Top Five Posts of 2011

I have taken time off of blogging over the holidays to spend time thoroughly enjoying family, friends, and this special time of year.  As I begin 2012, I want to pause and look back at 2011 because we have been so blessed!

Rachel's Reflections Top Five Blog Posts of 2011

1.  Our 2011-12 Curriculum Choices
After using the same wonderful company for five years, we embarked on an exciting change in curriculum and having a group of "real" homeschool friends to meet with regularly!

2.  State Jr. Duck Stamp Art Contest 2011
My daughter was thrilled to earn a First Place Award for her age division of our state's Jr. Duck Stamp Art Contest!

3.  Thankful Thursday, Feb. 3, 2011
As my son turned 10 years old, I reflected upon that difficult pregnancy, his premature birth, and how thankful I am for him!

4.  Father's Day, 2011
This post is a tribute to the fathers who have shaped our family.

5.  Why We LOVE Home Education
The title speaks for itself!

Our Homeschool Journal & CC Cycle 3 Week 12 - Dec. 5, 2011

In my life this week…
We hit the road running after our Thanksgiving Break!  That Sunday evening we had our church's Hanging of the Green service and I directed my kids' church choir.  Monday we were busy with CC all day and then J had his dress rehearsal for his Christmas concert.  We had gymnastics class and we all had choir rehearsals at church on Wednesday night.  Thursday was ballet for B and a holiday reception for D's work.  Friday we had our 4H Christmas party.  My husband was on call all weekend. Saturday we had Nutcracker rehearsal and caught part of my nephew's swim meet and ate lunch with my sister's family.  We also got out all of the Christmas decorations and the tree is lit and fully decorated!  Sunday morning I directed the children and the adult choirs at church and then I spent most of the day chaperoning my son's Christmas concert with the children's choir and the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic. Today was our CC Christmas celebration potluck luncheon and then we gathered for end of the semester class presentations.  Whew!  Tonight I just relaxed and watched a movie with the family!

In our homeschool this week…

Wow!  We are wrapping up our first semester of Classical Conversations already!  We just completed Week 11 and began Week 12 today.  We have learned about the Civil War and learned all of the math skip counting songs.  This week, we also begin learning the Latin translation of John 1 after working on memorization of Latin vocabulary for the last several weeks. My class was excited today to say a whole sentence in Latin!  We also completed our My Body models and our unit on music theory and the tin whistle.  I had my class play "Hot Cross Buns" in two different keys on their tin whistles and then we sang the skip counting song for the 9's.  They did a great job of presenting these to our whole CC community after our Christmas Celebration luncheon!

Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share…
I like making lists and checking things off of them!  It does help me to get things done.  However, I hope to relax a bit and take the time to just enjoy having my children at home with me.  School work needs to get done, but don't pass up the opportunities to enjoy family Christmas traditions or to begin new ones during this December!

I am inspired by…
Jesus Calling by Sarah Young has been an inspiration to me ever since my sister-in-law gave it to me for my birthday this summer!

My favorite thing this week was…
My husband was exhausted from a hard weekend of call and had to be back at work this morning at 7am.  He worked really hard this morning to finish up in time to drive 20 minutes to our CC Christmas celebration and surprise us there!  He finally met some of the other families there, at lunch with us, and even participated in part of our afternoon class with us.  The kids and I were so excited to have him there with us!

Questions/thoughts I have…
In the past, we have had a full curriculum for all 36 weeks of the school year.  (We are required to have 180 school days each year.)  However, one of the things that is nice about CC is that we only have 24 curriculum driven weeks.  So after this week, we have several weeks "off" and I am trying to plan out exactly how to use that time.  We will still have another two weeks of school before Christmas and then we will have about two weeks in January with a fun vacation trip too!  I am hoping that with our school time freed up we can do more focus on just the basics, review our memory work, add in more reading aloud, and definitely come up with some Christmas crafts or projects for us to work on.  We will still be busy, but it will be nice to have the freedom to structure our learning a little bit differently for a short time.

