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Thursday, April 23, 2009

True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.- Albert Einstein



People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built. -Eleanor Roosevelt



How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.- George Washington Carver



Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. -John Lennon

To Test or Not to Test

Quite frequently I get asked "do you test your son?"
First let me say that I will do whatever the law requires and am not afraid of doing so, but as far as what we do at home, NO I don't give tests. As a child/student, I've taken many test and made mostly A's, some B's, but I learned very little and I believe its because tests have little to do with learning. Because of the large classes/single teacher ratio, the teacher couldn't monitor each student's progress, and so ta-da the test was invented.
Being able to work with my son one on one, I know how he is doing. What would a test prove? Maybe it would make me feel better- maybe it would even give me some bragging rights or maybe it would make me feel bad if he failed. Either way, it has very little to do with what he has learned.


So, for what it's worth from this education rebel . . . leave the testing to those who don't know, and instead enjoy your position of knowing.

Happy Homeschooling!!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Best Friends

Check out River and his side-kick, Jenna. Jenna's daddy was Maximus's football (Fall '08) and the two of them have been "friends" since...
River talks about "Jenn-Jenn" all day long and looks forward to seeing her at church each week.

One of the sweetest things you'll ever see! River loves to drive Jenna around in Gravedigger.

I have to admit, he has good taste :)!!


Monday, April 20, 2009

There's something about nature... boys LOVE! Maximus has a huge heart for nature, and loves to explore! Easter weekend, he found a turtle and named him Kevin. Kevin went everywhere with us, even the soccer game. I thought seriously about going to the pet store and getting all the necessities so that Maximus could keep Kevin (alive). But I thought I'd better teach him about turtles natural habitats because I don't think Kevin will be the last reptile he'll find and want to keep. We talked and talked and talked and talked... and talked about letting Kevin go and finally I was able to coax him in to it, with the explanation that keeping him is cruelty to nature.
Don't know if you can see "Kevin", but here he is (probably on his knees under that shell) as we said goodbye

River saw Kevin's head pop-out!

Maximus disguising himself up in the trees trying to catch Kevin "getting away".
Wonder what's next???

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Maximus... Maximus... Maximus...

I hate to brag... ok, not really... so I have to tell ya', my baby boy is a champ!!
This is his 2nd season playing Upwards Soccer and at his Saturday game, he did sooo good. He blocked 2 goals and made 2 goals, turning one ball around from the end of the field and running it all the way back to our goal... Go Maximus!! Go Gators!!

Monday, April 13, 2009

Easter 2009

Something about being a homeschool mom, you can't just celebrate the holiday/occasion... you MUST know WHY you are celebrating!! So for the past month, we've sort of used a unit study approach to learn the real meaning of Easter. Funny thing is, I was learning to.
We used Amanda Bennett's Easter unity study to learn the history of Easter and where it took place. We read the story Matthew 26-28 from the bible, the NIV (which leaves out the and thou), then watched The Greatest Adventures of the Bible: The Easter Story. It was neat to see all the things that we had read, putting pictures with our visuals. We read The First Easter from several different authors and did a study on The Legend of the Easter Egg by Lori Walburg VandenBosch. From this book, Maximus learned 10 new vocabulary words, the meaning of a simile: comparing two unlike things using 'like' or 'as', did a refresh on time and days of the week as many events happened in the book using specific times/days, did a few experiments using an egg and discovered why eggs are a symbol of Easter.

He also got to do a few fun activities such as watch Charlie Brown's Easter and Peter Cottontail, make Resurrection eggs and Resurrection cookies, Easter nests and marshmellow cottontails.


One of the egg experiments: watching to see what happens when a hard boiled eggs is mixed with vinegar... calcium mixed with acetic acid, releases carbon dioxide.


Making Resurrection cookies, going along with the ressurection of Jesus Christ... a marshmellow (Jesus), dipped in butter (oils), cinnamon and sugar (spices), wrapped in croissants (linen) and baked (buried). After they were done (3 days later), the croissants were empty, representing Jesus has Risen!

Maximus with his "empty" linen


Resurrection eggs... each egg has a symbol of Jesus's time on Earth, starting with Passover, to his crucifixion. One of the eggs were stuffed with a cracker, to represent the bread and one morning we caught River red-handed opening each egg until he found the stale cracker, after he found it and ate it, he was done, he left the rest alone.



Cookin' and mixin' up some chocolate and chow mein noodles for the Easter nests


River's nest...


Maximus's nest...




Coloring eggs at Pawpaw and Cathi's



Easter egg hunt at the church... he didn't know what to think.


