Robles Xmas Card 2010

Joy and Love Christmas Card

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Shutterfly

I am excited to be using http://www.shutterfly.com/ this holiday season for my Christmas cards. Their site is really easy to use and always has a lot of promotions. I can use their super fast uploader to get my pics on the site, quickly and easily make photobooks, Christmas cards, and order prints, and they are shipped right to my door really fast. And really affordable. And as a busy mother, homeschooler, business owner, and wife... I couldn't ask for more.

My favorite this year is their Christmas Photo Card collection. What a great way to add personal touches to your holiday cards. http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-photo-cards Maybe these ones will stay on the mantel a bit longer?! And as for great gifts... I know that any grandparent would love a calendar just chalked full of photos of their cutest ever grandchildren! http://www.shutterfly.com/calendars/desk-calendars This year we decided to go with the photobooks, which you can get lots of different sizes and customize them to your needs or choose a premade layout. SO easy, and fun, and wonderful gifts to boot.

(Please note that I was given 50 free Christmas cards to offer my opinion of shutterflys products. All opinions in this blog are my true feelings of this great site though.)

Family Portraits

Jenny Grogg is an amazing friend and extremely talented photographer.... Enjoy!

Weeks 4 and 5

Wigwams
Dom's first soccer practice

Dom Roller Skating for the first time

Abbi Roller Skating for the first time

Abbi "Master Chef" making SOUL food!

My Fathers World Focused on Native Americans in Week 4 and Week 5 on Pilgrims. We have made teepees, wigwams, and read wonderful stories about Native Americans. One of my favorite go-alongs was a few books called "A day in the life of...(Sarah Morton, etc.) which told of the daily lives of the pilgrims. They were fun to read and accurate in information. We read the story of Squanto and fell in love with his determination and perseverence. It was a book that we didn't want to put down each day but liked the suspense. In the end, we settled on eating a Pumpkin Pie with homemade whipped cream to celebrate the first "Thanksgiving". For Science, we discovered the Universe, making a 13 ft. scaled down diagram of the solar system with cardstock, lots of measuring and math, and markers. I was astonished at how much bigger the sun is than the planets... oh the things we forget. Abigail spent a couple of hours on this project, but still refused to hang it in her "horse" room. So her brother gets it in his room. :) He is pleased. Then we studied the stars and constellations. We still haven't made it late enough on a clear night to actually look for the Big Dipper, but we'll fit that in this week (if I can remember!). Abigail memorized her bible verse on day one, so bible is fairly easy for her. I'm beginning to wonder if I should change the verses up each week, instead of giving her so much time to memorize them. I want them to be truely in her heart for good, so I don't want to rush it, but if she can memorize things so quickly, why not put a few more verses in there for her?

The Study of the Indian slavery and stars fit in really well with our Five in a Row studies. In week 4 we read "Who owns the Sun?" which was a great indroduction to slavery. It is a tear jerker, but the kids didn't seem to be "moved" too much by it. We have read dozens of books on slavery now and the kids have really come to love this time period and the freedoms gained since. We ended the week with a fabulous southern soul dinner cooked by Abigail herself. We even invited another family over to enjoy. (ham, macncheese, baked beans, and corn bread... and pie!) It was a dinner that the slaves might have cooked for their masters, and talked about the difference between what the slaves got to eat and what they had to cook. In week 5, we read "Follow the Drinking Gourd", another slave tale, and it has surely become a favorite of mine. We learned a lot about the Big Dipper and the North Star. We also took the time to learn the song that goes with the book (Thank God for YouTube!). The kids then wanted to hear more slave songs, which was fun. Abigail and I have enjoyed reading the Addy Series from American Girl Novels, which is about a young slave girl. We will continue our reading on slaves into the next week (6) because we have SO many great books.

And we ended the week with family photos, thanks to our talented and wonderful friend Jenny. I'm going to make another post shortly with some of the great shots! On Friday we also took a trip with other homeschoolers to a local roller skating rink. It was the first time the kids had ever gone roller skating and it was a blast. On Saturday Dominic had his 2nd game, and they won! He has scored 1 goal at each game and really looks forward to his soccer days.

