Life!

Saturday we all worked together in the front yard. Lots of bush and tree trimming and cleaning up happened. Tristin agreed to haul the loads of brush and yard trimmings to the back so we could burn it later. After transporting a load or two with their wagon, he had the brilliant idea of tying the wagon to the go-cart.  2 days of hard work later and he knocked it out!

Enjoying an ice cream party (with our neighbors grandson) for all of their hard work in the yard! 

Bible review! Easton wanted to answer all the questions since that meant he'd get jelly beans too. His answer to each question was "a train runs across this track!" 

I super love our Bible curriculum, I read the passages for the day and then draw a stick figure illustration on the board. It's a really neat and easy way to learn the Bible. The girls always seem to add to the stick figure illustration that they copy down until they have a pretty picture. :) 

Coloring while I read for morning school

Bella was so interested by the Amazing Facts book that the couldn't put it down, even thought I was reading too. Lol! 

Poetry tea time - hot tea and toast with Nutella while listening to poetry

Playing with friends during piano lessons

Since piano is from 12:30-2:30 and we are gone from 12:00-3:00 each Monday, we pack a lunch and eat in the car. Apparently, Easton liked decorating his face with his after lunch cookie more than he liked eating it. 

Out on our weekly date along with Easton and Hensley

Tristin, Bella and Hudson had orthodontist appointments. The girls aren't quite ready yet and need to return in a few months but Tristin FIANLLY is, he is getting an appliance to help bring his upper teeth back some. After a month or two with the appliance, he will get braces on his top teeth. 

Easton and Hensley snuggling together while I read Easton his bedtime stories. 

Making a popsicle smoothie! 

Bella listening to an audio book

Tristin has been so sweet taking Easton on rides

Three little monkeys

Listening to her audio book again

Sister's being silly together!

He has finally mastered the playscape

More trampoline play

Every morning during breakfast the kids and I watch Innovation Nation, a show filmed at The Henry Ford and Greenfield Village. It contains so many great new innovations based on things that inventors made that are featured at the museum and village. One of the shows showed humanoid robots and the kids were thrilled. I showed them a preview for the robot documentary showing at the IMAX in the museum. They couldn't wait to go, so on Thursday, we all went! 

After the movie, we walked around the museum for a while! Greysen couldn't wait to see these guys, the statues on the bleachers! 

Greenfield Village opening day! It was 84 degrees and a Saturday so it was packed! We didn't ride any rides. Just walked around and enjoyed being back in one of our favorite places! 

Tristin was challenging everyone to a race, so, his Daddy took him on!

Rest

This weekend, the focus was on rest. We have had a busy couple weeks and slowing down for a few days was great!

We started the weekend Wednesday with Hensley's doctor appointment. She is 10lbs 14oz now! She's growing so quickly. After her appointment, we went on a little date with her and Easton. We went to Old Chicago Grill for a late lunch, then to Lowes to walk off lunch and plan an enclosed outside play area for Easton so he can be outside without running to areas he should be, like the road or the woods.

Easton drinking out of a big boy cup on our date! 

After our date, we came home and watched "Meet the Robinson's" with the kids. Easton must have been pretty tired because he spent a great deal of time watching the movie from the comfort of a laundry basket of clothes that hadn't been folded put away yet! Lol! 

Thursday morning we woke up and planned some weekend getaways for this summer and some vacations for the next year. We had a sweet time chatting about our plans with the kids! On the summer list: The Creations Museum and the Ark Encounter, the cabin and camping! For next year, Chad gets an extra week of vacation so we are considering a chalet in the mountains and a trip to Popaw and Nana's. There was even a little talk of Disney World the following year.  

Hensley sleeping while we planned.

We went out and about with the kids for a couple hours and brought home Tiffany's pizza, which is a treat we all love, well, all but Hudsyn, she ate a sandwich.  After dinner the girls made puppy chow for dessert for another family movie night! This time we watched "Night at the Museum 3"

Bella and Maezy measuring the Chex mix

Bella figuring out how tricky it is to measure peanut butter. ;) 

The girls working together 

Movie night snuggles

Watching the movie! 

This weekend, Field Trip Friday was a relaxed one. It is spring break for the public school kids and all the places we enjoy minimal crowds at were sure to be packed so we decided to hit the dollar show to see "Rock Dog"since it didn't matter if it was packed there. 

Easton enjoying the movie! 

Instead of getting snacks at the movies, we decided to get our first ice cream of the year at the drive through dairy barn by our house on our way home!  

Easton was excited about his ice cream cone!

They all were! 

Maezy walking around the front yard enjoying her ice cream cone!

Even though it was chilly, Chad and the kids played outside for a couple of hours. I stayed inside with a sleeping Henlsey and tired Easton. 

