november

I have been so awful at keeping this up for records! We have been enjoying school so much, and if you ask my kids they will tell you that they don't do school! We have had so much fun and love learning so much, it doesn't seem like "school" although I am incredibly proud of my children's knowledge and accomplishments they've made this year already! We hit "school" hard in november because we generally take december off for more spiritual lessons and service projects. We still read constantly, etc... but we don't do as much history, science, math etc. So for november we work are batooties off so we can enjoy the special time of year that december is.

The kids have read hundreds of books already this year, and I really should make a list of what they've read, I'm so bad about that, we just read! We finished Around the World in 80 Day's as a family and we are still enjoying learning about the different countries they visited. Today we learned about Japan by finding it on our world map in the hallway, then we read a neat book on different Japanese arts, music, foods, customs, fashion, etc. We also learned about a typical Japanese household etc. Then we really enjoyed going on youtube and watching beautiful videos of traditional Japanese  music and art , and we loved learning about the different instruments etc. We finished off by writing different words in Japanese Kanji... the kids hung up their drawings in the hallway beside the map of japan. I loved seeing what words they chose. Sydney of course chose dog. Dylan chose man. Marlee.... oh how I love that girl, she chose soy sauce :) 

We have been really digging into the Bible this year, we are still only in Exodus because we go into such detail with gospel artwork and other neat resources. We are just now finishing the plagues and beginning to learn about Passover, which I believe will include us making a traditional Passover meal! The kids spirituality has grown so much this year also, and for that I am truly blessed. We have constantly been hit hard with trials throughout our time together as a family ( almost 11 years!!!) and thru each trial we have grown as a family and learned so much. The most important thing that my children have learned is how to take their worries and their praise to their Father in Heaven. Their prayers are beautiful, their faith is strong. I am thankful that we homeschool and I can be there to witness not only their spiritual growth but also their knowledge increasing. What a blessing!

We are starting The Odyssey by Homer for our next read aloud as a family. Im truly excited, I love to read and I am excited for my kids to read the books that I love.

Today Aunt Sandy is coming over for lunch. We are going to work together and make homemade pizzas and she has a new recipe for macaroons that we are excited to make ! The kids love to cook and I feel it is important for them to know how, and also to get to enjoy cooking with their family and extended family. It's important!!!

Well, I will try to update this daily or at least weekly hehehehe! I'm so bad lol! :)
I will leave you with a picture of one of the beautiful Japanese artworks that we have looked at today!

Fun with geography!

silly kids, they have way to much fun in school :) they love to learn though! excuse the messy house! we were to busy having fun to clean :)
love, jl the momma

history and the bible

We have been digging into History this week and it has been neat to compare it to places in the Bible that we read about. Today we are studying Egypt! We are also continuing Missouri government and the good ole math and english etc. It is raining buckets today which is kind of cozy. I've been awful at keeping up this blog, but be assured, the children are learning! :)

Monday October 3, 2011

Today we are working on lots of different projects. First of all, we watched one talk from General Conference. Then we are going to work on our Around the World in 80 Days unit... Marlee snuck the book this weekend and read it lol.... but we are going to finish reading it as a group then learn about the different places he visited! I have books on each of the places and we are really going to enjoy getting in depth about the world! We will also be doing our USA Geography and doing some fun games on the computer for it and then we will continue our USA History ( Abeka grade 4 ) All three of the kids have their spelling lists for the week. They are still enjoying their assigned books and Dylan was excited to learn that the book he is reading, the author is from Missouri! Still trucking along on our Missouri Government unit and of course good ole math. Dylan has all of his multiplication facts memorized ( he's had that done for quite a while) and is working hard on timed tests etc getting his brain to work fast! The girls are still doing their second and third grade math books. Learning alot of new skills!!!
Alrighty, time to hop off of here and get started!
Love, jl the momma

croupy kids

So all three kids are sick with croup. Praying the nebulizer doesnt break down!! We are still trucking away though with school. Today we did an educational movie day and reading the books theyve been assigned. That way they could still rest and try to get their bodies healthy!!! We are planning a unit on the missouri state government this week..... trying and praying that they will be better enough to take a field trip to the capital on friday!!! we might have a ride... and if theyre better it would ROCK!

So, basically they've been doing their assigned workbooks and reading their books and doing little projects here and there, its been fun past couple of weeks. I need to get pics and stuff uploaded on here. The other night we listened to a band downtown and identified instruments and types of music ( ragtime, waltz etc) that was super fun for me, hehehe. I love music. All three kids are showing major talent with piano and it's exciting to see them play and learn. The reason theyre sick is because they have been outside playing constantly... they've learned how to play all kinds of fun games with the neighbor kids, dodgeball, kickball, red rover, the yard is always full of kids playing. They ride bikes and jump on the trampoline. The pool is down for the summer, boo, but its freezing so we wouldnt be swimming anyway!

