Who's on the 2015 Crew??

As I mentioned in a few posts before this, I got accepted to be a member of the 2015 Schoolhouse Review Crew. This is my first year to do this and it's going to be a learning process as I figure out the ins and outs. However, there are a lot of really wonderful women who have been doing this for a while and have some really great blogs that are not only pertaining to homeschooling but to homesteading, Christian Studies, and all sorts of wonderful things.  Please go check them out :)

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year....

I have a confession to make.. Growing up, I did not like Christmas.  There, I said it..

I know it's probably almost a sacrilege to say but it's the truth. Holidays, especially Christmas, were not happy memories for me.  All my life I heard other kids getting excited about the upcoming winter break, wondering what wonderful presents they were going to have waiting for them under the tree, what Santa was going to bring them.. But not I.. I couldn't stand the entire concept.

It wasn't that I didn't wish Santa would bring me at least something good. But I knew better. I knew that on Christmas Eve, we would have a huge get together at one of our relatives houses where all the adults would be drinking, I would get to watch all the kids in my family open up really great gifts from all the family and I knew they were all laughing as I opened up whatever underwear or socks (yes, I literally got underwear and socks for Christmas) my stepmom found on sale.  Kind of hard to get too excited watching others around you open presents worth hundreds of dollars when you get a pack of Days of the week panties to open up in front of everyone.

I should mention I was a stepchild who at age 7 was suddenly thrust into a home existing of 4 older kids who didn't want a 5th sibling and a step mother who resented the fact my father had a child she didn't know about.. Prior to this, I didn't know my dad, I didn't know my step mom and I didn't know her kids. I was unwanted and they made sure I knew it.

Christmas Day was even worst.. You'd wake up, creep down to the Christmas tree to see what Santa brought. The tree would have so many presents under it but only one or two would be mine. If I was lucky, I would get the stuffed animal I asked for and one year I got a small radio I really wanted but usually it was watching each of my step siblings open several really expensive gifts while I got something bought on sale with whatever money was left. 

One year, my family even went on a Christmas vacation. I was 12 or 13 and I believe they went to Branson, Missouri. I say I think, because I honestly don't remember as I didn't get to go.. Yup, you heard that right.. I literally stayed alone in our lil 4 bedroom house for 5 nights while they all went off to make their own Christmas memories.  I spent Christmas sitting in a cold garage sharing whatever dinner I had that day with my cat while they were doing whatever it is you do in Branson.. Hey, they at least brought me a T-shirt when they came back..

So, it's probably pretty understandable that I never cared for the holidays when I was growing up.

But then..... I had kids....

Christmas turns into a whole new thing when you become a parent.  All those bad memories are suddenly left behind and you are left with a desire to make each and every Holiday season the best it can be for those lil rugrats you created in the hopes that when they turn 28 they are not in therapy crying because you didn't get them a Playstation 20 with the latest firmware that orders your pizza while you're playing so you don't have to stop your game and call yourself.

It doesn't help that I married a guy who absolutely loves Christmas.. When it comes to all things Santa Claus, sparkling twinkle lights and poinsettias, my husband takes the cake.  One of the many reasons I love my husband so much is because he has this very special childlike excitement when it comes to the holidays that is very contagious.  Between him and my kids, there's no way to avoid or ignore Christmas..  Just the idea of decorating the tree is a huge family ordeal: 

Our finished tree - Christmas 2014

But over the years, Christmas has changed for me.  Where once I couldn't stand the sight of the tree, I now cannot wait til Thanksgiving to be over so we can start decorating it together as a family. We

 shop together picking out Christmas decorations for the yard (although, we are on a very tight budget

so its something that slowly has grown over the years). And I get to reclaim all those memories that I did not get to have, only this time, I get to enjoy them with my children and through their reaction. Watching them hang decorations on the tree (usually all grouped together on one or two branches that

I have to move after they go to bed), having them ask for particular Christmas songs and tv shows, going through the neighborhoods and looking at everyone's Christmas lights and then driving home only to think ours is better.. lol

Each year we try to add more traditions in order to make the season a bit more special. This year, we added "Elf on the Shelf".. Personally, I think they look kinda creepy but the kids have been enjoying finding that lil guy every morning when they wake up and there's something magical listening to my 6 year old try to have a conversation with a 30 dollar piece of plastic (yes, I'm admitting I paid 30 bucks for that thing!!!). Christmas eve, instead of a huge family get together, we'll sit in the living room, make hot chocolate and popcorn, dress up in pajamas and watch "The Polar Express" together.. Then we'll play a game or two together and hopefully by then, the kids will be ready to go to bed... and THAT is when the  real fun begins.

