2009-2010 Curriculum Plans

Here are the (tentative) plans for school this year (note: that means starting next week!)

Combined all the kids:
History: Truthquest American History for Young People Vol 2

Science: Apologia Creation Series - Astronomy and adding in lapbooks from Knowledge Box
Central.

Literature, Geography, Scripture Memory, Poetry, Composer Study, Picture Study and Nature Study: We will be following the curriculum guidelines from Simply Charlotte Mason

Hymn Study: Hymns for a Kids' Heart

We do Bible as a family separate from school time so we don't purchase "curriculum" for that; however, Kailie will have assigned independent reading (listed below) and we will be continuing our memorization of the Westminster Shorter Catechism with all the kiddos this year.


For independent work, Kailie (Grade 3) will be doing:

Spelling: Building Spelling Skills 3 from Christian Liberty Press

Grammar: Rod and Staff English 2

Math: CLE Sunrise Math 2 and also: Singapore Math 2 Books A and B

Penmanship: Italics Handwriting Book D

Reading list:
Chronicles of Narnia (entire series)
Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates
The Secret Garden

Bible:
Ephesians
Phillipians
Colossians
Hebrews
1 and 2 Timothy
Titus

Character Study:
Polished Cornerstones - picking 6 topics to work on
A Little Book of Manners (to be used for copywork)

Handiwork/Homemaking Training:
Keepers of the Faith: Keepers at Home

Hopefully we will also be beginning piano lessons this year as well, we're still waiting on the piano though so that makes it a little difficult! ha!


Emma (K/1) will be doing:
Math: Singapore Earlybird Math Book 2A and 2B

Penmanship: Italics Book A

Phonics: Rod and Staff Reading 1 and Phonics 1
and The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading

Thinking Skills: Thinking Skills Grade 1


Isaac (Pre-K) is doing:
Rod and Staff Pre-school Series I'm also researching this site: Hubbard's Cupboard for additional ideas.

We are also using workboxes with all the kiddos to keep all of this curriculum organized!
Abby, Lauren and the new baby will be happily listening in/interrupting as often as possible. 8-)

No news is good news

I haven't posted in the last month, but that should just make you aware that nothing extraordinary has happened. 8-)

Everyone is doing well, is healthy and is enjoying life. My pregnancy is going really well, no hip problems so far this time around! Dave and I just went to NICHE which is the annual homeschooling convention for the state of Iowa. It was a wonderful weekend and the first time we've gotten away by ourselves for a whole night in a L-O-N-G time (at least 4 years but I think it's closer to 6!) The keynote speaker at the conference was Voddie Baucham, and if you've read this blog for any length of time you'll know that we LOVE him! We had a great time!

We're continuing to school through this summer so we can take a break when baby arrives - which of course has to be this fall along with all our other children's b-days!

Mom and Dad are coming for a visit this weekend and we're all looking forward to that since we haven't seen any of our family since Christmas (any Block's coming to visit any time soon???).

I'll update pics soon, the kids are crazily getting older/bigger VERY quickly!

Baking and Cooking

Last night Dave was gone for a conference for our church, the kiddos were all sound asleep and I decided that instead of vegging out in front of the TV, I should do something meaningful. So, I baked/cooked for the fam' entirely from scratch. Many of you do this regularly; however, I still struggle with this area of my homemaking duties. I'm learning though! Here's the rundown from last night:

1. 2 dozen banana chocolate chip muffins
2. 2 dozen apple raisin oatmeal muffins
3. Baked Oatmeal (9x13 pan full)
4. Boiled a chicken, froze the meat and bagged ALL of the chicken stock (2 large pots full!) which is now in the freezer as well, awaiting my next adventure in cooking.

Total time: 3 hours of baking, 2 hours of boiling and 1 hour of cool down but a very relaxing and rewarding evening I must say!

This is pretty alarming.....

Spring is in the air......

Today we went to Menards and purchased the supplies we need to start our garden. I'm hoping that it will go well this year, this is our first time gardening...so we'll see what happens. So far we've only purchased fruits and veggies, but I would like to eventually carve out some nice flower beds in the back as well.

