Heart of the Matter Meme

For today's meme we are to post our thoughts on the following quote:

“The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.”

~Tom Bodett

All through the Bible we find examples of how God tested His people.  I believe that is when we grow and learn the most -- during the times of testing.  I know personally I have learned many lessons through my times of testing.  And those lessons stick with me.  A wonderful benefit of homeschooling is that our "school" is just another part of life.  To our kids, life and school go hand in hand.  They are not separate.  It is simply our family routine.  Another lesson God is teaching me!

Lunar Eclipse

I hope you went outside last night with your kids.  The lunar eclipse was great.  Even in town, we had a great view.  My Dad just recently sent us a telescope.  We were able to get a closer look with it.   James even got a glimpse of the rings on Saturn, which is very cool because we are studying Saturn this week.  I was even able to teach him something about Saturn that he did not know.  (That is a rare occurrence.  Even though I have a bachelor's degree...he is much more a wealth of knowledge than I am!)

We took a ton of pictures.  Some of them were pretty blurry.  We have digital zoom on our camera, but the pictures taken with regular zoom turned out better.

I am still amazed at how God placed each planet, each star, each moon right in the perfect place.  And all of them are for our purposes.  They protect us and keep life on earth as He planned it.  What a great God we serve!  He did not leave out any details.

I would love to see your pictures if you have them.  If you want to link your pictures to this post, sign Mr. Linky!

Wordless Wednesday

Silly fun in the sun!

Last Minute Getaway

We had planned on going to Cincinnati this past Saturday.  When James got home from work Friday afternoon we decided to go ahead and spend the night.  It was fun to get out of the house for the night.  The girls always love staying in a hotel.  I think their favorite part is being able to watch Animal Planet.  We went to the Children's Museum on Saturday.  If you are in a few hours drive of Cincinnati you should definitely take your kids.  Right now they have The Human Body exhibit.  James and I would like to go up sometime just the two of us and see the exhibit.  It is 2 hours and a bit pricey to take the kids through it.  We did get to see the Human Body video at the Omnimax theater though.  We all really enjoyed it.  And I was very excited that there was only one reference to evolution.  They were showing babies swimming underwater and made reference to their ability to hold their breathe.  The movie said it is a reflex babies have and "probably was left over from us coming out of the water".   We immediately told our girls that God gave babies that ability.   Overall we were very impressed with the video.  And it actually gave support to God's hand created our bodies, even if they never said that.

I will post pictures soon.

Black Death Doctors

The girls had another lessons about the black death yesterday.  We use SOTW for history.  In the activity book there is a craft to make the bird mask doctors wore to, they thought,  protect themselves from the plague.  Here are some doctors that survived....

I don't think there were Cinderella doctors in the 1300's.

My Dad's Cooler Than Your Dad

Last week we saw a preview for a new TV show that is starting soon -- My Dad's Better Than Your Dad.  Kids go on with their dads.  The dads have to do all these crazy competitions.  Well, of course, my girls immediately said their Daddy would win!  And this weekend he proved, yet again, that he would most definitely win a show called "My Dad's Cooler Than Your Dad". 

The past two summers we have really gotten into camping.  All of us enjoy it a great deal.  These past few months of winter have really made us anxious to start camping again.  So this weekend my girls were able to go camping.

He moved furniture and set up a tent in our living room.  He has done this before.  But each time the excitement is full force!

This one turned out blurry.  They were only pretending to be asleep anyway.

I would have to agree with my girls.  They have one very COOL Daddy!

Working Hard

Last week we put aside our normal phonics, spelling and math lessons.  The girls did some fun Valentine's Day lessons instead.  I was really impressed with how many words Lulu could spell from a Valentine's sentence.  She filled up her entire sheet with no help.  We did some "living math".  (I implemented some ideas from Cindy)  I gave each girl a bag of Kissables.  They estimated how many of each color (pink/white/red, of course), sorted their piles, and made a graph of the actual amount.  Then they found the difference between their estimations and their actual amounts.  It was a lot of fun to add something different in for a change. 

