Update

I definitely think the weekend getaway (a 3-day Cruise to the Bahamas) did just the trick! I came back refreshed and ready to go! Schooling last week and this week has been awesome. My patience has been restored and the girls are just soaking up the information. Here is a quick recap of what we've been doing.

Math- Subtraction. The girls have done incredible. The curriculum we are using is basically just a work book from The Critical Thinking company. I have to do all the teaching and the worksheets just reinforce the information. We've used manipulative blocks, candy and our fingers and have mastered one digit subtraction. I'm so proud of them!! They both really enjoy Math and I'm glad. Math was always my favorite subject in school..my husband however despises it. We will be finishing up our one digit subtraction unit next week and will be moving on to graphs and fractions.

Reading/Phonics/Writing- Wow. That's all I can say about the progress we've made since July. I officially have two little readers in the house! They are just so proud of themselves. The A Beka reading/phonics curriculum is awesome! I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is trying to teach their children to read. The girls have also been enjoying www.starfall.com. If you aren't familiar with it, it's an awesome website for beginning readers. Check it out!

Science- Last week we completed our Healthy Eating unit. We finished all 10 Lessons in Little D's Nutrition Expedition and the girls absolutely loooooved it! :) Little D the Five Food Group Dragon is actually still hanging on our living room wall. They don't to take him down. These lessons were great. The girls definitely have a better understanding of the five food groups and why they are important. I've heard the girls discussing healthy food choices too..so maybe just maybe we can get them to start eating better. Since we've finished a science unit, we are moving on to a Social Studies unit. We will be covering a unit on Thanksgiving during the month of November and I'm still getting it all worked out. More details to come...

I bought a book from Barnes and Noble a few months ago titled "What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know" and I really love this book. It breaks down each subject into what Kindergartners should know before going to first grade. I use it quite a bit. The past few weeks we've been reading stories from the Literature section. Some of the stories the girls were familiar with, but many of them were new. (Some of them were new to me). The girls seemed to enjoy hearing the stories, well all of them except for The Ugly Duckling which they BOTH fell asleep during..LOL

We've continued our Bible studies and the girls are still hearing devotions/stories about character development. They are also starting a children's missions group at church and we will be attending our first class tonight! Super excited about that!! :)

Shaylie's soccer season just ended and we've already signed her up for Spring soccer. She really liked it. Nevaeh will also be old enough to play in the spring. She is very happy about this. She wanted to play in the fall, but wasn't old enough.

Things are just moving right along. I'm sooo glad we've made the choice to homeschool. I thoroughly enjoy the girls being home with me. I love watching them learn.

As if it isn't obvious enough...now I have even more proof that my babies are growing up. Shaylie had her very first visit from the Tooth Fairy (AKA Twinkle- in our house) last night. I can NOT even begin to fathom that she is old enough to be losing teeth already. I mean seriously wasn't it just like last month when cut her first tooth?! Just another reminder that I need to CHERISH. EVERY. MOMENT.


Still absolutely gorgeous!


Showing off her Tooth Fairy box!



Time- please please slow down. No, really I'm begging you. Let them stay little just a little while longer! <3

In need of.....a BREAK!

Yes, I need a break. And, I'm getting one. My husband and I are leaving tomorrow for a long weekend getaway. We do this every year...and this year it's much needed and deserved! Where we are going is a secret, so I will give details when we return :)

Work has just been crazy busy lately, home life and homeschooling have been busy. The girls have not been listening the greatest. I haven't been very patient. I find myself doing the very thing that homeschooling parents should NOT do, telling my children that they can't help me with whatever I'm doing just so that I can get it done faster. I find us doing our school lessons sitting at a desk with little to no fun. It's like we are just going through the motions with no real meaning. We have reached a point of being burnt out. So I think a break for Mommy and Daddy and a long weekend with Nana for the girls is just what we need. We'll come back more in love, refreshed, recharged and better parents to our beautiful sweet little girls!

Rainy Day Blues..

I don't know if it was the rain or what but today was not a good day for us! The girls could either not sit still or were being lazy. There was no in between. I had no patience. So after attempting to have school for about an hour I decided it was time for us to take a break! I was to the point of tears. I thought maybe working out, taking a shower and getting some lunch and then trying to start fresh might help us out. And it did..for a few minutes. So, we finished what we were working on at that time, packed up and called it a day. I haven't been feeling the best and neither have they, so maybe we all just needed a sick day. And you know what I've realized now 5 hours later? That's ok. There is no point in all of ending up in tears over something that we can just do tomorrow or the next day when everyone is feeling better. I was really doubting myself there for a while today. But then I remembered how well last week went..and how few bad days we've had since we've begun homeschooling and I felt better. Kids are human too..kids feel the Monday blues too and that's perfectly fine. Tomorrow will be better. The sun always shines after the rain.

