Month: June 2014

2013-14 Homeschool Year in Review

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hs year in reviewThis school year was an amazing one for us, and I want to take a few moments to document it here.

As you may (or may not) know, homeschooling is something I always knew we would do with our kids. For the first several years, however, I didn’t know how to do it well. Sure, my kids learned how to read and what a noun was and the basic concepts of mathematics. But they learned all of that stuff in what was probably the driest way possible: from workbooks. During Munchkin’s Kindergarten year, which was Seahawk’s 2nd grade year, they each had 5 workbooks, and we did all five every. single. day. (Don’t even get me started on Seahawk’s early years.) I’d heard all about these homeschool kids who loved school, were ahead of their peers in pretty much every subject, and didn’t “do school” at home. But I didn’t know how to make that happen. So we bought the workbooks for $9.95 apiece. And they got the job done.

But none of us was enjoying the process.

Last summer, leading into this school year, I spent some time online doing research and found a great resource that provided an awesome curriculum outline for homeschooling in the Charlotte Mason method, Ambleside Online. I wrote about it in my Homeschool Prep post last August, and we faithfully used that program until January of this year, and used it off and on from January to June.

In November, I was accepted as a part of Schoolhouse Review Crew, and that has opened up countless opportunities for the boys that we a) wouldn’t know about otherwise and b) might not be able to afford to give them. Since I got that gig, we’ve split our time between Ambleside and doing review products.

Here’s what we accomplished this school year:

  • We read the New Testament in its entirety.
  • We read most of The Burgess Animal Book for Children. (We’ll finish that either this summer or next school year.) We looked at pictures of the animals we learned about on Wikipedia.
  • We read Understood Betsy aloud together.
  • We read 40-something chapters of An Island Story: A History of England for Girls and Boys. To go along with this, Will watched a British history documentary that we got on DVD from the library with the boys (he’s a huge fan of British history).
  • We read kid-friendly versions of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet.
  • The boys read Tree in the Trail by Holling C. Holling.
  • We went on several nature walks.
  • We learned/are learning French with Mango Languages.
  • The boys learned all kinds of things in the “science” world from Science4Us.com including but not limited to: Earth and Space, Physical Science, and Life Science.
  • Seahawk worked on his spelling skills with Spelling You See. He still has a lot of work ahead of him, but he’s getting there.
  • We learned about several different kinds of sea creatures and where some of our produce comes from with Curiosity Quest DVDs.
  • We replaced our math workbooks with a similar-but-different program, CTC Math.
  • Munchkin learned to write in cursive, and just as importantly, to read it.
  • We learned why and how to be good stewards of what God has given us.
  • We read Little House in the Big Woods and did a study on it. We are currently about a third of the way through Farmer Boy.
  • We read Around the World in Eighty Days.
  • The boys mastered their multiplication tables with Learning Wrap-Ups.
  • The boys read The Whipping Boy and did a unit study on it.
  • We did a unit study on Sound.

Whew! We had a productive school year!

Normally we take the summers off, but this year we’re taking it easy instead of off.

  • They’ll keep their writing chops up by doing one report per week on a different sport. Seahawk is starting with basketball (of course!), and Munchkin has chosen badminton.
  • They’re earning prizes for reading through the library’s summer reading program.
  • They’re going to keep their math and language arts skills sharp with Learning Wrap-Ups and Learning Palettes.
  • We will continue our study of French.

For more on any of these topics, head on over to Ambleside Online or to my Reviews page.

Blessings,

Wendy

Something Crafty for Baby

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I mentioned in yesterday’s post that we have a new nephew. There was a baby shower for the little guy about three weeks ago, and I wasn’t really in the mood to sew something, but I always prefer to give hand-made gifts over store-bought ones. So after a lot of time on the yarn aisle – a lot of time – I finally picked a color that I liked (blue and brown variegated) and found a pattern I thought I could do. Here’s the result:

baby jacket

The pattern comes from Lion Brand, and it was so easy! You just have to crochet five rectangles – one for the back of the jacket, two for the fronts of the jacket, and two for the sleeves – and then stitch them all together. I also made a hat to go with it. The buttons slide between stitches on the opposite side, so you don’t even have to count out where to put buttonholes. It was the perfect project for me at this point – I got the crocheting bug satisfied without having to stress over a complex pattern or a large blanket. And I was able to make the jacket and the hat with only two skeins of yarn, which kept my wallet happy too! (Not that I was trying to be cheap, but when you can give a heartfelt gift without breaking the bank, that’s the best kind of all!)