Update on the tadpoles.... we have one adorable frog who loves his little ledge in the big tank, and two bunk tadpoles lol! They arent even growing legs! But it's been fun and all the fish are neat. Hmm... we've been keeping up with our scripture study and we are all learning sooo much, and the alpha project from school of abraham. Basically it's a good school year so far with so many more fun things to learn. Soon we will be starting a zoo unit, and really getting into learning everything we can about animals and their habitats and everything, then of course a tripto the zoo!!! The fall is a great time to go! The animals are usually out and it's less crowded and more fun!

Ok, off to go put sick kids to bed, poor babies!!!!! :(
love, jl the momma

September 13, 2011

Today we spent a day outside, going to the park for scriptures and history, then taking a one hour riverboat cruise at mark twain riverboat. That was amazing. We learned soo much and they gave us the captains script and a quiz and lots of neat things for us to learn about. I will write more on it..... but i have to go make supper :)

love, jl the momma

September 12, 2011

First of all, I want to say that we had a very moving discussion last night about september 11, 2001 and what it meant to our country. Dylan and Syd watched part of a documentary ( marlee has autism, she did not need to see it, each child is different, she was quietly reading in her bedroom when it came on, so she doesnt really know much about it. )

Today for school:
Prayer: marlee
theme

scriptures: alma chapter 32 select verses, seeds of faith
alpha project: Which one loved her best? by anon.     the kids learned that actions speak louder then words! You can tell anyone I love you... but you have to show it!

science- wrote in notebooks what changes our tadpole/frog has made this weekend... alot of exciting changes!!

Dylan:
he has learned how to breathe and is about to lose his tale.
by dylan.

this is what our little frog is looking like!! Only his tail is getting even shorter!!!!! :)


Girls played frog life cycle game at www.gudli.com while dylan practices multiplication flash cards, then dylan plays game while girls do math.


dylan did great at multiplication! syd rocked at the frog life cycle game then went on to do games on measuring and sequencing! :)
Marlee is getting ready to do the frog life cycle game, then we will find her some harder math games!
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/scienceforkids/life_cycle/frog_lifecycle.htm

Marlee also did some timed practice math problems on ixl.com
we are having fun playing games online hhehehehe! :)

History..... we are beginning Abeka grade four The History of our United States.... today we will read pages 35 and 36

Things to remember..... the 7 continents, the 4 major oceans, what does a geographer study and who discovered and settled america?? :)

Lunch time !! Then piano, and whatever else we want to do! I love homeschooling lol.
love, jl the momma

September 7, 2011

So far today we have played with the USA Magnet puzzle that my parents bought us, and then we played outside!!!!! It was to nice out not to! Marlee got to practice her photography skills and Dylan and Sydney blew bubbles for the baby that lives across the street, she loved it! It's still early, we still have school to do, but this is what I'm writing for today. It's gorgeous out. I love my babies. :)
love, jl the momma

September 6, 2011

I will probably have to add on to this, but while the kids are doing their writing I thought I'd go ahead and put this up. Dylan said prayer, then we read in Scriptures, Genesis 21 and 22, learning about the "old mother" and "Abrahams test". We had a neat discussion about it. Really makes you think!!

For the School of Abraham Alpha Project we read, "what have you done with my name" by Pres George Albert Smith.
Dylan- I learned that you want to try your hardest here in mortality so that when you go to Heaven you can be proud of what you have accomplished here on earth.
Marlee- Honor your parents.
Syd- try your best and learn.

Then we wrote out our school theme for the year, D&C 4: 5-6 on posterboard and underlined the specific things we were going to focus on this year.

Right now they are writing out manuscript letters, capitol and lowercase, then numbers, then for "homework" they will do it again ( having some issues with spacing lol)

Science- still working on our fun life cycle of a frog unit. This weekend something special happened, one of the tadpoles sprouted both front legs and today, he swam to the little dock thing and was trying to use his lungs!! Exciting!!!!

Here is what Marlee thinks of it:
our tadpole bert has front and back legs now so we  put him in a glass fish bowl . it was hard cause
he  learned to hop. my brother dylan got him out of the aquarium with his bare hands and put
him in the fish bowl. we watched him up close  for awhile. the end
marlee kaylor

september 6  fall 2011.

One of the tadpoles! Ready to head to the new place :)

Labor Day Fun!

