What did you do this summer?

"This week I want to invite you to take a moment and post a Summer Photo Essay memoir. Starting from around the official date of Summer to this past week - just give a basic summary of your summer as I know someone of you are photoholics! Haha! Make sure you jot down your memoirs about each photo so everyone can read about your summer."

Now that it's officially over, it sure doesn't seem like we did a lot this past summer! I guess we did, by looking back over the photos I've chosen to represent our last couple of months, but it sure went by fast!

We started off by going to a surprise 40th birthday party for one of our closest friends, and it was done with an 80's theme - we had to wear 80's clothing, hair styles, listen to the 80's music, etc. It was a blast!

Then, we enjoyed hosting a graduation party (or what we call, an Open House) for our daughter and her boyfriend, who had both graduated high school in May. It was a great party and they really appreciated everyone who came out to wish them a bright future. Now, if she'd just get those "Thank-You" cards out in the mail!

We went to Michigan in June for a Family Reunion on my dad's side and really got to enjoy some time with our kids - everyone but our newest graduate... she couldn't make the trip due to work. We went to Cedar Point in Ohio and had a great time on the roller coasters while we were up there! We also visited my mother-in-law's grave, which we hadn't been to in far too long.

We spent a day at the beach with our friends - we found out that "Water-resistant" does not mean "water-proof" when it comes to sunscreen. Even though we applied it more than one time, we all got burnt! Especially mom... I couldn't move comfortably for a week! OW!

We had some feathered friends visit our front yard one afternoon. These sandhill cranes just walked right up like they live here too. They weren't too afraid of us, which I'm not sure I'm happy with!

The kids had an end of summer youth group gathering at the youth leader's house and had a blast playing "manhunt" and having a flour war.

I co-hosted a surprise bridal shower luncheon for one of our friends and it came off just great... she had no idea and neither did her groom-to-be. They showed up at our friend's home thinking they were coming for lunch, but really there were a group of women waiting for the bride-to-be to shower her with love and the guys all took the groom-to-be out for lunch. It was a lot of fun!

We love our summers, but we're always excited to get back into our school routine. Thanks for asking us to post this, and sorry the post is so late....we've been out of town on a field trip!

As always, have a Blessed Day in your homeschool!

My Favorite Things... er, Sites...

"Since I’ve been making you work really hard on the previous Memoir themes I decided to take a little break, and do something fun! This week I want to invite you to share a few of your favourite things - er - sites. I know the list of favourite things could be never-ending, but I’ve made a list for you to do regarding your favourite homeschool things."



We've been asked to share our favorite sites in the following categories... here are mine:


Magazines/Carnivals - in print or online: I love cooking magazines, and Taste of Home and Simple & Delicious are two of my very favorites. I subscribe to online recipe magazines, too, like the one at MyRecipes.com.

Freebie sites - any sites that offer freebies or often have giveaways: I like the weekly homeschool free downloads offered at CurrClick.com.

Homeschool news/informative: I don't really follow any news sites, although I probably should.

Forums/book clubs: I am a lurker at HS Lounge and Vegsource. I would love to be part of a book club, and I have been considering asking my friends if they'd be interested in attending one if I start it.

Networking, Blog “About” (sites that offer tech-support or tutorials for computer/internet) & Quick Links: I don't use any of these, yet, but am glad to know I'll have a list of them to check out after this week's assignment!

Mom site - a sites just for moms: I like Lisa Whelchel's and Cindy Rushton's sites.

Inspirational/encouraging/motivational: I enjoy the daily devotional e-mails I receive from Proverbs 31 Ministries. You can find them at www.proverbs31.org

Youth/kid - sites geared towards youth/kids or owned by them: I don't visit any, other than the ones I use for obtaining homeschool lessons, games, etc.

Memes: This is the only meme I participate in, although, I'm thinking of taking part in Wordless Wednesday, since photography is one of my FAVORITE things!

Organizing/crafts - sites that you look to for organizing tips or crafts: I like two blogs for organizing helps: www.declutterit.com and www.orgjunkie.com

Homemaking/Homesteading: I don't have any "favorites" here, but I sure am enjoying reading every blog from the Mr. Linky on the weekly Homeschool Memoirs meme. I'm sure I'll find some new favorites after this week's assignment, though!

Bible-focused - sites mainly about God’s Word: Crosswalk.com

Homeschool Method - sites that offer a lot of info on a certain method: I don't have a certain method of homeschooling, therefore, I don't have any favorite sites for this one.

Family blog - sites that give you a glimpse into another family’s life, run by a family: Again, no favorites here, but hoping to be introduced to some new ones!

Businesses, particularly homebased: I don't have any in this category, either. I bet I will soon!

Thanks for the opportunity to share my favorite sites with others. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone else's favorites and probably coming up with some new fav's myself!

As always, have a Blessed Day in your homeschool!

What's new, they want to know...

"Planning your homeschool is a lot of fun, especially if you’re going to be trying something new. Just like finding a shiny new penny you’re excited to use it. This week I hope you’ll share something new you’re using, why you’ve decided to use it, and if you have used it how you like it. Make sure to include the publishing information and where you got it from so others can look into if they like."


I love this week's theme over at Home School Blog Awards... I'm using a few new items this year, and we're loving them, so I'm glad I've been asked to share them. Plus, I'm going to enjoy reading other HS mom's posts on their new finds. That will probably give me new ideas for upcoming year's curricula.

