Year End Celebration & Graduation

Today we had our year end celebration and the pictures turned out so cute. Their eyes sparkled so much and they were proud of their accomplishments. Every year they dress up and I give a very cheesy graduation speech that mimics the speech given at my graduation for my Masters program.

Congratulations go to Jordan for the completion of the 7th grade, "B" Honor Roll and the award for messiest desk.

Congratulation go to James for the completion of 3rd grade, "A" Honor Roll and the award for "I didn't do it!" (James is the kid who will have powdered sugar on his face, hands and shirt, but will act as if he has no clue what a powdered donut is nor has he ever seen one in his life! )

Congratulations go to Jackson for completing Kindergarten and a Reading Achievement award.

  

Summer school starts June 22. The 3 younger kids will be using summer skill workbooks and Jordan will be using Life of Fred. We all will be writing short stories using character development and setting worksheets from edHelper.com.

We See the Light...

... and we don't think it is a rushing train.

I think we are going to be done with school somewhere around the 20th of May. I am so excited because Momma needs a vacation more than any of these little people. I updated progress reports today and had to laugh at the differences in attendance. They do all go to the same school don't they? LOL!



Surprise Vacation

We will be leaving for a surprise vacation and it has been so hard to keep from the children. I have been doing laundry for the last few days as normal, but pulling items out bit by bit to put aside for packing. No one noticed until today when 7th grade said, "Hey Mom...it kinda looks like you are packing or something.  Are we going somewhere?" I started asking about chores and she exited stage left with a quickness. LOL!

We did Entertaining Angels again today and had so much fun. We served 3 new families. One was a mom with 10 children! She basically cleaned us out. My kids made a big sign and put it outside and stood out there waving trying to get more people to come in, but mostly just got stares. We will have to do another big shop when we come back.

Down to 5 & Spring Break with Snow?

I am back down to a mere 5 kids. LOL!  The little one that I was doing respite with went back today with very little fanfare. It's funny how 1 kid gone makes the house so much quieter.

We are suppose to start our spring break this week, but with us waking up to snow this morning and rain planned for the rest of the week, it kinda dampens my plans.

Last year we went to our first Easter egg hunts at local churches. The kids hated it! We decided to have our own this year, so I have about 70 plastic eggs filled with stickers, candy and trinkets.

7th grade is the owner of a brand new C**lpix S3000 Nik*n Digital camera and she got a pretty good deal on it. She babysat for 3 weeks and earned a nice amount of pay. Lots of pics with googly eyes to come. ~Smile~

Gainfully Employed

7th grade has been babysitting for these past 2 weeks and has 1 more week to go. He is an 11 week old baby and is as cute as can be. She does very well with little babies....poopy diapers and all. He really likes her and his little face lights up when she walks in the room. He knows her voice and prefers her. The baby's mommy is doing well too and the anxiety of leaving him seems to have lessened.

Jordan is rolling in the big bucks now and very close to her goal of saving enough money to buy a very nice digital camera. I may need some ideas for a quality 'point and shoot' for her.

Now if I can survive the eye rolling and other mess......

How Much Is That Doggy In the Window?

Our dog is being allowed more and more freedom from his crate as he gets older and is now sleeping out of his crate most nights. Tonight he discovered the full length mirror at the end of the hall. He thinks its another dog. He does not like that dog. He barks and growls at that dog and as that dog moves to and fro, he works harder to defend his domain. It is so funny to watch because he is so serious about that dog in the mirror. Of course I stopped laughing when he woke the baby up with his barking. Crazy dog.

For the first time in months, we have a very slow week coming up. 7th grade is starting a new babysitting job that she is very excited about, but we have no appointments. Yay!!

Finishing Units

Several units have been finished by all grades. Kindergarten in on the last unit of H*ndwriting Witho*t Te*rs and I am actually thinking of moving him to the cursive book instead of the next one which continues with printing. I have not done well with cursive for any of the other kids, so maybe he will be the only one to learn it early. LOL! He is also almost done with his Bible curriculum, having only 1 weeks worth of lessons left. He will then move to a 365 day children's Bible which has little 1 minute Bible stories. I am doing the Bible in a year again and really want the kids to be able to do it too.

Both 3rd and 7th grade are in the review units for most of their subjects. We did not have much of a summer break last year because we got so far behind in school. Looks like that is not going to happen this year.

This week, Entertaining Angels on Wednesday and food bank on Thursday.

Today is my brothers birthday. I cannot believe he is 39 years old.

Happy Birthday, Kid! Ha Ha Ha!!

It's Groundhog Day!... Again

I love that movie!


Yesterday was a fun day. We did not have a snow day like the rest of the world, but we kept it kinda light and had some fun. I rented a huge house for next week and we are planning a vacation with family friends, so we will have a break then.

We talked about Punxsutawney Phil and counted how many more weeks until spring. When 7th grade realized that spring is 6 weeks away regardless of Phil, she was like, "Awwww, I liked that story and you ruined it!" I apologized for killing the groundhog and the Easter bunny too. LOL! She laughed!

We did this activity together which I got from Enchanted Learning.

Last summer we were gifted this:

 I have to say, it reminded me of my childhood and everyone liked it much better than microwaved popcorn.

Kindergarten Writing and Full February

Kindergarten is writing stories now in Language Arts.

