Dust Bunnies And Books

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http://dustbunniesandbooks.blogspot.com/

I don’t know about y’all but it always seems to be about this time of year that I start wondering if I’m doing enough, wondering how we’ll “get it all” done, trying to figure out what to do next year, trying to figure out how my youngest thinks (and sometimes the oldest too!), etc.  I tend to dig out some books of encouragement (and go to Convention!) to recharge my batteries.

Anyone else feel like this toward the end of the year????   Just wondering what books encourage you?

Here are a few of my favorite that I try to at least skim each year:

Educating the Whole-Hearted Child by Clay & Sally Clarkson  (supposedly a new edition is coming out, but it’s been delayed since last fall)

Ignite the Fire by Terri Camp

Real Learning:  Education in the Heart of the Home by Elizabeth Foss (while I’m not Catholic and the author is, she says A LOT of things that I can appreciate)

Mitten Strings for God (not about homeschooling, but just generally parent encouragement)

I Saw the Angel in the Marble by Chris & Ellyn Davis  (and their new one, I Carved the Angel from the Marble)

Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe by Todd Wilson

So what encourages you to stay the course that God has called you to…..

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The snow was really coming down!

I think the horses were wishing for hot mash this morning!

Wasn’t The Pond beautiful this morning?!

In the woods….

From the woods to the field….

In the field….

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It’s hard to believe we’re in March now.  Most our snow has melted, and now we’re dealing with mud and floods.  It took me an extra half an hour to get to the chiropractor last week because I had to find a road that wasn’t flooded.  Fortunately, the house is on higher ground.

The weekends since my last update have been spent with illnesses. First, it was dh with the flu, then the following weekend I had a migraine that put me down for two days, and then this past weekend I had the flu. I miss church!!!! I was not able to do daily reading for my Bible in 90 Days, but I should still finish before the end of March if I get in daily reading now. I’m in Acts. I seriously never thought I’d make it this far! I can’t wait until I can say that I have read the Bible completely through.

What is it about nearing the end of a school year that makes you try to cram more in??? Is it automatically a time of reflection and seeing that you didn’t do all you wanted to? Sigh…. Well, dd13 has been asking to do Latin. This week we started William E. Linney’s book, Getting Started with Latin (subtitled Beginning Latin for Homeschoolers and Self-Taught Students of Any Age). His website, GettingStartedWithLatin.com, is a treasure trove of free resources that go with the lessons in the book. It’s a gentle introduction with short lessons. Very doable. We downloaded the mp3 files from the website and dd13 reads the lesson from the book, then listens to the audio file that contains that lesson’s commentary. Then, if there’s any written work in the book, she writes it in her Latin journal. We will also be doing Science Roots by Paula Hasseler. DD13 will be doing Marine Biology at co-op next year and Science Roots will help. She’ll be making the cards as recommended, as well as making a ring of cards to flip through for review. (The card ring will contain the Science Roots and the words she learns from Getting Started With Latin and be used for review.)

Also, I will be adding in VocabAhead’s SAT: Vocabulary Cartoons, Videos, and MP3s. We have done the Vocabulary Cartoon books by the Burchers before , but they always fall by the wayside. When you purchase the VocabAhead book, you are granted rights to download a 547M zipped file that contains videos and audios to go along with the lessons in the book. I plan on having DD13 read the lesson and then either watch the video or listen to the audio. Every 10 words I will give her the quiz that’s in the book. Again, short lessons that are very doable.

Let’s see…what else has been going on? Oh yeah, we got 16 new baby chicks!! They’re adorable and about a week old now! Our other chickens are almost 2 years old and barely gave us any eggs this winter. They’ve started laying again some, but are destined to become “chicken pot pie”  soon.  Shhh…don’t tell them!

With our tax refund, we decided to invest in a Hearthstone Wood Stove.    I wanted something that I’d be able to cook on if our electric went out….which happens from time to time.  We found a used one for sale at a third the cost of a new one.  Getting a good fire going has been a learning curve, but I think we’ve got it now.  It has a soapstone top and sides to retain heat better.  We’ve been mesmerized each evening by its beautiful flames.  We boiled water on it and made a cup of tea this evening.

As for our homeschooling, we’re still plugging along.  DD13 is on Module 13 of Apologia’s General Science.  I saw that Knowledge Box Central has revised their lapbooks.   Overall,doing the study guide lapbook has been great.  However, a few of the components were not well thought out and obviously not put together before being released for sale.  I look forward to seeing the changes made to the General Science one.

DD13 is continuing her Art Fundamentals class at co-op again.   She continues to work on Saxon 8/7 and is almost finished with her fourth Life of Fred math book, Pre-Algebra with Economics.

DD10  is continuing the Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry at co-op again.  She also started crocheting and health classes there.   At home, she continues to work on Math-U-See Epsilon, which focuses on fractions.  She’s having a tougher time with fractions.  Though she understands the concepts greats, she’s rushing and making silly mistakes too often.

