New Year's Resolutions

I decided several years ago that I was not making any more New Year's Resolutions. I cannot think of a single "worthy" resolution that I have kept for any length of time. Plus, I believe that if there is something about yourself you wish to change, you should not wait to change it.

However, I amended that resolution (ha!) later. I decided I could make one as long as it does not involve losing weight, exercising, or being organized. One year my goal was to get to bed every night before 10:00. THAT was a resolution that was easy to keep (back then it was, anyway - these days, not so much).

This year, my resolution can be summed in one word... read. This is going to be the year of the books. Now, I read quite a bit now, but it tends to all be children's books. Children's books are wonderful and fun, but I'm feeling the need to stretch myself.

So, I will be doing more reading for myself this year. Some of these books will stretch my mind mentally and spiritually and I will be a better person for having read them. Some of them will be pure fluff and mind candy, and that's okay. I will be reading... for me. And I will enjoy it.

Christmas Review

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas this year. We most definitely did.

I am now in recovery mode - trying to get everything cleaned up and organized after two weeks of fun. In fact, that is my goal for the time before we start school back up on the 7th. I have big plans for reorganization of some storage areas in our home.

Here's a quick overview of our Christmas this year.

Wanna See What I Made?

I get together with a group of friends once a month to scrapbook. We rotate homes and work on a layout from a kit put together by our Close to My Heart rep. Since we use her stamps and ink pads, it can be difficult to put them together at home if we missed a month. So, December was our month to "catch up" on any layouts we may have missed.

We went to Sandy's house and had a yummy lunch, then got to work. I chose to work on non-scrapbook projects that she had showed us in the past. I originally thought I would give them as gifts, but have decided to keep them for myself. I will, however, make them as gifts in the future.

We are going to hang this in the kitchen. (sorry for the glare spot)


The following is not actually finished yet, but I think they still look cute. They need to have another layer of decoupage, then I'm going to add ribbon and tags and other what-nots. (If you click on the picture, you can see it enlarged, but please don't. If you do, you'll see the dust that I thought would not show up in the photo. I was just so wrong about that.)

My picture looks all curvy, but I'm not sure why. Must be all that dust. :)


Aren't they purty? Merry Christmas to me!

Last Day to Vote!

I meant to post this reminder a couple of days ago, but then I got sick and, well, you know how it goes.

Go vote!! Now!! Vote!!

Today is the last day. Go!

(all links take you to the same place - here!)

A Dose of Christmas Realism

I love Christmas stockings. Love. Them. When I was a child, I would wake up on Christmas morning at dark-thirty and go to the den and check out the Christmas tree with all its presents underneath. I would always pull everything out of my stocking and see what was in there. There was never anything big, but I just loved it.

Since I married, I have wanted to make us beautiful, cross-stitch stockings. It hasn't happened. I have started the things more times than I can count and never gotten more than an inch or so done. And, since my children are rapidly aging (good grief, why can't they just slow down?! - but that's a whole other post), I've finally become realistic and admitted it's not going to happen.

So, yesterday, I ordered these. They are lovely, and just what I wanted. And, they only took me about 30 minutes to order, as opposed to months and months of painstaking, time-consuming, labor. And, hey!, you save $2.50 per stocking when you order three or more, so I saved money, too!

Now, off to shop for stocking stuffers...

P.S. I found out a couple of days ago that Robert also gets up very early Christmas morning and looks at everything in his stocking. Now, how can I possible be mad about that? LOL

12 Days of Christmas

I found this through TeacherBritt. It's great!

Winter Art Kit from Hearts and Trees

I've talked in the past about purchasing the Fall art kit from Hearts and Trees. We had a great time with it and I've been looking forward to the winter kit. (we did not finish all the fall projects, so I have things to save for next fall or fill "I'm bored!" days - yea!)

Well, the Winter Kit is now available! There are some great projects, including a fleece hat and a winter nature study lapbook. Those are just a couple of the projects available.

If you pre-order by December 7th, you are guaranteed a kit. After that, it's while-supplies-last. She's already had to increase her estimate, so I don't expect them to last long after the 7th.

You can find all the details here.

(BTW, I get nothing for recommending these kits. I'm just a very satisfied customer!)

In Which I Say the Word "Cute" Way Too Many Times

Ruthie has beautiful hair. It's thick, soft, and wavy. And, when the slightest bit of humidity hits, really, really... big. She has a very hard time caring for it. It always has tangles underneath, which doesn't help the "bigness" of it. She has wanted to cut it for quite awhile, but decided to wait for it to be long enough for Locks of Love.

