School These Days

My homeschooling career started 19 years ago, and I STILL LOVE, LOVE IT!

Being my children’s teacher is so fulfilling.

I praise the Lord for that fact!

Over our Christmas break I spent many days planning school.

Yes, that says days!

Ever since our “first day” of school back in August, I have just been winging it.

There have been SO many other things needing my attention!

All good things!

But I missed planning school and having a good plan to follow SO much.

I’m glad to be back at it to bring this important thing to fruition!

I planned four weeks of school over Christmas break – including four weeks of FIAR.

FIAR is my favorite way of schooling the kiddos!

Take a book, read it, and run with ALL kinds of learning based on that one story.

It’s SO FUN!

This past week we started our learning from a book called Hanna’s Cold Winter.

It’s about a family that saves the hippos in a zoo in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II.

As I am reading the book aloud to the children, they have a tic tac toe board of words they are listening for.

This activity builds listening skills!

And it builds vocabulary and spelling skills too!

We read a go along book called The Butterfly which is about a French family who was hiding Jews in their cellar during the Nazi occupation in France also during World War II.

These books have sparked SO much conversation!

The best part of reading aloud to your kiddos!

Since we read a book called The Butterfly, we did a butterfly craft!

I get all of my FIAR and craft ideas on Pinterest!

First we outlined our butterflies with black glue.

After the glue dried, we water colored our butterflies.

Then it was time to decorate them!

The kiddos enjoyed that craft a lot.

We have many more go along books to read and hands on activities to do based on the book Hanna’s Cold Winter.

School these days is good.

So very good!

Looking forward to many more days of learning with these kiddos!!

The Grandest Kind Of Day

We had the immense privilege of having Clyde, Ellie and River for the biggest part of a day so that David and Kayla (and Briar!) could go on a date!

There is nothing better than three adorable children running into your arms shouting “NaiNai!!!” when your front door opens!!

I kind of love them.

So very much!

We had such a nice day playing, snacking, napping, playing and snacking some more!

Look at this little Mama in the making!!

We somehow even kept Ruby Jane calm and out of the toys!

The babies are getting used to her now – especially Ellie who was the least fond of her!

When Kayla messaged me to check on everyone I told her they could not have the babies back!

That daughter of mine never listens to me, ha, ha!

We sure can’t wait till next time!

Hurry back over to NaiNai’s house soon, sweet babies!!

WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!

A Beautiful First Day of the Year

New Year’s Eve brought a new six inch deep gorgeous blanket of white to our area.

We were all SO happy to have snow again!

It filled New Year’s Day with a lot of fun here at Twin Oaks.

It was the most beautiful day!

What a great way to spend the day together, especially the last day of our Christmas break!

We sure hope this snow sticks around!

It is just so beautiful and SO MUCH FUN!!

2019, you are looking great so far!

A Very Special Christmas Visit

This New Year’s weekend brought two very special visitors to Twin Oaks!

My brother Mike and my Mom!

It was a WONDERFUL weekend spent together.

My brother and sister helped my Mom spoil us with Christmas gifts!

We enjoyed dinner together at HuHot Mongolian Grill on Saturday evening.

It was a smidge crazy keeping track of everyone, hence the very few photos!

I do have LOTS of blurry photos though that I will leave off this post, ha, ha!

We took my Mom and Mike to see Shiloh Valley Farm!

Which gave us the opportunity to grab this precious photo-

We also enjoyed going bowling on Sunday afternoon!

It was SUPER fun!

My Mom bought us a gift certificate to go bowling again soon!

We are SO, so grateful to my brother for all the effort he made to make this visit happen!

There were so many good memories made.

We have plans to visit my brother and Mom in March in Indianapolis and are looking forward to it very much!!

Happy New Year, everyone!!