Our China Study

When our home school co-op group had a country study this last school year, Rebekah piped up and said "Let's do China!". I thought if we choose China we most certainly have to do a Chinese dragon. So we got to work a week before the presentation. In the end, we had such a blast!


This is the Chinese Dragon that we labored so hard in making. The head was made out of papermachie and the body out of a plastic table cloth from the dollar store. For the head, we started with a box and for the mouth we used the lids of the box and taped them to one of the sides. We uses lots and lots of newspaper and flour to papermachie the box and mouth. It was a huge mess but the result was huge fun!


The eyes were cups taped to the top. The horns were cones make out of poster board, and the nostrils were toilet paper rolls. We broke out the tempura paints and had fun creating our dragon. We used lots of feathers and all the fun accessories were made out of Styrofoam balls and chenille wire. For the beard we used, Christmas tinsel. And viola!....A Chinese dragon. We will never forget our special Chinese dragon!



Here they are after the presentation. Don't they look cute? After learning about China, Rebekah told me she wants to be a missionary to China.

Teaching your child how to read-Pt. 1

Teaching your child to read can seem both intimidating and complicated, but really it isn't.

After I graduated from college with a degree in education and a concentration on reading, I felt I had a good grasp on how to teach reading. When I started teaching, I used phonics (decoding words using certain rules). I taught all the rules and blends but very quickly this became extremely boring!

When I began homeschooling, I used this same approach (don't ask me why!) with my first daughter, Rebekah, and it went well to say the least but became very tedious and wearisome very quickly, and above all else, *yawn* boring!! None the less, we trudged along only to find the reading process was slow.

I tried this approach with Brianna and for a whole year we were not getting anywhere. Both Brianna and I became frustrated, so I started praying asking the Lord "to show me the way". BTW this is what happens when you home school, you pray a whole lot! The Lord lead me to Charlotte Mason's writings about how to teach your child to read. It was an answer to my prayers! So far, it has been a success! What is so encouraging is that it is the same approach that mom's have been using for centuries! Susanna Wesley taught all her children to read this way in the late 1600's! So....the next few weeks I will be logging our journey using this method. Maybe down the road it will help someone else as well.

Blackberry picking

We went blackberry picking today. I have the battle scars to prove it! We had a blast and the
kids learned that it is a lot of work to pick berries but it sure is fun just spending time together! Blackberry cobbler is sure sounding good right now. Yum!

O.K. Nanny this is for you!!

I decided to start up my blog again. But it will be my homeschool blog. A glimpse into our homeschooling life. Not sure what to put in it yet so stay tuned....