Life Happens, But So Does Home Schooling

This has been quite a busy fall & winter for us... besides home schooling, we've been house-hunting, house-buying, packing, moving, unpacking and settling in to our new place. Oh, and did I mention that meanwhile I was in my first trimester of pregnancy?

If you've ever thought to yourself that you may want to do all those things at once, let me be the first to tell you that you MAY prefer to do otherwise, but if that's how life happens, it's ok. :)

Just for kicks I thought I'd share with you our "daily schedule"...

See how well-planned that is? You may be thinking that I've got it really together, but in that case you'd be wrong. We have yet to do ONE day by the schedule I so thoughtfully made before starting our school year. But somehow school happened anyway. And I'm thankful it did.

If we weren't home schooling, our home-buying process would've been WAY more stressful since various setbacks changed our would-be move-in date from August to November, which would've resulted in our little guy changing schools only a couple months into Kindergarten.  Besides that, he would've missed out on a lot of play dates with friends, a day-time bible class we join (a couple home schooled teen girls teach a class for the little ones while the moms have our bible study), visiting Dad at work, visiting his grandparents during the perfect fall weather and enjoying the Pumpkin Patch and Wild Animal Park minus the crowds, Day out with Thomas the Train, and behind-the scenes tours of Auntie Anne's Pretzels and Braum's Dairy Farm with our other home schooling friends. Most of all I think he'd miss getting to romp around with his brother, hunt roly polies, build forts, play super heroes, and go exploring.

I know I'd miss our "big talks," little snuggles, and hearing his lunch time prayers too. Besides, how can a class room compete with this???

Creation or Natural Coincidence?

Take a look at this aircraft cabin for a minute... 

It takes a lot of genius, planning, technology,
and wisdom to build such a marvel, wouldn't you say?

If someone said that the aircraft and its cabin were not planned... they just existed... by themselves... or by chance... or by coincidence... how would you react? How would the engineers and designers and scientists that built it react?

Now let's consider these wonders...  

My Bible Marking System

I will just tell you right off the bat that I am big on organization. Now, what does that have to do with highlighting in your Bible? Well, if you use any color to highlight any verse here there and everywhere with no logic behind it, or if you underline verses here there and everywhere that have to do with this that and the other, then you will have a very written-in Bible, but it won't serve you as well as it could. So, what I'd like to suggest is that the next time you get a new Bible, it's a great time to re-think your Bible Marking System! If you were to mark certain themes in a certain way or color, it makes it easier to find verses you've marked, and helps you to glance at a the page and know what themes are talked about. You'll see what I mean in a minute... let's just dive in.

First off, ditch the highlighters! They are unstable ink (they'll bleed through the page or mess up over the years). Second, get yourself some colored pencils for underlining. I've tried various bible markers, including the chalky type special Bible highlighters and other stuff that's geared specially for Bible marking, but colored pencils are the way to go. If you get a good little set, you'll have a variety of different colors that you can use for various different subjects, and since they're pencils, you can erase the occasional line that goes askew. Or the one that your one-and-a-half-year-old drew after watching Mommy do it.

Featured Readers!

I wanted to share a couple of the recent pictures I've received from readers who have made some of the projects on my site! Here we go:

Shona Mason used my Bible Cover sewing tutorial to make two pretty bible covers using an assortment of recycled fabric pieces! She didn't use a serger so she cut extra lining and folded it around the inner seams and hand-stitched them for a smooth finish. Here they are:

Sarah S. used my DIY Baby's Sleep Sack tutorial to make a sleep sack for her son. She wrote me back, glad for the  "super easy sleep sack pattern". She's a beginning seamstress and thought it was very easy to make. Here's hers, modeled by her sweet little Sammy: 

Thanks for sharing Shona and Sarah!

DIY Ponybead Suncatchers

This is such an easy way to make cute, surprisingly hardy little sun catchers. We made a couple of these last year and then made a couple more in our recent Kindergarten unit, "S is for Sun."

To make them yourself, you need some transparent pony beads, which look like this: 

S is for Sun

Well, we started Kindergarten, and someone is pretty excited!

Besides phonics and Right Start Math, we learned all about the sun and studied how Jesus is the light of the world. Here are a couple fun highlights...

We practiced the letter S in shaving cream, to make the boys smell good and clean my patio table, which was a fun and non-frustrating way for him to practice writing and re-writing a tricky letter. It was the first time he's been able to consistently make his S's face forward instead of backward.

Smurfy Tan & a Revamped Swingset!

My husband and I did a little revamping earlier this summer on this ugly, rusted, icky old swing set.