The Talent Show

Kate and Claire put on a talent show for us this morning. :)

All of the acts took place on the coffee table in our living room. 

Yes, I am aware that none of our furniture is going to survive. 

Miles enjoyed it.

Jack and Henry wanted in on the action.

If you are a 2 year old boy in our house, you're going to end up in girl clothes. It's just a given.

They made a gift shop for us to visit. Everything was a penny but unfortunately, Rick's ipad wasn't for sale. 

My Favorite Picture

I just realized that I have not posted my absolute favorite picture of my kids to-date. So without further ado:

And coming in a close second:

Quite frankly, I might like that one a little bit more. :)

School Update

We are a little over 3 months into our school year so I thought it was time for an update. This month was hard at times. I wasn't second guessing homeschool in general, but I was questioning some of our curriculum choices. It's hard to know what subjects are best for independent learning and what subjects should be combined across children. There is always an adjustment period each year and with each new family member but things have settled down in my mind some this week. It's important to keep our goal in mind and then make decisions based off of that goal and not off of what everyone says you should be using for curriculum, etc. However, I'm still happy with our overall decision and the lifestyle it affords us.

Here's the breakdown:

Henry - Kindergarten
Phonics - Veritas Press Phonics Museum - dropped this. We are using Reading Made Easy and Abeka handwriting and things are going much smoother. I really love the Phonics Museum but it was set up to use with a classroom and many things were not practical for us to do. In the same regard, it moved a little too slowly for us as well. 
Math - finish Singapore Essential Math and start Math-U-See Alpha - Henry finished Singapore and it a few weeks into MUS Alpha. This has been a great time for us. 

Claire - 2nd Grade
Math - Math-U-See finish Beta and start Gamma - still a good fit. Claire is in Beta and will probably move to Gamma in Feb/March
Grammar/Writing - Essentials in Writing and BraveWriter Projects - Never did BraveWriter because there is a lot of writing and writing projects in the History and Bible programs we use. Essentials in Writing has just been OK. I'm thinking of dropping it for Rod and Staff grammar. 
Spelling - Rod and Staff 2 - Going well
Literature - Books from Heart of Dakota and Veritas - Going well
Greek - Hey Andrew! Teach me some Greek 2 - Going well
Cursive - Abeka - Going well

Kate - 3rd Grade
Math - Math-U-See finish Gamma and start Delta - Going well. Kate will probably switch over to Delta in Feb/March.
Grammar/Writing - Essentials in Writing and BraveWriter Projects, - same as above
Spelling - Rod and Staff 3 - Going well
Literature - Veritas and Memoria Press - Going well
Greek - Hey Andrew! Teach me some Greek 3 - Going well. This has been a harder year in Greek but we both still like this program and are up for the challenge. 
Cursive - Abeka and across subjects - We dropped Abeka because it seemed like busy work. Kate writes nicely in cursive now so she just uses it in History, Bible, or Spelling

Together
Bible - Veritas Press Judges - Kings - Still love this!
History - Veritas Press New Testament, Greece, and Rome - This has been the hardest thing for me to implement. I really do love it but it is a LOT to wade through and decide what to use/teach/write/read. Veritas offers the same course online and the girls did a free 2 week trial. I was very impressed with it and they begged to keep doing it but I have invested in the parent lead course so I'm going to finish it out this year. 
Science - Apologia Swimming Creatures - I still really like Apologia but it's just hard to get Science done on a day-to-day basis so we do this is spurts and the kids read additional science books in-between spurts. 
Latin - Song School Latin - Dropped this!!! What was I thinking! Greek and Latin is too much for me to teach right now. Henry absolutely LOVE this program though and he still listens to the CD. :) It is very well done and I enjoyed it too but it was just too much with everything else I need to teach!

So there is the boring homeschool update! I'll be interested to see what I say at the end of the year! :)

An Encouragement or a warning...

I'm not sure if this post is going to encourage you to have more children,

 or give away some that you already have.

This is how it started off:

-and this is how it ended up.

Yes, this is a picture of how much our candy weighs (well-weighed). 

I think it should be our goal to surpass the 20 lb mark next year. We'll have Miles helping us then. :)

The Botanical Gardens

I'm trying to keep my blog alive so I'm going to blog once a week until the year is over. We went to the Botanical Gardens this morning and the kids had a great time! They are already asking to go back next week. It was about 48 degrees but we had the place to ourselves.

At first, Miles wasn't very happy to be out in public in his PJs. I tried to explain that that's one of the best things about being the 6th child - He didn't buy it. 

Sims had fun...

...until everyone ran off and left him. 

Jack jumped on rocks.

Henry rolled down a hill...

...and stopped a minute for a picture.

Claire climbed a few trees.

Kate found secret passageways. 

It turned out to be a perfect day!