I'm still here!

Oh boy! I've been so busy that I haven't stopped to blog here. I apologize!

Let's see, where to start...

Well we took a little break because we had to sell a beloved pet. That was hard on the whole family.

We tried and tried to get back into the swing of things and just couldn't and didn't want to. I decided that maybe I needed to find a new way to do school. And trying not to miss an A Beka lesson is driving me crazy!

So I stumbled upon notebooking and that brought me to Kristy for lapbooking. I have decided to try both of those in our school days. Our first project was a lapbook on ants. It was a great success!! Loved by both kids and myself!

Since History is pretty much a repeat every year, and Amanda did most of the A Beka lessons, I have decided to wait until next year and restart the Story of the World book 1. We only a few lessons into it.

Today I sat down with our A Beka Science book and figured out how I wanted to do the lessons for the rest of the year. We are not doing them in order. Well, most of them we are. I got everything planned out until we start our last unit for the year on plants and that will take us into gardening. It will be a long unit. But we can work on something like that all summer.

I went through Math 1 from A Beka and did the same thing as the science. I eliminated the lessons that we don't need and wrote in the ones we did.

For now I am going to leave the phonics 1 and reading 1 the same.

Kyle is doing all of the same subjects as Amanda now except for math, reading, writing and phonics. They are doing Bible, Memorization, lapbooks studies, Science and anything else I throw in together.

I went to a cute little book store in Sumner the other day. They have lots of used books in great condition. And so cheap! I bought quite a few for school. A few old favorites like The Borrowers, Beaver Creek and a couple of new ones that are a series that I haven't seen until just a few months ago called Magic Tree House series. I bought books 1-4. I read the first one and like it. They are very simple and easy for the kids to sit through one chapter. I also bought Pilgrim's Progress for me.

For Easter studies this year the kids are doing a lapbook on Easter hymns. One by Martin Luther, one by Fanny Crosby and one by Charles Wesley. I am also going to read a book to them called Tor, A Jerusalem Street Boy. It is a story of a street boy that is blinded by Pilate. He then finds Jesus who gives him his sight back and he dedicates his life to Jesus. The poor boy then watches all of the evils that happen during the last week of Jesus' life. It's a little old for the kids now, but I plan on reading it every year for Easter and they will eventually get it! lol

Another great thing that I would like to highlight is that with the kids doing lapbooks, they have been starting to learn how to do their own research!