First Day of School!

Stephen and Alyssa are both going to Adventure Christian Academy!! 

They are thrilled...LOL

I woke up early and made them Cinnamon rolls. 

They had their lunch boxes and they are all ready to go!! They are sooooo cute! 

Sissy was happy to see Miss Lucy! 

We will see how it all goes this year! 

My fingers are crossed! 

Hugs, 

Lisa 

2012 School & Sports

This is my first year in Many, Many, many years not homeschooling. 

It has been strange, but good! 

Alyssa is attending Adventure Christian Academy (ACA) and she has had some adjustments, but over all I am VERY pleased with the transition.

One thing Alyssa is LOVING is the sports program at ACA. 

She is playing Volleyball ...

 There is a ton of support from the parents, grandparents, and school staff. 

Because this is a small school, everyone knows everyone, but it seems that everyone actually likes everyone and that makes a big difference.

 It has been fun to watch the kids on the team improve as the season progresses. 

I am pleased to announce that we have actually won a few games. 

Even Stephen likes to go to the games and cheer on Sissy! I am so blessed to have such wondermus kiddos!

I love supporting my kids in their adventures along the way...

Hugs, 

Lisa 

Our First Day of School & Gardening

When we got home we took a few days before we started school...

Our first day of school field trip was to the Mount Dora Art Museum

After that we started school...  

We jumped in feet first and started the experiments!

 Alyssa made "rocket" fuel!

It was sooo cool!

We are loving our new science curriculum.

So far things are going really good.

I started a garden...

I started some of my garden from seeds.

Doesn't it look GREAT?

This is my new Tangerine Tree!

And this is my new Crate Myrtle.

So far things are going pretty good...

Back to School Fun!! ~ Part 2

Then... Alyssa made this for her Science project. We are studying the human body this year and I must say that "skin" is kind of boring, so....

We did this:

Starting it...  

 The Finished Product!!

Alyssa drew and painted a cross section of skin and labeled all of the parts, including: nerves, hair, sweat glands, etc. 

She loves to paint so anything that lets her pull out the art supplies is GREAT!! My kids are such opposites. Stephen HATES to color or do crafts and Alyssa LOVES them! Its interesting to me to see the differences. Stephen is loving public school and I'm glad it has been working out for us!

I cant wait to see what Alyssa comes up with this week. 

Back to School Fun!! ~ Part 1

Princess Sissy and I have been having soooo much fun starting back to school this week. She learns best by "doing" and so.... we have been "Doing"!!

Here are the projects that we have been working on:

The first one is for History. In history we have started a study on Egypt and so we pulled out the map... but that gave me a idea.... Lets not just look at the map... Lets "MAKE" a map!!

So we did....

Her map shows the Nile, the mountains, the desert, the fertile/populated areas, etc. It is pretty cool!  

 Then... I will post about Science Next!!

Starting School

Friday was our first day of school!! It is hard getting back into the routine! We are in a new town, new house, new curriculum, new planning tools, new everything... Things went good though!! We had a few bumps, but nothing serious. The new planner we are using was a little difficult to figure out at first, but now it is soooo easy to use! It is easy for both me and the kids to see what we have completed and what we still need to work on. It has a button for the kids to click when they have completed an assignment and another button for me to click once it has been graded!! It makes report cards, tracks progress, and so much more!! It took me several days to watch all of the instructional videos and read the manual, but now I have got it up and running. I love that I can reschedule anything with just a click of a mouse!! Yippy!!

We are excited about our school year and all of the fun field trips we are going to go on this year!

Monday we are going to the Orlando Science Center. I thought the field trip was on Friday, but then I checked the website and the kids were bummed that I mixed up the days!! Oh Well!! We went swimming as our field trip for the first day of school!! I have a feeling that swimming will be a regular "Field Trip" for us!! It was fun though!!

I have share a great discovery that I just made.... the kids will do ANYTHING for computer time. Even chores!! I made a new rule that they only get 30 minutes per day on the computer, well let's just say that went over like a load of bricks!! They kept asking how they can get more time... then it hit me....

CHORES!! For every chore they do "with out being asked" they get an extra 10 minutes on the computer!! My house is spotless!! They cleaned the bathrooms (and since we have 4 bathrooms now that was a blessing), they vacuumed downstairs, upstairs, and THE Stairs, they did laundry & dishes. It was AMAZING!! It was like "cleaning Elves" moved into my house!! I would turn around and they were cleaning something else. Stephen even vacuumed the sliding glass door track!! He was on his hands and knees vacuuming under the table, baseboards (which gets them bonus minutes!!) I was amazed!

I picked the jobs I hate to do, like dusting and baseboards, and gave them double bonus minutes for doing those jobs!! At this rate I wont ever have to dust my house again!! This was definitely shown to me by God himself!! I am so thankful!!

It has been great!! Things have been going really good in the new digs!! We love the neighborhood. The kids have made lots of new friends. There are TONS of kids on our street and there are even several "homeschool" families in the subdivision!! We met a really nice homeschool family with 4 kids... the boys are Stephens age and they play baseball!! Not only do they play, their dad is a coach, and Stephen is going to be on his team. We signed up for baseball and softball yesterday and found out that Stephen was on his team!! Isn't that great?

The kids are siked about playing ball!! The ball field is about 5 minutes from our house. This will be really good for me since I will probably be at the ball field several nights a week, with both of the kids playing this fall! I am not looking forward to Detto missing the ENTIRE season, but I will take lots of pictures and video for him!!

End of Summer

Well... its time to start school back up, but... We aren't ready yet! We are getting settled in the new house, but I'm not ready to start school. My kids are ready, they have asked if we can start school on Monday like Public School kids, but .... UGH!!

I haven't found all of their curriculum yet! I am thinking about starting some subjects just to make them happy. We'll see!! I still need to get Stephen's math from a friend of mine. Then I think we'll be ready!

My sister-in-law just had a baby on Monday. He is soooo cute!! We went to the hospital to visit him, but we weren't able to hold him. He was in an oxygen tent thingy for a few days, but now they are home and all is well!! I just got my computer set back up today... I had 409 new email messages. Wow!! I cant believe it!! I wasn't able to download picture onto my hubby's computer so I didn't bother posting till now!!

I love our new home and our new community. The community has a beautiful pool and playground. Today I took the kids swimming and guess what.... We me another homeschool family that lives here!! Yippy! There are 2 boys and 2 girls! The boys are 11yrs old and 9 yrs old. We are really excited about having other homeschoolers in our community!!

The kids are going to start baseball & tennis soon!! We are going to play for the city of Mount Dora this year. The field is aprox. 5 minutes from our house!! That make practices much easier for me!! I cant wait to get everything rolling!!