L.M. Montgomery Challenge - A Conclusion

Thus ends another year of Carrie's reading challenge. I managed to read through all of the Emily books as I planned and while I enjoyed it, it was much different reading those as a Mama than as a young girl. Not that I didn't enjoy this rereading - I did. But I saw things differently this go-round.


As a teen, I was swayed by the romantic-ness of young Emily's life. An orphan at such a young age, forced to live with relatives that (for the most part) don't understand her, full of dreams and words that must! get! out! As I read this time, I was more fully aware of some of the magic that surrounds Emily - her "gift" of second sight that would mysteriously appear and clear up an unsolvable mystery or right an old wrong. While there was nothing inherently bad about this, I definitely see Emily as a series for an older girl because of this. (I.e., handing it to a 12+ year old as opposed to an 9-10 year old). The Anne series, Jane of Lantern Hill, or The Story Girl and it's sequel would be better works to start someone out with LMM's material.

All that to say, I did enjoy renewing my acquaintance with Emily. My favorite of the series is book two - Emily Climbs. Full of entries into Emily's journal and stories about the scrapes that this young teen finds herself in - I find this book to be the lightest of the three and my favorite. I also watched one episode of Emily of New Moon, the series, on Netflix. One episode was all it took and I turned it off. (Carrie, you were right.) In the show, she is painted as a witch by the other children and the townsfolk, plus they drag out the death of both of Emily's parents with a visit from Death himself on a giant horse. Um, no thanks. The book handled that way better so we'll just wait until the girls are old enough to enjoy it in that format!

The girls and I also viewed a few episodes of the Road to Avonlea series. I was reminded how much I love this series. For the most part the characters are true to the book characters in LMM's The Story Girl and
The Golden Road with a few variations here and there that don't distract from the spirit of the book(s). As time permits, we'll probably watch a few more of these as the girls get older. N1 enjoyed them, but it was a little old for N2 and B so a few more years waiting on the shelf won't be a problem. I think it's safe to say that if you love the Anne movies (with the exception of the 3rd one which is a major detour from the Anne books!), you would enjoy the Road to Avonlea series.

Thanks, Carrie, for again hosting this challenge. I'm hoping to be back next January to play along!

Read Aloud Thursday ::: Groundhogs & George

We have been pulling an eclectic mix from our shelves to read-aloud of late. Being February, the last week has seen us reading up on the groundhog and George Washington and we have found some winners in both categories that were new to us. Last year I wrote a post on several of our groundhog favorites and this year we added one more to the mix.

Groundhog Weather School is crammed full of tidbits of information on groundhogs, seasons, and shadows and my girls loved it. For a picture book, it's so packed with stuff to read, it actually took us two reading sessions to get through it because of all the little facts squirrelled away throughout the artwork. The groundhog really is an interesting little animal with all sorts of quirky facts to learn about it. I'm glad we've taken the time the last few years to stop and read about him on his holiday. : )

We've also been spending time reading about George Washington in preparation for President's Day (and an upcoming review of a Download N Go study that I'm working on). One of the first that we read and enjoyed was George Washington's Breakfast. The young boy in this story is a huge fan of George Washington - they even share the same name! And when he starts to wonder what George ate for breakfast, he enlists the help of his whole family plus the local librarian to find out the answer. This book was full of fun little facts about George, as well as the answer to the burning question of what he ate for breakfast. There is also the added bonus of the message that if you want to learn about something, then research it! Go to the library, ask adults, take a trip (the boy went to Mount Vernon to search for information) to learn about what you are interested in. This is a life lesson that I want my girls to learn and loved to seen woven through this story.

As far as our chapter read aloud, we finished up Mandy yesterday - flying through the last chapters to answer the burning question of whether or not this little orphan girl would be adopted. "They need to just adopt Mandy!" and "Why don't they adopt her?!" was heard frequently from N1 as we pressed on to the end. : ) I loved to see her so invested in the story so we spent a little extra time reading on it the last few days so that we could find out what happened. Just as an FYI for parents, as I read aloud, I did edit out several instances of the Lord's name in vain as well as one mild swear word, however, there is nothing in the book that would keep me from handing it over to N1 in a few years to read on her own. (This book was written with a very British feel to it and the swear word fits in with that style of writing and language, something that can easily be skipped over while reading aloud or even marked out of the book if you are so inclined.) I originally blogged Mandy here if you are interested.

Thanks to Amy who hosts Read-Aloud Thursday so faithfully every Thursday!

Project Life Tuesday

Below are our pictures for last week's installment in our Project Life album! I've also been having fun trying to add in a little memorabilia through out the week as the pages for my first month in the One Little Word class that I'm taking. Can I just say how good it feel to be doing a little more scrapping? Hopefully I can remember to take a few pictures of the album page over all, but blogging time has been in short supply of late!

