Women's Work

I bet some of you just cringed when you saw the title of this post! Truth be told, I grew up in a home where the division of labor fit right in with "traditional roles." Because of this, I learned to cook, clean, and babysit, and my brother learned to fix things, mow the lawn, and set up a business.  I don't ever remember my brother cooking something in the kitchen, and to this day I have never started a lawn mower.  The cooking and cleaning were never referred to as "women's work" in my house - in fact, my father is just as good a cook as my mother! Regardless, the words weren't needed to express the general idea.  I don't disagree with that idea completely, either.  I have grown to love domestic duties, and am happy to leave the fixing and outdoor work to my husband.  He equally loves the outdoor "man's work" and is happy to leave the cooking and cleaning to me.  Even so, I really want my boys to be comfortable in a kitchen and taking care of domestic duties.  It is my belief that early marriage is beneficial, and hope my children will seek God for a quality spouse sooner than later in their adult lives.  But the reality is that people are waiting longer and longer in our culture to marry, and my children will no doubt be influenced by our culture.  I want them to be able to take care of themselves if they should find themselves living on their own.  Even if they do marry young, I would love for their wives to be surprised by a meal cooked by their husbands that isn't a chore to choke down.  To that end, we have started cooking lessons.  My boys love watching me in the kitchen and are quite excited to be learning a few skills.

Today we made banana bread! Aaron, my pickiest eater by far, wasn't super thrilled with the end result, but he was nearly giddy to be able to make it!  I am still holding out hope that he will outgrow his picky eating...

The bread is made with whole wheat flour and sweetened with honey, so our baking lesson also included health lessons about fiber, whole grains, processed vs. unprocessed food, and God made vs. man made sweeteners.  I am so proud of my boys for all they are learning!

Banana Bread
1. Place butter in large mixing bowl.  With a wire whist blend in remaining liquid ingredients one at a time:

1/4 c soft butter
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs
3 medium bananas, very ripe
3/4 c buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla

2. Place flour and nuts in medium mixing bowl.  Thoroughly blend in remaining ingredients with a mixing spoon:

3 c whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 c chopped walnuts, optional (we used them)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 TB baking powder
1 tsp salt

3. Blend dry ingredients into liquid ingredients until just mixed.

4. Scrape batter into greased loaf pan and set pan in center of a 325 degree oven.

5. Bake for 70 minutes, and cool in pan for 10 minutes before turning out onto a clean surface to cool.

Why Why Why

This is the way my day started out. Don't let the calm, neat, orderly and idyllic scene fool you.

This is where the day has gone. And that was after the cat stepped in his poop and tracked it all over the house and the massive clean-up that ensued from that.

School Check-Up

Today we finished 8 weeks of our planned school year! It has gone by very quickly, and I thought it might be a good time to review what we are doing to make sure we have the best year possible! I thought I'd just go down the list of my final curriculum choices that I posted a while back.

• Homeschool Co-Op: We LOVE our co-op! The boys look forward to Thursdays because they cannot wait to go to their co-op classes.  I think they have really enjoyed being with other home-schooled children and have also enjoyed getting some things that they just don't get at home! (It is hard to play dodge ball with just the 3 of us...) Andrew is in Mother's Day Out at our church on Thursdays, so not only do the big boys get some fun classes, we get to work on school for a few hours together with absolutely no interruptions, and I get to go grocery shopping by myself.  Yesterday, Jerry and I even met for a lunch date out!

A & E show off their Folk Art paintings - the first project they did in their art class! Who knew they had such talent? It sure isn't from me!!

• Sonlight Core B+C: This is turning out to be a good history and read aloud core for us.  We started reading Gladys Aylward yesterday, and I must admit that I'm a bit bummed that we have to wait until Monday to hear more of her story! My boys are also loving learning so much about world history.  The have gotten into coloring a flag for each country we talk about and taping it to the wall around our world map. I love that they took the initiative to do this themselves! 

E chilling in the recliner I sit in to do read alouds.  This chair has become a favorite "chill out" spot for the whole family.
• Rod & Staff Miller Series: I am enjoying using these books to supplement our Bible readings, and my boys really like the character quality workbook we are going through this year.  They look forward to starting a new page and I am enjoying the way they are searching through the Bible to find answers. 


