Week of 8/31 and the next one too ;)

Noah & Nick at Dr

This last week has been nothing like I expected it to be. I decided earlier this year to school 6 weeks on and 1 off. This week was our first week off. I had planned on letting the kids enjoy their time and spend time with free reading after visiting the library :) On Thursday we were suppose to leave for Georgia and visit some of what we had been studding in history previously.
   The first part of the week went pretty well. I cleaned and got things moving in the right direction. Monday 4 of the kids had dentist appointments which went well :) NO cavities!!!

just before surgery

   Tuesday was more Dr appointments :) Noah had his check up and all was well there too. After the doctors, Brie and Noah had TKD and we came home to a sick daddy :( This is where our nice-fun weekend turned a tad ;). Wednesday night we thought Big Tony had a stomach but, but by the morning we realized something was really wrong. He had pain in his lower abdomen that just continued to grow. By Thursday morning his mom took him to the ER. Since his pain was in the lower part of his abdomen I thought it may be his appendix, and it was. That evening he was headed to surgery to get it removed.  Thankfully, he already had Thursday-Monday off for vacation because we were suppose to leave on the following day. Unfortunately, after all the planning he did, he didn't get to go :(
   Thankfully the surgery went well and he is recovering nicely :)

Amber!!!

    Since our family "vacation" actually had a purpose to it, (Mimi had to go to French embassy in Atlanta, GA) we still had to leave. That was probably one of the hardest things I have done, leaving my dh behind, but my parents took care of him and he got some great quiet time. Also, my friend Amber was able to come with us so that was nice having a little extra help ;0)


   So, since we went to Atlanta, we had a great time ;) It was also my mother-in-law's b-day during the trip ;) Since it was a quick trip I took the kids to a park downtown while she was out then we went to Lego Land!! The kids had a blast here. There was a great big play area for babies/toddlers that the little ones enjoyed, a 4-D movie theater, rides, and all the legos you could play with :) It was a great adventure. Thankfully we are home now. Tony is doing better. We did unfortunately have a stomach bug go through our house the following week, but plan on having a nice and normal school week this coming up week and Tony should (fingers crossed) be going back to work :) I have loved having him home, but ready for some normalcy to return to this household :)

The week of 8/23

    So we have had an eventful week this week.

Kayla giving me the stinkeye

1. We finished up our first 6 weeks of school!!! Last week I wrote a post about how we were going to try schooling 6 weeks on then 1 off. I was going to wait for the bigger kids to finish up 6 weeks, but I started Brie 6 weeks ago and this mama could use a little break :)
 I also decided to break up Noah and Kayla from doing school together. Kayla, who is in 3rd grade, hasn't been getting too much out of school, so I am starting Sonlight Core 1 with her and that has been going great so far. I am trying to make a list of links to give her some extras because she loves hands on activities. If you have any suggestions please share :)

2. We had TaeKwonDo testing this week for both Noah & Brie. Noah has been taking lessons for the last 4 years and tested for his recomended black belt. In about 6 months he will be testing for his 1st Degree Black Belt!!! So proud of my little man.  Brianna tested for her yellow belt. She started taking lessons about 2 months ago since she is finally 5 :) She has been tagging along to classes since she was about 9 months old so she is happy to be doing this now. Her joy in this is now she can spar...watch out!!!

Noah drawing Fred

 3. Noah is almost done with Teaching Textbooks 5 and I am letting him try out Life of Fred Fractions. He loves Fred and so do I. If anything they are fun to read :) Here he is drawing Fred.


4. Nicholas is working on how many pacifiers he can put in his mouth at one time. I think his record is 3 :)

5. We have a new addition to the family. We have been talking about getting chickens for a long time and hopefully we will eventually, but as we were driving around we thought we would stop by the pound and look at puppies :) They didn't have any smaller dogs so we stopped by a pet store to look and fell in love. So, here is the newest member of the Stefko Crew, her name is Daisy-Mae and she was born on 6/23/15, 2 days before Nicholas turned 1. She's a beautiful dachshund.  We couldn't resist ;) We are calling her my early birthday present.

Week of August 10th

Brie's art project

   This week was our first week in full swing. Brie has been doing her school for 4 weeks completely, but I have eased into the older 2 joining in. Last week my 5th and 3rd grader just did CLE LA, Reading, and Teaching Textbooks(math). That was not too bad :) This week we have added in Bible, history, science and some music/art.  I have really missed doing these fun subjects with the kids. We have learned a lot this week and had a bunch of fun.

