A Little bit of what we have been doing

Last week I was getting things back to normal after a trip to Greenville for a 3 day homeschool conference. I enjoyed my time at the conference, and let me just say that Carol Barnier was awesome. She gave so many tips that I cant wait to put to use. The last time I went to a conference I came home with all of the kids curriculum. This time not so much, I only came home with science, Bryannas language arts and BW's next phonics book. So I have quite a bit of research to do to figure out the rest of our next school year. Right now I am looking at doing Galloping the Globe for BW. Seems like I have so much to do, I think we are going to start in July since it is so hot and take a couple of weeks in September and October off. Where are you in your plans for the next school year?

We were invited to attend a study with other homeschoolers about medieval times. Last Thursday was our first time going and the kids had a great time. They talked about for a long time after we left. They talked about castles and made castles last week. This week they get to learn about knights. Cant wait to hear there stories after they finish that day.

This past weekend my wonderful hubby surprised us with a 3 day weekend. We had such a great time with him. We spend 1 of those days out on the town, took the kids out to eat, and went shopping. The other days we celebrated my grandmas birthday (she turned 80) and went to church. Such a great weekend.

Hot Water Heater, Conference, and Anniversary

One morning this week our hot water heater gave out and leaked in our floor..ugh. So after I got everything cleaned up out of the floor and found out what the problem was I had to thank the Lord that I was home. Had I not been home we would have had a mess. So we have had to change our daily routine up a little, spending time at my moms some for use of water. The plan is to have this replaced in the morning and hopefully things will be back to normal.

Next week, well in 6 days, me and two other moms will be heading to Greenville, SC for the Southeast Homeschool Conference. Can I tell ya I am so excited about this trip! I am so looking forward to spending time with other homeschoolers, getting some great tips from seminars, and attending the book fair. Looking forward to the fellowship with my friends too! Did I tell you, I am really excited about going on this trip, well if I didnt I am very excited!

Also next week while I am away it will be mine and my husbands 11 year anniversary. I know I wont even be here with him. He has to work the whole time I am gone so we are going to celebrate another weekend. We thought about this weekend but with the water heater issue it may have to be the weekend after the conference.  I cant believe it has been 11 years since we said I do, I love him more today than ever. He is the best and I just love him so much. I couldnt have asked for a better hubby and father for my children.

Wishing everyone a great weekend!

Busy, Busy, Busy....

We are still here, just been very busy. Just last week we had 2 field trips with our homeschool group and my niece, who is a senior this year, was on the homecoming court at her school. We went to Battleground Alamance, Transportation Museum, homecoming parade and the homecoming football game. We had a lot of fun though and enjoyed everything so much. Today I am posting picutres from our Battleground Alamance trip, hope you enjoy. There were some other stations but my camera battery died. Other things were blacksmith, making apple cider with an apple cider press, chair weaving, and writing with a feather pen.



The Allen House

Telling about the inside of the Allen House

  

I love how the herbs are hanging on the wall.



I really like this picture!

School is in Session, This is a hornbook.

What do you think about this way of cooking?

Can you guess what that pan is called?

Making candles.

Time for music!

The Doctor is in....not a favorite to hear about!

And of course game time....BW playing with Jacobs Ladder.

Bryanna playing shut the box.



Telling us about the cannon demonstration.



Cannon....

First Week of School

This week marked our first week of school. We had a great first week. The kids did really well and I am pleased with how everything went. Last Friday we had a play day with some friends before getting back into the school routine. We went to a church that has an inside play center and had lunch, the kids had a lot of fun.

This year I did something different for our first day of school. I fixed a little goody bag for both kids that they were so excited about. Bryanna kept telling me "mom you really didnt have to do this". I enjoyed seeing there surprised faces.

Looking forward to another great week! Hope you all have a great weekend!

Not Back- to- School Blog Hop

This weeks Not Back-to-School Blog Hop topic is Schoolroom. I am very excited about this because I get to take a sneak into other schoolrooms and maybe come away with some ideas for our family. We have been schooling in our living room and when we remodeled in the spring we had to move to the kitchen.

