Well it is that time again-and my heart reflects the past, present and future

Our third child is winding down in her educational story which has unfolded under our little home school for the past 13 years (starting from Kindergarten-but really since birth) and well-it makes me a bit weepy to think about it.  Where has the time gone?  How can I be on the footpath toward another graduation of one of my precious blessings?  Have I done all I could for her?  Has she learned what she should have (up to this point)?

We will be purchasing her announcements, 

tassel and diploma from

Homeschool Diploma 

(we have for all the other children and 

are very pleased with the quality of these)

My heart grows heavy when I think of one less student in our little classroom-one less to plan for, one less to be entwined with on a daily basis in our daily homeschool affairs. But...

I know now (after watching her sister and brother walk through those doors) that even tho it makes our hearts sad at times [yep dad is feeling it too], it is also a new chapter in the story of her life and one we gladly look forward to unfolding.  Have I or her father done all we can?  No-that is impossible when life steps in and deals up some distractions, new roads and challenges.  Should I have taught her this or that instead of other things? Maybe, but I can honestly say we have done our best and pray the Lord will fill in those gaps we missed. I cannot fret about "what if" or "I should have" because that does no good.  I have learned in the past 16 plus years of walking the homeschool journey that there will be gaps, will be mistakes and will be areas that are weak yet, I have also learned that all children have gaps, mistakes and weak areas coming from every learning institution.

On the other hand, I have seen the "proof in the pudding" in my adult children.  By fighting for my children's education and by keeping them home with me to be taught in an environment that promotes love of God and family, more one-on-one attention and time spent working through learning difficulties at a pace that is set to the child's ability and needs-our graduates have become young adults that make our hearts swell with pride (not the bad kind of pride but a joyous pride in seeing them make good choices [more often than not-after all they are imperfect human vessels], having good work ethics and so forth).  I have seen it and I am overjoyed that I hung on during rough times and rejoiced thru the break through moments and just loved my children to the best of my ability. And I know this graduate to be will find her niche, and we pray that she will continue on the path laid out for her by her ever loving Heavenly Father.

our choice for her announcements-from Homeschool Diploma

So as we choose "class" colors, select announcements, zero in on a graduation date, our hearts may be heavy but they are also filled with awe that we have had this time with our precious daughter. We have watched her blossom from an inquisitive child to a young lady gifted with incredible artistic talent, a loving heart and a dose of orneriness that will suit her well out there in the "real world".

For those of you wondering if it is worth it, if you can run the gauntlet (to graduation), both my husband and I can answer that with a resounding YES!  You can do it with God's grace and mercy, perseverance on your part (and the student's) and love. I have a lot of regrets in my life, but staying home and teaching my own is not one of them.

I consider this to be one of the best legacies I can leave my children-to have served not only as their mother but to have walked them through childhood to graduation in the capacity as their main education facilitator.  Thank you Lord, thank you.

Wow-"Cassandra" our PW child has found her forever fam!

That is awesome for her-she has such a sparkle about her-so I guess we're down to McKenna getting her family now.  :)  Please continue to join me in praying for that precious girl!

[Cassandra was adopted outside of Reece's Rainbow, so we won't be able to follow her progress-but we can still pray for a smooth transition into her family and for a wonderful life for her.]

I forgot to add this to my Emma post

One of the difficulties in reading the "literature of old" is the complexities of them.  Lots of characters and situations abound in Miss Austen's stories-so we decided to use the white board as a diagram station to note the different (main) characters and situations in the story line.  If you need a way to help your student figure out the plot or to just simply follow the intricate craziness of it all...this is a good visual option for you and your student.

