{ Week 14 }

Am I the only mother to get anxiety attacks when I think about taking my children out for excursions?

Case in point:  this week we had the opportunity to go on a nature walk with the local homeschool community to our local wetlands.  I thought, oh this is a great idea, and then pretty much started having an anxiety attack straight away.  It got so bad this week that I was pretty much brought to tears just by the thought of the excursion.  In the end we didn't go, even though hubby said he would come with us and carry the baby the entire time for me.

I guess it was mostly triggered by the sheer amount of work involved in getting us out of the house, plus the needed materials, snacks and drinking water etc..  for the actual excursion.  I still can't fold/unfold the pram properly on my own either.  So whenever I need the pram, I also need another adult to help take care of that.  Additionally, the thought of trying to get the girls to do the remainder of their school work when we got home after a few hours out was totally messing with my little mind as well.  Let's just say it's near hopelessness when you have to pull off an afternoon of school after you've been out for the morning.  Yes, I may be flexible, but I guess perhaps I'm not as flexible as I might need to be.

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Instead of just putting our copywork directly into our exercise books this week we tried it out on some worksheets, ha ha, and then put those into our exercise books.

If you'd like a FREE copy just click the photo to go to TpT - that's where I've housed it at the moment.  Oh, and I've also included the passages in task card form as well, just in case that works better for your situation.



This week I also decided that we needed to change things up again.  Yep, I do this pretty regularly just to keep the ball rolling.  Nothing gets stale in this house, that's for sure.

Since I have a box or so of CLE modules left over, I thought that it would be a nice change to do one for English - so that's where we'll be for the next three weeks.

I also took some time to do a little cursive instruction with Hannah { 5 } as well.  She really loved it.

And just for my old and waning memory, { that way I'll have something to look back on }, I took a completely random, off the cuff photo of the girls all sitting down for school.  This is where we do most of our bookwork, at the kitchen table.

Thanks for visiting.

History Reads for Ancient History Part Two

Welcome to Part Two of our little show and tell for Ancient History reading books.

A gorgeous book on Ancient Egypt.

Beautiful pictures throughout.

Also, Ancient China, which is another interesting country to delve into.

For additional reading, and mostly pictures of real items, don't forget to add the DK Eyewitness books to your list as well.

Buying books can be a very expensive endeavour, BUT I have found that one can still pick up lots of them for cheap via second hand/book stores or even at the local flea markets.  I just keep an eye out for books that may be useful as I go along.

I hope you'll also join us for Part 3, coming soon.

Today I'll be linking up with:

I hope you will join us.

Thanks for visiting.

{ Week 13 }

This week I did a quick count up to see how many Maths lessons we've done and was super happy to find that we'd already done 65 days worth of Maths for the year, including today.  What this actually means for us, is that we are almost 1/3 of the way done for this school year.

That's a LOT of Math lessons.

For Science this week Hannah did the following work.  She did it without any assistance whatsoever.  First she outlined, and then she wrote her piece - all by herself.

The BEST moment in my life this week was this:

Noah sleeping as a real child would, in his cot, on his side.

I can't even begin to tell you how gorgeous this was.

Charlotte continues on with her tracing of the alphabet:

And finally, my dear friends, I leave you with the LONGEST sentence that I read this week:

Now Brutus, feeling that the noblest spirits of Rome for virtue, birth, or courage were depending upon him, and surveying with himself all the circumstances of the dangers they were to encounter, strove indeed as much as possible, when abroad, to keep his uneasiness of mind to himself, and to compose his thoughts; but at home, and especially at night, he was not the same man, but sometimes against his will his working care would make him start out of his sleep, and other times he was taken up with further reflection and consideration of his difficulties, so that his wife that lay with him could not choose but take notice that he was full of unusual trouble, and had in agitation some dangerous and perplexing question.

ha ha ha - true story.

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History Reads for Ancient History Part One

This year the girls are using Mystery Of History I as our main history reader.

Now while I suppose that we could easily get by on just MOH I { if I wasn't so History focused } - I feel it would be much more beneficial and fun to add a few more books that would compliment and concrete our Ancients History focus for the year.

M. B. Synge
On the Shores of the Great Sea
{ FREE online }

SOTW I

Britain and Her Neighbours

Chloe has already read Synge and SOTW I this year .  She LOVED them.  They are easy short readings, so she just did a few each time she picked up a book.  Soon she'll start Britain & Her Neighbours Book III.  Phebe is currently half way through SOTW I, and then I'll give her Synge as well.  I'm actually thinking of starting Hannah off on Synge as the stories look shorter!

After all that - I am hoping, seriously hoping, that the biographies of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar are also appreciated here in the house as well before the end of the year.  They look a little challenging, but my girls are not afraid of big books, which is good.  I'll let you know how that goes.



I'll have some more Ancient History books for show and tell next week.

Today I'll be linking up with:



I hope you will join us.

Thanks so much for visiting.

Timelines for History

One of the BEST things that I ever purchased for our homeschool was Amy Paks Timeline Figures.  I've had them for several years now and they always get used.

This year, while we've been working on improving our written work for History we've also been quietly doing a timeline to work along side.

I got the time line pages for FREE online from HERE.  Then I just bound them with my handy dandy little binder to make a book.

This book is Hannah's { she's 5 }.

It's currently set to cover all the Ancients.

When we need to add additional years I'll just open the book up and add the extra pages.

Can't wait to see the completed 4 year project.

Today I'll be linking up with:

I hope you will join us.

Thanks for visiting.

Free CVC Printable

Today I have another little idea that I picked up and turned into a worksheet.

I am super pleased with this format.  I figure that I can not only do all my cvc words with it but also all the multiple phonograms and word families too.  Can't wait.

 { Just click the picture to download. }

Thanks for visiting.

Random Chit Chat

Wow, some children are a breeze, and some children, not so much.  I've had a few babies now, so I've got them all over the spectrum.

Now this little baby, while he looks awesome cute, is actually a LOT of work.  I can't figure out if he's just broken or totally bored and needs attention and something to do.  It would seem that he needs to be picked up for pretty much his entire waking time and carried around to check out life.  Adrian swore he said, "mum" the other day.

In other news:

I've been swamped out with hats and bracelets these last few days.

Here's Charlotte with Nefertiti and Amenhotep.

She also had a bundle of Baa Baa Black Sheep bracelets too.

Time to go.  I'm exhausted.

The end.