Race For The Cure

We did it! We participated in the Susan G Komen Race For The Cure!
My grandma is a breast cancer survivor and I am thankful for that!


There were over 16,000 people there, and they raised over $200,000.

Tommy and I ran the 5K in about 36 minutes. Emily and Katey walked (or got pushed) with my mom, and they made it in about 50 minutes.

We all went out to a big breakfast afterwords. This is a fun yearly tradition that we all look forward to!

You can find a race near you here, or to donate to finding a cure to breast cancer here.

A few of my favorite things; Blog Hop!

Our Worldwide Classroom is hosting a blog hop. The theme is


These are a few of my favorite things.

1. My Heavenly Father
2. My Family
3. My Friends

To be more in detail, a few more of my favorite things are:

4. The mountains, and that I live so close to them.
5. That I am NOT a perfectionist.
6. Camping, boating, four wheeling
7. Cooking
8. Snuggling with my kids.
9. Learning something new
10. HOMESCHOOLING!

To be even more in detail a few more are:

11. Purple
12. The book Sidetracked Home Executives
13. Gerber Daisies
14. The movie Fried Green Tomatoes
15. Home grown vegetables
16. BBQ and campfire cooking
17. Sleeping in
18. Blogging
19. Taking Pictures
20. Running

History in my home

This year, we are focusing on Ancient History. I use History Odyssey Ancients, Level 1 as my guide this year. The biggest way I teach History is through arts and crafts. We really like feeling like we are living history. I read the Story of the World out loud. I will usually read first and then we do a project of some sort. I get my projects from 3 very helpful books, they are Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors, Ancient Israelites and Their Neighbors, and History Pockets. Here is a little picture journey of some of the history we have done so far this year.



Here we are having a Royal Assyrian Feast. We wore toga's and made crowns, we even ate on the floor. (They didn't have tables back then.) My husband and I were even their servants.








We played games that ancient Egyptians play.







We built a Ziggurat out of boxes.
















We made some mobiles to help us learn about the Nile River.









We sculpted bowls into ducks, made Phoenician head wear, and ate Phoenician stew to learn about the Phoenicians.






We carried water on our heads around our yard, to learn what
some of the daily life was like.










We eat alot of food from the time periods we are learning about.
So we usually do history right before lunch.






Here is an art project they worked on while I read to them.








We also learned about how they colored their clothes, we dyed our own socks using blackberries.








This post has been linked up to a history hopper at Latter Day Homeschoolers.

It's about time my kids learned how to drive!

We decided to surprise our kids, we put them in the car, and covered their heads with blankets and drove somewhere, they were all trying to guess where. They were using their senses they could to try to decide, they felt it when we would turn, they listened as a train went by. But they never did guess it.

When we got there we took them each out of the car, and all at once pulled the blankets off.

They then saw that we were at Boondocks, the local Go Cart Track! They were so excited as they have never done this before.

Here they are waiting to get started. They rode around the track a few times, and then....

It was Katey's turn. She isn't big enough to drive yet, so she got to go on the bigger ones with daddy. I thought this was hilarious, that it took not 1, but 2 employees to help him buckle her up.

She really had the time of her life.

This outing just showed me how much my children appreciate even the little things. We only let each of them go around once, and they were alright with that. They did ask if they could go more, and were told no. They did not argue or throw a fit of any sort, they didn't even act disappointed. They were just glad they got to do it. I was so happy to be able to do this with my family!

Cinco De Mayo

For Cinco De Mayo, we did some fun activities. We began by reading a book about Mexico. Then we read The Cat In The Hat in Spanish. We also looked at a My First Spanish word book.
For our craft we made Maraca's. I just saved some Sunny D containers, and we decorated them with stickers, filled them half full with beans, and danced and made music.

Then we did a Mexican Hat Dance. I took vocabulary words from our history lessons throughout the year, and wrote them on a card and next to that I wrote a capital letter of the Alphabet.

I played some Spanish music, as they danced around the hat. (I had to do it in my laundry room in the basement, since Tyler was alseep upstairs.) I would stop the music and they would all run to the hat and choose a card. The older kids would have to tell me the definition of the word, and Katey had to tell me the letter of the Alphabet. They loved this.

For lunch we had Quesadillas and Agua. I tried to talk them into a siesta, but that was a big NO once they found out it was not a party (fiesta).

And for our finale we had a pinata. I home made it. I used a paper grocery sack, and a scrap of wrapping paper. I filled the sack with the prizes. I cut the paper into long strips, and then fringed it partway up and taped it to the bag.

Then I stapled it along the top, and stapled some yarn on as well. I hung it from a tree and we went at it.

We also learned that Cinco De Mayo is celebrated more in the US, than in Mexico. We had fun with this!

He Crawls!

Tyler is finally crawling. He is 10 months old! The first thing he crawled to was the vacuum, and that is still his favorite thing to crawl to. He gets mad when I turn it off.



He is so cute. He never even showed any signs of crawling yet. One day I was vacuuming and he just went for it, I couldn't believe it.

WannaBe- Firefighter Review

I have been wanting to go over fire safety in our house and...

I was given this amazing resource to review from The Old Schoolhouse, it's from the WannaBe Series. What is the WannaBe Series, you ask? Well it's a series of 10 Unit Studies that show kids what some of the career prospects out there are. We started with When I Grow Up I Wanna Be A Firefighter.

It made fire safety so fun, and so much more. We got to learn about what it takes to be a firefighter, how much they make, the history of firefighting, and about fire dogs. Plus we played games,

and more games. We had fire drills, practice calling 911 (we used a phone that I took the batteries out of and I was the operator), we even had a fire theme lunch. Lil' Smokies.

This was so easy to prepare. It seriously took me about 1 hour from opening it up to having it ready to teach, and 30 min of that was me reading it, and putting books on hold at the library.

All the games and activities all use common easy to find items. (All of which I happen to have on hand.)

This comes with a book list, but it is an E-Book, and you could really do it without the extra books if you wanted to, or didn't have the time.

I set this up so that my kids would read a section then do one of the many worksheets it came with it, such as firefighter math, or the creative prompts, then we did a game or a drill. These were great for my 5 year old. She is a more hands on learner. That way it kept it fresh, since there was quite a bit of reading.

My little engineer, Tommy, thought that the making of a robotic arm was the best part!

This is for ages 4-10,
I felt as if some of the math was a little hard for my 10 year old. I just did the "harder" math along with him, and my 9 year old. My four year old was not able to sit through all the reading. I think because it wasn't in storybook format. However, she loved the activities that were involved, and the books from the book list.

There are so many activities that you could even have a Firefighter themed birthday party. These would also makes a great community helpers study.


These are only $8.95 each.

The titles are

• Firefighter,
• Veterinarian,
• Chef,
• Military,
• Doctor,
• Police Officer,
• Missionary,
• Artist,
• Pilot, and
• Farmer
  

But right now they are having a special for the month of May;
You can get all 10 titles,
normally $89.50
for just $35.80

Disclaimer: I was given this free to download, use and review and this is my honest opinion.