The Magic Tree House

I came across this recipe on allrecipes.com and wanted to use up my strawberries in the fridge.  I doubled this recipe and made some changes.  They turned out really good!

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup extra virgin coconut oil
• 1/2  teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup sugar (I did half brown and half white sugar)
• 1/2 pint chopped fresh strawberries
• chopped nuts of choice (optional - I did pecans)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Grease 12 muffin cups.
2. In a large bowl, mix flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together egg, milk, coconut oil, vanilla, strawberries and sugar.  Stir strawberry mixture and nuts into oat mixture just until evenly moist. Spoon into prepared muffin cups.
3. Bake 18 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, until a knife inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

Well we are into week 4 this week and I am seeing where we need to tweak some things.  We have dropped First Language Lessons, it just does not mesh well with Ethan and I.  So I am on the search for a different grammar program.  I have also given myself the permission to drop a book we were reading because none of us really liked it and at first I felt we had to finish it just to finish it, but I changed my mind and said it’s not worth the torture.  I can also start to tell we are all ready for our one week break :)  Only two more weeks to go.

I came across this article today about misconceptions public school parents have of homeschool parents.  It was fun to read and so true. 

Hope everyone has a great day!

I had a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend.  It started off with Carly’s wonderful dance recital (post to come), followed by a fun dinner with my family.  Then on Sunday Clark surprised me with a new foam topper for our bed in hopes to relieve my aches and pains and a 4 slotted toaster.  I told him it would make lunches go quicker with all the bread I have to toast :)  He thought it was funny that he bought an appliance for me, but I don’t care, it’s what I wanted.  Clark then made me this strawberry stuffed french toast breakfast and it was sooooo good!!! Later that night after the kids were in bed he made me chocolate covered strawberries.  It was such a treat of a day!  This makes up for last years mother’s day because Clark was sick then :)  I feel so blessed to be the mom of my kids and am thankful for my Mom and all the wonderful things she has and does for me.  Thanks everyone for making it a great weekend!

Ingredients:

Finished product:

The chocolate covered strawberries:

I finally found a program that is working for us in the schedule department.  This is something I have struggled with for awhile, but I think we have found our groove now.

I came across this blog post on scheduling for 6 weeks of school and tweaked it a bit for us.

I bought 6 folders each for Ethan and Carly.  Ethan’s are blue and Carly’s are purple.  Each folder is then labeled Week 1 – Week 6.

Inside each folder is the schedule for the week and all the worksheets that they need for the week.

I found this blank homeschool schedule grid and filled it in to fit each child.  Each day we go through the assignments and they cross off what they have completed, preferably in highlighter so I can see what we have done in case I need to go back and look and for documentation.

We then have six weeks planned out and ready to go for the most part :)  Since this is still new to me I still have a few things to do before each week has started, but it doesn’t take that long and at least I know what we are doing now.

The plan is then do 6 weeks of school and then take a week or two off and start another 6 weeks.  That way during the weeks off I can plan the next 6 weeks and tweak anything that needs changed.   I will reuse the folders and just take out the completed work and put them in binders to store away.

So far the best part of this system is the personal schedule and having all the materials needed for the week in one place.

I have revamped our homeschool program again and I think I finally have come to love our program now.  Everything is falling into place much better now and things get done.

First I will list off what curriculum Ethan and Carly use and on another blog post I will show our schedule.

ETHAN:

Math:  Singapore Math 2A (couple pages left to do!) and 2B.  Math is done everyday of the week.

Spelling:  Use list words from http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/.  I then plug the words into http://www.spellingcity.com/.  Day 1 he looks at spelling city and plays around with the words, Day 2 he alphabetizes the words, Day 3 he unscrambles the words, and Day 4 is the quiz.  If he gets any wrong, we will practice and retake quiz on Day 5, otherwise, Day 5 is free from spelling.  The unscramble and alphabetize worksheets are on the superteacherworksheets.com website.

Copywork/Narration:  Writing with Ease level 1.  I am in love with this program.  I have been trying to do these things on my own for some time and this program makes it so easy for me in the preparation department.  I bought the text book off amazon.com, but I am not sure how much it is needed.  I went ahead and bit the bullet and bought the PDF version of the student level 1 workbook.  Now this is the best thing I have done.  I love it so much and it is so easy to print off what we need for each day and I will be able to use it for multiple children in the future.  This is definitely worth the money for your time and if you have multiple children.  This program is a 4 day a week program, so we do it Mon-Thursday.

Literature:  I pick a book I would like to read to Ethan and we read it 3 times a week (MWF).  Ethan gets to pick other books he wants me to read to him when we do story time before bedtime.

