Glimpses

Science - We've been getting boxes from TinkerCrate this year, and they have been fun. The kids look forward to them each month. This month's box was making circuits to light up paper lanterns.

History - I always feel like History and Langue Arts overlap a ton at out house. For MLK day we had a poetry tea time where we watched the youtube video of Dr. King's entire "I have a dream" speech. Then we made hand print wreaths and pasted a quote on them to hang up in the school room.

Art - Ivan's art class doesn't start up again until February, so he's been working independently for the last several weeks. One of the things he made was this, which he calls "A Tree in Three" it is a tree, and he split it into three sections where he used acrylic paints on top, colored pencils in the middle, and oil pastels on bottom.

Math - My wonderful friend Wynter is working on writing a math curriculum. As she's been putting her webiste etc together she's come out with some really fun activities. One of those activities are these fun clocks that help you tell time, learn to count by fives, AND work on your five times tables.

Friday Fun - We've been meeting our homeschool group at the Springville Library on Friday afternoon to play games. It's been a good option for winter time. The kids can still see their friends, we moms can still see our friends, and no one has to be outside freezing to death.

Heading out on a Friday to play games with our home school buds at the library.

Language Arts - We're a little heavy on the langue arts at our house. Sometimes I think we could list just about everything we do under that category. :) We finished listening to Johnny Tremain. We've been doing copy work exercises from it all month, and having some awesome discussions. This middle grade reader is a bit slow at first, but by the end your heart is swelling with pride and love of country. James Otis's speech about "A man can stand up" tied in nicely with our study of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, and we talked about how what the colonists started clear back in 1776 is something we are still trying to fully realize and bring about today.

We also listened to The Red Pencil, but haven't started any work from it yet. Lincoln and Ivan have both read Finn Family Moonmintol, which is where our copy work will come from next.

Lincoln read the biography of Leland Melvin and completed a biography box style book report. As part of the report he made and flew a straw rocket. Ivan has been reading Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart.

Scripture Study - We begin our school days by singing a hymn, having a prayer, and reading a few verses from the Book of Mormon. This year we are attempting to scripture journal also, by using the "Box-A-Day" method. 

We take a piece of paper and fold it into 16 boxes. Each day, after we read, we draw a picture in one of the boxes about what we read, or something we learned, or thought was interesting. At the end of 16 days, when our paper is full, we get out a lined paper and write on it more in-depth about what we learned/thought was interesting/our testimony....basically anything that encompasses putting thoughts to paper about what we've been reading. Then we stick the lined paper, and the box paper back to back and laminate them together. Hopefully by the time we're done reading the Book of Mormon we'll have a fun little picture journal, and our thoughts about what we read, to go with. 

The first 3 pages of my scripture journal

Up close. I require that we write the verses we read for the day at the top of each box. Then I encourage the kid to either copy a portion of a verse  or to in some way write an explanation to go along with their picture. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

A box from Ivan's journal. I love  how well he conveys expressions, even in stick figures. 

This is the back side of one of Ivan's journals. I have them do this part "free-write style" which means I don't correct grammar or spelling. What I'm concerned with here is content, and narrative voice. I want them to feel safe expressing their deepest thoughts without fear that they will get all marked up with red pen. 

CO-OP Classes - Co-op is about to start up here again next week. I am signed up to teach two classes this semester, Animal Science to Ollie's age group, and Poetry (which is titled Wacky Words, so it sounds more fun and less intimidating) for the older kids class. I'm actually really excited for both these classes, but they will be a TON of work. Their are eight weeks of class. These are my class description write-ups. I did them by hand because my computer was being stupid. But, sometimes doesn't it just feel really good to put pencil to paper? It was a really enjoyable exercise for me. 

Nature Journaling Class: Week One

"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers!" - Anne of Green Gables Is what I've been saying to myself over and over again this week as the kids and I have stepped outside each day to Nature Journal. I signed us all up for the Nature Journaling class offered online by Brave Writer. It's a four week long class, we are one week in, and I am loving it. I had no idea how soothing and rejuvenating sketching outside in nature could be. Sure, I've had my kids do Nature Journaling for a few years now, but I've always got a baby or a toddler or both to chase around and keep alive, so I've always just turned the kids loose on their own to journal, while I tended to business. But for this class I'm making an effort to journal also, so the kids can see me, so that they can watch me take a time out to communicate with out-of-doors, so I can show them the details I've found, and the things that catch my eye. So we can talk about it at dinner.....so they can share their discoveries with me. And as we look and notice and talk and share, we will be building a richer vocabulary, a shared love of this beautiful world, and a connection with our God who created it all.