What’s your favorite baby gift to give?

Blessings,

Wendy

Please note: The pattern is free, but you have to sign up for a free account with the Lion Brand website to access it.

Simplicity: New Life

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simplicity copyI was torn on whether to share today’s post under the “simplicity” tag or not. But then I reminded myself that this series isn’t necessarily about only sharing tips and tricks for living a simple life. It’s about what simplicity means to me. Keeping that in mind, this post is completely appropriate here.

I mentioned last week that we had a new nephew coming “any day now.” Well, the wee hours of Saturday morning was that day! Will’s sister sent me a text message during normal waking hours on Saturday morning letting us know that she’d had her baby.

Holding this tiny person was a huge reminder to me of just how simply we all start out. We have nothing. We can’t do anything for ourselves. We can’t even maintain our own body temperatures at first. Talk about simple creatures! It’s fascinating to me that we go so quickly from that – a tiny, helpless infant – to adults so absorbed in ourselves and in maintaining busy-ness.

I know that we’re not babies anymore. I know that we can’t revert back to that completely innocent stage; heck, I’m not sure I’d want to. But at the same time, it was so peaceful and nice to just hold the sleeping infant and appreciate the intense simplicity that is his life.

Blessings,

Wendy

Messiah’s Mansion

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We had the opportunity recently to do something really cool, and I wanted to share about it here. It was called Messiah’s Mansion, and it is a life-size reproduction of the Mosaic tabernacle from the book of Exodus. One of the churches in our town brought it in, and it was on display for a full week. There was no admission fee for the hour-and-a-half long guided tour, and it was one of the neatest things we’ve seen or done in a long time.

The first place we went on our tour was a kind of “holding area” that had a 3D model of what we were going to see as well as some poster-size pictures of a few of the temples through the years (Solomon’s temple, for example). Our tour guide spoke to us about all the different temples during this period, and then we moved on to the temple courtyard.

You shall make the court of the tabernacle.

Exodus 27:9

The courtyard was pretty neat. We walked through a curtain – which was made of the colors described in Exodus (blue, purple, red, and white). The pillars, while not real gold, silver, and bronze, were the size of the real ones from Moses’ day, based on the current knowledge of a cubit being 18 inches, and were placed at the correct intervals. In the middle of the courtyard stood the altar for making sacrifices and the bronze washbasin. I was surprised at how big these two items were! Thinking about it later, it made perfect sense that they’d be huge – after all, the Israelites had to sacrifice huge animals on them – but seeing it in person was still surprising. Our guide told us that the washbasin was the one item in the display that they can’t know for sure is real size because the Bible doesn’t mention the measurements for it.

messiah's mansion altar

Notice how big the altar is compared to my kids

In addition to making sure everything was the right size, they also were careful to put everything in the correct location, spatially. For example, we entered on the north side. The altar was on the north side of the courtyard, and the washbasin was just a little bit to the south of it, between the altar and the Holy Place.

As part of the presentation in the courtyard, we were supposed to see a “real” sacrifice (done with a toy lamb and a red cloth representing blood), but our tour guide got caught up in his speech and we ran out of time before we were “pushed” along by the group after us.

Moreover, you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet yarns . . .

