The End of the Year

I keep reading everyone elses end of year wrap so thought I would do my own. It has been a whirl wind year with so many changes. My oldest has ended her 11th grade year and is now going to be a senior!!! That is very bittersweet as I see her as a little girl and still wonder where the heck did her piggie tails go??? She started her first job as well and is killing me with playing driver! Gotta get her license now so she can drive herself! She is turning into an amazing young lady. We have had our moments this year but I wouldn't trade them for anything. I love how proud she is of her good grades, her dream of college and future she wants. I couldn't have asked for a better daughter. I love that I have gotten to be there every night for dinner and every morning for wake up. I know every parent makes the best choice they can and I am so thrilled I have raised my kids for the most part with no outside interference. Even though she goes to school we still talk about her day, her friends, her everything and I love it. Wish I had that with my mom. Needless to say she is on her way.

That is my girl on her first day of work WOO HOO!!!!!




















Damian started public high school this year at his request that was odd! It was a huge hassle to get him in and a lot of stupid run around. Nothing with public school can be simple! He has had his struggles and hopefully learned a few things along the way. Quite a few of his teachers stated they could tell he was homeschooled. In a good way! He wasn't disruptive or had that attitude that most boys his age had. He was happy to do his work even if he didn't understand and had to do it a million times. He never complained or got angry. I liked hearing that. I don't know if it was all due to be homeschooled, maybe it was just due to him, who knows. Sadly I don't believe the school system here is great as far as special needs kids go. He seems to be the kid slipping through the cracks because the classes are so big and there just isn't time. I hear this alot from other moms too so this will be his last year in a public school setting. Next year he will attend a private school that has smaller classes, more teachers and a great all around school. I am very excited for this as I was a private school kid and if I had to do it over my kids would have all grown up that way. Looking from an adult point of view I wish I had stayed in private when given the choice! I know Damian is a different kind of kid and what homeschool gave to him when he was young is not what he needs now. It is hard to admit that being with me is not the best choice for him but that is what being a good parent is knowing when they need something beyond you. He needs me right now to be mom not teacher and that is OK. Sometimes I really want to look up the many people in Indiana who basically gave no hope when he was a toddler, who used words like "piece of meat" to describe him. I wanna scream at them and say Look at him now!!! He will do everything other kids do he just learns differently. Anyone who ever has a child diagnosed with autism and low IQ and are told it will never get better DO NOT believe it. It can get better. It is a different better than what your plan was for that child but it still can be great.

Damian also tried frog legs this year!  EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Fox what to say about Fox??? He drives me crazy on a daily basis and some days I just let him sleep in. He is a challenge child and I hate it!! He has to question everything and it drives me bonkers. We will be having a I wanna kill my kid day and he will do something totally out there like throw his arms around me and say I am the best mom. Or dig a grave for one of our little lost pets. Or how he carried his sister all the way from the neighbors house when she scraped her back then he walked back there to get her bike. He drives me bonkers. He totally throws me for a loop at times. We do something all week long and he can't answer nothing we get to a hands on project and he can't shut up. He can rattle off all kinds of stuff I don't even remember teaching. When the 11th grader has history homework and he can answer all the questions for her while I sit there in a state of shock. That is my boy. Who fights me every step of the way but I wouldn't trade him either.

Ever see a kid so happy to dissect a heart?




















My "baby girl" I can talk about her all darn day long! She is the baby of the house and still holds this place firm. Not thinking that will ever change! Every time I hear her read a book it just steals my heart a bit because I did that! I taught her to read and it tickles me. I taught the boys too but she is the last one I will get to do that with so I am still riding that high! She fights with the boys, plays with my little ponies and loves hello kitty clothes. She will wear her pretty dresses while climbing trees and playing with trucks in the dirt! She loves just about everything but math. I hate math too! This year she started pottery and loves it! We also started joining a co-op and she adores it. She still loves little toys she can tote around and her beloved stuffed animals. She also has developed an i pad thing and loves recording everything!!

She loves to climb trees!




















Well it was a busy full year. Fun times, hard times, challenges and great moments for all of us. Math and spelling will continue through the summer for the younger two. Skyler who really misses doing Magic School has asked for some science Hogwarts style so we will do some of that and spend time at the library of course! The hardest thing this year? Watching my life grow up!!! And joining a co-op and doing pottery class. I realized shortly after Christmas that life was not in the best place for me. I had become way too much of stay at home mom. I was becoming one of those unsocialized homeschoolers you read about!! So changes had to be made and it was hard. I put her in pottery, made friends with my neighbor and started walking at night, I then joined a co-op where I have to be involved and actually talk to other human beings! I made friends, it was pretty crazy!! So after being here for almost 4 years I am starting to have a life. Cannot wait to see what changes next year brings on. Wondering if I should be scared???

