Celebrations: The Sweet 16 edition

Sister Strings turned sweet 16 this week. Yes, that's a cheesecake, because she doesn't like "normal" cake OR chocolate!  She was delighted to receive this for her big birthday gift this year:

If you're technologically challenged like I am, you're probably wondering what that is. She's been begging for this for a while, because she LOVES to draw digital pictures of animals on the computer.  Before this, she only had a mouse to work with and would draw simple things like this:

After 5 minutes with this digital drawing pad hooked up, she was thrilled to announce how much easier it is to draw things now and produced this quick sketch to demonstrate:

Uh...Don't ask me how she learned this.  I'm just a homeschooling mom.  LOL.  She's working on something more complex now that I'll have to share later.  It's very humbling when your children exceed your knowledge in certain areas, ya know?  I guess I'm working myself out of a job.  That's the idea, though, right?  Here she's looking very natural holding her newest cousin that just recently joined us and came for a visit this week:

 My sweet baby is growing up to be a charming, beautiful, and talented young woman, and I'm very pleased to watch how God is moving in her heart and life.  I'm greatly looking forward to seeing God's plan unfold in her life as He gradually reveals to us His will for her journey into adulthood. 

And to add to the excitement of the week, we all went to the zoo, because you know this girl LOVES animals.  I wouldn't be surprised to find her married to a farmer, vet, or zookeeper one day...who happens to be musical too. :) Here are some zoo highlights, but I will spare you the gazillion photos that Brother Brass took that day, as he has all of the sudden decided that he likes to be the photographer. 

 Taking photos to make drawings from...

 Miss Melody loved the Lemurs best...

 Had to steal the camera to get a pic of the photographer...

And last, but not least...the tour guide...

A fun and eventful week.  Next week we hit the books!  ...A little bit anyways...  :)



Musical Musings: Hello Dolly Edition

 A little waltzing practice...

 A gorgeous set...still getting the finishing touches...

 A full cast of hard-working homeschoolers...

 And of course, don't forget the live orchestra pit...

Can you hear the music?

Two days until showtime!!!  So exciting to see all that hard work come together!  

Homeschool humor from a 5th grader

Spreading her thumb and index finger 3 cm apart, Miss Melody holds her "hand made" measuring device up to tell me, "Mom, I got THIS close to a deer!"  She had just come in from playing outside, and I'm thinking there's a deer roaming our backyard or something, which is unusual to find in a subdivision.  After being satisfied with the surprised and somewhat concerned look on my face as I'm headed toward the window to look for a wild deer, she proceeds to tell me with a cheeky grin on her face (still holding up her finger spread), " ...but, Mom,  1 cm = 1 mile, so it was about 3 miles away."   Pretty clever for a 10 year old.  Way to put those math application skills to use, Miss Melody! LOL

My girls want to move to the country so badly!  They love animals and the outdoors more than my boys. They know more about animals and wildlife than I do.  Seriously.  I don't even like to camp.  They inspire me sometimes, though. :)

Managing our Homeschool Days

I thought I'd post our tentative fall 2011 full school day schedule for those who may be interested in seeing how I "juggle" teaching 4 kiddos at home.  They are color coded, just as you see in our curriculum post.  I got the idea to do something like this from the book Managers of Their Schools.  We are not quite as detailed as they, but it gives us a general overview of what to expect on a typical full day of school.  I do a separate schedule for a half-day of school, when we have our home school music days or simply decide to take an afternoon off for whatever reason (company, field trips, beautiful sunshiny days instead of snow days, etc...)  I'm sure this may get tweaked a bit once we get the ball rolling and I have a better idea of the reality of things, but this gives us something tangible to work with.  By having it stored in a word document, I can go to it any time and tweak it pretty effortlessly.  We've done this for the last two years now, and the kids and I both appreciate the smooth flow and independence that it allows.  Some may think that a schedule like this is stifling, but we find that we are much more productive with it, and things actually get done...and then some. :)
Just click to enlarge:

Time in the PIT

Yes, the pit...Orchestra Pit, that is.  Sister Strings and I are spending most evenings (we had morning rehearsals before now) until after mid-August here:

