Catching Up

Ugh, I have gotten so far behind! Here's a quick recap of what we've been doing and then I'll start fresh!

We completed out studies of Ancient Egypt. How fascinating and fun that was! We ended with an Egyptian feast complete with costumes!

We spent many weeks studying the life of Moses, the plagues, the Exodus, the building of the tabernacle, and the wilderness. We made lapbooks to help the girls remember some of the most important details. We also did some fun things like acting out the plagues and building our own tabernacles and letting lego people serve as priests.
This is my example lapbook, they each made their own. Each of those little things you see opens up so they could summarize what we learned about it in their own words.

They illustrated each of the plagues to include in their lapbooks.

They LOVED acting out the plagues everyday! I made their water turn into "blood" by putting a drop of red food coloring in the bottom of the glass before pouring the water.

I hid frogs all over the house. I just found another one the other day that we missed - months later!

I made them walk through gnats (black hole punch circles stuck between layers of packing tape). This was not an easy one to prepare, lol!

I threw flies at them while they worked. (Tiny pieces of black paper - the dog loved that!)

They woke up one morning to find that all their livestock (stuffed animals) had died. Of course, the area of Goshen was unharmed!

I made them work with "boils" all over their faces and hands one morning. They thought it was funny at first but then they got pretty itchy!

We went outside one afternoon and they experienced a hail storm. What fun to throw ice at them! Gently, of course!

Stay Tuned!

Yay! It seems like I can finally post again! I had gotten a new computer and was having trouble getting everything moved over and then figuring out the new Windows 8 operating system. But I seem to be back up and running now so stay tuned for a lot of posts and pictures coming up! I got pretty far behind but hope to catch up by the weekend!

Jewish Fall Feasts and More Ancient Egypt, Weeks 5-7

Bear with me for this one... I have a LOT of pictures this time! We've been having a lot of fun with some extras and experiments! But I'll get to those in a minute.

First, I have a confession. The past few weeks have been both amazing and a struggle, if that is even possible. We've had a lot of breaks here and there, so between that and a tough extra curricular schedule this year (Yes, we have a busy extracurricular schedule! Don't talk to me about unsocialized homeschoolers! Lol!), I have been feeling stressed lately. I know what the problem is. I'm always either teaching school, planning school, being a taxi service, or trying to figure out who to take where and when. I'm learning a lot about the Old Testament from what we are doing in school, but I'm having trouble fitting in my own quiet time to really keep developing my relationship with God. I'm feeling so guilty and stressed about that. I've noticed through out my life that when I let that part slip, I begin having problems. So, I'm trying to be more deliberate about finding time to spend in personal prayer and worship. In 2012, I did one of those read the Bible in a year deals and was so proud of myself for actually getting through it! I began another one this year and lasted all of about 4 days. The more behind I got, the more discouraged I got and well, I just quit. So one way I'm trying to revamp this area of my life is to start over on that and do better this time. My goal will be to finish by the end of 2014, so I'll have a little wiggle room on the whole 1 year thing. Another thing I'll be starting will be going to a women's Bible study beginning in October. Spending time in God's word with others who want to learn has always been an encouragement to me. And finally, even though I just got a new phone (yay!), I will be putting my new toy down more often as it can be a real distraction. I'm still working on finding a designated quiet time. I'm truly just too tired in the evenings, but I am not looking forward to an earlier wake up call. Like I said, I'm working on it...
And while I'm in confession mode... if you will notice up there on that to-do list of my stressful day - housework wasn't even included. That's because my awesome and wonderful husband has been picking up my slack yet again this year. I was so determined that things would be different. I blamed last year's lack of housework on my part on it being our first year homeschooling. I needed to figure out this new journey, and if taking a year off of housework would help that, then that was a sacrifice I was willing to make (hehe, some sacrifice, huh?) But this year, I wanted to do better. I did really good the first week we started back, but once again, the endless piles of laundry and dishes got the better of me. Thank goodness Jeff doesn't mind taking care of those things, he is such a good man! It does make me feel like a bit of a slacker or a failure even, so I'm still hoping to change my ways and be able to do more of those household chores soon.
Whew. It feels good to get that all off my chest. Confession is good for the soul, so they say. You know, sometimes people will tell me that they don't how I do it all or that they think I'm super mom or something. Well, I'll just direct them to this blog post from now on. I'm SO not perfect! When others insinuate that I am, it just makes me feel all gross inside because I know the truth. We all have our struggles, stresses, and problems. Let's not compare, let's just encourage!

So, after all of that, here are pictures from our last three weeks. This is the amazing part I was talking about earlier. No matter how busy and crazy and out of sorts life gets, I am LOVING teaching these girls! I know without a doubt that this is what God has called our family to do!

Ancient Egypt pictures
We studied mummies and mummification, drew Egyptian coffins, built pyramids, and studied the science of how real pyramids were built.

Pictures from our Fall Feasts
We celebrated Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkoth. Wow! We learned SO much from this! If you ever have a chance, spend a year celebrating the Jewish feasts. It will change your life!
Rosh Hashanah:

Yom Kippur:

Sukkoth:

Other pictures from the last few weeks, including a couple of how I organize my things. I have file folders labeled weeks 1-34 with all the papers we need for each week. Whenever I come across a cute idea from a magazine or pinterest, I make a note in the appropriate folder so I'll remember when the time comes. Then on my table, I have a red wire dish rack where I keep a few of my supplies plus the things we need for our week. I take the papers out the week's folder and I divide those up in the folders Monday - Friday so I can just grab a folder for the day. It has worked really great so far!