School Year 2020-2021

This year has been a little crazy with so many ups and downs in our little and big world.  I haven't spent time to blog any of this years journey in over a year.  I am realizing that as much as I wish I were better at writing and getting thoughts out and documenting our journey, I JUST AM NOT! I can barely take care of the day to day much less actually get a thought out on paper or even get a thought.  :)  It is something I want to get better at.  I want to do a better job of keeping up with our memories, documenting our school journey and what life was like each year.  I realized how bad I have done with this yesterday when I had the brilliant idea to make a yearbook of our school year and went to google photos and realized I have maybe two handfuls of pictures of us actually doing school.  Like WHAT.IN.THE.ACTUAL.WORLD?!?!

Anyway, this year has been one of a kind.  When the pandemic hit and Curtis was working from home I thought it was such a glorious time.  Each morning and early afternoon was spent out in the front yard with our picnic blanket reading books, coloring, watercoloring, eating snacks and lunch.  Eventually, we would follow the sun to the backyard and the girls would work on their gardens and play on the swingset.  But then, Curtis was back at work.  We were in the thick of summer and sweltering heat and our outside time ended abruptly.  

I remember thinking that I actually liked the quarantine because we were literally not allowed to do anything.  Everything was cancelled.  There was no guilt for missing anything because our not being able to do stuff was completely out of my hands.  It wasn't up to me.  I remember naively thinking that this new normal of slower pace was something that was going to be good for our family.  And it was.  However, I thought we would be back to our actual normal by now and over a year later, we still are not.  Masks are still mandated in NC, libraries don't want you to linger, CFA dining is not open.  Not only that but we have seen our country toppling over with so many horrific things and destructive agendas.  I am completely saddened and overwhelmed with the state of our country.  

I am worried about many things.  What will happen in this country regarding voter integrity and our rights and freedoms as American citizens?  What kind of world will my girls have to grow up in?  Will my homeschooling rights be taken from me?  Am I messing my kids up with my own sinful issues?  What is this world coming to?  When is Jesus coming back...Jesus please come back.  

So this homeschool year was different with all these thoughts taking up permanent residence in my brain.  Not only that, but I was also grieving the loss of baby still over last summer and realizing 100% that God knew what He was doing when He took my baby to be with with Him in heaven.  My baby would never know the pain and suffering of this world and I was grateful and found so much peace over that.  While my arms would ache to hold him, my heart was full because he got to see our Savior face to face from his very beginning.  

I am tired.  Tired of the hypocrisy, the ignorance, the division, the lies, the corruption, the evil.  It is interesting that I read something today in Revelation that said to let the evil continue to do evil...meaning it is going to happen.  There is not a thing I can do to stop it, but  the righteous must continue to do right.  Evil is here and it is here to stay until Jesus comes.  I can't continue to wish it away, but I should be doing my all to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth.  

I realized today also that I am so sick and tired of reading all these books and be so fully into and committed to what it is telling me to do only to fall flat on my face a day or week after reading these books.  How far am I willing to go before I am so fed up with myself and I finally fall on my knees before God?  What is it going to take?  I need to wake up for the sake of my family.  No more excuses.  No more self deprecation.  No more justifying.  It needs to be over.  Me and my selfish ways must come to an abrupt end.  And there should be no turning back.  

So, while I don't feel like I have much to document, because frankly, I can't remember a darn thing, I do want to do this more.  Get back on that horse! 

February School

February 2020 has come and gone and with a lot under our belt.  We celebrated birthdays, we celebrated Valentine's Day with the Holt family,  and we played with friends for playdates.  We learned a lot about mummies and Ancient Egypt, as well as, pirates!    The only thing I would have put into our February School would have been black history and presidents.  I am finding that I really struggle with planning ahead on holidays.  I also need to be better at getting photos of our school days and just life in general.  

