Yo ho, Yo ho, a Pirate's Life for Me

This year while we were at Hilton Head Island, my husband decided we needed a little piracy in our lives...so we loaded up our girls and my niece, Ashlyn, and went on a Pirate Cruise! Once the girls were properly tattooed (a temporary one, of course!), eye-patched, and armed with styrofoam swords, we set sail on the open sea - or at least around the harbor- in search of Stinky Pete the Pirate and his treasure.


Bella helps hoist the skull and crossbones flag.
Me, Kenneth, and Abbigail

Our three Pirates: Abby the Angry, Barnacle Bella,

and Blackbeard Ashlyn

By the end of the pirate cruise we had found Stinky Pete and bombarded him with water cannon, had a cup of pirate grog (the nonalcholic kind!), and found the pirate treasure. The girls had a great time.

A-bee-dale!

"A-bee-dale!" is the sound that frequently echoes through our house, when Abbigail is doing something big sis Bella does not approve of! She may be the smallest of our home, but Abby is bound and determined to prove that "the last shall be first".

She is bouncy (literally!) and full of life! She is learning new words and little phrases every day- the newest is "All done!" as she hands you her plate. She is sweet and loving, and at the same time fiesty and determined- just try to take her blankie from her! Abbigail is no pushover.

Last night I crept into her room to see if she was asleep, and instead found her lying in her crib peacefully, with her big browm eyes open. I whispered "Nite nite" and she whispered it back, and I watched her for a long time.

She is growing so fast, it makes my heart ache. Right now, this minute, she is still my baby. But sometimes I watch her as she plays, and I know that any second she will take one more step and one more breath and then...gone. She will be a little girl.

"For all good and perfect gifts come from above, sent down from the Father of Lights...."

So thankful.

School is cool!

Here's a litle progress report! We have completed one month's worth of lessons thus far! Bella is doing really well. Granted, there are days when we don't accomplish as much as I'd hoped. But then there are days when we plow right through our lesson! Today we completed Book A of the "Explode the Code" phonics program. Bella has learned the sounds for "b, k, t, f, m, and r". The really exciting part for me is not that she can recognize them when she sees them, but that she's starting to recognize them when she hears the sounds in everyday conversation! She's also started asking about sounds we haven't learned yet.

She is really enjoying Saxon Math K. She loves the teddy bear counters, pattern blocks, and linking cubes we use.

My favorite part of our lessons is our Bible story. Each day we read the next story in our book, discuss it, and then pray together. For example, if our story was about the Children of Israel having the sea before them and the Egyptians behind, we would pray and ask God to help us trust in him even when things don't look so good! It's amazing how simple Bible stories can still speak to us!

Here are some pictures from today!



Bella and her pattern block graph.

Phonics!

Painting a seahorse. Since we are leaving for the beach

next week, we have been looking at some books about

the ocean, and this weekend we are making an ocean

diorama (shoe box scene).

Abby participating in art!

*please note that the above art project was not nearly as peaceful

as the pictures portray! We had a few minutes of wild rumpus during

which one of us was a fiddler crab and had to scuttle sideways with "pincher"

hands, and the other person was a fish and had to "swim" away!

Meet my daughter, Arab Ella

So, now that we are homeschooling, I've been working with Bella a little on her handwriting. Mostly just having her practice her name, as she tends to either write it in a mixture of capitol and lower-case letters, or her name starts on one line and drifts down through the next two before she gets to the end. Her phonics workbook has her practice the letter we are currently learning the sound of, so I don't do too much else. She's only four, I'm not pushing the penmanship.

But, as is often the case in parenting, sometimes the little boogers don't want to cooperate. So quite often Arabella does not want to write her name. Part of this is my own fault for giving her an eight letter name. I figured it was only fair I one-up my parents. Hey, I did give Abbigail an eight letter name, too. I'm nothing if not fair... Anyway, I don't push the issue for now.

But in church last Sunday I happened to glance down the pew to Bella, who was sitting beside my mom (Nana). Nana had given her a little spiral notebook and some crayons. The notebook was small - and her writing is large- so she was filling page after page with different colored versions of:


Arab
Ella


I had to smile.

Wait, while I pencil in your bowel movement on my day planner....

Okay, I know this is a strange title for a blog post. I'm really just having a laugh at myself. When Bella and I began homeschooling, I jotted down a tentative schedule. Not too specific, just an order in which we would do things. I goes like this: Math, Bible Lesson, practice our memory verse, reading, and art activity.

That, of course, did not include the many adventures of Abbigail Skye. Here's how Saturday went:

Math. Abby gets up. Clear Math from table. Dress and feed Abby. Clean table again. And floor. Bible Lesson and Memory Verse....what's that smell?! You guessed it. Change Abbys diaper. Reading, Art.

I love my girls.

Pleasantly Surprised

Bella and I have now completed our first few days of homeschooling, and I have to admit, I am surprised....but probably not like you think. See, I didn't decide to homeschool on a whim. I didn't wake up one morning and think, "Oh, maybe we'll give that a try." Nope. I did my homework. Literally.

I read books (lots of them!), I emailed people, I joined a homeschool co-op, I gave my patients who homeschool (a surprising and growing number!) the third degree, I went to a convention, etc. So I had an idea of what to expect.

I expected the extra time I would spend each night, getting the next days' lesson ready.

I expected the extra patience I would need!

I expected the difficulty in keeping Abbigail pacified during lesson time.

I expected to have to develop more of a "morning routine".

I expected to make a commitment to have a learning atmosphere in our home, not just "school hours".

What caught me off guard is how much I would love doing it. It's such an awesome thing to teach your child! It's so wonderful to be there to see that little "aha!" moment when the light comes on. Its so thrilling to watch - biting your tongue the whole time!- as they do a phonics page all by themselves...and get all the answers right!

I know we are just starting out on what (hopefully) will be a long journey. I know there will be tough days, and we will both probably feel like throwing in the proverbial towel more than once. But I'm SO thankful I chose this, and I pray the Lord will give me the patience, the wisdom, and the resources to raise godly children.

"A journey of 1,000 miles...

"...begins with a single step." -Lao Tzu , Chinese philosopher (and clearly a homeschooler.)





Today was our first "official" day of homeschool. Official as in I am keeping attendance records, Bella has had her school immunizations, and we are using curriculum. I am calling this year "K4". Kind of a run-up to official Kindergarten. So here's how our first day went:

We got up at seven and had our chocolate milk / coffee fix. Then I fed the girls breakfast and we got dressed and brushed our teeth. We started off with our Saxon Math K, then went over our "Character Quality". This month it is Truthfulness, so we read the definition of truthfulness and also read Ephesians 4:25. Then we read our Bible story, and ended the day with phonics. Bella really liked Explode the Code (ETC), our phonics program. Today we talked about the letter "F" and the sound it makes. We ended the phonics lesson by reading "My F Book" by Moncure. Our art project for today was, of course, a f-f-frog, which we painted green. Tomorrow we will add eyes and a ribbon hanger.

Overall it went really well and I am pleased. I am going to add in our weather chart in a couple days. The biggest challenge was Abbigail, who was pretty fussy this morning. I plan on going to the dollar store in the near future and fixing her a basket of "school time only" toys to play with as she sits at the table with us.

Here are some pics of our first morning of homeschool!