Exodus 26:1

We moved from the courtyard to the Holy Place – the tabernacle itself. This time, I was surprised in the opposite way as I was at the alter – this was much, much smaller than I imagined. If I had to guess, I’d say the Holy Place was not that much bigger than your average American living room. No kidding. In this room, there was the golden lampstand, the table for the “plates and dishes for incense” and “flagons and bowls for drink offerings” (Exodus 25:29), and the table for bread. The lampstand was a giant menorah, and the table for bread was a large table that held 12 loaves of unleavened bread, in two stacks of 6. (The loaves in the model were not real bread.) For the purposes of the demonstration, the loaves were bigger than real loaves (so people in the back row could see also).

holy place messiahs mansion

Between these three items, the room felt pretty full. There was room for people to be in there during worship, but not very many of them. Seeing this makes you understand why they had so many services during the day/week.

And the veil shall separate for you the Holy Place from the Most Holy. Exodus 26:33

From the Tabernacle, we moved to the Most Holy Place. I’m not going to lie: even though it was a replica, it still felt kind of weird to view this. I’m not, after all, the high priest of Israel. At the same time, it was interesting to see. The Most Holy Place is attached to the Holy Place, separated by just a curtain. Our tour guide passed “through” the curtain, much like a priest in Moses’ day would have. The rest of us went around. (The way this is set up reminded me of a shadow box. There were chairs for spectators to sit in at each area, and the guide was in the actual display, showing us things.) The Holy Place was the home of the Ark of the Covenant. Inside the Ark (which means “box” – Noah’s Ark was more box-shaped than boat-shaped, believe it or not) are three things: Aaron’s staff, which blossomed with almonds and flowers in Numbers 17; a golden jar of manna, which God had of course provided as food for the Israelites during their journey away from Egypt; and the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. There were replicas of each of these items in the Ark at Messiah’s Mansion. ark messiahs mansion

After leaving the Most Holy Place, we went to the final “holding area,” where there was an additional model of the Ark of the Covenant as well as a mannequin dressed in the traditional Priests’ garments of the day. This is where our tour guide wrapped up the tour.

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Overall, this was a very positive experience. I would definitely recommend that you find out if/when Messiah’s Mansion will be in a location near you and go experience it for yourself!

Blessings,

Wendy

This post was not sponsored in any way. We found out about Messiah’s Mansion through a flyer at the grocery store and went without any push from the Messiah’s Mansion people. They are not paying me to do this post. They don’t even know that I wrote it!

Picture of the Week: Good-bye, Old Friend

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car

I wrote a couple of weeks ago how we were having transmission problems with our car. Well, transmissions are very expensive to replace, and in a car that’s 23 years old and has over 300,000 miles, it just doesn’t make financial sense. So we had to say “good-bye” to our car, “Rocket,” earlier this week. In the background of the lower picture, you can see our new car – a 2002 PT Cruiser that we’re buying from my in-laws.

While it is nice to have a (slightly) newer, much more reliable car, it was still a little sad to send Rocket to the junkyard.

Blessings,

Wendy

Essay Contest Winner

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Back in April, the boys both entered an essay writing contest through the local public library. The topic/title of the essay was “What I Liked About {title of book} and What I Would Change About It.”

essay reading

Seahawk chose Bone: Volume 6. Munchkin chose Elmer and the Dragon. In addition to the topic of the essay being assigned, there were also word count restrictions, which were assigned based on age/grade. Seahawk, being in 4th grade, had to have between 100 and 200 words. Munchkin, in 2nd grade, was to write between 50 and 100 words. Here are their essays. Munchkin:

I read Elmer and the Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. I liked the part where The Canary King was sick of curiosity. In that part, Elmer got a secret treasure chest. That’s what the King was so curious about. He wondered what was inside it. I really liked it. I also liked the part where Elmer and The Dragon were on Tangerine Island. I would change the ending. I would have ended it with Elmer saying good-bye to the Dragon.

Seahawk:

I read Bone Volume 6: Old Man’s Cave. It is not the best book Jeff Smith has ever written. It was sort of cool though. I liked it because it tells you who The Hooded One is. It is very chaotic. Everyone is deciding who to choose for their team, and meanwhile Phoney Bone is making bad decisions. His decisions are causing the other characters to hate him. I would change the fact that Rock Jaw the huge lion is trying to kill Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone and capture Thorn. Instead of this, I would have Rock Jaw on their team. That way, they could all work together to beat The Lord of the Locusts. Overall, I liked the book – in fact, I love the whole series – but this one little change would have made this volume better in my opinion.