The class is incredibly fun, seriously. I didn't know how an "online" nature journaling class would go....it seems counter intuitive, right? But it's well thought out. Basically you log in to your class, and they have a lesson posted that you can read through. Then each day they have suggestions for different activities you can do with your kids. Example, week one was In Your Own Backyard, so the focus for journaling was on things that were close to home. Week two is about going further away from home, on a nature outing, and journaling there. There are suggestions of games to play, different methods of journaling to try, writing extension activities for older kids, tips and suggestions for other resources, etc. Then at the end of the week you pick one entry to submit to the class, and you answer the questions the teacher has asked. Then the teacher goes through each one and gives feed back. Since this is a family class, I posted one entry for each of my three oldest kids (the picked which ones they wanted to submit), and I typed for them while they answered the questions. Our teacher was lovely and took time to make a personalized response and to walk through each individual submission with my kids, pointing out what they did well, encouraging them to try different things, and giving suggestions about what would make their journal time more beneficial and meaningful for them. The teacher also coaches me on how to give the kind of feedback that will be most helpful to encourage creative writing skills in my kids.

I'm thrilled, truly. I've always loved writing, but sometimes I struggle to instill that love into my kids who don't quite love it so much. And since writing has always come naturally for me, I've never known how to break it down to it's parts to present the parts to the kids when they don't "just get it". And this class is helping SO much. And let's be honest.....I can praise and respond with positive feedback until I'm blue in the face....but sometimes my kids just need an "outsider" to do the same thing before it clicks, or motivates, or whatever. And so this class is giving us that as well.

Starting School For a Minute

My cute Del and I a few days before she turned 6.

I have been pregnant since Christmas. December 28th to be exact. Doesn't that seem like forever? I'm sorta getting to that point where I'd like to be done. I call it my "claustrophobic stage" because Cal is so big inside and pushing outward that anything on the outside trying to push inward (kids climbing all over me, noise, a mess that needs cleaning especially if it requires bending over, etc) makes me anxious. And everything else just makes me out of breath and my back ache. And I'm not physically able to do as much as I'm used to, which drives me completely crazy on another level. And it is so incredibly hot all the time. But, I made Aaron promise that we'll never get pregnant again in the summer. If we have anymore babies they need to be spring babies.

I'm 34 weeks though, so only 6 more weeks to go. (If I go all the way to my due date.) I start weekly doctor's appointments on Thursday. Cal is looking good...measuring well and all that. As far as cravings go, I'm pretty sure Cal is made almost entirely of salsa, chocolate, Pepsi, watermelon, crushed ice, and summer squash. Right now, I'm craving zucchini and squash like crazy, and it's awesome! Just about every day for lunch I dice up a zucchini or squash and a tomato from the garden. I saute them in butter and add salt and pepper to taste. It is delicious! And I can't get enough.

Which is actually sort of unfortunate because my yellow squash plant lost it's battle to the squash bugs. My zucchini plant is still alive, but it's struggling. I haven't gotten a zucchini off it in over a week. The only reason I've been able to keep up with my craving is because my awesome friend Wynter gave me a bag of squash and zucchini from her garden. The squash bugs also got my pumpkin plant, and my hubbard squash looks like it's not far behind. :( The beans, tomatoes, beets, and cantaloupe are doing well though.

School. I usually don't start until after Labor Day. We usually spend the end of August beginning of September rejoicing that all the public school kids are back in school by visiting all our favorite places that have been too crowded to visit all summer. We usually have a big, fun, NOT-back-to-school-party. I usually spend a lot of time planning and thinking about curriculum and figuring out what I want to do. There's usually some sort of plan. Not this year. I just started with really nothing in mind, except that I want to get a couple solid weeks in before Cal gets here so we can take a few weeks off in September with no guilt.

We started our The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe writing unit. I had Lincoln and Ivan start reading the book last month. Lincoln finished and Ivan is about 2/3rds of the way through it. This week I got on the ball and finally ordered the writing curriculum portion and downloaded it and printed it off. We did the first copy work assignment, and learned all about prepositions. We talked about how prepositions tell us what something's relationship in space is to something else. I had Lincoln and Ivan each grab a stuffed animal and a stool, then I called out a preposition and the boys had to demonstrate it using the stuffed animal and the stool. Example: The stuffed animals are under the stool. Then we read through our copy work passage and underlined all the prepositions we could find there. Lastly, we folded a piece of paper so there were 16 squares on it and the boys drew a different preposition in each box.