We continue to do Fix-It and It All Begins with Genesis, each once per week.  We should be finished with both of these in early May.  At that point, we’ll pick back up with IEW’s Student Writing Intensive-B and do Teaching the Classics.   I just can’t seem to get everything in, so I’ll wait until these other two items are finished.

We are continuing with with Mystery of History Volume 1.  Not sure how we got so far behind, but we just finished the first half of the book.  The girls are really enjoying it, and we will continue the series next school year.  (I’ve already purchased it!)     We finished Rise of the Golden Cobra, which became another book the girls begged me to read.   (FYI:  I did have to edit two or three minor things in the story.)   I have loved how the books I’ve chosen this year were mostly books they would have never picked up on their own, yet by the time we were done reading it, they were sad to see it end.

I did pre-read a couple other titles that I had hoped to use in our history.  Unfortunately, they have  language and/or unnecessarily detailed violence that I just didn’t feel like trying to edit as I read.  It’s a shame, because both books were an overall good read for the subject.  Here are the titles in case you’d like to see if they will work for your family:  Pankration:  The Ultimate Game by Dyan Blacklock (The pankration was a ruthless, bare-fisted event of the Olympic games.  The story is set in 430BC.) and To Ride the Gods’ Own Stallion by Diane Lee Wilson (This takes place about 640BC in Ninevah and one of the main characters is the son of King Asherbanipal.)  Of the two, the second would require the least amount of  editing.  I don’t know, we just did Ninevah today in history…maybe I will do the Stallion book….I don’t think I have anything scheduled to read for a week or so……

Well, I guess that’s about it, other than to say that I’ve been in planning mode lately, trying to figure out what all we’re going to do in our own homeschool as well as our co-op next year.   A new program I plan to have DD13 do at home is Hewitt Homeschooling’s Lightning Literature.  I opted to go with Grade 7 for next year (although she’ll be 8th grade) because it has James Heriott’s All Creatures Great and Small, which I think she’ll enjoy.

OK, that’s it for this update….Thanks for stopping by and have a SONshiney week!

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I don’t know how to embed the video in this post, but if you go to this B90 video at YouTube, you’ll learn what the Bible in 90 Days program is all about and how it got started.

I was one of those 75 million who said reading the Bible was important, but yet had never read the entire Bible cover to cover.  I’ve been doing the Bible in 90 Days challenge since right before Christmas, and I’m happy to say that soon I will be among the numbers who have read the entire Bible cover to cover!!!!

It’s been challenging and stretching for me, but overall I’ve been doing pretty good at keeping up with my reading…I’ve even managed to get ahead!  I am now almost done with the entire Old Testament!!!!   I’m getting ready to start Zephaniah.  I am so excited!   I’m thankful for my mentor, Debbie, who has been very encouraging each week.  I’m also thankful for Amy at Mom’s Toolbox for setting up this Winter 2011 B90 challenge.

I encourage EVERYONE to take the B90 challenge…..believe me, if *I* can do it, ANYone can!!!

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Wow, time always gets away from me any more!  Can’t believe a month has gone by.  Really….we have been working away on our school year during that time!

We recently attended a play for Alice in Wonderland.  It was a musical with a cast of over 50 kids!  They did a fabulous job!  The show was about an hour long, and one of the cast members said they had prepared about a month and a half for the performances.

For our Mystery of History read-alouds, we finished Rachel’s Secret Journal, which was just a so-so read.  We recently finished God King (takes place during the time of Prophet Amos and King Hezekiah) by Joanne Williamson, which was GREAT!  The girls loved it, and it made for an excellent read-aloud. It was one they were always begging me to read more!  Unfortunately, I should have read The Rise of the Golden Cobra (by Henry T. Aubin) prior to God King, as the pharoah in Golden Cobra is the grandfather of the pharoah in God King.  Oh well, we’re reading it now…..better late than never!

For the Apologia General Science, dd13 finished up Module 11 this week.  Doing Knowledge Box Central’s study guide lapbooks has worked pretty well for getting her ready to take the tests for each module.  Some of the components don’t quite work the way they intended, but I’ve been able to make them work by doing them different than the instructions.   DD10 will not start back up with the second half of the Science-4-Real Kids Chemistry until the beginning of March.

For math, dd13 is still doing Saxon 8/7 and Life of Fred: Pre-Algebra with Economics.  DD10 finished Math-U-See Delta and started Epsilon this week. In between, I had her do a few extra worksheets on multi-digit multiplication.  She seems to have trouble dealing with so many numbers.  (Surprisingly, it’s not with keeping the numbers in straight columns, because we turn a notebook paper sideways so she has lines to keep them straight).

We have continued to do AiG’s It All Begins with Genesis for our Bible time.  This week we did a character study on Satan, learning about the different names he is called in the Bible, as well as how he is described and things he does.   DD10 has been doing extra Bible work for her “What Does it Mean to be a Christian?” class which recently started at church.  The children’s minister has given them quite a bit of research to do each week….it’s been great!

DD10 is still working on All About Spelling Level 1.  We just haven’t been getting to it regularly.  She is also working on the Calvert Grammar.   I also recently purchased a subscription from the Homeschool Buyers Co-op for Big Bible Town, which she is enjoying.

