Wednesday, December 28, 2011

2011 Top Projects

I was just giving a house tour to a friend who hadn't been to our home for a year. She had seen things when they were still rough (aka no walls or ceiling in the bathroom and beds in the basement.) Looking at the house through her eyes made me realize how much we've actually done this past year!
We redid 2 bathrooms,
Painted every room in the house as well as the basement (except the shop area),
Replaced all the windows and the front door,
Replaced the cabinets in the laundry room,
Put new flooring in the laundry room and kitchen,
Created the school room and my craft space in the basement,
Fixed the chimneys,

Redid all of the landscaping, and
Decorated!
Here's a countdown of my most popular posts this past year:
#7 Organizing our 'Command Central'


 
#2 Our New School Room

And my #1 post of 2011 was my Summer 'I'm Bored' Jar

A few of my personal favorite projects included:
The Mr. and Mrs. Pillow Covers

The DIY Sand Table (Courtesy of the hubby)

and My Bird Art


So after a year of hard work, I'd say we made a good dent in the to-do list. But there's more to come!
I think it'll be a busy year.... we've got big dreams to make this house fit our family, and I've discovered Pinterest. :) Can't wait to get started! Let's go.....

Linking up at these parties and here

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Weekly School Summaries - France (December 5-16)


Our MFW curriculum seems to lend itself to posting a summary every 2 weeks. Of course, the busyness of the holidays is probably contributing to me having less time to post too but a 2 week summary is just as good. I had a bunch of Christmas projects to work on so while we had a regular week December 5-9, this past week was a week of 1/2 days. Which I guess technically for us would be 1/4 days. :) Last week, we only did our MFW studies and put the 3 Rs on hold. It was a nice break to have an easier week but still get some work done. 
King Kong and the Eiffel Tower
 
Here's what we did:

Math: Similar to usual. They each had 4 days of lessons and 1 day of math games on the computer.

Reading and Language Arts: Soprano continued The Hundred Penny Box  from 'Across the Centuries' with a couple days of reading, a family tree activity, a worksheet and an evaluation. 
She finished her first Phonics book and will begin the next one in the series next week.
English and Spelling are going well as is her Handwriting. We're up to Nn.

Tenor continued with his 'A Reason for Handwriting C' and 'Writing Strands.'
He continued in Stone Fox from 'Across the Centuries C Level 1' with a few worksheets, a cartoon drawing activity, and an evaluation.

English (Rod and Staff Level 4) and Spelling (Rod and Staff Level 4) are going well. 
Electives:
Typer Island for their typing instruction and continuing with SOS Elementary Spanish. I did change our schedule a bit because it felt like the school day was taking forever. So Tenor now has 2 days of typing and 2 days of Spanish. He gets Wednesdays off, while Soprano has 2 days of tying and 1 day of Spanish. It seemed to help us get through the day a little quicker. We'll see how it works this coming week.

They had a review worksheet about dental hygiene. We also talked about fishermen in PA.

Phys Ed.: We brought the scooters into the basement. It's an unfinished space but we have our family room, school room, and my craft space down there. The floors are concrete and there's enough open space for them to scoot around.  We also used the Wii Fit to do Island Cycling to coincide with our studies about France, where bicycling is popular.

Bible: The past two weeks included:
Reading about Albania and Gypsies
Reading Matthew 9:18-11:30
Memorizing Matthew 9:37-38 and 11:28
Reading about Menno Simons and William Tyndale.

Geography:
We've moved onto studying France. We read about the People and Places, Nature, Farming and Industry of Europe.
Coloring the French flag and writing down interesting facts about it.

Making a model of the Eiffel Tower out of K*nex.
I actually took 1 year of French in Junior High and then had a cassette tape course for 2 years in High School. I can't speak French whatsoever but I was able to muddle my way through the pronunciations for the language activity. I can however order a cheese omelet and Coke if I'm ever in France.

Illustrating notecards for cave, sea cave, river, and rapids
  
 
And playing the geography game with North and South America and adding Europe.

