~*Happy Halloween*~

I really enjoy Halloween, but since moving to our location here in Florida we have no Trick or Treaters & none of our neighbors decorate there houses for the holiday so it is not very festive at all : (
Anyway, I have decided since I can not convince Kelly to go Trick or Treating down town tonight we will go get some ice cream, popcorn & some candy and veg out and watch our new favorite show "Ghost Hunters": T.A.P.S. http://www.scifi.com/ghosthunters/sanatorium/
http://www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com/
Kelly and I can scare ourselves pretty well..... I'll just shut the lights off and just have the pumpkin flickering in the room.
Happy Halloween!

Mr. Pumpkin Head

We cut out our pumpkin on Sat. then Kelly & I were supposta go to a haunted hayride on Sunday night - It was the last night they were running it an it rained! Kelly was SOOOOO disappointed. It just seems like just one more thng this poor child has to do without : ( She had saved enough of her own money for the both of us to go. I told her I would drive her down to town if she wanted to go trick or treating on Halloween but she said no..... I will try and think of something special we can do at home on that night to make it kind of festive.

Fractions....

My plans for "Reviewing" this week has not gone as I had hoped. Since my husband has no work and has been hanging around the house it has been VERY hard to get school work done - then today my son is off again from the public school so it REALLY will be a stuggle to get anything done!
We started a Bat Study since we couldn't attend the Bat Class our homeschool group was offering (We are really scrapping bottom now but I keep praying that he find works soon). I found Kelly really absorbed alot of the info. about the Bats when we stayed pretty much on that one subject. I was thinking of maybe doing one subject a day instead of jumping around from one thing to another.
I was embarrased when we were working on Fractions! I was mixing her up.... We are using the Mammoth Math Fractions 1 booklet and I was showing her up at the board how to find the answer and I got all mixed up and couldn't figure it out : ( My husband came over and showed ME how to get the answer - YIKES!

Space Shuttle at Flagler Beach

Kelly & I made it down to the beach today to see the Space Shuttle take off - Since moving down to Florida from PA. we make an effort to watch each rocket & Space Shuttle to take off. It still amazes me when you see how much fire is blazing off of the Shuttle that people are actually in there - It really is breath taking.
As you can see from the picture I took you can't see the Shuttle but it was visible by eye - I posted a better picture taken much closer to the lift off so you can see how spectacular it really is!.

Monday, A New Day.....NOT!

Okay here I go again being negative.....
First of all I stayed up late last night (untill 11:00pm) watching the tv. show "Jon & Kate plus 8" , I really enjoy seeing how these parents handle so many children and I have a tough time with two. Anyway, I woke up at 6am. this morning which was good, I only had gotten up once last night (the cat has been getting me up a few times a night lately to go in and then out). My son left for school and then my husband left for his parents house, Kelly was still sleeping - I thought I would grab a few more winks. As soon as I layed down my son came back, his car is having trouble going into gear and is smoking! I was flabergasted, I have just enough money this week to pay the electric bill ($333.70 - which needs to be payed today or they are shutting it off), now we have this problem. I had hoped to take Kelly to the beach tomorrow to watch the Space Shuttle launch, We can see it from our house but I am sure it would be a better view from the beach - Now it looks like that won't happen : (
I HATE starting the week off like this!!!!!
As far as school goes, This week we are going to be "Reviewing" what we have covered so far. I had read on "Higher Up and Further In" that she used the history book "Oxford First Ancient History" I got it in Sat. mail so we will use it this week to review with and see if we might like it better then SOTW.
Well it's 8:40am. and I sure hope the rest of the day turns out better....

Sun Down in Florida

This picture just does not do the sun set justice last night - It was just beautiful and the colors, I had ran into the house to get the camera and when I got back out there the colors had already faded.....

Set some "Goals'......

