So, in case you don't know, we have.....

....we have begun the adventure of home educating again after a 3 year stint in public school for the girls, and a one year break for me after Isaac "graduated" from his home education. Yes. home educating. I like to call it that to remind us that we are not a school, we are a home. I am not a teacher, although part of my responsibility is to teach; I am a mother. Rick is not the principal, although he certainly gets to be in charge and they may get sent to his "office" if need be...:) He is the dad (who is more authority than the principal anyway.) We started a few weeks ago and are figuring out our "schedule" and tweeting our methods already, but the girls seem to really enjoy it. One will tell you otherwise if you ask her, but, that's another story, for another time. If you don't care to hear more about our experience, you can quit reading now. But, if you are interested, I am going to share more about how and what we learn on this journey called life and learning.


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Oh, good...you are still reading. Well, then, this was today. So far.



This morning the girls woke me at 6:15 wanted to know if they could have breakfast, and "Could we make you coffee?" They have a plan of getting an early start to their lessons so they can get outside to their newly discovered play area in the empty lot next to our house. With their breakfast complete, Grace worked on her math, and Maddie her spelling. Somehow one of them asked if all flowers close up at night and open again in the morning, so they donned their shoes and went out to check the roses. We now have 2 white roses in paper cups sitting in colored water trying to turn into pink and blue roses. That all happened before 7:15AM and then they parked themselves in the front bedroom window to "...watch the other kids get on the bus." Too excited to wait, so they missed it, but did see it turn the corner and drive away without them and they were pleased....:) 




















Once Hannah woke up and got going, and Daddy left for work, they gathered their folders, after getting a "no" answer to "Can we watch a little TV?", and dug in. Our folders should be considered a subject in themselves as we are learning to compile and  organize our papers along with me keep track of who's working on what. This is a definitely a work in progress.

A little recap from the last 3 weeks: We are beginning our studies based on a chronological study of the history of the world, so we are studying Ancient Egypt and since it is a desert area, are using deserts and all things related to deserts, as our science topic. We also read, studied, discussed and wrote about the story in Genesis of Joseph's life after he was sold into Egypt and God's big plan for his life. Yesterday, we finally got to our Nile River project and loved working on it together and collecting all the props we needed to make it look just the way we liked, including a small reed boat, placing some "mountains" on the east side of the river and adding a couple canals for the farmers. 

The rest of the morning we did math,spelling words, copywork/grammer lessons, and spent time memorizing Psalm 1. Read 2 more chapters from The Magic Tree House book, Season of the Sandstorm; added more vocabulary words and facts to discuss about caravans, deserts and camels, along with names of places to find on globe or map for geography. 
Vocabulary: when Rick is home, he finds immense pleasure in using unfamiliar vocabulary and then when the girls ask, "What's that mean?" he tells them, "Look it up and get back to me." Maddie now know the meanings of slothful and precursor...:) 


By the time we finished all this, it was 10:45 AM and we called it a morning well done and after a snack, Hannah and Maddie gathered their tools and rushed out to play in the field which is now their "fort". Grace and I took a trip to Walmart to purchase a few groceries and analog watches for the three of them (their money) to assist in our learning about telling time and time lapse the "real way" instead of all the digital clocks surrounding us around our home. 




Lunch time.

More outside play time for them. Breathing time for me...:)

We'll read more later and I'm sure Daddy will interject some new vocabulary into their lives...:)

That's all for now. I need to go make our chicken dumpling soup for dinner and clean some things up.