I am cooking this week... Well, my fine, chef-boy-ar-dee husband actually does the best cooking around here and he made a delicious crockpot full of taco meat for our Christmas Celebration potluck today for our CC home school community!  We also brought tortillas, scoop taco chips, salsa, sour cream, shredded cheese, and lettuce! Yum!  We had it again for supper!

I’m reading…
I am just happy to have a few minutes to "read" some blogs and check up on facebook during this busy season!  I am reading Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, again and the The ADVENTure of Christmas, by Lisa Whelchel.  It is a great resource for explaining many of the symbols that we use to celebrate Christmas and it also has directions for an activity for each day to go along with the reading.  We have not had time to do any of the activities just yet.

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

We found a way for both children to help place the angel on top of the tree together this year! 

Our Homeschool Journal - Nov. 4, 2011, CC Cycle 3, Week 7

by Rachel

In my life this week… I almost completely lost my voice and have been coughing, sneezing, etc.  It is better now than earlier in the week when I sounded like a teen boy, going through puberty with the crazy way my voice sounded!  I could not sing at our choir rehearsals at church on Wednesday night, but I could still lead them - with a powerful microphone!  We enjoyed sharing the message of Jesus on Halloween with the many children who pass through on neighborhood on that night and spent time with my sisters and their families.  I wrote posts about Halloween and the 30 Day Giving Challenge.  I am having a difficult time leaving the Halloween candy alone!!!  I need to hide it from myself so it is not out in the kitchen any longer!  We are getting ready to go out of town for the weekend.  I will post more about that next week!


In our homeschool this week…

Monday began Week 7 of Classical Conversations with a history sentence about the War of 1812.  We read The Flag Maker which is a fine story for this era of history with lovely illustrations.  I enjoyed getting back to our "normal" schedule and having a full five days of school this week to get everything done!  B is anxiously reading A Rebecca Mystery: A Bundle of Trouble to find out what happens! J read The Flag Maker to himself and then enjoyed some easy readers about Star Wars Clone Troopers from the library.   We have been working on compound imperative sentences, adverbs, appositives, and nouns of direct address in English - whew!  For their writing assignment, they are writing a two paragraph report about medicine of colonial times. It is actually funny to compare to the current practice of medicine!



Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share…

 I absolutley LOVE Handwriting Without Tears!  It is a great program to use for teaching handwriting skills to children of a wide range of abilities.  My daughter is soaring through the cursive writing and voluntarily uses it for her spelling words and other written work as a third grader!  My son, who has been diagnosed with "dysgraphia" (a handwriting disability) is slowly improving.  I took a peek at his handwriting practice this week and I noticed that with the cursive he appears to be copying the o's and a's in a counterclockwise motion now - like he is supposed to!!!!! {Happy dance!}  Against my instruction, he has been writing them "backwards" for years!  He resisted the cursive formation last year and tried to do it his own way.  At any rate, they don't pay me anything, but I really want every home educating family to know about this great writing program, because it works!

My favorite thing this week was…
My son has been learning how to mow the backyard this entire summer.  Wednesday, he said that he wanted to mow again and it needed to be done. I helped get out the mower and he did it all by himself and I didn't feel like he needed to go back and do anything over! {Happy dance!}  Maybe it was because there were so many leaves down on the ground that he could see his path more clearly, but he did his best mowing job yet!  Maybe he will be ready to help in the front yard next spring!

Questions/thoughts I have…
What kind of physical activity can we all be doing during the cold, winter months? Although I have had several nice afternoons to walk the dogs, it is getting much cooler here and we have had a couple of soggy, rainy days where we just can't go outside.  J wants to play basketball again. B is undecided if she will play basketball, but she is interested in trying gymnastics.  They enjoyed a home school gymnastics class a couple of years ago, but have been doing other things since then.  We already have a busy schedule, but during the winter I am thinking about letting them do these things locally because we will all need exercise!

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


Remember... Jesus loves ALL the little pumpkins!