Jackson is 2!

Dear Jackson,

Happy 2nd birthday my awesome boy! We had a lot of fun celebrating your birthday. On your birthday, we went to Chick-fil-a for lunch. We met your grandparents there and then took them to our house to see our chicks and keets. We had pizza for dinner and I made brownies that I decorated with some trucks.

Saturday, we had your 2nd birthday party. It was a construction themed party that we had at our house. We invited your friends over and everyone had a great time. We served lunch and cake. Dad described your party as the ultimate playdate. What one could hope for when they invite lots of friends over.  We had 26 people over. 7 of your friends and their siblings (if they have them) and a parent or two. I set up stations inside and outside for kids to explore. Some of the favorite stations were the hammer and nails, playing with truck area, and just playing outside. Your friends got to see the chicken chicks and guniea keets and many of them got to go on a tractor ride around our property to see the animals. 

Favorites at 2:

Food: Crackers, macaroni and cheese (mamamoni); guacamole (mamamoli); pizza; banana (nana); grapes, oranges, watermelon, yogurt, chips, and hot sauce

Songs: "Jesus Loves Me" and "Happy Birthday"

Friends: Caden (Caycay), Grace, Brandon, and Emi

Books: You are really into books! I hope you develop a love of reading. Some of your favorite kind of books are the finger puppet books. For a while they made you laugh and laugh. Then you went through a stage of being terrified of them. Now you're back to loving them. You also like lift the flap books and books that I sing as well as interesting picture books.

Toys: Trucks, tractors, cars, and balls.

Outside Activity: Riding on the tractor or mowing with dad, playing in the sand, digging in the dirt, and playing in the backyard.

Inside: Playing with mom, brother or sister, reading, playing with toys, or eating.

Jackson, you are so smart and have a very good ear. When ever an airplane flies over us, you excitedly jump up and tell us, "plane! Plane!" as you point up toward the sky. When you hear a train, you excitedly, exclaim, "train! Train!" You will stop whatever you are doing to tell us about planes and trains. When we pass train tracks, you love looking for the trains. When we see a train, you love pointing at the trains. 

You also are very determined. If someone has something you want, you are not afraid to go and take it. Size doesn't seem to matter. I've even seen you become pretty aggressive, for example, you've pinch and even hit (not good) a few kids who refuse to give you what you want. We are trying to teach you to be kind and gentle. We pray you continue to learn self-control while keeping your determination for good things. 

You have a smile that can light up a room. You are quick to make friends and are a bit of a charmer. You love being our helper. You help mow, helped dad put in the circle driveway, help with the animals, help water the garden. In fact, another thing you love is WATER! You seem to always find a way to get wet. There's rarely a night that goes by that you are not wet from outside before bath time. You love water. If we had a pool, I'm pretty sure you'd already know how to swim. You are anxious to go under water.

Next week you'll have you two year check-up and I'll get your stats then. I'm thankful you have made it two years nursing. I'll be weaning you soon, which will be hard. But my ultimate goal was to try and nurse you until you were 2, if you wanted to. We made it! :)

We love you Jack! Happy birthday!

Love,
Mom

Birthday morning!

Your bedroom door

God put a beautiful rainbow in the sky to end your birthday.

You gave me a kiss!! :)

I caught you getting into these yummy things!

Party favors

We gave you the big digging toy

You love the digger!

Friends and their moms!
Ryder, Genevieve, Zeke, Jackson, Brandon, Emi, and Jackson
(Ellie and her mom weren't there yet when we took this)

Dads!

Food! Fruit, chips, and dips were on the othe side of the island

Ryder, Grace, Jackson, and Zeke
Hammering golf t's into styrofoam

Big brothers building Lego's

Ashlyn, Jackson, Ryder, Nickolas, Ellie, and Grace

Brandon, Nick, and Jackson

Zeke and Ellie

How Many Clothes is Too Many?

Too many clothes! What do I really wear?

Ever since living in Europe, I have separated my clothing by season. I try and keep my closet as clutter free as possible. I've been trying to do the one item in, one item out but have been failing. I just counted my short sleeve/sleeveless shirts and I have 62! 62 shirts that are hanging in my small (for American standards) closet. This is not including my winter shirts or my dresses. 

