First Day of School 2013!

I can't believe our first day is behind us already! The girls were all excited to get started (mostly) and the day went really well. Here are my sweet girls, fresh and ready to begin a new year! It's hard to believe how quickly time is flying!

Here are pictures of the girls working throughout the day. Elianna will be with us for these first few weeks before her preschool starts. She does a little work in the morning and then naps in the afternoon during our history and science studies. Here she is practicing her cutting skills.

Maryella copies her spelling words

Kaylin and Annlee work on All About Spelling together.

Annlee begins her Spanish studies. She did AMAZINGLY well!

We ate lunch, got Elianna settled down for a much needed nap and then began to dig into the My Father's World, Creation to Greeks curriculum. One of the things that will tie our next 4 years together is a huge timeline on our wall. The girls each have their own timeline books that they can color themselves. They were so excited to get those today! We started by coloring a rectangle that has the Hebrew words "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth". Here they are beginning their timeline books while listening the Haydn's "Creation" on You Tube. They got a little silly during this, haha.

And here are a couple pictures from our big wall timeline.
Beginning of our wall timeline...

End of our wall timeline...

We also began a 4 year art curriculum today. Our first art lesson was about frustration. Even the best artists got frustrated with their work. But we learned about Joni Eareckson Tada (google her if you don't know who she is... amazing!) and felt what it would be like to draw like her. The point was to understand that when we feel frustrated with our art to remember that if Joni could learn how to draw with her teeth, we can learn to draw with our hands. And also, art is a learned skill. It takes practice!

And our big surprise for the day... Jeff got us the What's In the Bible with Buck Denver dvds! He found an AWESOME sale and we were able to watch the first half of the first dvd today. These will be a perfect addition to our year!

All in all, our day went smoothly and we had fun. I am really looking forward to our year and I think the girls are too. I'm so excited about the things we will be learning. Stay tuned for more of our adventure through history!

A New School Year is Upon Us!

I can't believe it! We are less than two weeks away from starting our 2nd year of homeschooling! I can not even begin to say how excited I am to get going! I've had all summer to plan, prepare, and think about what we will be doing. It's going to be a fabulous year!

The girls will continue right along with their individual subjects.
Here are Kaylin's books for the year...

Rod and Staff English 6
Math U See Epsilon (fractions this year, yikes!)
All About Spelling 4 (and probably 5 before the year is over)
WriteShop Junior D (this is really too young for her, but it's our first year using it, so we are just figuring things out, plus I'd like to keep her combined with Annlee for as much as possible)
Rosetta Stone Spanish (Speaking, Listening, and Reading course for now)


Annlee...

Rod and Staff English 4
Math U See Delta
All About Spelling 4 (and probably 5)
WriteShop Junior D
Rosetta Stone Spanish (Speaking, Listening, and Reading)

Maryella...

Rod And Staff English 2
Math U See Beta
All About Reading 2 and 3
All About Spelling 2
WriteShop Primary A
Rosetta Stone Spanish (just Speaking and Listening)

And now for the part that I'm so excited about!!! Our My Father's World this year brings us to the second year of the cycle called Creation to Greeks. We will be learning so much about the creation of the world (I have learned SO much this summer about Creationism and the argument for a young earth!), Jewish feasts, ancient Egypt, ancient Greeks... I can not wait! We will create a timeline around the room to see everything unfold in front of us. We will begin a 4 year art course called God and the History of Art that looks really good. We will also begin a 4 year study of great composers. This year covers Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach. Here is a picture of the books we will be using that are part of our MFW CTG package. The first column is science, then history, the art and music, then read alouds, then a couple extras.

English from the Roots up will begin to teach us some Greek root words to help with our understanding of the English language. I made this poster that we can change out each week with our new Greek root on the trunk and English words that use that root on the leaves.

These posters are for our Bible Memory Verses for the year. They will be learning some good ones!

They will also be learning the Old Testament books. This poster/game will help us memorize those.

We are also going to be doing an extra science curriculum this year that I am extremely excited about!!! It's by Apologia and it's called Exploring Creation with Zoology 1, Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day. We will know all there is too know about birds after this year! This curriculum is where our lapbooks will come from this year.

It's going to be such an exciting year! I'll admit to being slightly overwhelmed looking at all that waiting curriculum, but we've got a whole year to cover all of it. Honestly, I can't wait to let us all dig in!

And just because it's fun and I've worked hard on it, here are a few pictures of our homeschool room. Isn't it pretty? It's my favorite room in the house!

We've made a few changes this year. We have a new dining room table that Jeff made so we moved our old table into the school room for our art table. Here is the view looking in from the dining room. You can see that gorgeous new table and our new chore chart.

Here is the computer area in the dining room.

This shelf holds our art supplies that we don't use on a daily basis. The little cubby thing beside it holds Elianna's preschool stuff that she will do on days that she's home with us.

Here is my desk area in the school room. You can also see some of our supplies on the table in front of the map. Those are the things we will be using more often.

Jeff had these maps of Israel that we will use as reference.

So there it is... everything waiting and ready to go! We are finishing up VBS this week, Kaylin goes to church camp next week, then we can get started! Our big family beach trip is later in August and I didn't want to wait that long to get started. We will be able to get in 3 weeks before we go. I think it will be a perfect start to get our feet wet again and then we can take a little beach break. I'm looking forward to lots of learning, lots of fun, lots of blogging, but most of all, lots of growth in God. It's going to be a great year!