We tend to lean towards the Charlotte Mason type of homeschooling... you can learn about it here : www.amblesideonline.org Yesterday Keith was off work so we decided to go out to sawyer's creek and feed the koi and then we went to Ted Shanks Conservation Area... and I forgot my camera. duh. You can go here to see some neat pics that other people took lol... http://mdc4.mdc.mo.gov/applications/moatlas/AreaSummaryPage.aspx?txtAreaID=7011&txtAreaNm=ted%20shanks&txtCounty=PIKE&txtRegion=&txtUserID=&txtDivision= Anyway, we explored for hours!!!! Until us girls had to go potty lol, we soooo would not be good pioneers!!!!!! Anyway, we enjoyed being in nature and getting to be with each other and see all the dragonflies, and flowers, and neat lilypads and beautiful lakes. It was fun :) Good learning experience. Except next time I will take the camera. :) Love, JL the momma

Frank the Spider

All this summer we have been watching Frank the Spider. He/She ( ok it’s a girl cause it had babies, but still we like the name Frank, so sue us lol) would set up its web by our front porch, then be there all night, then in the morning, poof, it was gone, and you could see Frank sleeping in its little crevice in the porch ceiling

The next night, around dusk, Frank would begin the neat pattern of swinging all around, and there would be it’s beautiful web. The kids got to feed Frank a moth, and we watched it zip right out and wrap it up. Then by the end of the summer, we found this….

Really hard to see, but that’s a baby spider on Keiths hand!!!!! Pretty soon, after we kept seeing the cute little babies practice spinning their webs, we went out one evening and Frank was not there. It was that time I guess, insert the sad moaning of wilbur the pig when Charlotte dies. We had fun watching Frank and we even got to identify what type of spider Frank was… an orb weaver. We learned a lot about spiders and how they are defintely a part of God’s plan even though they can be a bit spooky sometimes!!!! What a fun lesson for all of us! And it was truly beautiful to see the web each night!

By, JL, the momma

August 30, 2011

second day of school!

No one was feeling super great, its stormy and yucky outside so we decided to snuggle in and watch a movie.
Then we went ahead and continued our studies on the frog life cycle. we watched this video then the kids did the assignment at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XldMRxVvW88&feature=related

The kids also are deciding what to eat for supper and we will all prepare it together using exact measurements etc. The girls have done arts and crafts all afternoon! Hopefully tomorrow we will all feel better and do a bunch of math etc. Today though, we are relaxing and enjoying learning!
love, jl the momma

August 29, 2011

It's day one of school! We started off by having family prayer and going over our theme for the year, D&C 4: 5-6 and we will be learning about these Godly attributes as we go through the school year.
For literature this year we are doing a couple of things, we are doing the Alpha Project from www.schoolofabraham.com and also we will be choosing good books to read throughout the year. This morning we started the Alpha Project with a small quote by Stephen Grellet a french born Quaker Minister called " I shall not pass this way again". The kids thought about it and this is what they have to say about the quote :

Dylan- Since he's talking about living life once, be nice to people because you only get one life- you don't get to re-do it, time machines are not part of Heavenly Father's plan.

Marlee- I liked the part about being kind and trying to be like him. Try harder to do kindness every day since we only have one chance.

Sydney- You can only live one life, so you should live the best life you can- do everything you can to be like Jesus.

Next we worked on science. Yesterday we went to Quincy with grandma and grandpa kaylor and bought three big tadpoles to add to our 55 gallon aquarium. One of the tadpoles is still pretty fishy looking, one has back legs, and one has front and back legs! We are learning from www.frog-life-cycle.com and we talked today about the first three steps, frogs mate, spawning, then the life span of the eggs and when they hatch etc. The kids had to write the three steps in their notebooks and we discussed each one in length then looked at pictures of frog eggs etc and the whole life cycle. Tomorrow we will begin studying the actual tadpoles, which will include pictures of our new tadpoles!!!

For creative writing today, the kids wrote letters to their penpals. Dylan's lives in Arizona, and believe it or not but Syd's lives in Arizona too, just in a different city! Marlee doesn't have one yet, so she is writing her cousin Elizabeth. The kids did good jobs today writing their first penpal letters of the year!!!

We discussed the chores each child will have each day. They each have one or two chores that they are responsible for each day then they are responsible for their rooms. The chores will be completed after school time and before play time :)

Right now is lunch break. We had alot of first day of school discussing to do this morning , hehe, so we didnt get as much work done this morning as we usually will. So since we did so much of the first day of school discussing etc, we are going to spend rest of day reading, playing outside, watching the tadpoles and watching a really old movie, the first Cheaper by the Dozen from 1950! A great way to slide into a new school year! :) love, jl the momma

Tomorrow is the First Day of School!!

This year we have decided to keep records on a blog, also the kids will be doing book reports etc and writing on the blog so they can get good computer skills! We have a great year planned out ahead of us!! We are excited and pumped up and we know this is what Heavenly Father wants us to do!! We have our theme for the year. We have the books. We have the school supplies. We have the willpower! We are ready!!

Love, JL, the momma.