Anyway, to begin, we are using a vocabulary program called Wordly Wise 3000 this year for both kids. They seem to be enjoying it, so far. It can be seen here: WordlyWise3000.com — Vocabulary Reinforcement for All . I had found a copy of it at our local used homeschool sale earlier in the summer and picked it up. Unfortunately, I assumed the 6 on the book meant Grade 6 and found that it was an older edition of the program and the number did not coincide with the grade. I liked the look of it, so I ordered the appropriate grade level for both my kids and they are doing well with it.

We are also using a new science curriculum this year. It's The Complete Book of Science by School Specialty Publishing. You can see them here: Complete Book of Science, Grades 5-6 workbook . Nick is using the Grades 3-4 workbook. I went through them and aligned their units so they are both working on the same topic at the same time (if possible), so that we could do all the experiments together. We are really enjoying this science curriculum, even though it is not from a Christian perspective. I am just making sure we discuss anything that sounds like it's contradicting Creation. It's got enough workbook pages for them to do that it makes me happy and enough easy, hands-on experiments to keep them happy.

We are using Handwriting Without Tears - Cursive 3 for my son. He learned printing using the D'Nealian style and it's incredibly hard to read his writing. His HWT cursive is beautiful - granted, he's taking his time in the workbook and that's probably why all the letters look so nice, but I can't wait for him to be through the book and start writing his work in cursive (so I might actually be able to read it!). You can find Handwriting Without Tears here: Why It Works Handwriting Without Tears

My son also struggled on his end of the year test with spelling. This really surprised me, since we did a 2nd grade workbook for spelling and he got one word wrong out of the entire year! When we got his scores back from the CAT test, his spelling was pretty low. I saw the mistakes he made and they were all phonetically explainable choices. For example, for the word "neat", one of the ways to spell it was "nete" and to a phonetic reader, that could be right, since we all know that an "e" followed by a consonant and a silent or sneaky "e" will make that first "e" long. Anyway, he made many, many mistakes like this, so I realized I needed to find him a spelling program that would cause him to learn to spell without relying on phonics. I did a few searches on the internet and found AVKO's Sequential Spelling program. It sounded like just what he needed. We're on the 16th day and so far, so good. He's really learning how to spell, as opposed to just memorizing a list of random words for a week and then forgetting them. Their program is found here: Sequential Spelling

My final, and favorite new find is our Geography resource. We've done history in many fashions during the year's we've been homeschooling and never enjoyed it very much. I guess an exception to that was fourth grade, when we studied Florida history, and we liked it a lot because we did a LOT of field trips! Anyway, I never remember learning about Geography when I was in school - although that was a very long time ago, so maybe I did... and I'm terribly challenged in that area. I found Geography Matter's program called "Trail Guide to World Geography" and it sounded like something we would all enjoy. Even with the difference in ages, we could do it together, which was a huge plus. We are having so much fun with it and really learning a lot, too! You can find the program here: Trail Guide to World Geography by Cindy Wiggers . We are using these recommended resources along with it:

All of these resources can be found at the Geography Matters website - linked above.


I'm glad I was asked to share our new resources with you, it was fun and I love promoting products that I'm truly happy with.


As always, have a Blessed Day in your homeschool!

Routine... we have one, but do we use it???

"I am sure some of you are still getting into your homeschool routines. I know some people are very routine oriented while others may be more “day-by-day”, and it all depends on your family and what works best for your life-style. This week please post what your planned homeschool routine is. The theme banner should give you some ideas on how to do that. I had fun making that and adding in real info (except for the times! lol).
When you’re done posting your routines please share your prayers for this school year."

A few years ago, I bought and read Steven & Teri Maxwell's book, "Managers of Their Homes" and worked up a schedule for us. I update it yearly, when I'm working on the next year's lesson plans. It looks fantastic on paper... but, do we follow it? Honestly, for the school hours, we do, well at least, we follow the order of it. The times might not always coincide with the schedule. Once school is done, I usually forget that I even have a schedule and don't give it another thought. I bet life would run better if I used it, though, so, thanks to this week's theme... I'm going to give it a solid try next week when we resume school. We've taken this week off.

Here is a copy of our schedule for this year. I tried to post it last week when we were talking about Agenda's, but I couldn't get it legible, so I gave up. I took it over to paint and saved it as a .jpg file, so let's see if it can be read in this post:

Yay! It's legible! I'm learning! In real life, it's colorful, each of us have our own colored font, but that wasn't showing up well as a picture on this post, so I edited it.

I also have a written routine for keeping up with the house. I haven't actually been faithful to that, either, but have high hopes that beginning next week, I'll start being more diligent. We had company stay over on Sunday night, so our house is in pretty good shape. It will be easier to start a weekly cleaning routine when I'm beginning with a house in relatively good state of cleanliness. That weekly routine is here:

If I could just stick to them, my life would be so organized that I wouldn't recognize it. I guess that's one of my prayers for this school year. That I would be more disciplined about using these schedules and routines and that I can get the things that have to be done accomplished so that we have time to have fun. Another prayer is that we are able to enjoy learning more this year than any other. I don't wanat it to be all about what we get accomplished during the year as much as memories of how we got there. I want my kids to enjoy school, and not feel it's just a required part of our day and we need to hurry up and get through. I'm thankful God is my principal, so I can bring my troubles, fears and frustrations to him for guidance. I'm also thankful that I have the opportunity to teach my children at home.

Thanks for letting me share these with you, and as always, I hope you have a Blessed Day in your homeschool.

Lisa