Q&A #2

Such a great day of learning while having fun. When I did my student teaching, "THE FARM", was my favorite. You had a hot day for this one. Where is this farm?
Yes, it was fun!! I love doing stuff like that with them. I'm much better at hands on stuff than I am with just showing them in a book. I think I get as bored as they do! It WAS hot though! We weren't there as long as we could have been! This farm is in Clarksville off of Highway 12... it's not quite as good as Honeysuckle Hill Farm which is off exit 24 on the way to Springfield, but it was still fun for the little ones. 


Okay I know you've dealt with many questions about the kids desks before, but I'm going to ask more :). Kaitlyn does not have a desk. Currently she does homework at the kitchen table. Actually, Natalie does too. Natalie however has a huge desk. I've been thinking of replacing it to give us more room in their bedroom. And especially recently I've been trying to figure out how to make more room in there. So anyways, are the desks big enough for a middle school aged child and beyond? 
No, Kass and Kam would look pretty silly in these desks. I would say maybe up to age 7 (for a typically sized child). Check out the website where I got them though, they have all kinds of desks for older kids too at pretty good prices! 


Renee, getting a book from another library sent to our library is called an InterLibrary Loan. I saw them happen all the time when I worked in the APSU library. The public library should do something like it too.
Thanks!!! I will definitely try that! I think next week I will need books from there again. :)


I follow your blog and am considering homeschooling my children. I was so sorry to hear about how the school treated Kennedy. I was wondering, are you planning to also homeschool Kellsey when the time comes? I'm guessing she would be in the same exact situation as Kennedy. Just curious! 
I'm not sure... right now Kellsey is in a fabulous preschool and I am praying hard that she makes great strides there. Her teacher is very encouraging about what Kellsey is doing and how she is progressing. However, when time for Kindergarten comes, if she's still not talking, I'm not sure that I could homeschool her... Now that being said, I said about 2 years ago that I would NEVER homeschool any of my children because I simply couldn't do it. And well... here we are. Out of necessity. So, we'll see what happens with Kellsey. I've learned to never say never. As it stands right now I don't feel qualified to give her an education, but we have a lot of time before Kindergarten and I know she will change a lot between now and then. But you are right, she would be in the exact situation as Kennedy here in our school system. 


Glad for the most part everyone is healthy. Hoping Kennedy continues to improve from her sinus infection. What gave you that food poisoning anyways? No more set backs with that education now, lol.
Sadly, I think it was my favorite Mexican restaurant. It will be awhile before I can eat there again!  

Where have we BEEN?!

Have you been wondering where we've been?! I have! LOL I got struck down with bronchitis and couldn't talk for awhile... a LONG while! This made it very hard for me to talk without coughing up a lung and therefore made it very hard to teach! I threw in a few days here and there where I could, but the last couple weeks, between being sick and then Kass and Kam being on Fall Break, Kennedy and I have basically been on a hiatus.

We were prepared to get back to it full force yesterday and then I got struck down with food poisoning and she woke up in the middle of the night with a 104 temp! I took her to the doctor yesterday and she has a sinus infection. She's on antibiotics now and is still fighting a fever which forced us to cancel therapy and reading clinic, but thankfully we are getting back on track today with school work at least! The good news is we can work on weekends and stuff and catch up. I'm not too worried. :)

SO what are we doing right now?

In Bible we are re-doing our Faith & Trust week. We didn't really get far with that and I think it's so important! Our story this week is Pigs All Around which Kennedy says is "silly"! HA! It is sort of a silly book, but there's lots of challenging words in there for her to learn. She has some spelling words to coordinate with her book. We're also playing catch up with our Raz Kids reading online. We'll be doing a few different stories on there this week. Thankfully this is one of Kennedy's and Keeghan's favorite things to do!

We have ditched our math curriculum. She had mastered it and was getting really bored with the repetition so we have moved onto addition. We're using Picture Math that someone mailed to me and she is doing really well with it! She already has lots of practice with basic addition anyway thanks to her iPod Touch, but somehow seeing it on paper is always different! She really enjoyed math today which is always good to see! I love watching her catch on to such important concepts like adding!! We're still working on flashcards as well and I'm going to step those up and add in numbers 21-30.