Wordless Wednesday

 

First week of 2014

WARNING!!!!!! There are pics of the heart dissection.....
My week is starting off right!

They are doing narrations from Story of The World Chapter 4 Volume 2. I got these cool freebies here.  Thanks for all that hard work and sharing it!!! I also made sure we started using our timeline books again. I got these from Winterpromise and they are just beautiful.

So we started our week with Chapter 4. I will get history done this school year. It has always been hit or miss but I want to get it done. I love history so I hope they will too.

For science this week started with the heart. You can see the plan on the human body tab. The had fun with the handmade stethoscope!

And since it seems all we are hearing about is snow Skyler wanted to have some so we made it LOL

 See mom we can have a snow day too!

By Tuesday they were a bit upset that their siblings high school was closed.  To them it wasn't fair they got to have no school! I just had to remind them of all the times they get a break that other kids are in school! So for the rest of the week we studied the heart.We did Story of the World up to Chapter 7. We added map work from the activity book and did narration pages which they really disliked. I told them we can cut those out if they start paying attention. It seems they only pick up on what they want to pick up on and sometimes they just seem to veg out to another planet!

Fox is still such a struggling reader and speller. He does so good at some stuff but when it comes to reading he just don't. I guess it is not helpful he hates doing it. He hates writing as well. He doesn't care if there are verbs, nouns, adverbs etc. and he thinks it is dumb. I found another program Language Lessons Through Literature that we have started this week. So far so good. It doesn't seem to be an awful lot of writing so he is tolerating it. It seems like a really good program, if Skyler wasn't already doing Easy Grammar and reading pretty well I would actually try it with her.

We dropped Spelling With Color it was just too much with all the different colors and it drove my kids nuts. We will be moving back to All About Spelling this coming week.

So here are some pictures that highlighted our fun week!

Some sand art from the Story of the World activity book. They really liked these! They really enjoyed reading about the Ajanta Caves too.

This was a project from the Horrible Science kit They got to fill up the heart with BLOOD! They both really liked that part LOL.

We figured out real quick to go outside! Fox said it was really cool to see how far blood could spurt out!

And we dissected a heart, well let's be honest Fox did it and Skyler stayed on the other side of our house! I was OK until all of a sudden a lot of fluid started coming out, that's when my lunch decided to come out as well. I have never gotten sick on body parts before but I did this time. We did a shark two summers ago and I got very ill it seems alot of people just cannot do the whole animal. I was OK with parts until this one.

Skyler will have nothing to do with anything like this unless it is safe online!

 NO I DID NOT TELL HIM TO POSE!!!! He looks awfully sweet though :)

As usual Fox behavior goes this is no different, all week he could barely answer anything but when he started cutting into this thing he could tell me all kinds of stuff. He truly is a hands on kid!! I hope everyone else had full weeks of fun too!

Our Week!

     I have really lost count on what week number we are on! My blog has been so messed up not being able to post pictures, not being able to do anything and of course blogger has been ZERO help!!! Messing around I finally figured out something was screwy with the compatibility. Oh well, my blog is now working so I am back!! This is the week after Thanksgiving and our first week doing Christmas Around The World!!!! Our little elf came back too! He for sure arrived in style in his Elf Rocket!!!

Now if you go here this awesome mama made this rocket printable for free!! Took all of 5 minutes to put together, but the smile on my daughters face was just priceless!!!!  Since his arrival we of course got his house out of the shed. He made this house about 2 years ago. We had wondered for days why all the green and red paint kept vanishing!! LOL

He also was attacked by lego men and saved by a Skylander named Hotdog

Skyler said after all that she wanted him safe and sound in her dollhouse for the day

Now onto Christmas Around The World!!!

I made the cutest little suitcases from here.

They were just so very adorable!! By the way this was a freebie too.

Made them each a passport and they will get tickets for where they visit!! The notebook folder will hold all their pages they make for each place and I got stickers for the passports just by googling free passport stickers or flags for whatever country. Now I also bought a study at Teachers Pay Teachers. I bought it because there were printable mini books for a lot of countries and some other ideas but it wasn't a must have just something I liked. You can for sure do a Christmas Around The World for free. Most of the notebooking pages I am using came from this free study. This is awesome as well and it has blogger links to a lot of people who contributed in different places.

