September and October 2012

Here is our life and school from September and October in pictures from my phone. :)

Kiera read some origami directions and made a swan

Blake's sleepy face

Found some udon noodles in the cupboard for noodle art

Noodle art in the living room

Nathan's

Kiera's 

lunch!

Sounding out words

Domenic wanted to do school so he grabbed one of Nathan's cards and started tracing letters.

Copywork/Penmanship

5 months old!

Art Lesson - Inorganic and organic shapes

cursive practice

LA County Fair

Huge pigs!

Chicks!

Bought some flavored honey sticks from the LA County Bee Keepers. Should have just got plain. Kids agreed.

Blacksmith

It's a horse

How cool is this!

Kiera learned how to latch hook a rug.

Making a rag doll

She's also making a rag doll.

We're reading about Thomas Edison. Actually found out today that his mom took him out of school to homeschool him because he asked a lot of questions and his teacher did not like to be asked questions.

Display  for the Wright brothers

The next day Kiera showed Nathan how to latch hook with yarn on our burlap with a crochet hook.

Little Miss wanting to organize the cupboard for me. :)

Lost a tooth!!!

Mickey pancakes for Domenic.

Little man turned 3 on the 3rd!

Sweet mini cornbread muffins to share with our nature study group.

When Robert got home from work that evening we had a little ice cream and Kiera and Nathan sang happy birthday to Domenic.

Blowing out his pretend candle. 

"How old are you now Domenic?"

Haha this one makes me laugh.

Laguna Coast Wilderness Park

Coyote Melon

Ghost Rock

Pelican

Blake's first time at the beach.

Cool find next to our blanket.

Drawing/Journaling about the day before.

My gardener, he loves to water for me.

My singer

Perfect little head

Perfect chubby toes

Practicing still life drawing

We hosed out the patio because it was so dirty and way to many spiders but it didn't drain as well as I had expected it to. But the kids took charge and got a lot of the water out.

"I like my doll house Mom" It had spiders in it before.

The week we talked about apples we made some applesauce.

After the apples were nice and soft we put them in the food processor.

Playing in the rain!

Saw some fireworks on our way home from a date!

Snuggles

My late night baking buddy

I heard the water on in the back and when I looked this is what I saw. 

Smoothies and some girl time

Brothers and nature

Nature study fun

Nathan made a hat and said "look mom, it's my shepherds hat". He was trying to hold still for me. :)

Then Kiera and Domenic wanted hats, so they made some too.

All dressed up for some family pictures!

My dad showing the kids how a motor works.

Siblings!

Daddy's home!!!

The mini pumpkin loaves that I baked for the fundraiser.

New business cards!

Pancake Breakfast at the boutique! Yum!

Cuddles with uncle David

Flowers from my Dad for my birthday

We went with friends to a convalescent home and passed out goodies. We took cookies and made pumpkin face cards that said "Jesus Loves You" on the back. The kids were all dress up in costumes.

The lady that led us through to home surprised the kids with ice cream cones.

We were watching Kiera, Nathan and Domenic ride their scooters around the van in our driveway.

Peek a boo Blakie!

Nathan had been wanting to build me a picture frame so Robert took him to the hardware store to get the supplies. I sent Kiera out to take these pictures since I wasn't suppose to see. :)

She loves writing in cursive and wants to do all her copywork that way.

I seem to be missing some pictures but that was our September and October. Hope you enjoyed our memories while I reminisced. :)

10-30-12 {30 for me!}

So I was just going through my phone and I have quite a few pictures to share with you. But this post is going to just be about my birthday outing with my family.
On the 29th, the last day that I was 29 I announced that I would be taking the 30th off. From my photography business, from facebook, from emails, from blogging, etc. And I did! It was great! Though now I had one less day for a couple things that needed to be done but really, they were not life threatening so, no biggy.
The plan for my 30th birthday (originally, like in January haha) was to have a costume party. But when planning the fundraising boutique it worked out better for us to have that on my birthday weekend. That totally worked out because at the beginning of the summer I realized Domenic does not really like big parties (he hides) and Nathan tends to get overwhelmed with a bunch of people around. This makes the next couple days after a big to-do not very fun for anyone in our house with the decompressing that goes on, like crying over insignificant things and more bickering than normal. So this Moma thought that it would be a bummer for them to NOT enjoy my party so the boutique won out on the weekend event. :)

So back to the 30th. Here's the face I woke up next to. :)

In the morning my mom came over with a perdy flower arrangement for me that Kiera said reminded her of Pixie Hollow. It even had a little (fake) butterfly on it.

We were off to DCA/Disneyland about lunch time. We walked through downtown Disney because I wanted to see the remodeled Lego store. I have a huge urge to buy ALOT of Legos every time I'm in that store. Guess I will be adding some of those to my Amazon wish list. ;) haha Have you seen the hobbit legos!?

We had to get a pass for Domenic because little man is a 3 year old now. The plan was to get a pro-rated pass that expires when Robert's does at the end of February but did you know, they don't pro-rate passes anymore!?! Anyways, we ended up buying a pass for Domenic but only paying for the day.

We headed to California Adventure first and saw this cute little musical show called Minnie's Fly Girls Charter Airlines. If you haven't seen it you should. The kids liked it a lot!

Once that was over we made a bee line to Disney Jr. Live on Stage.

After a potty/nursing/snack break we jumped parks to get on the Buzz Lightyear ride which we practically walked right on to.

