No Greater Joy

I title this with a hint of sarcasm. If you follow me on Facebook, I have been ~~bragging about~~ posting homeschool stuff all week. I've included hashtags like #homeschoolrocks and #toocoolforpublicschool. So funny coming from me, the woman who was kicking and screaming and white knuckled from hanging on to the idea that I WAS NOT GOING TO HOMESCHOOL!!! My main excuse, "She excels in the classroom. Why would I take her away from that?" Of course, there are these other issues, like: "I have a 3-year-old and nearly 1-year-old. I don't have time" "My house is already a wreck, why would I add more thing to the list" or how about "My daughter and I butt heads too badly. She thinks she is smarter than me." My husband, however, kept asking me to consider it. He wasn't pushy, just consistent. I wasn't listening too well, because I was busy shopping for school uniforms and bookbags.

Finally, about a week before L was set to start school, I asked the question.....Why? "Why do you want me to homeschool so badly?" You may be wondering why I waited until the week before my daughter was set to start school to ask that question. Perhaps, I was scared to hear the answer. Perhaps, I would feel convicted to step outside of myself and trust God to help me do something I absolutely could not do myself. Perhaps, I would have to let go of my own desires. When I finally listened, my heart was prompted. My heart was prompted to pray. My heart was prompted to seek counsel. A sweet homeschooling friend of mine lead me to this blog post by Anne Voskamp, and through her words, God spoke to my heart. So funny how God leads us to do the things that are most uncomfortable.....things that require us to depend on Him.

And so, I gave in.

I prayed more, sought more counsel, and explored various curriculum options. I read blogs, "pinned" my little heart out, went to meetings, co-ops, and visited other homeschool families. I took back uniforms and bookbags and the ever popular Kindermat. I bought calendars and pocket charts and pretty flowered file folders. I printed and printed and printed and printed. And I prayed some more.

Finally I was ready. Ready to begin our first week of homeschool.

We made the decision to enroll in Classical Conversations. To be honest, I am still learning lots about this program, but we have been really pleased with the material and community so far. We meet every Monday for half a day. It's great because L gets to learn with other children her age, and the mommas get to encourage one another. The things Landry is learning through this Classical method is quite impressive, and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't learned quite a bit myself.

Since we met with CC on Monday, our first official day of homeschool was Tuesday.

I stayed up late prepping and decorating. I wanted the first day to be extra special, just like if she was going to public school. I also included E in on the excitement, as we are calling this preschool for him.

And there is "Mr. Cool" himself, kicked back like he owns the place. LOL

After eating some delicious Monkey Bread for breakfast, we began. In order to make the transition easiest for everyone, I chose to only focus on Bible and reinforcing the things we had learned in CC for the week. Our campus is currently on Week 3 of Cycle 2 if you are familiar with CC.

And here I am, in all my, no make-up wearing, glory. Cory snagged this picture of us doing "Everyday Counts"

And here are my cuties are their first day of school

For Bible, this week, we talked about creation. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" Genesis 1:1

After Bible, each day, we sang our CC songs, which helps them remember their facts for the week.

We also did this adorable first day of school activity. So glad my kids have such high aspirations for themselves. Ha! I look forward to doing this activity with them every year from here on out.

Tuesday: Part of our memorization work this week, includes the Western European Countries. I had L trace the countries on the European Map first. Then, we focused on France. We colored the french flag, listened to the French National Anthem and watched an episode of Dora where she visited France. We also discussed some things about the culture. For dinner, Landry transformed our breakfast area into a Fancy French Cafe, and I served Chicken Cordon Bleu, Escargot (made from tootsie rolls), French Baguette, French Cut Green Beans, and Grape Juice.

For dessert, we had parfaits. In Landry's favorite book, Fancy Nancy says that parfait is French for ice cream sundae, so we went with it. :)

Wednesday: we focused on science, specifically the food chain. We talked about producers, consumers and decomposers. We started with this silly video that the kids absolutely love. Then we watched this one, that's a little more educational.

Then the kids colored, cut and glued this puzzle together.

While working on this activity, L had a great idea. She wanted to act out the food chain. Why not? I love that we can learn on the fly. If someone comes up with an idea, we can try it with no hesitations, because we don't have to wrangle a whole classroom of students.

This turned into a game of hide and seek where the consumer was seeking his food. Then we played catch with a frog ball and pretended we were snakes, catching the frog and eating it. Next, Eli suggested we play "Ring Around the Rosies" so we did, substituting the original words with "Producers, Consumers, and Decomposers, Food Chain, Food Chain, We all Fall Down!" I had heard that when you homeschool, you begin to see every moment as teachable, and there I was seeing it for myself. We had turned everyday activities into teachable moments. And we had FUN!!

I also found this cool printable game online and I let Lan do it when she had some extra time. You can use it in a variety of ways.

For downtime, I let the kids watch "Magic School Bus Meets the Rot Squad". I found it on netflix and it fit our lesson perfectly. Coop even liked it :)

Before rest time, I read the book "Oh Say Can You Say?" to the kids. It's a book of tongue twisters by Dr. Suess. It's a really silly book that the kids loved, and it inspired Landry to write a book, for her cousin Mason, during her rest time. I gave her a notebook to write her thoughts. When rest time was offer, she "transcribed" it to me, and I wrote it out for her. She drew the pictures over the next few days.

It's actually quite entertaining. I think we are going to have it printed and bound as a keepsake.

Thursday: We studied about Ireland. We talked about the lush vegetation in Ireland and the traditions. We talked about St. Patrick and how he used the 3-leaf clover to tell about the Holy Trinity. We talked about the legends and the leprechauns. Then we went on a clover hunt.

This was a plant the kids thought was amazing because it looked like it was wearing jewels.

We did a multi-media art project, using green to represent the vegetation in Ireland. And that evening, we did dinner and a movie, Irish Style

The kids weren't so keen on the Irish Stew...

Friday: We focused on skip counting and our history sentence. This week our history sentence is about Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lion Heart and the Crusades. I talked just a little bit about the crusades, but tried to focus mainly on being soldiers for Christ. We made shields and cloaks like the Crusaders wore, sang "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus" and then we pretended we were going to battle like the Crusaders did.

To practice skip counting, we mixed the numbers up and put them back in order.

We went outside to play hopscotch by 5's......

And stone jumpers by 6's.

Coop mainly ate chalk. :)

Here are my two little students at the end of our first week of school.

And here is mommy at the end of our first week of school.

yep.

That's real life, folks.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion (cub)....and the elephant....and the snakes....the monkey....and squirrels?

We were in search of ANY kind of wild animal today in the deep jungles of "Middleofnowhere", Louisiana.

If you haven't caught on by now, my mom and I are just kids at heart. Any excuse to get dressed up and act a fool...WE'RE IN! Bonus: The real kids have fun too ;)

So we found camo gear to fit everyone and decked ourselves out. We all climbed on the 4-wheeler, (Yep, I said ALL of us) and drove REALLY slowly out to the jungle.

At the edge of the jungle, we climbed off and crept slowly as the kids gazed through their binoculars to see if they could spot something in the distance.

At this point, they started getting a little nervous. They weren't quite sure how serious we were about the wild animals we might see. But no worries! We brought along pop cork gun and cap gun for protection.

Our first sighting was a snake.