PRAISE: We have been praying about a way to provide horseback riding lessons for Abigail. It is honestly the only sport that she loves doing and it's amazing therapeutically. Well, I called Coastal Therapeutic Riding Program here in Wilmington, and found that we can bill our insurance for most of the cost through them. We are so excited. We'll be going to the barn to meet her new instructor this Thursday. Praise God for providing this resource for us. What seems like a luxury, is really not for Abbi... and God knows her needs, wants, and desires and loves her more than I can even imagine. :) He sure is faithful.

Week 3

Ferry Ride

Our New Fish

Jellyfish crafts

Jellyfish at the Aquarium!

Cool Turtle

Octopus!

Alligators!

Each week gets better and better!!! I absolutely LOVE our curriculum choices for the year. We have not had this much fun together in so long.

This week, in My fathers world, we studied Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Name of Jesus. We've read stories of Native Americans and life in Jamestown, all written from a child's perspective, which is so intriguing for the children. We'll spend the weekend reading some Pocahotas novels for enjoyment. Next week we'll really get into the study of Native Americans, so this week we focused more on the FIAR curriculum.

FIAR brought us into the world under the sea this week. We read "Night of the Moonjellies" and fell in love with the idea of being along the sea in New England. We studied jellyfish, dolphins, sharks, whales, salt water fish, crabs, eels, and just about every ocean life book we could get our hands on. We learned so much about biospheres and food chains. We EVEN went to the store and bought the kids some fish for a science "project". Abigail is now the proud owner of a Betta Fish, Princess. And Dominic is the proud owner of 2 goldfish, Jack and Jill. And it was all worth it, when on Friday fun Day, we took a trip to the aquarium. The kids would say, Oooo look! A Moray Eel mom! Look at how its yellow because of the slime! And Mom! Look! A horseshoe crab! Let's flip it over and see how it can use its tail to flip back around! And MOMMMMM! MOOOONJELLIES!!!!! Hehehe. And then, oh how excited they were to learn that on the way home, we would be riding a Ferry across the river, just as the child in their story rode a boat the night he found his moonjelly. It was magical and wonderful, and lovely. We even invited some friends along, and had so much fun. Then to finish the wonderful day, we'll be eating some New England Seafood favorites... Lobster, Clam chowder, Fried clams, and milkshakes.

Week 2

Week 2 of homeschooling... we are just beginning to get settled into a routine. I'm impressed at how well the kids have transitioned from summer time freedom to school days filled with activities and schedules. It has certainly not been without it's tantrus, whining, and complaining, but not as much as I had thought there would be. Not to mention throwing the wrench of daycare into the mix. It adds a large family feel to our home, that I seem to love more and more each day.

This week in MFW we studied Christopher Columbus. We read stories of his travels, made ships out of foil (again with the foil! haha). And sailed them on the ocean blue... well, the bathtub. The kids enjoyed sailing the ships with lego men in the tub for quite awhile, acting out the stories we had read all week of angry men getting frustrated about sailing into the unknown for months, while Christopher insisted they'd land in the Indies. :) Too bad he never really knew that what he found was America, a whole new world. My children are fascinated by this.

This week in FIAR, we did "When I was young in the mountains" by Cynthia Rylant. We studied Appalachians, read appalachian folk tales, talked about being content with what we have, and finished the week off with an appalachian dinner of Corn Bread, Pinto Beans, and Fried Okra. Luckily Nelson, seeing the shopping list before him decided to pick up some fried chicken too, knowing that him nor the children would actually enjoy pinto beans or okra. Hahaha. He was right. At least we're trying new things.

Week 1

Vikings!

Name Bracelets (Above) and Red, White and Blue Snack (Below)