This is where we do all our schooling at. I really like sitting at the kitchen table with the 3 windows, gives such great light.

This is something new we are trying this year. Since both kids are doing school work this year I thought I would give each of them a color, Bryanna gets pink and BW gets the green cart. In these are there pencils, scissors, glue, crayons, markers, notebooks and current books they are using. And of course my lovely whiteboard  that really comes in handy.

These cabinets are in our laundry room which is right beside of the kitchen/dining area and as you can see from the pictures below these house anything from teachers manuals, books not currently using, to craft supplies. Please excuse the mess, still working on getting everything organized.

One thing I didnt take a picture of was a bookcase we have in our living room that has additional books and our paint on it. This is our schoolroom, hope you enjoyed your visit. If you homeschool and would like to join in, please do it is so much fun and you meet other homeschoolers as well.

Testing and conference

Wow, end of the year testing is Friday for Bryanna. I can't believe it is already here, where did this year go. I get way to stressed about this. Last year I worried over her math and she did very good but I cant help it. After all I am her teacher and I feel like it is a reflection on my teaching. She is a little nervous which is to be expected but I told her just to do her best and she will be fine. I think we are both ready for it to be over with so we can see how well she does.

On another note the homeschool conference is this weekend. Last year I went to the bookfair and had a wonderful time and came home with almost all of my curriculum for this year. I have been debating on whether to go this year or not but I think that I am going on Friday after testing and I am going to take Bryanna with me. Cant wait to see her reaction when she sees all the vendors. It is definitely an experience and gets you all pumped up for schooling. I hope next year I can go to the full conference and enjoy some of the workshops as well.

I have been looking at curriculum for next year and even after 2 years of schooling it can still get overwhelming. I wasnt sure what I wanted to do with language arts/grammar but I really like the looks of growing with grammar and soaring with spelling and vocabulary. Do you have any suggestions for curriculum?

This is way off of the subject but tomorrow we get our tables for the living room and that will make the set complete!

Homeschool Review

Yes today I had my homeschool review with the state. It only took 15 minutes and we were done. I felt like I was very well prepared. I brought everything they told me and brought some of her work and pictures with me to show as well.  Was I nervous about going, not really. But I can say I am glad I have that behind me.  We went in not sure what to expect, we were just told what to bring, and came out with smiles and a certificate in hand. We got a inspection verification certificate. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Gingerbread Houses

We went to a Christmas Party today and the kids had a lot of fun. They got to make gingerbread houses and of course mama was there with the camera. So here are a few shots of their houses, I thought they turned out so cute. Enjoy!!!

Lumpy Bumpy Pumpkin

We read Lumpy Bumpy Pumpkin this week and the kids really enjoyed this book. The story is about five pumpkins four are perfect and round and one is lumpy and bumpy and not a very pretty pumpkin. The four picked on the Mr. Lumpy Bumpy pumpkin and said he wouldnt be any good except for pumpkin pie. One by one each pumpkin was picked. It came down to him and one other pumpkin and Mrs Crow was coming the next morninig to pick her pumpkin so she could make pumpkin pie. Of course poor Mr. Lumpy Bumpy pumpkin cried all night and he had salt water tears flow down his face. The next morning Mrs. Crow came and the farmer took her to see Mr. Lumpy Bumpy pumpkin and she said he smelt salty and that would not make a good pumpkin pie so she picked the other pumpkin. In the end Mr. Lumpy Bumpy Pumpkin made a great jack-o-lantern. Of course whats a mother to do but tell her daughter that just because something or someone may seem perfect on the outside doesnt mean that they are. So after the story we made pumpkins and the kids painted them and cut out their own faces and put them together.

What Have We Been Up To?

