The HerdKeeper

I cannot believe the school year is coming to an end. We did not accomplish everything I wanted but I trust we accomplished what we needed. I missed all of the homeschool curriculum fairs this year because of time constraints. This is the first time in 15 years that I have missed a curriculum fair. 15 years ago I had my son so I was a little too busy to go. Top on my wish list this year is Rosetta Stone Spanish. So this year for math I need Math U See Algebra I - three books - have one book Math U See Epsilon - one book - check Math U See Gamma - one book Math U See Alpha - two books My 3 high schoolers will be doubling up on math this year they are also taking a consumer math class at a co op. I am still pondering Language Arts I think we will be doing IEW for late elementary and maybe Easy Grammar for the actual grammar I really want All About Spelling - to round this out. I have IEW and Easy Grammar. Of course Literature will be some good solid historical fiction to go with ...

Busy busy busy Saturday 1. deep clean kitchen 2. clean my bedroom 3. fold clothes - check 4. pick out light fixture for school room - check (shopping on line) made Lowes list - play sand, garden hose, tomato cages, string - check 5. Prepare clothes, shoes and kids for church tomorow. 6. work with Josiah on English 7. make dinner - not sure what yet 8. clean out fridge and get it ready for grocery shopping trip - check 9. drop Bekah off to meet her boyfriend to go to a picnic - check Sunday 1. Sunday school at home with littles that are sick 2. Lunch as family 3. return clothes to dress barn 4. give Emma manicure and have her give me one.

When I first "discovered" workboxes Don said no way can we have 108 plastic shoe boxes and 9 racks floating around the house. I really wanted to try this and loved the look of the Trofast system I saw on the yahoo group but didn't want to spend the money for a possible maybe. I am an organizing junky. I have spent hundreds of dollars if not thousands on organizing books, systems, baskets etc. I was skeptical but I kept hearing rave reviews. So....... I bought a cheap coat rack and some shoe organizers and tried it out for a few of the kids. I loved loved loved the system, but hated hated hated the shoe rack it was weak and kept toppling over. After brainstorming with Don and explaining to him how effective this system is he caved in and bought the Trofast system. I just wanted a more permanent rack to hang my system from but Don was sure there was something that looked neater so I was forced to show him the Trofast system at Ikea. I originally thought this syst...

We are using Konos with My Father's World and Tapestry of Grace. Wow what an odd way to do this. My high schoolers are using TOG so I was tyring to keep us somewhat on the same page but I know how well my younger ones learn from Konos. So in my planning I used My Father's World and Konos simultaneosly. We will not reach the end of MFW because we are smelling the roses along the way and I am okay with that. So this week we watched a Nest video on Columbus, a National Geographic video, read the D'Aulaire book on Columbus and my big kids read The World of Columbus by G. Foster. The younger kids also studied water, ships, bouyancy. I was amazed ( I should know by now how amazing my kids are) at all the questions they asked, all the conclusions they came to just by building simple tinfoil boats and floating them, blowing on them. Wish I had pictures to show but their dad couldn't figure out why there was three pieces of tin foil in the boys room so he tossed them.

Emma's last year as a high school cheerleader . My sunshine is growing up.

Took the big girls shopping. We had fun shopping and Melaina loved being a big girl.

Everyone was so excited to go, the trip down was fun. No pictures of our trip home we were to tired to lift the camera.