In science, she and Keeghan learned about germs today. We talked about what germs are and how to protect others from catching our germs by using good hand washing, using Kleenex or sneezing into our sleeves. Keeghan, my little OCD boy, was totally grossed out by the whole thing. Haha Kennedy thought it was all pretty interesting though!

The kids favorite part of the morning continues to be calendar time... they love talking about what day it is, the month, the season, going outside to "feel" the weather and pick out the weather card(s) for the day, and then singing our phone number song. Since it was pointed out that it would be pretty dumb of me to post a video of the kids singing our phone number on here (uhhh oh yeah! LOL) I will give you the generic version of our song:

To the tune of "Do You Know the Muffin Man"
Do you know your phone number?
Your phone number?
Your phone number?
Do you know your phone number?
555-1212.

Cute, right? The kids love it. Of course now if you ever ask them their phone number they're going to sing it instead of say it. Then again, I'll probably sing it now too! haha

Here's a picture of Kennedy in front of our calendar... this was taken a couple weeks ago... Keeghan was at school...

Anyway, that is it for now!! More later this week! :)

Field Trip to the Farm

On Wednesday, we went on a field trip with our homeschool group to Christan Way Farm out in Hopkinsville, KY. A bunch of us met at a rest stop and followed each other to the farm, and I'm SO glad we did because it was WAY off the beaten path! The kids had a great day though! They learned a lot about working on the farm, the animals that live there, different kinds of pumpkins, and they even used a pumpkin to show how God cleans the "yucky stuff" (sin) out of us so Jesus can come in. It was really cool!

Kennedy had a great time grinding the corn, feeding the animals, picking her own pumpkin and of course getting in a little play time with some friends. We had some amazing Fall weather for our day too! It was just perfect! Here are some pictures of our day!

We got to hear a cool story about pumpkins and hear all about the farm! 

(Kennedy's on the front row in the pink jacket)

I have to find the perfect pumpkin!

This one is beautiful!!

I'm going to chop up this corn!!!

Here it goes!!

It's hard work!!!

Now I throw the corn in this thing and it makes it all mushy...

Then I get to feed it to the cow!

Play time!!!

This is my stage... do I look like Hannah Montana?!

Can you believe they're making us mow the lawn?! (Just kidding!)

My friend Abby and I were slide racing!!

I'm gonna win!!

Let's just go together this time! :)

My mom and me before we left the farm. It was a fun day! :)

Faith & Trust!

This week we will be talking about Faith & Trust, which means Believing that God will do what He says and believing in something that you cannot see.

Opposite: Disbelief; not trusting; hopeless


Memory Verse: Luke 1:37 Nothing is impossible for God. 


This week we will be talking about the story of David & Goliath, which is one of my favorites! We are going to talk about how David had to have faith and trust God to go fight a big giant like Goliath. He believed that with God's help that he would beat him, even though he was little, and he did! We will probably have a movie night with Dave and the Giant Pickle and then I will teach them the "Only a Boy named David" song. We'll probably throw in a couple fun games as well! :)

More on this later!

Another Week Down...

I haven't been keeping this blog updated as much as I planned on... we've had a crazy couple weeks! We're still staying mostly on track with Kennedy's school stuff, but we've had some "life" get in the way... a little bit of illness (not with the kids, just with me this time), a lot of car trouble, and just other junk. Thankfully, the good part about homeschooling is that we can play catch up in the evenings and on weekends if we have to, and we can do school just about anywhere... and trust me, we have! HA!

Kennedy's been doing really well with her math... she's catching on quickly. I'm thinking that I need to change my lesson plans a bit and move us ahead a little bit faster than I had planned. She's getting kind of bored, and so am I! She still seems to have a mental block against recognizing the numbers 11, 12 and 13. I'm not exactly sure why. She will count them when we're counting, but if I write those numbers down or show her those ones on flashcards, she just stares at them like she's never seen them before. If anyone reading this has any ideas on how to help her with that, besides just practice and more practice, let me know!

She has also been doing really well with her reading. Her book this week had a couple of her spelling words in it from previous weeks and I was wondering if she'd remember them and she just read right along! She's picking up on reading words quickly now. She started back up at the Reading Clinic at the Kennedy Center at Vanderbilt again as well. She went this Summer for a month-long intensive program, 4 days a week. This time it's 2 days a week until December. I'm hoping that will give her a little extra boost as well as maybe a little break from just me teaching her ;). In my mind she can never have too much reading practice!!