Ethan *loves* Rod & Staff workbooks!
• Language Arts: I still love the Rod & Staff English curriculum.  This is my first year to use their grade 1 curriculum (I didn't start Aaron in it until grade 2) and Ethan is enjoying it.  He is getting a great foundation on how words are put together, and he loves the craft worksheets that go with each lesson.  I also still love the way Bible lessons are woven into each grammar and reading lesson.  I am glad we switched to Spelling Power, too.  Aaron's book is teaching him much more than what we used last year. 

Some cut-out people from one of Ethan's craft worksheets that go along with his reading.
• Apologia Human Anatomy and Physiology: I cannot say enough about this curriculum!!! We are absolutely *loving* science this year, and we have loathed it until now.  The workbooks that go with this are amazing and the reading keeps the kids' attention! I highly recommend this series! 

After each system we study, we add a layer to our "person" in the workbook.  We just finished muscles!

Mummifying an apple...

Making an edible cell.  It's hard to go wrong with a science activity involving large quantities of candy!
• Math: Aaron is really coming along with math now that he is using Abeka.  He is also understanding the concepts in RightStart's level B that he did last year much better hearing it with Ethan again this year.  I was concerned that he would resent having to do it with Ethan since he already did it once, but he is enjoying how quickly it makes sense now that he is seeing it for the second time.  I will keep him in Abeka, though, because it is taught in a way that simply clicks for him.  However, Ethan is doing perfectly in RightStart, so it looks like we will be a "two math curriculum" family.  It's only money, right??

Andrew has been much easier to deal with this school year.  He still wants to get in the middle of what we're doing, but hey! I just look at that as him getting some of his learning done early!

Finally, I was told by many that having a dedicated school room was a nice idea in theory, but that we would abandon it within a few weeks.  I don't know why we are the major exception to this statement, but we are still using and enjoying our school room. Other than Aaron escaping to a quiet spot to do his math work while I do reading with Ethan, we do all of our school in there every day.  My boys are able to understand that once we move to that room, we are there to learn.  They go to their seats at the table many  mornings without me asking and wait for me once they see I am headed that direction.  They have personalized their end of the table with a few items they enjoy and are staying much more focused when I am reading to them than they used to when we were sitting where ever we happened to be.  Jerry is also very grateful that the piles of books stay in there and not all over the living room! A nice plus has been that we have made a habit of deep cleaning the school room every Friday together, so the boys are taking some responsibility for keeping their learning environment neat and clean.  I don't think we'll be abandoning the "school room" idea any time soon!

Aaron hiding on my bed with his math work.  When I walked in the room, the cat was curled up at his side!

Shells For Science

We studied mollusks today. Here we are sanding shells to see what kind of shell it is.

 

  

 

 It's a mud whelk, you see.

Mini Post Monday

Welcome to Mini Post Monday, "First Day of School" Edition!! I *LOVE* the first day of school! And yes, I know I am a geek. I've come to terms with that a long time ago! And this year I have been looking forward to it in a way I haven't in previous years since my children are old enough to really, truly get on each other's nerves! Summer's lack of structure really needed to end...

Aaron, ready to go!

• Is it possible that Aaron starts the 3rd grade this year? I had my very first crush on a boy in the third grade.  I sat next to him at our "table" made from four desks pushed together, and thought he was so cute.  Boy am I thankful there are no little girls in Aaron's "class" at school for him to crush on...I am *so* not ready to deal with that! 

Ethan, excited about 1st grade!
• Ethan has joined the ranks of "real" school in 1st grade this year.  He continues to amaze me with his zeal for life and love of learning.  I cannot wait to see what he does this year!

Does this look like a future 3rd grader to you? Where did the time go?

Close brothers from the very beginning.  How much joy it brings me that they can continue to develop their bond every single day doing school together at home! We are so very blessed.
• I am wondering how Andrew will do this year with school.  Last year he was really in the way, wanting to be involved with what we were doing and sit in my lap the whole day or look at our school books without us.  I am hoping that the maturity he has gained since the end of last year will allow him to play independently at least a little bit during our school day.

I know it must be very hard to picture him causing any kind of trouble during the day...
• I am going to attempt to be a bit more scheduled with my days this year.  I started on this path last year, but Andrew made it hard to stick to it much.  However, with more detailed subjects to teach, I think it will be important if we want to actually get everything done.