For Morning basket, we covered so many topics.  We read books from the Charlotte Mason schedule.  Learned about some people who worked hard for the kingdom of God, practiced memorizing the catechisms, and read five minute devotionals.  Our favorite read loud this month was the Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo.  This book was excellent and has become a favorite of ours.  It even inspired Ava to add some of the authors technique into her fairytale writing.  We also read some Valentine's books, Groundhogs books, and poetry.  During our morning time we find it fun to include some language arts by using MadLibs.  Since we were talking about fairytales, we did a fairytale MadLib.  We also incorporated learning about fairytales using a Fairytale Spin to Play game.  One of my favorite, and the girls, was the Once Upon a Time Map Book.  We used this for a fun spin on geography and reading map skills.  For Art, we included our Charlotte Mason artis, Gustave Courbet and we also used a Learn to Draw Princess Kingdom to go along with our fairytale theme.  Morning Basket Math included a variety of games, heart candy patterns and candy heart measurement.  For science, we played Top Trumps Fillies, foals, and fantasy.  

Here is an overview of what they learned in unit studies this month:  

Ancient Egypt and Mummies:  We read Magic Tree House Mummies in the Morning and the Ancient Egypt Fact Tracker that goes along with it.  We read Who Was King Tut biography, as well.  The girls learned about Egypt and where it is on a map, including a cut out of Egypt that they colored and placed in their composition books.  They watched several YouTube videos on the subject and we did the Waldock Way unit study on the subject.  We played Top Trumps King Tut.

We also read Magic Tree House Pirates Past Noon and the Pirates Fact Tracker, Who Was Blackbeard, and You Wouldn't Want to be a Pirate's Prisoner.  We played several pirate games

like Don't Poke the Pirate, Don't Rock the Boat, and my personal favorite Dozen Doubloons which is fun and couples with math and making addition equations that add up to 12.  Ava drew a pirate ship in her composition book and we also watched YouTube videos on the subject, watched Hook, and did the Waldock Way unit on the subject.  

For writing, we are working on the Brave Writer Jot it Down curriculum and spending our time looking into fairy tales.  This month we have looked at The Frog Prince.  We read the story and they wrote their own version of it and colored a frog to go along with it. 

Ava was able to complete several activities in her Good and the Beautiful curriculum.  

LA lessons-79-87, reading comprehension sheets, spelling, read each day independently (60 books), Reading Eggs, grammar, compound words work, homophone matching game and worked on punctuation.  

Math- 52-59, Math Seeds, addition facts to 20, candy heart patterns, candy heart measurement, color caper game, comparing numbers

Bible: Jonah 

Sally: 

LA: Lesson 10-18 in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons, some beginning sound and ending sound exercises, as well as reading her Good and the Beautiful level A books, and spelling.

Math: lessons 79-87, Color Caper game, addition facts, and MathSeeds

Bible: Jonah

Evie: 

Confessions of a Homeschooler: Letters A, E, I

Math: Preschool Math Unit 1

January School

  So we are back at it!  2020 has gotten off to a good start.   Over the break, I was evaluating our homeschool and curriculum, things that were working and things that were not.  I feel as if I am always searching for different ways and new ideas to try and I am uncertain if this is a good thing or bad thing.  I know it is good to change things when they aren't working, but at the same time, I feel like it shows a side of me that is never content with how things are.  And I am also uncertain if I have enough reasons to justify the changes that I felt were needed or if I was just getting bored and losing hope thinking that things may never change and homeschool will always feel this rigid.  

It is true that I felt it was rigid.  And I did feel like I couldn't continue this way and be happy with homeschooling if we did continue the way we were going.  I still do not know if I am happy with The Good and the Beautiful literacy and math.  I love a lot of what it teaches and I think it has been great. I just haven't seen the fruit in Sally's learning.  Sometimes I feel like the math is monotonous and I don't always love it.  If I am being honest, I am feeling guilty about it because there is literally nothing wrong with it, but sometimes I feel like they take too long and there are often things in the lessons that I don't see the point of or don't like the way they have chosen to approach the concept.  The games they include need lots of pieces and they really are not that fun in my or my daughter's opinion.  I don't know.  I am unsure as to what I should do.  Why fix something that isn't necessarily broken?

So this post was originally supposed to be about our first week back at homeschooling and my introduction ended up  being more long winded than I had thought it would be.  

