This year we are using The Mystery of History II. Brandon seems to be enjoying this curriculum more than all the other history curriculum we've used in the past. Dare I say, we've finally found the perfect history curriculum for us? Gee, it's only taken us 5 years of homeschooling to hit pay dirt!

Here is his Time Line. I followed the book's advice and just bought a package of historical figures. He really likes this method better. The time line will fold up to for an easy put away...say, under the couch...or you can hang it on the wall to work with it. I just leave it up on the wall.






















He has done a few little projects already this year. Nothing big but he has enjoyed them and I do feel confident that this is a curriculum he "gets" with very little necessary input from me. That kind of makes me sad because I love history and think I'd enjoy this study myself but at least I don't HAVE to help him which means he can do history even if I'm busy. I guess I could catch up and read the lessons in my spare time....LOL

Any way, here are a few of little things he has done along with his lessons:

When he studied the Dead Sea Scrolls he tried to duplicate the environment the scrolls were found in so you'd see how the salt preserved them. He boiled salt in water and left the paper in a tray of the salt water in the sun to evaporate. So, the paper ends up covered in salt crystals and stiff. Also by accident he found that it was also at least slightly fire proof! How about that?




Here he made a copy of the Apostle's Creed and then made the paper look aged by crumpling, soaking in strong tea water, drying it out and burning the edges. Around this time is when he discovered that the sea salt paper wouldn't burn. We then mounted it under self sealing plastic to put in his notebook.



This is a topographic map of Israel made of salt dough to remind him of the Salt Sea. The little flags are places where important things that he has studied so far this year have happened. It's not supposed to be quite so flour-y but we had a hard time with the dough sticking to us and not the cardboard. This was messy and not quite perfect but a nice break from the ordinary map worksheet.

Our church has finally gotten an Awana's program! Emily is a Spark! This is a wonderful program and I think Emily will love it! Here is a picture of her at game time during the very first meeting.

I also have her signed up for All American 4-H. Her projects will be in Food and Nutrition and Clothing and Textiles.

She will be going to the monthly American Girl Book Club at a local library.

When we remember them we'll go to the Home Depot and Lowe's kid's clinics. She loves those.

I haven't decided if she'll do children's choir this year.

I've also gone to a local dance studio and checked into the price of putting her in tumble and ballet. We just have to talk Daddy into it!

Things can get pretty irritating around here. By that I mean why in the h-e-l-l-o do these two kids have to fuss and fight and pick and whine 24/7!?? What happened to that extra special super close bond they were supposed to build being at home together and homeschooling? Yesterday they were right in normal form until when about 1/2 way through the day I decided I had had enough.

Let me set up the scene: I was busy (ok preoccupied....ok obsessed with fixing my blog's template) and asked Brandon to help his sister with her school work. Now I know she can be let's say.....a brat... at times especially to her big brother but he in turn has developed this habit of growling at her. He just talks so roughly and snaps at her it seems constantly. As I sat in my room I kept hearing this over and over and finally I had had enough. So, I called him into my room and asked him to find the paddle. (It seems I spank my children so often that the thing can turn up missing for weeks without anyone knowing it was gone.) While he was looking for the paddle, because it was indeed no where to be seen, he would pass his sister and growl at her for getting him in trouble. See... they thought he was in trouble for not helping her to do her work not realizing that it was his attitude that had sent me over the edge.

So, here he is all mad stomping around the house looking for the object of his impending doom when Emily came into my room. She had her serious face on and I could tell she meant business. She walked right up to me and took my hand in both of hers so as to have my full attention. She looks me straight in the eye and says in a tiny little voice,

Emily: "Mommy, you shouldn't spank Bubba because it's not his fault."
Mom: "It's not. Well, then who's fault is it?"
Emily: "It's mine. He tried to help me do my work but I told him to leave me alone."
Mom: "So, he shouldn't get a spanking?"
Emily: "No. "
Mom: "Well, who do you think should get the spanking?"
Emily: "I should."
Mom: "You think you should get a spanking instead of Bubba?"
Emily: "Yes Ma'am , It's all my fault. Don't spank him. Spank me."