A first day of school family tradition.
• The boys made it through one more allergy treatment last week.  After this, they still have a treatment in early November, but after that one, they get to wait until March! Woo-Hoo! I cannot wait until we are down to only 2 treatments a year!
• I have been thinking about traditions, and realizing that we don't have very many fall traditions prior to Thanksgiving.  What are some of your family's fall traditions?

Mini Post Monday

• About a month ago, we celebrated 14 years of marriage! My parents kept the boys overnight and gave us a night at the Westin Hotel at the Galleria in Dallas! We had Mi Cocina for dinner, walked the mall, had Haagen Daz for dessert, and actaully had a quiet evening together for a change! Wonderful! For my anniversary, Jerry got me a new camera. I cannot tell you how excited I am about it, although I still haven't learned how to use all of its features. The pictures in this post are a few we took while trying to figure out the new camera.

Just goofing off with the new camera...this is Drew on our way to a July 4th cookout.

• I cannot tell you how excited I am for school to be starting next week. I am soooo tired of hearing the kids bicker and get on each other's nerves! I am also tired of hearing the words, "I'm bored." At least with tons of school work to do, they won't have a valid reason to say they're bored. Not that they won't still try it...
• The Jr. High Grammar class I was so excited about teaching at our local homeschool co-op didn't make.  I was so disappointed I had a hard time gathering my things and getting out of there without crying in front of everyone.  But I know that there were many people praying that just the right students would sign up, so the fact that I didn't get enough to keep the class tells me God has something else for me to be doing instead.  I'm choosing to trust that his plan is better than mine, because, you know, it is.

One of the sillier features of the new camera - templates to put the pictures in - right on the camera screen! Crazy.

• I am working through a Kay Arthur Bible study right now called, Lord, I Want to Know You.  It is a study on the names of God, and it has been amazing!! I am so thankful that I had already done the lesson on El Elyon before the co-op registration.  It is so amazing to me to try to understand fully what it means that God is Most High, fully in control of everything that happens.  I am not sure my human brain can fully comprehend it all, but to know that even when Satan attacks, he has to ask God's permission first - well that's comforting to me! That means that God has a purpose and plan to use each of those hard times for my betterment. His plan will happen no matter what because he is sovereign over heaven and earth, angels and demons, the good and the bad.  Wow.

Jerry took this one...I know it is a horrible picture as far as pictures go, but the effect of having the outside blurry and the focus only on Aaron's head is cool. I'm sure there's a technical name for this effect...

• It's amazing just how cool 86 degrees feels after 40 days in a row of temperatures over 100 degrees. Saturday we actually had rain (!!!) and the temperature stayed so low - sitting in the house under the ceiling fan actually felt cold that day!

This picture doesn't show any special camera feature, but I love seeing Andrew really able to join in with what his brothers are doing now.  And I love that his brothers humor him and let him join the fun!

• Jerry and the boys have another allergy treatment this week.  We all hate these treatments so much, but also cannot deny that they have made a world of difference for our overall health. With a treatment on Thursday, we are on much stricter eating now through September 9. It's no fun, but we also thought it was important to get another treatment in before the fall baseball season gets in full swing so that the kids aren't suffering after each practice and game.  The summer clinics they did, although fun and very educational for them, were horrible for their allergies.  With no rain, the dust has been unbearable.  Mix that with the tree pollen and the ragweed, and they coughed and sniffed after each night at the ballpark. Actually, all of us except for Andrew did! Remind me on Friday when both my older boys are throwing up and miserable that it is worth it, okay?



A New School Room

When we first bought the house we live in, we weren't planning on home schooling our children yet. That was almost 7 years ago! This house had a formal dining room in the very front of the house that we decided to turn into a playroom.  At that time, we only had Aaron, and Ethan was 3 months from being born.  The playroom was a favorite hangout spot until 4 years ago.  At that time, we put Aaron and Ethan in a room together and most of their favorite toys went in their room.  The playroom still got plenty of action because we were LifeGroup leaders at our church and when the LifeGroup came over, the kids in the group went like magnets to that room!  When Andrew was born, I found that we didn't hang out and play in the playroom with him like I had with the older two because I was doing school instead and Andrew had to be where we were or in the playroom by himself - which he didn't like! A little over a year ago, we stopped being LifeGroup leaders and the playroom stopped being used.  It became the catch-all room instead, which for a room at the very front of the house is a very bad thing!