MFW books with book basket

    Truthfully the MFW cycle we are doing is for 2nd-8th grades, but my K student loves joining in on a lot. We were working on week 8 and learned about Reptiles, Amphibians, King Louis XIV, and a bunch of other things. We actually didn't have a ton of books for our book basket this week but next week is loaded!!!
    For the big kids we were learning about the life cycle of a frog. The kids have known this for a while, but now we get to watch it, if the tadpoles don't die ;)

fishing out the swimmers

can you find the tadpoles?

   I confess to have neglected our pool for a week or maybe 2. In light of this a frog or 2 or a dozen had decided to lay their eggs in our pool. I know this happens so I try to stay up on the pool, but to my surprise we probably had 100+ tadpoles swimming around the sides of the pool!! I knew if I didn't let the kids rescue some of the tadpoles they wold be heartbroken so they dug up an old fish tank we had and filled it with a dozen or so little swimmers :)   The one little neat thing about this lesson is that the day we caught out tadpoles I didn't know we would be studying the lifecycle of frogs or that keeping some tadpoles would be suggested, so that worked out nicely :)

look at them go :)

Tony and Nick

 And of course the little kids weren't too interested in looking at the tadpoles because they were busy digging in dirt!!!

 Finally, the kids had a great time working on art. I am not a crafty type of person, I leave that up to Mimi  or my mom, but art time is good for them. This lesson they were paining angels. Anytime I pull out paint they come running so this was a nice lesson that eventually my K student decided to join in on. That is always nice when you can have an activity where they all decide to be calm, of course this was during nap time too which contributed to the quiet :)

   And finally we had 2 great moments this last week. Super Brie here lost her first tooth and my cat Kiki which we had assumed was long gone finally came home after being gone for almost 3 weeks. We had neighbors move and were afraid she might had gone with them, but thankfully she made her way back :)

BLHFHG unit 20/21 LHFHG unit 5/6

 
This last week has been a lot of fun for us. I really do love the little projects that HOD has that go along with their learning. This last week we finished up Unit 4 and part of Unit 5 in LHFHG. We are working through Moses's life in the OT and how the Israelites worshiped a golden idol. We actually made our own little peanut butter calf but I didn't get the pic. They were really cute and tasted really good when we ate them :)


In science we explored dirt also. We learned about the different layers that dirt has. Here is a pic of our soil layers. Of course both kids had to partake. Our rocky bottom layer was made up of raisins followed by gram crackers for the top soil and cereal flakes for the humus layer. We also finished up our first book from the Thornton Burgess collections, The Adventures of Reddy Fox. I will definitely say Kayla has learned a lot of what not to do from the example of Reddy ;)

   Reading is going well also for Kayla. I have used a couple of different phonics programs in the past and this one is a perfect fit for her. There are pictures that go with the lesson and I let her color after she is done reading each lesson. She is definitely a workbook girl and this has a nice flow with it. It started out on the easy side since she knew how to do CVC words, but it is getting a lot harder now she is working her way through. 
   Math is going at a good pace also. We started Horizons 1 math with her about 2 weeks ago and it is a nice mix of stuff for her. She had finished up Singapore math 1A and I wasn't ready for her to go into 1B yet so we are taking this time learning basic facts and also skip counting.
Noah is also doing well working through BLHFHG. We have finished up week 20 and are starting week 21. Friday we learned about how the French explored and settled some of the middle part of America and how the Indians showed them how to make canoes. So...of course we made canoes from salt dough. Whenever we make this around the house all the kids have to be a part of it. Kayla made a sailing ship, Noah made a canoe and Brie made a mess. I actually salvaged the mess and made a little hand print for her to give to someone eventually :)

Noah's math is also coming along well. I think we will finish up Singapore 2A this week and then move onto Singapore 2B. He is doing well with the transition into multiplication and division so I am happy with that :). We are also still chugging away at LA. Everything has pretty much been a review there, but I know R&S has a good reputation so I know he is learning well.


