Our room and Earth Day projects

Okay, so hopefully I'll be able to update a little more timely from now on!  We had a great 1st week! Still waiting for the chalkboard to go up, but I'm keeping my finger's crossed for morning!  But, here are a few pictures ... we're all so proud of it!

P's desk area.

The chalkboard will go above the colored baskets.

Our reading are and fun new chair.

Alphabet wallies above the patio door.

Last week we made two Earth Day projects.  The first were watercolored bookmarks with a pressed flower.  Unfortunately our flowers didn't dry enough (who knew that was possible in the desert?!) and they are turning black.  Boo!  P watercolored on index cards and then we cut them in half.  I found a few cute Earth Day pictures that we taped on and then we laminated them.  Cute, but too bad about the flowers LOL

We also made a paper mache globe. We got super messy and had a blast!

P stirring up the "goop".

Finished for the night!

Day 2: painting lots and lots of blue.

Mommy painted (not very well) the continents, but P painted the Arctic Circle and Antarctica (well, he painted where Santa lives and where the penguins live LOL).  

 And, he finished product, hanging above our reading chair! =)

I'm really hoping that in the future I'll leave myself time to blog more ... still sharing pictures, but actually writing more about our experiences.  Anyway ... Happy Learning!

Easter fun!

Pictures are finally loaded!!  W00t! So, here are a few from our fun Easter Sunday at my aunt and uncle's house. Everyone had a blast in the pool.  The two boys were crazy, jumping over and over!  We tried to get them to jump at the same time, but they couldn't get the 1-2-3 JUMP concept LOL

Here Tia and her little "bittles".  Man that little chica can rock a bikini!

After pooltime, we were very crafty and lured the kiddos out of the pool with promises of an egg hung!  Too bad I couldn't get bug into more than undies!  (I was lucky to get him in those!)

Bittles finding an egg.

That face!!!  Oooo ... I love that girl!

The boys helped NeeNee put the finishing touches on the deserts.

The pretty princess getting her grub on.

Had a great time, hope everyone else did!

Picture issues, brief update!

I have been trying since Sunday to upload pictures and they JUST WON'T DO IT!  Argh!

We started up homeschooling on Monday and despite a few little rough spots, we had a lot of fun! The room is about 20 minutes away from being finished.  McH finished up the blackboard and I painted a border on it today.  He hung the curtain and we'll hang the blackboard and final wallies tomorrow.  If I have to take a picture and upload it from my phone, I will!

I'm also looking at a few additions to what we're doing over the summer.

Time4Learning is a website with different lessons ... haven't looked too much at it, but I know people who use it and it's on sale this month.  $5 for the month is enough incentive for me to try it LOL

Little Passports This looks like one of the coolest programs I've seen.  Each month two characters send the student a package filled with items from a country along with a letter about their visit.  Sounds like so much fun ... I'm wondering if I'll get a bigger kick out of it?  Think we'll try it for at least one country.

The Quirkles This I saw from a giveaway on The Secular Homeschool Community.  It mixes science and reading.  It looks absolutely adorable and I'm thinking it might be something to look at once the school year starts up.  You have until April 30th if you want to stop by and enter!

Spelling City Here is another AWESOME giveaway from The Secular Homeschool Community. Spelling and Vocab made fun ... who knew?!

Anyway, I am hoping that tomorrow I'll have some pictures to share! :)

Here's what we've been growing ... I mean, doing!

Turns out my kid loves to grow things!  We planted Sugar Baby Watermelons (of all things!) and surprise, surprise they sprouted in two days!  Aren't they adorable?

My gorgeous baby!

And ... the winds came, knocked our Sugar Babies to the curb and the poor things just couldn't pull through.  Sooooo, back to the beginning! We picked up some new supplies ... Taken' it to the next level!

Poor kid.  He has my grandpa's smile ... adorable.

We started all but one row in our seed starter, nothing popping through yet, but we remain hopeful.

Starting a garden isn't the easiest thing when you live in the desert.  So, we converted a turtle sand/water, uh, thing, for his garden.  We even got a little umbrella that might (probably won't) help with the scorching sun that shows up around now.  Either way, we're having fun getting dirty and learning about how things grow!

Homeschool room is ALMOST finished!  We have a chair being delivered tomorrow that will hopefully make a great spot for reading together and we are just finishing up our blackboard.  I had a few pictures, but for some reason the files didn't work ... so ... SOON!

Three weeks later ...

... and we are well on our way to officially being a homeschool family!  I honestly think that everyone here is pretty excited.  Watching Bug learn has reminded the grandparents of the awe they felt when my brother and I were young and McH and I are loving the first time around with all of this awe business.

I'm digging through the internet trying to find the right curriculum.  Not an easy thing to do, apparently.  These days there are a plethora of curriculum choices.  That might make my job of researching seem endless, but it's so amazing to see that we can really find something that works for us ... and, if we can't, then I am more than able with all of the options to create something that does.

Next time I'll post before and after pictures of our "homeschool" room, we are very nearly complete.  The last major items are to find a big, comfy reading chair and to make a blackboard - we have the items, just have to get it finished.  THEN, we get to decorate!  We have wall stickers with the alphabet, numbers, fishies and big, fun circles!

So, back to researching I go.  I have been settled two curricula over the past several weeks (ha!) and I'm thinking I'm close to settled for the third time!  Will it be the charm?

Here are the two I was previously enamored with:

Enki Education
Oak Meadow

Now I'm looking at:
Moving Beyond the Page

I'll add in foreign language (Spanish and maybe French or Latin??) and music.  I may also add math.  We're going to start out using Starfall and BOB books for phonics and see if we need to add Explode the Code.

So, there ya have it!  Funny, I read about a lot of people who have people around them being very harsh and critical about the choice to homeschool.  We just haven't had that!  It's like when we adopted and so many of my friends had such a difficult time with the mean and ignorant things people (even family!) would say and we were absolutely blessed to go through the process without that.  I'm SO thankful that we have such a supportive family!!

Wonder where we'll be in another three weeks!!