Emily's School

Emily's report on bees. She really has enjoyed her bug book from the library and decided the first thing she wanted to read about was honey bees. After reading about it I asked her to write a little about it. She completed it with a couple pictures of bees. The picture stapled to the back shows the bees in the hive and is really cool. She got the honeycomb look and all.


The dinosaur lap book that we had so much fun making. And I love that Emily likes to look back and read it. We were talking about dinosaurs and the dinosaur bones that have been found in our state and she asked if they had found any "terrible lizards"? I knew she got it from her lap book and was testing to see if I remembered that dinosaur means "terrible lizard".


We started our lap book on Pilgrims in November, but after finding out I was pregnant the morning sickness hit hard and we have slowly been coming back to working on it and trying to finish it. So its still a work in progress.

The stalactite experiment. We don't know how many days/weeks it takes for the stalactite to hit the bottom of the dish, but we are waiting impatiently. Lindsey comes in every day to see if it has "grown" yet.

Our bean! Its hard to see, but there is a tiny little root already growing out of the bean. It has sprouted!

For her 6th birthday Emily got a clothespin doll set from her great-grandma. Its awesome and so far these are the doll creations she has made.

I looked all over the house for her journal to show off because I think its totally awesome. But we have misplaced it and will have to show it later. I love this thing. We got it in the notebook section at the store and I love that the paper is for learning beginning writing and it has a space at the top for drawing pictures. Emily writes about what she wants, includes the date and draws a picture. I think it will be really neat when it is all filled up and we can look back on what she wrote.

Library Learning

We have been having some tough financial issues this year, from Emily's hospital stay, Robert's cancer screenings, Lindsey's asthma, me and baby and having some backed taxes we didn't know about. Ballet lessons had to be dropped and so far we can't afford to add anything right now. We are hoping and praying things will lighten up some soon. The stress has had me down as far as homeschooling goes. Feeling like I can't give the important things that I am grateful my parents gave to me. Then there are the thoughts that I should just get a job myself, but how is that possible when I have a new baby on the way. So that plan has been laid aside for even more desperate times. After all, we aren't there yet, we are still making it and paying our bills, there just isn't room for much luxury or extras. And next month I am outfitting my kids for summer so money needs to go towards clothing and an infant car seat.

After feeling a little down for awhile and wondering what to do, the obvious thought came to me.... why am I not using the library for school more?? We use it for fun. Fun reading, movies, etc. but we haven't been actively searching their educational section for curriculum. I kicked myself a little and the next day I went and found some great books! As I mentioned before we have a couple science experiments that have come from one of those books. Another is an art book with so many ideas! Unfortunately Emily isn't quite interested in them- they would be perfect for Lindsey, but not at this age. Oh, well. Guess we will check that one out again in a few years. There is a wonderful book on bugs that Emily has really enjoyed and she did a report on honeybees from it. My mom used the library a lot for educational ideas and yet its something I have been over looking. So even though I am not able to purchase a lot of curriculum right now, learning can still go on. Even on a very tight budget!

Science Experiments

Emily is loving science experiments and we have 2 going right now. We are growing a bean start in a jar with a paper towel so we can watch it. Ours does not look like this yet. I will take pictures when it starts to grow, but this is how it will begin and we are excited to see it.


We also have some stalactites trying to form between two jars with water and baking soda and a piece of yarn in between. A stalactite should form in a few days to a week. We'll see I guess.

Emily wrote to her sister in Taiwan to practice writing and I was impressed when she found her geography book so she could draw Taiwan's flag for her picture to her Aunt. We also talked about mold spores on food and moisture in the air and learned more about positive and negative charges with static electricity and playing with magnets.

Homeschool Update

I have not been very diligent about keeping up our homeschool blog. We have done so many wonderful things for homeschool that I haven't talked about or taken pictures of. I started the homeschool blog so that I would have something to force me to show what we do, but it hasn't worked out that way. We have been doing lap books, water and air experiments, writing, math, reading, park days, dancing, field trips to the zoo and loads of craft projects. My goal is to take pictures of all the things we have done and the things yet to come.


Emily's math has improved quite a bit. She is doing first grade work and doing great! Her reading is still excellent and she is obsessed with Garfield comics and can read those all day! I really like it because the vocabulary is pretty high and she finds new words all the time that she asks me about. Her writing has improved now that I have been having her write a journal entry every school day to keep it up. We are in the process of trying to get into a co-op. We missed the last meeting because of sickness. And January should start dance class up again since she is done with hospital issues.

Lindsey is my little artist. Drawing on the walls and papers and everything. I am so amazed at how naturally this is coming to her. She is just like me. She draws circles and "writes". She is less interested in letters, but knows most of them and loves books. She pretends to read them all the time. She also has a stellar memory! She remembers things that I would never think she would remember.

A Homeschooling Plus

Emily is in the hospital right now for a ruptured appendix. It stinks! She has been here for 6 days now and still going. We are looking at 2 weeks at the least. The plus side here is that she isn't missing school. Still she is too sick to do her lessons and is vomiting a lot, but she is not behind. She is ahead by a couple grades on some things so I don't have to worry right now that she is falling behind. The hardest thing for her is that she is missing dance class. We have been reading stories- a great Madeline story about getting her appendix out- and we are watching non-educational videos. But she is learning a lot about other kids who stay here for months at a time. Kids with cancer down the way and she is learning life lessons that aren't so fun right now to learn. We love her and really hope that soon she will be able to get up and go home and learn while not feeling the need to vomit. Until then, its wonderful to know that life is learning and sometimes we do it when we are sick in the hospital.

Start of the School Year

Emily and I have started our school year officially. Our affidavit is sent in, even though she technically doesn't need it until next year, we decided for our own protection to send it in. Now that vacation mode is officially off after a great Disneyland trip, we are on track. My goals for this year are to work with her math skills and practicing them and practicing writing. She is doing very well. She told me that she already knows how to write. I told her that is true that she knows how to put her thoughts down on paper and can read very well, but that everyone needs to practice their penmanship and the operations of writing letters. We got one sentence down well and I was very pleased with her. Small steps, she is doing great!

We have also been working on her math and she has been doing very well with her math. We have been working on addition, subtraction, place value and multiplication. She has also improved a lot with her reading interest level. Even though she has been reading on a 2nd grade level, she hasn't wanted to go much past picture books and small chapter books. Recently she has picked up 4th grade reading material on her own and found it interesting. She finished in half a day the 4th Magic Treehouse book and asked for more.

So far things are going great! We are excited to start a new year.

Ebay + Homeschool

I needed some books for the new year and was frustrated to find the prices to be outrageous and the shipping terrible too. So I decided to finally jump on and join Ebay. The books I needed were $35 with $8 shipping. Through Ebay I got them for $26 with free shipping. Every little bit helps, especially with homeschool when everything comes out of pocket for us parents.