Anyway, we decided to turn the playroom into a school room, and it was a great decision!  We got rid of a lot of our toys that weren't getting played with, moved the ones Andrew liked into his new big boy room, and left a few in there for Drew to play with while we did school.  We moved the giant bookshelf with all of our curriculum out of a hallway it had been in to the new room, along with a recliner that had been shoved in my office (and not used), and a table that had been my cutting table in my office and before that our kitchen table.  The result is a great school room! We can now all be working at the table, or one can work at the table while the other reads in the chair, all while Drew plays with his toys in one corner!

The view from just inside the front door of the house.  Actually a respectable room now!

The work table.  When I want to cut out a sewing project, which isn't very often these days, I'll have to do it in here - hence the large cutting mat between the table and the wall!

The reading nook, which is where I'll spend my days reading the boys' read-aloud books to them!  It has also become a favorite place for Jerry to sit and decompress.  Wow! We actually  made this a functional room! :)

I love my sign over the white board! I still haven't been able to collect on this, but I am holding out hope that it is my get rich quick plan...

The curtains I bought for this room weren't long enough, and didn't come in a longer size.  But I got creative and altered them!

Doesn't that look like they were meant to be this way? And yes, I did do the cutting and pinning right here on the table!  This is also Drew's toy corner.

Overall, I am so happy with the way this room has turned out! I am hoping that it also helps keep the school clutter out of the other rooms in the house! Maybe we can actually relax in our living room now!  Is that too optimistic?

My Master Curriculum Plan

I thought I’d share a bit about what I’m doing for school this year. I’m entering new territory, since Ella is going into 5^th grade. She is leaving the grammar stage and entering the logic stage. Everything is more involved. Although I hope that when we actually start school (on July 18^th) Ella will be a more independent learner and also help to teach her younger sisters what she knows, planning for her school has been more involved than any planning I’ve had to do for school so far. My reliable source of grammar at Peace Hill Press is exhausted. The 5^th grade grammar curriculum Mrs. Bauer is writing is not due out until January. I’ve had to include logic for her this year and I’m serious about getting serious about Latin. I’m getting nervous about letting her miss out on some crucial learning time because I’m so distracted with the little ones and pregnancy. This year I have three in “real” school (1^st, 3^rd, 5^th grades) and one in pre-k. Lily is an eager scholar; we will try to start her formally reading. So anyway, here’s the low-down.

 

I've had to get uber organized: red for Ella, pink for Rachel, blue for Sarah, yellow for all the kids

 

 Here are their personal school shelves. The top-most one in the picture contains books everyone uses: dictionaries, Latin, etc. The shelves under are Ella, Sarah, Rachel and Lily. The shelves contain everything they need to do school during the day. As far as I know, anyone could come in off the street and conduct school with the kids, that's how clearly everything is labeled and planned.

 

History – We will continue working with The Story of theWorld series of four books. This year Sarah is in book 3 and Ella and Rachel are in book 1. I plan to have Ella read the chapter to Rachel and help her to answer questions about the chapter and summarize it. From there Rachel will color a picture, or do a project. Ella will research other topics pertaining to that particular chapter, write a short paper about her topic and then take a quiz on the chapter. Hopefully, while all this is going on I can do history with Sarah. I will have her read the chapter; she’ll write answers to questions, make a summary and copy some sentences into a copy book. 

 

These are the history and geography shelves. Any book I think we could use for further reading/research in history is here including children's books from Japan, Korea, India, Africa, etc.

Grammar – Rachel will be doing part 1 of First LanguageLessons (which I love), Sarah will be doing part 3 of First Language Lessons and Ella will be doing Rod & Staff’s 5^th grade grammar. I have also included some supplemental worksheets for Ella and Sarah that I had inherited from an aunt that homeschooled a bit and from my mom. Ella will also be doing lessons on diagramming sentences with The First Whole Book of Diagrams, which I could read for fun. What a cool book!!

