! Anyway a teacher friend of mine emailed me a sight to find out what types of questions might be on the 6th grade version. I just looked at everything and I am freaking out! Every math problem is a word problem, and half of the questions like: probability, geometry, and algebraic equations we haven't even learned at all yet. The history/social science questions mostly focused on ancient history and we have be in depth in American history for the past 1 1/2 year and still have one more year to go. I already have our year planned out and don't really want to change it. What to do?!

Exhausting Day

Anytime we have to travel to Emory for appts it is an exhausting day. Grace didn't want to go with us this go around so I worked it out for her to stay with a friend and her mother. The mother is a teacher at Trinity. I sent some school work with Grace to work on in the morning and then in the afternoon everyone was going swimming. We left about 8:45 this morning, dropped Grace off at Trinity and then got on the highway to head for Emory. Today was to be just one appt with mom's doctor. You never know how long you are going to have to wait for this particular doctor. Ended up waiting one hour in the waiting room and 1 1/2 hours in the exam room. We have finally gotten mom regulated on one chemo pill once a day for the past three weeks, will go one more week then up it to one pill twice a day. In five week some more lab work and CT scan then one week later appt with doctor for results. Got home about 4:30. Good thing Grace didn't go this time, too much waiting. She would have gone nuts. She decided to spend the night with the same friend tonight. My night will consist of helping Travis (my other child that I don't talk about very much) finish his mid term portfolio for his college English class.

School Today

Today was another Nature Study Challenge. We have just started a section on garden flowers. Grace picked a bloom off the geranium to use with our diagram of plant parts. We decided to glue the diagram in the nature journal with a drawing of the geranium bloom. After that Grace dissected the bloom to see the inner workings of a flower. Only two more chapters on our study about The Alamo, which has been very interesting. Next in history will be The Oregon Trail. I have three books to share with Grace on the subject. In math we have only a couple more chapters in our Life of Fred book about Fractions and the remainder of the summer will be review over many different math concepts to keep them fresh in her mind. I am very excited about a project I have undertaken. I have been very undecided as to what to use for math next year. Love the Life of Fred books but feel we need to add more to it especially since she will be tested at the end of this year. Teaching textbooks was at the top of my list, but at a price of $150.00 just for one year I balked. So here is what I did, I took the table of contents of what she would be learning with 6th grade and created our own math curriculum with free worksheets from the Internet. When the time comes to learn percents and decimals I will purchase the next Life of Fred book for $20.00 and go from there. Today also found us with grammar, spelling, narration writing from one of the books on the Alamo, Bible, dictation, and a story from Missionary Stories with the Millers.

As I mentioned before Grace has started some private art lessons and the above picture was some homework from that class. She was asked to draw the differences of eye shapes from different types of animals. She decided to include the hooves for each animal also. In the above pic she did a horse, bird, dog, and cat.

Grace drew this today while we were reading a chapter from By the Shores of Silver Lake. We decided that we wanted to start watching the Little House Series again so I put some on our list with Netflix. Have I mentioned lately how much we love Netflix. In the next couple of weeks we plan on ditching cable and getting a roku box to watch Netflix live on our TV.

Shakespeare Performances

Grace's drama class has been practicing Shakespeare for a couple of months. Today was there final performance at the school. The Elementary Class performed Hamlet and Along Came A Knight (not Shakespeare), the High School Class performed Taming of the Shrew. It was wonderful. It never ceases to amaze me the talent in these two small groups. Also the memorization that goes on for all the lines with Shakespeare. I took this photo right before we left for the school. The Elementary Class has one more performance of Hamlet to do next week and then will perform it at the local library. I thought we were going to have a break from Drama for a while but between Wizard of Oz in July and drama camp in August, it looks like it will turn out to be a year long endeavor. But Grace loves it and thrives on performing.

End of the Workboxes

Just like alot of homeschoolers I was swept up in the workbox revolution. We did workboxes for almost a year. But, alas, all things must come to an end. Grace will be starting 6th grade in the fall and it just seems a little young for her. As well as the fact that there aren't many hands on things that we put in the workboxes anymore. The workboxes never really accomplished what I wanted them too, which was, help her work more independently. She still had me go over to each box and get out the next assignment. So about two weeks ago the workboxes went away. Of course I still had 12 shoe boxes that needed a home, so we decided to use them for art supplies. Has worked out wonderfully. Now I write out everything she needs to do on a piece of paper for that day. Starting in the late summer Grace will be doing her science completely on her own and if I can get the money together to purchase Teaching Textbooks that will be added to the independent list. In History I have started assigning one book of her own to read and I will still read a different book about the same time period aloud. Spelling, cursive and dictation will be independent also. Composer study, artist study, literature, poetry, and art lessons will be done together.

No Sun

This is the third day with clouds/rain and no sun. After a day or two it is just plain depressing without the sun in the sky. Hopefully as the day wears on it will get better. Yesterday was another busy day. Grace attended her fine arts classes at Trinity (only three more classes) and had a choral performance last night. In the afternoon we did some school. We have started the Easy Grammar book that I purchased at the convention and really liking it. Grace has already learned prepositional phrases, infinitives and helping verbs. I think she like it too. Moving right along in our Life of Fred book with only 6 more lessons to go before finishing. Then we will work on review through the summer to keep her mind fresh. I still think that I will purchase the 6th grade Teaching Textbooks for the new year. I really like the Life of Fred series and the next book is Percents and Decimals, but this will also be a year for standardized testing (we do it every three years per state law) and I feel she really needs to review everything over the year to prepare for it. We might do Life of Fred again next summer for review of percents and decimals because she really does like the series. We hope to do a small field trip today to a nursery for our next Outdoor Hour Challenge, we are starting garden flowers. Really enjoying nature study these days even with no sun. Mom and dad are still good over this past week and a half which is a real blessings. We haven't gone this long without any problems in a while.

