3 weeks later....

.....and our schedule is *still* working!!  I'm so excited about this!  This is the first time since Little Man has been born that I have been able to not only create a schedule, but stick with one!  We are super busy, but we are getting so much done. It feels fantastic at the end of the day or week to stand back and take a look at what all we have accomplished!  Here is a sneak peek into what we've been up to the past 3 weeks...

First- the fun stuff-  we went to a birthday carnival for a very special one year old.  The kids had so much fun (and so did the adults!)  My kids are still excited about the fish head sticking out of our soap!  (makes no sense..unless you were there)  :)

Here is Little Man playing the pick a duck game...

 He loved sitting in this truck!!  Santa is going to have to bring him a big 4 x 4 power wheels or something!!!

 Here he is with Daddy feeding the cutest baby pig ever in the petting zoo...

 Here is BabyGirl after her face painting....

 We had an 18th bday party for Bubba Shawn.  Here is Little Man enjoying some yummy home made vanilla gelato!!!  He could eat his weight in ice cream!

 Part of our home schooling involves going outside every morning to observe nature.  This is a wonderful gift that we, as home schooler's have been given.  We treasure the opportunity to learn freely.  We do a lot of playing while we are out for those 2 hours every morning, but we also do a lot of discovering and learning hands on.  I try to take the camera with me to capture anything interesting we may find.  Here are a few of the best ones.

Here is BabyGirl smelling our beautiful Spider Lily's that opened up this past week.

 Here she is showing brother these interesting flowers!

 These amaze me every year.  I love them.

 Here she is with "Pepper", our new baby.

 Here is Little Man's grubby little hand holding onto some freshly picked plums he found.  He kept looking at the tree and yelling "Ball!  Ball!" as he saw more and more!

 Look at this beautiful web spinning by one of our 2 garden spiders.  Amazing.

 Here is #2. 

 Little Man has discovered how to get into any chair now, and loves to practice all he can!!

 As I was helping him up the ladder to the slide he looked up at the sky and yells "Moo!  Moo!"  I had no idea what he was talking about until I looked up...and, there in the sky, was a crescent moon.

 Here he is after we came inside.  He grabbed his juice and climbed into the rocker for a nice rock.

Recently, Little Man outgrew all of his shoes!  We went to the mall with Mimi to get a pair in Stride Rite.  After much fussing, we picked out a pair of boots.  The fit his fat little foot perfectly.  He calls them his "Boops".  (anything with a t on the end gets changed into a p)  He says "Daddy Boop!  Vroom!  Vroom!"  He knows daddy wears boots, too.  And, anything man-ish deserves a vroom vroom!!!!  :)

 Sissy had outgrown all of her clothes and needed a pair of Mary Jane's.  Here she is posing in a new outfit from Justice, and her new shoes.  Her socks have music notes on them.  She adores wearing those socks to music school and gets many compliments from the girls.  :)

We attended our first Roots and Shoots meeting.  It went really well.  The kids all got along splendidly, and the adults had time to discuss our upcoming year.  We have decided our first charity will be "Pennies for Peace".  We will be having a tea party where all of the children pay admission to attend with whatever pennies they have collected.  We have read the book "Listen to the Wind" to go along with our study, and are have discussed the book "Three Cups of Tea".  We are looking forward to our participating with this group.  It will be so fulfilling.

The children painted pots and planted flowers to symbolize our group "Roots and Shoots".  Here is a picture of BabyGirl's pot.  (she also painted a Sesame one for brother)  :)

 And, here is a picture of our shoots!!

 We have been enjoying our AIMS science!  Here is what we've done so far.....

We created a device to look through by using a toilet paper roll with black construction paper covering one end.  The black paper had one hole punched through the center of it.  You look through the open end at various sizes of spheres.  We held the spheres at different distances until they all appeared to be the same size.  This shows us how, even though the moon and sun appear to be the same size from Earth, they are not...and why.  These are how far our spheres had to be apart in order to appear the same.  The smallest was a marble, the largest was a baseball.

 Here is our model of the Sun and Earth, displaying the size difference.  The Earth is a tiny green circle on the bottom right of the Sun.

 In this activity we demonstrated how the rotation of the Earth creates dawn, mid-day, dusk, and evening.

We are LOVING our Oklahoma history!!!  It is so interesting and fun!!!  So far, we have covered the Spiro Mounds people, the Vikings and their rune stones (we plan on going to see some next weekend), all of the different explorers who have come through Oklahoma, and the 14 different flags that have flown over our state.  My husband and I learn something new with each lesson, and we never tire of discussing our topics over the dinner table.  Here are some examples of what we've done...

Here is BabyGirl wearing her arrow head necklace we made when we covered the Spiro Mounds.

 Here is the worksheet where she made each flag that has flown over our state.  She did such a great job!  Under each flag is the year it was flown.

 Here is the beginning of our time line....

Everything else is flowing as smooth as butter.  I couldn't be more happy with our progress! 

One other update....the other front tooth is out finally!!!!!!!!!!!!  Here she is posing after Little Man accidentally knocked it out.  (which is great because I had threatened if she didn't get it out soon I was pulling it that night)

Little Man just *had* to copy the pic!! So cute!!



Last, but not least....Little Man went pee pee into the big potty!!!  He stood right up on the step stool in front of it and went!!!!  He was so proud of himself.  Now, if I can just keep this up somehow...... :)

Until next time......

Sayonara Summer

I cannot believe it's the end of summer.  What a summer it has been!  This has to be one of the hottest summers I can ever remember.  We are so thankful to Mother Nature for this cooler weather for Labor Day weekend!  It has really got us excited about the fall and everything that comes along with it!  Here is a little sneak peek into what we have planned.

