Geography

I'm not sure why, but Monday has become our day to study geography. We didn't really plan it that way, but for some reason, it always seems easier to start the school week with geography, so we do. We spend most of the day on it. Sometimes I'll have Grace practice her handwriting skills by writing out some of the names of the countries we have studied or the names of Landmarks we've found. I also like to find free coloring pages online that coincide with what landmarks or countries we've talked about.
While in Minnesota, I found some really fun tools for teaching geography at a garage sale. There was a fan deck of cards giving info on each of the fifty states, a Jigsaw World Atlas, puzzles of the United States, a game for learning about the fifty States (which we have not pulled out yet), a "Goodnight America" book that's great for bedtime, an Egypt themed 50 piece puzzle, two Dr. Seuss books that I didn't even know existed, and a bunch of other stuff for the other subjects we are learning. I was one excited Mama. :)

This is the majority of what we've been using for Geography lessons.
The three puzzles to the left are all from the dollar section at Target. Two are 100-101 piece World and U.S. maps for Grace. The front puzzle is a 24 piece map of the world for Hope.
Obviously we have a globe and we use a deck of "Landmarks" cards, again from Target's dollar section. We pick out three new ones every few weeks and find them on the globe, talk about them, and find free coloring pages of them.
The "Where Do I Live?" book is from the library and is very good.
The Jigsaw World Atlas is a great book for the kids to work on puzzles together (has tiny little pics of the landmarks we've learned) while listening to Audio Memory songs listing countries.

I found this idea on Pinterest. Basically, we read through "Where Do I Live?" and made a circle for our planet, our continent, our country, our state/city, our street, and our house. The kids loved doing this project. I just used free clip art for the cut outs.

Love these books. They are very informative and we've taken some words from them to use as vocabulary lessons.

Also, because we are reading "There's A Map On My Lap" often now, we made maps of how to get from our house to our church and the kids now use them with their quiet time matchbox car box.

Last Minute Vacation

We just returned home from a VERY last minute week and a half long vacation to Minnesota. Steve decided on Tuesday that we were going and we left on Thursday evening and drove through the night to reach Minnesota on Friday. We all had a blast! We were able to see lots of our extended family and had a lot of fun staying with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. The kids got to spend some quality time with their cousins and they now want to live in Minnesota. Which actually brings us to the reason why we took such a last minute vacation.
We had been thinking and praying about moving our little family back to Minnesota if a job would open up for Steve in his company's Minnesota location. A couple weeks ago, a job opened up and Steve applied. After the first interview, we decided we had better go and check out the town where the job was located and decide for sure if that is where we wanted to settle down. We ended up LOVING the town and also (as an added bonus) found a Mediterranean restaurant that has some pretty amazing gyros and baklava. Yay! We contacted a realtor and went out to see some houses, to get a feel for the real estate market there and see what we could get in our budget. We ended finding a house that we both love, but Steve never received a call for a second interview. Late in our trip, we heard that Steve had not been given the job. Sadness.
However, this little vacation solidified in our minds that Minnesota is where we want to be. So, we are working towards that goal, trying to sell our house and Steve is looking into other possibilities for transferring to Minnesota.
Sadly, this could set our Congo adoption plans back a little bit, as we would probably have to have our home study revised, if not redone altogether when we move. BUT, since we had already decided to wait till after DRC's elections to get on the waiting list, it doesn't seem like too major of a setback. 
Anyways, after a whirlwind vacation, it has been nice to settle back into a routine the past couple days. We are back in school and doing well. We went garage saling while in Minnesota and found some cool new school supplies. I'll post pictures soon.