You see, while the presents might get wrapped and go under the tree, they don't stay there.. On Christmas eve our living room gets transformed. We have this huge 8 foot inflatable snowman family that should go out in the front yard. But after moving here to the Mojave, we quickly learned it is way too windy for large inflatable items as they would quickly end up in the Land of Oz.  Not wanting the

inflatable to go to waste, it became a Christmas tradition. The kids go to bed and the snowmen are set up in our living room, all the presents are moved from the Christmas tree to around the inflatable.. It makes for one pretty impressive display on Christmas morning.  There might not always been a large amount of things around those snowmen, and they might not be very expensive items at that, but I bet the smile on my kids faces at just seeing those snowmen on Christmas morning is worth way more than any Ipod or video game system.

Christmas is about memories.. and about Tradition.. and most of all, its about that lil baby in the manger.. When I was growing up, that final part was often forgotten in the equation. Occasionally we would go to the Candlelight Service but it was all show.. Maybe if the reason for the season was remembered, my childhood Christmas's would have been much much different.  For the last few years, my kids got to enjoy the Santa Claus and the reindeer but this year, they're learning about that baby.  And it warms my heart more than can be imagined to sit there and have it all snap for them, to hear one of their favorite Christmas songs and know that the baby is Jesus, or to understand that the star on the top of our tree is to represent the Star of Bethlehem.

When did North Carolina become a Continent?

Today we decided to start tackling the good ole subject of Early Modern History. We've covered a lot of the Ancient histories such as Egypt and Rome but after our discussion involving the Pilgrims and their voyage to America, the kids wanted to start studying what happened after they got here.  We decided to skip over to Volume 3 of our Story of the World  and will supplement it with various lessons I have found involving Colonial America and such.

I really love this pic of her today

To kick off the SOTW Vol 3, we went ahead and started refreshing ourselves on the continents and oceans. This is something the kids have known for a while and have never had an issue with before.  So we bring out our trusty globe and start reviewing. Today I added a short discussion about the Equator and how it divides the Earth into a Northern and Southern hemisphere. I guess the kids were too concerned about this new information about the equator, because as that went in, it seemed like everything we previously knew went out... lol

The kids recognized Antarctica and Australia easy enough.  Asia and Europe required a bit of a hint, which that's fine.. South America was easy (Garrett is obsessed with Brazil so he knows that no problem).. But then we get to good ole home.. North America.. something we've discussed time and time again..

This is how our conversation went:

I point to the continent and say "Okay, so what continent is this?"..
They look at me like I have grown a third eye..
Me:   "Come on kids, we know this.. Here, what Country is this (pointing at the US)?"
Them:  "United States"
Me:  "Okay, and what country is this above the US (pointing at Canada)?"
Them:  "Canada"
Me:  "And this country (pointing at Mexico)?"
Them:  "Mexico"
Me:  "Okay, so Canada, the United States and Mexico make up what Continent?"
They again look at me as if I just asked them to start quoting the Gettysburg Address in it's entirety. 

Mapwork to review the oceans and continents

Me:  "Okay, lets try this again.. What continent is this (pointing to South America)?"
Them: "South America"
Me:  "Alright, so if this is South America... and this (pointing at Central America) is Central America. and this continent (pointing to North America) is North of South America and Central America, then what continent would it be?"

Ashleigh: "North Carolina"

FACEPALM!!!

Hangs head in shame..