Now, at this point her bottom lip is sticking out a tad and trembling, her eyes are red, silent tears are trickling down her face. Sweet wispy strands of hair have worked loose from her braid and are sticking to her wet face. Her tiny little nose is kindda swished up. She is SO sincere. She is breaking my heart! About this time Brandon came into the room looking suspicious. I could read his mind, "What's this monster done gone and done to me now." So, I called him over, put my hand under her shaking little chin to tilt her head up to his face. I asked him to look at her in the eye. As he did I saw his countenance visibly soften. Then I dropped the bombshell.

Mom: "Brandon you see this little face, this little face that you have snapped at and growled at all day long?"
Brandon: "Yes, Ma'am." said a little humbly.
Mom: "This little face just asked to take your spanking in your place. She said it was her fault and not yours."

Brandon's eyes tear up a little, his hard shell is dropped. He is broken.

Mom: "Now, is this is the same person you yell and growl at. Do you think now may be you can see what I'm saying and quit being so dog gone mean to her? She loves you."
Brandon: "Well, I love her too."

Emily throws herself at her Bubba and they hug and kiss and declare they love each other....... but as they leave the room I hear her pipe up in that dramatic gasp-y voice she uses sometimes,

"You should be grateful! I just saved your life!"

Oh signs have been coming in for a while now. I had to break down and buy Proactive. He had to start using deodorant and Axe body spray. A faint mustache is forming on his upper lip. He began to like a girl. He now cares if his clothes match... Yes, it has happened, my boy has become a teen. September 14th he turned 13 years old. Ah, the big one three. I had originally planed to have one big bash to celebrate his birthday with style and then move on. You know what they say about the best laid plans, right? This was the birthday that wouldn't die.

First, his Me maw set us up at a Log Cabin style resort for the first week of September. Yep, just one week of the school year in and we took a week off. Regrettably I forgot the camera. It was a nice cabin, fully furnished, dishes, towels, etc. It had a bed room downstairs, 2 beds up stairs and a pull out couch. We had some friends come hang out with us. The kids spent most of the day walking the trails. It was an enjoyable week. BUT I had to come home on Friday to prepare for Emily's party the next day. Then Brandon's was to be the next Saturday.

As I said Brandon's party WAS to be the next Saturday. However, Hurricane Ike had different plans. I doubted seriously that anyone would want to attend a Luau in a hurricane. So, I canceled his party. On the 14th we did take him to pick out his MP3 player. He got a Creative Zen. It was second to the ipod nano and so far we really like it.

My Mom also came over with her presents. Lots of clothes! Yeah! I'm so grateful my children are finally at an age that they like to receive clothes for presents!

His party was tentatively rescheduled for this last Saturday but we all fell ill. Especially Cecil. Brandon had a hacking cough. I just couldn't see it making any sense to have people come to our home just to get sick. So, I canceled again. Then Friday a trip to the doctor's office said we weren't contagious just having severe allergies. *sigh WHATever!......after two days of med's we all felt fine so I went ahead and invited a few of his friends over just so he could at least have his cake!

While we were out Daddy and Emily decorated the house, baked his cake and started supper. When we got home supper was ready. We all ate, then had cake and ice cream. We got him a new game for his Wii (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed). His friends got him a Beatles t-shirt. (He has since had me download a ton of Beatles songs onto his MP3 player because he didn't really "get" who they were. Now he likes his shirt even better.)After cake and ice cream came the silly string war, the sack race and balloon race. I think his birthday is finally over.....

We were blessed. A few hours without electricity, had to boil our water for a week and a few limbs down in our yard. In fact about half way through the day we went out and sat in the gazebo to grill steaks and baked potatoes. All and all we know we were very blessed to have enjoyed a storm that wrecked havoc on so many others. As we count our blessings, we will also remember others not so lucky in our prayers.



