Well, it has been a busy summer, we started out with a graduation party for my niece Jasmine.  A wedding for my other niece Brooke and her new husband Taylor. And we will be closing the summer with Melanie's Sweet Sixteen party.  Jeff (my husband) was the minister for the new couple and the picture below is my daughter Melanie dancing with Taylor.  Really nice guy and I am very happy for them.  Well with the summer closing I just want to remind the Home school families here in Iowa that our laws have changes for signing up for the new school year.

If you have question, please get a hold of your supervising teachers
or Home School legal defense.  www.hslda.org. Have a great
school year.

Geography

I just received this link from one of the Home school groups I belong to. Here is the link, Post Crossing. It was really easy for me to sign us up. Here is how it works, go to the link and sign up, then you can start sending post cards to any where in the world. You can send up to five at a time. And while you are sending out your post cards, other people are looking at your profile and sending you post cards. It looks so fun and it would be great with geography. So happy sending and have fun. Tanya

Cooking and Crafting

This year, I have been pulling Melanie into the kitchen. I really want her to learn how to cook and read recipes. She learned how to read the recipe for some homemade pancakes. She did really well and they tasted so good.




Here is what they looked like, so good.

Another area I have been trying to put into her week is arts and crafts. Melanie is so creative and the best way to get her creative juices flowing is by giving her the time to create. I have also been using the Keeper at Home book to give me ideas to help her create. She is learning about stamping. We bought a bunch of stamps a couple of years ago, but we did not have the time to mess with them. Here is Melanie creating some master piece. She is really good.






I made this one, the stamp needed me to press harder in the middle of it, I did not get all the giving stamped down.

This one is Melanie's creation. She love working with the stamps and creating a neat picture. This would be great as cards. She started cross stitching, so hopefully I will be able to show you some of her project. I hope ya enjoyed the pictures and remember, crafts are fun. Tanya

Science Projects

This year Mel and I are doing the "Beyond Five in a Row" Curriculum. I have really enjoyed it and Mel has been doing some really interesting Science projects. She is currently reading "The Boxcar Children". Beyond Five in a Row has the children read books and then there are subject that are wrapped around that book. It is set up like a unit study, but she has done most of the work for you. So, her first science project was Evaporation, Precipitation and Condensation. Here is a diagram for you to look at. If you would like more information, check out the National Weather website.


So to get the effect of evaporation, we used a kettle and we let it get really hot to get it to whistle and let out the steam.


Once it started to whistle and steam started rising from it, we placed a clear glass over the steam without getting burned and watched the steam fill the glass. This formed condensation on the inside of the glass. The steam went into the glass and droplets of water fell out of the glass.

It was basic, but very interesting.














Here are some websites that can help with easy science labs, They are fun and practical. Here is the first one, it is called Science is fun home experiments, This website not only has science, but lots of other subjects as well and there are some other links that you can go to, this website is called Easy Science Experiments. This site had quite a bit of experiments, enjoy, it is call Science Bob. I just go to Bing or google and I just type in what I need and you would be surprised all of the sites you can use. Have fun. Tanya

Special Needs

Well, here we are on another year of school. This summer we realized that our daughter Melanie might be Dyslexic. Our son Luke was diagnosed with it when he was younger. Now our daughter is showing signs of it. So, I did some research and talked to many different people. Here are some suggestions if you are seeing some educational issues with your child. First, call Home School Legal defence and talk to their special needs coordinator. They really helped me with some areas of concern. Also, if you know of a supervising teacher with special needs abilities, call them and pick their brains. It is always good to have people who have seen these signs before. Do research and find someone out there who can test your child, it will be pricey, but it will help you to know exactly what the problem is. Most of all, do not be discouraged or upset. Make decisions and then stick with them. And most of all, keep a schedule, this is very important. Here are some site that you can check out, The Gift of Dyslexia, this is a good book and it made me look at Dyslexia in a positive way and not in a negative. He has curriculum that you can buy and the book it so good. You can also go on You tube and see some of his videos. Diane Craft, she has a site for left/right brain learners. She also touches on Dyslexia. Mel and I are in the process of doing her left brain right brain test each morning. I think that it is really helping Melanie. This is the Dyslexic Association website, lots of suggestions here. Also, just google or Bing Dyslexia, you will be so surprised at all the sites that are out there. Again, do not get overwhelmed, just take your time and do the research. I hope this all helps and happy hunting.

