December Happenings

I have been terrible about bringing my camera along for our family fun in December. I forgot it when we went to our yearly trip to the historic museum's Christmas frolic. I forgot it when we put up our Christmas decorations. I didn't bring it with me when we went to breakfast with Santa. It's been a bad month for memories via pictures! Ha! I do have these pics though...

We are doing a family curriculum called My Father's World. This is our second year to do it. This year we are marching through the Old Testament. Right now we are in the middle of the dessert with the Israelites. One of our activities was to get up in the morning and bring in the "mana." The kids got a huge kick out of it and it was a successful lesson to them.

If you've been reading my blog for long you know that we do a buddy system with the bigger kids being paired up with the little kids. Our first real buddy team is Lulu and Mia. They have such a sweet bond. Here they are watching Saturday morning TV together. Such a precious memory.

These are fruit candy canes. I saw them on a friends facebook and decided to make them for the kids. They loved them and they were really tasty. Just strawberries and bananas sliced and place in the shape of a cane.

An up close shot of it. I didn't really take too much time getting it done because I had 5 eager children ready for snack. You could make them as fancy and perfect as you wanted.

Another project we did was to make the tabernacle. Manly did this with the kids. It turned out great and the kids were really proud of it. Now they have it in the playroom for the Barbie Dolls, err priests. Ha!

I also forgot to take pictures of my sweet littles singing at our Christmas MOPS party. Here they are afterwards in front of our living room tree.

If you've ever been around Mia you know that she's oddly quiet for a 1.5 year old. However, get that girl warmed up and the fun never stops. Here are a few outtakes of the picture above. That girl is a ball of fire! Ha!

Ever year we take the kids to a great event at a nearby church called Bethlehem Revisited. It's a mock up of the city of Bethlehem complete with live animals and fully garbed characters. It's such a fun time for our family and the kids ask to go each year. Here are a few pics from that...

The kids loving a goat with some shepherds.

Sorry it's not very straight. It was really dark and I couldn't tell what I was taking a picture of until it took and the flash came on.

 

The girls with the fish seller. Yes, that's a real fish. I thought Addi was going to throw up! She didn't like the smell or sight of it! You can kind of tell in this picture. One of the fun things about Bethlehem Revisited is that they give you coins when you come in to spend in the town. Addi bought her head wrap and KK got the little pot she has in her hand. There were lots of things and foods to choose from.

The kids loving on a donkey or horse or something big. Ha!

Bubby checking out the food table.

At the end you are taken out back to see the baby Jesus who has just been born. It's always a real baby and it's so heartwarming to see the kids respond to seeing it. Bubby really liked getting to see baby Jesus.

 

After the tour you get to go inside for cocoa and cookies. Here is Addi really enjoying her treats. I told her she looked like Aunt Jemimah. Ha! Love this blue eyed girl.

Pin Pon and Friends

I've mentioned before that we are using My Father's World curriculum this year. The them of the year is Exploring Countries and Cultures. It's such a great idea starting first with an overview of the world, then it has us "visiting" all the individual countries across the globe. We just finished up a study of Mexico. To celebrate we had a Mexican Fiesta. Below are some of the pictures and a HYSTERICAL video of one of the songs that they kids learned to share with their dad.

First of all, we needed decorations, so we made a pinata'! I HATE paper mache, because I always end up having to do it mostly on my own and it's a HUGE mess, so I figured out how to make my own pinata with a paper lunch bag. It worked great, and there was virtually no mess!

Here's how we did it:

We took a paper lunch bag and filled it half full of "goodies." We filled it the rest of the way full of balled-up paper. Then I stapled the top of the bag.

I let Olivia design the pinata'. She wanted it to look like the Mexican flag, so I looked in our party cabinet and got some green, white, and red crepe paper.

I had Olivia measure around the bag then cut several strips of the paper to glue on.

 

Olivia also used the scissors to cut fringe on the strips of crepe paper. She really liked that part.

We simply spread glue around the bag and added the paper. As a finishing touch we added the crest that's found on the Mexican flag. I got it from one of our school pages, but there are TONS of free clip art sites on the internet.

Last, we added streamers to the bottom with tape.

The finished product! Worked like a charm and was still really fun for the kids to make.

For other decorations we made Mexican flowers. Olivia made a Mexican flag(Yes it's on yellow paper.). We also used some of our work pages for decorations.

Spanish color words.

John 3:16 in Spanish with Mexican flag worksheet. The one on the end is Bubby's.

Our kitchen decor. I pulled the "vines," red table cloth, and green napkins out from Addison's Watermelon party leftovers.

A sweet little Mexican doll a friend gave me over 15 years ago was our centerpiece.

Mis bebe's. Olivia picked out their "spanish outfits."

We had some old fashioned spanish music records that we played. This is the kids clapping while they were waiting to be served their Mexican meal.

Mis hijas

Pin Pon y amigos!