Science – This year I am on my own with science. My mom had to get a job (poor Mom) and in order to get me to own teaching science I’ve decided to make my own lesson plans. I’m going to stick with biology. We’re going to spend 10 weeks on the human body and then 26 weeks on cells, classification, ecology, birds, insects, reptiles, etc. I have purchased at least half a dozen books to help me with this. Some of them are The Usborne ScienceEncyclopedia, Creepy Crawlies and the Scientific Method, How Nature Works, How the Body Works, Biology for Every Kid, Slime, Molds and Fungi. I am going to use Christian Kids Explore Biology, How Nature Works and How the Body Works as my main books for teaching lessons and go from there.

 

This is the science shelf of books I plan to reference this year. A few books are not on it here because I'm using them to write lesson plans. As you can see in the picture below, my mom has blessed us with a gold mine of science books and reference material and experiments. Everything you see in the picture is science related.

 

Logic – Ella will be doing lessons from Red Herrings andMind Benders books A3 and A4.

Latin – We are going to start over from scratch with Prima Latina, which I had tried to do with Ella when she was in 3^rd grade. I plan to include all three kids with the Latin lessons, but not pushing Rachel too hard.

Art & music – I am going to break up art and music up into two semesters. In the fall we are going to look at music. UnderstandingMusic and The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra are the two main books I am referencing for these lessons. I also have a coloring book of classical composers that I am going to copy for them to color and put in their notebook. For art in the spring, I plan to use Drawing with Children which is an actual how-to book on drawing. For a study of artists and art styles I am going to use The Children’s Book of Art, which is an Usborne Internet-linked book. My biggest beef with this book is that for the classical artists they used the Sistine Chapel’s creation depiction and The Birth of Venus. Both of those pieces of art, while intricate and nice, have naked people in them and I have decided to omit those and replace them with a discussion of other pieces of fine renaissance art. There are plenty of works that don’t include penises and breasts. I’ll try to not get on my soapbox, but it’s really hard. I’ve had to erase many times. No soap box. No soap box.

 

The art shelf. You can see the Drawing with Children book there and the two music books are just to the left of it.

Writing – For writing, we are taking Granny’s suggestion of Classical Writing. I’m not sure how prepared Ella is for writing, so I’m going to do Ella and Sarah together on Aesop, book A. If Ella thinks it’s too easy, then I’ll move on to book B for her. If that’s too easy then I’ll move her on to Homer, book A. I’m nervous about how time intensive this will be, but I really want to give the girls a good foundation in writing, something I was sorely lacking in my own education, and I think Classical Writing is the just the thing.

Geography – We all really enjoyed Galloping the Globe and if time permits, we’ll continue with that. We managed to complete Asia and some of Europe last year so we’ll just pick up where we left off.

Handwriting – I have decided to let Ella off the hook for a formal handwriting program this year and get her typing. She has spent the last two years learning cursive, but I think it’s time for her to get with the times and start typing. There are a couple of online typing tutorials I plan to try out before I commit to purchasing lessons. Or maybe I will conjure up my own lessons from 9^th grade and make my own lessons. Sarah, Rachel and Lily will all be doing the Handwriting without Tears books. Sarah’s is cursive, which she taught herself last year because she liked it so much.

Spelling – Ella, Sarah and Rachel will all be doing Spelling Workout F, C and A, respectively. I think this series of books is really cool!

My school room is messed up as you can see, but I have a plan in place for cleaning it the weekend before we start school and hopefully we can keep it that way. 

I hope this helps someone in some way. If you'd like to see how I made lesson plans for anything above, just email me and I'll send you a copy of my plans.

I am not always very good at doing hands on projects for science with my kids.  We do a lot of science "book learning," but that hands-on stuff is just so messy and time consuming.  Oh, and you have to plan ahead to have all the materials on hand.  BUT...I did actually do a volcano building project with the kids this year! They happened to have one of their best buddies over that day (also homeschooled...and also here as I type this post... :) - We love Nate!), so it was even more fun for them.

Mixing the salt dough and deciding where to put the plastic bottle volcano core.

Packing dough around the bottle.

Great buddies!

The lava kinda oozed pink out of the volcano, rather than blew out all red and destructive.  Oh, well.  Notice all the "burned out trees" on the volcano! Can you tell we visited Mt. St. Helen's last summer? :)

Whether the volcano fizzled or blew its top, this project was a success!