Greetings, all, and here is my first posting. I started this blog as a (hopefully better) way to communicate with friends and family members. We get really busy at times and I wanted a place to "post" thoughts and feelings and ramblings, as well as send encouragements to anyone who reads this.
We are so busy! It is so hard to homeschool when the house needs tended to, meals need to be made, laundry done, dogs barking, etc. Tom is almost done coaching cross country (middle school). He says he will retire from that position when he retires from teaching in June.
Anyway, Josh is reading some, and Debbie is working on her letters and small words, and Jenna is interested in drawing shapes and learning colors and object names.
For anyone interested in what curriculum we use, we pretty much grab ahold of whatever we can that is cheap. You'd be amazed what you can find at a yard sale or a church rummage sale. For instance I got ahold of a whole year of Saxon Math (grade 2 math) at Deb's school yard sale and that is about a hundred dollar value. I was thrilled.
Anyway, so we are settling into using Saxon Math, and "Mrs Phipps" for phonics; this is a DVD phonics program that Sue Payne gave us. It is a daily 15 minute lesson. We do one or two per day. Then we have handwriting where the kids write a Bible verse or other sentences or words; reading (try to read up to an hour a day), art class, Bible devotion time and verse memorization. The junior church leader at our church, Miss Erica, wrote a devotional book and we try to do that daily. We also have a time for science exploration - all kinds of topics - and the kids have music class on Wednesday nights (they sing in the kids choir) and Awanas. Gym time is easy as the kids jump on the trampoline and run across the yard. Josh has developed friendships with the neighbor boys (several) and they sometimes play somewhat organized games.

More later..... love, Lisa