Holiday Season Happenings

The holiday season is in full swing.  Thanksgiving has come and gone and Christmas is upon us.  There have been lots of happenings around here!  We celebrated Thanksgiving and a partial early Christmas in Vancouver, WA with my Dad and family.  We were able to see my older brother and his family for the first time in about 7 years!  That was TOO long!!  We are gearing up now for Christmas at home with the kids and extended family.  I will be glad to have things slow down a little and slip back into more of a routine.  Homeschooling has been haphazard which will cause us to have less "days off" over the holiday in total.

Exciting things are happening too!  Seeing my family all together was great.  While we were gone I found out that I did get picked to be on the Schoolhouse Review Crew.  I am finding it challenging to get this blog and my schedule going again.  Pray for me as I press through.  I am so happy and excited for the opportunity.  This also means that you need to stay tuned in for future reviews on homeschool curriculum and resources.  We also finally signed adoption papers on the sweet baby girl that we have fostered for the past 3 1/2 years.  There is still more red tape to get through, but we are gettting closer!  Updates on that saga to follow.

I will keep this short as just a touch base post.  I must settle down to get focused on future blog posts and challenge myself to get connected on the social media platforms again.  I am committting to posting at least 3 times weekly to keep things flowing.  I am also looking forward to linking up with other bloggers.  I so enjoyed that before and met some really fantastic ladies who shared like minded thinking.

Praying that  you are blessed during this season and that peace and joy surround you and your families.

Many Blessings to you,
Jacqui

My First Review

So here it is, my first review for the Schoolhouse Review Crew!  You can find them at www.SchoolhouseReviewCrew.com. This is a sample run but I am so excited to be considered.  I received a publication from The Old Schoolhouse Magazine for no charge for my honest review of the product.  I chose A Path Among Ancient Rocks: Everyday Easels Book 1.  It is a 5 to 10-day unit study using art to cover the subjects of art, bible, history, geography, english, math, science, physical education and health, home economics, and archaeology.  Whew, that's a mouthful!  How awesome is that, to have fun learning about art while covering those subjects!  It was a perfect fit for my 12 year old, 7th grade son who tends to thrive on curriculum like this. You can find similar studies like this one and many other homeschool curriculum, supplements and "all things homeschool" at their online shop at http://www.theoldschoolhouse.com/shop/.

The first study in the book was a 10-day unit study titled A Path Among Ancient Rocks about a painting by Theodore Rousseau.  There was a direct link to the artwork in the pdf file I downloaded. You cover 8 different subjects (art, bible, history and geography, english, math, science, physical education and health, and home economics) on days 1 through 8 and then have a notebooking activity on day 9 and an age appropriate art activity for day 10.  I love how the art activities are broken down by age.  The three age categories include Grades K-2, Grades 3-6 and Grades 7-12.  I felt that the questions in each subject were interesting and challenging enough for my 7th grader.  He really enjoys this type of study.  The work is not too intense and it allows enough variety and the ability to customize it for your needs.

The second study was about Acropolis of Ancient Greece.  It is a 5-day unit study teaching about the Acropolis while covering the subjects of art, archaeology/science, geography, history, and then an age appropriate art activity on day 5. The art activities really engage the student to dig deeper into the subject.  The type of activity depends on the age group of the student.  Sometimes it has more of an art element to it and sometimes it is more investigative and creative for the students to answer and complete certain tasks.

The third and final study in this book was about the Designs of Louis Comfort Tiffany.  It covers the subjects of art, science, english, history, and another age appropriate art activity. The art activity included an experiment that was very enjoyable.  I really like the links included in each of these studies.  It allows the student to explore other art works and dig deeper into the subject matter.

This entire book is a wonderful Charlotte Mason type resource and the diversity of the book kept the subject matter very interesting.  My son was able to complete the lesson without too much trouble (he really doesn't like to write) and it kept his interest in the subject matter. We learned a lot together as we explored the included links in each of the studies. I would definitely recommend this book, especially if you like Charlotte Mason curriculum. The amount of information learned in the studies is wonderful. The active links in the pdf file really help to engage the student and allow for much deeper learning of the subjects.

