I have gotten behind on participating in the HSBA Homeschool Memoires meme. I have loved each theme but stuff just always seems to come up!!

Tonight I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone (I promise -- no "tweet-tweets" were hurt in the making of this blog post) and do a bit of catch up. Enjoy!!

(from top left to right) 

1. The Pear -- This was a bronze sculpture that I fell in love with at The Castle in New York.

2. Decorating -- We are getting our house put together. We moved from Arizona to North Carolina in May.

3. My Honey -- We were out looking for beaches and took the ferry. This is a reflection of Mike in the driver side mirror. He was standing with the boys and watching the birds fly over the water.

4. The Statue of Liberty -- The ferry to the Island was closed when Victoria and I arrived but we were able to take pictures from both Liberty Park on the Jersey side and Manhatten on the New York side.

5. Garden Statue -- I guess I just like statues and scultpures :-) This fair lady is in the gardens at Tryon Palace in New Bern, North Carolina.

6. My Boys -- We did a lot of swimming this summer trying to decide if we could afford to be on the Carteret Currents team down in Morehead City. We had to forego the team for now because of the expense but are saving, and practicing, to give it a go after the first of the year.

7. Taco Bell Volcano Taco -- Our children LOVE hot and spicy food. They didn't believe it was really hot. I'm still not sure what they believe about it except they had a contest to see who could down it first so I'll probably never learn the truth... ya know, since they are boys and all!

8. My Honey and Me -- Our daughter snapped this photo of us at Tryon. Isn't it sweet?

9. The 57 Chevy -- We saw this car at a Military Appreciation Day. It started raining but Mike was willing to get soaked to get the perfect shot!

10. Mo aka 7169 -- Mo is the squirrel we rescued after Hurricane Hanna blew her out of a tree. We got her warm and fed her and kept her protected for a day until we found out about our local animal rescue, The WildARC.

11. Victoria, my girl -- Victoria and I went to New York this summer on an all expense paid trip she won because of her paper last year on Habeas Corpus. She made me a proud mama by interacting maturely and intellectually with peers much older than her!!

 Hmmm... what is our favorite snacks??? Well, this one is kinda easy for us because we do like to eat...LOL.. I think I'll just give ya our top 10.

1. Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

2. BLT on wheat with baby spinach

3. Snap Peas and Baby Carrots with Ranch

4. White Cheddar Popcorn

5. Chicken Tortilla Soup

6. Monkey Bread

7. Baked Potatoes (soak 'em in olive oil, put in a paper bag, sprinkle with salt and microwave.. yummy!!)

8. Apple slices with Peanut Butter

9. Cheese (any kind of cheese... sticks... cubes.. slices... I mean ANY kind of cheese!!)

10. Chicken Wraps (a good piece of chicken, some baby spinach, veggie cream cheese, all wrapped up in a nice soft wheat wrap... some more YUM!!)

Thanks for catching up with me this week.... I hope you enjoyed my post :-)

Have a blessed weekend!

Sallie

Yeah!! I'm really excited about sharing this week :-) My family loves history. If I ever go back to college and get a degree it will be in history; in fact, I'd probably major and minor in history!! That's how much I love it :-)

So, I wanted my young 'uns to really learn through living history this year and I found a program by the National Park Service online that is a FREE curriculum for just that! AWESOME!!!

The National Park Service and The National Register of Historic Places has a website called Teaching With Historic Places. It has all the curriculum you need layed out in a plan complete with pictures, maps, and pretty much everything! You can sort by state/location, theme, or time period so it makes finding places that fit what you are studying very easy. You don't have to pick some place you've already visited but if you do, then it really opens up your kids minds because they can really see it and thats perfect for visual learners.

We wanted to pick a place that we've been to recently, and also something that fit in the time period in our country that we are studying. We chose to focus the next several weeks on the Homestead Act and so are using the program that goes along with The Hornbeck Homestead in Colorado. My in-laws live in Colorado Springs and so we had a great time visiting the homestead last year. We even made an old timey video of my mother in law walking on stilts (you might have seen that on my homeschool lounge page)! Here are a few pictures we took when we visited: http://www.angelfire.com/sc/anderklan/hornbeck_homestead/

Sallie

Our routines are pretty regular around our house, but not exclusively so scheduled down to the minute to where I feel like a failure should we not meet the appointed "10:55: walk the dog" mandate. That routine has never worked for me. I do respect and admire those who it does work for but every time I've tried it, I've felt my servant heart stifled by my own worry of getting it all done. I can't seem to separate the two I guess so its better for me to work this way.  

I am up before 6 every day with my husband. This is typically 5:30 but sometimes it is VERY much earlier (especially, if I feel like I need to do more in depth study on my own) but on occasion I might be a bit lazy and sleep an extra 15 minutes :-)

Our children must be up, showered, dressed, with breakfast eaten by 8:30 and at the table working on school. That also includes morning chores being accomplished as well. These might be chores such as walking the dogs, putting away dishes from the dishwasher, or putting their stack of laundry away if there is any for them that day. Their future employers are not going to schedule their morning routine and so, now that they are nearly all in their teen years, we feel they need to be responsible for these bits of scheduling on their own. There is an assortment of breakfast items for them to choose from but occasionally I will still cook a nice hot breakfast, or Victoria may make muffins. In any case, it is ready by about 7:45 so if they plan their time wisely, then there is no excuse for them to not be at their appointed work on time.

Everyone reads their Bible and does their devotion work for the day first thing. This is a must! After that, everyone is able to work at their own pace, and in their own order of subject that best suits them until after lunch. We do our "together" work after lunch and so any individual work not finished will have to be put off until later and that will eat into their "friend" time later in the evening.

