VBS and Always on the Go

This week we actually stayed on schedule, despite a few surprises thrown our way.

Monday was the first day of Vacation Bible School! YCJ and Peanut were nervous but ended up having a blast (of course). While they were over doing that ECJ and I were hanging out at the library next door. We'd spent the morning doing lessons and playing a bit outside, then up to VBS and back... Late suppers were the rule not the exception the first four weekdays this week. Monday was also the day I passed out a few new school supplies, nothing fabulous just things we'd run out of or low on. But, the reaction of the kids was priceless when they got new dry erase markers, crayons, and pencils. ECJ was also given a new compass and protractor since his other one had broken.

Tuesday looked a whole lot like Monday. Lessons in the morning, then play time, then Vacation Bible School. The girls were having a blast learning new songs, dance moves, signs, and learning more about God. ECJ was pleased as punch to be relaxing with me in the library. The above pictures were snapped on our walk up at about 4:45 PM.

On Wednesday morning we went down to Grandma and Papa's house to welcome Grandma back from Texas. To our surprise and delight our two seldom seen campers were also at Grandma's house! The children enjoyed playing with their brother and sister while the adults enjoyed a nice visit. We left in time to get back for VBS and ECJ joined in with the girls! Daddy and I took the opportunity to eat out as an early celebration of our 7th wedding anniversary coming up on Monday. Afterwards we grabbed some fast food for the campers and went out scrapping. The children have always enjoyed going along while Daddy scraps and so they got to stay up pretty late that night. Daddy was also pretty creative when it came to getting that first load of scrap back to the house before we went back out. Yes, that is a BBQ on top of the truck and another strapped to the back resting on our hitch!

Thursday we pretty much repeated Monday and Tuesday. Peanut finally finished her beginning books for Sesame Street and got her certificate. She wanted to begin right away on the next books so we pulled out Curious George. She's still working through McGuffey's Primer as well. Before VBS all three campers took some computer time and during VBS Daddy and I did a quick scrap run.

And so now it is Friday and we spent a good deal of the day outside simply walking back and forth to the library and a few other stops. It was Freaky Science Friday at our library today (there will be two more of those this month) and the children had a blast learning more about static electricity, vibrations, charges, and centrifugal force! It was a fun packed half an hour! Daddy is down at Grandma and Papa's house visiting with Buddy and Baby Girl before they go home tomorrow morning, so Daddy won't be home until later tomorrow. We'll be spending the rest of the evening having a water balloon fight, eating TV dinners (another treat around here), watching NetFlix and just plain hanging out!

We'll be duplicating a few of the science experiments that we did at the library again next month as the children really enjoyed them. So, look for a post about mid-August on simple science experiments that costs little to do and are fun for all ages.

Can anyone identify these fungi?  These were found growing in our yard and I attempted to take the best pictures possible but cannot identify these fungi.

Trying to show the underside of the mushrooms

Top down picture

You may have missed my review post earlier this week:     
Lesson Planning

Who we're linked up with this week:    
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Faithful Mom of 9
Squishable Baby

And for those of you who have yet to look us up on Facebook you can find us there by following this link . As yet it is the only social media account we can be found at.

Lesson Planning

*This post contains an affiliate link through a third party site where you can purchase products.*

A few weeks ago I won a free copy of a homeschool planner made by Renee over at Great Peace Academy and I've been in love with it ever since! As a matter of fact if you click that link I provided it will take you right to the planner's order page! 

I printed off the first several pages, minus a few of the note pages simply because I don't need that many right now, through the end of July the very minute I got it. I'd have printed more off at the time except for the fact that the campers seem to think that my printer paper is the perfect paper to draw on and I ran out of paper!! I'd also recently bought a nice 3" binder full of page protectors at a local garage sale for a dollar and figured that it would be perfect to use for the planner. This way I could shuffle things around, keep the pages clean, and if I needed to reprint a sheet or two due to some total mess up on my part I'd be able to do so without feeling as though I'd really messed up (which happens when I have spiral bound books and I have more white out on the page than ink). The blue pocket binder folder was also inside of the binder when I bought it. I use it to store our grade book and some extra pages I have made out for each child.

As you can see I do not write every little thing down on the pages within the teacher's
planner that I plan for the children to do each day. I put that information on their own
lesson sheets (not in this planner).

OK... so... we all know that a planner is pretty much a must if you are going to be doing any type of lesson planning. No matter if you buy one at the store, buy the one from Great Peace Academy , print off separate sheets each week for the children, or any other way you choose to do it. Most homeschool parents I know like to keep a record of their lesson plans, they like them to be appealing to the eye, and they like them to encompass as many of their needs as possible.

This planner does that.

I'll be printing off more pages going into July (at the moment I have paper but no color ink and this planner is too pretty not to be in color). Now, to stop rambling...

Let's see how I've laid this all out shall we?

Right behind the blue binder pocket folder I have the year calender and the Title page...

then I spread out the calender for the month of July so that I could check it at a glance...

and behind that are the weekly lesson plans (this one is before I filled it all out for this week).

Every page of this planner is beautiful, even the pages for your extra notes. There's pages for advanced classes, field trips, reading logs, you name it and this planner has it. Everything that a homeschool (and possibly other school) teacher would ever need is right there at your finger tips! It's colorful and makes you want to put that pen to paper.

I wouldn't be an affiliate with this if I didn't like it and think that others would like it as well. When I won this planner it wasn't with the assumption from Renee that I'd join her affiliate program, she didn't ask that I write a review, I just did it. Why? Look at the planner! The price is a steal and it is a pleasure to use! You could put it in a three ring binder or go ahead and get it bound at your local office store. Either way you're sure to enjoy using it.

