Slices of Life

This week's list challenge:   the people you admire immediately made me think of my mom.  My thoughts soon turned to my mother in laws, my sister, my husband.  Then they slowly went through most of my family and friends.  I admire most of them .   I admire different aspects of them all.     I started writing .... (and deleted) this post multiple times.  I missed my Thursday deadline.... something I've never done.  I thought and stewed and wondered how best to approach this.  I finally realized that what I admired most about my family and friends is what wonderful parents they all are! This parenting job is seriously tough but everyday I read about moms going off to work to provide the best life they can for their children.  I read about moms who are giving up on their jobs to stay home with their children.  I read about moms who are running from one job to the next job while stopping to grab a bite to eat in between hoping ...

We had such a wonderful week this week.  We took a family field trip to New Hampshire; accompanying my husband on a road job (you can read about our day here ).  We went to the Air Museum for their homeschooling day learning all about the properties of flight, the history of planes and helicopters, and to try our hand at flight simulators.  We went kayaking together and ended our week with an amazing field day with our homeschool group. Reading:  Alec read Summer According to Humphrey , Secrets According to Humphrey , Cronus and the Threads of Dread .  Evan read Cheetah Cubs , Sam&Dave Dig a Hole , and The Adventures of Lucky Pup . Ian read Sam and Dave Dig a Hole, Love that Dog and Treasure Hunters book 3 .  We listened to Voyage of the Dawn Treader and a few more chapters in One False Note . Math:  Evan worked on a page in his dot to dot book.  Alec was playing Minecraft one day and we ended up turning it into a mini lesson on ar...

I should begin by admitting that I have never worked by myself to put a field day together; ever!  But I still think I'm qualified to help you put together a great field day because I have attended a few field days and worked in conjunction with other mothers to organize them. We just attended a field day with our homeschool group and it wasn't very hard to put together with all the moms working together.  Our group leader secured a location for us; just a free public park with lots of room for us to spread out. We plan a mid-week, mid- day event (April and May work best as long as school vacation are avoided).   We ended up having the entire park to ourselves and the weather cooperated so nicely! Each of the moms planned an event (a few moms teamed up to create an obstacle course) and brought all the supplies needed for whatever they planned. Once we all arrived our group leader wrote up a list of names and ages for all the kids participating and then divided the large g...

My middle son is quite obsessed with France right now. He just wrote all about France for his geography fair report and while I think we may have exhausted our library's list of books he's still quite eager to learn anything about it that he can. Some of his favorite books for learning about France include: Let's Go Hugo- - A cute story about a bird living in Paris who is afraid to fly until he meets a friend and together they finally go off exploring the city. The Moon Was the Best- - Beautiful photographs and a short story showing the simple pleasures of Paris. Minette's Feast-- a cute story about Julia Child and her cat, Minette. A Walk in Paris- - Filled with tons of information this cute story takes the reader on a walk through Paris following a young girl and her grandpa. The Mona Lisa Caper-- Based on a true event this book about the time the Mona Lisa was stolen! Adele & Simon--  An adorable story about a sister and brothe...

We're often on the look out for new places to visit.  We love going on field trips and try to take at least one a week. After 4 years of homeschooling it's hard to keep finding new places so we often re-visit old field trip spots. I'm a firm believer that it's a good idea to revisit places we've been. Yesterday we took another trip to the New England Air Museum.  We had not been there since our last trip in 2014 . We had a great time! Here are 10 reasons to re-visit old field trips: 1.   Kids pick up on something new each trip.  My kids learn something new each and every time we go somewhere.  No matter how many times we've visited a place in the past there's always a new sight, a new sign, or a new connection that they make. 2.   Different exhibits or materials available to learn about relate to different lessons we have covered through the years .  For example, on our last trip to the air museum we had not yet covered World War I...