Here's what we're planting:
1. Tomatoes - lots, we love tomatoes! I also selected some grape tomato plants for the kiddos to enjoy.
2. Cucumbers
3. Broccoli
4. Snow peas
5. Green beans
6. Raspberries
7. Strawberries
8. Pumpkins: full-size and the littler varieties as well. There are no pumpkin farms around here, which I find very odd considering I live in the midst of FARMLAND USA....but apparently you can only grow corn in Iowa. Anyhoo, we want to try growing our own pumpkins for the decorating aspect in the fall, it should be much more rewarding than just plopping down $5 a piece at the grocery store (and MUCH CHEAPER!).

I guess we did buy some flowers too. We bought the kids a mixed variety sunflower pack and we plan to give them a corner of the yard to tend to. Maybe we'll make a sunflower house for them to play in.....

Plans are to start digging out the plot tomorrow and hopefully transplant all the veggies next week. I'll keep you all posted!

It isn't really nesting yet....right?

Normally my quest to dominate the germs, dirt, messies...whatever - aka NESTING -really doesn't appear until closer to 34-35 weeks in pregnancy. Prior to this I have other obsessions, usually involving painting or decorating, but not particularly the cleaning bug. Well, today I tackled our kitchen. I started by washing the dishes and doing a load of laundry (laundry is in the kitchen for those who don't know this already). That lead to the following:
1. Completely removing everything from every cabinet and purging excess/junk then reorganizing all dishes/pots/pans/appliances etc.
2. Cleaning the oven (outside).
3. Cleaning the microwave.
4. Cleaning the outside of the washer and dryer.
5. Cleaning the outside of the fridge.
6. Vacuuming floor.
7. Mopping the floor with bleach to kill all "those germs" that I knew were secretly lingering.....
8. Cleaning our stainless steel sink with bleach also...for same reason as above. I actually followed the directions from FLYLADY (see sidebar for link) on shining your sink, which involves some Windex - post bleaching...and it looks like a whole new sink. Sorry, no pics though.

I still need to wash the inside of the fridge and do the stovetop again. I also need to do the cabinet doors and the drawers, and I'm feeling a little OCD about refolding all my dish towels for some reason.....

So, all in all it's great to have a clean kitchen to wake up too, I wonder if I'll be obsessed with something else tomorrow....????

What $25 is doing for our bathroom:

We love our house. Well, we love the space and layout and functionality of our house. Some of the decor; however, is not exactly (scratch that....EVEN CLOSE TO) our liking. Case in point: the bathroom. Our home was built in the 50's and I think the tile was original to the house. Here's the before:

Unfortunately, I didn't get a shot of the entire bathroom prior to Dave's start of this project - but just visualize the repeat of this tile around the ENTIRE room.

There's no way an entire bathroom remodel will be in the picture for us anytime soon (if ever!) but we found a kit on Target.com to reglaze tile, tubs and sinks and thought "well, it can't get any worse right?". 8-)

Here's the result after the first coat. Obviously, it's going to take 2 coats to cover but the results so far are WELL worth it! The only downside is the fumes are HORRENDOUS! We had to put coat 2 on hold until the weather warms up enough to open the windows again. I'm on the hunt for a new shower curtain and then we plan to paint the top portion of the walls and the cabinetry once we have our new color scheme picked out. So there you go, what you can do with $25 and some noxious fumes! I'll update again whenever there's more progress....

Homemade Baby Wipes

I'll confess that I'm the type of person who LOVES to research ideas about how to do different things (sew, quilt, cook, bake, etc. etc.) but RARELY do I ever put these things into practice. I'll blame it on tiredness, too much other stuff to do, homeschooling, no time alone....you get the idea. I'm trying to put a stop to that and actually DO something when I find an idea I like. How profound right? 8-)

I came across this recipe for homemade babywipes and Kailie and I have made 2 batches so far. Each batch has lasted 2 weeks (and that's for 2 kiddos in diapers right now). I figured out that it will save us roughly $100 a year or so from buying wipes (we were buying a full case each month), but the best part isn't even that! All of our kids have sensitive skin and break out EXCEEDINGLY EASILY from just about anything that touches their skin, be it laundry detergent, shampoo, bubble bath or baby wipes. This recipe was tested during our week long battle with tummy flu (and many, MANY disgusting diaper changes!) and the end result: NO RASHES! I was so surprised and am now a committed homemade wipes convert - it only took 5 kids to get me here. ha!

Here's the recipe:
4 cups water (we boiled it for the first batch, but the second time we just used warm from the tap)
2 Tablespoons Rubbing Alcohol
2 Tablespoons Antibacterial Soap - your choice
2 Tablespoons Baby Wash - your choice
2 Tablespoons Baby Oil - your choice, we used the Johnson and Johnson with Aloe Vera and it smells very good! I think I'll try Lavender sometime too....