We finished the week off by having a nice little nature walk and fun at the park with daddy :)

More from Week Oct 9-12

Well we have had a lot of fun this week!!! One thing I notice with dd is that Sonlight might be a tad too much for her right now. So we are back to LHFHG for a little bit. I am really starting to like LHFHG. We have had some great conversations that really have touched her heart. One thing today that we covered was why parents discipline their children. We were reading from the devotional book that goes along with this program. I truly love this book. If you don't have it, it is great to do on your own.
Anyway, We are really enjoying LHFHG. I would of had more pics this week but my camera was acting up and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. I got a new SD card and it seems to be working okay so hopefully I can take some more fun pics of our adventures.

 Here is Kayla showing off her first attempt of sewing. I unfortunately only know how to patch holes so she saw me fixing a hole in a pair of pants so she had to learn. This is a cloth napkin and she is sewing up the sides. Noah took a turn but he wasn't very interested :)

Noah is also working on Shurley English 2 this year and this week he was suppose to make a book filled with synonyms and antonyms. He isn't too big on writing and I didn't have any magazines for him to clip words from so I improvised and I wrote a couple syn/ant combos on each page and he illustrated it. It turned out really nice. Kayla saw him doing it so she had to make her own book. I am quite proud of both of them.

Finally, here is Brie. Whenever she sees me with the camera she comes running and asks me to take her picture too. Her schooling this week is more potty training. Hopefully this is learned quickly :)

Week of Oct 9-12

Tuesday
    So I have been pretty busy the last few weeks and have neglected my blog :( So this is what we have been up too.

I found a Bowflex in the basement. My cousin had purchased it and then my aunt got it from her and my dad traded a pool table for it and then left it in the basement here. We rent their old house so since they decided they didn't want to move it we now are the proud owners of it. So...after it sitting in our basement for 2 years it is now on the porch and I am going to move the treadmill out there and hopefully get a TV to put out there and have a little exercise room for myself. I have used it and do sometimes use my treadmill so hopefully it will be a room that gets used and not wishful thinking :)

 Here is Kayla. We are working on week 3 in Sonlight A. We were learning about Ancient Greece some and so I found this little print off here to personalize a vase like the Greeks did. For science we are on weather right now learning about hurricanes and tornadoes and how weather effects animals.

My pretty little Brie Brie

loves to have her picture taken so since she saw me taking pics she had to be a part of the fun :)

 Next, Noah is working on week 11 of HOD Beyond. Thomas in our history reading shot an arrow through a paper window that had just been oiled so for our art activity we oiled some paper. I only had some white construction paper, but in the pic below you can see how the oiled paper lets in more light than just the regular paper (and our nicely covered pool in the back).

April 2011

Well, we are still plodding along with our school year. I am excited about getting close to done with our curriculum for the year. The next few weeks we are pretty much going to focus on the 4R's. I am ahead in almost everything except the core, so we will do that and then throw in the core readings. I think the readings are Noah's favorite part anyway so this will be a treat for him. I am really trying to focus on handwriting too because even though we have practiced some and he can write, I think it is time to really improve the handwriting so he does it neatly.

Math is going well also. We are working our way through Singapore 1A for now. I think he is really doing well with this and we are also throwing in memorizing math facts. I just made my own cards up so that is going pretty well. He gets a little frustrated when he gets them wrong, but it can be a little confusing.

LA is going pretty good also. We are about 5 weeks ahead in this area, so we are going to back off and I will let Noah have a little break here. That is where we are just going to work on Handwriting and reading with a little copywork thrown in. I have Shurley English I have purchased for next year as well as SL LA 2 with the readers and ETC 4-6. I am so excited to start all this, but I think I want to have a summer break before we dive into a new core/LA... Kinda like starting a fresh new year.

Science has not really been happening here. I just have not been keeping up in this area. Sometimes I will do some and they do enjoy it, I just haven't gotten that in the game yet. We did read some about the earth from Apologia and noah and kayla really enjoyed that. I guess for now they will have to live with The Magic School Bus on TV for science :) (They are watching that as I type)

Kayla I have decided to do SL P3/4 instead of the P4/5. I ordered a bunch of the books off of Amazon for real cheap so I am pleased with that. She really likes those books. I am mostly just reading them to her before bed time. I think I would like to have a more relaxed K year with kayla, but she really will be almost 6 when it is time for her to start school...December b-day. Oh well. She does enjoy school, but she still needs to learn a little more about self-control before she can really get into doing school. We still work on things orally like counting and read some together, but she does have a shorter attention span.

Overal, I am pleased with how the school year has gone. I didn't know how I could do it, especially with 3 kids, but God's grace is amazing and sufficient! Thank you Lord for a great school year so far.

