Sunday, August 27, 2017

FUSE

 
What a great start to our week off! The weekend 3 of my kids have been anticipating for over two months has finally come! FUSE is basically our churches' in town summer camp. Joshua and Savannah got to participate last year and now Alexa is in youth also and so excited!! 
Why the name Fuse? I looked up the definition of fuse and this is what it said:
fuse1
fyo͞oz/
verb
  1. 1.
    join or blend to form a single entity.    
 
This is exactly the purpose of the event to blend the kids together and form friendships and relationships at the start of the school year. Within the youth group each of my kids are in their own small group with mentors and the groups are divided on grade and boy/girl. They stayed the weekend with their mentors at a host home and went back and forth to the church for times of worship, guest speakers and fun! My kids all have great mentors who are eager to be there and excited to take part in the kids lives.
 
Needless to say they came home Sunday exhausted!!
 
 
 

Baking Cakes

  
Proud Mama bragging moment! Anastasia has her own side cake baking business. These are some of her most recent creations. She made six cakes in one weekend!! So much talent I just wanted to share. If you are local and ever want her to make a cake, let us know and she does have a Facebook page just for her cakes.   
 
 



Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Kids Night


  The girls and I have been serving in kids ministry at our church for about a year now and we  love it! I server with the 5 year olds and they are so much fun! This by far has been the easiest kids ministry I have ever served in. Everything is always planned out and I just get to have fun teaching  the kids and sharing the love of Jesus.   If you want to serve they ask you to make a six month commitment. At the beginning of each new 6 month term the church hosts a fun evening of dinner and games for the volunteers and tonight was one of those nights. The theme was Superhero fun and it didn't disappoint. 






Monday, August 21, 2017

Solar Eclipse 2017

Today was a great hands on learning opportunity and a chance to review our astronomy from last year! Where we live we only got to see a partial eclipse at its peak it covered 64% of the sun.  We viewed it the old fashioned way, a pin hole box and we also used a Saladmaster strainer. HA!
We streamed the NASA site and listened to info about the eclipse. filled out a worksheet, and made our pin hole viewers. So we covered science, writing, math, language, art  and history, I was ready to call it a day! HA!  I like creating memories in the big and little things. They will all remember where they were during the eclipse of August 2017.  :)










Saturday, August 19, 2017

Calm Before the Storm

      Like my title of this post? LOL  One of the other reasons I like to start school the end of July is it gives us a full six weeks to get started, back to routine and accomplish quite a bit, before all the other school activities start. We are able to stay focused and ease back in. Because after our week break, everything is in full swing, volleyball games, co-op, First Lego League, book clubs, Keepers, Biology Labs, Science co-op, youth group and what ever else we throw in there. Oh my poor unsocialized homeschoolers! Thankfully the start of all of these is spread out and we can ease into the craziness. Although some would say we are always in the midst of craziness with homeschooling SEVEN!
       I must say though, as long as we stick to our schedule the days go really well. I am ready for the weather to cool off  however, so they can spend their lunch hour on the trampoline or riding bikes!!  Last week, after I spent one afternoon and evening picking up stuff and cleaning,  I decided to make an after school chore chart for each child. Wow! That has made a huge difference and the house is clean afterschool!! As the saying goes, many hands make light work. This is very true. Each kids has about 7 jobs that take no longer than 15-20 min but then the house is picked up and looks nice! Here's to a great start of the year and a blog post to look back on when I am pulling my hair out. :)
 
     Here are just some fun pictures I managed to take from this week.









Sunday, August 13, 2017

My Special Day

 
 
Just a quick Happy "Left-hander's Day"  to my peeps. :) 
 
Some fun facts:   **Myself, my brother and sister are all left handed
            **Both my parents are right handed
            **Only 2 of my girls are left handed
            **A majority of my homeschool mama friends are left handed....hmmm....
            **I bat right handed but catch left handed
            **I use scissors and the mouse with my right hand
            **I don't write like a lefty meaning I don't smear the ink or contort my hand
            **I have no idea anymore which hand I would put down first for a cartwheel because I have been smart enough not to try one for years!!
 
 

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Girl's Book Club

 
 
I am so excited! I finally started a Girl's book club!!  Joshua has been in on for four years now and the girls have finally gotten to an age and reading ability that I was ready to start one with them.
 
 If you want to start one it is fairly easy to do. I put the word out that I was looking for 9-10 other families, with girls ages 10-12, siblings okay. Once I had enough girls I set up a meeting this summer and asked the girls and moms to come with 3 book choices. At the meeting each mom/daughter picked a month to host and which book they wanted the group to read. We meet the 2nd Wednesday of each month from 1-3. The host serves lunch to the girls, trying to relate it to the book if possible. Then we of course have a book discussion based on a paper they each complete ahead of time which goes over the characters, setting, plot, theme etc. Then any other discussion or activity they might have and then an activity relating to the book. We have a wide range of books and that was my goal, not just literary greats. The really only ground rule we have is that you are welcome to sit out a month if you don't want to read a book but I don't think that will be an issue but it is there if needed.
 
So today was our first meeting and we were hosting. Savannah, Alexa and Jocelyn are all participating.  We picked From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, it was a fun book to read. I did it as a read aloud with my girls and used it as our reading. I found comprehension questions and activities that I had them complete each day.


The girls arrived all excited and a bit nervous. We started with lunch, grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup and cheese crackers. In the story Claudia and Jamie ate at museum cafeteria and they took crackers to bed with them. For dessert we of course had to have hot fudge sundaes because it was always Claudia's treat that she saved for. I saved the sundaes till the end, no need to sugar them up before the book discussion! HA!
 
We had a good book discussion for being the first one. We also went over how things would go and talked about how they might not like every book but it will expose them to a wide range of books and they can still discuss them respectfully and share why they liked or didn't like a particular book.  For our activity the girls got to decorate the file folder that I gave them all their papers in and they each got to make their own angel, from white sculpy clay. This was a major part of the mystery in the book. At the end they were all super excited to make their own hot fudge sundaes. Overall I think it went pretty well and am looking forward to this year. Now I am done hosting and just get to enjoy the rest of the year reading the books with my girls! That is a plus to going first and getting it done. :)
 
 







 
 
Each girl needed to get a 3 ring binder with a plastic cover. On the front cover is a picture of each girl and on the back cover I made this sheet with a picture of each of the books we are reading this year.