Weeping and Wailing

I awoke this morning to the sound of Hope's warning to her sister, "Hurry up! Mama will be awake at any minute!" First of all, where did she learn to talk like that? And second, what in the world are they up to? Hope also came into our room to tell me that her sister had just called her "foolish". I had a feeling it would be a long day. Since it is only 10:45am as I write this, we still have much of the day to live out, but let me tell you...It has been way too long already.
Today is our phonics/ letter writing practice day. The girls, at this very moment are weeping and wailing in their beds. I sent them there after trying to patiently calm them down after introducing something new. For Grace, it was the "an" sound followed by "man, can, fan, tan". We never got farther than "man". Since we have been doing "at" words, she was convinced she knew how to read and wouldn't have to learn any more. Introducing a new letter grouping did not go over well. She wants to just guess at everything and not have to sound it out. This would be SO much easier if every word we ever said ended in "at".
While I was working on phonics with her sister, I had Hope at the chalkboard (her favorite place to be during school) working on what we call "swoops". Basically practising the motion she will need to use to write B's, P's, C's and so on and so forth. Anyways, though she can do this perfectly well on her own, she keeps pretending she can't so I'll come work with her. Instead of doing the swoops I asked her to, she was writing perfect S's. Like I said, she really shouldn't have a problem with this assignment. Also, have I mentioned that she is a Perfectionist? Notice I said that with a very capital P. Oh. My. Word. That little girl falls apart if the lines she draws do not connect in EXACTLY the right way. Oi.
There is seriously never a dull moment in this house. I have two extremes in my children. The oldest just wants to do her schoolwork as fast as she can, with as little effort as she can, and just know everything without really trying. The youngest, on the other hand, would spend all day long doing one thing so she could get it just right. She's the one who, when she saw me smiling about a facebook post today, asked me to tell her the letters in each word, so she could sound them out and find out what made me smile.
Okay, the kids have calmed down and we will try this again. I'm thinking play dough and a good book (with me reading to the kids, of course) would be a good stress reliever this afternoon. Pray for us, friends, we've got quite a bit of the day ahead of us yet.

August Home School Happenings

We have almost completed our first month of homeschooling. It has been surprisingly fun and I think it is actually working! The girls are still loving school (apart from a few rough days with Hope), and they are remembering what they've learned so far.

We've done a lot of review work with Grace, to make sure she is up to speed and hasn't forgotten too much over the summer, and have started a bunch of new things with Hope. Grace has (very excitedly) started reading basic sentences and Hope has been listening in on the letter/sound review, so she knows all her letters and sounds almost as well as Grace. We are working on fine motor skills- this is what has caused problems with Hope- and she is getting better. She wrote a number 2 for the first time today and was very happy about it. :)

For the first three weeks of school we studied the basics of the human body, touched on germs, and focused on the five senses. We had a lot of fun with that, playing lots of games using their senses. I also ask the girls to use one or more of their five senses to figure out answers to simple questions they ask me. I'm hoping that this will help them figure things out for themselves more and maybe not ask quite so many questions with obvious answers. We'll see if that works, but a girl can hope, right?

We've also spent the month studying the Pilgrims, their voyage to Plymouth and their life once they got to Plymouth and started a colony. I LOVE history, so this has probably been my favorite subject to teach the kids. We read for about half an hour to 45 minutes every night before bed and most of the books we read have to do with the subjects we are studying. I've found this to be a fun and easy way to reinforce and review what we've talked about during the day. 

These have been some of our favorite Pilgrim/Plymouth Plantation Resources.
"The Dreadful Smelly Colonies"
"Three Young Pilgrims"
"Samuel Eaton's Day- A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy"
"Sarah Morton's Day- A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Girl"
"Pilgrim Cat"-This has become an every night favorite.
"This is America Charlie Brown: The Mayflower Voyagers"- Surprisingly informational!

These are our most reviewed books on the Five Senses.
"The Magic School bus Explores the Senses"
"Me and My Senses"

Hope's first attempts at writing the letter A. Highly successful. Though I've discovered she is much more confident trying things out on the chalkboard than she is trying them out on paper.

Hope's pre-writing work. She generally acts like I just asked her to kill her favorite dog when I ask her to do this. Ha. We're also working on having a good attitude even when doing something she doesn't like doing.

Intro to the concept of a calendar. We laid out seven pretzels to start with and talked about the seven days of the week, counted them, recited the days of the week while pointing to each pretzel, then add seven more and so on and so forth until the "month" was full. Practised days of the week and counting to 31.

After we finished with the pretzel calendar (and the kids had finished eating it), we moved on to a real paper calendar. I had them color code the days of the week and we put a sticker on every day we have already finished for this month. We'll make another one every month left in the school year and add stickers as we finish days. The kids loved it.

This was a song I found on YouTube using the tune to "The Addams Family". Ha! The girls LOVE it and are learning the days of the week quickly.