January update

Well, Spring semester has started and so has school again. We have enjoyed a nice Christmas holiday break :) We took off right before Christmas and are just starting back up after some sickness in the family. There are no subs in homeschooling, well that is if daddy isn't available too. So, I will go through what we are using. I have changed up curriculum a little again so I will go by subject:

Math: We are back with using Horizons K. I had switched with MUS, but Noah was starting to get confused with his numbers from 0-100 and Horizons is good with reviewing. We had previously finished the first book so we are working on book 2. I had switched mainly because he was complaining about all the writing, but that hasn't been much a problem now. We are learning subtraction which isn't going too bad so all is well.

LA/Reading: We have for the most part finished SL's LA and readers 1 so instead of going to LA/Readers 2 regular I wanted to give him a little more review on this level. We are using Rod & Staff right now. The reading isn't too challenging for Noah and he really likes the reading workbooks and activity pages that go along with this program. I also got the phonics books but am not too excited about them. We both were really liking the ETC books, so if by the end of this book if we aren't liking it a lot more I will go back to ETC. We are still reading some of the Readers from SL and he is doing very well. He even will pick up some of the Dr. Seuss books to read on his own, loving it. One other thing I love about R&S is that their reading is so Bible based, it is like combining LA and Bible, so other than his daily bible readings we do in the morning and at night I don't feel we need a bible program right now.

Core 4/5: We are going through this quickly because he loves the books. We probably do about 2 or 3 days worth of reading in 1 day. This has science/history together in it. It is a little lighter right now. I think we are around week 13, but both the kids are really enjoying this core. I will most likely do this again with Kayla when she is 5 next year.

October update

So.... even though school was going well I had a big blessing and my parents got me Sonlight's Core P4/5 which we actually started today. Noah was doing well with Core K, but it had been pushing it a little and I needed to slow down a little for him. He and Kayla both enjoyed school today and it was easy :) It is funny since we have been reading a lot of material to go backwards. After reading science they asked, "Is that all?" That is a lot better than are we done yet! So here is a summary of where we are so far

LA: We are doing readers 1. We are repeating I Can Read It book 2. He was struggling a little with book 3 so instead of getting frustrated I thought we should strengthen where he is at in book 2 and just redo it. That is nice because I was thinking about throwing in some of LA K, so I will be using that while we reado reader 2. I really didn't know if I wanted to go into LA 2 regular so quick, so doing LA k and 1 gives me a little more time before we have to advance. We made an F page today and Kayla and Noah are both able to participate. We drew different things starting with the letter F. Kayla also learned how to write her name. It is a little rough, but hey, she is only 3 :)

Math: We are doing the word problems for Lesson 1 and 2 and then will move on to Lesson 3 for Math-U-See in their Foundations of Math program. He is liking this program a lot more than Horizons so I am happy.

Science: We started Sonlight's Sci K and there is also one that came with P4/5 so we have plenty of science to go around. The Berenstain's bear big book of science is a huge hit here. Kayla had me read about 50 pages the day we got it. We are also learning about weather too. The other day Noah pointed out what type of clouds were in the sky. That was so neat (we learned about clouds last week).

History: Well, nothing much lately.

Handwriting: Noah is doing much better here. He was copying his spelling words and had to point out to me that he made a letter better than I had. I don't mind that at all.

Well, I am sure there is more, but it is nap time and I must lay the kiddos down. :)

Checkin September 30, 2010

So, I think it will be easier to update the school week if I just divide it into subjects :)

Math: Math-u-see is now our curriculum and loving it. We did finally buy the blocks and both the kids like them. We have finished up the intro section and lesson 1 and will be moving onto lesson 2 this next week. I really love the video that goes along with it. I think Noah needs to know that this is how math is done and it isn't just mommy saying so. I also like the program because there isn't so much writing yet. Horizons was just killing ds who apparently doesn't like writing numbers so much. He can sit and write a story for fun, but will die if you ask him to write a number :).

Read-Alouds: We just finished Dr. Dolittle. I really enjoyed the book and I believe Noah did too. Towards the end he asked for me to keep reading, so I will take that as a good sign. I don't know if he will have the same reading addiction that I have, but who knows it might develop. I wish I would of been homeschooled with this curriculum just because I would have loved to stay home and read constantly, but then again I would have become a hermit. Anyway, we started 100 dresses. We started this book earlier in the year but ds was going through a girls are yucky stage with his bff, so I think he is ready now. We ready The Rag Coat prior to this and he really loved that book and was very upset about how the other children made fun of the little girl. I think 100 dresses will be a hit now for him.

