School's in Session

It's time to hit the books and start school once again. This year we've had a few new 'starts', and lots of fun planned for the year....

Brianne will be hard at work trying to get the attention of her siblings to pay attention to her and play, play, play! She does a great job of it too. She can now crawl quite well and will wander from room to room in search for someone to interact with.

Liam's enjoying activities geared just for him. I will be doing a "letter of the week" approach to preschool for him this year. He loves to be included with the big kids activities too (when he can).

Delaney's goals this year are to better learn reading and writing skills.

I'll be using The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading and The Book of Mormon for reading skills. For math I'll use The Life of Fred. We are really enjoying the approach, a more story book fashioned, for this text.

For social studies we are using I Love America. For science Delaney want to learn about different animal, so she picks the animal and we get books and find items on line and learn about that animal. I use the Exploring Creation from Apologia as a spine to help with that.

Right now, for book group we are reading The Trumpet of the Swan soooo, we are learning about swans and other water fowl.

And to accomplish to goal developing better writing skills I'll have her do copy work, narrative or her own thoughts on each of the subjects we talk about in a journal.

She's also in a Classical Conversations Foundations group. Our first meeting with them was yesterday and she was sooo excited!! The anticipation almost consumed her. She was up and ready to go by 7am!

Cailin's got a fun filled busy year ahead of her. She's also in Foundations and will have much memory work to learn. History sentences are focus on American history. Science's memory work will be directed toward anatomy and physiology and chemistry (this week they are learning about all the tissues is our body--connective, epithelial, muscle and nerve) Latin is on different word translations and learning to say scripture from the book of John in Latin.

Then there is geography of the US, states, capitals and other features.

Timeline cards,the same as every year. Math and English grammar.

Her tutor, is amazing. She's going to have a great year.

English and writing, the Essentials class, will be different for her, there are so many more kids in the class, at the present time she doesn't like that, but she'll get use to it.

Here at home, she's using I Love America vol. 2 and reading many novels based on different eras of history. I'm requiring a project each month on her topic. September is all about the Native Americans.

For math, she too, is using Life of Fred--Fractions and Decimals. She's liking it much more than the curriculum we used last year....I dare say, she might even claim to like math now!

Science is Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Physiology.

She still busy editing her book she recently had published. Plus, she's energetically writing the 2nd book in her series.

Connor moved up to the Challenge program of Classical Conversations this year--he's now in Challenge A--and he's learned they call it 'Challenge' for a reason.

I think his biggest challenge is learning how to be better organized--time and stuff. This is very difficult for him, but he can do it.

He's very excited for Latin....real Latin, not just conjugating the word amo over and over.

He also tested to be in algebra...which he's very excited about. (He got to skip Saxon's pre algebra). His tutor here is very challenging--here's that word again :) --and he's loving all the thought provoking questions she has them ponder and think of. Ahh, to have another math and science minded person to converse with...he's in heaven!

Ryan's big move this year has been the addition of a college class at New River Community College. He's taking Pre Calculus. He's doing amazingly well!! He meets 3 times a week and each day, although he claims his head hurts from all the work, there is a big--no, huge--grin on his face when he comes out to meet us. We hope to slowly acclimate him to New River full time. Next semester it will be math, computers and maybe a history class.

For now, he's not continuing on with CC, but other studies will continue at home will be chemistry, American Literature, American history with Dad, and a few small online classes from BYU.

Book Group, History Group, CC, a fun video productions class that Cailin and Delaney will start in a few weeks, preschool, therapy for Ryan and Brianne, college....yep, we're busy! But what fun we'll have along the way too!

Summer Fun

A list of summer fun to remember some of what we did this year...

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  Camp--autism camp, summer camp, youth conference, and LDSEHE home school conference


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  Family visits-- Grandma and Grandpa came and stayed with us for 2 weeks in June. Loved meeting our new cousins, Brenen and Logan. (of course we like to see Aunt Risa and Uncle Brian too)--Can't forget Aunt Cheri and Elizabeth, we had a great time with them coming over the 4th of July weekend.


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  Going to Historical Sites....USS North Carolina, (Cailin's favorite), Ft. Fisher Civil War site, and Harper's Ferry, WV.
  

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  Free movies in Wytheville at the Regal Cinemas. The kids particularly like going to these because we don't often go...(or ever,) when they are full price.
  

The Garden was bursting with green beans and tomatoes this year. With lots of help from Liam, I canned spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, salsa, diced tomatoes, sweet relish, and many, many quarts of green beans ~80, peaches, blackberry jam and peach jam too.

Music lessons continued through the summer. Cailin loved learning to play the flute from her teacher Meredith. Her family moved to Sweden for a year....sad for us...but happy for them. Luckily we found another teacher and she'll continue in the fall.

Picking berries! After reading Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey, Barry and I took Liam and Laney out to pick blueberries. We picked two gallons worth and look forward to eating yummy blueberry muffins and pancakes, just like little Sal, during the winter.