It's literally under the stage.  You can see the conductor's podium and the chair I sit in right up front, next to the clarinets.  Sister strings is to the right of me, along with 4 other violinists.  Yes, the net keeps the actors from joining us in the pit, should they decide to fall dance "off" stage in the wrong direction. (Yikes!)  That little trap net door above the podium opens up so the conductor can poke his head through to conduct both the singers and the orchestra simultaneously.  It's kinda cool.  It's amazing how much sound actually projects from that pit.  Anyways, this is what Sister Strings and I are busy with these days...for two more weeks.  Fun, fun, fun!  BTW, I think she has ALL of the lines to the musical memorized, and she's not even in the speaking/acting part of the musical. LOL.

I'm back! Did you miss me?

So I took some time off from blogging for a while...  Okay, a long time.  I needed some time AWAY from the computer world to refocus on some priorities and seek the direction in which the Lord is leading us on number of levels.  Of course, I'm still seeking Him, but at least I've got a good vision for what our school year will hold for fall 2011.  Check out my final plans here.  (It's under my various labels).  I've got most of my stuff bought and our school schedule typed out.  Now I just need to get organized.  We've been doing some light-schooling throughout the summer, with some math and English, so the transition into doing more school work shouldn't be too difficult.  We have an official start date of August 23rd, but I'll probably only introduce two or so new subjects every few days until we are in full swing.  I find the gradual additions to make for a smoother transition out of our summer mode and into the world of academics.

Sister Strings received a scholarship to participate in our homeschool summer musical theater orchestra pit this summer.  They needed a flutist, so I am also participating as well, and it's turning out to be a lot of fun for her and me.  It's some tough music though, around 50 pages worth, so practice is a must.  The rest of our time has been spent visiting with out of town family, picnicking at the park, and just enjoying the warm weather while it's here.  Our neighbors have a pool, so the kids have enjoyed swimming quite a bit as well.  I'm looking forward to fall, though, as that is my favorite time of year.  Oh yeh, and I turned 40 a couple of weeks ago...Okay, moving on...

Anyways, just checking in to let my readers know that I haven't fallen off the planet, and I'm looking forward to another great year of watching my kids grow up some more.  I'm slowly updating some of our blog photos too, along with playing around with the templates.  Sister Strings is being a bit camera shy.  I'm trying to capture a nice sunset photo of her with her violin.  I need to do it soon before the weather gets too cold again. I should probably update my photo too.  I guess she's not the only one around here who's camera shy.

EASTER (not spring) BREAK this week

All of our schools had their spring break a couple of weeks ago, while we did school.  The kids weren't too happy that I made them do school then, knowing "everyone" else was off.  I explained that back in the day, schools had an EASTER break every year, and somewhere along the way in our postmodern society, schools decided that "spring" sounded more politically correct, I guess.  Well, no matter what the latest trends are in school, I informed my children that our break will occur during Easter time.  So, we are off this week...sort of.  We have some loose ends to tie up with an IEW writing assignment for tomorrow along with our usual music activities, but mostly we're going to spend a good portion of the next few days watching Matthew, the whole book on video, word for word (NIV), acted out by one of the first professing Christians to ever portray Jesus on video. (We have the older VHS version).  My older two have seen this before, but this will be the first time that my 10 and 6 year olds will join us.  On Friday, we plan to go to our church's Good Friday service.  I also am going to attempt to do my first lap book with the kids, while we continue to study through the New Testament together, using this.  We're going to start with the Last Supper, Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.  We just got done reading through the Book of John last week.  Now they'll get the Book of Matthew's perspective on the life of Christ.  I'm looking forward to a great week and  little bit of a break from our normal routine.  Sometimes a good "break" entails much more than the beach, although, that sounds pretty good too, considering that our northern weather is very confused right now, as my six year old keeps putting on shorts each morning due to the warm Sunday we had last weekend, which creates an issue considering that we had snow flurries today.  :-/  He just doesn't understand our MI weather yet.  He feels that the weather should be cooperating with the calendar.