We also learned about Jupiter.  I think after we finish all the planets I am going to have the girls pick one planet to do a presentation on.  I'm open for ideas as to what all I could have them do for this (1st and 2nd grade).

In history we started learning about the bubonic plague.  When I was reading about the rats, their ears perked up.  Lulu said, "That's what happened in Little House on the Prairie."

Lil started a number book.  She is learning to recognize 1, 2, and 3.  She also played with counting bears.  She is very good at sorting!

Where Do You Homeschool?

The Heart of the Matter has asked that we share our school room this week.  We do not have a lot of extra space in our current home.  We used to school at the kitchen table with supplies all over the house, literally!  I finally got tired of running back and forth from room to room to collect everything just to get started.  At that time Lulu and Monkey shared a room and Lil was still in the smaller room by herself.  We decided to move all three girls into one room and use the smaller bedroom for our school room.  For now it works out great!  (having all girls made it easier) 

I have two bookshelves that I keep all our curriculum, notebooks, manipulatives, files, etc. on. 

I use the closet door, the bedroom door and all the wall space to display artwork, lesson helps, poems to memorize, scripture to memorize and whatever else needs to be in sight.  I use the white cabinet for all our art supplies.

Lil even has her own little desk...which she does not use very often!  She is usually on the run and does not have time to sit at her desk.  Maybe one of these days......

Missionettes

We have Missionettes and Royal Rangers at our church on Wednesday night for the kids.  They are both really great programs.  My husband is a commander for 3-5th grade boys and I am a leader for the Friends Club, 6-8th grade girls.  We had an awards ceremony this past Wednesday. 

Lulu and Monkey are in the same class this year, Prims.  They have a different unit each month.  They earn their badge by going to class, memorizing scripture and doing their class work.  The girls love this program.  Next year Lulu will graduate to Stars.  They have both graduated from Rainbows and Daisies with honors.  We are really proud of them.

Lil is in Rainbows.  This was her first awards ceremony.  She was so excited to get her animal badges.  I can't wait to see her smile when she sees them on her vest.

It was a busy night.  We also had our Valentine's Day parties in our classrooms and our annual Hop-A-Thon.  The girls get sponsors to raise money to help pay for all the badges and charms that they earn throughout the year.  We play music and the girls see how many times they can hop in 15 minutes.  I have a picture of Lil hopping.  I have to alter one of the older girls   and then I will add it.

It was a fun night.  We love our church.  God has really blessed us with some wonderful men and women in the Lord to help shape and teach our children.  We are very thankful for each one of them. 

Love Letter to Jesus

Dear Jesus,
Thank you for loving me when I was and am unlovable. You chose me when I was not worthy of choosing. Your love is not something I deserve, not something I could ever earn. You give your love to me and anyone who will accept it... for FREE! All I had to do was accept your choice of me and do my best to live my life for you. Because you love me, I can love others. You have given me so much. I have a husband that loves me, three beautiful, healthy girls, one sweet baby in heaven, family, church family, friends, etc. The list goes on and on. Your hand is always at work in our lives. I'm so thankful that you revealed yourself to me. Thank you for saving me out of the pit I was in. Thank you for creating a new legacy for my children. Thank you for breaking generational curses in me. I love you Lord. I fail daily and yet you still love me. Please never stop working in me. Change me continually to be more like you.
I love you, Kim



If you want to participate in this Blogger Friend School, visit Nancy at The King's Kreation.

Our First Good Snow

We woke up to our first decent snow of the year yesterday.  The girls were excited!   It snowed a little last month, but not enough to play in.  Yesterday it was kind of an icy snow, but we played anyway. 

I need to buy new snow bibs for the older two girls.  They were a tad bit short!

Sliding is much more fun of an icy slide!


Snow angels are a little difficult too...

It started raining while we were playing.  So they only were out for about 20 minutes.  It helped to ease the pain of having to do school work when public school kids were not.  I'm not going to tell them that school was canceled today as well!

Blogger Friend School #13

My friend Nancy is now hosting BFS.  This week's assignment is to introduce you to my Bible.

