A Happy 12th Birthday Shoutout To DS Hoopy and Our Tree Frog

Today is Hoopy's 12th birthday so "HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOOPY" ! I love you ~ always! Hoopy had two requests for his birthday. One was to visit his Grandparents in Chattanooga , which won't happen today due to vehicle problems. And to sleep late. Now that one I can do. As a matter of fact he is still sleeping peacefully. We will have some "hands on" stuff for school today. why? Because we must take our 5 gallon aquarium and build a habitat for this fella: He is a gray tree frog. Hoopy caught him last night on our porch.
Now Hoopy has the nickname " Lizard Whisperer" in our family because he like to "hypnotize" lizards by rubbing their bellies. i'll let you know if he tries to "hypnotize" the frog :)
What is especially neat is that this morning, the tree frog had changed his camoflauge.
He looks less like tree bark today and more green. I thought that was neat. He will be our guest for a little while anyway so we will make him more comfortable today. I will post a picture of his new home tomorrow. I plan on making some worksheets and stuff for us so that we can study our new guest. I will post them on HS Launch when they are done. Once again let me invite you to join the Autumn Poetry Party. Have a great day ! Blessings! ~ Nikki

First Day Of Autumn 2009

Happy Fall Y'all! Its official ~ Autumn is here! We had a great first day of Fall. The weather has gone from foggy and rainy to sunny and then back to rainy again. We started our studies on poetry today. We read Fog ~ Carl Sandburg, Autumn ~ Emily Dickinson and several by Robert Frost. I love his poems. Imagine my surprise when I mentioned Robert Frost's name and Hoopy says "I know that name!" He then begins to recite "The Road Not Taken" and Roosie chimes in. I give them the "I can't believe you know that" look of course. Hoopy says," I learned it on Disney". Roosie says," Yeah Mom. See we do learn stuff from tv so you should let us watch it for school." AH, the things kids say. We also had a nice art project today. We colored some leaves from one of the sites I posted yesterday. Then we cut them out and taped them onto some jute string and tied on some old strips of gingham I had and made a garland. We hung it up over the window in the living room. I will try and post a picture of it tomorrow. Well its time to go read some blogs before bed. Be sure to join the Autumn Poetry Party this year. You can read the details at the top of the blog. Blessings! ~ Nikki

Autumn Websites

Tomorrow is the first day of Autumn so I thought I would share some websites that I have found . They have some great activities. If you enjoy these sites then tell your friends to come by and chek out the list. Tomorrow I will put up the Mr. Linky for the 2009 Autumn Poetry Party. I encourage everyone to write a poem and join the party. You can even use it as a writing assignment for your kids.This year we will be giving away some neat little Autumn themed prizes at the end of this years Poetry party. I will be working on the prize list throughout the week and will have it posted by next Monday. Enjoy the sites and God Bless!

Autumn Leaf collection Album ~ Be sure to checkout all the fun Fall activities on this site.

Autumn Themed Games, Coloring Sheets

Tons of Autumn Activities

This Page Has Tons of Links For You To Check

Worksheets And Coloring Sheets

Another Page With Tons of Links

Lots of Nice Printables For School

First Week Of School

Our first week of school went great. Tman has found his niche in the Christian school again and is enjoying himself. He has learned quite a bit this week. I think he has been most intrigued by his Bible PACE which makes me smile extra big. I love it when my Blessings enjoy the Bible. We are moving along at a wonderful pace in our PACES in our homeschool also. We seemed to have settled into a routine without much struggle. Last Sunday after Homecoming we headed up into the mountains for some quiet time and found some amazing things to do some nature study on next week. We are reading the Hobbit in our homeschool for this grading period. I am having the kids do some drawings for each chapter. This way we can get art and literature done at the same time. We are eagerly looking forward to Fall coming to our area. We love the cooler weather and color. On my HS Launch page you can download an Autumn Lapbook I made last year. I want to try and make some more this year. I enjoy making things for others to use. If you are interested in some free printables you can go to my page through the link on my right sidebar.

