Spring Has Sprung

Zane & Zoe battle for the ball in scrimmage

Many happenings going on. First, our home church has officially split into 2. This is a good thing meaning that we had grown so much that we needed to divide into 2 groups :) Adam & I will be leading with 2 of our long time friends & senior leaders, Adam & Dawn. It is super exciting for us to be home church leaders for the first time accompanied with a dash of scary thrown in . Along with our leadership roles Adam & I both have leadership classes to take ( & Pass :). I am in Christian Ministry 1 right now, which Adam has already taken. Then we will have 4 more that we will conquer together. LOVE my class ! The teacher rocks and 3 hours passes rather quickly. And lots of LOVE to my super awesome husband who gets the kids shuffled around to soccer Sat. morning . Let me just say this also.... we are so blessed to have SO many wonderful people God has put into our lives to be able to make it possible for us take on this leadership role. It is so true that with Christ ALL things are possible. And he uses the church body in a powerful way to get his work done. NO WAY we could do this balancing act on our own power. NONE ! It is truly an act of God every day!
Soccer is in full swing ! Zane & Zoe officially started their games this week. God was merciful with the soccer schedule. It has been neatly placed MWF, Sat which will not interfere with other commitments. And of course I am ever thankful for the use of the very close playground for the younger 2 although we have already had reported incidents of play ground potty mouth and West Side Story rumbles going on in which my children are the leaders :)
School is slowly rolling on. The older 2 have OAA testing next week and are mortified that I would make them take practice OAA's this week :) when really this is to ease my own selfish motherly worries about testing .Carson & I will be starting to put together his portfolio for the year soon, just waiting to wrap a few more things up . 2 more weeks of Co op and one more scheduled field trip. So, things are winding down in that arena.
Can't wait for summer! Lots of fun and exciting things to look forward to:)
Bambi

Sunshine !!!!

We have had beautiful weather this week and have totally taken advantage of being able to get out during the day ! With the time change and the extra activity our week has flown by. I am definitely getting the end of the school year syndrome. I keep looking at our curriculum and counting how many lessons we have to go to finish or in some cases where a good ending point would be to start up next fall.
Another realization has kicked in though. One that is not going to be popular :) Everyone is at a critical point in math. Carson is mastering multiplication, Zane will be starting Algebra in HS & Zoe has some catching up to do . So..... we will be having some math this summer & reading. Nothing heavy but I would hate to drop everything for 3 months. I'd rather start the fall being ahead in both subjects.
Zane had his first HS information meeting this week. I'm really glad we went because he had kept telling us it was pointless and that he had already made up his mind. Well.... that may not be the case now.He has the choice between 2 local HS because of the way the 2 districts overlap. Both have a different set-up. One is a traditional HS and one is a STEM school. The meeting for the other HS is next Friday. At that point we will way the pros & cons of both & PRAY. I can't believe we are going to have a freshman in HS and kindergartener next year . OY!!!!
The other 3 will still be at home. I've already been planning for that in my head :) But I know 1 thing for sure and that is that we will not being doing the online school. I'm glad we tried it but it's just not for us.
Here's some of the fun this week......

above....animal classification, dissecting owl pellet

below.... dinosaur fossils out of salt dough for Magic Tree House Club

Blacklick
trying to coordinate jumping off swings at the same time

Creekside

We have not fallen off the face of the earth !

peanut butter playdough using extra robot cake parts :)

Finally, a chance to sit down & update the happenings of homeschool from the last couple months. They seem like a complete blur and quite frankly the thought of trying to sit down & cover everything is sooo overwhelming that I have just been deciding not too :) But I can do a somewhat brief overview.
Zane & Zoe started an online program in January. I thought this would give them the challenge and freedom from me that they were looking for. Learning the system and starting a new curriculum was surely a challenge for us all but don't think for a moment when things got tough and the words " mom, we should've stuck with you . Your stuff was more fun ! " were uttered from their lips that I didn't delight in every second ( okay probably more like millisecond ) ! They are pretty much independent now just needing help & the occasional kick in pants to get things done :)

Carson ,Vania & I have been winging it and having fun!
For Carson we did a robot study & dolphin study using unit studies by Amanda Bennett. Now we are going through the Core Knowledge series , What A Third Grader Needs to Know and covering various science topics, working on writing , geography and anything else we can fit in before the end of the year. Carson is still using the same math curriculum Teaching Textbooks 3 and learning multiplication. We switched up language arts, so now he is using Language Lessons For The Well Trained Mind level 3 for grammar. For reading we are doing the Magic Tree House Club ( free ) from the site Currclick. Last but not least we will finish up ancient history, using the book Story of Our World, covering Rome.

For miss V we are just keeping it light. She did her own robot & ocean study using preschool packs from the site 1+1+1. New things since January include....writing her last name & memorizing her address & phone number. So we just do whatever we can think of, read & play on abcmouse.com alot. She is definitely ready for kindergarten work , but no rush :)

We are also back in co-op, which we LOVE. Carson is taking gym, nature enrichment & weather. Vania is taking geography , music and a story book class. The older 2 opted out this time because they would still need to work on their assignments online that day. So we miss them :(

Other than that the older kids start soccer at the end of the month . Yeah!!! By the time winter is over I am ready to see them come out of hibernation !

The weather here is CRAZY & we get out enjoy the nicer days as much as we can. I 'm counting the days until summer . Never thought I would say it , but really considering a trampoline to set them loose on when cabin fever is just too much :)

Carson's robot from recycling

Robot Day at COSI

our robot cake