Pour over your choice of wipes. The first batch we cut Bounty papertowels into fourths. This took about 15 minutes of time. They worked really well but if you use a thinner towel I can't guarantee they'll hold up during the wiping.... Most sites I've seen recommend cutting the towel roll in half and then pulling the wipe up from the middle of the roll. I don't have a large enough circular container to store this style in, that's why we cut ours up.

For the second batch I just cut up an old bath towel into small squares. I got about 50 cloths from one towel and these can just be thrown into the wash and reused. 8-)

I store the wipes in a rectangular Ziplock container, they stay really moist and have worked wonders on speeding up the length of time cleaning the kiddos. I also use them as handwipes and face wipes since they don't cause any breakouts.

I read a tip online that suggested keeping a Ziplock bag of dry towels in your diaper bag and putting the solution into a spray bottle. When you need to change the diaper just spray the solution directly on the child and wipe off. This will help prevent the solution from leaking in the diaper bag.

What does $4 buy you????

Reg. Price

4 cans of Pringles: $1.69 each
3 cans of Air Wick Room Freshener: $ 2.49 each
1 bag of Halls: $1.99

1 Covergirl Outlast All Day Lipcolor: $ 7.99

1 CG Smoothwear Conditioning Moisturizer: $ 4.99
Total Value of all items: $29.20

I had coupons for everything and luckily for me it was double coupon day at Pamida (which is a store I had never heard of before moving to Iowa, but it's basically like K-Mart).

1. The pringles were on sale 2 cans for $3. I had 2 - buy 2 cans save $1.00 Q's which were each doubled to $2. This brought the price for all 4 cans to $2.00.

2. I had Q's for the Airwick's for $1.00 off of one can. I used 3 Q's which were all doubled. Final price for all 3: $1.47

3. My Q for Halls was $0.75 doubled, final cost: $0.50

4. The lipgloss pack was clearanced to $2.50. I then used a $1.00 off any CG product Q which was doubled. Final cost: $0.50

5. The lip conditioner was also clearanced to $1.40. I used another CG product $1.00 Q which was doubled. Final cost: FREE plus I got an additional $0.60 off my total.

So I paid: $4 and some change after tax, a savings of 84%!

I'm also excited to report that I have been in DESPERATE need of replacing ALL of my make-up, I was at the - scraping the last fleck of blush and digging the bottom of the lipstick for an eensy weensy hope of color - stage. However, our budget right now wasn't allowing for a large splurge to replace it all. Here's how I've done since couponing:

Physicians Formula: Blush, Bronzer and Lip Gloss (Walgreens) $13 but will get $10 back at the end of the month.
Final cost: $3
I have a coupon for a FREE mascara the next time I run to Walmart. (and no, it's not buy 1 get 1 free, it's just FREE!)
Final cost $0
CG lip gloss (Pamida)
Final cost: 50 cents
CG lipgloss (Pamida)
Final cost: FREE
Still need to get: concealer, foundation, eye shadow and eye liner.....how much can I save???
Total for makeup so far: $3.50 and I'm halfway to replacing my whole makeup bag.

Easter Sunday

As promised to our family, here are the pics from Easter morning. The kids all looked beautiful! Apparently Lauren (whom we've taken to calling Lolo btw) wasn't interested in smiling for most of the shots, however....someday I'll get one with ALL of them smiling! (I hope, and maybe then we will also work on them actually sitting up and not looking like they're being eaten by the couch....but I digress.) 8-)

(you gotta' love Lolo's hairdo!)

Now we just have to wait for the newest lil' Block to arrive and get a WHOLE family shot!

Blog Schizophrenia

For those of you who have visited my blog in the last week, you may have noticed I keep changing my mind on this blog's appearance. I wanted something cute for Spring, I think I've FINALLY decided on this one. Sorry for all the fuss!

Super cute homemade hairbows for little girls!

Go to Classy and Sophisticated for the tutorial on how to make these beautiful bows for your little ones.

What do you think about this?

I found this in the sales ad for Walgreens this week. I had never heard of it before and am curious to know what you guys think, apparently it's a pee in the cup type of test (ala pregnancy tests) that will accurately predict the baby's gender:

click on image to go to site