My cherry pie :)

I did it today. I baked my own cherry pie from scratch!

We had extra dough, so we added hearts and balls on the top of it!

It was sooo good! I may need to make another pie in my near future!

Cherry pie anyone??

When we were in Illinois a couple of weeks ago, our friend had a whole bowl of cherries from one of her friends. She thought cherry pie would be something fun to make, so she pulled out her cherry pitter and sat for about an hour and pitted all the cherries.  When she was done, she made a cherry pie! It was scrumptious!

The other day when we were at Walmart, the girls saw a bag of cherries. They begged and begged for me to buy them. I was hesitant to get them because in the past, nobody has ate them, and we have ended up throwing them all away. Well, I ended up buying them, and then came home ordered myself a cherry pitter off of Amazon!

It came yesterday, so I think we are going to attempt our own cherry pie today!

That is if Megan doesn't eat all the cherries first!!

New Curriculum

I almost have all my books for this coming school year! This last week, I ordered Megan's science book and a friend is letting me borrow one for Courtney and Christian. I have to order Megan's journal yet, but I already have one for Courtney. I plan on the kids doing science independently this year.

I have about six chapter books to order yet for our history curriculum, and then I am set with that!

Fourth and seventh grade English are ready to go along with fifth and seventh grade math. (Courtney is a year ahead in math.)

We will just pick up in spelling from where we left off last May.

I will just keep moving ahead with phonics and math with Christian, so I don't need any new books there. I may get him a book on sight words though.

Speaking of Christian, this boy sat down today and we read "Hop on Pop" together. He read almost all the words in the book. I really thought he was going to give up half way through, but we made it all the way. I love watching him learn how to read!!! It's one of my favorite parts of homeschooling. :)

Crash!!

I learned a lesson last night.

Never give your 8 month old a glass bowl and then close your eyes to pray.

I bet you can you guess what happened.

The 8 month old pushed the bowl to the floor and the bowl broke right in the middle of Matt's prayer!! We had glass pieces all over the floor.


Thank you very much Micah! I guess I didn't need that bowl anymore...

Who wants computer time?

For the last six months or so, Christian was constantly asking me to play computer, especially when he was bored. I tried to encourage him to find something else to do at these times, but it didn't always work. I needed to find a balance between letting him get on the computer once in awhile and learning how to entertain himself away from electronics.  This finally got to me one day last week and I came up with a solution! (Ok, I saw it on Facebook!).

Before Christian gets to play computer or any video games, he has a list of chores he must accomplish.

1. Get ready for the day (get dressed, brush teeth, make bed, clean bedroom)
2. He must help do the dishes in the morning. His job is to put the soap in the dishwasher!
3. He needs to spend 20 minutes either coloring, reading, or writing. He also needs to read through his phonics words.
4.  He needs to make or build something creative.
5. He needs to help somebody in the family do something.

This little list has helped tremendously!! Whenever Christian asks if he can play computer, I ask him what he has accomplished.  Some days he doesn't get to play computer because he does not have them all done, but today, he accomplished them ALL!!

I helped him clean his room, but he did most of the work. He even made his bed all by himself! He helped entertain Micah while I was teaching school, and he spent about 20 minute reading and working on his letters. He was creative with some friends we had over and read his phonics words,

He was so excited when I told him that he had accomplished everything on his list and that he could play some video games. He ran right down to Matt and told him!

About ten minutes later, the entire family was in the living room playing Mario Kart!!

I am glad this is working! It was just the motivation we needed for him!

New Curriculum!!

After not getting much schoolwork done last year (except math and English) due to Micah, I have decided to reset everything this fall and start over.

We are not switching math, English, or spelling. I am very pleased with what we are using and it is working.

We are cutting out Sonlight completely, which actually makes me sad. I have done Sonlight for five years and have loved it, but I have come to realize that there is only one of me and now three children that need to be educated in this house. I can't forget that baby who needs attention too!

