Last year Savannah and I were invited to be a part of a group called Keepers of the Home. We met monthly with other moms and daughters learning life skills, and focusing on the things that God designed us, as women, to take care of. Since I had never heard of a “Keepers Group” at the time of our invitation, I ordered the handbook. It didn’t take long after flipping through its pages to know this was something special.

Going forward into this school year I knew I wanted to continue learning in the Keepers handbook. But I hesitated returning to the previous group. Not because they aren’t the most gracious, fun-loving, God fearing women I’ve met through homeschooling. Because they most certainly are. They are wonderful! But that group was a very large group. Twenty or more girls if everyone showed up. And I knew some personal friends who I thought would also like to be a part of Keepers. I didn’t feel that it was my place to invite them into the other group, so I decided to branch out and start my own group.

The picture at the top is our new group (minus one lovely) taken at our Christmas Tea. I hesitated planning a December meeting but when one of the moms offered to give the girls a proper “tea”, I thought it was a great idea. They got all dressed up for the occasion and each girl brought a gift or two for a family we adopted from the local ministry village. After eating and hearing the story “My Child My Princess”, the girls wrapped their gifts and decorated Christmas cookies.

I am so pleased with how this group has turned out. An absolute answer to prayer. I love the diversity of their ages and family backgrounds as much as the girls themselves. And I can’t say enough good things about the new friendships I have made with their mothers.

Some other fun things we’ve done this year include how to grind your own wheat and make blueberry muffins, we’ve made our own travel pillows, we learned some healthy ways to take care of our bodies since they are the temple of the holy spirit and we also made our own Christmas cards. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year brings!!!

What can I say about writing? I personally have a love/hate relationship with it. When I have time to think clearly, be humorous, add style and entertain people… I love to write! But these days, I don’t have time for all that. I update this blog quickly, just so I don’t forget things. It’s far from entertaining anymore. It reminds me of a checklist. And that, I hate!

But I do like to teach writing skills. With a first and third grader, we are still doing a lot of basics. Savannah has very neat handwriting and so for her, I assign a lot of journaling and some copywork. She told me once when she was quite small that she wanted to be an author some day. She’s never mentioned it again, but gosh, does she love to write stuff! She fills up notebook after notebook with her thoughts and drawings and ideas and to do lists (I have NO IDEA where she gets THAT from!). On a normal school day, I have to continually remind her that she’s done enough writing for that day and she needs to move on to her other work or it will never get done!

Emery hasn’t been as eager to write as his sister. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s getting older or if she is rubbing off on him, but he isn’t as frustrated by it as he used to be. Neatness and taking pride in his handwriting is something I’m trying to develop in him. “It’s not just all about getting the assignment finished, son.” At the beginning of this year I hesitated to teach him cursive even though he was asking. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it, but I could barely read his printing. I thought cursive would be even worse! Now I’m glad that I decided to go ahead and do it. Turns out, if it’s something he sincerely wants to learn, he will do what it takes to do it right.

I don’t know why this picture is so blurry. Knowing him, he probably wasn’t sitting still! The page was taken from his writing book called Writing with Ease (Savannah also uses the 3rd grade edition). These books have been great in reinforcing copy work, comprehension skills, and story narration. We do a lot of work finding the main points of stories and then condensing those stories in our own words. This is difficult because for Savannah, she wants to retell the story in complete detail including the color of flower petals that the main character passed on her way to the farmhouse. And Emery, knowing that whatever he narrates back to me about the story, I will write down and he will have to copy, gives me only 4 and 5 word recaps! (sigh)

But overall, I can already see a huge improvement in both their handwriting and their writing skills in general since the beginning of this school year. I am really looking forward to next year when Savannah will be old enough to participate in the Essentials Writing class that is offered within our homeschool group. I hear nothing but praise about it and I think with the program we’ve been using, she will have confidence in herself and will do very well in the class.

This week we had an opportunity to visit The Rock Ranch in The Rock, Georgia. I was so excited when I heard about this field trip within my homeschool group because I have been wanting to go. Another family I know went a couple years ago and spent the night. They have a huge bonfire in the evenings and when it’s time for bed, campers get to sleep in COVERED WAGONS! Just like the pioneers! How cool is that!?!??!