Maximus's best friends




The bike rodeo, he did soo good!






I couldn't believe how good he did in the bike rodeo, making no mistakes and did not knock over 1 cone!!



Sitting with the Easter Bunny "bunn-bunn" at Ashley Park. River wasn't sure about it, but he was a good sport.



Easter morning- the posse


"Cheez"... River hunting eggs at Granmama Arp's






Maximus and his eggs at Granmama Arp's.

What a fun time for the Brew Crew!!
There were a few things that we didn't get to do as we were sooo busy, but I am a little disappointed so we'll have to make those priority next year... coloring eggs at home, making our bunny cake, and hot cross buns for Good Friday. Since, I have all the stuff, we may just go ahead and "practice for next year"!
Happy Easter y'all!

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

You know I've been thinking about what it takes to make it in the "real world". What is it that society is looking for from homeschoolers? There are many things and being a homeschooler, you get so focused on trying to please society that it often translates into keeping your child 'above grade level' and into many different social activities such as sports and outside classes and going along, we forget to teach the important things called Life's Skills.
It is exciting for me to teach and witness first hand my children's education; watching them learn colors, words, math problems and on into reading and writing. Accomplishing those things seem to encourage me and become my main reason for homeschooling.
But when I think about it, when I take time to teach my children life skills, I am actually equipping them for the "real world". What will my boys do when they are launched into the real world where Mama is not around to do the laundry, cook, or clean and Daddy is not available for a quick twenty dollars? Beyond the textbooks, my goal is to equip my children to care for themselves and others, along with doing whatever else God has in store for them. In doing so, we- River included, have been talking a lot about money; how much things cost and the results of saving. I want to teach them the value of a dollar and the value of saving a dollar. I don't want to shame them for wanting "stuff", I just want them to identify that no amount of "stuff" brings true happiness, especially when you are a slave to the lender. In teaching this, they must also learn math, science, history and literature, so I believe if I focus on the true meaning of "functioning in the real world", I will have accomplished far beyond what society can comprehend.


While teaching money, Maximus and I was counting up all of his money that he has been saving over the years and counted over $400. After we were finished, the first thing he did was take a great big sniff! That let me know he had inherited his mama's natural love for the smell of green. The money that we counted is his money, not earned, but gift money... so I ask him what he wanted to do with it and he said "keep saving because I want to buy a Harley Davidson when I grow up"... Next year he may decide to blow it all on bubble gum, but at 6 six years old that's pretty astonishing!
And all the while, while I have been teaching Maximus about money, River brought me a "quar-quar" and "penn-penn"... at 1 years old, he can identify the two. It sounds like a fib or an exaggeration, but that is the God's honest truth!

Friday, April 3, 2009

Wow, how time flies. I come to post a blog and realized I hadn't posted since last week!
So much is going on and we have just become so busy since the beginning of the year. After the holidays, I thought uh oh we've got 'real' school work to do and workbooks to finish...so we better get back on track or else we won't have a summer break! But I did mention that we did a birthday study for Maximus's birthday, which was really fun and something I plan to do every year for both of my boys. And we did a small unit study for St. Patrick's Day, learning the history of the holiday, eating green eggs and ham and of course, bashing our cheap leprechaun... (Maximus cannot wait till next year because he has a plan, he wants to set up a trap and catch him...uh oh!).
This year, April Fool's Day snuck up on me! I was planning on getting my family really good. I can't tell because they are soo good, I hope to use them for next year!
Well, after telling Maximus it was April Fool's Day, my little prankster couldn't be any happier! We were able to talk some about the history of AFD, but he was waaay more interested in fooling everyone!
He couldn't wait to get Jason and he did good!
He apologize to him for getting mud all in the camper (this was soo good because Jason is a neat freak about our camper and its not unlike Maximus to do something like this).
He said he accidentally jumped in the mud puddles and didn't know his boots were muddy until after he had climbed all over the beds. I saw the look of fear in Jason's eyes and nudged Maximus to quickly say APRIL FOOLS!
He called Mimi and told her we had to go to her house to get something and Lucy (her very spoiled dog) ran out and ran down the road. Maximus said she really started to get upset so he had to tell her APRIL FOOLS pretty quick!
Then he called Pawpaw. He tried telling him that he saw his laundry mat on the news where it had been broken into and everyone had stolen all his washing machines. After hanging up, he said "Man your daddy is good, he knew it was April Fools...so I've gotta think of something good to get him next year".
For the last few weeks, we have been doing an Easter unit study, so I'll be posting the details on that soon.

So that's what our Home Sweet Homeschool has been up to!