Good times.

Welcome! As many of you know, we have been homeschooling for a couple of years now. I've been toying with the idea of a homeschool blog for a while. We do so many cool things in the course of a day, I thought this would be a great way to share with our family and friends what we're up to! Aimee gave me the inspiration I needed to finally get started when I saw how cool her photosharing site is-if you know Jeremy and Aimee and want to see some great pictures of their adorable baby boy go here.

So here it is. Our site dedicated to our homeschooling adventures. I haven't figured out how frequently I'll post...ideally I'll try to update daily. Those of you who know me well know that will probably translate into once a week...or month...haha...just kidding. I've got a lot of pictures I want to sort through, so for a little while you'll probably get the current days news plus some old stuff. Eventually we'll be all chronologically organized and whatnot...

Today we worked on some math skills. Katie has been complaining about the amount of reading and writing and bookwork we've been doing, so I thought I'd give them a break and just do some fun stuff. Here is Francesca working on a cool numbers puzzle we borrowed from the library. (I looove the library! It rocks!)

Here's Katie working on some addition problems I made for her using another cool toy we borrowed from the library. I put number tiles down and she adds the wooden disks to make the problem. Notice MY math problem-8+1=9. Pretty good math for a five year old, right?

Wrong. Here's Katie after she decided she needed to make up her own math problem...

            Yep. Our Katie had to know what 19+24 equals.

She got frustrated with the big numbers-but she stuck it out and worked on it until she got it. Notice how my math problem needed one peg board?

Today-addition problems. Tomorrow-pocket protectors and black- taped glasses.

Here's Sam with that gorgeous baby Jeremy. You will see much fewer pictures of Sam here because she has that teenage girl affliction that causes her to turn her head or hide every time she sees a camera.

She's been working diligently learning about Americas beginning in history. She has read many great stories including Benedict Arnold, Indian Captive: The story of Mary Jemison, The Landing of the Pilgrims, Rip Van Winkle, Peace Child...the list goes on but I can't remember them all. We're using a great curriculum this year-Sonlight-that uses great literature in place of textbooks. Sam is really thriving using this method. We're using Sonlight for Sam's history, language arts and bible. We use Teaching Textbooks for her math and Apologia Science. We're using Sonlight for all of Katie's subjects except for math. We're using Singapore for that.

All of our curriculum is very expensive-we spent about $1500 for this school year-but we strongly believe in what we're doing and want our children to have an exceptional education. I could've done it for less, in fact I did it for much less our first year. However, the amount of time I spent hunting the internet and library and piecing together things to make lesson plans from nothing was just too much for me. The benefit of saving money just didn't outway the negatives. However, we don't do it alone.

We are very blessed to have a grandma who believes in what we're doing just as much as we do, and pays for half the books we buy every year. Without her we wouldn't be able to do it. I know we don't say it enough how much we appreciate you, and I'm sorry for that. Just know that we do. Very much. There's also an amazing auntie who never says no if we tell her the kids need something for school. We love you, and you rock! We also have others who know that we homeschool and think of us when they're out and bring us cool things that they think we can use. (Mom and John! thank you!!) Ok. That's enough of that. I feel like I was giving an award speech or something :D What I was trying to say-in my very long winded way-is that we are very blessed. Blessed in too many ways to list them all here...but having family that loves us and supports what we're doing...that's definitely at the top.