Now for our field trip, we didn’t get to spend the night, but there is plenty more to do at the ranch than sleep. We had a guided tour that told us all about traveling across the U.S. in pioneer days, what people ate, and how they survived. It went on to show us their permanent homes, log cabins, when they settled. Then we got to grind our own cornmeal, with stones, so that we knew how much work went into making something simple, like cornbread.

We tasted cornbread muffins, fed barnyard animals at the petting zoo and went for a hayride, before hearing about the Native American way of life. Then we were off to a picnic lunch, followed by free time on the ranch.

Free time included underground slides, a jumpy pillow, volleyball, and a kid-sized pioneer town complete with pharmacy, church, jail, dress shop, barn, boarding house, and more. It was so cute! All the children had a great time and I would seriously love to go back on a weekend when they have even MORE to do! And this time, I wanna sleep in a covered wagon!!! :)

This year we are focusing a good bit of time on the ole U.S. of A. I knew part of our C.C. memory work for cycle 3 was going to be learning the states and their capitals, so I was thrilled when I ran across Roadtrip USA on another homeschool mom’s blog. It was very inexpensive for a complete curriculum that we can use all year!

The curriculum is very well organized. We not only learn the state and its capital, we also learn it’s history, flag, industries, famous people from the state and the foods that are popular there. There is a coloring page, travel logs, passports, recipes, and more.

Both of my kids have enjoyed the “Roadtrip” portion of our school days. I love it because each week is already laid out for me. I print a few worksheets, get a couple books from the library and voila…Geography class. It doesn’t get much easier than that!

In addition to the curriculum, I also bought a giant wall map (seen above), made 2 copies and had them laminated so we could use dry erase markers on them. The map came with a corny, albeit catchy, tune that names all the states and capitals. The maps come in handy because we are are also going to be learning the names and location of rivers, lakes, mountain ranges, deserts, trails, and other prominent features.

Emery’s favorite part of the week is Friday, when I challenge him with our States Flashcards. I let him challenge his sister at first but she wasn’t as, shall we say…passionate about learning them as he was, so I let him go head to head with me instead. Now, I know my states and capitals pretty well, so I thought this would be a good match up. Boy, was I wrong! He blew me away! I think it helps that he likes to play the “Stack the States” app on my iPhone. He not only knows the capital of each state, but I can give him a flashcard with nothing but a shape of a state on it, and he knows which one it is. Here he is a couple weeks ago, going through the cards himself. Nothing is on the front of the card except a shape, the state flag, and a tiny map that shows where the state is located. What a stinker!

So I mentioned in my last post that I’d share some pictures of our recent family trip to Lake Guntersville where Jeremy had his final FLW tournament of this year. And LOOK…. I’m actually doing it! And it’s not even Christmas! Yay me!!!

The cabin we found to stay in was very nice. It was right on the water, had a basketball court, and an awesome fire pit, perfect for roasting marshmallows.

Only 45 minutes north was Huntsville, Alabama, home of the US Space and Rocket Center. That place was really fun. Here are Savannah and Emery, ready for blast off:

We kept up with our school work while we were out of town, but it’s always more fun to take a field trip instead. So on the last day, while we were waiting for Daddy to get done on the water, we stopped by Cathedral Caverns State Park.

It’s was a pretty cool (literally) underground cave where a tour guide would show you natural rock formations that have been thousands of years in the making. The park itself was small, but very beautiful. The weather was perfect.

Then we headed off to the lake with our fingers crossed, hoping Jeremy brought in a big bag of fish. And while he did bring in a bag of fish, it was not big enough to keep him in the tournament for the final 2 days. It didn’t matter to my kids though. Their favorite part of weigh-in days, is when they get to go on stage with their Dad and talk on the microphone to the crowd. The fact that it’s being recorded and watched live all across the country, is the just the icing on the cake.

Fish? What fish? I was on TV!!!!

A year or so ago I found a fun human body school book on a clearance rack somewhere. I pulled the My Body book out of my stash this year since I thought both kids were old enough to enjoy it.