And wouldn't you have known of all places at Walmart I found the perfect book for us!!!

We had to have it! Skyler loved it, Fox was ho hum about it but she really enjoyed it. Of course while reading it I changed one of the towns names to our own so that made it even better by her. We then went to Hawaii because they do Christmas a bit different than the rest of the US. We watched a video and learned how to say Merry Christmas in Hawaii!! They really enjoyed that. We made some crafts.

we then went on to Canada. I really couldn't find much in the Christmas in Canada way all I could find were Canada day crafts and coloring pages so they made Canada Day fortune teller.

We then went to Germany on Friday and I think they liked that most of all. We made cute little shoes from a pattern this mamma made. They were so stinking cute!!!

Here they are by morning

I also printed some cards off about St. Nicholas from the St Nicholas website and found a little print out about the pickle tradition in Germany and my mom even found her old pickle from when she was young. We made paper Gingerbread houses that would store in their suitcases.

Hot chocolate with some gingerbread man marshmallows

The unit I bought had some German paperdolls so they had those to add to their suitcases

We also found our little elf in the fridge after he had a night of making some fudge!!

This is our map after the week we have labeled where we learned about. I just used some little Christmas stickers we had to mark the places and Fox put some twine to each place.

It was a pretty fun week. They did all the other school stuff I just didn't bother with pictures of yet another math sheet or whatever. :)

Wordless Wednesday

Because even rats deserve Thanksgiving!!!

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Welcome Fall! Week 6

This week we are celebrating Fall! Fall is my favorite. Not too hot, not too cold but just right! The framed images come from google image from searching fall subway art. I think they turned out quite pretty. It is also homeschool spirit week! Here is their website and here is their facebook page to tell you all about it! First up is jammie day!

Not quite sure what is up with the hat..she has been wearing it a few days now and don't seem to be wanting to give it up at all. Fox and pajamas have kinda went away as he has gotten older usually it is a pair of lounge type pants with a t-shirt. Skyler still loves jammies! She is my child that will fight me tooth and nail about leaving her childhood! For our Fall study I am using a few different things. Some videos from Amanda Bennet's Fall download and go, ALOT of library books, various free things I have found online, A Journey Through Learning Fall lapbook and the Dynamic Moms free Fall Unit. Just whatever I like out of those things. The first two videos we watched the kids liked but they said were sad. They were kinda a goodbye to summer thing and the kids said the music was really sad.

I figure when all is done I will make a BIG lapbook of everything so I had the kids make a cover for it.

 

Skyler is the only one who liked hers well enough to post a picture. We are going to turn this into a pretty big study, adding all the holidays and things associated with Fall. We also made a blood cell model today. This was OK I am glad the kids knew what was what and could tell me all about it!

 

Here is Fox adding the red blood cells. (these are those red hot candies)

Skyler adding white blood cells (dried lima beans) and platelets (sunflower seeds)

 

Now for the plasma (corn oil)

 

Here is a side view of their blood cell!

 

Skyler just had to pose with it. She has already ditched her pj's and now is wearing a fox costume she has for Halloween. Yes she realizes it is over a month away, she had to get in the mood she told me! Tomorrow is school away from home day and I think we will take it to the park! My kids like finding nature goodies and eating outside so it will work out perfect.

 

On Tuesday we took our school to the park for a picnic lunch and some nature time!

We also took the time to work in their yearbooks they are making.

It is a bunch of printed pages with frames and designs where they add a picture each moth or little drawings that they will work on throughout the year. Should be cute when the year is up!

Math time!





There wasn't many leaves on the ground yet but Skyler started to gather what was there. My kids love leaves.

 

We saw a lot of little caterpillars traveling along the walkway. Fox was convinced all these leaf skeletons looked like dead fish. I actually kinda agree! My kids have a thing about mushrooms. They have to look at everyone they see. They also love the waterfall that looks like rootbeer. I have been told by a few librarians this is the only natural waterfall in Florida all the rest are man made. Tomorrow is crazy hair day so not quite sure what we are going to do with that one!

 

 

 

Well, I knew Tuesday I was feeling low and by Wednesday I was pretty worthless. For the rest of the week my kids played while I slept. I have heard it is going around, don't you always hear that when you are sick? I really wanted to go and volunteer with the animals and do crazy hair but it just didn't happen. On Friday my daughter still insisted on dressing up for hero day and I did manage to catch a pic!

 

She looked so cute for the few minutes I was awake!