School opening day- Children of a king adventure

After spending the week doing all the last minute shopping, putting binders together, writing, cooking, and printing we finally made it to our first day of school!

This year we are doing an EPIC adventure that I wrote over the summer using the writing course they have on their website. I'm really excited about it, and that has been getting my children excited as they've seen the preparations being made for the year. The first secret revealed was that we were not going to have school in the school room until Monday (they were very disappointed about that since they haven't seen the school room yet). Instead, our adventure started with a door.

 The children woke up to this door and had to be patient and wait until after breakfast to find out what was on the other side of it.

 When it was time to start school, they ran outside to "Narnia" and saw two tents set up. We started school in the first tent where we gave them the key information for our first topic and revealed to them that they were prince and princesses on a journey this year to become kings and queens.

 The reason Katie is not smiling is not because she is upset, but rather she fell on her bike the night before and hurt her cheek really bad (it was a long night in the ER to get steri strips and leave). Smiling would make it bleed again so she was being careful.

 The children then made treasure boxes to collect "treasure" from their teaching this year. They made crowns where they can collect "character" jewels for each topic we learn about. They could color pictures and make a clay door or star to remember today for their journals.

 We finished the day with "Horse" races. Even Lilly participated. It was silly and fun.

Now the adventure is set up for the year and today we are going to delve into our projects and subjects and other fun. The kids are psyched!

Sewing Day

I like to sew in batches. I get a big amount of projects together and take a day and sew like crazy to get them all done. If a project takes longer then a day then it needs to be really important to get done and take no more then a week or I'll lose interest. Yesterday was sewing day so I think I'll be good for the next 4 months. I sewed a costume for each member of the family- 2 biblical style dresses and 3 biblical style coats for the boys and jammie pants for each boy. That's a total of 7 projects. Phew...

Back to School- homeschool style

Back to school shopping is pretty typical for a homeschooler along with a few fun twists. For example, this year the following typical supplies appeared on our list:

binders
crayons
colored pencils
pencils
glue
paper
notebooks
rulers, etc

but we also had:

balloons
jewels
treasure boxes
crowns
plastic circles
star cutouts
candles
footstep cutouts, etc

We are going to have so much fun learning this year! I also promise that all of these things are for worthy academic causes believe it or not.

Busy...

It's been a while since I've last posted. Mainly because I've been BUSY!!! Some of the highlights:

We bought and moved into a house at last. We love it and can't imagine going back to renting anytime soon.

We've had some fun summer activities with family. Fireworks, BBQ, and swimming at the lake among other things.

Mainly the reason I've been kept busy is getting ready for the next school year. I decided, after much thought, to write my curriculum this year. For anyone who may think that is overwhelming I should add that I had help. I invested in a curriculum writing program first that broke everything down into baby steps. I have to say that I am psyched for this school year! I know what we are doing, the writing is done, and the final detail steps are coming together so we should be ready to start next Saturday. That's right, Saturday- but it will be fun. More to come...