Tenor's Europe pages from World Geography were Islands, Climate, and, Animals.

Science: Discussion on Animal Defenses, Adaptation, Caves, the Balance of Nature, Classification, and Eugene Odum.
We read some neat books from the library including:

Soprano finished the Reptile animal pages from The Complete Book of Animals and then moved on to the Science and Animals pages.

Other MFW: Wee sing: Wee Falorie Man, Coulter's Candy, Lavender's Blue, All the Ducklings, and Frere Jacques. I suppose I could have played some music by Debussy, Delibes, Ravel, or Saint-Saens but it just didn't happen.
 
Art: We got several books from the library about Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir and then we did the profile silhouette activity.


To fill in a bit, we read other books about western European countries and borrowed DVDs from the library. We focused on Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Greece, and Serbia.
Some favorite books from the library were:
C is for Ciao: An Italy Alphabet
Count Your Way Through Greece
Linnea in Monet's Garden
and Little Bo in France

We had French Toast for dinner one night (I know, I know, it's not quite authentic) and then went to Olive Garden for an Italian meal. Being quite a bit Italian, the younglings are pretty familiar with Italian food. Ahh.... chicken alfredo, garlic bread, pasta, more garlic bread... yum!
With Christmas just a few days away, I'm looking forward to another week of 1/4 days and then a week off. I know the kids are too. But we're finished with 15 of 36 weeks! Wow! I wasn't sure we'd get this far to be honest. O me of little faith. :)
Merry Christmas to you and your families! I hope your Christmas break is refreshing and filled with joy!


Linking up at www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com and
at http://2ladybugsandalizard.blogspot.com.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Christmas Cards - Joy


I had a bunch of Christmas cards left-over from last year and a few that I had put together during the year but I still needed a few more cards to send out this year. So I got to work. Here's what I came up with (all variations on a theme.)


Supplies used:
Stamps - TAC Seasonal Circles and TAC Christmas Postage
Patterned paper - from a really old Christmas stack and some from Creative Memories
Spellbinders - scalloped and regular circles
Provo Craft - swirl embossing folder
Tombow markers
Stickles (for the stars on the trees)

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Christmas 2011 - Holiday Cheer

I mentioned before that this Christmas (the 2nd in our current home), I have more time and energy to do some crafting and decorating. Last year, with no shower, a bathroom in shambles, Bass away on a business trip, and all the painting and cleaning we had to do, we barely got the tree and stockings up.

This year after we pulled all of the tubs out of the attic, I spent hours digging through them and re-imagining how everything could work in our new space. Here are a ton of pics of the spaces I dressed up for Christmas. Come on in and check it out!
Starting outside...
A bunch of old garland wound together to beef it up, some pine cones and holly sprigs from my stash, a few new white poinsettia blooms and a new gold bow went on the front window.


A lit grapevine tree with new gold bow and wood angels for the front stoop.

New white poinsettia blooms for the window swags and my lit grapevine angel dressed up the other side of the house. 


Our gold, music themed front door wreath. the picks and ornaments were on clearance after Christmas a few years ago.

Living Room entry table: framed vintage-y postcard, 2 leftover garland pieces, and lantern.


Christmas village set up in the living room bay window with a roll of sparkly winter snow.

 

Winter pillow covers join the striped pillows on the sofa. 

 

Candle arrangement on the coffee table.


Our ornament tree... filled with tons and tons of ornaments and many, many memories.


Our Christmas card holder. Either I'll just lay the cards we receive over the rungs like in the pic or I might punch a small hole in the corner of the back and tie them on the rungs with jute. Not sure yet.




Okay, so this house has this nifty little Narnia-esque lamp in between the dining room and the kitchen. We're not quite sure why it has an outdoor fixture on it but it actually works and until we redo the kitchen, it stays. I honestly don't even think about it anymore but when we have company over for the first time, they usually comment on it. At Christmas, it just cries out for decorating so it got some garland with ribbon and a bow.  Gotta work with what you've got, ya' know? 


