More Christmas Fun...

We had such a blast making ornaments the other night we decided to do a few more. We are meeting with family Christmas eve and this year we're just focusing on the kids, which is how it should be. But, I feel so strange going there empty handed, so I decided to make some ornaments to giveaway.

Here's a look of what we made:

Aren't these cool?

Then I forced my children to make some snowflakes too. :-)

Aren't they pretty??

Unit Studies/The Checklist

What a great resources!

If you have been homeschooling for any amount of time, I'm sure you've at some point stumbled upon the great website from Oklahoma and you may have heard of Cindy Downes. If not, here's a few links to some really awesome things I stumbled upon today.

First of all, since it's Christmas - I'll give you think link to her free Christmas Unit Study. Then, since you're interested in her unit studies now, I'll give you the link to her long list of free unit studies!!

And, to top it off, here is a link to a really great homeschool resource she created called The Checklist. It has a list of EVERYTHING you could think of that we want our children to learn in the course of our homeschool. It's one of the best tools I've seen to make sure you "fill in the learning gaps" and assures that you cover it all (as best as humanly possible). Very cool in my opinion.

I personally think the Checklist would be great to have as a yearly planning tool. As the end of the year approaches, it's always a good time to make sure you're on track for what you planned in your homeschool for the year or the long haul.

Here's yet another resource I'm putting on my wish list. :-)

Big Birthday Suprise!!

Last Friday was a doozy for Superkid!

We woke him up with the surprise of a big birthday trip!!

As he stumbled out to the rental car that was all packed we told him all the things we had planned. He had the widest smile I think I've ever seen on him. :-)

Our first stop was The Jelly Belly Factory for a tour. SO MUCH FUN! The kids had a really good time and especially liked the samples at the end. :-) From that point on I can tell you we ate ENTIRELY WAY TOO MUCH SUGAR! ugh. I'm still sick from it all.

Then we traveled down the road to:


















San Fransisco!

(picture taken by Superkid)


We then took a trip down:


















"the crookedest street in world." Lumbard Street (which according to Wikipedia it's not the most crooked - OH WELL!) I am just amazed that people actually live on that street!



Anyway, from there we went to Fisherman's Wharf. As soon as we showed up there was a clown blowing up balloons my daughter noticed right away. It wasn't even five minutes as we walked past him that he threw off his wig and began to yell at his partners, making a big scene. My poor daughter spent the rest of our time in San Fransisco talking about how "the clown was angry." Superkid had a blast! He was amazed at the size of the buildings and all of the people. We couldn't leave SF without having a bread bowl of clam chowder first, so we walked in the cold night air and finally found a place to sit down for dinner. San Fransisco was fun to visit, but we all agreed we don't think we could stay there too long without going nuts.

We stayed at an average hotel outside San Fransisco. Woke up all excited for the best of the trip (according to the poll taken afterword). We had planned to go to Bodega Bay for Superkid to see the ocean for the first time. We stocked up on our supplies since we planned to have a bon fire on the beach. We went to Safeway to pickup: Hot Dogs and Smore Supplies. YUMMY!!


So, as we begun traveling to Bodega Bay, we got weary of driving (plus we were ready for lunch) and Superman thought he knew of a beach someplace. Sooo, we drove down these windy and hilly roads, expecting any moment we'd see the ocean. Eventually we found a little town and asked how to get to the ocean. They directed us and we made it. And, it was SO worth the drive! The minute we opened the car door we heard the crashing of the waves. We had no problem with lighting a fire on the beach, which just made the whole experience. The weather wasn't too bad either. We had a few times where it sprinkled on us, but altogether it was fairly nice. Our hot dogs & smores were GREAT! The kids made sand castles and had a good time chasing each other with sticks. Every family needs a trip to the ocean on a regular basis I think.

Here's a picture of my birthday boy playing in the dirt & playing with sticks (his two most favorite things to do):


















After that we drove around my husbands old stomping grounds and took a trip down memory lane. It was dark by the time we got over to where he used to live, so he wasn't able to see everything as well as he would have liked. That just means we need to take another trip soon. :-)


Then, we headed back home. As dinner time approached we tricked the kids into thinking we were going to a fancy restaurant since we'd been eating junk and instead we drove into a kids paradise - Chuck E. Cheese!

Altogether we had such a great time. Superkid said this was his best birthday ever.

Happy Birthday my sweet 8 year old boy!!!

Christmas Fun!

I'll post later about our Canada experiences.



I'm just amazed that Christmas is in just one week!!!



We spent some time last night at our own "Christmas party." We cranked up the Christmas music, while we worked on these:






















As we pulled out the Christmas ornaments this year to decorate I realized that my son had a TON of ornaments, while my daughter couldn't find one with her name. :-( Poor her. She did have a craft from last year we did that goes on the fridge, so at least she had something. BUT, I resolved no matter how busy things were, this year we were making ornaments!

Superkid chose to do the iron-on one and Pickles decided to paint some stars.

I can't show the end result of either because they have their names and the date all over them. But, I can assure you - they both turned out VERY cute! Then Daddy got creative and made Pickles her very own iron-on ornament. I don't have pictures of that one (sorry), but I thought that was pretty special.

After hanging them on the tree, we caught up a little with the Jesse Tree (we're just putting the ornaments on our big tree) and ate some hot holiday pumpkin loaf. Yummy!

A very nice Christmas celebration I must say!

Thanksgiving Learning

As I was looking online for some kind of craft/traditional things to do for thanksgiving to make thanksgiving fun, I found this great video on the beginning of thanksgiving. If you click around you will find some other thanksgiving videos as well, like the Presidential turkey pardon. Did you know they go to DISNEYLAND to party after being pardoned???

Click here to learn all about Thanksgiving.

Holiday Crunch Time

I've spent the last few hours trying to get this month and next month organized since we have the following:

Thanksgiving
Weekend trip to visit family
Superkid's birthday
Christmas

(this is not including the fact that I am having a few complications in my pregnancy and I need to keep myself rested right now.)

So, I was trying to figure out how to work out our homeschooling in the middle of the holiday chaos. Here's my plan:

I'm giving myself until Thanksgiving to finish up Mexico. Then the week afterward we will start into Canada. After Canada (as long as that takes) we'll just focus on Christmas until after Christmas is over.

I'm hoping to buy a Jesse tree this week from online so that we can start doing that to keep us focused on what is really important for Christmas. These people have a great calendar here that I'm planning to use as a reference to keep doing school activities during our "Christmas break."

As I'm looking at what I originally planned when I purchased this curriculum, I am actually right on for what I expected to happen. I just know how goofy-headed I get during this time. Good thing, because it gives me comfort knowing I'm "on-track" as best as can be expected here.

Taking it one day at a time and doing what we can when we can. :-)