It has been awhile since I posted but we have been very busy. We had our second field trip and we went to Battleground Alamance. This was very interesting and the kids did really good. They got to see one of the old cabins, play with toys they had back then, see how candles were made, watch a blacksmith turn iron into a nail, see apples pressed into cider, see musket demonstration, and see a canon firing demonstration as well as a few other things. Below are the pictures I took before my camera battery died.:( Then we headed for the beach on Thursday with my mom and helped her paint the outside building. We decided we would let the kids help, I will post an after picture tomorrow for my Wordless Wednesday post. So tune in for that. And we are now trying to get back in the swing of things. We have another field trip next week to the fire department and I

think BW will really enjoy that.

Bryanna is playing a game called shut the box, and B.W. is writing on a piece of slate just like they did in colonial days.

This lady was telling us about how they cooked and stored food then. If you will notice there is a pot over the fire which had pork and beans in that. There is a stand beside of the fire with a chicken tied to a string. She had a piece of fish tied to a board that sat near the fire and a potato and egg that sat on the ground next to the fire. The man was showing them how to make the candles. He said it would take about three hours to make those candles.

This is the blacksmith and in the first picture he was trying to get his fire hot by using the bella (sp?) which blew air into the fire to make it hot. He stuck a iron rod into the fire and when it was the right temperature he took it out and hammered it into a nail.

This is the Allen House. It is a one bedroom house has no electricity. There was a door in the front and back of the house which served for most of the light. The fireplace served for light and heat as well. The kids slept upstairs which was like an attic, and the beds were made of straw. Imagine that.

Old Salem

So today I thought I would post about our Old Salem trip and show a few more pictures that I had. The first place we went to in Salem was the childrens museum, of course they didnt want to leave. I did manage to take a few pictures there. The kids are building in the pretend workshop in these pictures.

So we continued on and visited the gunsmith shop, old houses, bakery (my favorite place :p), and the old church. Everything was so neat. On this day they had some hands on activities for the kids and you know they were excited about that. I got so much into the history of things that I forgot about taking pictures. The bakery was so neat they told us about the oven and I was just in awe, cooking 80-90 loaves of bread at a time,wow! The kids got samples of ginger cookies in there and they were good. One of the houses we went to had a bed they could actually try out and I did get a picture of the kids in that.

They got to make african masks, do a watercolor painting, stamp with wood block stamps, and see how to make a blank book. Another thing we got to see was how to make a button out of just thread, one thing she and I may try sometime. I told Bryanna that I would like to go back around Christmas time and visit again.

Blog Title/Homeschool Name

So I thought I would post how I came up with my blog title/school name. We had been thinking about homeschooling for over a year and we didnt talk about it with family until we decided for sure what we were going to do. When we decided this was what God was leading us to do my dad had become really sick. At the time I felt he was just too sick to talk about this with him. And months later the Lord took my dad home. So now, it was time to decide on a school name. I told Bryan since I never got to talk about homeschooling with my dad I wanted him to be included in our decision somewhere, so we decided when we named our school we would somehow include him in that. We went through many names, Faith, Grace, etc. One day we were sitting around just saying names and Bryan said Echoes of Love Academy. I immediately said that was it. My dad had so much love for God and his family that everyone seen it. My dad loved us unconditionally, no matter what we did or what happened he loved us.
One thing I remember about daddy is no matter what the situation or how bad things were he would always say "you know what we need to do, we need to pray" and he would get on his knees with us and pray. He had a tradition on Christmas Eve when we would go to his house before anything else he always read us the Christmas story out of the Bible.
He loved God and even during his sickness he always said "it was ok, God is going to take care of me" and "God is good". Daddy never questioned God why this was happening to him, but I did. He would often times say "I am more worried about yall than I am myself because I will be fine". My dad had an impact on my life that I will never forget. I love him and I miss him but I know he is better now, no more sickness.

Ramblings

We went to the beach this past weekend and had a great time. It was hard also because when we got there all my dad's stuff was there. I think we needed this time away after what all has been going on the past months. Also Bryan and I decided that we would start homeschooling next year. We are all excited but I am a little nervous as well. Bryanna is very excited I just hope she stays that way. We are going to do a little bit of this and that this summer, hopefully to get the hang of things and to get in some sort of routine, if there is one. Bryanna had to get glasses last week, they are so cute on her. She only has to wear them when reading, on the computer, etc.