Kids, gotta love them :) 


We also had fun today talking about the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. We watched a few videos of the launch, the lunar lander making its approach to the moon, Neil Armstrong taking his first steps on the surface and we listened to the famous words "The Eagle has landed" and "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"..

To have a bit of fun with it while practicing our copy work, we used an activity that I found on schoolhouseteachers.com. We traced out each kids footprints on a piece of colored paper and copied Neil Armstrong's famous words onto them, then pasted them on a printed picture of the moon.. The kids had a blast with this and I think they did a great job with their writing. (Especially Garrett, whom we were kinda told would most likely never write very well to begin with)..

All in all, we had a great school day today :)

I Should have Skipped today.. lol

In case you haven't noticed from my post yesterday, I'm kinda running on a short fuse these last few days.. For anyone who's curious, I'm normally not this irritable.. But this week has been extremely stressful and to add to it, I stopped smoking on Monday.. Cold turkey!!  I've been a smoker since 2005.. (Ironic part is, I'm a respiratory therapist and did not start smoking til I worked nite shifts in a hospital).. No Patch.. No Gum.. Nothing... So needless to say,  I'm not nice to be around this week.. LOL

Yup.. about how I feel right now.. LOL

But, even if I'm in the thralls of nicotine withdrawl, homeschooling must go on.. and so we're still working through our lessons. However, the kids do not understand irritability or addictions and so for them, its business as usual. Business as usual means making 10's that have boobies (my son thinks this is funny - Mom is not amused), 6's that have faces (again, mom is not amused) and the typical writing the wrong answer even after saying the right answer and writing said wrong answer in the wrong part of the page..  Yesterday didn't

seem this bad and at that point I was 48 hours without a smoke.. for some reason 72 hours is worse.. lol  To say there have been alot of prayers muttered under my breathe for patience and tolerance today would be an understatement.. lol

 We did manage to get through our lessons, however.. and had a pretty productive day.. We piddled around with some American Sign Language which the kids seem to be picking up pretty quick, we did some reading outloud, and we worked on some mathematics.. We did a quick science experiment.. Later we will be reading from the book "Family Funstuff Bible Stories" by God Prints for a bit of Christmas lessonwork. Somehow we are managing to accomplish stuff .. lol

The Original Artwork

Ashleigh's Artistic Interpretation

On a cute note, for Christmas I brought my husband a print of the artwork for "Le Chat Noir".. Not sure if any of yall are familiar with it, but the Chat Noir was a Caberet in Paris during the 18th Century.  Anywho, my husband has always liked the artwork and so I bought him the print and a nice frame for it for Christmas but because I really have no place to hide it til then, he got it early.. lol  Well, Ashleigh obviously likes it too, because suddenly I have doodles of the cat everywhere.. In notebooks, on cardboard boxes, ect..However, this particular one made it to my fridge..

Rant

This is going to be a different sort of post. more like a gripe then anything of any educational value..  I normally do not type controversial stuff on my blog, but this really has me upset..

Yesterday for our homeschool, we decided we wanted to start learning the song "The Little Drummer Boy" just to have a bit of fun. The kids really enjoy the version by Go Fish and constantly request it but they don't really know all the words or understand what the song is about..

 Before actually learning  the song, I wanted the kids to learn about the song.. Who was the Little Drummer Boy singing to and why?   Out household isn't as spiritual as I would like it to be and while the kids know who God and who Jesus were, I really failed as a mother to bring the Christmas Story to them. I planned to change that this year as we will be doing a few lapbooks in regards to the symbols of Christmas ( a wonderful unit I picked up from "In the Hands of a Child" and teaching them the Nativity story in depth from their bibles starting next week.. However, for this week, I just wanted something very quick that I could show the kids in regards to the real meaning of Christmas, the birth of Christ and then move on.