So this first week back I was excited about the new parts that I was bringing in but also nervous if all the planning and money I spent over it would be well received.  So far so good.  :) 

Here are just a few pictures of our first week back...
SO these first couple pictures were during morning basket.  Morning basket consists of several books that we read. Some of the books we have read so far are The Snowbelly Books, Jan Brett's The Three Snowbears and The Hat, We are reading Mr. Popper's Penguins, The Boy of the Pyramids, Dinosaur Books, Stories about Ruth in the Bible, Bible Devotional Books, Everyone Your Child Should Know, Catechisms.  During the reading part of the morning basket, the girls will work on different quiet activities.  They used these templates pictured here to make snowflakes out of cutips,  they used templates to make dinosaur out of playdough, we used trivia cards from the internet to answer questions about the dinosaurs we are learning about, we counted syllables in the different dinosaurs names, we did a dinosaur puzzle,  and we played Top Trumps Dinosaurs video games.  Some other activities we have done is work on a Frozen Mad Libs and read A Frozen Storybook together.  This time in the morning has been enjoyable and I look forward to planning some every month.  

These next few pictures we made scones and put strawberry preserves and whipped cream on them and snacked on them while we watched Tangled.  We watching Tangled to see the differences between that story of Rapunzel and the one in the Blue Fairy Book.

 Here they are doing their play dough models.

 Here is Sally reading words and jumping to the next one.

 This is when we decided to get out the watercolors and work on some artwork.

 The girls are doing the January Reading Challenge from Read Aloud Revival.  It has been fun sitting with them and listening to them read.  Ava finished her first chapter book, Polar Bears Past Bedtime.

Taken

Have you ever been in a situation and wondered why you are there?  What got you to this place?  Maybe you've been or are in a trial and you are wondering how God could ever use this?  How could He ever turn this around?  Will you see the goodness of God positioned at the end of all of it?
I was reading Esther and was thrown for a loop this morning.  There is a verse where it says she "was taken into the king's palace and put in custody of Hegai." Esther 2:8  I have NEVER thought about this in any other way, other than, she willingly went, maybe with some hesitation and anxiousness, but that she packed her bag, handed it to the kind eunuch and off she went to live in a palace and be given royal beauty treatments.  Literally.  Thinking all this time, "what a life!"  But do you know the word taken in that verse means she was carried off by force, snatched, captured, seized.  WHAT?!?!?!    And then I thought about what that must have felt like.  The fear, resentment, the wondering how God was going to use this, what was going to be the outcome, would I ever see my family again, all. the. things.  Isn't funny though, God wasn't caught off guard by this.  He knew this was going to happen.  And He did use it.  As I have been reading the Bible the past year, I changed my methods.  I stopped trying to constantly see how this applied to me and started paying careful attention to how the story of God is woven through all these different stories.  Yes, she was carried away, taken against her will, and God used the wretchedness of that for a purpose.  He gave Esther natural charm and beauty so that she would be able to win the favor of important people in her new position which would come to serve her later in a positive way.  God's love for you is unfailing!  He will redeem!  His strength will be your guide.  He is compassionate.  He is gracious.  He is slow to anger.  Abounding in love.  He does not withhold and He will right all the wrongs.  He is a God who keeps His covenant to those who love Him.  He is THE faithful God.  He has been and will continue to be good to you.

Evelyn Olivia 23 months

 Evelyn,

     You are such a spit-fire.  You are an independent, stubborn, at time sassy, little thing.  You still show such happiness in most things you do.  You still are a smuggler and love to be held. There is still so much of you that has not changed since you were itty bitty.  I am thankful I have gotten to hold on to all those sweet things about you another year.

     I pray often for that joy of yours.  That it will be a constant in your life.  That you will radiate it so that it reflects itself onto others.

     You got your first haircut this month.  You did rather well for a very fidgety, wiggly child.  It looks really cute on your, but I wish you'd let me keep your bangs pinned back so you wouldn't constantly have hair in your pretty eyes.  You usually pull everything out that I put in your hair to help with the problem.