Our Son's New Adventure

Hello everyone! I know, it has been a while since I have been on here. I have to tell ya, I really should keep this blog up and going. So much information on the world wide web for Home school families. I will be posting some blog post for families with Special Needs kids. I have lots to tell you in the next couple of blogs. But I would like to share the biggest news of all, our son Luke
and our niece Tasha graduated in May. It was a busy time, but it was also a very deep time of reflection for me. As a home school mom, I often worry about my kids education. Did I do enough, will they have enough knowledge to make it out there. So, this was a big step for me and a hard one. I was very blessed to have three other mothers going through graduations with there sons. So this really helped me.

I do not want to tell you this to worry you. Home schooling is a privilege and should not be taken lightly, but should be honored and serious. We have the opportunity to train our kids in a way that is not offered in Public school. We get to teach them about creation, God and family traditions. So this year, I will be homeschooling one child, our daughter Melanie. I am really honored to be able to teach her one on one. This will be a great year to teach.


This picture above is Jeff, me, Luke, Tasha, Charlene my sister, Jim who is holding JJ. This was on the day of the graduation. We had lots of friends show up and support us. Lots of food and a DVD showing of Luke and Tasha. It was a really great day. We had a blast. Here is the site that I ordered Luke's diploma and class ring, go here
Well, it was great to be back and I will be posting some more blogs in the coming days. Talk to ya later, Tanya

Good afternoon, I thought I would post some blog sites that I have stubbled on. I have been tweeting on Twitter and found some fellow home school moms. I would like to share their sites with you. Here is an awesome English site, on this site, there is eight rules to english, diagraming sentences and why you should teach poetry. Another site that I stubbled on is for mom's teaching children with special needs it is called, home school calling. ADD, Autisim, and other needs should look at this site. I even think I could pull off of this site for my hands on kids. This next site is called Trivium pursuit, it is for families who are teaching classic home schooling through Christ. Great site with lots of helps and information. One last site and this one is more geared for mom's, This is called Home school Lounge. You have to sign up if you want more of the site and they will have to appove you. But it is a good site with lots of encouragment and information for you.

Wow, I have not been on this blog for some time. We have been so busy with school that I have had to put some of my hobbies on hold. We started school in July and we have been working straight through. I have stubbled onto some sights that I want to share and I know that they will come in handy.

On October 20th, there will be a green comet that you will be able to see with the naked eye. And a Home school group sent me this site. It is called Space weather, here is the site www.spaceweather.com. Another cool site is www.space.com. Jeff and I have Zune's and I wanted to listen to books on MP3. So here are some sites that you can down load books for free. Here is the link to go to the site. If you are on Twitter, there is a site you can go for grammar. There are test, information about 8 steps to language etc. It is a great resource.

For mom's with early reader, do not forget Starfall. This is a great website for kids, plenty of games and you can order books from their site. As always so many sites to choose from and I just enjoy the Internet and its benefits. I have not spent a lot of time on the Internet looking for different sites. I hope to sit down in a couple of weeks and do some more research. If you have a site that you would like me to look at, please leave me a message or comment.

One more piece of information, Kent Hovind's son has taken over the ministry and there are some awesome items on their website on creation. If you need curriculum or DVD's on creation here is the site www.drdino.com . God bless all of you and have a great week. Tanya

Well it has been a very interesting year so far. I can not believe that it is March already and soon summer will be here. I started some fractions with Melanie and I found a couple of math sites that have some free worksheets. I would like to post them, I have also found some other sites that again are great resources. So here they are.

Here is a math site with loads of worksheets, it is called Math Drill, and this one is called free worksheet.net. Here is a site with free ring tones that you can down load to your computer, plus they have some free e-books, the site is call mobile 24. I did find some Nancy Drew book and some other books of interest. I could down load them straight to my computer. This site is called Clicking School, all the activities are on the computer, and there are some drills for the kids to do. This site has many worksheets for grammar, math, and so on, it is called home school love to know.com. It is a great site to look at. Again if there are sites that you would like me to post on this blog please let me know. My e-mail is tanya_rss@yahoo.com. I would love to hear your suggestions. God bless you and have fun, from Tanya

Christmas and Home schooling......

Well for the month of December, we tried to do some home school. I actually wanted to take the month off and work on a Christmas curriculum. We did really good and then Iowa got hit by a winter storm and the public school had days off and friends came by and I could not get the kids to concentrate. Oh well, I believe that we really got things done and the kids and I really enjoyed the things that we learned.




This is Luke and Melanie working on the Greek alphabet for Alpha and Omega. We also learned about the Christmas tree and St. Nicholas. I really stressed to the kids that if you look at every symbol of Christmas you will find Jesus. Example: the Christmas tree is in the shape of a triangle, look at three points of the tree, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. St. Nicholas represents the giving that we should do to each other. The greenery of Christmas is Eternal life we receive when we except Jesus and the white lights is for purity of Jesus.


