Our first day at Heritage Home School Workshops was on Monday.  The twins are taking a writing class there - Institute for Excellence in Writing.  They go for an hour on Monday and then bring home homework that I incorporate into their day throughout the rest of the week.  We were getting ready to go and Tayden said, "want a backpack!"  So, I was able to find an old one for him:)  He and Ethan went to the nursery for the hour while I sat in on the class with the twins.  Part of our commitment to this co-op is that we have to volunteer some time so I'll be sitting in the nursery from here on out.

Our last three weeks of school have been busy and have flown by!  Between school, doing peaches, babysitting, serving lunch at church, and family things we have not had a lot of free time.

My sis-in-law just gave me an AWESOME website for spelling - I went in last night and plugged in the twins' spelling words and today they can log on and it will give them the spelling test and we can print out the results for our records.  There are also games that can be played with the list that I plugged in.  I will be able to add their words each week for them to study - should make spelling a little more fun:)  I'll add it over the side as well but it's http://spellingcity.com

More Homeschool Links

There are so many amazing resources out there if you just know what you are looking for and how to find them!  In this particular case my sister-in-law who is a teacher found these for me and passed them on.


https://teachingideas.co.uk/science/contents.htm  has just what I was looking for as far as filling out a lab sheet for a science experiment.  I haven't looked completely around the site but I do know that these pages were good.

http://mathwire.com  is another site that I'm using for Ethan to play some counting games on the computer.  It also has math centers that can be printed out along with the instructions to play them.

http://www.kidsbiology.com is a great site for learning more about biology.

A disclaimer on any sites that I post here - I haven't reviewed each site in it's entirety - please make sure you look them over before determining whether they are appropriate for your children or not.

I will also add these sites to the links to the right so that they are easy to find if you come back later looking for them!

Check out the video posted above for a really cool look at an Octopus!  God's design is amazing!

Couponing

For anyone who is interested in couponing or learning more about couponing check out this blog:

www.jillcataldo.com 

She lives in Huntley and does a good job at keeping track of the local sales/coupon match-ups and teaching couponing tips.

Well, here we go with our first full year of homeschooling! I started planning the first week a couple of nights ago and almost have everything figured out. We're starting next Monday because both the kids and I need to have structure again in our lives! Our summer has been very full and busy but I live off of a schedule and the kids are starting to be very grumpy so this will be a good thing:) My job this week has been to get our classroom cleaned up from last semester (it took us longer to get done than I anticipated so I kind of just left it and "shut the door" so to speak on everything in June!), get the first week planned and to finish up painting our kitchen table and chairs. I just have some touch up work to do on those and then the polyurethane coating and we're good to go. I'll have to remember to post some before and after pictures when it's all done:)

A few friends that I met last semester at the Swim & Gym class that the twins took invited me to start up a co-op with them for this fall. We had our second planning meeting tonight and I'm starting to look forward to getting that started. It will be the first three Friday mornings of the month with the third Friday being a field trip. The first two Fridays will consist of a conflict resolution "Bible Study" time, a science class, an art class, and a PE class. Each of the moms will be taking turns with the teaching and hosting. The main purpose of the co-op is for fellowship for the kids (& the moms, of course!) Kaitlyn, especially, will like this as she will also be with this same group of kids on Tuesdays again for Swim & Gym and she made some friends there last year. She misses the socialization at school and this should help with that. There are 10 moms and 18 kids not counting one baby - yikes!!

My biggest challenge this year will be....ETHAN! I'm going to start off doing a preschool curriculum with him and if he's ready we'll start the kindergarten curriculum in January. We'll see - some days he comes up with random new things that he learned from somewhere (I know I didn't teach it to him!) and some days he has no interest at all in those same things.

Here we go!!!

The Torture Begins!

Ughhhh! 

I've been gaining a lot of weight the past few months and have had ZERO motivation to do anything about it.  Today I decided that it's time to try and get healthy again!  I HATE watching what I eat and working out but I've noticed as I've gotten older that the weight just doesn't fall off like it used to:(  So I began the torture of working out tonight - 45 mins on the elliptical machine followed by 10 mins of arm weights...along with limiting my daily intake of coke to 1-a-day (down from...ahem!...4-a-day!)  I'd love to say that I'm good enough to eliminate regular pop from my diet altogether but I don't see that happening soon!  We usually eat fairly healthy but lately the kids and I have been eating out a lot when Ryan's gone and that is what is KILLING my weight.  Time to make more meals at home and eat out less.  That means I actually have to be productive each day and think about what to eat BEFORE 3pm when it gets too late to run to the store for anything I don't have on hand.  Which brings us back to the aforementioned zero motivation.

If only they sold motivation pills...

World Relief Day

 A few weeks ago we helped out at World Relief Day at the church's Fellowship Center.  The twins helped fill health kits that will be used in local (US) crises and some may be sent to Japan.