I realize that my kids’ Halloween pictures were the last thing I posted. On the one hand I feel badly about that. But on the other hand I accept that homeschooling comes with certain sacrifices. This blog happens to be one of those sacrifices – along with afternoon naps.

But the sacrifices are well worth it. I am very happy homeschooling.

Today is an ugly, soggy day. I am extremely thankful that my children and I are warm and dry inside our house. Most of us are still in our pajamas. My morning coffee is perfectly complemented by the Ludwig Van Beethoven Station we created on Pandora. I feel happy.

Banana is in the other room trying to build a house for her dollies out of dominos. She lets out a frustrated shriek every time they fall down. David takes a break from his schoolwork to help her, announcing, “I am a domino expert!” Any other time I would probably ask David to get back to his work, but he was actually being helpful to his sister. I am happy about that and wouldn’t want to interfere with it.

Miss M is working on spelling. Today’s lesson calls for dictionary work – NOT her favorite. She has the dictionary and her papers spread out in front of her, writing each word in a different shade using her 4-color pen. She is doing all of this with a feverish toddler on her lap. I am happy to see him smiling at his big sister, even though he’s not feeling so well this morning.

C.B. and I are sounding out long U words to fill in a story about Sue and her pet mule that eats fruit. We are enjoying the story and it’s making us laugh. I am happy about this because only moments ago he was complaining about having to work on this story.

Today is definitely a good day. My days aren’t all like this one, believe me. That’s why it’s important for me to record days like this one. I tend to focus on the negative instead of on the positive. Writing this post will highlight this day in my memory. I can also go back and read about it when I’m having a different sort of day.

Have a happy day!

You may have noticed that since I started homeschooling I haven’t really been posting anything here. I guess you could say I have been busy. You could also say that I have never been busier in my entire life. Something is always happening around here, and it’s making time go by much faster than usual. Every day I seem to run out of time for all the things on my To-do List. This phenomenon has made for an incredibly long To-do List. And, yes, writing posts for this blog is definitely on it.

Since the Dinosaur Unit Study, we have spent time studying cheese, one of our favorite things here at the Reddy Zoo. Hey…if I get to create my own curriculum, it should be fun. Not to mention delicious. We learned about how cheese is made, various kinds of cheese, and some of the ways cheese is used in making other food products. We invited grandparents over for a cheese tasting and the kids were spouting off cheese facts for them at lighting speed.

For teaching Science and Social Studies, I decided to try using Unit Studies. A Unit Study is defined as “an in-depth study of a topic (space, trees, cars, etc.) that takes into account many areas of the topic, such as geography, science, history, art, etc. It is a complete immersion into the topic so that the student will see things as a 'whole' instead of bits and pieces learned throughout their education.” We started out with a simple subject. One I knew we would all find interesting – Dinosaurs.

I found so many fun things related to dinosaurs. I gathered books, puzzles, games, DVD's and other activities. The kids and I work on Unit Studies two afternoons a week while Banana is at preschool and Mr. H takes his naps. So far it has been working very well. We just finished our three-week study of dinosaurs. We have been very busy reading, doing hands-on activities, and we even took a field trip.

I checked out no less than twenty books about dinosaurs from the library. Some were for the kids to read, some were for me to read to them.

We made a terrarium after reading Dinosaur Habitat, a book about two brothers who find themselves inside of the younger brother’s terrarium. Not only did the plants become life sized, but so did the plastic dinosaurs the boy had carefully put in there. And they were no longer plastic!

Thankfully our dinosaurs are still plastic.

I bought a Dinosaur Dig kit from an educational retailer that I thought would be fun for the kids to try. Then I found small kits at the dollar store that I picked up just in case we needed something extra to do. It turned out that those little kits offered much more fun for a dollar than I ever thought!

The kids scraped away layers of clay to reveal tiny dinosaur bones.

Since I posted hardly anything all summer long, I went through my pictures from May through August and found quite a few worth sharing. As you can see, we had a fun summer!

Dad at an Alumni basketball game

I have a lot to catch up on. Homeschooling does not allow me as much time to blog as I had gotten used to. In case I don’t get another opportunity to blog again soon, I decided to condense several big events into one post.

First, we have a new nephew!!

This “little” fella weighed in at 9 pounds, 10 ounces! His parents and three older brothers are ecstatic about his arrival. Miss M and I got to snuggle with him for a little while this week.

Yesterday was our first day of school. Since we are homeschooling this year, things were a little different from previous first days of school. Last year the kids’ “First Day” picture looked like this.

This year it looked like this.

We still had to wake them up for school. And they still looked incredibly tired during breakfast.

Instead of desks they each have boxes for their books, notebooks, folders and pencil cases.

But they still had lots of work to do.

Miss M’s softball season is finally over. But the climactic ending was worth the extra length. Her team won their division and made it into the City-County playoffs. They won their first game in a close and exciting match-up. It was so much fun to watch!

I just had to share these cute pictures I took over the weekend.

Miss M holding her new baby cousin.

Mr. H lying in a field of clover.

We had a fun and busy weekend. We went bowling with a homeschoolers' group on Friday, attended an ice cream social at church on Saturday, and on Sunday Miss M's softball team won their first City-County playoff game. And what an exciting game it was!! I had so much fun watching Miss M and her coach (Dad) at the game yesterday. I cheered so loudly that I was nearly hoarse afterwards. I am so proud of both of them. And I'm looking forward to the next game tomorrow night!