Reading:  On Day 1 I have Ethan do a reading comprehension worksheet from http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/ and then on Days 2-5 he reads for 20 minutes on his own.  Things that I need to work on here is having him read aloud to me more and I also want to check back through our phonics program to see if there is some areas that he needs to work on.  We never did finish the program because he got bored with it and was doing so well anyways, but according to the Writing With Ease textbook boys sometimes start having problems with reading in the 4th grade because they didn’t keep up or finish with their phonics/reading programs. 

Grammar:  We use First Language Lessons loosely and I am also using worksheets from http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/ to back up things we have learned. We do this two days a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays)

History:  Story of the World Volume 1.  I have started this program before and I could sense Ethan wasn’t that into it and so I stopped.  Now that he is older, he really seems to understand more.  I use the activity guide and have the student pages also for ease of copying for multiple children.  We do one chapter a week and split it up into two days for the week (Tuesdays and Thursdays).  If Carly is willing, she will sit in with us an listen or do the activities.

Piano:  He practices piano 3 times/wk (MWF) using Alfreds Basic Piano Library, Level B.

Group Time: Group time is like our opening exercises and also includes anything that I want both children to learn/do at the same time.  It consists of:

• Prayer
• Pledge of Allegiance
• Calendar
• Scripture Memory
• Song (Hymn)
• Subject of the Day

The Subject of the Day goes as follows:

Monday – Picture Study of an artist.  We are currently looking at John James Audubon.

Tuesday – Geography

Wednesday – Science/Nature Study – We are currently reading The Burgess Bird Book for Children.  Also, the book can be found here for free.  I also made a notebook of each of the birds we will study in this book.  I got this idea from here.  I have 4 pictures of the bird of study on the front of the page and on the back I have the description of the bird, etc. I put this on cardstock and laminated them.  Let me know if you need help making a book for your children and I can share my files.  Also another great help is this link.

Thursday – English from the Roots Up.  I finally bought the index cards for this program, again another time saver.  We do one word a week and will review old words each time.

Friday – Art – We just started using Draw-Write-Now book 6.  So far I like it, Ethan wasn’t too thrilled after our first week because he is a bit too perfectionist.  Carly liked it and did her own thing anyways.  This week I am going to have them trace what we are drawing first before we try to draw it freehand and see if that helps.

Ethan also has karate 3 times per week and loves playing all sports with his friends.  He is really into climbing trees, making paper airplanes and devising contraptions.

Now onto Carly

CARLY:

Math:  Essential Math Kindergarten A (singapore math)

Phonics:  Happy Phonics and substitute in where needed with Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading.

I just received the Happy Phonics in the mail this past weekend.  My first impression is wowzers it is a lot of work to put together. However, I can see this will be very helpful for Carly and hopefully the other children to follow her.  I wish the company made it a little more easier to put together, I am not impressed by this part at all.  This week has been our first week to try some of the games, etc and she is doing well and liking them and it really helps me get a better picture of what she already knows and what she needs work on.

Handwriting:  A Reason for Handwriting.  She does this 4 days a week.  I like this program for the K level.  But next year I will probably move onto Writing with Ease.

Literature:  I pick books I would like to read to Carly and we read them 2 times a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays).  Carly gets to pick other books she wants me to read to her when we do story time before bedtime.

Group Time:  Same as Ethan’s above

Carly gets a lot of free time, she loves to be outside hunting for butterflies, snails and flowers.  She is a real nature girl.  I am excited for our future studies of wildflowers, butterflies, etc.  She just finished up her dance class for the year and I am not sure what she will be doing this coming year.  We will have to wait and see

Well I think I covered everything we are doing.  Let me know if you have any questions on a particular program.

For awhile now, we thought we had a beehive in our shed out back.  Then one day the kids came running in the house yelling at me to look out back and I saw thousands of bees swarming in the very back of the yard around the shed and tree.  It was really scary and freaky to see.  I have never seen anything like it before.  We hired a beekeeper to come in and take care of the problem.  We had the suspicion that the hive was under the floorboards of the shed and we were correct.  The beekeepers did such a great job at finding out where they were, cutting the floor up, taking them out and repairing the floor.  I highly recommend this group if you are ever in need.  They also take the bees away for their own use instead of killing them with chemicals which I liked also.  The bee keeper said the hive had been there probably around 2 years and it was 4 sheets of hive that where quite long.

I took some quick pictures and I mean very quick because I was scared to have the door open

We have found a couple of these outside on our driveway and I tried looking up online to figure out if it was a caterpillar or something else.  They are furry and fast!  Let me know if you know what it is?

