Patriotic Weekend Away

I'm writing this from the Great Wolf Hotel in Cincinnati as we are going to the Freedom Concerts for Nathan's work tomorrow. It should be absolutely amazing and full of Patriotic pride. I'm pretty excited to not only see all these true patriots who are helping out with the benefit for soldiers and their families but also to spend an evening listening to some great Country and Christian artists play for a crowd full of Patriots.

We dropped off the 4 (yes I said 4) kids to my mother-in-law on Thursday so we could come down to the concert this weekend kid-free. Even though I hated the thought of sending little Elijah to Pennsylvania, Nathan is still working this weekend. The worst part is that not only do I feel awful for sending him, then I find out today that Maddelyn is sick. She's got a fever, sore throat, and throwing up. Poor thing and all when she's so excited to be at Grandpa and Grandma's, now she's feeling awful and not enjoying her time there. We will be picking up Elijah from them on Saturday night and then the rest of the kids will be staying until next Friday so I can have some time to work on homeschool lessons for them uninterrupted. I've got lots of planning and cutting/sorting/prep work to do before we start school next Monday. I'm really getting excited about the upcoming year. The more research online I do the more excited I get about all the neat activities and topics I want to cover with them. I have decided to do the lapbooking still but I will also be pulling Math and Language Arts for sure from a few other sources and perhaps throwing in a few lessons here and there for the other topics. Basically we will be doing as much as possible from Ohio's Grade Indicators using the lapbooks we do and then filling in where ever we need to with supplements.

I told Nathan there was no way we were coming to Cincinnati without coming to Ikea as well. Four hours later I left the store with tons of stuff for our homeschool room as well as our Mater Bath and even a few Christmas items for the kids. Man I love that store! I've come pretty far with the room already but I just needed those final items for organization as well as some bookshelves, the boxes and shelve for my workbook system, and I still need a good table for the girls. We had desks last year but I like the idea of sitting with them at a table to do their school work. I of course will be posting pictures of my room when it is done, but here are a few others online that I really liked.

Loving the words under each letter. I think I might just do that same idea under our alphabet train.





We bought these today for both the school room and the master bath. Mine are a tiny bit different but I loved these! The rails were only $2.99 and the baskets were only $1.99 each! Yeah LOVE Ikea!! ------>

Hands on Homeschooling

So this week has been nothing but getting ready for our next year homeschooling the kids. As I mentioned in a previous post I've been getting ready to order the girls school books for the year and not until the day that I was going to place the order did I finally give in to the doubts in the back of my mind. For the past several months the thought of continuing on with the current curriculum was pretty worry some with Emma. Here are a few thoughts I had written out about it in an email to a fellow homeschooling friend. "I'm not sure if you know but we've done Abeka with Maddelyn for the past 2 years and really liked it for it's organized lessons ( I know she's learning everything needed) and for how well she's done with it. However we now have Emma entering kindergarten who is a total hands on learner and I'm realizing Abeka is just not the best for her. I've been researching lots of different hands on styles of homeschooling for her and possibly even Maddelyn. I'm REALLY interested in lapbooking and had remembered you were working on some of that stuff in TN in March. Nathan and I love to read and I want to share that passion with the girls as well, Lapbooking seems to really focus their lapbooks around children's literature as well. I have realized that it is time to leave Abeka for something more hands on for Emma's sake and I think Maddelyn would really enjoy it as well." So needless to say as much as we have enjoyed using Abeka these past 2 years I believe that for the sake of my hands on learner coming up, we are going to be leaving a traditional program for a more hands on "unit/theme" approach. The lapbooking that I mentioned above is basically a theme unit based on either a theme (oceans) or a children's literature book ( Little House in the Big Woods.) This theme is then carried out in each subject (language arts/math/science/history/etc.) For example our first lapbook we will make will be on Johnny Appleseed so we will be doing early fractions by cutting apples in halves, thirds and such for math. We will also be doing her history but learning about how this area of Ohio was visited on John Chapman on his apple planting trips. We will include cooking with apple recipes, cutting apples in half to dip and paint and stamp on paper for art and such. Basically we will be weaving that theme through out our lessons. The whole time we are working our way through this unit the girls will be also making lapbooks (kinda like a mini scrapbook made of file folders) showing each of the new concepts they have learned. It is a great way to both connect all the items learned and for them to look back through later to refresh the lessons learned. I really think this will be a much better way to teach Em than a strict curriculum filled with worksheets. So, with like less than 2 weeks until school should start I decided to not only ditch our old curriculum to write my own but to switch our playroom out with our homeschool room to give us more room. I'm pretty excited at how nice the new school room is coming along. I decided to do a aqua and lime green color theme to go with my brown walls. I had to spruce it up a bit making it more kid friendly but seeing how we just painted, Nathan said no to a new paint color. I found the cutest containers and buckets at the Dollar Tree of all places and then more matching milk crates, lime green folding chairs, and an adorable monkey prize jar from Target. It's amazing how much fun and cute homeschool stuff I had in storage that I've picked up here and there but never really found a way to include it into Maddelyn's previous curriculum. Well now I've got it all pulled out and am so excited about how nice the room is turning out. It actually is starting to look like an actual elementary school room with the chalk board, alphabet train across the top of the walls, calendars, posters, and such. My parents have even offer their goldfish as class pets...not too sure about that. I have visions of me walking into the room to see Caroline letting her Barbie "swim" in the fish bowl and the poor fish flopping around on the floor. We'll have to see about that.

Website Re-Design!!

I'm so excited to FINALLY announce that we completed the total re-design on our hair bow boutique's website http://www.sugarsweetbowtique.com/ !!! It took a bit of time to re-do but the new site was totally worth it! We are able to offer our customers so much more as well as a smoother check out with the new design. We also have cute new features such as a guest book, coupon codes, and gift registries! We also have added LOTS of new products! A few of my favorites are the Birthday Girl Shirts, Felt Clippies, and Layered Boutique Bows.

Check out the new design on our website and let me know what you think! We will be adding lots of new items as we get ready for the Fall craft shows so be sure to check back!

Summer Flew By!

Okay so I am realizing that regular blog posts during the Summer is really not just going to happen. I can barely remember my name at this point so updating about our crazy life really just hasn't happened. I am going to make a major effort though to keep regular posts once the school year has started. Man...where did the Summer go? I can't believe that the school year is just a little over 2 weeks away. I realized today that I hadn't even started ordering the kids school supplies from A Beka yet. Yeah I was totally caught off guard with how soon school will be starting. I guess I need to get on the ball. Maddelyn will be starting first this year and I believe we will be starting Emma with kindergarten. We've had lots of conversations as parents and I've done some work in each of the kinder and preschool textbooks with her to see which she is ready for and I think we've decided to do kindergarten. She has one of those October birthdays that puts her withing 2 weeks of the cut-off date for making the local city school's kindergarten class this year. So, after lots of thought we have decided on kindergarten this year. Emma is VERY driven and loves to learn so I think she will do well. Like Nathan said if we have problems we can always pull back and start the preschool curriculum instead.

We've spent the past week with Nathan's family visiting Pa and Cedar Point and then we did the Ohio State Fair with my parents. The kids had such a great time but boy were we tired after the garage sale and then right into our week with Nathan's and my family.

While in Pa, Nathan's brother's fiance Emily died and cut my hair as well as gave Elijah his 2nd hair cut and straightened Emma's hair. Emma just thought it was the best to be all done up like that. Doesn't she look like another child?