We had fun and it really helped me to see Christmas in a different light. We have started back to school and then the kids got sick and more snow storms. I will be glad when spring comes our way. We have had a wonderful year. I have really enjoyed this year more than I have the past. We are one day away from a hundred days of school. I hope that all of you had a wonderful December and are getting back on track. Here is Melanie who just love Mario and Sonic. Luke is into Jeff Hardy and money. After a certain age they really do not ask for much, except money.

And here is the biggest kid I have. He is more a kids than our children. I love him so much, he is such a kidder. I hope to get some time to look at more websites to add to this one, but please keep using these awesome resources. It is awesome to be able to home school. There are so many resources on the web that you can use. I would not be able to Home school with out it. God bless all of you and I hope you have a wonderful week. From Tanya

Our School Year

Well, another school year close to seeing another year change. It is hard to believe that we are looking at 2010. Luke will graduate in another year and Melanie will be one more year closure to High School. We have had a busy year, me in the hospital and our trip to Georgia. I will post some pictures soon. We had a blast. Any ways, I have not posted for some time on this blog. I hope that you have found what you needed when you have been here. I hope that your year has gone smoothly. Like I said, I have somethings to post and some pictures, so I will be on soon. God bless all of you and thank you for visiting my blog. Tanya

I have not posted in a while because I have been in the hospital. My appendix decided that it wanted to evict. So, during this time, I taught the kids about the appendix. And for some reason, I have been able to do school with the kids. But seriously, I have actually felt good, in fact even better than I did before the surgery. So, it was time for it to come out. I hope all is well in Home school land. If you need any help, please email me or leave a comment. And of course, if you have any sites you would like to share let me know. God bless you.

Eagle Owl

Last night, about midnight, I was turning off some lights and getting ready for bed. I kept hearing this hooting sound and I thought it was the kids. I opened the front door and stood there for a while and sure enough, I heard an owl. I called the kids down and we stood on the front porch for a while and listened to the owl. It was cloudy outside, so the sky was light. All of a sudden there was a scuffle in the trees and two owls came gliding out over our roof. Then they turned around and one owl landed in our tree and the other across the street in another tree. They both started in with the hooting and then the other from across the street flew back into our tree. They started scuffling again and both of them flew away. They headed for trees up the hill from our house. I got a good look at one and it was huge and the wing span was wide. I came in and looked at our animal books and found the eagle owl. It is the largest owl I could find. So at twelve thirty in the morning Luke, Melanie and I were having a lesson on owls. It was so awesome. I love learning.

Our School

Well another school year is now upon us. I am so surprised at the beautiful summer that we were blessed with and how fast it went. It really seems like we did not have a summer of rest, we were always busy with some activity. Fairs, to plays, to fireworks, church activities and friends over. Now, we have to get down to the grind and get school going. Luke is a junior this year and Melanie is now a sixth grader. Wow, they have grown fast. We are going to do American History and look at geography more closely. I also hope to get Luke moving on to more challenging math and work on Life skills. Melanie is showing more interest in everything from buds on flowers to how things work. She has always been a curious kind of girl. We will also start up with Nursing home visits and possible scrapebooking with the residents at the Nursing home. Melanie and I love to scrapebook. It is one activity that we do together. I hope that all of you were able to get to the site okay and make sure you check out the daily freebie site. They offer many curriculums for free. I hope to add more sites on this blog and possibly more homeschool blogs. Enjoy your visit and I hope you have an awesome school year.

This is Luke and Melanie.

Welcome New School Year

We have been very busy around here. I have been doing some odds and ends that I can not do during the school year. We are now heading around the bend and will be starting school within a week. So I am getting all of my last minute items in order. I would like to remind all of you home school families that CPI forms can be obtained at http://www.hslda.com/ or the Niche website. They are due really soon. I also stumbled upon two websites that may really help with your math or just crafts or projects this year. This math website is amazing and I think that I am going to be using it many time during our school year, http://www.homeschoolmath.net/. You really need to check this little ditty out. Then the other day I stumbled on a blog that I found really good. I have been wanting to do more sewing with the kids and this blog has plenty. Here is the address to the blog, http://sherylmaxey.com/. I will be honest, I have not done to much searching of this blog. From what I seen I really liked. I hope that all of your planning and teaching is so blessed this year and I will post more later. God bless.

We The People

This is a group of girls that my daughter and I are involved with. The girls put on a play about the colonies and the set up of the new government. They went to the local nursing home, Good Samaritan. The residents just love the girls and the girls really love the residents.