 We generally have one day a week that is designated our "Library Day" and we get out books on the topics we are planning to study the following week. So far, our system seems to be working well. The kids are enjoying it and so am I, something I honestly wasn't expecting. God is so good to allow me to school my kids at home AND to allow me to enjoy it as well!

2 Big Changes Around Here

The first and BIGGEST change is that D and I are now officially and legally ours!!!! Praise the Lord! We were finally able to adopt them on July 28, 2011. They are now asking to be called by the middle names we gave them, so we are trying to adjust to calling them Grace (the oldest) and Hope (the youngest). And they are now praying that our babies from the Congo will be ours soon too. :) It has been a great transition to a family. We've had a few rough patches, but for the most part, we are just all happy to be a forever family.
The other big change around here is that we have decided to home school this year instead of sending the kids back to the school that Grace attended last year. We started yesterday and it was great. Today was a little more difficult, but mostly because I was tired and irritable. I am now positive that this teaching thing is going to stretch me. Yikes!
The girls both LOVE doing schoolwork and beg for it the second I climb out of bed. Their favorite thing yesterday was when I pulled out the globe. We have a pack of flash cards of world landmarks and we took a few minutes to look over three of the landmarks and find their locations on the globe. Grace also wanted to know where our babies from Africa are, so we talked about that and she was amazed when she saw how far away they are. Today, we took a trip to the library to look up books on the human body, our five senses, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Steve also grabbed a few cookbooks full of recipes from around the world, so we may be trying some food from other countries as we study about them.
We received our initial approval from the U.S. Immigration to bring two children (under 2 with minimal special needs) home from the Congo. Now we just need to get on the waiting list. We are planning on having another garage sale this month, so hopefully we'll be on the list soon!

Big News on the Foster Care Front

The appeal is over!!!!!! Our two foster children have been in our home for over 2 1/2 years already and the birth parents have had their parental rights terminated for 10 months. They appealed the decision and we have been waiting to hear a ruling on the appeal for the last 10 months. Last Friday, while driving home from the pool, we received the call we had been waiting so long for. The panel of appeals judges had made their decision and they chose to uphold the Termination of Parental Rights ruling. Hooray!!!! We hurried to the attorney's office and signed "Petition to Adopt" papers as quickly as we could.
The birth parents still have 30 days (well, 27 days now) to appeal this decision, but if all goes well and they do NOT appeal, we will finalize the adoptions of our two foster children at the end of July!!!!!!!!!! We are super excited and so are the kids. :)
No huge news on our international adoptions except that we are having a garage sale to raise funds this Saturday. Friends from church have been donating items all week long and we have a basement full of stuff to sell. We are praying that Saturday's garage sale goes well and we will hopefully be able to get on the waiting list for two Congo babies soon.

And Things Are Moving Right Along

We received notice this morning that our home study has been approved by our agency and the final copies are already in the mail! Praise the Lord! We had just prayed about this in church yesterday. It's so awesome that it was already being taken care of. We sent in our paperwork for USCIS, so now we wait for an appointment to have our fingerprints done.
We have also recently learned that policy has changed in the DRC and now at least one of us is required to travel to the DRC to pick up our kids. We are asking for prayers in deciding how to go about this. I would love to have both Steve and I go to the DRC together, however, we have to think about what would be best for our current children as well. D and I have not been apart from us for more than just a couple days since they came to live with us almost 2 1/2 years ago. We do not in any way want to make them think that they are losing their new family. If both Steve and I go, we need a lot of wisdom in knowing how to prep the kids for the separation.
On the other hand, if only one of us goes, we will need to find someone to go along to the DRC and help, since we are hoping to get 2 children. Steve and I have never been apart for that long either and are not looking forward to the possibility of half a month away from each other. Either way, we are going to need a lot of prayer!
This afternoon just proved my weakness and my inability to mother my children well on my own. I totally lost my temper and yelled at D when she let the dogs get past her and out of the yard. Our dogs of course, are rather large and there really wasn't much she could do to stop them, but I yelled at her anyways. :( I hate sin and how easily I fall into it! I apologized to D for losing my temper with her and blaming her for something that was not at all her fault, but the damage was already done. Such unkind words and tone to come out of my mouth. *sigh* So thankful that His blood covers ALL my sin! And thankful for a daughter who is quick to forgive.