Here are our photos from our trip to the children’s museum.  The kids have enjoyed this one two years in a row now

Ethan being a bat. 

Enjoying the grocery store.  They spend most of their time here.

Here comes Gavin to save the day.

They had a demonstration on dry ice and made dry ice puffs and poured the smoke in their hair.  Ethan and Carly thought this was really neat.

Then off to the great outdoors.  The museum has a fun water feature thing for the kids to play with and they love it.

They guy with the dry ice came and dumped into the water and that was pretty neat to watch.

Gavin and Jonathan digging for bones. 

On your way out of the museum they have two projector screens that you can play with.  In this one Carly is holding real still so the butterflies will land on her.

On the way to the car all holding hands :) 

The following are quick re-caps, I won’t go into too much detail.

DECEMBER:

Christmas and Gavin’s 3rd Birthday.

Here is my new stocking holder I made for the family.

Gavin enjoying his birthday breakfast of chocolate chip muffins.  The last picture is of them singing happy birthday with his chocolate cake.

JANUARY

Just before New Year’s Eve Clark and I found out we were expecting our 5th child.  We thought we were done at 4 but we were wrong and have a little surprise on the way. Guess I need to make a new stocking sign This surprise prompted us to decide to get our home ready to sell so we can move closer to Clark’s work and be 5-10min from work instead of one hour.

Clark and I also both celebrated our birthday’s and anniversary this month.  We are now both traveling through our thirties, I am feeling so old now

FEBRURARY

February was a happy and sad month.  We had the arrival of another nephew, Nash Caleb, in our family and he is so precious.

Our sadness was with the loss of Clark’s Grandma Jarvis.  We were all able to drive to Kansas to be a part of the funeral services and it was beautiful, I loved listening to all the stories the grandkids gave.  We all miss her very much and love all the memories that we have with her. 

MARCH

We were still working hard to get the house ready to put on the market, but our energy was lacking with Clark working longer hours at work and me being so tired.  Also, this month was another sad month with the loss of Clark’s other grandmother, Grandma Black.  Clark was able to fly to Utah to be a part of the funeral services.

Sadly, this is the best picture I can find among all our photos.  I will have to do some digging around to find a better picture.  This is of Carly, Me and Grandma Black sitting on her porch in Utah while the kids play in the yard.  This was on our big trip last September. 

APRIL

At the beginning of the month Ethan had his first belt test in Karate.  He was currently a white belt and was testing for the next level which is a blue belt.  He did a great job and we found out the next class that he passed and he received his blue belt, he was super excited.

Before his belt test:

Doing his White Belt Kata:

Sparring with opponent.  They were so cute.  The little girl is tough, I think she took Ethan down more times than he did her, but shhhh don’t say anything!

We finally worked real hard and were able to get the house finished up on the market!  We are so thankful to the family that helped us get it ready and helped watch the kids.  Here is the link to the listing.

Just as we put it up on the market we went to our annual family reunion with Clark’s family in New Braunsfels to spend time together and have fun.  We will try to do this each year in remembrance of his father’s passing.  I look forward to being together with everyone at this time each year.  We took the kids to the McKenna Children’s Museum, bowling, and to the Witte Museum in San Antonio.  Unfortunately the weather wasn’t very cooperative this week and it rained most of the time.  We planned on going to the zoo, but never was able to.  I am going to do a separate post for the pictures since there are so many.

After we returned from our trip I had my 20wk ultrasound and found out we are having our 4th BOY!!!  We are excited and scared.  I just can’t believe we are going to have 4 boys in our family.

Well the next weekend we went to Hempstead to see more family who couldn’t make it to New Braunsfels.  We had a blast visiting and playing games.  We bought two new games, Quelf and Funglish.  We have never laughed so hard for a game as we did playing Quelf, it was a blast.  Funglish is fun too and Ethan loves to play it, so great for kids who can read.

So we finally returned home late Sunday night and Clark had to get up early to leave for a week in California for work.  I thought it was going to be crazy with the kids and the house on the market, but we did really well and Clark’s trip went well too.  The kids were excited to see him back home and Jonathan didn’t know what to think at first.  He just kept staring at Clark.  We are finally back to normal week as we start May and I am so glad to not be traveling this month, I have had enough

The sad news so far for the month of April and beginning of May is that our home has not had one person come and even look at it, so we welcome all the prayers and wishful thoughts that someone will come look and buy quickly!

Well it has only been over 4 months since my last blog post, so I figured I need to finally finish this vacation

I think it sums up well with us having fun with Great Grandma and Grandpa and going to the sand dunes, the kids favorite place.

Everyone looks older now that it has been 4 months, but more posts to come on what has been happening!