Nicole's Mid-year update!

Hey homeschool world! All I can say is God is good! 2015 was such a blessing, many things have transpired within the last several months that have consumed most of my time and energy, but things are beginning to level out! (As much as they will I guess, lol)

I had another baby! A little baby boy, he's so cute ya'll! My husband and I bought our first home! Love, love, our home, we're finally settling into our new community and we just joined a church! I feel God's blessings all around me, He is amazing!

As far as homeschooling, my little Kindergartener is coming along beautifully! We've been focusing on the basics, Reading, Writing, and Math! In reading, she is currently on a third grade level, if you visit our curriculum page you'll see the Houghton Mifflin Series that I use for her, we're currently midway through the Journeys book. We have two more books to go in the set (Flights and Explorations)! I've been using this set since she was 3 1/2 years old, it's been a golden staple for us.

Her writing is developing as well. We do ALOT of copywork, for handwriting purposes, and we've just transitioned into writing in one space in her composition book. She also gets practice with creative writing. The focus right now is communicating her ideas in a progressive way. Introduce an idea, develop it, and explain it so readers can understand it as if they were there. Here's a sample of her copywork.


For math we use the Math Mammoth curriculum by Maria Miller. She is currently in Kindergarten but she's learning first grade math. We have the 1a and 1b set, which focuses on addition and subtraction. She has officially learned all of her addition facts up to 10+10! I'll have to upload a video of her reciting her addition wall, to show the progress.

    

So yes, this year has been quite the adventure! But we've still managed to keep it moving with our schoolyear! I'm beginning to look into the Easy Peasy website. Alouse is using that for her Kindergartener and High Schooler, and loves it! Maybe I can coax her to share her experience, lol! It really is an excellent site! The creator of the site has broken homeschool down from first grade all the way to 12th grade and gives a thorough day by day guide for each subject. I'm thinking about squeezing it in as a supplement to what I've been doing with the little one.

Until next time!

May God bless you and keep you! Be encouraged to be the best you can be, and keep a smile along the way!

:) :) :)

Building Polygons: Marshmallow fun!

Here's this week's Kindergarten math hands on activity! To end our summer math enrichment J bug is building polygons! She's memorizing polygons tri through dodeca (3 to 12). To make it come to life, she'll be building with toothpicks and marshmallows! Here's some pics of the fun!

DIY: Chocolate Bowl

His everyone it's Alouse again, back with another DIY.  This time I'm back with an even more yummy treat :). This past week for my husband's birthday we decided to do something different, instead of purchasing a cake like we always do to celebrate a birthday, we decided instead to make CHOCOLATE BOWLS! who doesn't like chocolate. This was our first attempt at making them and we had sooo much fun. I can honestly say that it was a hit, my husband loved it :)). This inspiration did come from you tube. I will post the link below in case you would like to check out the video. I will also include pictures of how everything came out and the steps to achieving this yummy treat. !ENJOY!

Supplies:

1. Water balloons

2. Dark Chocolate ( any of your choice )

3. Bowl or measuring cup ( glass or metal )

4. Parchment paper

 5. Cookie baking sheet

 

 

1. Blow and wash your balloons then pat dry 

  

2.  Melt chocolate in a bowl that is deep enough to dip the balloon into. you can melt chocolate in either the microwave or on the stove over boiling water medium heat. Before dipping the balloons, make sure to let the chocolate cool down just to room temperature. If it’s not cool enough it will cause the balloon to pop and you can imagine what a big mess that would be. 

 

3. Spoon a dollop of chocolate on the baking tray. This will form the base of your balloon bowl. Dip one of your balloons into the bowl of chocolate, rotating it so that all sides are covered evenly.

 Repeat same step for the rest of your balloons.You can also use a spoon to create a design.

               

   

4. Place baking tray in the refrigerator for at least 15-20 minutes. Once chocolate is ready, remove tray from the refrigerator and poke the balloons with something sharp then carefully remove balloons from chocolate mold.

  5. Fill your bowl up with your favorite ice cream, or just add some strawberries, blue berries, and whip cream. This was the best birthday desert ever!

I hope you enjoyed this post. Feel free to comment and share some of your favorite deserts DIY's.

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM_ZyL0FgQQ

No bake Oatmeal chocolate peanut bites (Alouse)

This past Friday I decided to make some delicious sweets with the kids, something to keep them busy, although for the past couple of days I've been craving nothing but sweets :)). I decided to look up a couple of simple recipes i could do with the kids, and to my surprise !CHOCOLATE BITES!. I of course did tweak it a little  : ). I found this  recipe from a you tube channel ( Simple cooking Channel ). if you are interested in checking this video out for the original recipe this is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjAyHiV9Bzw. I will also include the original recipe and my version down below with a couple of pictures. Please feel free to comment and  let us know what you think!.

Original recipe

1/4 Cup of butter ( melted )
3-4 Tablespoons of honey
1/2 Teaspoon of vanilla extract
1.5 Tablespoons of cocoa powder
1-2 Tablespoons of warm water
1/2 Cup of raw oats
1/2 Cup of desiccated coconut
1/4 Cup of flax seeds
1/4 Cup of chocolate bits

 My Version:

1/4 Cup of butter ( melted )
3-4 Tablespoons of honey
1/2 Teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 oz of  Nutella ( Hazelnut with Cocoa spread )
1 1/2Cup of raw oats ( old fashion )
1/2 Cup of desiccated coconut
1/4 Cup of flax seeds or Chia seeds
1/2 Cup of  Peanuts ( any peanuts of your choice )


 Each child took turns incorporating all the ingredients.





 


Then i mixed everything together

I used a ice cream scooper to scoop and form the bites
placing each one on the cup cake sheets.

 Final step includes placing them into the refrigerator or freezer for about 15 minutes! then !ENJOY! :)) YUMMY!

Organizing my home! (Nicole)

This year I actively joined the Spring Cleaning Team! I don't know if it's the time of year or what, but my home was in desperate need of some TLC :) The first thing I thing was decluttered! It got to the point to where I was just looking around and seeing things out of place and was completely BOTHERED by it all! lol. From my room to the laundry room, the kitchen cabinets, tv storage, all the way to the kids room I was throwing EVERYTHING away lol. I have to be honest it feels so good to know where everything is, and know that I was able to get about 50+ bags of junk hauled to the dumpster, courtesy of my wonderful husband :) :) :0) Next on the list was my bookshelves. I had 3 tall bookshelves and 1 small bookshelf in my master room. THey were slowly becoming drop off centers in addition to a neverending system of fixing and readjusting! I've removed all the shelves! Replaced the shelf in my living room, daughters room and son's room with small shelves and called a couple friends over who were delighted to attend a free book sale lol. The shelf in my room I've completely removed, it's just something about it, I'd prefer the master room to be clear, so I could literally step away from it all, an enter into a place of clarity and rest. After the setup of my shelving, it was time to buy organizers!!!! I decided to visit the dollar store and buy everything in sight, all that was in my color scheme of course, and managed to walk away with organizers for my pantry, kitchen cabinet, bathroom closet and new toy rotation system. The Toy rotation works like this: Divide a small number of toys into an organizer, keep 10-15 toys down switch out weekly. Toy rotation systems are good for kids because it helps them stay interested in their toys and keeps them from having literally hundreds of toys and pieces all over the floor. IT HELPS SO MUCH!!!! I can officially say...I'm at peace now!

Step 1: Declutter and throw away things no longer using Step 2: Get rid of unnecessary books and bookshelves Step 3: Utilize Organizers and create a toy rotation Step 4: Sanity and a happy home :)