You can see how we put Emma in the center and branched out the family members and suitors, while adding little symbols to highlight the love triangles or should I say none love triangles?  LOL.  It is definitely helping in keeping everyone straight.  The pictures are for our Renoir study.  :)

It's all about Emma

Emma by Jane Austen that is.  So my teen is mid-way through the book (which I love) and I have discovered some interesting things and thought I would share them with you.

image from Amazon.com

1. When a teen balks at a reading assignment-say because it is not an era nor anything they thought would be "interesting"-persevere.  I wasn't expecting my teen to go all Jane Austen nutty on me, but I had hoped she would at least walk away with a broader sense of what good literature is, and perhaps a wee bit of "love" for Jane's writing style.  I wouldn't back down when the initial complaints started and I very glad I didn't. [I will get back to this in a moment]

2.  Austen's writing is still touching her audience generations later.

3.  There is something to be said about well-structured sentences, and delightful circumstances in one's writing that instantly draws you into the story and the time period. [and no I do not pen my blog posts like I would if I were writing a paper, etc.]

image from Christianbook.com

Our oldest daughter loves, loves Jane Austen. In fact (this may sound odd to many) but she requested all the novels for her birthday last year (and she is 23)...she also read Emma in her literature class (I used the Gold Learning Language Arts Through Literature series) which I am betting started her love for Austen's writings.  Well that and the Wishbone episode where they did Pride and Prejudice (which is adorable-I miss that show. We watched it regularly and the kids were first exposed to Austen way back then)....anyway,  my heart is overjoyed to see my children actually want and request these "antiquities" because it points out the fruit of feeding our children good literature during their school years.

I am against giving children junky, poorly written, twaddle-type books (mind you I am not talking children's books that delight, or having a few fluffy pieces here and there. I mean for their main diet in their education, I am not a super purest but I do feel care should be taken in keeping the main course to good literature).

What is alarming to me is the destructive thought of "who cares what they read, as long as they are reading" which plagues the educational realm so much today. It does matter! The decline of our nation's children in regard to the exposure and knowledge of excellent literature is alarming and has great consequences-some of which are already rearing their ugly heads (have you looked over the national test scores lately?). I am speaking generally, as there are always exceptions within the PS/PS setting. Sadly too, even some homeschool families fall victim to this thought.  But if students are [continually] reading the hastily penned books that contain nothing more than "dumbed-down" sentence structure, poor grammar, weak plots [or no plot] and so forth-then more likely, that is how they will write and express themselves. They will be devoid of the skill because they have not had a solid foundation laid for them.  Charlotte Mason has a lot to say about this very subject-and I strongly urge folks to take the time to read her thoughts, and books from others who have studied Charlotte and her methods.  Even if you choose to not incorporate much of her style into your educational plan-this is one area that you should strongly consider adopting.

image from Wikipedia.com

That said-and back to what I mentioned in #1-my dear daughter has now been drawn into the world of Miss Austen. She delights in narrating to me the happenings of Emma and has even picked up a couple lines to toss around in every day life ("Badly done Emma." is one of them. When someone does something in error she'll [or actually any of us] will throw that line out but replace Emma with their name...it is funny). The key to my post here is that she has a new appreciation for this writing and has discovered a liking for this era and for the author. What a loss it would have been if I had caved and not asked her to stretch herself to discover Austen (and even if she walks away not totally enthralled-she still has been exposed-and that is important). I don't think she'll be quite as enamored with Miss Austen as our oldest, but she definitely has a new love for her and her writing.  Actually, this daughter loves The Great Gatsby [she likes this time period better] and has requested to read other books by Fitzgerald.  That again is testimony to my point here-"feed" them great literature and you will reap a harvest of a love for the well-written word.

image from Amazon.com

And for an extra boost-we have watched 3 versions of Emma now on DVD.  We have found the BBC [2009] version to be the best.  It stayed the closest to the story line, and had the most believable actors.  I love it when she can say, "Hey, that isn't in the book." or "They skipped a lot here." and so forth too.

Ah yes, "Well done Emma, well done."

For more info on Charlotte Mason:

images from Amazon.com

My favorites:

Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling Series by Charlotte Mason (this is kind of hard to read-you'll need to study it and use other resources at times)
Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola
Charlotte Mason Education and More Charlotte Mason Education by Catherine Levison
When Children Love to Learn: A Practical Application of Charlotte Mason's Philosophy for Today by Elaine Cooper

Cross post from my CM blog-Our little art section

So I took down the poster above the white board and taped up these 5 pics the kids have done.  These are my favorites ones from their projects so far.  I will hopefully find some white frames to really draw attention to them and also, as ya know-we have to be matching with the room decor-LOL...