Last week we made a haircut appointment for today and she decided it was THE DAY.

I took some pictures of the whole event.

Before... (Ironically, her hair was laying smooth and beautiful today.)



In the chair...


Notice 4 different ponytails. Lisa, who cuts our hair, said it was still hard to get the scissors through it. Like I said, thick hair.

The cutting begins...


And the final result (after being washed and cut properly)


Cute, cute, cute, cute, cute! I just love it! And, really, who wouldn't love to have wash-and-go hair?

And a picture at home, after it's dried, with her holding the cut hair.


Can I say it one more time?

Cute!

Remember to Vote!

Voting has started over at the Homeschool Blog Awards. Voting ends December 15th.

Weekly Report - November 12-30

I haven't done a weekly report for a few weeks, so I'm covering everything we've done during that time. Last week was very light because of Thanksgiving.

GRAMMAR

CLE Language Arts arrived and we have started. We just finished the first quiz and it's going pretty well.

READING

Lots and lots of books about the middle ages were read. We have studied castles and knights the last couple of weeks and the kids are really enjoying it. They've been disinterested in the middle ages up to this point.

Ruth is also reading the Chronicles of Narnia. She read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe previously, but the others shown have been within the past couple of weeks. Robert has finally finished Lad: A Dog. I asked him if he finally liked it at the end, but he said that he's liked it since the beginning. So why did it take him a full month to finish the book?!

HISTORY

We read about William the Conqueror this week. I wanted to share Robert's notebook page. He is learning chess now, and since it had its beginning in the middle ages, his picture is a chess "battle scene". (We are working on the writing portion. Robert gives very good oral narrations, but struggles with written .)

MEMORY

We're working on the poem The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I really like this poem, and the kids recognized the first couple of lines from a Foxtrot cartoon. Now, how's that for cultural relevance? LOL (please excuse how crooked this is - I just could not get it to scan straight)

SCIENCE

It's taken awhile, but we've finally finished up our sea turtles chapter. I thought we'd never get those last things finished! Kids made sea turtles and sea snakes for the ocean box. I promise the next pictures will show them actually in the box!

BIBLE

I am putting aside our regular Bible curriculum for a study of Christmas. We are doing a Jesse tree for the first time. In an effort to keep it simple (to make sure it gets done!) and inexpensive, we are using the scriptures and ornaments found here. I also found an excellent overview of Jesse trees here.

Coming up:

We will return to our study of Latin and do better with our composer and picture study. :)

Tracking Assignments

Keeping track of daily assignments has always been a struggle. I've tried several different methods - handwritten, daily assignment sheets, weekly assignment sheets, pre-printed, blank sheets with handwritten assignments. None of them work, mainly because we can't keep track of the sheets of paper and my children forget to check what has yet to be done.

So, I went back to something I used last year.


I have all our subjects listed, with columns for each child, written with wet-erase markers. Assignments are written by me daily with dry-erase markers. It is easy and impossible to misplace. :) (Please note that every single assignment from this chart is done. That hasn't happened since then, but I wanted to make sure you saw this it does happen here occasionally.)

I have also started using the Simply Charlotte Mason web-site organizer. I used to think the $10/month was too much, but after seeing it recommended by Christy at A Common Shepherdess, I decided to sign up for the 30-day trial. I figured if I used it for those 30 days, it would be worth the money (seeing as I've never stuck with any organization method that long - I am so ADD at times). I did and it is! I love it. It's easy to see daily assignments and check them off throughout the day. If I forget something, I can go back later and do it. Easy-peasy.

Another advantage to this method is that I get a break from the paper monster that threatens to take over my home. :)

This Could be a Real Bummer

Ruth told me today that her face feels "itchy" after eating fruit. I asked her how long this had been happening and she said for "awhile". She used to think it was normal. (!!!)

I did some research and found that most people that have fruit allergies also have pollen allergies. She definitely has those.

So, we are headed to the allergist tomorrow morning.

This girl loves fruit (really, really loves it), so removing it from her diet will be very painful. Would you say a prayer that this is not serious?

UPDATE: We saw the allergist today. We got a prescription for an epi-pen and prednisone for an emergency situation. Ruth got blood drawn for that type of allergy test. If it doesn't show the results we expect, we'll have to do the skin test. She cannot have any fruit until we go back in two weeks and get the results.

Happenings

The latest...

