January Homeschool Update

I realize that I'm pitifully behind this month on staying updated.  To tell you the truth, things have been absolutely crazy around here.  Many things have happened this month, so here goes...

At the beginning of the month Nana Betty and Papa Doug visited us and stayed at our house.  It was such an enjoyable time.  Here is Nana with her girls.  We gave her birthday present to her while she was here even though it was a little early :-)

We also got some great news about our new baby cousin, Aamina!  She got to come home the first week of January.  She is so incredibly precious!  Here she is asleep on her flight home.  She's wearing a onesie I made for her :-)

 Isn't she beautiful?!?!?!?  Look at her precious little face!

 This month we also went to the Gilcrease Museum for an art lesson on landscaping.  There is a huge room of windows there with a beautiful view.  Although all the trees are dead, the view was still incredible.  Here is Zora taking it all in to prepare for her landscape drawing.

 This is the view she chose to draw.

 Lily was hard at work on her drawings as well :-)

We were also able to have a fun playdate this month with some of their little girlfriends.  They all enjoyed getting together to play with their American Girl dolls and we also had a tea party with real China dishes :-)

Then came our first snow of the year!  It was fun and beautiful while it lasted, but we were glad when the warm weather came to pay another visit! 

Zora enjoys the snow

 And, of course, we had to keep the tradition of snow rafting with the Fieldens!

Addie, Zora & Lily

 It's so crazy that one week we can have snow and just a few days later the weather is beautiful.  This weekend the weather was WARM and BEAUTIFUL so we took full advantage of it!  First, we celebrated a friend's birthday at Bounce U.  I tried to get some good pics of the girls having fun, but they were having so much fun that every picture is a blur....literally.  Here they are coming down the slide :-)

After the party was over we headed outside to enjoy the beauty and warmth of the day.  And what better way to spend a beautiful day than walking around the zoo, enjoying God's wonderful creation with cousins?!?!?!  Here is the cute bunch of cousins! I LOVE this pic!!!

Nate, Zora, Lily, Skylar, Alli & Kohen

It's also been a while since I've updated on our homeschooling, so here goes...

Zora continues to do well in math and is starting to enjoy it a little!  YAY!!!  She also continues to do well in phonics although it is quickly becoming her least favorite subject.  I've also started some timed reading lessons with her that will help her learn to not only become a faster reader than she already is, but also to work on her comprehension skills.  This year I have been working hard with her on some critical thinking skills.  It's been tough on her (and me) at times, but I really want her to be able to take information that she reads and learn to analyze and hypothesize things.  I want her to be able to think for herself and not be spoon-fed information!  It's a work in progress :-)  She continues to LOVE and BEG for History.  Last semester we studied a few ancient cultures, and then this semester we are learning about American History.  She loves it!  She begs for her lessons every day.  We've learned about the Revolutionary War, the Constitution, the War of 1812, and the Pioneers Moving West (Daniel Boone, Jedediah Smith, Steamboat, Gold Rush, etc.) so far.  The stories of our nation's history captivate her attention - it's great!  For science we are just reviewing a lot of what we've already learned.  I'm struggling with finding a science curriculum that we love.  Any homeschoolers out there got any recommendations????

Lily is blazing through her lessons.  Sometimes I'm not sure that what I have is challenging enough, but I'm not ready to begin pushing her through Kindergarten curriculum yet.  I want to make sure we have a solid foundation before we keep going.  She is continually improving on her reading skills - YAY! - but it is not something she loves to do :-(  It's hard for me to accept that because Zora always loved reading.  I hope that Lily warms up to it soon.  I was really proud of her tonight at church because she leaned over to me, pointed at the video screen where the sermon notes were projected and said, "Mommy!  I can read the top line!  It says LOVE THE LORD!"  She is also doing some IQ building workbooks every day, and her handwriting is impressive for a 4-year-old.  And the most exiting part for me is that MATH IS HER FAVORITE SUBJECT!!!!  She's been working on simple addition, subtraction, sorting, geometry and word problems. 

Ok, so enough of that.  Although school takes up a lot of our time during the week, we have enjoyed a few lazy days here and there.  On their "down time" the girls love to play their Nintendo DS games...

 ....and they also spend literally hours upon hours building LEGO masterpieces and playing "house" with the LEGO people in their LEGO villages.  It truly is an endless source of fun for them :-)

Now here are some completely random pictures that I captured this past month that make me smile...

Our dogs, Rosey & Shelley, learned to climb UP the slide and sit at the top of the swing set so that they can see over the privacy fence and know what is going on outside our yard.  They crack me up!

This is a pic of Lily enjoying some ice cream after church one night. 

I love that smile :-)

And this is probably my favorite of Miss Lily.  Every morning when she wakes up, if I am still in bed, she'll come get in bed beside me and want to snuggle.  I love this little sleepy face in the morning :-)

Well, that sums up the month of January!  Check back at the end of the week because we should have more pics of Baby #3!!!!