Oh, the writing on the board is for my teen's study of Emma.  We have so many characters and crazy love triangles that we figured it best to plot out the story characters and some interesting facts on the board to make sense of it. :)

Left to right:  the two Renoir mixed media paintings (DD decided not to add lettering to the can), the Pointillism project my DD did a couple years ago (you can read about it here) and the two 6 step paintings the kids did with our CM co-op. 

I love how the kids art makes our room so cozy and personalized.  I love being able to look back at what they have done too.

Art project-Renoir inspired

To go along with our Renoir study, we did a Mixed Media Still-Life art project found on page 45 in the book: Discovering Great Artists.

For those of you who do not have access to this book, I will give you the directions for completing it. :)

Gather your materials:

for each artist you will need-

*cardboard or matte board 

(size up to you-I used the cardboard backings from some

yellow note pad pages-those were pretty good-altho, having something

 slightly thicker would have been best-

but look at those cardboard backings under

your paper pads-good way to recycle them!)

*white tempera paint (I found white poster paint and it worked)

*painters tape 

(get FROGTAPE by Shurtape (green), if you can-it works better than

the blue painters tape-I found mine at Home Depot which seemed

to be the cheapest I could find. It was about $4 which is the same price
 as the blue tape. THIS IS THE BEST tape for painting-

it does not leave those little boo-boos like 

the blue will-let me tell ya...

and yes, we have used both-will not use blue again)

*pencil/eraser (altho try to not erase if possible)

*paint brushes, water container 

*water colors

*real or fake flowers/twigs/etc. for your still life 

(be creative-look around your home for fun things to use)

*type of vase

(again be creative-I used a tea pot and a container for coffee)

Process:

1.  Tape the cardboard to something-painter's board, drawing board, etc. I used two pieces of white board. I had extra from when we cut down the large piece we bought/used for the classroom. Maybe even a clipboard will work-anything to secure it to so the cardboard doesn't slip.  Yes, you can just place on protective cover/paper, paint it and then just do this, but I find that you'll get a better result when the paper/board is secured to something larger and hopefully, waterproof or not so absorbent as the paper. 

2. I like to create about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch trim-depending on how big your project is.  Will this show when I frame it? Probably not on this one because it is an ugly brown cardboard, so I will try to cover it with a matte...but with a white board/paper it looks very pretty when you have an edging.

3.  Paint the cardboard white (tempera/poster paint).  I did this twice to be sure the cardboard was covered nicely.  The poster paint may not have given us the result the lesson wanted (for it to bleed with the watercolors) but I wasn't about to drive to the mall area to just buy one bottle of paint...so we used what the local Meijer store had and it was just fine.  Let dry before you begin the drawing/watercolor part.

4.  Set up your arrangement, and have student lightly sketch the image.

The boy was more focused on creating a background, and I think that jetting out image on the right side is a window sill, I think. :)  This just goes to show how everyone sees/does things a bit differently. :)

5.  Use a light color to wash color into the background coming close to the image.

6. Use watercolors and paint-try to let it bleed/blend together.

  

7.  When dry, have the artist sign their name and frame it.  

The teen still needs to put the writing on, but we had to let it dry first and then she had to leave to babysit, so once I have these framed, I will post them (and obviously, there will be their signatures and the writing on the can in this picture).

And there you have a Renoir inspired art project-and hey-you don't need to be studying him to do this.  It is just a great, fairly easy project to do with your kids.

Introducing our new Prayer Warrior child! McKenna!

Alrighty, since 2 of our PW kids found their Forever Families, and the other is sadly in a region that is without a facilitator, we requested a new PW baby and thankfully, one of our choices was available.

This is "McKenna" 

She is an August baby (2003) so this year 

she'll be turning 9-it is SOOOOOO time 

for this precious child to find her Forever Family

 to get her out of the orphanage and into loving arms!

Isn't she gorgeous?  I think so!  This little lady lives in an Eastern Europe country, is HIV positive and in need of her own family.