Now that summer is here, I have had a chance to think about what we want to do next fall. Even though Micah is older and is doing MUCH better, I think it is still crazy for me to think that I can get all that reading done in one day! I could always make the girls do it independently, but honestly, I don't think they want to be in their rooms reading all day. They want to be down with the family and helping out.

I figured out that if I switch from Sonlight, I need to find a new history, geography, reading, writing, read-aloud, and science curriculums. Sonlight was not just one subject, but many! I also have three grade levels to cover.

For many years now, I have had my eye on Heart of Dakota curriculum. I always looked at it, but always came back to Sonlight. Well, we are switching to Heart of Dakota next year and I am super-excited!! I am able to switch history, geography, reading, writing, and science too!

One of the main reasons that Heart of Dakota was appealing to me was because there is a program written for 9-11 year olds with an extension pack for the older kids. Most of the time, I picked the curriculum to fit the oldest kid and the others just listen in and pick up what they can. Heart of Dakota is actually aimed for the younger group and the older kids get more books to read!

I also like it because it is more hands on than Sonlight. With Sonlight, we read books and the kids answered questions. That was about it. Everyday now, the kids will have a little hands on project to do. I think Courtney and Christian will really like this aspect of the curriculum.

There are about a third of the books to read as Sonlight and it has sections that the kids do INDEPENDENTLY! This may be listening to a section on a CD or reading a passage in a book, but they want them to do it by themselves. This is exactly what I need for my kids!  I think if I would have had them more independent last year, we would have gotten through much more school work. There are still read alouds, so I still get to read to them, but the passages are much shorter for each day. AHHHH! I feel like we will actually be moving along in our curriculum this year.

http://www.heartofdakota.com/index.php

We are going to be doing the "Creation to Christ" package and hopefully this will get Megan into a high school. What? High School? That's just crazy! :)

Teeth are disappearing and coming in!

We have had quite the time with teeth at our house this week.

This baby of mine got two new top teeth in the last couple of days.

He now has his two bottom teeth AND his two top teeth. Now he has to be really careful when he is nursing. :)

The other young man in the house LOST his front tooth last night.  It had been loose for awhile and yesterday it was hanging crooked in his mouth- it was driving me crazy! Last night I was making dinner and Christian came over to me and said, "Here is my tooth mom, I just pulled it out!" Great! Thank you!!

My big boy is losing his teeth and my baby is getting them! I guess this is what I get for having children five years apart!!

Groceries?

I have not made it to the grocery store since we have gotten home from Illinois. We are finally starting to run out on things. Matt told me the other day that his milk expired, and that he couldn't eat his cereal in the morning without milk.  I kind of told him I was going to wait until we needed more groceries, I wasn't going to haul four children to the store just to get him a gallon of milk!

Last night, I went to make supper and realized I needed some more almond milk! I kind of made due with what I had, but then I thought I need to go to the store and get some milk. I need to go as soon as I have time.

I don't really think Matt running out of milk is an emergency, but it kind of is for me!

I guess we are making a trip to the store today!! I should start making that grocery list! It's going to be a big trip!

My crazy husband!

If you know Matt, you know he loves to throw our children in the air. While we were hanging out at park one day in Illinois, we tried to get action shots. This is probably the best one we got!

Matt and Micah both have smiles on their faces!!!

Vacation to Illinois :)

I have not blogged for awhile! I have been out of town on vacation. We went to Illinois to visit some homeschooling friends that moved away a couple of years ago. We miss them a lot! Once we met up again, I remembered how well our families got along! The kids picked up right where they left off last year and so did us parents! I loved it!

We went bowling one afternoon, here are some fun pictures from that day.

Micah hung out in his stroller while the bigger kids bowled.

Christian trying his best with the bowling ball!

The big girls...Ana, Megan, and Kaelynn.

The goof balls! Courtney and Miki! They insisted on writing a story while they bowled. It didn't work out so well!

We always enjoy a big pot of chili with this gang! All eight children in the picture. (This was dinner after we got done bowling!)

We spent almost a week there and had many other adventures!