Blog Walk Week 3

Welcome to week #3 in our TOS Crew Blog Walk.

Come take a walk with me and meet all the members of our Crew.  It has been so much fun getting to know all the wonderful homeschoolers that are to be my mates for the next year!
Since I did things MY way during the first week of the walk I have added the original blogs under this week’s list below. See what happens why I try to be creative, *sigh*!

Tinkerbell is 15.5 months

This is right after a haircut she now has a much more shaggy hairstyle now, again!
 
Field Trip to Daniel Boone Home

New Hat!

curriculum 2010-2011 Part 2

This is what we will be using for our 2nd year of homeschooling. Can ya’ll tell how excited I am, still trying to plan it all out though.  I hope to eventually have this on my sidebar as links.

MFW ECC
Adventure Bibles
Writing Strands Levels 2 & 4
Conquering Cursive Book 1
Song School Latin
Latin Primer A

june 25 2010

The Simple Woman's Daybook
FOR TODAY
Outside my window...It is dark and the full moon is just barely beginning to eclipse...
I am thinking...I should wake my son to see it but not until 5am…
I am thankful for...today was not the huge headache I expected.
From the kitchen...Is a very empty cupboard and fridge.

I am wearing...a red halter top and blue jeans.
I am creating...my home school planner.
I am going...to fold laundry, the baby’s.
I am reading...The Boxcar Children.
I am hoping...my hubby will get a well deserved promotion in the very near future...
I am hearing...frogs signing and crickets chirping and my dryer whirling.
Around the house...I keep seeing these strange piles of paper called bills!
One of my favorite things...my daughter’s big belly laughs
A few plans for the rest of the week:  Church on Sunday and possibly a barbeque after, more planning for school, and working on my TOS Crew review.
Here is picture for thought I am sharing...

Better, New Way to Blog?

Guess what I discovered? After learning about Windows Live Writer on the TOS Forum I searched my laptops programs and lo and behold I already had it preloaded.  I thought well this is cool! So I set it up and gave it a try. What do you think about it if you use it? I am very pleased with how easy it makes adding links and pics to my blog and also that I do not have to be online to write my posts. It is also a great way for my kids to blog without being exposed to being online! Now if I can only figure out why my posts won't publish with the date and time stamps like they are supposed to.

If you are interested in using Live Writer it is a part of a pretty cool suite of tools called Windows Essentials available from windows for FREE here.

Put My Faith In him

I have been thinking about how easy it is to forget all the things God does for me. How those big things I always remember but it’s the little ones that really count and sadly those are the ones I let slip away. I know I maybe crazy but I don’t sweat the big stuff like maybe losing a house or job, I know my God is bigger than that. Yet… why is it I worry about my sleeping children not waking up, or the prowler in the dark that may have the worst in mind. I can quite convince myself that there is something “out there” and work myself up to such a state that there will be no sleep for me that night!

Learning a new language

Lately my precious little girl has been having bouts of some severe frustration with us.

So hubby and I decided to look into using a few signs to teach her. Thinking this would give her some control over her little world and help us to understand what she wants.
I set out with Connor in tow to learn a little about American Sign Language or ASL for short. After I Googled (did I mention I heart Google) it and found what I was looking for here. It is a video dictionary for American Sign with and exhaustive list of words. You can search for a word alphabetically and then watch the video to see the sign for that particular word.

It took me a bit longer to learn the signs than Connor and I had to watch the videos a bit more as they are done rather quickly but all in all very easy to learn. It was after about 10 minutes I noticed the little tab at the top that said ASL For Babies. I clicked it and was taken to a page specifically for infant sign, Awesome!
So far we have learned the words Mom, Dad, brother sister, drink, food, more, bath, sleep, no, and stop. Deirdre has picked up sleep, more, food, drink, and no very quickly. She hasn’t used them to tell us on her own yet but when I ask if she is ready to sleep and sign it she will sign it back and head for her room or my arms.
Hopefully after a little while she will be able to tell us what she needs with out us asking first. Then we will have a happier baby!

TOS Crew Blog Walk week 2

So here is my second list of blogs to visit on the weekly blog walk. Apparently there is a list posted each week on the forum and I missed it last week and found my own blogs to put up. I think this week I'll do it the way it was intended. Although I kind of like not having the same blogs listed as everyone else. Hey what can I say I gotta be different, I am an Air Force wife after all, LOL!
So here it is, this weeks list:

1. Second Star to the Right and Straight On Till Morning


2. Surviving The Testosterone

3. Family Style School

4. School Around The Bible

5. 1628 The Story of The Goebels 5

6. Morris Family Madness

7. Homeschool Musings

8. Homeschooling (and then some!)

9. Heartfelt Homeschooling

10. following Him home

D discovers nature

The girl loves her trees and bubble play!