And it has been really fun! We’ve done 1 or 2 body parts per week, depending on how many additional library books I can find on the subject. Plus I found this cool Human Body board game that goes really well with what we’re learning.

As enlightening as it’s been discussing how our body works to a 6 and 8 year old, the best part for all 3 of us is the making of our own bodies. We started out tracing an outline of ourselves, and each time we learn a new body part, we color it and add it in its proper place.

Above we’ve got Savannah with her bones, muscles, heart, brain, kidneys, spleen, gall bladder, stomach and bladder. Next week is the small and large intestine. I’m sure they will find them just as hilarious as they did the kidneys and bladder! My big question is whether or not to add the section on the reproductive parts. I mean, I know my kids. I already know that next week we will spend a lot of time talking about farting. I can accept that. But I’m not so sure how far they’ll take questions on the reproductive system. Oh mercy!

This week was the second week of our fall break, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t do any school work at all. On Tuesday’s we have school with other homeschool families in a community called Classical Conversations.

The method of schooling classically was new to me until Savannah’s first grade year. I had done her kindergarden year “out of a box”, an all inclusive K5 program, and we were both very bored with that approach. I began researching other avenues and stumbled upon Classical Conversations in a way that only God himself could have ordained.

A classical education trains the mind. The goal is to teach my kids how to learn anything they want, and ultimately be able to articulate their beliefs on any subject they are passionate about.

In the early years, classically educated children do a lot of memory work. This is the time when the building blocks for all other learning are being laid. Their minds are like sponges, ready to absorb information. Children at this age actually find memorization fun. So we spend the majority of our time learning facts. Rules of phonics and spelling, rules of grammar, poems, the vocabulary of foreign languages, the stories of history and literature, descriptions of plants and animals and the human body, the facts of mathematics — the list goes on.

At the end of the year, each child is given the opportunity to become a Memory Master. This means that they are able to recite every single bit of information we learned over 24 weeks, including the scripture passage and time line cards (of which there are 160 cards, beginning with creation and ending with modern times, with all world events in between).

This is a lot of dad-gum information and even the thought of reviewing it with my kids on a daily basis is overwhelming to me! But Emery and Savannah have both told me that they would like to try to be a Memory Master this year, so last week while we were on vacation, I took a couple of afternoons and made us a memory box and folder with all the facts we are going to need to know.

Wish us luck!!!!

If ever there was a subject that would prevent me from homeschooling, math would be it! Oh the frustration I suffered over math homework as a child. The thought still makes me tremble. And the real irony is, when I got to college, I fell in love with accounting. Charts and bookkeeping and organizing numbers into categories or allocating them into separate accounts…oh my goodness…someone was finally speaking my language!

But give me letters instead of numbers? Fractions? Cosines? Theorems? Polynomials???? Are you kidding? My math brain shut down somewhere around 9th grade algebra.

I know the importance of math and I didn’t want to pass my math insecurities on to my kids, so I needed a curriculum that I was comfortable with. I also figured we needed something that we could use for a long time since math tends to build on itself. I found exactly what we needed in Math U See.

“Mr Math”, as we affectionately call him, has a video teaching segment for each chapter and also a teachers book that provides more detailed explanations and examples for me. There are student workbooks, activity sheets, and a test booklet. There is also a set of manipulatives available, which both my kids enjoy playing with outside of school time as well.

So far the math we are learning is not too hard. The problem is I have a daughter who, like her mother, shuts down when math doesn’t look like it should. We’ve done a little bit with letters in place of numbers (which really threw her for a loop) and word problems (again, it doesn’t “look” like she thinks a math problem should look), and most recently, we are rounding numbers into the hundreds and she looks at me like I have 2 heads.

After a while, I have to enlist the help of her dad. One, because his math brain works very well and he may have a new, more creative way to teach the same lesson. And two, because apparently saying the same instructions, only LOUDER and LOUDER, doesn’t seem to work.

And then there’s my son. His favorite subject is math. I don’t know when or where, but he learned to add. He is now teaching himself subtraction. Two weeks ago he asked me what this “x” means and I told him it was multiplication. He wanted to know how to do it so I gave him a simple explanation like, “well, the problem says 2 times 3, so that means it wants to know how many are 2 three’s?”, and since he can skip count all the way 6, he started doing that on his own as well.

