Letters From the Homefront

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...

One day last week, while cleaning up from breakfast, Hoss discovered this guy sitting on the window outside of our kitchen.  Hoss grabbed a plastic food container, captured this guy, and brought him in. I think he figured he was probably not fully alive - which was a WRONG assumption, by the way - and wanted to preserve the body. He put a lid on it, and for a while this huge moth didn't move a hair ( pun intended ). LM took this time to observe every detail she could about the outward appearance, and recorded them for keeping.  (which my phone has apparently turned sideways for me) Then it got interesting, when all of a sudden - he woke up. Then, we heard nothing but frantic wing beating through this container. We let him go, but not before we would at least figure out that what we had found was a 'Waved Sphinx Moth'.  We finally found our moth here , where you can find a good description of this type of moth. They all loved to watch his movements, fee...

Monday was such a fun day for us! Fun, but very, very loooooooooooong! Note to self (and anyone reading who might be mistaken on this little factoid): When you usually wake up fairly early, this will not change on vacation. It doesn't matter what time you go to sleep, where you are, or how much you are supposed to be taking a break. You will still wake up at 5 am.  Monday started with a trip to the most amazing, most FUN indoor museum! In fact, this one beats Ripley's hands down, if you ask me.  Wonder Works Indoor Museum We couldn't have picked a better kick start to our week. The best part was that among all the fun features were some education experiences, and even some fun introductions to different types of art! I'll try my best to let the pictures do a lot of the talking. The first room had some great science and history in it! In the picture above, Hoss is exploring what creates lightning. If you look in the background, you ...

We spent two days on the road getting to where we were going.  The statement, "I'm going to stop  overnight because I don't want to drive after dark." was blown out of the water on Friday since the trip took so long, but Saturday the drive couldn't have been better.  We crossed the rest of the great state of Alabama (I see Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump) in my head every time I say that) and moved toward our destination. By about 3:30, we finally made it! Through the streaked-with-travel-dirt windshield, you can see it there at the top :)  We are now in the great state of FLORIDA!!!! Warmer weather, here we came!!! Sort of.... We (my husband and I) were stationed here for the first 5 years of our marriage. When you are active duty military, you make a lot of friends that end up going a lot of places. Rarely do some ever have the chance to go back, or need to, because by the time they might have a vacation to go back to familiar places, everyone...

In the  middle of all the busyness of our life, we are on VACATION!!!! Blogging time has been non-existent lately, but since we are here and I have some free time on my hands, I thought I'd blog through our vacation. Why? Because I want to remember this week and a half for a very long time. I also thought it would be fun to see how much education can come in to play with a vacation. Keeping in mind, my children probably won't think of it as such, but I will know - and there, my friends, is the trick of homeschooling. Learning without borders, without realization of what is happening, just having fun! Today I'll just share our trip with you. Not many pictures because, well - I was the one driving. Which, obviously, renders it impossible to take pictures.  We packed up and left Friday morning and spent the next 12 hours making what should have been an 8 hour trip. We were stopping for the night in Alabama, staying with a family friend that I haven't seen in a...

Oh, I've been such a bad blogger! In truth, we have been very busy this past month.The last several weeks have seen a lot of work, some 'school' related, some 'life'. I've been leaning on my favorite term, life-school, here lately.  Bug working with the stereognostic bag. We have had many school days since my last post, and started some fun new things. Little Mama has *finally* begun to use the multiplication checkerboard that I made last year, and is working with five digit multiplicands, and  two digit multipliers. Due to her tendency to get overwhelmed, she generally tends to do only one equation when sitting down with that work, and I'm usually with her or close to her. She moves slowly with it, but I am glad, because she is seeing it work. Since she is already a second year/fifth grader, I wasted no time, and showed her how to use the board and how it looks to work it out abstractly on paper, all at the same time. I didn't push, but just...