We are honored to be her Prayer Warriors.  She has been on my heart for some time and I want to see her find her family this year. But, if you click on her name-you'll see that she only has 5 bucks in her account-if you are feeling led, please consider donating to her account (tax deductible) to help her future family get her sooner. I will try to put some kind of give-away together soon.

Please help pray for this precious one.  Together we can pray this girlie home!  :)

Ah! Starting the year off with a clean classroom for 2012-it's a miracle!

I did it!  I finally got the classroom organized (enough anyhoo) and rearranged to meet our current needs.  Not perfect by all means but better than before and hopefully, it will be user-friendly.  I don't write much on the board, but if I do the kids can simply swivel their chairs to see it-so I didn't have any issue placing their desks the way I did [IKEA chairs rock].  The teen is over at the wall area, and the boy is opposite of me since I must work with him a lot more than I do the teen.  I currently have the old workbox shelf there next to my desk to hold my overflow of books/things to get to but I actually need that area for the boy to bring his chair when we need to work side by side, so I may have to find that another place to stay.  We'll see.

Biggest change-workboxes.  I originally bought two IKEA shelving units for the teen since the original version of the workbox shelves was working nicely for the boy-but I am tired of his books being bent and I have been giving him items to work thru that are larger and so they would take up too much space on the rack...so, since I hardly ever give the teen more than 6 workboxes, I split it up-she gets one unit and he gets one.  6 boxes per kid.  Now I can easily put his overflow on the old shelf, but usually I do stuff with him on the couch so I don't necessarily need a workbox for him on those...I will see how this works out.  My teen does do more than 6 boxes worth, but again-her overflow usually is in the box (above her shelf) or  they are found in the holder to the right of her desk.  She only has about 5 or so months left of school, so in just a short amount of time-the Boy will have both sets to use.

 My son's desk to left, his "new" workboxes, the basket is for his finished work to go in if I need to see it.

 Teen's spot to the left.  Her extras are in the striped basket and the file holder to the right of her desk.

 Looking from window side.  Ignore all the discombobulated books on the shelves...I am not that ambitious today!

 I still have a few totes that are full of "to get to" stuff-like the red box on the floor-that has all my lapbooking stuff and "to be" put in a lapbook materials.  My desk is clean for now-trust me this won't look this sparkly for long-usually I have to dig to find the top of the desk-always have some projects cluttering it up.

 I am so proud of myself, I did organize my shelf which is under the picture.  That is where I have all the stuff I need pretty much on a daily basis and it holds all my folders with materials I will need to finalize grades, etc.  That WAS A MESS for sooooo long-ah, I can finally see what I have there!

Notice the Well Planned Day planner there-mighty handy schedule book!  The map on my son's desk is laminated and since we're covering the 50 states (and there is no wall space for this) I taped it to his desk, figured by seeing it all the time the states and their locations will "stick" in his mind. :)

The books on the shelves need some organizing and I need to prune but that is not gonna happen anytime soon.  I need to figure out the school schedule still but at least we have a fresh, clean and moderately organized room to hang in.

Candy Cane Deer project

I just posted the instructions and supplies for these cute reindeer candy canes, on my What's in the Box? blog.  Thought I would let ya know in case you are looking for a simple, fun project to do this season.

Trip to the state capitol building and History Museum

We went to the state capital (Lansing) yesterday to tour the capitol building and visit the Michigan Historical Museum, as a part of our Michigan state history study. It is a beautiful building!  We took a self-guided tour but did listen in when the docent was talking to a group of elementary students (about the House of Representatives), saw the Senate in session (thankfully, they were done near the end of our tour so we could sit in the public viewing area and take pictures of that area) all the while learning about the history of this particular building.  We've been to Lansing on several occasions but never had the time to squeeze a visit in.  For anyone in Michigan, I highly recommend making the trip to tour it.

Standing dead center on the main floor, which is a thick glass tile, so when you come in downstairs, you can sort of see folks standing there, muted from the frosted glass, but crazy none the less.  These pictures simply do not do this beauty justice!

House of Representatives-they have the pink/maroon color scheme.  On the ceiling are etched glass state symbols from all 50 states-very neat.