62 shirts hanging

My minimalist side would love to pair down to about 15-20 great shirts. I've been trying to embrace the minimalmist lifestyle for a few years now. I still have a ways to go. When I designed my closet in my new house, I decided to go with a larger shower, door to the laundry room, from the closet, rather than a larger closet. I truly want to only have what I love. I want to only see shirts that I would love to wear no matter what. Shirts that if my husband ever surprised me with a weekend getaway, he could easily pack my clothing and I would not dread wearing a single thing he packed. And if I'm really honest with myself, 15-20 shirts is still too many. I probably wear the same 5-8 shirts most days. So that's allowing me to have a few extra shirts. 

So how is my weed out plan working? Every tme I wear an item and wash it, I hang it on the very left of the clothes line. Slowly, items I haven't worn in a long time get pushed to the left. You can even flag the shirt on the left and move the flag over if you end up wearing that shirt. I've done this a few weeks now and I'm going to give myself another month to see where I'm at. Then it's time to purge! 

Last weekend my husband asked if I needed any jeans. I looked in my closet and realized I have 5 pairs. So really, no, I'm good. I need to try on all my pants, especially before going into Fall and see what I love and don't. What fits and doesn't fit me. I do this about once a year. Below is a picture of my pants and shirts. I think I'm done to one skirt which I'm about to give away. I tend to wear more dresses than skirts and tops.

How to you organize your clothes? What do you think is a good number of clothing items to own?

3rd Grade Curriculum and Daily Schd

This year we're changing a few things up and adding new things in. Since we moved, we have decided to not do Classical Conversations this year due to the distance. We're on a waiting list for one really close to our house but it's doubtful space will open up this Fall. We are continuing with our Thursday co-op, but not doing the morning classes. Caden loved them but it's further from our house and it would mean I'd have to find something for two hours to do with my youngest every Thursday morning and we'd be gone from the house all day Thursday. It's hard to be gone all day, especially with little kids. We did add another co-op, which meets on Fridays.

Our schedule is somewhat flexible. Meaning, it's really up to my son on how long it will take him to complete his assignments. I allowed 30 minute blocks for most subjects. Some will take 10-15 minutes to complete, others may take 45 minutes. It also depends on his willingness to get it done and whether or not he's being challenged in a particular area. We should be done by lunchtime, except for reading, which we'll do after lunch. I give him the option to work ahead if he's loving a subject or we'll do extra work when we know we have a field trip that week. One thing I LOVE about homeschooling is the flexibility of it. I'll go through our day(s) and what we're doing for each subject as I talk about it.

Bible

I Can Learn the Bible by Holly Hawkins Shivers (52 scriptures every kid should know), will be our reference book for our memory verses this year.

Know Your Bible for Kids by Konna K. Maltese goes over all the books of the Bible and highlights key events from each one.

Because I Said So by NotConsumed, is a Bible study we're doing on obedience. We'll do one of these each week. I also bought a few of her other studies and will do them once we're done with the others.

We'll start our day off with Bible. This is also when we eat breakfast most days. Some days my son will already be done with breakfast. He usually feeds the animals sometime between 6:30am and 7:30am. So this allows him time to get back and get ready for school.

Math

Math U See Gamma (we have the blocks, not pictured)
Learn Math Fast System Volume 1 & 2
Life of Fred books for fun - not pictured but have

By 8:30, everyone should be done with breakfast and while I'm cleaning up, Caden will start on math. I found the Lean Math Fast System and ordered it due to the great reviews. However, after reading through it, I realized it will take a good amount of my time to teach each day. We used Math U See last year and are going to continue with Gamma this year. He watches a 5-7 minute lesson on Monday , which explains the week's lesson. Then he gets to work. If he has any questions, I'm here to help. He mostly can do this on his own which is great! We'll play games using Learn Math Fast as time allows as well as continue reading through Life of Fred books.