Read my testimonial, and those of others, on this planner by following this link (this link goes straight to her page and is NOT my affiliate link to her product). Buy it from either place, going through the affiliate links at the top of this post will allow you to help fund my growing spending on curriculum and supplies. Buying directly from her link in this paragraph bypasses me entirely. It's up to you! But, at less than $4 for a beautiful product you'd be doing yourself a disservice by not purchasing this planner.

Also, just a quick apology for those of you who were awaiting this post on Wednesday. We went to welcome Grandma home from Texas and were surprised to find out the two campers we don't see very often were at her house. So, this post is a day late ... But, this Mamma is still very happy. :-)

Find us on Facebook here or subscribe to the blog for tips on homeschooling, book reviews, how to get your children helping out in the kitchen, and to see many pictures of the cute kiddos, plus much more!

Celebrating Independence

With a title such as the one I used you'd think we had giant plans for Independence Day. Yeah... Not so much. We celebrated our independence all week long and talked about it almost as much.

Monday we relaxed at home. There was no lessons, though we'd planned some, no big plan for the day. We just relaxed and visited with friends. Papa came out and took us to lunch and then visited for a little while as well, that was such a treat! The campers played outside on and of all day long and managed four hours outside. Add that to the 4 hours they had outside on Sunday and our week was off to a great start! The power was out when we woke up Monday morning and this is where I found the Cracker Jacks... discussing new stitches for crochet work!

What the campers did Tuesday afternoon when it was at it's hottest...

Tuesday we did lessons. And not just the lessons for that day. By the end of the day all three campers had done two days worth of lessons so that they could have the rest of the week off and not do anything but have fun. They did all that and still managed to get another 3 hours outside!!




Wednesday we had a blast!! Noni took us up to a park we'd never been to...

We had a picnic in the pavilion while it began to sprinkle lightly...

The campers played for about an hour on the playground as the sprinkles faded away...

And then we hit the beach at the same park for the next several hours!












After 8 (!) hours of being outside the campers politely asked Noni to stop at the store and get them each another new skein of yarn. No, they haven't gone through the last one she bought them yet... but they were close!

Thursday was one heck of a day. Daddy took the campers with him grocery shopping after dropping me off at a doctor's appointment. Bless that man, he did about everything that day. He had the children for 2 1/2 hours SHOPPING while I was at my appointment. And after he'd gotten groceries, picked up some essentials we needed at another store, and entertained them while I was in the doctor's he took care of most everything else for the rest of the day! I was very uncomfortable after my appointment, in pain and grouchy. I didn't have to make supper, he got my prescription, made dinner, and even took a walk with me and some friends of ours who are neighbors later that evening in hopes that walking would help me. Even with all that going on, and at one point it being 53* out in July, the children still got 2.5 hours outside to play and have fun!!

 

So. That brings us to Friday. Independence Day. The 4th of July. Big plans? Nope, not us. We hit a local thrift store in the early afternoon to take advantage of a one day only 50% off nearly everything sale. We didn't need much but we did need a few things. We came home and the campers played outside. We BBQ'd hot dogs, added chips and fruit and called it supper. The campers were impatiently waiting for it to get dark so that they could play with sparklers (well supervised of course), wave their glow wands, and have fun with glow jewelery. Fire works were set off in town but we watched from our side porch because Peanut does not do well close up with fireworks. So, it was a late night and a lot of fun. Sometime that morning they'd even done some patriotic word searches I found at Dollar Tree. Another 7 hours of outside time logged.








And finally we come to Saturday. Daddy had picked up the parts to fix the truck yesterday and would be spending most of the day working on the truck with our friend and down the street neighbor. In the meantime we had library books due back and so we took a walk to return them, pay a small fine for a movie case that had cracked under our watch, and check out a few more items. We saw something super interesting (see bit o' science at the end of this post) on our way home while sipping on slushies and iced coffee (only I had the iced coffee lol). All in all it was another 4 hours outside today. I can say that even though it's just after 3 PM because I have 5 blisters on my feet, 2 of which are popped, and the children want to rest and watch movies for the rest of the day.

Here are some crochet projects done by myself in the children. Some simply finished this week and some done only during this week...

Harley Davidson color inspired blanket made by myself for a customer. Delivered Tuesday. I also made a head kerchief
for a friend of mine which I cannot find the pictures of and a baby cocoon and beanie for another customer.

YCJ made several of these "Tornado Bags" from her own imagination. She's working on making them a bit bigger
and adding a button to the top so that those who live near tornadoes have a bag to stick some important
items into that they can grab on their way to shelter.

A water bottle backpack made from an adapted pencil
case pattern that ECJ made this week.

Bit o' science: We made an interesting discovery while on the walk home from the library on Saturday. I've never personally spotted one of these due to the fact that I seldom look at the sun. The children looked up and saw a "rainbow" around the sun. (I had to stand in the shade of a tree to get the photo below.) Turns out there's a very scientific explanation for this to happen (which you can read some of here ). But, basically when you have sunlight passing through ice crystals in our atmosphere and they hit 22* angles you get a "rainbow" or ring around the sun!! 

Now, the ring did go entirely around the sun. However, I couldn't get a good picture standing below the sun to show the whole ring due to the amount of light entering the lens of my camera. So, our total outside time for this week was 32.5 hours!!   Making our year to date total for the 1000 hours outside challenge  an even 400 hours!!!


Linked up to:    
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Faithful Mom of 9