This week was a great first week of school and daycare. I got really nervous over the weekend, that I wasn't prepared enough, or that the kids wouldn't like the new style of learning... who knows. But it went really well. We learned about the meaning of our names, made name pancakes, posters, and bracelets. We learned about patriotism and the pledge of allegiance and made a red white and blue snack. Did you know the pledge has been revised several times from the original, with adding Under God the latest rendition? Crazy, the things I'm still learning as an adult. We learned about map reading and the Vikings. Today we did a science experiment about floating. All of the children I was watching had so much fun seeing what would float in plain water and salt water and what wouldn't. We read Harold and the Purple crayon all week, which taught us about creativity, the use of puns, and the children made purple pictures with the use of the vanishing point technique. We pretended to be in a hot air balloon and took a ride (with the use of google maps) from our roof all the way to space, where we could see the earth... little by little. Perspective is a wonderful thing. We've spent an hour or more every night, curled up on the couch reading book after book from the library. What wonderful time spent with my children. Last night we read a chapter book, "The chalk box kid" to go along with the same type of creativity portrayed in Harold and the Purple Crayon, and today we too made chalk gardens, like the chalk box kid. How fun it was to see my children's imaginations blooming. They are inspired by learning about how creative God was in the story of Creation. It has been a topic of conversation all week, as we take our morning walks around the nature preserve in our neighborhood. It hasn't come without challenges... Dominic isn't a fan of workbooks at all, so math is definitely not his favorite, but he still does it. And I've learned that he is just not ready for Powerglide Spanish yet, as I had hoped he'd be. Oh well, Abigail is in her prime and loving it, and Dom will just have to get it by osmosis. I'm almost certain I'll be impressed with what he retains from listening to her do it. I've also had a few extra daycare children from time to time this week... a welcome addition to our home. But Abbi does have trouble staying focused with older children in the house who don't have to learn these things. We've incorporated them as much as possible, and it's been fun. I've learned that I can be flexible, and that my plans are great building blocks... that can be manipulated, changed, or even crossed out without any of my children lacking anything integral to their childhood. I'd rather see them playing and learning what is inspiring them in the moment, and fit the rest in when I can. We are finishing our week, on Friday FUN DAY, we had a Vikings Day. We made Vikings costumes from foil and sheets... held an epic battle over lands... and even made hommeade vikings bread (dense and seedy) with beef and barley soup, and vino (grape juice) from horns! for lunch. And Friday night, Abigail read us the FIAR book Harold and the Purple Crayon, and we had a Harold 9 Pie Picnic dinner. We made homemade empanads (meat pies) and had purple (blueberry) pie for dinner.

Homeschool Journey

This is my first post about homeschooling... probably one of many to come. We chose to begin homeschooling our children last year. Given the baby (Logan) on the way and other factors, we choose to use a traditional style curriculum, along with videos to help the year go smoothly. It worked wonders for our family, and Abigail really came to love learning at home. Homeschooling is not a lifelong choice for us. Simply a year-to-year decision based on what is best for our family. Well, this year, we have chosen to do it again. Except now, we'll have 2 kids in school, and I'm operating a small daycare in my home to supplement the budget. AND, I've decided we need a different approach this year. We are going to give the 'living books' approach a try, with an ecclectic feel. Definitely more hands on. We've chosen to use Adventures in My Fathers World for Abigail (3rd), and Five in a Row for Dominic (K). In addition, we're adding Singapore Math, Primary Language Lessons by Emma Surl, Teach your Child to Read in 100 easy lessons, Powerglide Spanish, computer keyboarding lessons, and Spectrum Spelling. We are SO excited about this school year. Crafts, recipes, read-aloud stories, and fun activities will fill our days. We've also decided to get more involved with activities for social exposure this year. Both children will be participating in a weekly homeschool co-op in which they'll have the opportunity to take up to 3 classes. They'll also be joining AWANA, which I'm really excited about. Additionally, Dominic will be taking up soccer and Abigail will continue with horseback riding. I've kept our afternoons free for Occupational and Physical Therapy, especially since the daycare children will all need naps. I am beginning to wonder if we've filled our schedule too full, and not allowed enough margin. I pray this is not the case, but will not hesitate to trim down our obligations if family time is not abundant.

This week, my goal was to visit the New Hanover County Library, because the Brunswick County Library does not have sufficient resources to meet our needs. (Ie. NHC has 31 of the 33 books I need for Dominic's FIAR curriculum, as compared to BC - 13!) We had to pay $30 for library card... but it was well worth it. I can actually turn in my book lists for the whole year, with dates for picking them up, and the childrens department, will find all of my books (even through inter-library loan if needed), as well as add supplemental books they see fit, and I just pick them up. This will take hours of work off my plate. Praise God!

Well, today is Saturday... our year will kick-off in 2 days on Monday. To celebrate the occasion, we made "name" pancakes this morning with each pereson getting mini pancakes in the shape of each letter of their name. "Mom" and "Dad" included. I wish I had thought to take a picture! This week, we'll be learning about Jesus' name... our names... The pledge of allegiance... and reading "Harold and the Purple Crayon".