We've also done a combination Nature Journal writing assignment about humming birds. I figured since we've enjoyed watching them out the window so much, that they would make a good theme for our writing.  I tried something a little bit different this time. Instead of giving the kids all the same assignment, I gave them a prompt based on what I thought they'd best like to do with their writing. I gave Linc the prompt, "If I were a humming bird...", I asked Ivan to write a poem about humming birds, and Adelia made up a story about humming birds. I was surprised and pleased that no one gave me any grief about the project. So maybe I'll have to try that approach more often. 

Adelia tells me what she wants to write, I write it for her, and then she traces it. This is part of the "Jot It Down" phase in the Bravewriter curriculum that I use. 

I decided to combine Ivan and Adelia and teach them both Level 1 All About Spelling. It's actually been a lot of fun having two students at the same time. It's easier to turn things into more of a game to make it more fun. I also use the tiles and the flashcards less, and do a lot more orally. They seem to like it so far, and although they have different strengths and weaknesses, they seem to be on equal ground. (I was worried Ivan would be way further ahead, but Adelia has surprised me with the spelling rules she already knows, and how quickly she picks up and remembers what she doesn't know.)

Ollie says his job is to play. :) And I couldn't agree more. He likes to sit in the same room with us, but do his own thing. One of my favorite things for toddlers is this set of Imaginets. They are similar to pattern blocks, but different enough that Ollie doesn't feel like they are the same thing.

And Ruby, well...let's just say we get more done when she's asleep. She has been basically a tornado baby for the last little while. I know it's because we haven't been going out as much as she'd like to. She's just busy, she's gotta have things to do, and if those things are to dump all the contents out of every drawer and cupboard and closet in the house and spread them from top to bottom of the house, she does it. She's happy about it, but she makes a giant mess wherever she goes, and it's all at her level, which makes clean up extra hard. She works hard, plays hard, and occasionally crashes hard. Especially when she stays up half the night jumping up and down in her crib and singing to herself. This is a rare sight, so I had to take a picture for proof that it actually happened. And it was glorious while it lasted. :) Look how big she's getting.

On Sunday we invited both sets of grandparents over for dinner to celebrate Adelia's and Lincoln's birthdays. We had pizza and salad and salsa, then played Pictionary, and ended the night with root beer floats. It was a blast. Both kids enjoyed getting presents. Adelia was in heaven with her new tea set and mermaid tail blanket. And Linc seemed happy about his gifts too, but I didn't take any pictures of him for some reason.

I wish I could say we've made excellent progress on the bunk beds, but...ya. We have good intentions of working on them, but other things keep popping up. Aaron's dad is letting Aaron borrow his drill press though, and that is making a huge difference. It is so much easier to build things when you have the right tools. We just need to dedicate some time to finishing them and get down to business. We're about half way done.

Other than that we've pretty much just been hanging out and watching the Olympics. :)

Adventures in Swanland

The days are hot, so I live for the cool of the evenings. After the kids go to bed, I step outside and I admire my garden and my grapevines, and then the cornfield waves to me and catches my eye, and back even further the are mountains glowing golden in the setting sun. It's beautiful. I am grateful for this slice of heaven and relief in the evenings.

You better believe I have plans coming out my ears for things I still want to do here, improvements I want to make. We are a long ways off from a finished product. But as I make my rounds these summer evenings, I'm satisfied with the progress so far. I can see our yard taking shape. I can see it growing into the visions I've dreamed up for it. A yard takes so much longer to come together than you ever think it will. But it is coming along.

My hummingbird friend came back, and this time I got a picture of him. :) The kids have been anxiously sitting in front of our front room window in the mornings to see if they could spot him. I'm glad they are as excited about it as I am. The Zinnias have been attracting butterflies too.

We spent a  nice weekend up in Hooper for the Lemmon/Sparks family reunion. It's always really fun to have everyone together. I especially love that the cousins get a long so well. It was great to sit in the shade with my siblings and their spouses and relax and chat and eat.

Aaron and Rue and Ollie in the kiddie pool. The big kids couldn't be bothered to stop jumping off the diving board for a picture. 