     This was the first Christmas where you showed any interest in the presents.  So, that was fun for us.  We enjoyed watching you open your presents.  Your favorite present was your rocking horse from Mimi and PopPop.  You get on that and say, "Yeehaw!!!"  The other day you wanted your rocking horse in the family room where the rest of us were and so you picked that big thing up and lugged it in there. I wish I could have gotten a picture of that!  It was funny.  We heard lots of bangs on the wall as you were bringing that thing in the room with us.  These next pictures are of you sitting on the rocking horse saying "yeehaw!"

     These other pictures are of you opening your presents Christmas Eve at your Mimi and PopPops.  You were such a character.

Since you like to bag things, we also got you a little toy to hammer all the pegs.  You really like that one.  I think that would be your 2nd favorite toy.

You also really like the sandbox daddy made you, but it has been so cold out, it is even freezing in the garage.  These are pictures of you being very excited when you did get to go outside and play with it.

 You have gone through a season of not really wanting to eat your food.  You use to be a a pretty good eater, especially with fruit, but that has not been of real interest to you.  You like to feed the dog all of your food and you often get reprimanded for doing that.    You like to draw on the chalkboard, read books, play with your toys, hang out with your sisters, and steal my phone.

I have found it interesting how you play pretty well with others.  Most kids your age don't really play with other kids, but I know that having your sisters has something to do with it.  You love to do things with them, especially.  You love it when you are included in whatever they might be playing.  Today, you were Bolt from the movie Bolt and your sisters were Penny and the mom.  You loved every second of it.

You no longer like to sit in a shopping cart.  You get out of them every time.  And most of the time you won't walk for me.  You want me to shop while holding you the ENTIRE time.  It is exhausting, my patience wears thin, and I am usually sweating bullets half way through.  Its time to hire someone to watch y'all so I can get those things done...and just wait and see....I will be a much better person for it.

You still take a nap for us each afternoon around 1-1:30.  Sometimes its a nice, long one others days it is fairly short.  One of the wonderful things about you, though, is you will play in your crib for quite a while without getting upset.

You now tell me when you have a poop and will grab my hand and take me to the diapers to change you (unless you are engrossed in some activity).

You still love the movie The Boss Baby and anything Mickey Mouse.  You love to listen to Emily Arrow on Youtube.  You love your stories that daddy reads to you at bedtime.

After bath time, you want to be snuggled in your towel for a while.  It's adorable and I don't mind it a bit.

You are just full of life.  It's so fun to watch.  You love your life, you love your people.   I hope you always do!

God will do great things through you and your ability to bring a smile to anyone's face.  Shine His light!  Stay in His presence.  When in His presence there is fullness of joy.

Love you to pieces!
xoxox
Mommy

Evie 22 months

I feel like I just wrote Evelyn's 21 month blog.  Anyway,  Oh girl, are you a pistol.  You still bring so much joy, even though you are very impish.  You are sneaky, silly, and showing indications that you are getting ready to be 2.  In fact, a couple weeks ago at the grocery store, you were acting up and starting the beginning of  tantrum and an older lady looked at you and asked me, "Is she two?"  I told her you were going to be in a couple months and she said, "Yea, that's a two thing!"

You are very independent and certain things have to be done certain ways with you.  Some things have to be done at certain times.  You are a bear when it comes to brushing your teeth.  You LOVE to "bru teef." But you don't think you need ANY help.  You say so many things and your little voice and phrases remind me so much of Ava when she was your age.

You are the worst at sharing toys and will scream a shrill scream when someone takes a toy away from you.  But it doesn't have to be a toy taken from you that causes this deafening scream to protrude from your mouth.  Your sisters can just look or walk near a toy you like and there she blows!

