Circling Through This Life

As I think about saying hello to the new year, I can’t help but think about what goals I want to accomplish.  There are no major life events planned.  We’ve not been invited to any weddings, nor have the girls been asked to be part of the weddings. (We had flower girl in 2013.) None of my girls are set to graduate in 2014. (We had one in 2013 and we’ll have one in 2015.)  So what am I looking forward to? Using my 2014 Schoolhouse Review Crew Blog Planner ~  I tried a bit to use a blog planner for 2013 but couldn’t really find one that I really liked.  There are parts of this specially designed for 2014 Schoolhouse Review Crew Team Members planner that I don’t need and won’t use but I’ve printed out and bound the pages that I want. Keeping my blog real.  Blogging from my heart about what’s on my mind, about what’s happening in my life and my thoughts and reactions to issues of faith, family and home education. Using a new simplified check off system f...

Here we are just two days before Christmas,  We’re at letter O for the Blogging Through The Alphabet.  Being so close to Christmas it would make sense to do something like O is for Ornaments and I could very easily do a whole post about ornaments.  But I found a bunch of “ordinary” pictures.  Pictures of us doing boring ordinary things.  Here are just a few.     Sleeping.  Something we do everyday.  Not necessarily daily on the couch though.         Yard work. Another ordinary activity. This was taken in the spring after the major ice storm of January 2012           School work.  Boring.  But it’s something ordinary that we do nearly everyday.           More school work.  Doing school with the cat on the lap is a pretty ordinary event for us.               I wish that goofing off during schoo...

Have you heard of Zane Education ?  I had not. Zane Education provides video based instruction for classrooms and home school.  In today’s technologically driven world, videos have become almost essential for teaching and learning. As you can see from the tag line, Zane Education provides “ the Missing Piece .”  You can download several catalogs for free and get a feel for what is available.  I especially recommend the Video Title Catalog. Zane offers several levels of membership including a free basic level.  At the basic level you have access to all the resources including the online quizzes but you’ll only be able to view sample videos as the full online educational videos are only available with a premium membership . GOLD MEMBERSHIP provides access to the videos for all topics at just $17.99 per month or $197.89 per year. SILVER MEMBERSHIP provides access to the videos for all topics in a particular Age/Grade at just $12.99 per month or $142.89 ...

Last week a new vendor list posted and I was thrilled to see my name on the list.  So I was expecting a package…. just not today. But getting the package early wasn’t really the unexpected blessing.  Seeing Supergirl’s face when she realized that the package was for HER.  That was the unexpected blessing.  I wish I had taken a picture or had a recording device for her voice.  She wants so much to be like her sisters and so much of what they do for school is well beyond her level of learning.  What a thrill to have a review crew product arrive that was just for her!  “ Thank you, Daddy for buying this for me” she politely stated.  Her face registered surprise when he replied with “I didn’t buy it for you.” She turned to me and asked “You bought it?”.  “Nope.”  I explained that it was a crew product that we need to review and that her job was to use the product so that I could write about it on my blog.  Her face beamed with pride...

I’m supposed to be the teaching parent. Today I felt like I was the learning parent. Science was not a requirement for high school graduation when I was in school, so I didn’t take science. Now as an adult I have discovered that I really enjoy science. Yesterday, BooBear had a question about her physical science. She’s currently studying Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion. She needed help setting up the equation so that she could figure out the answer to how much force was applied to move the rock or something like that. This required a crash course on Physics for me. I told her to bring me her science book and we’d talk about it tomorrow. I ended up reading and re-reading the section in order to understand the relationship between force and friction. Using the Charlotte Mason technique of “narration”, honeybear got to be my sounding board as I tried to understand the science well enough to teach it to my daughter. So this morning we sit down together to go over th...