She thinks she's big.

Ruby loves swimming. She's not one bit afraid of the water either. 

Jackson and Bri's baby Stratton, modeling the pool floaty and pretzel pose.

Of course Adelia found a dragon fly at the park. No outing would be complete without one bug or another worming it's way into her affections. :) 

Swingers: Imogen, Ruby, Ollie, Isla, Emree, Adelia
Photo Credit: Aaron Swan

When it got late, the swings were the only way to avoid a complete earth shattering melt-down for little miss Rue.

Sliders: Adelia, Abi, Isla, Emree, Ollie, Burke, Nolan
Photo Credit: Kyle Lemmon

We got home late Saturday night. Sunday we went to church and spent the rest of the day trying to recover from our wild weekend. So I didn't get out to check on the garden until this morning. Needless to say, our Monday harvest was about three times the usual size. :) The tomatoes are starting to roll in, and I am loving it! There is nothing on planet earth quite like a fresh garden tomato. I have some beans that need picking, but since I won't be eating them today, I'll leave them on the vines until tomorrow. Also, the rest of my beets are ready for pickling, so I'll probably pull them up tomorrow too. And the cantaloupes should be ready this week or next. Yippee!

Borrowed this pic from Bravewriter.
These are the 2016 Arrow books we'll be reading this year.

I've been trying to gear up for the school year. I usually don't start school until after Labor Day. But this year we'll probably be taking most of September off to have a baby. I'm thinking I might try slowly adding one thing in at a time until we are up to full speed. And since my writing curriculum is the one I love the most, I'm planning to start there. I'm doing the Arrow program from Bravewriter again this year. I'm super excited about the book choices for 2016. In August all the copy work and grammar lessons in the Arrow will be based off of the book The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Today I assigned both Lincoln and Ivan to read the first chapter. I think I'll have them read silently some of the time, and some of the time we'll get together and take turns reading aloud to each other. I also plan on using the Jot It Down writing projects, as well as continuing with Poetry Tea Time and Nature Journaling.

Ivan asked me last week if he could get some books about Egypt at the library. So we made a trip, he picked out just about every book they had in the junior non-fiction section on Egypt and we brought them home. Friday night after scriptures and family prayer, he said he had a presentation he wanted to show the family.  He brought out a clip board with a blue piece of construction paper on it. The construction paper was filled front and back with drawings. He took turns asking each person to pick a drawing. When the person did, he explained what the drawing was of, and what he'd learned about Egypt that related to the drawing. Example: I picked the picture that looked like a scale. And Ivan told me that Egyptians used to weigh a person's heart after they died, if the heart was light they got to go into the after-life, but if a heart was heavy they got eaten by a monster. I was super impressed with how much detailed information he could remember just by looking at his pictures. On Monday, I asked him to do his presentation for me again so I could take a video. The video cuts out early though because I ran out of space on my phone. I thought it was so awesome that he put together a report all on his own, and that he did it in a way that was meaningful to him.

And I do think art is meaningful to Ivan. I think he uses it as a way to express what's on his mind. He got an art easel for his birthday back in March, and he has used it to turn his bedroom into his own private art gallery. But he takes his time with each picture. He thinks about it, and then once he's decided exactly what he's going to do he'll start drawing. And sometimes he'll work on one drawing for a week or more. Making sure he has it just how he wants it. Sometimes he'll stop what he's doing and take a couple more days to think about it, just to be sure, before he starts drawing again. It's actually a really interesting process to watch.

Besides his art, he has also hung up lists of things that he wants to memorize. Days of the week, months of the year, mine and Aaron's phone numbers, his school schedule for the day, etc. And he also has his swimming ribbons hung up as well. :) I love to watch how differently each kid makes a space their own. I remember loving to make my room my own space as a kid too. Also, that stack of books on his bed railing, yeah...I have plans to make him a nightstand/shelf of sorts that will be accessible to him from the top bunk, but I have to finish Ollie and Cal's room first.

Complete change of topic, in case anyone was wondering why I hate cats, I present exhibit A:

I don't predict that our screen door will last very long under the circumstances. *sigh* But, the good news is that we bought a little kitty house, so now the cats sleep outside instead of in our down stairs bathroom. So that's good. They are officially 100% outside animals now.

And to end on a happy note, look at my adorable husband reading bedtime stories to our crew. It's getting to be quite the pile-up. :)