"play" LOL!

He is reading well and seems to be strong in math. He still cannot get the concept of how days and weeks repeat and so we have our every Monday morning "I can't figure out what day it is" conversation. He can count ordinal numbers pretty consistantly with difficulty transitioning from 20th, 30th, etc...  saying "Twenty-oneth, Thirty-oneth..." instead of "first."  It's kinda funny to me.

7th grade has completed almost all of her units and now has to go back and do corrections and complete some of the essays. She strongly dislikes them and I have allowed her to save them. She is currently reading "The Hiding Place" and seems to really like the story, except the sadness of it being a true story. She is enthralled with Corrie Ten Boom.

3rd grade has started multiplication and he "gets" math in such a weird way it is hard for me to help him sometimes. He works hard in school most of the time and had perfect attendance in January!

We are going to hit the ground running starting tomorrow with Early-On appointments for our 2 year old. I asked for a PT consult as his gait,  he is 29 months old, still seems pretty unstable. Just checking to be sure.  We also have recert. for WIC. Jordan has her girls group thing every other Monday.  Our homeschool group is having the bowling Valentine party again this year. I think we are making our cards unless "The Nana" buys boxed cards. (You know you can't help yourself!) We have food bank and personal needs closet and well child doctor appointments. We are also going to sneek a 4 day weekend get-away in there with a quickie vacation with family friends.

Peace

Teaching Cursive

I heard on the news last week that many schools will no longer be teaching cursive handwriting and will replace it with typing/computer skills. We have always tried to incorporate cursive handwriting skills, but I have to admit when time becomes crunched, it is usually the first thing to get chopped from the schedule. It has become even harder to stay on it as 3rd and 7th grade both use Sw*tched On Sch**lhouse, a computer based curriculum. How did/do you work it in? I can't even remember... what grade do they teach it in public schools?

Progress Reports and Fire Drill

Progress reports:

3rd Grade

7th Grade

Kindergarten

Fire Drill:

January 1, 2011. 10:50 pm

Studies have recently said that you have an average of 3 minuets to get out. So that is our base goal. These are our times from when the alarm started to reaching the patio door.

3rd grade: 20 seconds

7th grade: 32 seconds

Kindergarten: 3 mins 45 seconds after having his name called and told, "Fire!" He also stopped to put on his slippers,  so... he gets to practice again.

My public safety message: check your batteries, practice escape routes, stay safe!!

Fashion Week

The Princess (aka, 7th grade, aka, Jordan) has a new hobby. It's cheap and keeps her happy (which keeps mommy happy!)

Princess Puppy

New Week

Not much other than school, school and more school going on this last week. Clipping right along.

We have a new chore chart that seems to be working well. I've had to re-vamp it from time to time in the past, but this one seems to be easier for everyone to complete the basic everyday chores that get sloughed off first.

We are planning to do $ Store Christmas again this year. We have identified the family that we are going to adopt and have started gathering presents for them. So fun! In the past we have had live Christmas trees, but for the last 5 years we have had a little plastic one. I offered the kids a live Christmas tree this year; even the chance to go cut one down. I was so very surprised when they said that wanted the little fake one instead! It's kinda "Ch*rlie Br*wnish", but they like it.

We had dinner guest after church yesterday. It is the first time we have had guest at the house in over a year and it was an unplanned invite. We had so much fun, baked and frosted Christmas cookies and chatted for hours. It was very nice to talk to another adult. I don't get much of that. 7th grade wrote a post about it here.

Ending With Fun!

For review sake:

Kindergarten is able to count ordinal numbers up to the thirty-first consistently and seems to understand it. He can spell and write the days of the week and write his numbers up to 100. He has completely learned the Pre-Primer list of Dolch words so I have moved him to the Primer list. We are moving slower in Science and Social Studies as the lessons are very short and I am trying to figure out how to bump it up some.

Third Grade has completed several of his test with scores in the high 90's. He is struggling with mental math that includes carrying so we are doing some math drill sheets to help him with the basic addition part so that it takes some of the work out for him. James is a child that does well with memorization, but struggles with transferring information to other situations. He picked up some books about cheetahs from the library and really enjoys reading anything about animals. His school behavior has really improved in that he stays very focused and on task.

Seventh Grade is ahead in all of her subjects. She has several essays that she is working on at the same time for 3 different classes. I may have to delete some of them as it seems to be too much ( and I think so as the person who has to read and grade them.) Her music and guitar class is going well... I broke her E string this week and when we went to go have it replaced, the guy tuned and then played a real fancy song on her guitar. She and I both cracked up and said we did not know that guitar could sing like that. LOL! I read a blog by Christie and she was describing a research project called a "delight directed" project. I totally stole (err I mean borrowed) the idea and Jordan is doing her project on the history and making of French Toast. I can't wait to taste/grade her project. ~Smile~

We went out for a ride in the country yesterday and stopped at one of the local small farms to get pumpkins and gourds. We are looking forward to making some pumpkin muffins, pancakes and toasting the seeds. Not sure what we will do with the gourds.

Today we went to the YMCA and it was pretty quiet there. Had the pool to ourselves.

This weekend is the changing of summer to winter clothes bonanza. Woo Hoo!! Fun times...

The Princess speaks...

Introducing 7th grade Princess Puppy