I haven't been very thrilled with the Social Studies curriculum we've been doing, it's kind of... well... boring. I think I'm going to move on to something else. Our homeschool group is taking a field trip next month to The Homeplace, so I'm looking forward to that! I think she'll enjoy learning all about all the different stuff they have there. I think I'm ready to move on to Science! HA!

Bible has definitely been one of our most fun subjects and I try to incorporate other subjects into our Bible lessons, like reading and math, and P.E. is always in there as we're always playing active games related to our character trait. :) Speaking of P.E., Kennedy started her ballet and tap class up again this week. Her dance studio started a day time class so we're not out late in the evenings which is perfect! She was so excited to get back to it and see some of her same friends from before in her class!

Today we went to our meeting for our homeschool group... Kennedy went off with the Kindergarten through 2nd graders and I went off with all the moms. I kept telling her, "OK I'm going to leave now... but I'll be back..." And she was pushing me out the door like, "GO already!" haha When I got back to pick her up she was running around with new friends and had made a beautiful piece of artwork during craft time! :) She said she had a lot of fun! It was nice for me, too, to talk to other moms and hear what they are doing with their kids. We are going with them next week on a field trip to the pumpkin patch, it should be fun! :)

Anyway, I guess that's about it. I still want to get pictures of our morning routine on here, because I do so enjoy doing that, but honestly, we haven't done it once all week! Kennedy's even asked about it a few times! I am hoping to be back in routine next week and on schedule! I'm loving working with Kennedy and watching her learn. :) It's been more fun than I ever could have imagined!

A Day at the Firehouse!

Yesterday Kennedy got to go on a field trip with a bunch of other Kindergarten and First Grade children who are homeschooled in the area. It was a lot of fun! Kennedy is not shy at all and stepped right in with the other children. She told them her name, she handed one of the firemen the thank you card we made for them... and then she politely asked for it back. *ahem* And then we learned all about fire safety and the firehouse and fire trucks. I say "we" because I actually learned a lot too, which I found out later was the sneaky plan of our leader: pretend to teach the kids while secretly teaching the parents as well! Tricky tricky! :) hehe

Anyway, here are a few pictures from our day! It was especially cool because the fire inspector who lead our tour is the husband of one of Kennedy's Early Interventionists! :) It was neat to make the connection... and yes, we DO live in a small town!

Talking about calling 911 and the importance of knowing your address

Explaining the different parts of the fire truck... even the windshield wipers! hehe

Kennedy couldn't STAND it that the door was left open! LOL She fixed it!

In the firemen's bedroom. This was Kenn's favorite part, 

though she was disturbed there were no blankets on the beds for the firemen! haha

My so NOT shy daughter!

Explaining the parts of the fire suit and seeing the fireman in gear so the kids 

wouldn't be scared if they ever had to see a fireman during a fire.

The fire engine... lights and sirens going... Kennedy said it was "too loud!"

One last picture before we left the firehouse!

On our way out, the rescue truck got an emergency call, so we got to see them leave... quickly!

It was a great morning and we hope to see these kids again at future events!! They were all so cute and fun! Thanks Clarksville Fire & Rescue!! We appreciate it! :) 

Attentiveness!

This week's character trait is Attentiveness!
(Or, as we're going to say, "Pay attention!")

Attentiveness means listening by keeping your hands in your lap, mouth closed, ears listening and eyes watching!


Opposite: Distracted; busy; daydreaming


Memory Verse: Psalms 85:8 - I will listen to what God says. 


This week we will be talking about paying attention. This is something we talk about constantly anyway. I am always saying, "You need to pay attention" or "You need to use listening ears". Kennedy is easily distracted by... well... just about anything. She has a hard time staying on task unless it's something she really wants to do! We have been working hard all Summer on the importance of listening the first time to mommy, grandma, teachers at church, or whoever else she needs to be listening to at the time, so while this won't be anything new to her, hopefully we can have some fun with it!

This week we will be talking about Samuel and how he heard God calling him, but he had to pay attention to hear Him. We have a fun game and craft to go along with that and will be reading from Samuel 3. We'll also be singing the song, "O Be Careful Little Eyes" which is one of my favorites from when I was little! Of course we'll be going over our memory verse every day and we are also going to play the "Pay Attention" game. I'll be sure to post pics of all that later! It's going to be another fun character filled week!