Our Homeschool Journal, April 30, 2011

Hello friends!  I am linking up this post with my friends at The Homeschool Mother's Journal and the Hip Homeschool Hop.  Please check out some other great blogs by clicking these links! 


In my life this week...
The rains came down and the floods came up!  We had over 6 inches of rain in the last 10 days and 2 inches in a very short time overnight on Tuesday/Wednesday.  At about 1 am on Wednesday this really terrible storm woke me, my husband and my son up and then the power went out, but thankfully our generator kicked on.  At 3:30am, my husband woke me up again and we started moving things in the basement up off of the floor and onto concrete blocks. (Yes, this has happened before!)  We got our big gas powered pump out of the shed and got it going to drain the ground water from around our foundation.  We were glad that we only had about 1 inch of water covering the basement floor all day on Wednesday, but the ground was just so saturated that it had nowhere to go.  The floor started to dry yesterday and so the house is still a mess with things from the basement upstairs.  It's been a bit crazy!  We are thankful though, because it could have been much worse. In 2008 we had a major flood and the river was coming down our street and that time we got 14 inches of water in the basement, but now we have a better system of the generator and this high-powered pump. My husband is such a smart guy!  Even with what we are going through, my heart goes out to those in the South who were devastated with last week's storms and tornadoes. We are thankful that we are relatively okay!

Our pump system! Thank the Lord for our natural gas-powered generator!

Our dis-assembled schoolroom is a mess.

More of our mess in the basement

In our homeschool this week…
We wrapped up learning about Daniel this week and discussed the Medes and Persians taking over Babylon in Week 31 of Creation to the Greeks. I remembered how much I enjoyed doing the Beth Moore Bible study "Daniel" a couple of years ago and it was a good review for me, too. We did some quick review of math and language arts at the beginning of the week, after being gone on vacation last week, and then jumped right back into our curriculum.  We are getting much closer to finishing our work for this school year!  We have about three weeks to go.

Places we're going and people we're seeing...

By Friday, I was able to leave the pumps and take my car out of town for it's annual oil change that really needed to be done. The kids and I drove to Louisville, KY and then we had the shuttle driver from the car dealership take us downtown.  We were actually able to have a field trip to the Frazier History Museum and we also stopped by the Louisville Slugger Museum across the street.

Frazier History Museum of Louisville

Louisville Slugger Museum

I also took my daughter, sister, and niece to see the Butler Ballet's production of Sleeping Beauty at Clowes Memorial Hall!  It was fabulous! The B.U. Orchestra accompanied with live music and the performance was colorful, beautiful, dramatic, and breathtaking!  Sometimes last minute plans work out the best.

Two Pretty Ballerinas

My favorite thing this week was...

The royal wedding!  Like many of you, I was a young girl when Prince Charles married Lady Diana. I listened to Disney fairy tales on my little record player and played with dolls. What fun to have another, joyous royal wedding! My daughter is now just as intrigued as I am!

What's working/not working for us...

I have had to modify things this week since our "classroom" was in the basement and is currently out of commission!  The kids actually liked a change of pace and made a "fort" out of the extra furniture and were doing some of their work in it upstairs.

Can you find J in the "fort" in this picture?

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have...

I'm trying to plan our activities for this summer and I'm getting information about local summer camps and programs.  I am still trying to figure out how I can combine My Father's World curriculum and Classical Conversations for next year and or choose one over the other so that I don't overwhelm myself!  I am praying for God's direction because I need to turn in paperwork soon for CC.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share...

A pretty, new bike for B

 I almost forgot to say that B was excited to get a new bike when we got back from vacation last week! She already needed something bigger for those long legs and we found this pretty bike for her to ride.  She enjoys riding it - even in the rain and puddles!