Saturday, February 19, 2011

B90 Update....still going strong!

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I don't know how to embed the video in this post, but if you go to this B90 video at YouTube, you'll learn what the Bible in 90 Days program is all about and how it got started.

I was one of those 75 million who said reading the Bible was important, but yet had never read the entire Bible cover to cover.  I've been doing the Bible in 90 Days challenge since right before Christmas, and I'm happy to say that soon I will be among the numbers who have read the entire Bible cover to cover!!!!

It's been challenging and stretching for me, but overall I've been doing pretty good at keeping up with my reading...I've even managed to get ahead!  I am now almost done with the entire Old Testament!!!!   I'm getting ready to start Zephaniah.  I am so excited!   I'm thankful for my mentor, Debbie, who has been very encouraging each week.  I'm also thankful for Amy at Mom's Toolbox for setting up this Winter 2011 B90 challenge.

I encourage EVERYONE to take the B90 challenge.....believe me, if *I* can do it, ANYone can!!!

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Friday, February 18, 2011

Our January-February Homeschool Days

Wow, time always gets away from me any more!  Can't believe a month has gone by.  Really....we have been working away on our school year during that time!

We recently attended a play for Alice in Wonderland.  It was a musical with a cast of over 50 kids!  They did a fabulous job!  The show was about an hour long, and one of the cast members said they had prepared about a month and a half for the performances.

For our Mystery of History read-alouds, we finished Rachel's Secret Journal, which was just a so-so read.  We recently finished God King (takes place during the time of Prophet Amos and King Hezekiah) by Joanne Williamson, which was GREAT!  The girls loved it, and it made for an excellent read-aloud. It was one they were always begging me to read more!  Unfortunately, I should have read The Rise of the Golden Cobra (by Henry T. Aubin) prior to God King, as the pharoah in Golden Cobra is the grandfather of the pharoah in God King.  Oh well, we're reading it now.....better late than never!

For the Apologia General Science, dd13 finished up Module 11 this week.  Doing Knowledge Box Central's study guide lapbooks has worked pretty well for getting her ready to take the tests for each module.  Some of the components don't quite work the way they intended, but I've been able to make them work by doing them different than the instructions.   DD10 will not start back up with the second half of the Science-4-Real Kids Chemistry until the beginning of March.

For math, dd13 is still doing Saxon 8/7 and Life of Fred: Pre-Algebra with Economics.  DD10 finished Math-U-See Delta and started Epsilon this week. In between, I had her do a few extra worksheets on multi-digit multiplication.  She seems to have trouble dealing with so many numbers.  (Surprisingly, it's not with keeping the numbers in straight columns, because we turn a notebook paper sideways so she has lines to keep them straight).

We have continued to do AiG's It All Begins with Genesis for our Bible time.  This week we did a character study on Satan, learning about the different names he is called in the Bible, as well as how he is described and things he does.   DD10 has been doing extra Bible work for her "What Does it Mean to be a Christian?" class which recently started at church.  The children's minister has given them quite a bit of research to do each week....it's been great!

DD10 is still working on All About Spelling Level 1.  We just haven't been getting to it regularly.  She is also working on the Calvert Grammar.   I also recently purchased a subscription from the Homeschool Buyers Co-op for Big Bible Town, which she is enjoying.

DD13 is continuing IEW's Phonetic Zoo for her spelling.  It's been working well for us this year.  Especially for mom!  Because she uses the audio CDs, I don't have to do anything except for the personal spelling word lessons.

We continue with Fix-It for our editing practice.  It's been great to see the dress-ups for for IEW's writing program reinforced in this grammar program.....and in dd13's writing.  She recently wrote a story for a contest at White Oak Stables, an on-line horse game, and placed 3rd in the contest.  Without even being asked, she used many of the dress-ups she's learned from IEW.

DD13 has also being playing around with graphics programs, such as Gimp, Paint, and Paint Shop Pro,  learning how to crop and cut and blend photos together and creating cartoonish graphics.  Because of this, I've been thinking about having her try educational digi-scrapping.  While poking around the Internet to see how others are doing it, I found something called NOTA. It's a kind of on-line whiteboard where you can combine videos, graphics, and text. It takes educational digi-scrapping a step further by being able to add in media to the page.  So, I've been having her create some pages on it about carnivorous plants--a favorite hobby of hers.  I hope to figure out how to embed them on a blog page so you can see them.

Guess that's about it for school.  I'm sure I left out plenty.  I always think of things I want to blog about and then when I don't get to it right away, I forget about them!  I really need to write them down!

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