Conrad's first organ lesson

     As a parent, it's always fun when your kid likes something that you like.  Last week I gave Conrad a little organ lesson before Scouts.  He did great.  He had this simplified hymn memorized.  I've decided I'm going to have them bring their simplified hymn book with us so they can start practicing.  Conrad thought it was awesome.  I let him change the stops around when I was playing. 
     I'm sure one day he won't think this is so cool, so I'll take it while I can get it:)

The Diary of Mary Jemison, Captured by the Indians

    We just finishing reading The Diary of Mary Jemison, Captured by the Indians.  I stumbled upon this book while I was looking for Ohio state history books.  It was a great read aloud.  It's about a 12 year old girl who was captured by the Seneca Indians.  She was 'adopted' to replace a brother who had died.  (Mary told her life story to a local doctor when she was in her 80s).  She eventually becomes free and has the option of staying with her Indian family or going back to her birth family.  

     The kids and I enjoyed it.  It had a lot of vocabulary words to go over such as tomahawked, squaw, bounty, melancholy, plundering, etc...  The kids will journal about it tomorrow and complete some worksheets that I created.  

     Now for our next read aloud....

    

Oh Christopher...

    We are using The Story of the World for history and geography.  We started with Ancient times and are learning chronologically towards the present day.  I enjoy this, but I was troubled when my oldest said that she did not know who Christopher Columbus was.  How could this be??  She's had many years of public and homeschooling.  

    Anyway, I decided to do a unit study on Columbus.  It was a lot of fun.  We got information from a couple different library books, the internet and watched 2 movies on him.  I only remember learning good things about Columbus...

My kids asked me why we honor him when he has done so many awful things.  

     Positives~material provided vocab words, map work by charting his voyages, a topic for them to journal about so they won't ask ME what they should write about:)

     We went back to our normal studies.  Knights and Samurai.  My kids love history because of the enrichment activities we do.  We got a How to Draw Castles and a How to Draw Fighting Figures from the library.  They worked really hard on their drawings.  I created a test for them to take to let me know if they are retaining information.  We usually do oral tests but I've been doing more written tests lately.  

     This chapter gave us a lot of vocab words such as chivalry, orphan, feudal system, page, squire, ect...  Fun stuff.  I'd like them to see an edited version of A Knight's Tale:)

     

OHIO

I blog like I journal.

So, I guess I blog like I journal...sporadically.  Our lives have changed dramatically since my last post. Long story short:
Matt finished his MBA but couldn't find a good job in Utah.
He got a job working for Vita-Mix, which is his family's company.
We moved to OHIO.
We left our family, friends, home and half of our possessions.

We LOVE working for Vita-Mix.  It's proving to be an amazing company.  We are getting to know Matt's extended family and friends.  Ohio is a beautiful place to live.  We've met so many great people here in our church.  We've made some great friends.  We miss our family and Utah friends fiercely and hope to visit every summer. 

One of the constants in our daily lives has been that we still homeschool!  I've decided that my main purpose for blogging will be to help keep track of what we're doing in 'school'.  Ohio has different HS rules than Utah.  Here in OH, we have to notify the school district about the curriculum we are using and our kids will either need to be tested at the end of the school year or hand in a portfolio of their work.  I haven't let OH know that we're here yet:)  I'm going to get everything organized and send all of the paperwork in for this next school year.  I'm going to go with the portfolio options this next year.  I'll need to stop throwing all of the kids' school work away:) 

We are on a two week break from 'school' right now.  My parents were here last week and this week we're just relaxing.  We do 'school' year round so we can take time off throughout the year when we want to.  By the way, I say 'school' when I refer to the more classical methods of education that we do.  We also get a lot of our education by just living our lives.  The kids are usually always taking some class from the library, nature center, museum or science center. 

For the past two months we have been volunteering with FamilySearch at the Cleveland Probate Court.  Jaylee, Conrad and I go once a week and work around 4 hours.  FamilySearch has been contracted to image old probate documents.  After the documents are imaged, they will be indexed, then people can find their relatives!  We love volunteering.  My kids think it's so much fun.  We make a date out of it by getting lunch. 

We are using the following curriculum:
Saxon Math 6/5
Saxon Math 2
Apologia Science (flying animals book)
Story of the World (history and geography)
Spelling lists from superteacherworksheets.com
Cursive/Handwriting without tears
Daily journaling/copywork
Rummy Roots (greek and latin)
Spanish cds and bingo
Random art/crafts
Bastien Piano books

Kids have taking the following classes:
Conrad-Comic book class. 1 month.  Create his own comic book.
Dodgeball
Cultural diversity class at the library
Library service class
Maple sugaring class
Jaylee-sewing and cross stitching
Conrad-Boy Scouts

Enough for now!  Hopefully more to come.

Jazz Game 2012

Jazz Game 2012

Jaylee, Conard and Waverly love playing in the Jr. Jazz League.  It's their favorite sport.  Matt took the kids to watch a Jazz game.  They love doing this with their dad.  They eat junk food, yell DEFENSE and try to get close to the bear:)  Good memories.

Camp Floyd/Finished Book of Mormon

Camp Floyd/Finished Book of Mormon 2012

This was a special day for us. We went to church, went home and through a bunch of food together, grabbed our scriptures ended up at Camp Floyd. Camp Floyd is a 'heritage park that reflects the settlement of Utah and its resolution of ongoing conflicts with the federal government'. It's about 15 minutes away from our house. 

We had been reading the Book of Mormon as a family and were finally on the last couple of chapters. We read the end of the Book of Mormon at this beautiful park and had lunch. It was a neat experience. We'd read the Book of Mormon as a family before, but the kids were younger and don't remember it as well. We gave the kids the challenge of praying and asking Heavenly Father if this book is true. 

Reading the scriptures as a family is hard. Sometimes it doesn't seem worth it because we end with kids being grounded and being set to bed:) It's hard but it IS worth it. 

(On a lighter note: I want this tree! It's the coolest tree. There's even a little hole for the kids to hide in on the other side of the trunk.)