I came across this today..and it just fit so well. It's from the following website: http://homeschoolblogger.com/afternooncoffeebreak/691969/ and this is what it says.

"Sometimes you gotta laugh or you’ll cry.

Sometimes crying is a good outlet.

Sometimes it helps to just take a deep breath & smile.

Leave the room for just a moment. When you return, look at each child’s face & remember how you felt the moment you met that child for the very first time – upon his or her birth or adoption.

Smile. Thank God for this awesome opportunity he has placed in your hands.

Give them each a hug & take a recess for the day."

Fall is here!

Update: Week of 9/20-9/24

We had a busy but very fun week last week! Since Thursday was the first official day of Fall we celebrated all week long! In addition to our normal school day (math, phonics, Bible, science) we also baked homemade sugar cookies with homemade buttercream frosting. We decorated the cookies to look like leaves, pumpkins and apples. We sang fall songs and told fall jokes! We made a homemade fall wreath to go on our front door. I have planned to take a field trip this Friday to a local pumpkin patch. We just simply had a GREAT week!









The girls had their first math "test" on Friday! It consisted of 20 addition problems and it took them less than 10 minutes to complete. I'm happy to report that Nevaeh got every single problem right on the first try and Shaylie missed one problem, but when she took a second look at it got it right immediately! I must say I was one very proud Mama that day! :)

The Science unit we've been working on; Little D's Nutrition Expedition, is still going well. The girls still really enjoy it and are always asking if we can "feed Little D to make him grow". There are 10 lessons in the unit and each lesson has a story with it. The stories are really fun and have portions that the girls can act out. So far we've covered the dairy food group and the meat food group and they've really learned a lot! They enjoy the characters in the stories and the activities that go along with the stories. Part of the unit involves making a dragon on the wall. It started with just his head and you add a portion of the body for each food group that you study. In the end he will end up being about 5 feet long! Yes, this is stretching across a wall in our living room, but hey it's fun and educational!! Right now he just has a head and two segments of his body, but he's growing each day! Pics will be posted at the end of the unit!

Late post..

September 6th-11th we were onboard the Carnival Fantasy! We had so much fun! We sailed to Freeport and Nassau, Bahamas. While in Nassau we managed to squeeze in a field trip. We visited the Atlantis Resort and toured the aquarium and learned about some of the history of Atlantis.

The girls had a blast. Their favorite animals were the sharks and a very cute black and white polka dotted stingray. I must admit he was my favorite too! :) They were able to touch sea cucumbers and starfish. It was a really great experience, just the fact that we were in the Bahamas was awesome!! I'm assuming this will be their favorite field trip all year! I don't know of any other Kindergartners who take a cruise to the Bahamas for a field trip :) Ahh, the benefits of homeschooling! BUT, they may have become just a tad bit spoiled...Shaylie insists she is asking Santa for another cruise for Christmas ;)

My poor poor neglected blog. Why is it that I just can't seem to keep up with you? Well actually I can't seem to keep up with anything at this point. The past month has been CRAZY to say the least. We've had the girls a birthday party in VA, a birthday party in NC, a Bahamas cruise and I've had a co-worker out at work, so I've picked up quite a few extra shifts....pure chaos is what we've had lately. Oh and my husband started school full-time, which takes up the majority of his time so I've been flying solo with homeschooling. AND Shaylie has started soccer and has two practices and one game a week!

Homeschooling is one thing that we haven't neglected though! We are still trudging along. The girls are breezing right through Math and Phonics. They really seem to have the hang of addition. We are having a quiz on Friday! They are both reading one syllable words and are learning different blend sounds. It amazes me to watch them learn new concepts. On Friday we will also be learning our first sight word- "the". Shaylie informed me today that she has known that word "for a while now"..LOL. So I guess we won't need much work on that one. In Science we've started a "Being Healthy" unit and are currently working on Nutrition. I found an awesome unit entitled Little D's Nutrition Expedition on this website: www.nutritionexplorations.org%2Feducators%2Flessons%2Flittled%2Flittled-main.asp%3Ftab%3D1&h=2912d Today was our first day and we all loved it. I definitely recommend it! It says it is for 2nd graders, but so far the girls aren't having any problems with it. If I have to adapt some areas, that's ok, but so far so good!

I've realized while reading other homeschooling blogs that maybe we are doing too much "book work". So I'm integrating some new activities into our days (crafts, cooking etc.) We are also working our homeschool schedule around my work schedule, so we aren't doing Monday through Thursday anymore. Now we're doing 3-4 days a week, but it might not be consecutive days. That's the beauty in homeschooling. FLEXIBILITY. I love it.

I have some fun activities planned for the rest of the week and will post more on those (with pics!) later!