1. How old is your Bible?
    My Bible is 18 years old.
   
2. Why did you chose this Bible? 
    It was a Christmas present from my parents.
   
3. Do you highlight/mark passages in your Bible?
    Yes, I do both. 
   
4. If so, what is your system for marking passages?
    I mark passages that are special to me, that speak to me when someone else is teaching, that friends give to me for certain circumstances, all kinds of things.
   
5. Do you have notebooks to record things? 
    I have kept notebooks in the past.  I do not currently have one that I take to church with me.  We have a note taking section in our bulletin that I use.  I keep a prayer journal at home that, as I get time, I copy the notes into.
   
6. If so, how many and what do you record?
    I have about 7-8 from years past.  I recorded sermon notes mainly and some notes from personal devotion times.
   
7. Where is your favorite spot to read your Bible?
    I read at the kitchen table out of necessity in the mornings.  I would love to someday have a special little area where I kept all my devotional materials. 
   
8. Are there any special thoughts about your Bible you want to share?
    My Bible is battered and torn.  The leather binding is torn and cracked all the way down it.  There are a lot of memories with this Bible though.  I have things marked in there from my youth years til now.  I would never throw it out because it reminds me that I too am battered and torn, but God still loves me and has a placed prepared for me.

Thanks Nancy for heading this up.  I hope I can keep up with all the assignments.

VALENTINE

My aunt sent me this in an email.  I really liked it and thought I would share it will all of you.

  "For God so loVed the world,
        that he gAve
            His onLy
            begottEn
                  soN
                     That whosoever
        believeth In Him
           should Not perish
        but have Everlasting life."
      
                         John 3:16

Pretty cool, huh?

Safety in the Storm

We had really bad storms last night.  A friend of ours called us around 1:30am to make sure we were awake.  We were not.  The only noise that wakes me is a crying kid.  I can sleep through anything else.  Once we did wake up we heard the tornado sirens.  James and I got all the girls out of bed and into the hallway.  He watched the news and we were right in the path of tornadoes.  After about 10 minutes it had passed by us.  Praise God we were unharmed.  The girls were a little stirred up and had a difficult time going back to sleep.  It was still storming.  We have old storm windows so it always sounds like they are going to rattle right out into the floor.  We were not in bed for two minutes before Monkey came strolling in. 

So if you needed one more good reason to homeschool -- it is not having to get the kids out of bed early in the morning when you are awaken in the middle of the night and lose sleep due to tornado warnings.  I did, however, forget to put our dinner in the crockpot this morning.  Frozen pizza anyone?

Olympus Mons

We are loving our Astronomy study this year.  We are using Exploring Creation with Astronomy by Jeannie Fulbright.  I love this book.  The past two weeks we have learned about Mars.  For our project, the girls built a model of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system. 

They had a blast working with the salt dough.  After the model was dry, they were ready to make 'er blow.

Lil thought this was pretty cool too!  The side trough is not part of the actual volcano.  The girls wanted to add their own personal touch to God's creation.

When 3 Year Olds Are Supposed to Be Asleep

The other night I put the kids to bed.  I still do not have Lil to the point where she will go to sleep without me in the room.  She is a repeat offender of getting out of her bed, annoying her sisters, the whole bit.  So, for now, it is just easier if I sit in the floor. 

She was very quiet, laying on her side, giving all appearances of being asleep so I left the room.  James was watching TV so I hopped in the shower.  When I got out of the shower I saw that the girls' door was wide open.  I finished up in the bathroom and went to make sure she was still in bed.  Monkey was in the bottom bunk, no Lil.  So I stepped up and looked in the top bunk.  1 Lulu, 0 Lil.  I went in the living room to ask James where Lil was.  He said, "She's not in bed?!?"  As I turned around I was greeted with this coming down the hall.

While she was supposed to be sleeping, she was in the dark school room coloring her arms and hands with a marker.   She never ceases to amaze me with the workings of her brain!

***Side Note ***  Lulu just came in the room to read this post.  At the top I had that I jumped in the shower.  She informed me that it would make more sense to say that I hopped in the shower.   I would have hated to have made that mistake.