A few days after we submitted their essays, I got a phone call letting us know that Seahawk had won 3rd place in his division! We were very proud of him. The library had a ceremony the first week in April where all of the winners had the opportunity to read their essays. There was also a local published author there who made a presentation, which I found interesting. (Her topic was “where do authors get their ideas?”) On top of bragging rights, he won a gift certificate that was good at any number of stores in town; the only catch was that it all had to be spend at one time, at one store. After a trip to the toy store yielded no satisfactory results, he decided to take his prize to the bead store. In the past year or so, he’s decided that he really likes beading. Unfortunately for him, I don’t really know how, so I can’t teach him beyond a single strand threaded version. But that’s okay – he’s happy with that for now. And as he improves, we’ll get him some library books to learn more. The gift certificate was for $10, which as you might imagine bought a lot of beads! The first thing he made was a bracelet for our neighbor across the street. She’s like a grandmother to the boys, and her birthday was about a week after the essay celebration. bracelet

He has plans to make a bracelet for each of his “real” grandmothers, too (my mom and Will’s stepmom). We’d hoped to have them done for Mother’s Day, but that didn’t happen. Will’s stepmother is recovering from surgery, so perhaps we’ll make hers a “Get Well” present later this week. And my mom has a birthday coming up in August, so that’ll likely be when she gets hers.

Blessings,

Wendy

 

Wednesday Chat #8

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chatsonthefarmhouseporch

 

Welcome back to the Farmhouse Porch, friends. Here’s a fresh round of questions from Patrice at Everyday Ruralty. If you have a blog, you can answer them and link up, too. (By the way, although it’s probably not Wednesday anymore where you are, it is where I am, so “Wednesday Chat” is still an appropriate title. 🙂 )

Do you like lemonade? Any special flavors?

I do, but it has to be more on the tart side than the sweet side. Making my own (usually from bottled lemon juice) is preferable to, say, Country Time. I really like strawberry lemonade, too. But my drink of choice is plain iced tea – no lemon or sweetener. Although I’m kinda hankering for a glass of lemonade now!

How many place settings of silverware do you have? (I adjusted this question a little so it would make sense beyond the context of Patrice’s original post.)

Four. We have a total of 8 forks, four big and four small. Same with spoons. We also have a toddler spoon and a few baby spoons that we haven’t passed along yet (although we probably will soon – we have a new nephew expected to make his arrival sometime in the next week or two!).

Have you ever been to a party in a barn?

Yes! Each October, our friends (who live on a working farm that the wife’s father owns and operates) host a Pig Roast. They buy a whole pig from the butcher and cook it up, then invite the whole town (and us, even though we moved away a year and a half ago) out for food (besides the pig, there’s usually about a million pounds of potato salad and three million rolls – on top of other side dishes). Everything’s served in one of the many barns on the property, and the shindig lasts all day.

Do you wear nail polish?

Occasionally on my toes. Not really on my fingers. I have a bad habit of biting my nails, and I think combining that with polish looks weird.

Please finish this sentence. I wish I could . . .

. . . travel to Europe, specifically England and France. England because I have a couple of “sisters” there that I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting (ah, these internet days) and France because I’d love to immerse myself in the language and culture.

Now it’s your turn. Pick one of these questions and answer it in the comments for me!

Blessings,

Wendy

Simplicity: How to Maintain it in a Big House

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simplicity copy

We live in a pretty big house. I don’t know exactly what the square footage is, but the house has four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, two living rooms, two stories, and a two-car garage. It’s bigger than we need, but the story behind how we came to live here is rather remarkable. Long story short, the owner called us and offered us the house for a very reasonable price. We jumped on it for two reasons. First, we’d just had Small Fry less than six months before, and we were living in a 2 bedroom apartment. We weren’t feeling crowded yet, but he hadn’t started moving yet, either. Second, the house is way closer to the places we go frequently (namely Will’s book signings and our church) by about half an hour.