Now, it is very possible, and quite probable on most days, that everyone is finished with their individual work WAY before lunch and so we go ahead and start our shared work. Most days our school is finished by noon. Today is an exception and we are still working at 1:30 and will probably be doing so for another hour. It just happens to be a bit of an extra workload because we chose to take an extra day off yesterday to spend with Dad. We need to accomplish at least four days of school, though, and so we divided the extra work between the days available.  

Afternoon chores (rooms cleaned, trash out, dogs walked, dishes, bathrooms, leaves raked, etc..) must be completed after school is complete, and before anyone can have any "free" time. My own work (like laundry, food prep for dinner, or other household chores) is usually done throughout the day in between helping answer questions and teaching a subject so I can spend time with my husband after he comes home. I try not to be busy with chores when he is here. That is one of the reasons Mondays are busy for me.... I've ignored the house on the weekends in order to show my husband love and respect :-)

We have church several times a week. We also have swimming several times a week.  They are very much part of our routines! We don't go lots of places and do lots of things. We all are very comfortable with being home-bodies because of the amount of time we already are away at church and swimming. We don't ever have the desire to feel like we have to be on the move constantly. I like field trips but I prefer family trips so if I can do it with my husband on a weekend and have us all together, then that is what I'll do every time! We definitely aren't the field trip a week homeschool family...lol.

Oh, I print out a lot of work for the children from the computer/internet from old books and lessons I create from old books (I've talked about that before). I usually print out a daily list of work but will also usually give them a stack of printed material at the beginning of the week that covers the whole week. Again, this puts more responsibility on them for organizing the workload. If I ask everyday "are you finished" and they answer "yes" but on Friday I collect the work and it isn't then they have given away their freedom (at the very least) for the weekend as well as chosen a failing grade for that work. I have not yet experienced this problem. I won't say it won't ever happen but we've always worked on instilling a good work ethic in our children and pray that it sticks with them.

I try to cook dinner every single day. Lunch is something small like sandwiches, ramen, or veggies/fruit/cheese plate. I keep it simple and easy but I love cooking so dinner is where I really try to make it good. We do "Sunday" dinners everyday pretty much! Wednesdays are an exception as that is our church family dinner and Victoria and I cook for that once a month. We are just starting this schedule back up for the first time today so are just kinda waiting to see how Wednesdays pan out.

We don't do much of anything on our free nights except be veggies! We might play games, or watch a movie, or read a book. Sometimes we'll go for a walk, or have a discussion with the whole family on politics or the Bible study we are doing at church. We just try and keep the schedule clear and enjoy each other!

I know my homeschool routine will be very different from lots of people but hopefully it feels like home to others :-) If you want to share your routine as part of the HSBA homeschool memoirs meme, click here.

Sallie

My name is Sallie and I've been homeschooling our four children (a girl and three boys) off and on since our special needs child was in 1st grade; he continued to have problems and when we discovered that the teacher really didn't care and was actually mean to him (and us!!!) on a regular basis, we brought everyone home to homeschool. We've done homeschool, charter schools, and public schools during the years in between (and with different children) because with each move we felt like we needed to be fair and give the new schools a chance to prove themselves. We've homeschooled Caleb the most and after trying him "one more time" in a charter school, in which the school promised lots but failed miserably, we have brought everyone back home and are on our second consecutive year of home school now (about 6 or 7 years totally). We love it and won't give the public school system a chance again, Lord willing. We hope to graduate our first (and currently only) high schooler this year... something we couldn't do if she was still "learning" in a public school setting... and something also that has encouraged me in my abilities to teach without fear!

Our family is a military family. My husband and I met when I was active duty Air Force. Our daughter became ill with RSV (respiratory sensitive virus) when she was only about 8 weeks old and I was deployed to help out in the hospital with a base that had been hit by a tornado while they were rebuilding. When my father in law called me to tell me that Victoria was hospitalized and in an oxygen tent because she couldn't keep her oxygen levels above about 30%, there were two doctors in the background arquing over whether she would live or die, and consequently whether I needed to come home or not. I was allowed to come home only for the weekend and my husband and I immediately made the decision for me to get out of the military, as soon as would be allowed, and for him to get in (since we really weren't sure of what her future medical needs would be...thankfully, there were no long term effects). Our deacon at church was also the Sergeant Major of the recruiting station and was ble to get my husband an "old man" waiver so he could enter the Marine Corps at 27 years old. Everything in Mike's Marine Corps career has been a gift from God and we know that His hand has been all over it. We spent nine months of our first year married apart from each other as we transitioned to a military career for my husband, which led to the first three years being a shaky part of our marriage. Thankfully, with God's guidance and blessing, we've lasted through the good and the bad and celebrated 17 years of marriage this past May.  We owe everything in our marriage and life to God and are never quick to forget it!!

I love God. I love my husband. I love my children. I love my parents, in laws, grama, siblings, and all of my extended family. I love my friends who have learned who I am and accept me, good and bad, without judgement.  I love to cook and try new recipes. I love to mess around and practice making new stuff for any of my families blogs and/or webpages. I love to read about history and study my Bible... great if I can do them both at the same time!! I love trying to learn and become familiar with Greek and Hebrew as I try and study God's Word. I love the Amplified version of the New Testament best of all the translations we own in our home. I love animals, especially dogs, and birds that sing. I love farmhouses and other types of old houses; I want to one day buy, take down, and put back up on my own property the log cabin that my great grandfather built that is still standing on my dads old homeplace (too bad it isn't in the family anymore but if it ever comes up for sale again I might be the first in line). I love to travel. And just to prove I don't love everything, I really hate asparagus ;-)

Have a blessed week!!

Sallie