January 23: Truthfully, it was a full Sunday and this was a late night shot before I headed to bed. Several nights a week T & I have a bowl of popcorn while we hang out after the girls go to bed. I've gotten back in the habit of using our popcorn popper which makes the BEST popcorn!

January 24: B is very into all things Seuss right now which I love. So when our friends invited us to join them at Barnes and Noble for a meet-and-greet with the Cat in the Hat, we decided not to pass up that opportunity! It was a little chaotic there with a ton of moms and kids, but this little pic of B with a current favorite character was all worth it. (N2, who is still nursing a deep aversion to life-sized costumed figures, declined to pose in the picture).

January 25: E is more alert and strong every day. He loves to lay on the floor near a sister or two and check out what they are doing. We are going to be in BIG trouble once he is mobile.

January 26: Dinner. Mass production of grilled cheese sandwiches to go with our vegetable soup.

January 27: The cuteness of a post-bath picture. He is not a huge fan of the bath overall but I think once he is able to sit up and splash around in it that will change.

January 28: Friday was errand day with the three littlest while N1 was at her tutorial. Target, an oil change, and Sam's were on the morning agenda and we were able to check all three off before E decided he was ready to eat again. The girls and I dined on Sam's hot dogs and pizza for lunch - a favorite errand treat when we are out and about.

January 29: We had our first showing on our house today and when we had to get out of the house, we headed to McDonald's at the birthday girl's request. (N2 turned 5 on Sunday, so she was granted her lunch of choice on our Saturday outing). Just a few fun silly sister pictures - as you can see I couldn't pick just one so I made a little collage to print.



Afternoon Snack

In the process of cleaning out our freezers before we move, I came across two bags of frozen strawberries from this summer. A perfectly good excuse to make homemade fresh fruit slushes at home (a la Sonic) on another homebound snowy day.

10 oz. frozen strawberries
1 cup orange juice
juice of 1 lemon (or a decent squirt from the bottle of lemon juice)
1/3 cup of sugar
1 pint ice

Run it all through your blender until it's nice and slushy! (Not responsible for any "brain-freezes" you might encounter when drinking this too fast). : )

Project Life Tuesday

  

This is my third installment participating in Project Life Tuesday. This has been a great prompt for me to get down some thoughts on my pictures sooner rather than later (as sometimes happens in a busy household!) Last week while T and I were watching TV, I was able to pull up posts 1 & 2 of Project Life Tuesday and write up my journaling cards and it went so much faster having little bits already on the blog. Granted, I tweaked a few things from writing for the blog v. writing for the family album, but definitely made the process easier. Anyway, on to this week's photos!

January 16: The signs to sell our house went up in the yard today. It was one of those happy / sad days and I will admit it was a bit teary taking this picture. I have loved, loved, loved this house and while I know we have outgrown it, I will miss it terribly. You might notice parts of the photo are blurry for privacy. However, if you are truly interested in our sweet little 2 bedroom home, I'm happy to hook you up with the realtor. *wink*

January 17: By Jove, the boy has got it. He has been working on his thumb for a while now and Monday marked a day of success for him.

January 18: B's little lammy that she is glued to was in DIRE need of bath. We popped it into the wash Tuesday morning and she literally haunted the washer and dryer while it ran through the machines. When we pulled it out, upon first inspection, her comment was, "It's so white!!" (And just to note, it smelled much better, too!)

January 19: A little artistic creation with the Wiki Stixs during our school day. This is apparently a space ship and a couple aliens.

January 20: N2's birthday is ten days from today and in lieu of a party we have having her best friend and her BFF's family over for Sunday lunch along with our family. It will be a big bunch of folks in this crazy house! She spent considerable time this morning handwriting her invitation to them and we then popped it in the mail. I was super proud of her hard work on this. : )

January 21: The third snow day of our school year - so far N1 has had three of them fall on days that her tutorial meets. While I could go ahead and do school with her, we were all happy to have a day off to hang out and play. Thus, a spontaneous bowl of ice cream at approximately 10:45 a.m. Why? Because we could. : )

January 22: We had a girls' night out dinner tonight, only this was our annual one where we bring spouses along. Yummy Mexican at a LOUD restaurant and time to catch up with friends. We were missing half our group tonight because of conflicting schedules and we were sad not to see them - looking forward to catching up with them at the next get-together!

