Saturday, August 27, 2011

Happy Half Birthday, Juliet!

I seem to be struggling every day to keep up with laundry, dishes, school and not dreading starting it all over again each morning.  However, I'm taking a moment (at midnight) to say Happy Half Birthday to my sweet Juliet!  She technically turned six months old last week on the 17th.  How these six months have flown.  I praise Jesus for you and for the joy you bring to our family.

Friday, August 05, 2011

Back to Football... and to School!

Matthew and I started watching the Carolina Panthers play football on TV together when were dating. It was something fun to do and he taught me everything I know about football. Can't say I've followed them closely ever since but they are still my favorite NFL team. The team actually does its preseason training in our town so we decided to take our little Panthers fans to their opening day celebration!









So that was Saturday, July 30th. A good end to our official summer vacation and therefore it was time for school to begin. One of my favorite pro's for homeschooling is that I make our schedule, both class days and materials used. August 1st seemed like a good day to begin and so we did. This year, we are using My Father's World for Philip's 1st grade Bible, reading, writing, and science lessons. For math, we are continuing in Math U See. Braewyn is working with Hands On Homeschooling which I used when Philip was 4. And both kids are using a critical thinking skills workbook called Building Thinking Skills. For these workbooks, I decided at least two pages each a day but more if they chose. Braewyn has been doing 6 or 7 pages a day and she loves it! Very encouraging to me because last week she was telling me that she NEVER wanted to do school and that she would just take care of Juliet all of her life.

So far we're one week in and things are going fairly well. I think it's a large part due to the Managers of Their Homes scheduling book I've mentioned before. I've made out a daily schedule for the kids and I from 6:00am until 1:00pm. It keeps things moving along smoothly. Now I need to make time to nail down 1:00pm until 10:00pm and we'll be set.