New Shelving

I took this pic this morning just to show how much Grace is engrossed in the Warriors Series. She started the 4th book today.

My Christmas present this year was a new shelving unit and desk that hubby built for the school room. This top picture is a collage of animal pictures I put on the desk top. Everything was built on a very low budget, so we used mdf board which is not pretty, hence the collage on the desk top.

The shelving on the right was my Christmas present two years ago - we had outgrown it very fast. The desk is new and houses all things computer. The top shelf under the computer has all of Grace' art books and notebooks. She takes her drawing very seriously.

Here is a more close up of the desk.

This is the new shelving unit. The only thing that is missing is the bottom shelf will have a door with a cork board on the front. This will keep all the tall items (easel, posters, etc.) that will not fit on a regular sized shelf.

We already had this shelving which now houses the workboxes.

The Cabin Faced West

Today we finished The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz. I just have to write how much I like this book and even though Grace isn't always ready to admit how much she likes something, she really liked it to. The fact that parts of the book are true and about a real person was great. Grace really like that Ann got to meet General George Washington. He has always been one of Grace's favorites from history. Him and Ben Franklin. In the last chapter where Ann says, "My cup runneth over", I just about cried. Such a sweet story. Just thought I would pass it along.

Today was Back to Business

Much to Grace's dismay we did have to get back to work today. It took us about three hours to do everything we had planned. Eleven workboxes were filled. Today consisted of Bible, Science, History, Geography, Math, English, Blokus, Art, and Spelling. After school Grace started blogging and playing online some. She also started drawing a really big dragon that she might enter into an art contest that will be at a show with her dad. The TV still hasn't gotten turned on. It is almost 10 pm and we are about to go watch Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives. We don't miss an episode every Monday night. Then she will come back up and read for about thirty minutes. All in all I think our first day back from Christmas Break went really well.

New Year's Resolutions

I have read alot over the past couple of days about resolutions. I am not one to usually set any for myself. But after reading so many it has gotten me to thinkin maybe I should. I will be working on this post over a couple of days to really think hard about it.

1. Invite friends and family over for dinners/game nights at least once a month. I really feel this is important for fellowship with like minded folks.
2. Read my Bible more on my own. Me and Grace read daily together and we are doing a Bible Study about the book of Proverbs, but I feel I should be taking some quiet time of my own and reading also.
3. Try to perform one random act of kindness each week. I know I should be doing this daily, but lets start with weekly.
4. Exercise. I have recently lost about 15 pounds and I am happy with where I am on the scale, but I did most of this through watching what I eat. I really need to add exercise to the plan this year.

Great Giveaway

The Homeschool Classroom is having a great giveaway. Make sure you go and visit.

Visit www.hsclassroom.net.

New Purchases

Over the past two week I have purchased some new materials to use when we start back to school on Monday. There is a teachers resource store that I purchased some of the items from. I felt we really needed to beef up our Language Arts materials. Above is a book with a vocabulary word a day to learn and flash cards with a short paragraph and questions for comprehension.

The spectrum books are pretty good. The past 1 1/2 years we used Language Lessons from Queenhomeschool but I thought a small change was in order.

A book for dictionary use.

Another grammar book.

This one actually was a Christmas present with short stories about dragons from E. Nesbit. Grace is crazy about all things dragons.

Love all products from Queenhomeschool. This is the final book in her cursive series. We took a break from cursive for a few months but need to get back to it.

Just about finished with Making Math Meaningful. I have read alot about Life with Fred and now Queenhomeschool is carrying it. It looked very interesting so we decided to try it next, especially since she need more work with fractions.

Catch Up

Thought I would take a few minutes and catch everyone up on the last few days at our house. Mom went to her second chemo treatment on Wednesday. She was very sick all day yesterday. Please keep her in your prayers. She seems to be a little better this morning. Will go by and see her soon. My desktop computer got a bad virus and had to send it off to be scanned and cleaned. That took about three days. My husband's laptop died about two weeks ago and is off hopefully being repairs. I was going a little crazy without a computer in the house and no way to check emails and blogs. Oh my gosh!!! Anyway we were bad and went and bought a new laptop yesterday. It is so nice. Today is building day in our schoolroom. I got a desk and shelving units for Christmas. Looking forward to seeing it all put together. Also looking forward to getting back to a more structured schedule with school on Monday. I will taking pics of the new school room in a couple of days. We are going to put the desktop down there for the family and I will keep the laptop with me. Really didn't do anything last night for New Years. Hubby had to work and my 19 year old was home and asleep by midnight. So that just let me and Grace to ring in the New Year together. Lots of fireworks which greatly disturbed the dogs. Took a while to get them back settled down. I caught up on some crocheting and TV shows. Tonight is dinner at a friends house and Scott will probably be working on his art most of the weekend after the shelving is completed.