As you can see the trauma of the storm really shook Emily up.

No doubt about it Emily is growing up! Of course it had to be a princess party! Duh! It was fab-u-lous darling!

Bonus: My friends do love me. She got nearly all clothes as presents! No T O Y S! Yes! I felt like it was MY birthday!

While going through the old family photo box I found these gems from almost ten years ago and couldn't resist posting them. This was the summer of egg fights and wedgy wars... ah those were the days....

Brandon and I made these copper and bamboo wind chimes a while back. We made them with green bamboo. I've been waiting for the bamboo to age before posting a picture of them. They have a lovely sound. Only the center piece doesn't seem to be quite big enough to make it sound often unless there is high wind. Right now it is a fat piece of bamboo. If I can find a piece of wood that is not too heavy but wide enough to make it clink (can't really say they chime) more often then I'll replace the center piece.

Brandon worked too incredibly hard on this lap book to not at the very least post pictures of it. We downloaded it from CurrClick http://www.currclick.com. This lap book by www.knowledgeboxcentral.com is crammed packed with info and huge by our standards. Three file folders and over 28 little booklets of information! I really appreciated the detailed instructions with pictures on how to assemble it that were included. They also included articles for him to get the information to fill out all his little booklets so he didn't have to scourer the internet. Every thing you needed was right there in the Acrobat file! All in one is a big plus for me. (I believe I've mentioned my lazy streak before, no?) It took a long time for him to complete but if he didn't learn anything else this year I am confident he learned all about Ancient Greece. I downloaded another one from the same site by the same company about Ancient Rome just a couple of days ago. Hopefully, it won't take him as long to complete but if he does as nice a job on it as he did this one it will be worth it!

PS. I confess I colored the cover page. I also colored all the pictures on our Ancient Greece bulletin board. So what? I like to color. Big bonus of having children ... having an excuse to still do things children like to do!

PSS We also made this really cool Medusa mask: http://www.clevelandart.org/Kids/art/mask/index.html

And....

Got the recipe and supplies to make our own Baklava. I'll have to let you know how that turns out.

Emily's room has been over crowded for a while now. The obvious answer would be to purge 1/2 her toys and have her Daddy stop buying them. However, since neither of them seem to agree with me the next best thing was to get rid of her full size bed and replace it with a cute little day bed. I found this one at a garage sale last weekend for a steal! Of course we have no twin size sheets for it but they will come, oh yes they will... Step one in mission redecorate Emily's room complete. I will have my way on this one....Oh, yes I will.

Mom's little "pond" in her back yard has become a breeding ground for frogs! She brought us these tadpoles. A lot of them already had back legs, but it seems we have a few in each stage of development. We even have a couple bigger ones that are obviously completely different kinds of frogs from the others!

When Nannaw brought us the tadpoles she also brought a set of drums for Brandon that she found at a garage sale. They didn't have a bass pedal with them so I've ordered him one along with some drum sticks and a Book/DVD set titled Drums for Absolute Beginners. Pray for me.

I started to explain to a friend my lack of posting and she summed it up nicely with one sentence. "So, it is Spring in a Homeschooling family." Yep, I've been trying to swing group events, friendships, housework, and most of all FINISHING UP THE SCHOOL YEAR. So, far here's Brandon's school year is wrapping up like this:

Math: Completed Saxon 65 math, have been doing 76 math drills to stay sharp, thinking of starting the actual book and just doing odd numbered problems through all the easy part of the book as long as he keeps a B average for about 3 days a week through out the summer. If his grades drop then we'll slow down and make him do all the problems.

Reading: Just Finished The Pilgrim's Progress Curriculum. I was worried when I first got this that it was too complicated for him but he says he really enjoyed it. He even said he'd like to go back and read it with out having to stop after each chapter and do a worksheet. LOL I think this one grew him up a bit.