Taking a Blog Walk

So I got an email saying someone had posted a message on one of my blog posts. I visited that persons blog as all good bloggy friends should do when one gets a message. I was reading her latest post here Homeschooling Blessings: Taking a Blog Walk  and realized she posted my blog as one of her Blog walk blogs. Thank you Wendy, you are so sweet! I do not think I have ever been featured on anyone else's blog before so this is pretty cool for me (I know I am a total geek).

So if you are like me and wonder..."Hey, so what is a blog walk anyhow?" Let me explain. You basically visit a certain number of blogs and list those in a post on a certain day each week so other bloggers can visit them and check out their blogs. Pretty easy right? So since I am a part of TOS Crew and we are starting a new year this sounds like a pretty cool way to get to know fellow TOS Crew Mates and make some new friends. Needless to say I am in!

I am going to list 10 Crew Mates names with a link to each members blog here and you go check them out, K!
                                         Go...go...go.....
Now if you would like to keep this walk going just link to my post and list your own 10!
(no husbands or children were neglected during this blog post)


1.Mindy @  My Own Sense and Sensibility

2.Briana @ I Can't Decide

3.Kimberly @ Train Up A Child

4.Brandi @ Living Sola Gratia

5.Angela @ My Journey

6.Wyldmomma @ Heritage Homestead and Home School

7.April @ Homeschool Musings

8.Shawna @ Tenacity Devine

9.Jennifer @ A Glimpse of Our Life

10.Karla @ Ramblin' Roads

TOS-Crew News

I announced earlier in the year that I was trying out for TOS Crew. Well I submitted my reviews for that process and have gotten the word. I am officially a newbie Crewmate. I will be reviewing various products for the middle and high schoolers from different companies and sharing my opinions here. I am so excited since my oldest is embarking on his high school years. I am trying to learn all the ins and outs of this new venture before we officially start our Cruise in July.  I am looking forward to meeting my Crew Mates and making new friends.

I am spending a few days away to plan out our school year so I am not trying to do it as we go. I found out we work much better with a plan before hand then trying to plan as we go.  I hope to have our lessons planned out on paper at least and hopefully all plugged into HST+ or Home School Inc not sure which one I will be using yet. I may decide to use one to plan and one to record but still playing around with that idea.

Well enough rambling for now...reading the Cruise Handbook and so excited to do this! I am excited can ya tell?

Having a rant today

I had not planned on posting today but after some things someone has said to me I felt the need. I chose to homeschool because my children were slipping through the cracks at school.  We also homeschool because it allows us certain freedoms. We homeschool because my son asked us to. We homeschool to learn to love the Lord. We deal with multiple behavior problems caused by a variety of medical conditions. In other words we do it for a variety of reasons.

In the past year no one has outright challenged out decision but many have made innuendos. Innuendos that suggest I am off my rocker and that I do not know what I am doing. That it is wrong or sheltering, that I am doing my children an injustice. I am sure everyone of them feels justified in their thinking. I however know better. I know my children and I know what traditional school has brought them. Heartache and pain! I know that they walk closer in the Lord because we homeschool. I know that they thank me for being their teacher. I know how to teach them the best.

Timeline is coming down!

Before I take down our timeline we created for this school year I thought I'd share it in some pictures and explain how we had set it up. We don't have much wall space to put up a time line and since we were using Ambleside Online as our curriculum for the boys we just had to have one! I loved the idea and so I set out to make it work.

First, of course, I Googled and searched the web to see how other home school families used timelines. I came across Higher Up and Further In where they color coded their cards by civilizations. I thought, hmmm...perfect! So I followed her directions and came up with our own color coding. We decided to categorize our events/people into four groups Politcs, Arts, Medicine, Inventions.

 So we had 1 timeline for each boys history. 1 for Ancient history and 1 for Modern history.  We only did the coding for the Modern since it was a wider variety of events but I think it worked well. The boys really enjoyed putting up the newest card and reading all the ones already up.  It was great as a built in review and towards the end of the year they had cards that actually brought the two time periods together and they needed to put cards onto the others timeline.

So changes I am making for next year...I will probably color code the clothespins, make a distinction somehow of the centuries, and  have the kids type up the labels for each card so it is more legible. Go here to see some other great examples of timelines and how tos!

Do you make a timeline?  How do you construct and display it in your home?  If you do please post a link I'd love to see them!

Chubby Cherubs Cloth Diaper Giveaway

So I have hubby's OK to try and start D back on Cloth Diapers. I love how cute she looks in them and the washing is not a big deal except when I end up picking liners out of the dirty bag! Daddy needs a refresher on that one. So far only 1 leak on mommy's jean this evening and that was probably beacuse I did not pre-wash 5 or so times like all the older dipes. I am looking forward to getting my stash up and having some good absorbent dipes on hand. For now we are usingcloth only during the day and while at home. It is so cute because I will watch D and can tell she has gone potty because she pats the front of her diper when she wets. She never does this with the paper dipes so maybe this will make it a benefit to potty training.

I have a great site for you to visit today.
Chubby Cherubs

Go to Facebook and "Like" them to be eligible to enter an awesome Dream Diaper Giveaway!