DD13 is continuing IEW’s Phonetic Zoo for her spelling.  It’s been working well for us this year.  Especially for mom!  Because she uses the audio CDs, I don’t have to do anything except for the personal spelling word lessons.

We continue with Fix-It for our editing practice.  It’s been great to see the dress-ups for for IEW’s writing program reinforced in this grammar program…..and in dd13′s writing.  She recently wrote a story for a contest at White Oak Stables, an on-line horse game, and placed 3rd in the contest.  Without even being asked, she used many of the dress-ups she’s learned from IEW.

DD13 has also being playing around with graphics programs, such as Gimp, Paint, and Paint Shop Pro,  learning how to crop and cut and blend photos together and creating cartoonish graphics.  Because of this, I’ve been thinking about having her try educational digi-scrapping.  While poking around the Internet to see how others are doing it, I found something called NOTA. It’s a kind of on-line whiteboard where you can combine videos, graphics, and text. It takes educational digi-scrapping a step further by being able to add in media to the page.  So, I’ve been having her create some pages on it about carnivorous plants–a favorite hobby of hers.  I hope to figure out how to embed them on a blog page so you can see them.

Guess that’s about it for school.  I’m sure I left out plenty.  I always think of things I want to blog about and then when I don’t get to it right away, I forget about them!  I really need to write them down!

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The last couple weeks have been spent getting back into a normal routine of school.   The girls keep plugging away on their math.  DD10 is about 2/3 done with the Delta book of Math-U-See.  We’ve hit a point where we are slowing down.  We both like the way the material is being presented….hopefully this program will be the one that works for her!    DD13 is still doing Saxon 8/7, as well as slowly working her way through the Life of Fred: Pre-Algebra 2 with Economics.  She does complain sometimes that trying to remember all the necessary math concepts is overwhelming, but she’s holding her own.  (Not bad for a child who was once at least 2 years behind in math!)

For our language arts, DD10 is still doing the Calvert Grammar CD.  We took a break from All About Spelling, but we’ve come back to it and will soon be finished with Level 1.  I ordered Level 2 this week, so we’ll be able to continue the program.  Even though Level 1 was pretty easy for her, it’s been good to build a firm foundation.   DD13 does her Daily Grams, which she actually enjoys (especially analogies!).    We also do IEW’s Fix-It….for some reason this turns into a giggle session.  I’m not sure what’s so funny, but the girls seem to have doing it and they’re learning, so who am I to complain????   Unfortunately, HWOT’s Cursive for DD10 went by the way side….really need to pull that back out!  We also got out of the routine of IEW’s Writing program…MUST get back on that!!!

The last couple weeks of science for DD13 has been finishing up the sections on earth science in Apologia’s General Science.   She prefers geology, but we’re now headed into the life science section.  We are now coming together at co-op for discussion and labs for the remainder of this course.  Another mom and I are teaching it.  I had the first class……I was 15 minutes late and finished 15 minutes early……maybe I should work on my timing a bit more! LOL.  I was able to show a couple short videos from The Truth Project by Focus on the Family that tied into our discussions.    DD10 has a break from science right now…with the exception of what she’s learning in our Bible time.

For our school Bible time (as opposed to our personal devotion/reading time), we have been going through Answers in Genesis’ It All Begins with Genesis.    We’re about half way through.   This has really enriched our science class as well!  When we were studying fossils in General Science, IABwG had a great illustration that the kids acted out to learn just how difficult is to become a fossil.  Now that we’re on the life section of General Science and discussing DNA…our discussions in Bible time ended up being on DNA.  Don’tcha just love it when God coordinates your school lessons!!  (You don’t think that *I’m* that organized, do you!!!!)

A little extra Bible time we had this week was watching the video The Star of Bethlehem.  I had ordered it from the library awhile back, but was in line waiting for an available copy that finally came in this week.  It was just FASCINATING!!!!  It’s the story of one man’s mission to determine what exactly the Star of Bethlehem was–was it really an astronomical event and could he prove that it happened?  Well, what he found was amazing–the symbolism is undeniable!  I whole-heartedly recommend watching it! (Probably best for about 12 and up–it’s a bit on the technical side.)

On to history……we are still working on Mystery of History, Volume 1.  We’re now on King Solomon.  Not a lot of options for read-alouds, but we are reading Rachel’s Secret Journal from the Bible-Time Kids series.  The girl’s father is one of the Temple workers for King Solomon.  It’s an OK read…certainly not great literature.  The diary format makes it a bit cumbersome as a read-aloud.

I guess that’s about it, I think, except for our co-op.   During these winter months, we continue to meet weekly, but with a reduced schedule.  Our main focus is to keep the upper sciences going and allow the younger kids an organized time of educational games and a gym time with more time for socializing (’cause ya know we’re unsocialized!)  I had the 4-6 grade kids at co-op this week for the educational game time, and we broke into two teams (7 kids each) did some Bible trivia.   I think for next week, I’ll make a ZONK game for them that covers multiple subjects.

Have a blessed week!