Science: Just Finished Apologia's Zoology 1- Flying Creatures. He is dying to start Zoology 2 - Swimming Creatures. However, right now I'm holding him off to get through the other subjects for this actual "school" year before we start getting into Next year's curriculum. However, asap I'll let him start it and do it through the summer if it is his wish. Who am I to stop a child from learning? I also just bought him Zoology 3- Land Creatures which he is really pumped about.

Spelling: We have been hit and miss in actually doing spelling this year. And although he has improved he is still not a great speller. I have noticed that if he misspells a word in a paper that if I ask him how the word is spelled, he can spell it correctly. He just doesn't seem to bother to think about the correct spelling when writing. Then again he still has handwriting that is nearly unreadable so I guess he has bigger issues with expressing himself on paper than he does any other problem. Any way back on topic we've been cramming in about 4 to 6 lessons a day when we do work on spelling only stopping and slowing down on lists he has problems with. Right now he has about 20 more lessons in Sequential Spelling 2 and then we'll do crash courses all the way through Sequential Spelling 3 through out the summer. If he still needs helps I'll order the next two Sequential Spellings.

History: This year's history curriculum (Ancient History and the Bible) expected a lot out of us. It was researched based. We have a small local library, and a small budget. So, finding and buying books were just not an option. OK, I confess I'm also too lazy to hunt extra books. I highly recommend it to anyone with more time, money and energy than me. However none of those previous qualities allude to me. So, we have done this very slowly with a lot of online research. It really has required me to be hands on. Which I like but also put off on busy days. So, starting with Creation we have only made it to the Ancient Greeks. We are wrapping them up. This curriculum goes all the way through to the Resurrection of Christ. Then we we'll be through with it. For next year I bought The Mystery of History. This works because it does pick up where this last one left off. More of the meat you need is there so there is no hunting for more resources, it has actual quizzes and tests and it has the hands on stuff I like to do when we have time.

We ditched grammar again this year. I just don't get it. He reads good literature on a regular basis and writes in a journal. There are just more important things to learn than diagramming sentences. I think I'll ignore it until right before his SAT's and teach him to the test. Is that awful?

OK, I've already mentioned most of his curriculum line up for next year let's see it will be journaling daily, Saxon 76, Sequential Spelling 3, Apologia Zoology, The Mystery of History, and I've ordered a Lifepac for British Literature. The Lifepacs are a new step for me. I hope they work out. If so after British Lit. we'll do American Lit. in them.

How is Emily's school year wrapping up? It is not. She will school all through the summer. She will still use Explode the Code (which I've come to realize I haven't really been making the most of), Saxon Math 1 and other various workbooks for other skills. A friend loaned me BJU First Grade Heritage Studies and a couple of other books for history. I always read her all kinds of little books that have science. We have a plethora of animal books and stuff like that for her. She is progressing but needs more one on one time with me to really excel. Hopefully the school through the summer program will give her that.

When I posted my last blog I thought it'd probably be a while before I blog again I might as well give them a peek as to why I'm not around! Sure enough I haven't blogged. However, I truly do have a ton to blog about. I guess that happens when you go a whole month with out a peep. Just give me a moment or to organize my thoughts and I promise I'll catch ya up to all we've been up to. Let's just address them in order.

Beth Moore Bible Study:
This is wonderful! But then again it is BETH MOORE for crying out loud! So, that is really a given.


WLBC Food Bank:
Brandon is still doing this the first Wednesday of every month, but will miss the next two due to soccer.


Patrick’s Wedding
We actually stretched this trip and stayed a lot longer than we originally planed. This will get it's own post with pictures and all.


Pick up Josh:
Josh actually drove up by himself and spent a few days with us. It was nice to have him around.

Dentist Appts.:
Brandon: 1 filling
Emily: 2 crowns where she already had fillings that just weren't cutting it.

