Letters From the Homefront

When the school year began, the three oldest were wrapped up intensely in the amazing Christmas play we were blessed to take part in. Because of that, I didn't throw them all in to a great deal of music classes this school year. However, LM did get to join the beginning orchestra with our local homeschool music group . These pictures were taken at their Spring Solo and Ensemble competition. It just so happened that every new orchestra member this year wanted to play violin, which made for a nice beginners group :) LM loves music so much, and has not only a beautiful voice (she also had a solo singing entry in the competition), but picks up so much by ear when she plays :) My prayer is that she truly gives her talents to the Lord and lets Him guide her, as she uses those talents to praise His name!

So it wasn't a very catchy title jumping out at you this time. There was just - not really a good way to bring a post about two totally different things together in to a one-liner description. :)  On top of music this year (another post) my three older children, LM, Hoss, and Miss Priss, are participating in a drama. Through their music teacher last May, we learned about a church not far from where we live that hosts a Christmas play every other year - A Christmas Carol.  LM is playing the part of the 'First Spirit', Hoss is (chuckle) Tiny Tim (he's anything but tiny, but they said he does the part wonderfully) and Miss Priss is one of the younger Cratchit daughters.  Here is LM with old Scrooge himself, working in one of their first rehearsals together. She is super excited to get this part - it's what she wanted, and it's also her first to ever be in a play like this. Unless you count those they come up with at home, which can't really com...

If an unclear picture bothers you, I apologize in advance. I definitely never started blogging because I wanted to showcase my perfect picture taking abilities.  Here recently we have started something a little new. We are going to try it out over the next couple of months and see if it works well. You may have read in this post before about our expectation cards. They do work very well, but right now we are working with a little less space and a busy schedule - baseball, summer coming up, and I'm still the only adult here to get all the other non-school things done. So in an effort to streamline each day of school and be able to add in all the summer fun that is coming in a few weeks, we are going to one subject a day. For their expectation cards right now, I printed out a card for each day except Friday. Monday is math, Tuesday is grammar, Wednesday is language/spelling, and Thursday is history. I listed every thing that might apply to them now or in the future, and their jo...

I haven't taken as many pictures as I'd like the last couple of weeks, but here are a few that I managed to get during our work time.  Bug was intrigued by cleaning the brown stair one day, and decided she would clean each piece while putting it together.  She enjoyed it a little more than I expected. Here she is, checking her work a final time before putting it away. This is the history that LM is divulging herself in lately. I had the CD's, but they weren't captivating enough for our children for some reason. The books, though, are LM's current favorites to read. As of right now, she's made it through this one entirely, and is working on Volume 1 (kind of taking a step backwards, I guess :) ). Hoss is even enjoying reading more than he used to, which is good to see. He does still have a 'shut down' mode, however. When he *shuts down* he can read the words, have no comprehension whatsoever, and quickly gets frustrated. I have ...

I know it seems like :everyone: has a 'School Days' post somewhere on their blog, but there was just no better way to title this, unless you want to call it a mish-mash-of-photos post!  My last post was about the weather theme that we have been working through in our homeschool, and I like to have a 'point' to my posts when I can, but I always have so many miscellaneous pictures that are still good :) So I figured it was time to have a post about them.  I found these cards at Dollar Tree months ago, and snatched them up before I could think twice about it. I am very glad I did. We use these for word studies, mostly for Little Mama and Hoss, since they are the readers and the others really don't need them yet. The set you see below are Homonyms, but I also have Synonyms, Antonyms, and Compound words. The first 'presentation' (if you want to call it that) consists of us going over each pair of words and talking about them. For example, with the h...

We have been busy with some wonderful things here!   Hoss has started reading in our Abeka American History book, and although we have not used it daily, he enjoys it and I hope to get more into it in the following weeks!      When I first began to use Montessori works/activities for school, Miss Priss loved them - and enjoyed each one as I showed them to her (when I began, I had only a few things). Then she looked at me, just a tad bit let down, and said, " Where are my worksheets?" Of course, this was NOT what I was expecting, but she insisted that she needed to have worksheets. So I pulled out what I had for her, which I had moved out of the way when I decided to do things differently, and simply said, "Okay!" So while I have been able to get enough for her to keep her busy with hands on materials for a good chunk of her school day, she still really enjoys the worksheets - so we still do them! They are usually saved for the afternoons, when Buddy ...