Science: I am excited about this. I just had another box day for science. I was using Apologia, but I just don't think it is a fit for us right now. I think it is very interesting, but it is Noah that needs to get it. Sonlight has a spiral approach for science. We are on week 2 of Science K and loving it. I finally figured out how to use the Usborne Children's Encyclopedia's links, hurray for me. Both kids are really liking science right now. Today we talked about the rain cycle and ds went off on a tangent about the seasons which we had studied last week. I think it is a little more practical for him right now because he is observing seasons and the things that are talked about in SL science, and even though he likes learning about Astronomy, he can't really see much of what we are learning about.

Language Arts: We have been a little slow in this area the last week. We did 1 week over a 2 week period. We were busy last week so for some reason this is the subject that doesn't always get hit. He is in LA1, so I don't feel too bad if he gets a little behind in this area. We are about 2 weeks behind in LA from our core, but I have skipped 2 or 3 weeks in the core because I wanted to read the RA at the end, so we are pretty well on track really :) We also have added in a handwriting program which is going pretty well. My dd really wishes she could be doing it, but I really don't want her to start anything yet more than writing on the fridge with dry erase markers (she is only 3 still).

History: I kinda waver for history. I like the Good News book that comes with Core K, but ds has been asking if his friends will be beheaded or persecuted and I think this book might be a little intense right now. I know he likes action, but some of the stories in this book can be intense. I want him exposed to what really goes on in the world, but I don't want him to be afraid yet. Anyway, a friend of mine gave me a history book; History for little pilgrims. We both really like this book. It is very biblical and he knows a lot of what we have covered so far. We have covered from creation to the tower of babel so far. I will say ds knows his bible :) Thank you Lord.

Bible: We are using the Egermeier's bible and CD that came in Core K. I will confess that I haven't been totally faithful to daily do the CD. I think I have them all memorized. I have let my schedule get off just a little. Usually we start the day at the breakfast table and I read the bible and they color a bible coloring picture while I read. Then we usually listen to the memory verse at least 2 times. I think I am going to put the CD in the van so we can listen to it when we drive. I have another kids CD they have listened to, but I really want them to get the word in them. That is what really transforms lives, God's word! Anyway, the bible is great, but I wonder at times if it does go a little over their head. I do love that it contains biblical stories that most children's bibles don't contain. I might reread this bible again with Core 1. We also like to enact the bible stories with our crayons while I read it, so today the Assyrian army was coming against Kind Hezekiah and we had an almost war with our crayons, it was great :)

Well, I think that is it for the week with Noah. I did get the IG from Sonlight for their P3/4 program so I could be doing that with Kayla. I really do like the stories that are included in the program. I have been struggling with maybe combining the two kids when we are done with Core K, but I just don't think I want to push Kayla into starting "school" when she turns 4. I know she is very bright, but I just want her to learn to enjoy stories and reading. She can hop in on Science and she loves the experiments, and she does math by playing with the blocks. I know eventually doing 2 cores will be more work, but hey homeschooling 2 different grades is going to be more work anyway.

Well, hope you guys have enjoyed our last week. BLessings :)

Core K week 19

Well, today was a good week and a lot of fun. We are close to being done with Dr. Dolittle. I wish I had the old movie to show Noah, but oh well. We finished up our journey to Mercury yesterday so we will be off to Venus next week. I also ordered Science K from Sonlight so I am excited about that!! You know you are a curriculum junkie when you use your birthday money to buy homeschool curriculum :).
Language Arts is going well. We started his third book in the I Can Read It series. I think he is liking the books a little more because there is a broader vocabulary being introduced, well compared to The Cat is Fat. The rat sat on the cat :) He is also really loving to write. My husband mentioned that his handwriting needed a little work, so we started A Reason For Handwriting this week. He has done the first 6 lessons. I think he likes doing worksheets.
For history I decided I wanted to try SOTW to see if he would like it for next Core. He has loved it. We have finished the first chapter on nomads and he has talked about things we have read.
Friday we have taken off. Mommy needed a break after a long day yesterday. That is one of the things that I love so much about homeschooling, you can make and change your schedule whenever you need to.