This entire school year will be devoted to Oklahoma History and Geography.  Our entire family is looking forward to this one.  We will be covering everything from ancient Oklahoma through the OKC bombing.  I'm using the curr. from Oklahoma Home school.  I love it.  It is so thorough, self explanatory and fun!  This may be the favorite purchase I've made so far.  (and, it was inexpensive!)  We plan on making at least 1 (if not 2) field trips per month to go along with our studies.  I have ordered a TON of free travel brochures available through the state.  We've also gotten our people from OK history coloring book.  We will be starting with ancient OK this week, covering the Spiro Mounds people.  We made our first field trip yesterday to Woolaroc.  They had an entire room devoted to Spiro Mounds!  We have already learned so much, and we haven't even started!  We will for sure be going back several times to Woolaroc when we study various other parts of OK history.  Here are a few pics of our visit...

Here is BabyGirl shooting a gun.

Here she is throwing a tomahawk.

Here we are entering the main tee pee at the mountain man camp.

Here she is wearing a coyote hat.

Aren't we cute?!  ha!  He is wearing a coyote and I'm wearing a skunk.  (cuz I'm stinkin cute)

Beautiful view of a waterfall as we drove over a bridge.

This place truly is magical.  You can see what Frank Phillips saw everywhere you look.  The land is enchanting, everything about it.  Reminds me how lucky we are to live in this beautiful state.

Touching and comparing skulls.

Before we climbed the outlook tower.

Little Man had to climb up and down every single step on his own!

Entering the museum, beautiful mosaic.

For science we are covering one topic per semester.  For the first semester we will be studying the solar system, stars and nebulae.  I purchased a new study guide from AIMS.  It looks very interesting and combines the science with math.  It has an activity or experiment with each lesson, so she cannot wait to dive into this one!  For our second semester we will be studying the human body including various systems, then we will be learning about cells.  I haven't decided what we will be using for that, yet.

For math we are halfway through level C in Right Start.  She is totally "getting it" and loves, loves, loves the geometry we are currently working on.  I feel like we are finally making great strides in covering not only the basics, but much more.  I have learned so much while teaching her with Right Start.  The strategies are wonderful, and I wish I had been taught them at her age.

For handwriting we will continue with Handwriting Without Tears.  We're on our second year of cursive writing.  For spelling we are going to start out trying Everyday Spelling.  We'll see how that goes.  I've never found one I just *love*, but maybe this one will be okay.  Our OK History course has several spelling/vocabulary words we will be learning with each unit as well.  For our regular writing exercises we will be using the next level of Write-Away.  She loved using it last year!  It will include many forms of writing such as book reports, research papers, letter writing, story/play writing and poems.

For reading we will be going over all the suggested readings from our History, as well as whatever we find that looks interesting.  We may be starting the Harry Potter series again, using a Scholastic literature unit we found to go with it.  We'll see....don't want to pack too much in.  I have plenty as of right now with just our history reading and what she's doing on her own.

We are starting our 2nd year of music school this week.  She will continue have 1 hour music theory lessons twice weekly, and 30 min piano lessons twice weekly.  She is so excited to get back into class!  We truly love our music school.

We will be doing OK Communities for our Social Studies this year.  It is absolutely perfect to do right alongside our history!  We really lucked out with Nanny giving us this one!!  It also helps that Social Studies is one of her favorite subjects!!

We will be doing art lessons every other week, implementing them with our trips to the museums.  I'm hoping to be able to introduce some fun new techniques this year.

Another new thing we will be doing is cooking.  She will have at least one day per week (Wed) that she will have to pick out a recipe and make it on her own.  She loves it!  Last week I even had her half a recipe and she did it perfectly with no help at all!  I'm so proud of her working with fractions!

We plan on doing some sort of PE every single day.  While the weather is perfect we will be playing out, taking walks and nature journaling in the mornings.

Once a month we will be getting together with our local chapter of Roots and Shoots.  We will be focusing on 3 different forms of community outreach.  For the fall we will be helping the environment, for winter it will be the human community, and for spring it will be the animal community.  I'm so glad that we have so many like-minded friends that we can join forces with to make this happen.  It's never too early to introduce pay it forward.  I pray that we can make an impact in many lives with this program.

Little Man will also be participating in some weekly activities this year!  Once a week he will be attending story hour (the same one BabyGirl grew up on).  He will also be joining some good friends weekly at playgroup!  We started these a few weeks ago, and he is already loving his new routine!  Here he is playing on the big toy at playgroup...

And, here he is enjoying his snack.... :)

So...that's it.  Our next year in a nut shell.  I'm sure many things will change through the year, but I'm prepared to roll with the punches.  I've given BabyGirl an assignment notebook this year.  It has a page for each day.  I will fill it out each morning with whatever self-directed activities as well as chores that she is expected to do that day before free time is achieved.  Then, I will also write in what we do together during our one on one time during nap.  That way, she gets a simple view of what is expected of her, and I get a nice record book.  It's a win - win situation!

As we say sayonara to summer....here are the last few pics we have of our great summer of 2011.  Enjoy.

We said good-bye to Bubba Steven as he went off to college at OSU.  Way to go, Bub.

Petting our George...

Cupcake decorating party just because!

Finally, we lost one of the top teeth!!

Horse back riding with friends!!!

Saying thank you to "Maggie"

My babies chillin

New Park Day!!

My beautiful hand made banner for "We love mom" day.

A ssssssssssssneaky vissssitor outsssside our dining room window...

Welcome Seth!!

Sacked out after our "Summer" play date!!

Go Pokes!!!!!!!!!

Hope you enjoy every single second of this beautiful beginning of fall!  Until next time....