Since the fairies are right next to that ride we all went to meet the fairies in hopes of (Kiera's hopes) meeting the newest fairy Periwinkle.

So happy to meet the newest fairy!

And I decided to jump in for a picture too. Gosh, I'm like a little kid who you have to say "freeze" to before you take a picture. haha

"Mommy that Tinker Bell was a different one." Kids totally notice!

After the fairies we had some dinner, another potty break and then went over to the end of main street to get a good table to watch the parade.

Domenic passed out between one end of the park to the other. Robert woke him up after a 10 minute power nap.

As Robert went to buy me a Mickey Pretzel (that's what I wanted for dinner) he came back with a Happy Birthday pin and a chocolate cupcake. Sneaky sweet guy!
The kids and Robert sang (not quietly) happy birthday to me before we shared the cupcake.

He got some animal crackers for the kids too.

Waiting for the parade with little man. haha I love the face he's making here.

Awwww, loves from my littlest Love.

The things I heard more than 5 times that night, "Mommy, Tinker Bell and Periwinkle are my favorite Fairies", "Happy birthday Mommy!" and "Mommy, I love you!" :D

School Year 2012/2013

We just finished our first 2 weeks of school! Woo Hoo! Yep, Kiera is in 2nd grade this year and Nathan is in Kindergarten. I'm going to share some pictures that I mostly took from my phone. If you're on instagram and you follow me you've probably already seen some of them.

So let me start with WHAT we're doing this year.
I decided to do the Kindergarten curriculum from My Father's World with Nathan this year. I did it with Kiera and I kind of didn't want to have to think to much for his curriculum this year. haha that sounds bad but I know other homeschool moms understand that right!? I like how it starts with making a book about the days of creation and then moves on to the different topic/theme of the week. For a 5 year old I like this style. He finished his book already and I love listening to him narrate to me about the days of creation. On Wednesday we started S for Sun and are talking about "Jesus is the light of the world".

Now for Kiera I used Ambleside Online for her curriculum last year but had omitted a few of the recommended books to read because of how sensitive she is. I'm glad I did. I wanted to continue with Ambleside but then received a catalog in the mail from Heart of Dakota. I hadn't heard about them until a friend who is in our nature group told me that, that is what they use. So I wanted to check it out. I like how the history readings are set up. Basically they felt like the ancient history with the Greeks should be postponed until the child is more mature (because of sensitive souls) which is how I have felt all along for my children but kind of didn't know how to switch it up. So basically I looked through Ambleside's Year 2 book list and Heart of Dakota and did some picking and choosing from each one.

Now I was stuck on how to organize our week and then I came across this blog. http://fisheracademy.blogspot.com/ and she talked about how they were planning and how she put together a check off list. So I downloaded her template (basically) and started plugging in our stuff, adding and changing up what we needed to do. So ever week Kiera will have a list of what she's suppose to do each week. Here's week 3. Front page has her daily and back has her copy work verse and the poem she will learn over a few weeks. She has memorized almost all of it after two weeks.

Both kids have binders for all their work but Kiera has number tabs that will coincide with the weeks. So every week will have one of these sheets at the beginning of it. This has been SOOO helpful mostly for ME. She likes being able to see what's next and check things off as she goes but seriously, this is a life saver for mommy.

So from the list you can see what books we're using. I'll post pictures too.

Just to make it clear, the top things are done every day. If there is a * symbol by a book that has to do with what term it's to be read in (I like having the 3 terms that Ambleside uses, Term 1: Sept-Nov, Term 2: Jan-Mar, Term 3: Apr-June). So you can see we're reading "Understood Betsy" during term 1 and (OL) means I can read it (for FREE) on-line. So that means, "Wind in the Willow's" will be read in term 2 and "Robin Hood" in term 3.

For Narrations I have her re-tell back to me what I have read to her and I figured 3 narrations a day was good. She has gotten so much better at the details since last year! 

We still haven't started our Timelines or Book of Centuries so I need to get her going on that and also the science project which will have to do with baking (for this term).

So Monday we do a singing lesson (with Mom), Tuesday is an art class (with Dad), Wednesday they have gymnastics which is not on this schedule, Thursday we go to nature studies so our Spanish lesson will sometimes fall on Wednesday or Friday. Friday is a piano lesson (with Mom) which the theory part overlaps with what we discuss on Monday's for singing.

Kiera's doing quite a bit more writing than last year but to avoid her having to write things down that aren't necessary (in my opinion) some stuff we do orally. Like in her English book, Preparing to Build, we do the exercises together instead of her having to copy down the correct way to write a sentence or an answer she just tells me, with the punctuation too.

For handicrafts I'll be teaching Kiera how to sew by hand a picture and she's been practicing her crocheting that her Grandma showed her.

So there you have it!

Here's some pictures from our first two weeks of 2nd grade and kindergarten. :)

Puzzles, Legos and Lincoln Logs and pots and pans are what Domenic plays with and Nathan and Kiera join him between subjects.

Kiera starts to read and her brother's sit down next to her. She enjoys reading to them as much as they love to listen. :)

Doing school on the living room floor.

The kids caught a grasshopper and after a couple days (maybe 3) it molted! Here's the old skin.

Art class!

 Circles, triangles and ovals.

Nathan practicing his letter S in salt. Totally reminded me of an etch-a-sketch. I let Domenic draw in a small container of salt too.

 She's getting stronger!

Thinking hard, the head gets heavy. ;)

Monach at the ENC in Newport

Robert gets to go on nature studies too!