Pin Pon's a paper doll and his clothes are all in place.

He uses soap and water to wash his hands and face.

He straightens out his hair with a tiny ivory comb,

And even if he pulls hard he doesn't whine or moan. 

Pin Pon the paper doll. He was such a little HAM!

The pinata' busting.

el profesor

And, without further ado, I give you...PIN PON!!!

What a blessing to teach these Little's.

Our Homeschool Journey

When Olivia was about 3 and a half she started really showing an interest in reading. By the time she was four she was reading(we're talking READING), so I decided to try out homeschooling. It was never something we'd wanted to for sure do, but because she was a few months from the birthday cut-off for public school I thought I could get something for her to do with her free time and keep her busy instead of letting her get bored. We would try it this first year with Olivia to see how it went. If it was terrible we'd just put her in school the next year when she was supposed to be in K5 anyway.

Olivia on her first day of kindergarten

When we decided to go ahead and get a curriculum I knew I needed LOTS of structure. I picked A beka, and it did not let me down. I loved that the teacher's books told me EXACTLY what to say in bold print and the worksheets were a great way for her to spend her free time because she LOVES having something like that to do. Olivia did well with their stellar phonics program and within a few weeks of school the girl was reading whole chapter books at nap time. My girl LOVES to read!

About half way through our year I started hearing more and more about the "classical" approach to school, but three words would come to my mind every time. Not For Me! I LOVED the idea of everything and every moment being a teaching moment. I'd always done that with Olivia anyway, but to have it as our only form of school, in my mind, put a lot of pressure on me as a parent with LOTS of littles. I decided that it might be something we could do when all the little kids were older if we were still homeschooling at that point.

As the year drew to a close and it'd gone really amazingly, we decided we'd go ahead and try it again the next year, but this year I was going to pick and choose my own curriculum. Our family went to our first homeschool convention and used book sale and I pieced together a pretty good set of books for us. We decided to go ahead with first grade materials since she'd done so great. Having lots of different books was fine because it was still very structured, but it was fun having new different ways of looking at things. The one thing that didn't turn out was our Math curriculum. I'd chosen one that I'd heard LOTS of great things about, but for whatever reason Olivia just did not do well with Math-u-see. I'd heard at one of the conventions I'd gone to that if something was working to stop using it and try something else, so about half way through the year I cut out all math and for a few weeks. It allowed me to figure out what would work better for Olivia. That ended up being Saxon. Olivia now LOVES math and just eats up the little workbook pages. She's still doing Saxon this year and it's still been a great choice. If you are homeschooling and something just isn't working don't keep trying to make it work! One of our precious privileges as homeschool parents is to be able to make our own decisions about our kids education.

Olivia on her first day of first grade. Love that long pretty hair!

All year I kept hearing about My Father's World. Several people had told me to look into it for our family because we have so many kids so close together. It's a more family approach to education, which is a nice approach when you're trying to teach a lot of kids at a time. I FINALLY looked into it and LOVED it. The curriculum is, as I call it an "organized classical approach." It uses what Michelle Duggar calls the bus stop method. Where all the kids learn the same thing, but get off at their own "bus stop" or level. For instance, if we were talking about the eye, Olivia might label or dissect the eye, while Emma Claire would simply color a picture of the parts of the eye. There is also a LOT of reading on the current subject, and they push library books so that it cuts the cost of the program significantly. The part that sold me, IT HAS A TEACHER'S MANUAL! I still have the structure that I really need, but I get to give the kids the education that I really want them to have. It doesn't drain me of a lot of time as far as the planning goes, which is really nice. I did still need a language and math curriculum, so I just picked A Beka back up and like I mentioned, we are using Saxon Math. Scotty also does a beginning Spanish program that he basically created on his own from a workbook we found at a used book sale.

Olivia on her first day of Second Grade

So far it's been our best year yet as far as the excitement of school and such. I won't lie, it's HARD teaching Olivia while I have four other kids that also need my attention, but I've been able to plan our days so that it's not been too bad. I usually get the other big girls(EmC and Addi) in on most of the day, and I've been using a playpen for Isaiah full of race cars and other fun toys that he only plays with while we're doing school. (This idea was from one of my more experienced mom friends and I'd like to take a moment to give a much needed thank you to Susan Baker! You've made my life a LOT easier, friend!) I'm planning to blanket train Mia, which is another Michelle Duggar tip I found in her book "20 and Counting". This is a GREAT book with LOTS of little tools and some good recipes(including her homemade laundry soap recipe). A must read for larger families for sure. For now Mia is usually sleeping while we do school.

I don't know what our future holds as far as homechooling. We've always said we'd take it year by year and child by child. I don't want to be closed minded now that we've homeschooled for the last three years. I want to be open to whatever plan the Lord has for us. For now, I'd better get off of here and get ready to go to Mexico tomorrow. The plan is to "be there" for two weeks. Adios.