This is Melanie, is she not beautiful. I love that stain glass window behind her. It is so awesome.












Here is another mom working on the costumes for the girls. We had little colonial women, Indians and gentlemen. Very creative with their costumes. They looks so good.







We were so blessed this time with some grandma's and grandpa's helping with the play. They did an awesome job and it was awesome to see family input to the play.







And here are the two mascots for the play. They had a wonderful time waving their flags and rolling in the wagon. They are so cute.

Here are the girls singing songs. They sang some awesome songs, "Yankee Doodle", God bless America, America the Beautiful, and She is a Grand Old Flag. The residents had a wonderful time with the kids and vice a versa. It is so awesome to see how they have all grown in the couple of years that we have done this. They are all wonderful little ladies. What are you doing this summer, please let me know. God bless all of you and Have a wonderful "Fourth Of July."

Why I became a Home school Mom

Jeff came to me about seven years ago and asked me if I would consider home schooling the kids. I was not really sure that I would be able to do that. But with some time of prayer and some time picking the brains of other home school mothers, Jeff and I pulled Luke out of public school and never looked back. Oh, I would not be honest if sometimes I might wonder if I am doing a benefit to the kids by keeping them home and not in public school. But then I see how close Luke and Melanie are, and that we as a family are so close. I think that we would not be as close if we had let the kids stay in Public school. I am also blessed because I was able to teach Melanie to read and watch Luke actually do Multiplication. We were told that Luke may not get that far in Public School. And now he is doing multiplication and division. I have been so bless to watch the growth of both kids.
Now, Melanie and Luke do Nursing Home visits. They are taught about God and what we want them to know about the history of our great America. I really love teaching them, I seem to walk away knowing more than I did. Recently, we started looking at the history of our country. We bought the book, "5000 Year leap" and we are reading it as a family. It is so interesting, I am learning clearly more about our forefathers than I did in high school. We are learning about Jamestown and the free enterprise. Why Jamestown was such a success in growth, then in other countries or tribes that fell so quickly after rapid growth. It is a great book and one that should be in your library. We are also learning about the faith of these forefathers. It is awesome to be able to share this with the kids.

We are also so blessed to be able to teach the kids other things that maybe the public school could not. More music, more cooking, more life skills. I just learned the other day that the public school does not teach the kids how to address envelopes or write thank you notes or business letters. I have been able to share this with the kids, even in the age of the computer, the kids still need to know this. I am so glad that I listened to the Lord and Jeff and I brought the kids home. I love the kids and I am blessed.

Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo

Yesterday, Jeff and I took the kids to the zoo. Jeff's job gave all of us the opportunity to go. It was a blast. The day was wonderful also, there was a light breeze and it was not that hot.



During the year, Melanie and I love to watch the "Meerkat Manner"on Animal Planet. We fell in love with these little guys. It was so cool to get to see them up close. The one on the rock actually came down for me to take its picture. It was so cute.
These pictures are from the dessert dome. It was three deserts from the world, Africa, Australia and American deserts. It was so cool to see all the wild life that live there.



Jeff, Luke and Melanie in front of a cactus.

This year during school, I taught the kids the different structures of the caves. We were so excited to see that the desert dome also showed the structures of caves and all the bats that go with it. Here are Luke and Melanie in a cave.

The Polar Bear was really cool in the water, he looked pretty big.

Oh, the butterfly house was so awesome. The butterflies and hummingbirds were all over the house. The attendants had to check you when you left the house to make sure there were no stow aways. The even had a bee hive that we could watch.



Lunch anyone?

Speaking of Lunch, Jeff's job gave us free lunch and entertainment. This is Foster, she lives in Australia. She talked for us and screamed. She was a beautiful bird.

Jelly fish, this was from the Aquarium. There is so much to see in the zoo. We did not see all of it and we were talking about going another time in the year to see more.





After Lunch we rode the train around the park. We had such a wonderful time. We even seen animals that we would not see from the walking. The only complaint about the train is that it can be noisy.



Here is Melanie and her new friend. She loved the turtles. I think I see a pet turtle in our future?

This is the new Madagascar exhibit. It will be open in the Spring of 2010. Jeff and I were really talking about making another trip next year to see it. It looks like it will be cool.



Here is the Train station and across from it is the carousel and the feeding zoo. We did not get to it, because we went to an Imax Movie. By time the movie was over, we were all tired and ready to go home. We had a wonderful day at the zoo. If you are close to Omaha or making a stop in Omaha, the zoo is well worth your time and money. Get there early though, there is a lot to see.