I'm ashamed to say, it took me forever to find ANYTHING to show the kids, and even when I finally found something, it was a very low quality video on youtube..  Amazon Prime, who is usually my go to when it comes to VeggieTales videos, did not have either the Saint Nicolas or the Little Drummer Boy episodes.. I tried finding anything aimed for children in regards to the Christmas Story.. Heck, I even tried several Church and Spiritual Roku channels in hope to find something, anything, in regards to the Nativity.. I struck out almost everywhere..We ended up finally finding "The Beginner's Bible" channel on youtube who had a video in regards to the birth of Christ. However, we're not really big fans of "The Beginner Bible".. My kids never really took much interest in the drawings and the stories were way too simplistic in my opinion. Well, at least they watched the video. But I really got to wondering why the availability of actual spiritual based Christmas movies has seemed to really decline in recent years.  I remember watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" when I was a child but yet it's not on the ABC Family lineup this year.. Instead are movies like "Baby Daddy" and "Pretty Little Liars Christmas Special".. 

As said, the kids are familiar with Jesus and with "Baby Jesus" (although sometimes I wonder if they honestly

Garrett checking out the new decoration

understand that the two are one in the same).. Right now, for Christmas, we have vinyl on our wall that reads "Today a Savior has been born to you: He is Christ the Lord" and shows the manger scene and the first thing they pointed out was Baby Jesus.. But it appears as if I am really going to have to sit down this weekend and come up with my own lil curriculum to teach the Christmas story to these kids as a visual method isn't out there, that I can find. . 

Tonight we will sit down together, all three kids and myself, and we will read from our Children's bible the story of Jesus's birth.. This year, rather than Christmas tree crafts and wreaths, we will make nativity projects and learn about the symbolism of the candy cane.  Heck, I might even ban Rudolf from our house this year ;)  All I know is that I want the kids to start understanding having a relationship with Jesus, not just pointing to a representation of him and saying that's who it is.

Which brings me to why I'm so upset about all of this....

Last night, I read a story that broke my heart.. The story was about a series of billboards being hung by an Atheist organization throughout America which features a child writing a letter to Santa, saying all they want for Christmas this year is not not be forced to go to church, because they are too old  to believe in Fairy Tales. 

Wish I could remove the website, but then they could sue me!

This has been a sore subject in my household as of lately..  I have a few friends who are Atheists and for the most part, they respect my choice in religious believes and I respect theirs.. Faith is exactly that, a belief based on something you cannot see or cannot prove. I chose to believe that there is a greater entity besides myself out there and that upon my death, I will hopefully join him beyond the pearly gates with my loved ones.  If others choose not to believe this way, that's their right and I won't force my beliefs on them (but will pray that eventually they see things differently)..  I am a firm believer in the what the Mark Gungor (a Pastor out of Green Bay, WI) says in regards to atheists and

Mark Gungor.. I absolutely LOVE this guy!!!

homosexuals that we encounter in our lives. If they do not believe in God and in Jesus Christ, then love them, be friends with them and accept them as you would with anyone else.. It's only when someone claims to be a follower of Christ but yet engages in behavior that Christ taught against that we still love them but shun and disassociate with them until they start actually living by Christ's instructions..

These are the guidelines I choose to live by.. and so my friends that are atheists are treated as I would treat everyone else. I don't sit and criticize their beliefs, I don't belittle their facebook posts that support Atheist movements (Although it breaks my heart to see them posting about removing crosses from the 9/11 museum or to get "Under God" taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance). But as much as I try to respect their beliefs,  I really do feel that my own beliefs are being stepped on.  Atheists do not want to even SEE my bible or my cross or anything that even remotely represents Christianity. Just having any icon that represents the Christian religion is suddenly a huge infringement on their civil rights and they demand its removal. It's not enough for them just to ignore it, they have to get rid of it.. 

Back when I turned my back on my own faith, I never was offended by the site of a cross or a bible or even a picture of Christ.. I could look at a cross and maybe appreciate the beauty in a very ornately made one.. If someone said a prayer, I would remain silent, glancing down at the floor until it was over in order to respect those who wanted to pray.  Respect is no longer in our vocabulary.. If you don't like something, you are entitled to do whatever you want to make you happy, it seems, unless you are a Christian.. Then, you're out of luck, because anything you say or do infringes on everyone's rights.