I will end this review with a wish of Happy Thanksgiving!  May your day be blessed and please feel free to comment or ask any questions.  It was a joy to be considered for this opportunity.

I'm Back!

So here I am again.  Back at it.  I have so wanted to start this blog back up again and just kept having convenient excuses as to why I was just "too busy."  Well, no more.  The dream will not die and I am looking forward to connecting with everyone again.  There is so much to catch up on.  It has been at least 5 years since I was active!  Where does the time go?  "Sweet Pea" is now 12 almost 13 and he would NOT appreciate his nickname at this point so we will refer to him as he is, Sam :)

I chose the picture of the chick above because it is what I am most about these days.  I AM that CRAZY CHICKEN LADY.  LOL.  We still foster, I  still homeschool, we still have a dream of being homesteaders and we are getting ready to adopt one of our foster children.  Fostering has kept me more that busy with lots of happiness and heartache along the way.  Our soon to be daughter has been with us since she was 8 months old and she just recently turned 4.  She is a spitfire and keeps us all on our toes. The chick pictured above was our first actual hatch.  One of our hens became broody (the desire to sit and hatch an egg) last fall and was able to hatch out one egg.  The other hens destroyed the other eggs and 2 just didn't hatch.  The chick ended up being a rooster and I named him Georgie (he was Georgia until I could no longer deny she was a he).  We still have him along with his father, brother and now son!  His brother and son were hatched this spring along with 4 other pullets by another hen that decided to go broody.  I'll save the updates on all the chickens in another post.

Looks like my next step is to review and update the formatting of this blog.  I'm sure there are plenty of dead links and just general clean up.  I also plan to add another page called "Lessons from the Coop."  My hopes on that page is for encouragement and funny stories from the coop.  Chickens can be a lively and entertaining group if you have never had the pleasure to meet any or have them.  I am also going to apply to be a Crew Member for The Old Schoolhouse and hope that I will have the privilege to review products for them and post what we think and learn about those products.  I will be applying for that this evening so please wish me luck!

Blessings to all,
Jacqui

Back to School, Woo Hoo

Homestead Dad and Sweet Pea

NOTE:  The following post was slated to be posted on August 6, 2012.  I never posted it.  But here I am, again.  I AM going to start this blog back up.  It has been such a dream of mine and I refuse to let it go this time.  I am posting this anyway just to share my heart at the time.  Looking forward to posting again and connecting.  Here is the post from 2012:

Wow.  Where does the time go?  I really was going to just shut this blog down since I no longer seemed to have the time to work on it.  But, it was something I so wanted to do for myself.  I wanted to share and connect with other moms.  I have learned so much from so many of my other blogging friends. I have been able to supplement my homeschool curriculum with so many awesome resources.  I now have some who ask me where to connect with some of these great resources.

I have decided now is a great time to start back up.  It's back to school time, even though I tend to school my little guy year round.  We did take off a little more time off than I had planned this summer, so I am anxious to get going again strong and finish getting us caught up.  Be watching for lots of future updates on here.  I hope to really grow the area of suggested homeschool sites and resources to check out.  I will even be doing a give away very soon!

For those of you that faithfully followed and supported me before, we are still fostering.  It has been an interesting roller coaster and I still don't have great faith in the system, but we are in this for the kids.  We had a 5 year old that was able to transition back home last year.  We soon got a 2 year old girl last fall that is still with us.  We had a newborn for a short time, but then were not able to keep him.  We were all very sad to have to let him go.  Sweet pea still talks about him all the time.  Of course the 2 year old was happier because she got to be the baby again!  She is quite a handful and we are so very attached.  In all the transitions, we also made the decision to change agencies and we are much happier with that decision.

How was your summer? Are you ready to begin the new school year?  Would love to hear any suggestions or new stuff you plan on accomplishing this school year.