A month or so later, I took the all the kids out to pick blackberries. Not sure how many berries we picked but, it made wonderful jam and cobblers...with more in the freezer for later.
A new friend of Barry's, Joe, let us pick to our hearts content from bushes on his land. He not only let us pick his berries but he helped us pick them and told the kids about sassafras beer --it's suppose to taste like root beer--and other great medicinal remedies that are found in the wild. Connor of course ate this up...he even brought home some sassafras root and brewed some tea or root beer, which ever you wish to call it.

I think he liked it....I tried some, I didn't like it. I'll stick with root beer.

Every year, we like to go to the creek and play with our friends catching bugs, spiders, fish and the such. Mostly just getting wet and playing with friends is what it's all about.

During the summer, the local libraries sponsor a summer reading program. We often start with a bang, but seem to fizzle out towards the end. However, they always read enough to earn their prizes--coupons to local restaurants, items from the treasure chest, a free book to keep, and a ticket for free entrance to the local swimming pool.

They all earned a free meal from Wendy's, yeah a no cooking night for me! Cailin earned an extra meal from Apple bee's. We spent the afternoon at the pool with the Matton's. School was in session, but the pool was still open so it was relatively empty. The older ones loved having free reign of the slide.

The library also has special performances and plays they sponsor. We went to one at the Pulaski theatre. A gentleman from Florida plays the didgeridoo. These are musical instruments made by termites indigenous to Australia. The termites eat the inside of a stick till it's hallow and the natives then use this to create a deep haunting horn type sound. He also brought along a large lizard from Australia to show.

Last, but not least, we love to sit outside as the sun begins to set and the fireflies start dancing all around, to just relax and enjoy the summer breeze. The kids try to catch the bugs. One night Cailin tried to see if she could get enough to make a 'flashlight'. They kept crawling out through the holes but, she had lots of fun catching them.

We didn't get to go camping this year....the mowing business kept the boys pretty busy so it's often hard to find a free couple of nights and days together. However, we did go to the BEACH! and that was fantastic!

Our Beach Trip

Our Mission: To have as much fun in the sun as humanly possible.

Our Destination to accomplish said mission: Holden Beach, North Carolina (thankfully one and half weeks before Hurricane Irene hit the coast!)

We joined Barry's parents, sister and her two girls at Holden Beach this year for a vacation. It wasn't till we got there that I realized how long it has been that we've been on a long (more than one or two nights) vacation. We all had a WONDERFUL time!

Ryan did have a hard time aborting his regular routine, but once we actually got him out in the sun and surf, he did have fun. I don't think he'd claim that he did, but he did smile, laugh and tackle the waves on a boogie board.

Brianne loved to eat the sand. We would try to keep her from it, but found the best way to do that was just to hold her. She loved the waves coming to crash up on her as we sat in reach of the tide coming in. Once, Delaney got between her and her view of the ocean. She scolded Delaney and waved her arms furiously trying to get her to move. I think she thought Delaney was keeping the waves from brushing upon her (because coincidentally, no waves reached us during that time.)

She ate so much sand the first day, that she had a bm full of grainy texture....she often deals with constipation and it sure did cleaned her out! Barry says "Ditch the cookies, just feed her sand."

The second day we picked up some boogie boards and the older ones had a fabulous time riding the waves. However, a storm was brewing and by the last day of our visit there, the waves were so strong that it decreased our fun factor--I lost my glasses because of a strong wave crashing into me, (thank goodness I brought my second pair, something I don't normally do)--that we left the beach and went to the beach house to play in the pool instead.

This was Brianne, Delaney and Liam's favorite place to play, just at the edge, as the waves come crashing in. Barry and I took turns going out deeper with the older kids verses spending time with the younger ones.

Having some fun with the sand. Liam and Connor started digging and digging...just for the fun of it!

Yet, Cailin had very definite goals for her sand playing fun....to be entirely covered, buried in sand.

Connor gladly helped his little sister out!

Mission accomplished!

Roarrrrr, I'm back!

Delaney and Hayleigh

Ryan, Jakki, Cailin

All good things must end, and we head back to the beach house. After some lunch and a nap for Bri, we play in the pool.

At the beginning of the trip Delaney would cling desperately to the side of the pool. She wanted to join the fun in the middle of the pool, but just couldn't branch out and do it. By the end of the week she did garner the courage to come away from the wall and go in the deep end with any sort of help, parents or floatation device. But, overcame she did and had a wonderful time.

Following the example of his sister, Liam too, had a difficult time with the deeper end. But, he too conquered his fear and let us hold him in the deep end and had a marvelous time being with the others.

Let the water noodle blowing games begin!

Spending some down time....playing peek-a-boo in a large bucket.

Glued to the TV after a day of summer sun .

In the evening we'd take a walk on the beach.

Ryan didn't enjoy this to much, he even brought along a book to read, however, he pilfered the camera from me and began having a bit of fun taking pictures....see below for his photos.

Brianne must be part reptilian. She loved to experience the salty sea air with her tongue out tasting it.

Liam loved to dig in the sand, we'd often turn around and find him digging away on another hole. Getting him to put the sand down was nearly impossible.

But, it wasn't impossible to have a super time this year....mission complete! We did have a fantastic time. We're now planning a trip with Barry's entire family for next year. I can't wait!