Last week, we celebrated Thanksgiving and we talked about the Pilgrims and the people who came to this new world for the right to worship as they wanted, without the government prosecuting them for it.  I came to a realization that with the way things are going in this world right now, we're well on our way to being right back in that situation.  Businesses are being legally prosecuted for upholding their beliefs in regards to gay marriages, Hobby Lobby was prosecuted for their religious beliefs for not offering certain forms of birth

control that allowed conception but not implantation. Slowly but surely, our religious beliefs and practices are being attacked because they supposively infringe on someone elses rights or beliefs.  (Which I'm sorry, if someone doesn't want to make a cake for you, you go have a cake made somewhere else...you don't sue them to force them to make you a cake. cake is cake.)..

I guess my long winded point is, this year, my kids will learn the true story of Christmas. Fairy tale or no, I will educate my kids to what my beliefs are and then later down the road, if they choose to question or challenge  those beliefs, I welcome them to do so. I did the same thing as I got to my young adult years and I have gradually gravitated back to beliefs from early on in my formative years.  We still have the Christmas tree, the presents and the lights but we also have our Nativity scene and we still have our bible.  Here's just hoping we don't have to spend 66 days at sea on a boat to find someplace where I can teach those values to my kids without prosecution.

End Rant

Exciting News to Share

Ever had some news you were so excited to share but didn't want to post it until it was absolutely official? That's how its been for me these last couple of weeks. I received some great news the other day but was afraid to share before it became official in fear that something would happen to change it.. But now, its official!!!

A while back one of the groups that I am a member of for Homeschooling posted that The Old Schoolhouse's "Schoolhouse Review Crew" was accepting applications for the 2015 review crew. Anyone who teaches homeschool knows of this group as many of the times when you are googleing reviews for various curriculums and such, you will come across on of their members reviews.. I've read alot of these reviews for various items I've considered buying for the kids. The insight they give is amazing and has always been a valuable resource when making judgement calls for items sight unseen.

I saw the post about the applications and said "What the heck!".. I would fill it out but I didn't have my hopes too high on it being accepted. After all, I was new to this blogging thing and did not have a lot of followers (if any??).  My understanding was also that they only have a set number of reviewers each year and many of those are returning crew members.. But I did fill out the application, after all, I definitely wouldn't get picked if I didn't at least fill out the application, right???  A week later, I received an email from Kate over at the Schoolhouse Review Crew stating that she viewed my blog and liked what she saw and asked for me to do a practice review of a curriculum that they offered and they would make a decision based on that. We were given the opportunity to use and review “WannaBe™-When I Grow Up I Want to be a Firefighter” ( Our review can be found here).  Imagine my surprise when Kate emailed me back saying they really enjoyed the review and offered me a position on the 2015 Schoolhouse Review Crew :)

We are so excited about this opportunity. As a military family, money is always tight and I tend to have to pick and choose curriculum based on a price tag versus if I think its the perfect fit for my kids. This works, to some degree but it requires alot of modifications and deviations away from the original concepts. We usually have to adjust a curriculum to fit us.  This opportunity is going to allow us to try various products without biting the bullet and then finding out that we wasted money.. But not only that, it will give us the opportunity to give an honest opinion of new curriculum before other homeschool families spend their hard earned cash, to let them know how it worked (or didn't work) for us, what type of modifications we suggest to fit unusual learning situations (such as with my special needs son) and hopefully help other families like our own to make a more educated decision when purchasing products.  Hopefully, someone will google a name of a product, looking for a review and will come across my blog and it will ultimately help them in their decision. That makes me feel great!!!  

For the last 4 years, since we moved to this base, I have been unemployed and generally felt pretty helpless when it comes to doing anything outside my home. Being a member of the Schoolhouse Review crew gives me some enjoyment knowing that even though I'm still locked up in this house and on this base, I can contribute to society by helping others.. That's a wonderful feeling and something I am really looking forward to.

So there it is, my big news.. I can't wait to start bringing my own views to the Homeschooling world.. 

To those who have been here since the beginning of this blog, thank you so much.. To those who are joining us, welcome aboard and I hope you enjoy the journey :)