I found a site that seems to be helping me, it has a lot of teaching tips ect.
http://www.susancanthony.com/Workshops/workshops.html In one area she mentions how you need a "Goal", I think that is one of my problems, I need to narrow down what I really want Kelly to learn this year and stick to it. For instance we are working on the United States - Does she really need to know the state flower, bird, tree ect. no not really not if she isn't interested in it, but I do want her to be able to locate each state on the map and memorize the capitals too. I sent away for each states travel guide, this way she will have something to look over when we get to each state, that way if she sees something the she is interested in we can go in depth a bit more.
We were also working our way through the Zoology 2 book by J. Fulbright we got to lesson 5 Primeval Reptiles: Nothosaurs, Mossasaurs, Plesiosaurs & ichthyosaurs. Because it was in the book we trugged through it, Kelly & I both were pretty lost about these "giant sea reptiles" and to be honest didn't learn a thing about them even after having read it : ( Why did I waste time on it - I don't know. I need to set my "Goals"!

It's that time of year again...

Each year we usually try and decorate the house for Halloween - This was the only decoration I could find in our closets, Where do they all go : (

As for homeschooling - We are at week 7 of our studies and when my son brought home progress reports from his high school, I thought it would be a good time to look over how we are doing too. I see we have to do some tweeking, When I asked Kelly what the name of the huge human/animal shaped statue in front of the pyramid was called she couldn't tell me.... We are using Story of the World vol. 1, Which I thought was working well for us since she LOVES to do projects & experiments but I guess I need to do more. I am going to try and add some of these books to our curriculum and mix up our schedule a bit to match this one: http://higherupandfurtherin.blogspot.com/2006/12/year-6-program-and-booklist.html
http://higherupandfurtherin.blogspot.com/2006/12/year-6-schedule.html
I also am going to look into using unit studies more for each topic to go a little bit deeper on a few of the topics covered, I am hoping this will help her retain a bit more information we are learning. Most times Kelly looks at me like I am making history up - She has asked me "How do they know all this REALLY happened?". Maybe I should have worked my way back from the present to the past instead of the other way around....

A Day At The Beach

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Kelly & I finally got a chance to take the car today! We went down to the beach. It really makes a difference when you are able to get out of the house and see something different for a change! Here are a few picture I took today of some of the goodies we found, jelly fish, a baby sea turtle, a large sand crab & tons of shells. As you can see Kelly was wading in the water for the shells, I was chicken, too cold for me!

Butterfly Nature Study

I'd like to share with you a couple of the beautiful butterflies Kelly and I saw today on our nature walk. We were really out hunting for tadpoles but got distracted a few times watching these magnificent butterflies. I have to say one of the best things about the Charlotte Mason teachings is the nature study - So many times we race around and never stop to see the beauty that is around us if we just take a moment to look.

Homecoming Dance

This is a picture of my son Kristopher and his girlfriend Annie getting ready to go to the "Homecoming Dance". It was raining like cats and dogs Sat. night so you can see alittle wet stain on my son's shirt. I was so worried about them driving out in that weather, But all in all they said it was okay and everyone got home safe.

One good thing / One bad thing.....

It is funny how things seem to be working here - When one things goes right another one goes wrong!
I started a unit study on Presidents and becoming a President via http://www.oklahomahomeschool.com/PresElec.html I bought the workbook "How to be President of the USA", I have a number of books already on the different Presidents that we can look through. It started out a bit slow - Kelly was feeling a bit mixed up about the different political parties. I didn't really want to go into it to deeply at this point. I asked her the President Quiz questions from the workbook and she did great.... We then moved over to the computer and watched "So you want to be President?" on United Streaming (I have recently found out that our school distric subscribes to it so we homeschoolers can use it too - Yea! If you haven't checked it our take a peek it, it looks great: http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm ) Kelly actually watched it and seemed to be interested in it : ) I then went to print out a few work sheets and would you belive the printer is broken!!!!!! I love my printer I use it all the time for so many things, It really is needed for homeschooling. I was so depressed since money is so tight here not sure when I will be able to get another one : (