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I’m officially back! It had been a fun and busy summer, but things are slowing down finally. All summer I tried to get back here, but I just couldn’t find the time…now that school has started it will be much easier!
We are starting a new educational journey this year with PACYBER. You can visit their site for more information. We really like the curriculum, but we are adding a few things to our day.
The first is Dr. William Bennett’s book The American Patriot’s Almanac. It is very important that we teach our children real American History. This book has daily readings of events in American History. This kids are facinated by all we have learned so far!
The second is a Bible Curriculum by Anne Elliott. This is our first year with the curriculum. By the end of the year we will have made it through the Old Testament. I love this program because it is designed to use with all grade levels. It has lots of options for activties and extra reading and memory verses for older kids.
Visit my Amazon aStore to view or purchase these books.
Check back in awhile for what I have planned for the rest of this week!
Summer is finally winding down and I’m thinking things here might get back to a normal schedule. I’ve missed blogging over the last few months! We have one final week of vacation before we start school-but it’s a “stay-cation” which will be nice and relaxing.
School Time
For those of you that might not know, we have enrolled our kids in PA Cyber this year and are really looking forward to what they have to offer. As my girls browse the course catalog they are presented with electives such as Digital Drawing, Digital Painting, Digital Photography (all wonderful skills to attain in today’s society) as well as different foreign languages ; Spanish, French, German and Chinese. These are only a few of the electives they have to choose from. We’re also looking forward to having a self-paced curriculum again. It seems like the options are endless and we are very excited to get started!
Home Time
Our garden is growing an abundance of veggies and the canning process had begun. Our beets are pickled, our beans are growing like crazy (we’ve already done a few quarts and I have a huge pan in the fridge waiting to be canned today), the tomatoes are coming along nicely and soon the house will be filled with the delicious smells of homemade sauces and salsas. It is wonderful to be able to send one of the kids out to pick food for a meal!
Family Time
Some updates from our family:
Chrissy turned 11 this summer. I can’t believe my little firecracker is growing up so fast! Last week she had to have stitches for the first time (hopefully the last!) after cutting her finger on a garden stick. I was so proud of her for how she handled the whole thing. Yesterday she even took out the last stitch herself! I was very impressed :)
Sammi will turn 13 this fall. Yes, that’s right…I will officially be the parent of a teenager! Any and all prayers and support will be appreciated during the next few years LOL! She is turning into a beautiful young lady. She is hopeful that her braces will be coming off this year and she has already made the change from glasses to contacts.
Alex…my not-so-baby-anymore boy. It’s hard to believe that he is closer to 6 than 5 now! He is excited to start kindergarten, but he still keeps asking if he can go back to preschool. He was there for 2 years and is really going to miss his teachers. He is growing so fast, I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up tall like his uncles (Ben and I aren’t on the tall side).
Ben and I…well, we’ve been busy raising our family! For those of you with children, you know exactly how time consuming this is! There is never a dull moment around here and I’m thankful for that. We are planning of doing some renovations on our home in the next few weeks. Our house is close to 100 years old, and unfortunately, it’s starting to show it’s age. We’ll be starting with replacing the plaster walls in the living room with dry wall and hopefully be moving to the kitchen to replace the carpet with linoleum. Lord willing, in the next few years we’ll have replaced most of the walls and be able to start saving for new furniture!
Well…that’s an update in a nutshell! Hope you all are having a blessed summer!
For those of you that don’t already know…we’ve brought Chrissy home to finish the year off with the Cyber school Sammi is “attending”. Her books came yesterday, so today was our first “official” day of school. It went very well and we got a lot done before lunch. After lunch…not so much! I guess we’ll need to figure out a way to get back the focus after lunch or get all our work done early. I’ll have some pictures in a few days of our school.
I’ve decided to name our “school” The Rinehart Academy. We needed a name…and since we might not always stay with Connections Academy, I thought we would just have our own name!
Reading Class
As one of our homeschool projects, we are going to complete a Family Tree. I’m excited, because it will involve the kids interviewing their grandparents and also the great-grandparents that they are blessed to still have! So, if you are one of those grandparents…we’ll be calling you to set up a time for an “interview”. It will be fun to see how far back we can trace and what we can learn about our families.
I plan on posting pictures of our ongoing project as well as other projects we’ll be starting along the way.
I got this planner from CVS on a referral from my friend Heather. It’s great for homeschooling or just family organization in general. Of course, I HAD to scrap the cover to make it mine! I love it because it has places for each child’s daily activities and a Mom’s section to keep mom on task too!
Before
After
Well, after lots of prayers and talks with Sammi, we’ve come to the decision to start Home schooling after Christmas break via Connections Academy. You can check out the link on the sidebar, but briefly, it is an online public charter school. Complete with all the materials, computer, and learning support. We’ll be adding our own Bible curriculum in a month or so, but for now we’ll get into a regular routine and see how things go. Please pray for us during this transition!
For those that don’t know, we absolutely LOVE the elementary school that Chrissy attends, so she’ll be staying there until next year. We made the decision to send Sammi to a Christian Academy in lieu of the Public middle school this year. We felt that 5th grade was too young to send her to middle school and be exposed to way too many adult issues at too young of an age. That said…we LOVE her school that she is finishing up at, but due to some adjustment issues on Sammi’s part and some other family issues, we decided that homeschooling would be the best for her this year. Chrissy has expressed interest in going to the academy next year, but we will see what the Lord has planned when the time comes.
I’ll keep you all posted on what is happening on the homeschool front!