Mid-Year Assessment

We have now made it over halfway in our homeschooling year - yay! (102 days to be precise.) I sat down on Thursday with our books and roughly mapped out our weeks of school and number of lessons we have left. With N1 gone two days a week for her homeschool tutorial, I have been a little concerned that we were going to get to the end of our 180 days and find that we were no where near finished with our language arts and math work. There are some of her subjects that I can easily double up on the three days that she is home (handwriting, Writing with Ease, etc.) However, her math (we're doing Saxon 1) takes us easily 30-45 minutes a day sometimes and to double up on those is tricky with everything we're trying to check off + the whole 3 other kids thing. : )

After looking at numbers of weeks v. numbers of lessons, I was pleasantly surprised to see that we will easily wrap up everything by the end of the school year with the exception of her math! Whew. It looks like that will take us a few weeks into June to finish up the daily lessons, but I am fine with that. I want to make sure that she is solid on her math skills for 2nd grade ... I am not a great mathmatician myself and I want her to be confident in her math skills we continue on.

As far as the materials we have chosen for this year, I've been pleased with the curriculum we decided to go with. The materials from Peace Hill Press (Writing with Ease and First Language Lessons) have worked very well for us and I expect will continue on with them next year. Saxon math has also been a good fit for us this year even though I wasn't knocked out with it for Kindergarten. I'm glad I gave it another shot for 1st grade. (Not that the kindergarten materials were bad; I think N1 was somewhere between the K & 1st grade materials when we started and they were to easy for her. Now, when I pull it out next year for N2, I think it will be a perfect fit). The only thing that I haven't been fired up about this year was our spelling/vocabulary workbook (Wordly Wise) but we're going to keep plugging away at it.

I've also started doing a little planning and notetaking about next year for my soon-to-be-2nd grader and almost kindergartener! Right now (although nothing definite as far as a decision has been made) we're planning on bringing N1 back home fully for 2nd grade. I cannot begin to say how completely providential the tutorial was this past year. Having two days a week where I didn't have to do school was such a lifesaver for me (mentally, physically, educationally) what with having a baby, surgery, and now our upcoming move. I have been so thankful for her teacher and the program they provided. However, I will admit that there is a tug-of-war with our time between the work that I do with her and the work that the school asks for. It's not much, but I find that have to let go of some of the things that I plan so that she gets her tutorial work done timely. Again, not a bad thing, but not as hands-off for me as I thought I would be. (Does that make sense??) : ) Anyway, I'm looking at / thinking about social studies and science curriculum for her. She has spent the last year in American History - mid-1800s and on. I'm contemplating using Story of the World but starting in book 2 (middle ages) as opposed to book 1 (ancient civilizations) and then hitting book 1 on our 2nd lap through the series when she is older. We'll see. And then, science. I like the looks of the Young Explorer Series by Jeanne Fulbright (i.e., Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day) - how much would my nature girl love something like this? There are a lot of cool options out there, that's for sure. : )

This has turned in to quite the long-winded and rambly post. My apologies but I apparently needed a brain dump on some of this school stuff. I've also been tweaking my calendars, meal planning system, and cleaning routines - can you tell I'm trying to get organized for the before and after of the move? : )

Happy Saturday!

Magnificent Moon - A Download N Go Review

This week, as time has permitted, we have turned our eyes up for a study of the moon! Thanks to Download N Go, we were given a free copy of one of their new unit studies, Magnificent Moon, to test out and it has scored high marks with the 1st grader.

With this study, one of the things we are really enjoyed has been learning a little bit about some of the astronauts that have been to the moon. What their hobbies were as a kid, what they studied in school, etc. It has been a great start for some discussions with N1 about how different subjects may lead into different careers in life, as a love of science did with these men.

As always, this study has some great hands-on lapbook elements for your elementary aged students as well as an amazing suggested library list for read-alouds and independent reading for your student.

Magnificent Moon was a lot of fun and we look forward to wrapping it up over the next few days! Thank you Download N Go for the chance of another fun unit study!

A few special offers from Download N Go that are available right now:

First of all, the Cabin Fever Fun Pack, which includes Magnificent Moon, Winter Wonders, Expedition Canada, and Popcorn is currently on sale, and will be through 1/31/11 for $20 (regularly $28).

Secondly, there is a giveaway contest in conjuction with the Magnificent Moon blog tour. The contest will run from 1/24-28/11, with the drawing at 9pm on 1/28. We will be giving away 2 standard Moon Maps from National Geographic, valued at $16.99 each.

Weeks 10 - 14 Baby Boy Layouts

Playing catch-up here on posting my Ethan-boy scrapbook layouts. I've been getting them done each week (or every other week in a couple cases), but have been behind on posting. Time is flying by so fast with this little guy ... I am so glad that I'm taking the time (that I don't really have) to do these layouts for him while it's all so fresh. You can click any picture to see them larger in Flickr.