Senate-blue color scheme.  There is an etched glass picture of the Mackinac Bridge (a student won the contest for that, like $2000 [not sure when that was tho] and that is the same amount that the architect earned for his sketches for the building back in the late 1800s).

Just one of the paintings on the upper rotunda. These were painted on canvas, then were glued to the panels.  Gorgeous.  I took pics of all of them (I think).

Had to kind of lean over the balcony to get this shot. You can see the details and beauty of the upper part here.  Love the stars.

Looking down from the top floor.  That is a class down there and those white tiles are the glass ones I spoke of.  This is crazy gorgeous.  The other floors have painted portraits of the past governors hanging all around the circle hall area.

I had!!!!! to take a picture of this.  I just wish more people would "get" that.  There are many more pictures I took, but didn't want to clutter up the post too much.  Even the door handles have the state seal on them-tried to get a pic but it was just too dark.  The lights are unique, the restoration they did here is amazing.  Again-if you can get here, do so!

We then walked the few blocks to the historical museum.  It was chilly and windy and I pray we don't get earaches or anything from it-very cold.  Anyhoo-we got there and walked through it.  We were greeted by a dude who obviously loves his job but he is sadly under the influence of the evolution/billions of year old earth thought.  My children were very gracious and didn't disagree with him (as that would be pointless and we were not there for a debate) but he kinda got the impression we were not buying the millions/billions part. LOL  I just wish they would leave the dates out-it happened a long time ago and that should be sufficient...but no-they have to toss that in.  Let the folks going thru decide that on their own.  UGH!  He at least told us how they extract the copper from the rocks and that was interesting.

He took this for us but didn't get all of the map of Michigan in it-it is huge-like 2-3 stories high huge.  We look like we are bearing the state of MI on our shoulders-LOL

This sits right by the entrance to the main part of the museum. 

The museum has a traveling display on the Civil War there (right now anyhoo) and that was a fun room to explore.  They has a telegraph machine pinging and on a computer screen you could read what it was saying.  It was dark in there so I didn't get many pictures and I had to have the camera on museum mode, which means they can be somewhat blurry...bummer-but hey it is the experience, not the pictures we are there for... 

Kind of a neat wall mural there...the drum in the case is obviously from the war, very beat up and yet-when you figure someone carried that into battle-amazing and sobering.

They had a tent set up with little folding chairs and canteens for the kids to play with-some coats/hats too but my children are too old for that-but I am sure the younger visitors love that part.

They also had many flags (that I found out after reading the literature we got from the capitol building tour) that were from the Civil War here (originally they were kept in cases in that circle area of the capitol building where you start your tour)-very humbling to see these too.

Had to have them in sealed rooms and no flashes were allowed so as not to further deteriorate them.

This is a funny one-it is in the area where they talk about law making or something (we are terrible at reading the info signs) and so when across the room from this display-it looks like the dude has wings!  But in reality-that is an eagle statue behind him-crazy huh?  The kids were digging this.  I will have to check the literature to see what this display was for.

They have an area that looks like you're heading into the copper mines-way cool (but extremely dark) and then you come into an area with all sorts of tools/mini house section to highlight what a home would be like, then you can go upstairs to a schoolroom and mini-house of the early 20th Century.  There were too many folks in there to take pics, but it is awesome.  We've been at least 2x before-each time is fun and again-I highly recommend it-especially if you are doing a Michigan history study. There is a small fee now to go thru, but it is not too bad.

We wrapped up our visit to Lansing by stopping in a local Zoup restaurant.  The Tomato Basil Bisque (I think that was its name) was delish-the sandwich not so much-but it was food and we were hungry after all that walking and touring.

I should note here that I am currently reviewing for HEF review team, the State History from a Christian Perspective from A Helping Hand.  It is a great program.  I am really impressed with it.  Sis is doing the upper level material and Bud is working through the Funbook.  I can't wait to share my thoughts on that soon.  In the meantime, you can find them here:  State History from a Christian Perspective  (I also have their 50 States Under God 3-12 and 3yrs-3rd and their Geography program to review!)  I will be sure to let you know when it posts.