He loves to play all kinds of math games. On the computer, board games, or card games, it doesn’t matter. He plays them competitively, smack talk included, and usually wins. His biggest math bummer are the worksheets, which he is holding here, and thinks writing from 1 to 100 is “dumb”.

I thought it might be fun to blog about what we are doing in school this year. At times I think some extended family members might be thinking “those poor York kids… their parents are schooling them AT HOME (gasp)… and do you know that neither one of them finished a four year degree… those children are gonna be dumb as rocks!”

So how about I post some things we’re learning each week? It may not change the minds of those appalled by the thought of homeschooling, but at the very least it will keep me writing!

Our school year started the second week of July. I pretty much school them year-round. We go 9 weeks, then take off 2. By then it’s September and it’s cool enough to enjoy outdoor activities. Plus, most every other family is back in school and that means prime vacation spots are not only practically empty, but they are CHEAP too!

After a 2 week break, we hit the books again for another 9 weeks and that puts us right up to December. We take off the whole month and start back again in January, doing the 9 weeks on, 2 weeks off schedule. This finishes up our school year in May, and then it starts over again in July.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk curriculum. Savannah chose the first topic. She is our little budding artist. She get’s it from her dad. I am challenged by stick people.

Knowing that this is a passion of hers, I was determined to teach her an actual art class this year. I dug into my favorite “all things homeschooling” reference book (The Well Trained Mind) and found out that they recommend the book “Drawing with Children“.

I have to say, this book eats up more of my lesson planning time than anything else. It’s not hard, but trust me when I say I know NOTHING about drawing. So I read, and I re-read. And I prepare the lesson by pretending I am the student. So I do all the work that I will be asking them to do. And whatdaya know…I can draw too! :)

Although, in all fairness, we aren’t exactly sketching self portraits or anything yet. It’s more along these lines:

and

We’ve learned the 5 Elements of Shape, the importance of being *quiet* during art time, and we took a day to play with all our new markers to see what they will do, how they will blend, and which ones are our favorites.

We do art once a week. Savannah loves every minute of it (unless Emery dares to sneak a peek at her page and, God forbid, copy it!) The boy gets his skills from me and get frustrated very easily when his picture doesn’t turn out quite like he expected. My goal for him is simply to relax, enjoy drawing, and stop sitting against the back of the chair with his arms crossed, lip sticking out. My goal for the girl is to teach her some new ideas that she can use with her God given talent, giving her the ability to improve her pictures on her own.

Happy Drawing!!!

The end.

What’s that? You’d like to hear a little more about my summer? Well, okay. But it mostly revolves around being too hot to do anything that doesn’t involve air conditioning or a swimming pool.

Except for this:

I went to Youth Camp for a week with the middle and high schoolers from our church. The above picture is my group of 7th graders. We had morning and evening worship, small group time, games, a ropes course, and nightly “cabin time” for sharing and prayers. I worked the snack bar and made a bazillion ice cream cones and slushies. Savannah went with me and in our free time we cooled off in the wave pool. Because the temperature? It must have been 1,864 degrees in the hills of Tennessee!

Meanwhile, my parents let Emery stay with them. Apparently he had no problem beating the heat:

You met Lady in my last post, but keeping with the theme of “smothering heat”, here she is with her new hair cut, lounging in the A/C with her new friends:

She’s so stinkin’ cute!

We started a new homeschool year, which has been challenging, mainly because the sibling rivalry has been off the charts! Here is one of Savannah’s recent journal posts:

I attempted to grow tomatoes on my back porch this year. I enthusiastically bought 2 containers, a big bag of soil, and 8 small plants. I watered thoroughly. And after 2 months, this is what I got:

That’s one expensive mater. I figure it cost me about 40 bucks.

Lastly, and probably the most time consuming part of our summer, has been the opening of our new retail store: Anglers Warehouse. After months of remodeling, stocking, inputting, and ordering I am proud to say the doors are officially opened (and so is the web site, with shipping all throughout the United States…hint hint).

So there you have it. Summer 2011. And now I need a cold drink. I’m sweating just typing this.