I took Robert on a Cub Scout camping trip this weekend. It went okay until the rain started Saturday night. The thunder and lightning lasted 4 hours! Thankfully, Robert slept through most of it. We got 6 inches of rain. At 5 am I found more than 3 inches of that rain in our tent. I had forgotten to close the bottom zipper on the door. (I'm smart that way.) Ugh. We were dry because we were on a blow-up mattress, but just about everything else was soaked. I decided then and there we were headed home. So we packed up and left. My rain poncho split down the front while loading the car, so I got soaked and filthy. It was so good to get home and be warm and dry again.

I found out this weekend that somebody is using my personal information (name, address, phone number) to create and forge checks. Not on our account, thank goodness, but I am getting the bounced check notifications and am having to deal with that. Identity theft is no fun, let me tell you.

We will be having more than 25 people at our house on Thanksgiving Day. I think it's going to be a great day, but I'm beginning to be stressed about cleaning my house and things like that. I'm trying to concentrate on thankfulness, and not on impressing everyone with my spotless home. :)

I hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday!

Rhonda

Don't Forget to Make Your Nominations!

The deadline for nominations at Homeschool Blog Awards is Saturday, November 17th. Don't forget!!

It Must be All Those Weekly Reports

That's the only reason this makes any sense whatsoever.




(And am I the only person who immediately thinks "Wile E. Coyote - Su-per Ge-nius"?)

HT: The Common Room

Cat Alarm Clock

I found this very funny. We have two very silent cats. One of them, however, has been known to come meow in my ear very loudly in the early hours of the morning if her food bowl is empty. I'm pretty sure she would take it this far if I didn't get up. LOL

HT: Accidental Blogger

Weekly Report - November 5-9

Science

We studied sea turtles this week. We learned that the leatherback turtle can get as big as 9 feet long. That just astounds me. For an activity, we drew a life-size model of this mammoth turtle on our driveway. Both of my kids fit inside it! (You may need to click on the picture to see the turtle. I had a hard time getting it to show up in a photo.)

Math

I had gotten behind in grading math papers. I caught up this week and discovered that Ruthie is really having problems with multiplication facts. So, she spent this week correcting math papers and drilling multiplication. She hates drill, so this was not a good math week for her.

Art

We did another project from our fall art pack that I bought. I (again) want to highly recommend this if you're craft challenged like me. She has sold out of fall packs, but is currently working on a winter one that will be available in January. Hmmm... I guess that means I'm on my own for Christmas crafts. Bummer.

Ruthie painted fall trees using warm watercolors. Robert was not interested in this, but he did make the origami dog.

Language Arts

We are not continuing our use of Bravewriter's Arrow. I discovered that it's just too unstructured for me. Grammar and writing do not come to me instinctively. I have to work at making sure my children get enough of this and are learning it correctly. The Arrow is just not enough for me to feel confident in this area.

So, we are back to BJU for writing. I did decide to try CLE for grammar (still trying to simplify this subject). I gave them the placement test and ordered the first couple of light units to try it out. Hopefully those will come this week.

Geography

I wanted to share a new notebook I made. This one is for our U.S. geography study. I had to divide it into separate notebooks because my comb binding machine doesn't allow for more than 60 or so pages in a notebook. (I want to upgrade to a better one before next school year.)

There are dividers for the different sections of states. Each state has a map (Uncle Josh's Outline maps) and a coloring page with state bird and flower (links for those found in this post).

I love our notebooks. They keep everything organized and help tame the paper monster.

Motivation

The threat of having to clean a toilet is very effective in getting a certain boy to do his math.

Google Notebook

I recently discovered Google Notebook. I'm still discovering the full functionality of this feature, but I figured out a use that is coming in very handy for me.

I use our online library catalog all the time to check if our library has books and request them. I often need books for our history studies and need them particular weeks. One feature I wish our online library had is an ability to save lists of books I will need to reserve at a future date. I am often misplacing my list of what the library has and then forget to request the book.

Enter Google Notebook! I made a notebook for library books. I copied the URL for the book search result and add it to the notebook. In the comment section of the entry I put the name of the book and the week I will need it. Ta-da!

This makes my life simpler and it's nifty neat-o, too. :)

Homeschool Blog Awards

I haven't mentioned it here, but I am part of the Homeschool Blog Awards team. I am posting there twice a month and will be assisting with all that's involved in making the whole process run smoothly.

I'm mentioning it now because nominations start TODAY! Make sure you head over there and nominate your favorite homeschool blog. There are a lot of different categories and there will be some great prizes.

Make sure your favorite blog gets the recognition it deserves!