You like to sit at the table in a chair like the rest of us, but I still try to keep you buckled in your booster seat.  You have learned how to take your chest strap on your carseat further down to your belly and get your arms out.  You know how to open all the doors in our house, cabinets, drawers (you name it).  You can make several calls on my phone by somehow figuring out how to get through my locked screen.  You like to turn Netflix on all the time on the tv.  You like baths.  You like to tell us when you have a poo-poo and you will touch the back of your pants while you say it.  You like to play peek a boo, play piggy back rides, and all other forms of running around games.  You love our Saturday Pancake nights and will sit in your chair for the length of time it takes to make the pancakes repeating the word cancakes over and over.  You like to read "dories" and will also bring me my books and say, "Mommy's dories."  You often sneak off with other peoples drink and food.  You love to get into my school stuff and you are super sneaky about it.  You love to take your socks and shoes off in the car as we are going somewhere.  You have no problem throwing your water bottle across the car when you are done and saying, "all done!" Hopefully you won't ever knock me in the head with that thing when I am driving.  You are a disaster to put into a carseat on most occasions.  You are a tornado that strikes our home a kajillion times a day.  BUT....
I WOULD NOT TRADE ANYTHING ABOUT YOU FOR EVEN A SECOND.  
You are wonderful just the way you are!

You are wearing 2t clothing, size 5 diapers.  You still love milk and eat any fruit given to you.  You are not a fan of vegetables, meat, peanut butter sandwiches.  You like it when I make pancakes, pizza, and cheese quesadillas.  You love a breakfast bar, banana, and milk in the morning. You are pretty routine with that.  You go to bed at 8 and wake up around 7.  You usually wake up happy and play with your horsey in your bed.  You do so well, I often won't get you until 8.  Then I put you in your seat to eat and (maybe I should not admit this) but I let you watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or (your favorite movie) The Boss Baby while I take your sisters in the other room to do school.  You make it impossible to do school with them, otherwise.  I even try to include you, and right now, you will have NOTHING to do with it, unless it involves tearing everything to shreds.

Evie, I said it 22 months ago and I will say it again.  There is a joy that radiates from you.  I hope that you live your life in God's presence where there will always be fullness of joy.   I love you, pumpkin!

Ava's 5 Year Letter (picture overload, but you will be happy you looked at them, I know I loved it! 😉)

 Dear Ava,
It seems like just yesterday I was holding you in my arms for the first time.  I can no longer hold you like that anymore.  You are more than half my size now.  It is insane how quickly you grew from a tiny infant (if you consider 9lbs. 6 oz. tiny) into this beautiful 38 pound young girl.  Your daddy and I prayed and prayed for you.  There was a time I lost hope of ever having a baby.  BUT GOD.

God knew exactly what He was doing!  Shocker, I know, right?!  He knew exactly what we needed and when we needed it.  I wish I could take back those years where I didn't trust and lived in sadness and doubt.  When I found out I was pregnant with a baby I was the happiest I have ever been in my life.  I could not wait to meet you.  And I just knew you would be so special.  And you are.

You love God with such tender love.  You know how important He is and love to talk about Him.  Since you are only 5, you don't understand everything you need to or behave in the ways I know you know you should, but I know that your heart wants to know, love and serve God.  He is going to do great things through you.

He has made you a compassionate and caring sister.  Just the other day, your littlest sister who is showing signs of terrible two's, lost her mind and I left her screaming and throwing a fit in the parking lot of church.  You were crying because you were so worried about her safety.  I had to reassure you over and over again that I wouldn't have left her there if she were in danger.  The parking lot had no-one there and no-one coming.  And we were close to her.  (So don't think I abandoned my child in a busy, dangerous parking lot, please.  I would never do that.)

You love to help cook and the other day you wanted to help get the house clean for me when I came home because you know I love a clean home.

You work hard at your schoolwork and love to be around people.  You have always been so gracious as you have had to share toys since you can remember.  Last year we went to Disney World during your birthday.  You never once asked for a toy the entire week we were there.  The last day we let you pick out anything you wanted.  You picked the Cinderella Castle.  Well, of course, Sally wanted in on that and you have shared that with her lovingly and graciously ever since.

YOU are going to do GREAT things for GOD.  I just know it.  We are so very proud of you.  We love you so much.  You have blessed my life so much it can't be described.  I can't wait to watch you grow physically, socially, emotionally, but most importantly, in your relationship to Jesus Christ.

Always remember He is Number 1.  Always put Him first and serve Him only.  He loves you so.  And I thank God that He chose us to love you here on this earth.