EASTER PICNIC
Easter was wonderful. We did the homeschool group picnic. Then the family egg hunt on Sunday. As it was time for our family egg hunt children from the neighborhood mysteriously appeared in our yard. So, we had quite the gathering for it too! LOL

I had the family wear blue this year for Easter Sunday but alas didn't get that elusive family photo. Here is a picture of Emily and Brandon:



MONTHLY FIELD TRIP
Where: ---- Zoo
This was a nice outing. Great spring day for it. I forgot my camera but if you've seen one giraffe you've seen them all, right?

ACTS SPRING SOCCER
What can I say? As much as I hate physical exertion I might become a soccer mom yet! Soccer Wednesdays are my children's favorite day of the week. Not only do they get to go to soccer but I count it as our free day. I know we won't get any school work done on Wednesday so it is open house day. This is the day they are allowed to invite their homeschool friends over to play. We go to soccer, come home and picnic with friends, and the last one usually leaves around 6 PM.

Other random thoughts.....

In all we had a two week spring break and I've been trying to play catch up ever since. This week in particular I've knuckled down. I see summer around the corner and we are no where near wrapping up our school year.

We got a new puppy Dobie.


I've planted some flower beds around my gazebo and of course it then snowed. Snow in East Texas? I'm pretty sure this was all about me and my tulips.

























Finally Spring has sprung and the yard is looking pretty.







And last but certainly not least I just have to tell ya'll about the new lawn mowing service I've hired. These gals really love their work! They don't want any pay and are absolutely meticulous that they get every little blade of grass. The one draw back is that due to their size and dedication to detail they are rather slow.

To those of you that have already seen this picture, it's cute. Surely you can stand seeing it one more time!

OH the Randomness. I have so much more randomness I could share but I need to get to bed because tomorrow is SOCCER! I'll post some soccer pictures tomorrow after the game. See you then!

My children have plethora of toy/play paraphernalia. It seems their father wants to buy them a toy every pay day. Holidays & Birthdays are insane with gifts. I do appreciate his generosity but let's face it the kids are rotten. Not only that, but it is also difficult for them to clean their rooms with the abundance of toys. I have purged and purged, bought totes and added shelves all in the name of organization and cleanliness. However, last pay day he brought home an ever so welcome educational toy for each of them. Now I'm not going to lie and claim that it is my children's deepest desire to acquire educational toys but they really liked these.

I am behind.

I am behind in the house work.

I am behind with the kid's school work.

I am behind on my Home School Forums' maintenance.

So, dear dear Blogger do not feel left all alone. You are in good company, left behind with all the other things I have yet to do.

Oh wait just minute! In my rush to sum up the multitude of days in which I failed to post I forgot to mention one of our recent exciting aquarium happenings. I can't believe I dared to let this go by with out reporting it sooner because I know dear blog readers that this kind of juicy aquarium talk is just what your looking for when surfing for reading material! Now to the topic at hand. Seems to me every female in my tank looks pregnant at all times. Although I had never seen babies being born there has been three different times that I've found a lone survivor from a batch of fry. I had long since given up trying to watch for signs of imminent birth in order to protect newborns. So here I am refilling up my tank after a cleaning and I notice a fish that looks distressed is being harassed by all the other fish in the tank. Come to find out I apparently shocked her into labor with all my work on the tank and that the others were chasing her around eating her babies as soon as they were being born! I finally got to see baby fish being delivered! At any rate I have no idea how many she had in total. I did manage to save 13 and put them in a nursery tank. There were more but I was tired by 13. Besides 13 is a large number of fish which I will at some point have to add back to my regular tank. I would post a picture but right now they are so small that they basically look like orange rice with eye balls. I don't think I could take a picture where you could see them clearly. Ok, now take a deep breath, calm down as I know this exciting news is bound to have you all worked up, and resume your life as best you can.