It would have been easy to look at the bigger house and say, “We need a bunch of new stuff to fill this place.” But we didn’t. Living in a big house wasn’t an excuse to lose our minds – and our convictions. We have only two pieces of furniture in the house that we didn’t have in the apartment: a coffee table that was left by the previous tenants (they asked us if we wanted it) and a chair for Will. We got rid of our old couch, though, so we’re still ahead in the “keeping stuff limited” game. (Not by numbers, but by volume/annoyance factor next time we move.)

I know I mentioned before that simplicity is not the same as minimalism, and I still believe that to be true. However, I do find – at last for my family – that mostly-minimalism helps us. This concept goes well with last week’s post, now that I think of it. What’s the point of minimalism? To be able to live a less stressful life because you’re not burdened by stuff. What’s the point of simplicity? To live a saner, less stressful life.

Just because we moved into a house that roughly doubled our square footage, that doesn’t mean we suddenly had to give up our lifestyle. So I guess that’s my advice on this topic: Decide (or realize) why you want to live a simplicity oriented lifestyle, and make your decisions based around that goal. If you wind up living somewhere that is perfect in the moment but could easily detract you from your desire to live simply, don’t let it. It’s okay to have a sparsely furnished home. Use things like colored walls and paintings and bedspreads and curtains to make it warm and inviting. Keep the things you need and little to nothing more. Another good trick is to use consumable things to make your home cozy. A few well placed candles all around the house and a nice bar if soap in your bathroom are lovely.

How do you keep your big house running simply?

Blessings,

Wendy

P.S. If you’re an email only reader, pop on over to the website today and check out my new design – I love it and would love for you to see it!

1999: A Reflection

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Today marks exactly 15 years since I graduated from high school. (I was a public school student.) For such a momentous occasion, I thought it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane and share it here.

First, here’s a picture of me way back then:

me in hs

How much about the news stories from back do you remember? What about the impeachment of then-President Clinton? Or the war in Kosovo? Those were what I wrote down as the most memorable of that year (national and international, respectively).

Here’s something that should be fun: prices. Back then, you could two loaves of bread for$1.39. These days, my husband will pay $5.19 without batting an eye. That’s for organic, chock-full-of-seeds bread, but still. I’m a little more reasonable; I pretty much max out at $2.50, or I make it at home. Milk was $2.79, which is pretty close to the $2.89-3.19 I pay now. The only difference is that back then, we were always told, “Be glad your car doesn’t run on milk,” because gas back then was in the $1.29-$1.39 range. Now of course, we’d be grateful if it dropped to$2.89! My, how times have changed. Eggs were 59 cents for a half-dozen. Now it’s around $1.19 for that size package. (Clearly I didn’t buy the eggs for our family back then or I would have recorded the price for a dozen instead of a half-dozen.) CDs and tapes – remember those? They ranged from $5.99-$15.99.

Okay, now a few personal things. In 1999, I was named Outstanding French Student. No wonder I love the language now, eh? The theme for my senior prom was “Light Up the Night,” and I attended with my now-husband. I got straight As and earned 28.5 credits; 24were required to graduate. My classes were Band (I played/play the flute), Government, British Lit, Yearbook (I was an assistant editor), and French 3. One of my best friends that year was a foreign exchange student from Germany. Unfortunately, I haven’t been in touch with her since then. (I wonder if the email address she left in my memory book is still accurate. And if so, would she even remember me?)

hs announcement collage

My high school graduation announcement

What year did you graduate? Tell me something memorable about that year in the comments!

Blessings,

Wendy

Product Review: We Choose Virtues

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We Choose Virtues Review

What is a parent’s job?

The answer will probably vary from person to person, family to family, but they all center around one theme: Training our children to become responsible citizens. How do we do that? By making sure they are equipped with the knowledge and character to make good choices. We Choose Virtues is here to help. For the purposes of review (and to help me train my sons into being better people!), I received a set of Parenting Cards with all the different virtues on them. The Parenting Cards retail for $38.49 and are geared toward kids in the 3-11 age range. The ideal goal of the program is to introduce one Virtue each week, spending about 10-15 minutes learning about it and doing age-appropriate activities (many ideas of which are included on the cards themselves, or in the Download Bundle which I’ll talk about in a minute).