Laundry Room
 
Family room decor 
 
 


With all of that finished, I was able to purge quite a bit that we don't need anymore. I was able to do a few projects too to make our Christmas stuff really fit into this house. It's nice to have all the decorating done. Now on to cards and gifts!


Linking up to some of these parties and here.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Weekly School Summaries - Norway (November 14 - December 2)


With the Thanksgiving holiday, we had a shorter week last week and did some combining with our MFW curriculum. Here's what we got done:

Math: Similar to usual. Tenor had regular lessons each week. Soprano had regular lessons each week and some time to play computer math games. She's beginning to learn how to measure in feet.

Reading and Language Arts: Soprano finished Ox-Cart Man  from 'Across the Centuries' with an evaluation, then started on The Snowy Day. She had an opposites worksheet, a chalk snowman craft, map and animal footprints activities. She finished up The Snowy Day with a couple evaluations and then started The Hundred Penny Box.
Soprano is continuing well through her Phonics book. We're reviewing beginning and ending blends.
Her English work is moving into learning different types of nouns (people, places, things, and common and proper) and verbs. She sailed through the first Unit tests wonderfully.
We continued the new spelling curriculum, doubling up on some lessons to catch up. We'll start moving a little more slowly now that the word lists are getting a little harder. She finished through Lesson 7 this week. Her overall spelling is showing much improvement too.

Tenor continued with his 'A Reason for Handwriting C' and 'Writing Strands.'
He finished The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe from 'Across the Centuries C Level 1' and turned his finished worksheets into a mini book at the end of the unit. Now we're almost through Stone Fox, which we've discovered is a lot like the movie "Iron Will." It's interesting how much they took from the book but how much they varied the story in the film.

English (Rod and Staff Level 4) and Spelling (Rod and Staff Level 4) are going well. He's diagramming sentences with compound subjects or verbs.

Electives:
Typer Island for their typing instruction and continuing with SOS Elementary Spanish.

They had a few worksheets about the teeth they've lost or grown, the different jobs teeth do, and how to brush and floss.

Phys Ed.: A little bit of bike and scooter riding on the warm-ish days we had and some more soccer. We used Wii Fit to do some of the snow sports to coincide with our studies about Norway.

Bible: The past three weeks included:
Reading about Romania and Bulgaria
Reading Matthew 8:5-9:17
Memorizing Matthew 5:44-45


Geography:
Reading about the People and Places, Nature, Farming and Industry of Northern Europe
Coloring the Norwegian flag and writing down interesting facts about it.

Illustrating notecards for fjord, promontory, lake, and stream
And playing the geography game with North and South America and adding Europe.

Tenor's Europe pages from World Geography were Physical Features, Rivers, Mountains, and Bodies of Water.

Science: Discussion on the Northern Evergreen Forests, Seasonal Changes, and Animals' Seasonal Behaviors.

Soprano started working on the Reptile animal pages from The Complete Book of Animals.
We also did some tree activities: measuring the girth and height of trees and identifying trees while blindfolded.

Other MFW: Wee sing: Row, Row, Little Frogs, The Mulberry Bush, and The Circle Goes Around.
For more music, we listened to music by Edvard Grieg.
 
Art: I didn't have boxes or chests to do the rosemaling craft but we did have 2 unfinished picture frames from a Home Depot kids event, so they painted those. We also did the Lapland felt squares.

Rosemaling: Soprano's on the left; Tenor's on the right

Lapland squares: Soprano's on the left; Tenor's on the right

To fill in a bit, we read other books about northern European countries and borrowed DVDs from the library. We focused on Finland, Sweden, Iceland, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.


We had planned to go to Ikea to have Swedish meatballs in the food court but time-wise, we just couldn't make it work. It's an hour and a half drive and we couldn't find a time other than Thanksgiving weekend. Not doing that on Black Friday!

The days go by and the finished work piles up. It's hard to believe it's December already and Christmas is around the corner. We're excited!


Linking up at www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com and
at at http://discovertheirgifts.blogspot.com/.
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