Language Arts

Spelling: Spelling You See: Americana
3rd Grade Language Lessons for Today by My Father's World
Dude Diaries
Daily 6-Trait Writing

I scheduled language arts to take approximately 45 minutes. This is not including daily reading. We are going to continue with Language Arts for Today. We're adding Daily 6-Trait Writing, and for free writing, we're using Dude Diaries, which is perfect for boys. It has good writing prompts, and comes with a lock and keys. Once we get through LA, we'll take a break and go outside for morning recess.

MORNING RECESS BREAK

Geography and Health/Social Studies

Daily Geography Practice by Evan-Moor
Health, Safety, & Manners 3 by Abeka

After our morning recess, we'll continue with Geography and Healthy/Social Studies. My son will be taking a Geography class in one of his co-ops, so we're not going to spend excessive time at home on it. That makes Daily Geography a perfect fit. There are just two questions a day, four days a week. I really like Abeka's Health, Safety, and Manners books, so we'll continue with grade 3 this year. We should be able to fit both in, in the 30-minute time frame.

History and Science




Adventures in U.S. History by My Father's World
MysteryScience.com
Magic School Bus Science Kits

Last year we did not finish our history. So we'll continue with Adventures in U.S. History by My Father's World. We have all of the supplement books that go with this curriculum and are looking forward to continuing learning about U.S. History. 

Since we only have half a year's worth of history, we'll be doing science for the other half. I'm hoping to do history twice a week and science the other half. My son will also be taking a science, technology, engineering, and math class on Fridays.

For Science, we'll be using an online science curriculum called Mystery Science. We'll also be doing some Magic School Bus Science Kits.

Handwriting and Typing

Handwriting Without Tears Cursive
Typing: Typing.com (unless I find something better)

We used A Reason for Handwriting last year but are going to go back to using Handwriting without Tears this coming year. This is the series he used in 1st grade. He got really frustrated with cursive last year and we ended up having to put it aside. This one looks like a better fit for learning. Since he's writing so much already, we'll only do handwriting twice a week and the other two days he'll be learning how to type using a free online typing program such as typing.com. 

LUNCH BREAK/OUTSIDE Time

Reading

On our bookshelf:

I Survived Series: There are 10 books in this series based on true historical events and kids who survived them. We're currently reading I Survived Hurricane Katrina. 

The Imagination Station Books: There are 6 books in this series by the same authors of Adventures in Odyssey.

God I Need to Talk to You About series by Dan Carr and Susan K. Leigh - he'll be reading these to me as we continue to work on character traits 

Who Was Ronald Reagan? by Joyce Milton and other Who Was books.

We're going to continue to get readers that are a good fit for him as well as read several series together. I noticed this last year that he retains more when he's read to. He seems to be an auditory learner. I also noticed longer books, while he could read the words, he wasn't comprehending the story-line as well when he read it. So we'll be working on reading comprehension a lot this year. There are also novels and other books we'll be reading as part of our history curriculum. It should be a good year full of interesting stories. 

In addition to the above schoolwork, my kids attend a co-op. For the co-op classes, my son will be taking: Geography, Gameschooling, PE, STEAM, Art, and Legos. He will also continue with Trail Life, as this will be his 3rd year. I'm hoping he'll get into piano lessons and he will continue to play basketball when the season comes around as well as tennis when we can make it in town. He's also showing an interest in swimming, so we might try and fit that in for a season. We have a very busy school year ahead of us!

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	Daily Schedule 3rd
Time	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
8:00	Bible	Bible	Bible	Bible
8:30	Math	Math	Math	Math	Morning Co-op
9:00	Spelling	Spelling	Spelling	Spelling
9:30	LA Today;Dude Diary	LA for Today	LA for Today	Dude Diary
10:00	Daily 6-Trait Writing	Daily 6	Daily 6	Daily 6
10:15	Outside	Outside	Outside	Outside
10:30	Geography/SS	Geography/SS	Geography/SS	Geography/SS
11:00	History	Science	History	Science
11:30	Typing	Handwriting	Typing	Handwriting
12:00	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
12:30	Outside	Outside	Outside	Afternoon co-op	Outside
1:00	Reading	Reading	Reading		Reading
2:00	catch-up	catch-up	catch-up
3:00
4:00