Wordless Wednesday Week 11

Fostering & Your Family

I haven't wrote a lot about our foster journey simply because it has been very hard.

I haven't known what was alright to share and what wasn't. 

I want to shine only God's love and greatness for this calling and I guess I am afraid I will bring shame or displeasing by sharing thoughts about it.

Fact of the matter is this Fostering stuff is H A R D. 

I have raised 3 children and been married for 15 years and you would think I would have been prepared for what God was sending my way. 

NOPE.





This child is a lovely child after God's own heart and after everyone's blessings but he has a dark side too. 

It has been hard on my family. One of my children has had it worse than the others. The one child has asked us to stop this and said they didn't like him too. 

I believe God called my family to do this very hard task for many reasons but the one reason I remind myself of daily and my children on a hard day is that when we want to stop what if Jesus wanted to stop too? 

My heart has had so many emotions throughout all of this. I've quit many nights and cried myself to sleep more than I care to admit but every morning I am reminded that God's mercies are new.

Every child is in need and deserves love, a safe home, food and fun. 

I know this child may not stay with us forever and that each child comes with their own challenges but no matter what I hope that I have helped keep this child safe, loved and healthy while with my family. 

If you believe you could shine some of God's love on a helpless child although all that I just said was hard please consider calling your local social services office and asking about information on becoming a foster parent.

 

Brookdale House Review

Who doesn't love to learn outside of a normal text book? I know all three of my children love to learn all different ways. The Geography Drawing Series is from Brookdale House and is inspired from the Charlotte Mason method. 

Brookdale House is a homeschool curriculum publisher.

My family reviewed Drawing Around the World USA ebook edition. This item retails at $22.95. 



Drawing Around the World: USA is a very simple, fast method in teaching the geography of the United States.

I personally used this with my smallest child. He is the only one that hasn't really had an introduction to the states, capitals and facts about each state yet. He is 10 and drawing has always actually frustrated him but we came to an understanding that I would not show his work on my blog for this review. I am sorry but that made him feel much better about being able to do the review and learn instead of being self conscious.

A major plus to this curriculum is that it is super simple. Very easy and lessons do not take long at all! Normally we would do 2 states a week and spend about 15 to 20 minutes on the lesson 3 times a week.

During the lesson the child becomes familiar with the shape of the states, facts, labeling and locating the state on a map.

Lessons are broken down into 4 days. 

Day one your lesson you learn the facts about the state, locate the state on the map and you draw each of the states you have learned so far.

Day two you locate and label the map again with all the states learned. (some weeks we skipped this part simply because we only used 3 times a week)

Day three we would locate and label the map again and we would review the facts about the state once more.

Day four we would go back over all the states learned and capitals. Then the challenge of the week is drawing the states from memory! This proved hard for my little man but over the course of a few weeks he got better although the task gets harder!


The only item that is really needed for this neat curriculum is colored pencils, which we have tons of around here.

Each new state that is introduced has an outline that is able to be traced. This helped my hesitant drawer feel better that he wasn't required to sketch it out first.

There are lots of maps included for use. 

The curriculum is very complete, you need nothing! 

The way I prepped this for my son was since we had the ebook version, I simply printed it all out and hole punched it to go into a binder. EASY PEASY. 

Overall my son really loved this. Again drawing has been a struggle for him but I have been very happy with his ability and the fact that he has learned a lot in a short period about the states we have covered.

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Field Trip/Hiking

This weekend we had a wonderful time spending our time together in nature and observing the awesome creation our Lord and Savior has given to us.

Here are some of our pictures from our trip to Crabtree Falls here in NC, we did the loop that was 3 miles long. This was probably the hardest hike we had done to date!

Next stop was Mount Mitchell, the highest point this side of the Mississippi. 

Can I add it was C O L D.

 Hot cocoa and apple cider to warm up!

Once home we made a fire in the fire pit and enjoyed some silliness and smores.

Wordless Wednesday Week 9

Fireworks In A Jar Experiment

We have a hands on science coop coming up very quickly for our homeschool group and I am teaching one of the classes. I have to admit, I stink at science. I am afraid of it and I just in general never really liked it. Seeing my children grow as they have I can see how easy it is to learn from doing projects like this and how much fun you can have too.


So I do try to have projects like this in our daily homeschool experience, which is one reason why we use Christian Kids Explore for our science curriculum. Very hands on.

Alright you want to know about Fireworks In A Jar - Don't you?

I know that my smallest is 10 but who doesn't like doing projects? My guys all love doing things like this which is why age really doesn't matter in some experiments.

You need to gather a jar, we used a large glass.

You need warm water, food coloring and vegetable oil.

We actually tried this 2 ways. The first way FAILED. We couldn't figure out why really because we followed the directions I had from online so what does any good scientist do? 

First attempt & Failed:

Adapt! Do it again and try something different!

This is what we did and the experiment worked great the second time.

Fill the glass or jar 3/4 full of warm water. Next put a small amount of vegetable oil (3 tbsp). I allowed that to sit for just a few seconds and then we added a few drops of food coloring on top of the oil. 

Now you get to sit and watch for the fun to start.

You see the food coloring is more dense than the oil so it will fall through the oil into the water. Once the food coloring hits the water it starts to combine and you get nice patterns.   

Hope you enjoyed our Fireworks In A Jar Experiment.

Weekly Wrap Up 8

I can't believe we have already schooled 8 weeks of this year. It has been really good so far and I am so trying to keep it that way. 

Ya know this week I have thought alot about homeschooling and just how lucky we are to do it. I love the freedom that it gives us and the memories that tag along.

This week we completed a lot and I mean a lot of hands on science for our homeschool coop that I am teaching of course someone had to try the experiments out before I got to class Monday right? Then we had several come up in our normal curriculum with all 3 kids. 

Some of the experiments we done:
Potato Clock was done Tuesday and you know that sucker still has power today! We are seeing how long it lasts and then we will test again with another fruit or veggie to see which has the most energy.
Fireworks in a Jar, Volcano, Salt Cavern Formations and Leak Proof bag. My kids loved them and I am happy to say I did too! See I have a secret, I have a love/hate relationship with science.

My two smaller children are really going at a fast pace through the math curriculum we changed to the first week of school! They love it and are racing to catch up to things that stump them. 

Kyle is doing much better in his Math U See Algebra, we took a week and reviewed a lot to make sure he was understanding everything that was expected and went over a lot of the rules and exceptions so he would totally understand for moving forward.

He is also learning to compose reports and writing on the computer now. This is pretty big because he has never had the interest so I am making him at this point.  

This week we had revival from Sunday to Wednesday nights. 

Foster son had a challenging week with lots of prayers sent up for all involved. This sure is getting harder and harder. You would think after 9 months it would be getting easier... Nope.

Candle orders are still pouring in and I am so thankful. I love making soy candles and I have been so blessed to start up again.

Hubby and I are having date night tonight and I am very excited about it. I love our together time without any children however I usually feel guilty for the 2 to 3 hours of time we are alone but hubby and I need that time.

Kevin preaches for the next 2 weekends and I always love watching him prepare and it delights my heart to pray for him during this time.

Wednesday we took a small break from school and enjoyed some time shopping and playing around town. I love those quite moments with my babies. 

I hope you had a wonderful week. God bless you friends.

Wordless Wednesday Week 8