The Parenting Cards are a lovely set of 12 full-color, double sided, 8.5 x 5.5 inch cards. Each one has a different virtue on it: Content, Self-Control, Obedient, Perseverant, Patient, Kind, Honest, Helpful, Gentle, Forgiving, Diligent, and Attentive. Each virtue is taught as an affirmative statement: I am Obedient. There’s no room for “I will try to be obedient” or “I wish I was obedient” in this program. The idea is to give kids the self-confidence to be virtuous, right from the beginning.

Each virtue taught in the program has its own character, and that character is essentially the virtue personified. For example, the card for “I am Content” introduces us to “Cake Jake.”

We Choose Virtues Review

Jake is a boy who loves to eat cake. His parents own a bakery, so he’s able to eat lots of it. But sometimes Jake wants more choices – he isn’t content with the current options. Kids are reminded through Jake’s story that it’s important to not want too much. We should be happy with what we have. Each card has a character and story like this.

Additionally, there are activities on the backs of the cards to help parents with ideas for putting the concept behind the virtue into practice. These include things like games and discussion points. The cards also have Bible verses on their fronts. You can choose from the NIrV (New International Reader’s Version), which includes both Old and New Testament verses, or the KJV (King James Version), which is only Old Testament. The KJV includes only OT verses because it was designed with Jewish customers in mind, but you definitely don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate the product. They’re also available in Spanish.

In addition to the Parenting Cards, I was blessed with the WCV Download Bundle. There’s all kinds of cool stuff in there, and it sells for $7.99. This includes all sorts of neat printables including a Teacher’s Handbook, Family Character Assessment, Coloring Pages, Awards, and Sing-Along Sheets. Because we don’t do much printing, we didn’t utilize these too much, but I still think they’re great resources. (Also, my kids aren’t huge fans of coloring, so that would’ve been a waste of money to have the coloring sheets printed. But if your kids enjoy coloring, these would be awesome! They’re absolutely adorable.) We did, however, do a handwritten version of the Character Assessment, and that was very eye-opening. But mostly we just used the Parenting Cards for our Virtue lessons.

There are two specific instances that were memorable during our time reviewing We Choose Virtues which I would like to share with you guys today. The first is when we were working on Obedience. I chose that one first because it’s the area my kids need the most help in. I’m not saying they’re bad kids, but the focal point on the obedience card is more than just “I do what I’m told.” It is “I obey exactly what you say right away.” The difference is subtle, but it’s there, and it’s important. Did you catch it? The part my kids had trouble with was “right away.” On the back of the Obedience card is a game to help kids practice their obedience. The basic gist is that you whisper an instruction to one child, and everyone else is supposed to guess what you told them while they’re doing it. It was a good for my boys to put this into action in such a simple, fun way. (And it had them do my living room tidying that day!)

The second one is a bit more “real life.” We were studying Perseverance (I do what needs to be done, even when it’s tough; I don’t give up) the same week we did our soap whittling project while we read Little House in the Big Woods, and Munchkin was getting incredibly frustrated. He was nearly to the point of tears when I took him aside and reminded him of our “Virtue of the Week.” He was able to go over the meaning of perseverance with me and recite the catchphrase. Once we’d done that, he took a deep breath and finished his carving. He even liked it in the end! To me, that’s a beautiful example of what We Choose Virtues is all about. The idea is not simply to teach your children (or students) what a virtue is, but to help them apply them to their everyday lives.

The long and the short of it is this: We Choose Virtues is a great product for helping parents raising upright, virtuous children. And that’s what we want in the next generation.

Blessings,

Wendy

We Choose Virtues has a blog, and they’re also on Facebook and Pinterest.

Interested in trying We Choose Virtues? From now through the end of August 2014, use code BTS20 and you can take an additional 20% off anything from their online store.

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