November Happenings

November has been quite a busy month for us. 

It stared off with our new yearly tradition of taking our pumpkins out to the shooting range.  

 

That’s right I carry people.  LoL. 

 

Leaving there we saw the most fantastic sunset.  B-U-tiful!!!

Another thing that has kept me so busy is that I have been taking a very amateur photography course through my local library.

Please don’t start expecting more of me in terms of photography.  I still only own my little point and shoot digital camera. 

My family is insanely sick of me practicing on them. 

Except for Emily.  LOL.  She went to one of the classes with me and kept practicing on herself. 

And me.

She even let the class practice on taking action shots of her flipping her hair.  This is the best I could get with my camera.

 

This really has been a month of science for us.

Katey has been loving science this month. We have been using The Magic School Bus kit on our solar system.  If Katey had it her way, we would have done all the experiments from this the day it arrived.  I have been making her pace them out.  This has really been giving her an in depth understanding of our solar system.  We have been paring the kit up with some books we own along with some library books, including The Magic School Bus books on our solar system. 

Katey has also been working through Autumn Treasures.  This has been perfect for her and I plan on having her start Winter Wonders.

These are week long unit studies.  However we have been doing it much slower.  Autumn Treasures will take us about three weeks. 

Emily had to do a water purification experiment from Prairie Primer and she caught me looking at the water through our Discovery Scope.

I was finally able to purchase Apologia Exploring Creation through General Science.  I have both the older kids working through it using a free schedule download from DonnaYoung.  They do the reading and questions on their own and we do the experiments together.

Here are just a few we have done so far.

The famous density experiment.

This next one was a neat way to see molecules moving slower in cold water and faster in warm water.

We also blew up a balloon using boiled cabbage and baking soda.

We also did some traveling for the Thanksgiving Holiday.

 

 

When we got to Grandma’s house we let off our long awaited Diet Coke/ Mentos Bomb.  It didn’t go off super high because I couldn’t get all the Mentos in before it went off.  It was still super neat.  This was from Science Experiments in a Bag Book 3.

We took our kids to the park and of course turned that into a competition of jumping.

We were going for distance.

Tommy spent some time cooking while on his iPod.  I can’t even remember what he was making here.

The kids were all given Geodes and were able to break them apart.  It was really neat!!  I’m talkin’ REALLY NEAT!!

Our town has a celebration after Thanksgiving and the girls danced in it and were in the Parade of Lights.

We even saw Santa on a horse.  That’s how we do it out here in the country!

Along with our regular schooling, one day during our lunch break Tommy and Emily dissected some non working calculators that my mom had saved for them.

Tyler has fallen in love with the show Doc McStuffins.  I was grateful to find some Doc McStuffin printables at 1+1+1=1.  

I wasn’t sure if he would quite understand this graphing activity.  Once I showed him how, he got it right away and loved every minute of it.

 

On a day to be thankful,

I am thankful for many things in my life.  One of those things happen to be you, my fans, my readers, my support, you! 

I am grateful for the friends and opportunities blogging has provided my family.  I am grateful for the ideas I come across reading your blogs.

I am grateful for the opportunity to show others a glimpse into our life and show you that it doesn’t have to be perfect to have a happy family. 

We have a whole bunch of fun in store for this next year.   I hope you will continue to follow along with us on our bumpy ride.

There are many ways to follow Family Style School.

Google Friend Connect and Linky Followers in the sidebar along with these other ways.

Follow @familystyleschool

 

Vocal Coach~ At home voice lessons

 

My 12 year old has wanted voice lessons for some time.  A few things have held me back. I live in very small town.  No one that I know of teaches them here. I would have to consider traveling time and costs as well as the actual cost of lessons, both of which is out of my budget.  Along came Vocal Coach.

Vocal Coach Singer seemed like it was going to be the perfect solution.   At home voice lessons.  No traveling.  Priced at $119.99 for the physical version (which I received) or $99.99 for the downloadable version- easily transferred over to an MP3 player or such. 

The Vocal Coach Singer set came with:

7 professionally produced training CDs

• Getting Started
• Complete Breathing
• Complete Warm-Up
• Complete Tone
• Complete Expanding Your Range
• Complete Diction
• Complete Performance

4 workout CDs

• Daily Workout High Voice 1 & 2
• Daily Workout Medium/Low Voice 1 & 2

A full-size instructional guidebook

1 CD with printable lead sheets (forgive my pictures)

 

Together these resources are valued to be the equivalent of more than $2000 worth of personal voice training lessons. 

Honestly my daughter was a pretty good singer (in my opinion) before Vocal Coach Singer.  It helps that she loves to sing and sings all the time.  Vocal Coach Singer has been amazing for fine tuning her voice.  It has taught her how to warm up before singing, what things she can do to protect and even help her voice. 

I was a little worried that it wouldn’t be personal enough for us. However, one of our favorite things is how the lead sheets help you evaluate and determine the areas you want to improve.  Then you can go to the correct CD and work on that area.  Vocal Coach Singer has been the perfect fit for our situation.

Vocal Coach even has a Homeschool Section. They also offer singing help for younger kids known as Teaching Kids to Sing, which some of the crew reviewed too.

Check out this post to find out what others thought of Vocal Coach Singer and Teaching Kids to Sing. To see a wide variety of reviews check out our crew blog.

Disclosure: As a member of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew I review products, like this, which I receive for free in order to be able to share my honest opinion.  No other compensation is provided. 

 

Let’s go ahead and be honest, shall we?

 

 

 

 

I realized after writing a few posts, that I am extremely comfortable with myself and the fact that I homeschool, and you know what comes with comfort? Honesty. So while I may be judged for choosing to homeschool or the way I do it, or even the way I live my life,

I AM HAPPY

MY HUSBAND IS HAPPY

MY KIDS ARE HAPPY

Go ahead and judge me if you must. Here, let me give you some stuff.

You want to know some truths?

My 2nd grader does not read as well as the average 2nd grader.  I’m okay with that. We are working on it, but it is no reason for me to give up. 

My 3 year old can work the PS3 and Netflix and has been able to for quite some time now. 

My 6th grader and my 8th grader are almost at the same level in math. 

My 6th grader is a book worm.

The rest of my kids, not so much.

My kids fight.  My kids get along too.

My husband and I fight.  We get along too.

We sometimes make decisions we regret.  But, we learn from them.

My kids misbehave, heck, sometimes I misbehave.

We are Mormon, but not active.  And, we don’t really live the Mormon lifestyle.  But we are still Mormon.

I have a few guilty pleasures.  I love the Real Housewives of Anywhere.  I hide candy from everyone else and sneak it.

I was mostly soda free for 8 months.  I am now back on the sauce. (Pepsi)

Sometimes we have cereal for dinner, and Ramen noodles for breakfast.  (not very often, but it has happened.  Not on the same day, that I can remember.)

My house is never spotless, well except for that once every couple of months when I throw down the gauntlet and demand complete cleanliness.  That usually doesn’t come out of my mouth very nice, but I get my way.  Then I feel better. 

I am not perfect, and there are times when I don’t try my hardest to be. 

There you have it!  That’s who I am.