Playing around the world, Chad is still the reigning champion! 

Greysen and Maezy jumped on the trampoline for a while! 

Tristin catching the football! 

Chad, Tristin and Bell tossing the football

Easton snuggling on the couch watching Paw Patrol

I happened to noticed my peach tree is blooming! It's always so beautiful in bloom!

We finished the weekend up with BLT's for dinner

School

This season of life has really been a challenge for me. Having a difficult pregnancy and delivering Hensley near 3 weeks sooner than I expected really threw me for a loop. Breastfeeding was a terrible struggle for Hensley and I and ultimately, I decided that bottle feeding was better than a really stressed out momma. Kaitlynne moved out and into her grandparents a short couple weeks after I delivered Hensley. Hensley has had a couple of medical concerns that have kept me a bit uneasy. My uncle passed away and one week later Papaw passed. Kaitlynne struggled through her first breakup and it was much harder than I anticpaited. There have been 1000 other small struggles mixed in through the last 10 weeks. Through the challenging days, I tried to keep a small sense of normalcy for the kids. That was mainly in the form of school. Although for the first moth or month and a half we only managed to get math and reading, online art lessons, learning games and piano lessons done. I've had to become okay with doing some subjects online that we haven't in the past, math, reading and spelling, but have found some great resources and it's been going so well I plan on continuing.

We have always schooled year round only taking breaks when we went on a field trip or had a doctor appointment. I'm going to try a different schedule for a while and see if it benefits our family. We are still going to school year round but take one week off a month. We usually take off December from official school studies and focus on Christmas school, which we will still do and we will continue to take off birthdays. We will still far exceed the days that Michigan recommends for schooling but will have small focused breaks. During the off week, I will plan the next 3 (or 4 if it's a 5 week month) weeks of art and science projects, order the materials, print off any worksheets, plan literature read aloud's, and organize it so it's ready for the next 3-4 week block of school.

Moving into the summer season I don't plan on resuming our full school schedule, just a portion. This  will be our schedule until the fall. 

Mornings:

Grapevine Studies (stick figuring through the Bible) 

Prayer 

Morning meeting (discussing the days events)

Read aloud time: 

Literature 

Science: (Sassafras Adventures: Zoology)
History: Who Was series: Presidents 

Morning Chores 

Day 1:Art 

Day 2: Sign Language

Day 3: Science Project

Day 4: Poetry Tea Time & Baking with the girls 

Day 5: Piano Lessons and SOTW audio 

Day 6 (every other week): Field Trip Friday

Evening Chores

Evenings:

Reading (online) 

Math (online)

Spelling (online) 

Paino Practice for T, B, H and M

The kids eat a bedtime snack while they are working through their evening school subjects then brush their teeth and head to bed. 

This is Homeschool

At some point in our home education journey, we stared to relax our rigid schedule and school at home began to evolve from a segmented time set aside to work on set subjects to a learning being a natural extension of everything in our life. We still do have blocks of time set aside for subjects that we do daily but we don't set down at the table and work for eight hours a day. Our focused learning has been a little lighter since Hensley has arrived. Right now we work on reading aloud in the mornings. We read a chapter or two of our literature book and poetry each day and rotate our science and history books every other day. Math and reading lessons are done in the evening, after Chad and Easton are in bed and the kids have came in from playing outside. We believe unstructured play time is as important as academics are. We are working on moving devotions from table school time to evening after dinner so Chad is able to lead the devotion.

Here is a small glimpse into our days!

Our equivalent of gym class: 

Daddy teaching the kids how to play Around the World

Greysen and Maezy working on a reading lesson

Working on a late night online art lesson 

Mazey LOVES Madeline, here she is reading Madeline to Hensley and Easton while he holds Madeline

Maezy found an online drawing tutorial for Madeline. I adore her finished product.

Hudsyn working on an art lesson and Oreo prohibiting the use of the colored pencils! ;) 

Watching a documentary about Flamingos

Ironically, we saw a whole bunch of flamingo's at the Zoo just a few days later

Bella and Hudsyn in their favorite tree working toward memorizing the Old Testament books of the Bible

Hudsyn and Greysen having a snack and playing addition facts war

Me and the kids playing addition and subtraction facts sequence before bed

Hensley sleeping while I read a chapter of The Wheel on the School to the kids

The kids playing games and drawing during our read aloud time

Hudsyn and Greysen's drawing of Greysen and Maezy

Bella took a break from playing to take a walk with me and Easton and push him on the swing

Hudsyn and Maezy researching a paper-mache project to make over the summer

Bella drawing during reading time 

Bella's Easter basket drawing

Hudsyn's Easter basket drawing