Green Hour Challenge #9 One Small Square

I can't tell you how much we are enjoying nature study these days. I had printed out all the green hour challenges at least 1 1/2 years ago and never really did much with them. Right now we are trying to do 2 a week and finish up alot of them over the summer before we go back into our regular science material. The top and bottom picture is the area we were in today. Only 100 feet from our local park is this back woods trail and meadow, following along the Soque River.

Along the river bank we discovered this hole that we believe to be the den of a ground hog. We have alot of ground hogs in our area.

The next two pics are of our actual small square area. We kind of cheated a little. At the beginning of the trail we looked down and saw snake skin and immediately declared this our small square. We also found an ant, leaves, earthworm and a egg sac of some sort. When we went further down the trail we found more snake skin. Brought some of it home and glued into our nature journal.

Here is the first one we found.

Good Weekend

Just some random thoughts to pass along:

Mom and dad are doing better. Dad is visiting a chiropractor three times a week for his back and has pulled himself off of the pain killer and muscle relaxers that were making him just not act like himself in so many ways. Mom has not had anymore chest pains and is tolerating the low dose of her chemo pill well. Hoping and praying that everything continues to stay on an even keel.

Friday - Went over to a good friends house for a playdate. Grace and the other girls swam all afternoon. Also got to visit baby chickens and a baby goat that looks like a skunk in coloring and named Flower. Lots of good conversation and visiting. Hubby met us at the Mexican restaurant for dinner afterwards.

Saturday - Me and mom went out in the morning to do some shopping and just be together. After lunch went to a family graduation party for my cousin who is graduating with a masters in art from Georgia State University. Good to spend time with all the family. All the kids and hubby played croquet all afternoon.

Sunday - Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there in blog land. My son gave me a wireless printer. Yeah! We have been without a working printer for more than six months. Grace gave me a ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. She knows they are my favorite. My sister's family and us went to my moms after church for a mother's day lunch. Yum! Fried chicken. Mom actually got to go to church this morning, it has been awhile. I know it was good for her.

This Week

In one way this has been a busy week and in another it has been like any other week. Finishing up the Fine Arts classes for the year with our final performances next week. It will be good to have Tuesdays and Thursdays back for some academics and just relaxation. School is going right along, working in some of the new items that I purchased at the convention this past weekend. Grace gets to go to her first private art lesson today, she is very excited about it. Health issues still abound with mom and dad. Dad is still in pain so has started with a chiropractor three times a week but feels it will take up to six weeks to see some results. Mom had two episodes this week that are like chest pains, just like the one that landed her in the hospital a couple of months ago. She decided to plug along with the medication and didn't have any problems yesterday or today so far. Scott is getting put back on the day shift/5 days a week, for the past year he has worked the night shift/4 days a week. He is not really happy about it, it really decreases on the time that he can work on his art. Grace volunteered at the library yesterday, normally we go on Monday afternoons but not much going on during that time frame. Decided to change it and go right after story hour each week and help clean up. Grace is working really hard at learning how to shelve books - dewy decimal system and alphabetizing fiction books. It will take time but each week she gets a little better at it.

Artist Study

Just like in composer study we have been woefully behind in artist study. I really love the postcard size paintings that you can get from www.doverpublications.com. I picked up the two pictured above to use over the next couple of months and today at a used book store found one on Van Gogh. So if we do one artist a month I will be covered until August. Really Charlotte Mason recommended to study them longer than a month, but Grace starts get bored with just one artist for any longer than that time frame. Tomorrow we will start with Whistler.

Treasure Trove

Even with all the rain we have had over the past couple of days we decided to do our nature walk this afternoon. I am sure glad we did. In one small area of about 3 x 3 we found a treasure trove of God's handiwork. The above pic is a wolf spider with egg sac. Kind of creepy but fascinating to see from a distance. Can you imagine how many baby spiders there are in this egg sac. For obvious reasons (Grace does not like spiders), we did not choose this guy for our focus today.

Now this guy is a different story. Grace was thrilled to find a land snail and immediately picked it up to bring in for a pet. She did draw him in her nature journal and added some details about what he likes to eat and if they give live birth or hatch from an egg. They hatch with just one spiral on their shell, and continue to get more spirals as they grow. So we currently have Gary in a small pet keeper for Grace to observe for awhile.

All of our honeysuckle bushes are about to open up.

Queen Homeschool Products

I was excited to see that Queen Homeschool was at our convention again this year. Always love their products. This year I decided to add From Egypt to Canaan book and study guide to our Bible curriculum. Right now we are in the Greenleaf Guide to the Old Testament but once we get to the book of Exodus we will take a break and switch over to From Egypt to Canaan. Also purchased the new spelling book we needed. Probably will review on spelling city all this summer the spelling words we learned this past year and then start the new book in July or August. If you are not familiar with Queen Homeschool's products you really need to jump over to their website and take a peek. www.queenhomeschool.com.

Composer Study

Up until about three months ago I was teaching an art/composer study co-op at my house twice a month. Due to my parent's health I had to stop teaching the class. I have woefully been neglectful since that time with us doing composer or art study on our own. While I was at the convention the past couple of days I made it a priority to get some materials that would ignite the fire again. In the picture above is the items I choose for the next few months for composer study. I am truly excited about starting these. This is a series by Opal Wheeler. I choose Franz Schubert and his Merry Friends and The Young Brahms. Each book comes with a small study guide and a companion CD with music and other printables on it. I think we will start one of them on Tuesday. Tomorrow I will share some of the materials I purchased for art study. For those of you who read my blog and don't home school, I am sorry just bear with me and soon all these curriculum posts will be over.