Materials:
Template by Cathy Zielske
Red polkadot paper from Crystal Wilkerson's Playground pack
Brown & Cream from her Neutrals pack
"Cherish the Moments" wordart from Playground Word Art Elements
Fonts are CK Marker & CK Ladder



Materials:
Template by Cathy Zielske
Blue & brown papers from Me and My Brother by Crystal Wilkerson
Yellow paper from her Playground Pack
Fonts are CK Allison & CK Ladder




Layout details:
Template from Rebecca Cooper's monthly layouts
All digi supplies are Crystal Wilkerson's:
Brown & graph paper from Neutrals Paper Pack
Red polkadots from the Playground paper pack
Snowflake & Heart are Merry & Bright elements

Fonts:
Amelie, CK Ladder and Lazy Days



Materials:
Template by Cathy Zielske
Plaid & gray paper from Me and My Brother by Crystal Wilkerson
Fonts are CK Sassy & CK Ladder



Materials:
Template by Cathy Zielske
Cream circle paper & owl element from Me and My {BABY} Brother by Crystal Wilkerson
Brown paper from Me and My Brother by Crystal Wilkerson as well.
Font is CK Ladder

52 Photos ::: Evening

Taken last night (1/18/2011) at dinner before my husband was home to join us. A typical bit of craziness trying to fill plates, calm babies that want to be held, pour juice, and maybe take a bite of my own food here and there. This is my life and I love it and am so thankful for it. (Such a good reminder this morning as Mama woke up on the wrong side of the bed in a big way.) : )

Project Life Tuesday

  

  Week 2 of my Project 365 for this year. This project has taken on an entirely new meaning in just the last week. There is a blogger that I have read for many years now named Joanne and this past week she suffered a major, MAJOR stroke. She is my age, a homeschooling mom of girls, and so full of life that it is hard to imagine her laying in a hospital bed while family and friends wait for her to wake up. While I pray for her, it has been such a good reminder for me as to how I am spending my days with my sweet family and where my priorities are. (You can read updates on her blog here or via her husband's twitter here).
  January 9:     The big girls are now going to a choir program at a nearby church on Sunday nights and it just so happens that my BFF has a few of her kids in the same program. This means that we have an hour and a half of UNINTERRUPTED TALKING on Sunday nights now. So wonderful.
  January 10:  

Heap big snow on Monday! We were given some hand-me-down snow pants recently and at the time I wondered when on earth would we ever wear them. Apparently sooner than I thought and I was so thankful for them as we put them on several times over the course of a few days.

January 11:

We wrote a check today to seal the contract on a new house. So thankful for God's provision in letting us make this move and for how the pieces are all coming together. It really is amazing.

January 12:

The girls and I drove by what will hopefully be the new house today. (Really, I wanted to see how well I could find it without T driving me there). : )

January 13:

Today (Thursday) was the first day that we really ventured out much this week. N1 had a field trip at a local cooking store - the field trip was teach the kids some of the chemistry involved with cooking - and she, of course, thought it was very cool. The little girls (and boy) and I had an hour to kill in a small shopping center so we filled our time visiting a little toy shop and walking around and taking pictures. The left picture is one that I posted here and I wanted to include it to document B's outfit of choice. It still cracks me up to look at it. Her little smile is so sweet in the picture - she was so proud of getting herself dressed without help and since that included tights that was a big deal!

January 14:

As we are prepping to list our house, I took down the 4 seasons papers that have been on our wall for several years now. They were the first things that I made for our homeschool and were showing lots of wear. They weren't going to survive the move since I had originally made them on construction paper and were becoming very faded and flimsy, so I took a picture and will recreate them in the new house.

January 15:

My photographer Dad (and Mom) came over on Saturday to take pictures of the house to put online when we list it. Here he is showing the images to T and formatting them for online. E is hanging out with the guys here giving his thoughts on the pictures and overall support. : )

A Few Food Links

Being homebound for much of this week apparently brought out my adventurous chef side because I tried three brand new recipes. If you ask me they were all winners although different family members had different levels of enthusiasm. : )

First, I made these oatmeal breakfast bars from Cooking During Stolen Moments. I loved them. I put half raisins and half dried cranberries in there, and I think next time I make them I'm going to sprinkle in a little coconut as well as play with the sugar (maybe use a bit of honey?) The girls weren't too fired up about them because they don't look like "regular" granola bars, but I think if I put them in front of N2 & B enough times, they will really like them.

The second recipe was chosen by Noelle as she was flipping through my recipe book one day. She picked out this recipe for gingerbread waffles and according to her, they were the best! waffles! ever! I have to say they were very good and I'm not a huge waffle fan - they smell exactly like a gingerbread cookie while baking and everyone gulped theirs down. I only made a single batch of these, but next time I make them, I'll definitely be doubling them so I have some for the freezer.

Third, I made this recipe for Creamy Chicken & Wild Rice Soup for dinner tonight and it was a.ma.zing. Goodness gracious. I really can't say enough about how fabulous it was other than I may be making it again in a few days when we have some young couples from church over for dinner. Two thumbs up! Five stars! A++! Whatever your rating scale is, it goes at the very top. : )

Happy cooking. : )