Today my girls and I got to meet my favorite author, Beverly Lewis. The girls and I love her books. She is so sweet and nice. She is an amazing writer and so friendly. She was having a book signing for her new book in the Seasons of Grace series at one of our library branches today. She was so easy to talk with and seemed very humble when I complemented her on her writing ability. I told her that God had really blessed her and she said “yes He has”. The look on her face when she said that spoke volumes about how much she loves her Lord. We have some pictures to put in our memory books. Here is a picture of my signed copy of the Missing.

I will be adding the link again for the Nature Nook on my blog. I created the Nature Nook last year on Ning to be able to share videos, pictures and printables about animals and nature with other homeschool moms. It didn’t take off like I had planned but maybe this year we can get it going. I miss the Blogger Friend School which seemed to help keep me on track blogging. I tried blogging about websites I had found and my favorite homeschool blogs but they didn’t seem to draw much traffic so I think I will no longer post about them. I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a meme something like BFS. Maybe we could post our favorite Scripture and have an assignment to blog about like we did with BFS. If anyone else is interested leave me a comment. Maybe someone has started another BFS and I haven’t found out about it yet J If so let me know. Blessings! ~ Nikki

First Day Of School 2009/2010

Today was our first day of school. Everything went great. Tman had a great first day at the Christian school but we missed him so much at home. We had an easy first day. We worked in English, Word Building and Bible. We had to go to the fair and pick up our fair projects. I'll post more about that later. Here is what our curriculum looks like this year.
Tman:Math, English I, Biology I, Etymology,World Geography, Bible
BabyGirl: Her last requirement is English IV and she will be doing 3 Bible courses.
Hoopy:Math, English, Social Studies, Science, Bible and unit studies
Roosie:Math, English, Social Studies, Science, Bible and unit studies.
All the kids are using ACE PACES this year.
Our full schedule will probably look like this.
Monday: Bible 
             English
             Math
             Word Building
             Social Studies 
Tuesday: Bible 
             English
             Math
             Word Building
             Science
Wednesday: Bible 
             English
             Math
             Word Building
             Social Studies
Thursday:Bible 
             English
             Math
             Word Building
             Science
Friday: Homemaking Skills
           Field Trips

8:00 am Take Tman to school
9:00 am begin school at home
9:00 - 9:30 am Bible
9:30 - 10:30 am Math
10:30 - 11:30 am English
11:30 - 12:00 pm fix lunch
12:00 - 12:30 lunch
12:30 - 1:30 pm Word Building
1:30 - 2:30 pm Social Studies/ Science
2:30 - 3:00 pm cleanup and pick up Tman
Blessings! ~ Nikki

September Already !?!?

Time does seems to be flying by here at our humble abode. August saw many busy weeks for us. We had VBS in August this year. It was awesome! DD BabyGirl turned 16! I don't know where the years are going. I turned 35. I have earned every wrinkle and silver hair. I'm proud of them. I had to go to the Dr. to discuss possible surgery for my bladder and to have several tests done. Instead of surgery I will be having meds and PT. This is day two of the medication and it has done some great things for me. Had I known years ago that it would help this much I would have taken it sooner. We are preparing for school to begin week after next. DS Tman will be returning to the Christian school at our church this year.He wants to have some interaction with his friends this year so we are going to give it a shot. I help out several times throughout the year and they allow our kids to attend the conventions with them . We have decided to go with all PACES because frankly, I feel like having a "lazy" year. BabyGirl will graduate in Spring of 2010 and we have a lot to plan for that so we want to take it easy on the lesson planning. I'm sure we will do some mini units and lapbooks together but our mainstay will be PACES.
Today is my Big Brothers birthday so "Happy Birthday Brotherman!" I love Ya! We have spent the day finishing up our Fair projects. I still have some things to do but I will finish them up later tonight. The county Fair starts on Monday. The kids enjoy the rides and Toodles and I enjoy looking at the exhibits.
We have also been doing the Fall cleaning around the "homestead ". I will post more about that on my Homestead  blog. You can come on over and check it out if you like. There are some amazing recipes and stuff on all the blogs over there. Just click on the "Dreamin' of the Farm" pic on the right sidebar and visit my blog. Then you can check out the other blogs by either clicking on the Front Porch link or using the Random Blog link. Well Tman is making some homemade chili for supper tonight, Momma taught him:) so I'm going to post on my other blog and then check out what is going on in the kitchen.Have a great weekend! Blessings ! ~ Nikki