Gardening

I am so, so excited! We're going to do a garden! We bought some little organic seed starter pots and fertilizer soil as well as some seeds. After we get the plants growing, we're going to use some old tires we have and fill them up with soil. Voila! Raised gardening. :)


Of course, being a homeschooler, I need to follow this rabbit trail, right? I purchased this Amanda Bennett unit study on Gardens and will row Miss Rumphius from FIAR Vol. 2. I am so, so excited! I think I'll do The Secret Garden as a read-aloud.


Caleb is going to plant and tend to the vegetables, and Millie is going to do the flowers. It should be fun to see how they do. We've never gardened in Florida, so it's going to take some researching and trial and error to figure out what works best and how. I think I'll let Caleb do some of that research as a project.


I've also ordered the Spring Hill Nursery catalog. My mom used to let my sister and me pick out plants every year to order when were still living at home. I think I'll continue that tradition and let my kids choose one or two.


Just wanted to give a quick update. I'll try to take some pictures this week while we finish up Ping and maybe some of our Mystery of History projects.


Thanks for reading! :)

End of the First Quarter

It's been a fun first quarter of school. I haven't been able to keep up the blog as I had hoped, but I still have faith that this will change. We've made some changes which have been so gentle and purposed. I started out very structured which I needed to do in order to develop a routine, and as we went along, we dove into the kids' individual needs and wants. This was purposed by Yahweh, and I am grateful I obeyed because we are really seeing the fruit of this. We are making much better strides this year than we ever have.

We have completely dropped Heart of Dakota. It was too, too structured for me. Although I appreciate the curriculum a lot and enjoyed what we did in it, it wasn't fulfilling our needs for right now. Caleb was ready for a lot more than what it offered, and Millie was beyond the material in hers as well.

I am doing unit studies with both kids now and using Five in a Row for Millie and Beyond Five in a Row for Caleb. We are doing a lot of reading and field trips. I am still using Astronomy for Caleb, and it was very cool to be able to go see a shuttle launch while we were studying space.

We also had a great field trip to The Reptile Discovery Center in Deland, Florida where we got to watch actual venom extraction from several snakes. It was unbelievably cool. Both of my kids have wanted a snake for awhile, and now Millie REALLY wants one. I was stretching myself by letting them get a bearded dragon. A snake might be a bit more than I can handle. ;) I highly recommend this place as a homeschool field trip if you are in the Central Florida area. They are extremely accommodating and want you to have a successful and educational time.

Weight loss is slow but still coming along. I don't know how much I've lost because I had to quit WW for financial reasons. But it's all good. I've taken up walking with plans to eventually run. Right now I am doing two miles. The activity is good for me and the kids, and the fresh air does us good.

Everyone is asking for dinner, so it's time to cut this entry off. I will do my best to continue to update and add some pictures without taking months to do it. :)

First Day!

What a smashing first day of homeschool! This was, by far, the most successful first homeschool day we've ever had. Thank you, Yahweh, for ordering my steps! I was gathering our things to start, and over the last couple of days, I starting thinking about adding some Five in a Row into the mix for fun. So, today I said to Yahweh - The first book FIAR book I come to on our shelf is the one we're going to start with. I could not have chosen a better book had I researched and pondered on my own!!!

Today we started rowing Make Room for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey, a lovely book about the Mallard Family (of ducks) in Boston, Massachusetts. Well, guess what the state dog for MA is? The Boston Terrier!

And the state insect of Massachusetts? The ladybug! Just the day before, we were at a friends house, and look at Miss Millie:

She was so excited when we talked about the Boston Terrier and ladybug! Caleb enjoyed it as well, even though I didn't require him to sit in on FIAR. He was so excited about learning about Massachusetts the he has decided to do his own study...but on the Cook Family! We are choosing and voting on similar items that we learned about Massachusetts - family animal, bird, dance, dinosaur ;), cookie, etc.

Day one and we've already taken a tangent. Not bad. :)

On the weight loss front, my weigh in last week was outstanding! I lost 4.6 for a total of 24.2! I'm not really seeing a difference yet, but my clothes are starting to show a big difference. I have such an amazing support group with my family and friends.

Another wonderful thing that has happened: Dave got a job! He is in training this week and will start the actual job next week. He is working in sales which he said he would NEVER do, but we all know to never say never when you are a Kingdom person. ;) Had he not gone through the week long interview process with Schwans, he never would have applied for this one, so we are grateful for that experience, even though he wasn't hired. I know he can do this. He will succeed!

That's it for now. More to come.