the wheels are turnin'.....she's a clever one!

of course, I already knew she was clever, but every single day she amazes me! We did a Bible lesson yesterday based on the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. I reminded her that her Daddy used to say "Billy Goat" for Abednego! The lesson was about "is disobedience ever ok?" and told the story of how the 3 men didn't obey the law because they followed God and therefore didn't burn in the fire, but even the guards who took them to the furnace burned up! G's assignment was to write/draw a cartoon/dialogue retelling the story. Because she loved the Billy Goat name so much, she decided to retell it with animals.....it was a sheep, a dog and a billy goat. The king was a BEAR. The guards were PIGS (I didn't tell her that sometimes cops are referred to as pigs....but this was dead on and made me giggle!) The funniest part was that when the PIGS took them to the furnace, they burned and turned into BACON! She carefully selected the animals based on the temperament ......

folks, you can't get this kind of thing in public school. What a fun,sweet blessing!

A typical day.....

working on cursive writing......very frustrating for G....she wants to do it perfectly from the start!
Afternoon chapter book reading.....with her feet!
(this is AFTER school and for fun!)

I'm learning to relax a bit with the whole homeschool thing. Flexible is the word. We've pulled back a bit on the Science lessons & History/Geography lessons, for I didn't know until yesterday that her Science and world culture she will have in her enrichment program will count.....This is a great thing, for we can spend more time on reading, writing and math. I challenged G with a journal and a promise that for every chapter book she reads, I will pay her $2. She has to list them by title and author in the journal with the date started and finished.

Today I introduced cursive handwriting. G has been wanting to write in cursive for about a year or so, and now is the time. She is a bit frustrated, but we will get through it. She prints beautifully, so I have a feeling cursive will be somewhat "natural" for her too!

Here is a "typical" schedule for us (right now, anyway!):
8am: awaken, eat breakfast, make our beds, take our vitamins and do some sort of exercise.....

that might be Wii fit or just dancing around to some fun praise music for 15-20 minutes.

9am: say the pledge to the flag and Bible, and then a sweet prayer to get lessons started.

9:15am: Language Arts/English

10am: Math (I lesson planned this early in the day when our brains are fresh! ha ha! We actually LOVE Math so far.....it's cool....for BOTH of us!)

10:45am: a little break for a snack or just rest

11am: Health (so far, we have talked about families, differences in boys and girls, how to say no, etc. Very interesting and Christian based)

11:45am-12:15pm: lunch break

12:15pm-1pm: Bible (lapbooking....so this is Bible with CRAFTS! I love that I am reading the Bible EVERY day. This is something that I am sad to say I have not done very much in life)

1pm-2:30pm: We read chapter books, review anything we felt might need a little extra emphasis, clean up the studio, etc)

This is just a "rough" idea of what we do.....we rarely take a whole 30 minute break for lunch, and we sometimes spend extra time on some subjects/lessons. It's very rewarding. G seems to really enjoy it.....especially that she can be BAREFOOT and sit on the floor if she wants to :)

Back to my blogging roots.....

First day of homeschool (we quickly kicked OFF the shoes! :)

workin' hard.....(too hard...the first day we did a whole week's worth of material!) wooooah, nelly!

Our Math curriculum, called Math U See works with block manipulatives. This is some fun stuff, and I know if I had this as a kiddo, I would love math as an adult too! G wrote out "I love M" (for Mama....so sweet) while playing with the blocks after our lesson. We both love math now. That's a major deal right off the bat!

making hand puppets to use in Health lessons

The Gigi puppet is on the left, the boy in the middle she named "Al" and the girl on the right is "Laura". We role play with the puppets, Gigi loves it!

I am having to back up a week.....we started homeschooling on August 17th, I tried using wordpress for the school blog, just to get frustrated and come back to blogger! As I get adjusted to being a teacher to a brilliant student, I might be a bit sporadic with my posts.....I WILL catch up, as this is going to be our yearbook each year.....at the end of the school year I will print the blog into book form for each grade. It's going to be lots of fun......we have already had challenges of sorts.....some of the curriculum is a bit too easy for Gracie. I'm getting lots of support from my homeschool mom friends on facebook, which is very comforting. We are working with Alpha Omega Lifepacs for Language Arts, History & Geography and Science. These are the 3 that seem to be too easy right now. The Math U See is going great, as is the Alpha Omega Horizons for Health and Lapbooking for Bible. One thing I LOVE is that the Bible is incorporated into all subjects. We say our pledge to the flag and pledge to the Bible to start our day and then Gracie says a prayer. They are so sweet. She thanks God for our opportunity to study at home and asks Him to bless our day and lessons. She is a precious student. Little Fella doesn't understand what is going on and can't decide if he wants to come to school with us or not! hee hee! When Gracie is able to work independently on lessons, I frantically work on cleaning the studio. Why didn't I do this BEFORE we started school?! Why?! Well, I am working on it. Slowly.
Gracie starts her enrichment program on September 10th in Franklin. This will be each Thursday thru May from 9-2:30. It's called "Arts 4 Life" and sounds WONDERFUL!!! She will be with 9 other students as they explore world cultures, science, drama, art and music. This is G's cup of tea! I look forward to knowing the instructors, other parents and classmates.