What’s up?

• [1 Jun] Love's Rescue by Christine Johnson ★★★★★
• [1 Jun] Silver Spurs by Miralee Ferrell
• [2 Jun] The Book of the Ancient Romans Curriculum from Memoria Press {Review}
• [2 Jun] Ancient Romans & Virgil Lesson Plans by Dorothy Mills
• [5 Jun] Field Trip Friday: U.S. Space & Rocket Center 
• [8 Jun] Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal by Rachael Yunis ★★★★★
• [11 Jun] Any advice for someone about to start Memoria Press First Grade?
• [16 Jun] Beyond the Ashes (Golden Gate Chronicles ,#2) is in stores now!
• [17 Jun] Studying History {Grammar Stage}
• [17 Jun] CTC Math Online Maths Tutor {Review, 2nd year}
• [19 Jun] Pirate’s Code movie {Review}
• [23 Jun] A word from the silence…
• [24 Jun] SmartKidz Media Library for Homeschoolers {Review}
• [24 Jun] Another one bites the dust, or rather gets the sniffles.
• [30 Jun] Another day.

• [1 Jul] The Convenient Bride Collection
• [3 Jul] Lost her first tooth!
• [8 Jul] The Creation Story For Children by Helen Haidle ★★★★½
• [8 Jul] Who has missed historical posts?
• [8 Jul] Refining Fire (Brides of Seattle) in stores now!
• [9 Jul] If He Had Not Come by David Nicholson ★★½
• [10 Jul] What’s up?
• [11 Jul] Before Amen: The Power of a Simple Prayer by Max Lucado ★★★½
• [11 Jul] Before Amen Prayer Journal by Max Lucado ★★★½
• [11 Jul] Another tooth fairy visit..
• [11 Jul] A Distant Melody by Sarah Sundin ★★★★★
• [11 Jul] WIP Weekend
• [13 Jul] An Extraordinary Egg by Leo Lionni ★★★½
• [14 Jul] Fish is Fish by Leo Lionni ★★★½
• [14 Jul] Birthday Boy turns ONE!
• [14 Jul] WIP cross stitching
• [14 Jul] Birthday milk shake!
• [16 Jul] Coming Soon from the Pen, Please Welcome Historical Author Christine Johnson!
• [16 Jul] Homeschool Planet (Online Planner) {Review}
• [17 Jul] WIP Sew ‘n Tell Friday
• [21 Jul] A Most Peculiar Circumstance by Jen Turano ★★★★
• [21 Jul] In Good Company (A Class of their Own) by Jen Turano {Review} ★★★★½
• [22 Jul] Project Passport World History Study: Ancient Egypt {Review}
• [23 Jul] Among the Fair Magnolias: Four Southern Love Stories by Tamera Alexander, Shelley Shepard Gray, Dorothy Love, Elizabeth Musser ★★★½
• [23 Jul] A Heart So True: A Southern Love Story by Dorothy Love ★★★½
• [23 Jul] To Mend a Dream: A Southern Love Story by Tamera Alexander
• [23 Jul] Love Beyond Limits: A Southern Love Story by Elizabeth Musser
• [23 Jul] An Outlaw's Heart: A Southern Love Story by Shelley Shepard Gray
• [23 Jul] ‘Among the Fair Magnolias’ Southern Hearts Kindle Fire Giveaway
• [23 Jul] Reasons to read an eBook novella
• [23 Jul] To Capture Her Heart by Rebecca DeMarino ★★½
• [23 Jul] Early 20th Century Romance Book List (in pictures)
• [24 Jul] Strauss tells a story in music. Merry Pranks of Master Till: Maestro Classics {Review} ★★★★½
• [24 Jul] Tillie & Clementine Noises in the Night by Dan Killeen ★★★★½
• [25 Jul]
• [28 Jul] With Lee in Virginia from Heirloom Audio Productions {Review} ★★★★½
• [28 Jul]
• [29 Jul] The Core by Leigh A. Bortins {Review} ★★★
• [31 Jul] Birthday Girl turns SIX!

Summer; Math Studies & Cursive

Well I haven’t been abundantly active here, but we’ve been active elsewhere! From VBS to a summer cold to a little bit of summer school we’ve been busy. We’ve started working in part two of Saxon Math and are getting close to the introduction of multiplication as well as continuing to reinforce our fact families for addition and subtraction. We’re going alphabetically in cursive and are about halfway way through the alphabet.

History & Bible

AppleBlossom is working a delighted steady pace through Veritas Press Self-Paced OTAE (Old Testament & Ancient Egypt) History and now also Self-Paced Bible: Genesis through Joshua. She’s studying the Flood and Noah now and about to start on the Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, so the Egyptian fun begins! We’ve been collecting books so I’m eager to immerse ourselves in this study. We’ve been watching more Netflix and our own movies as well including: The Prince of Egypt, The Mummy saga, The Scorpion King saga, Ultimate King Tut, The Pyramid Code, and I’ve added more for us to watch including the Smithsonian Secrets The Sphinx, and a BBC miniseries Egypt that ought to prove interesting. I’ve also saved A&E’s The Bible and Son of God and The Book of Daniel to see if these might prove educational for us. I’m open to other suggestions if you know of them! (I had all sorts of things picked out last year, but then Netflix redid some of their programming and not all of the same shows and films are available.)

Seton

You may remember we intended for Seton Home Study School 1st Grade and Memoria Press 1st Grade to last us two years? However, we’re almost finished and it’s just been one year, with having a baby, influenza A, stomach virus repeat, and all, and we’re still almost finished. We have a few chapters left in Religion, English, and Math 2. Nothing in Seton has challenged her in the least bit and she was already doing a grade above (she started first grade material when she turned five). She has about five tests left (one in Religion, two in English, and two or three left in math).

Memoria Press

As always, Memoria Press is amazing and we’ve just kept trekking along with their material with AppleBlossom since she started JrK at age 3. She’s five now and almost through with their First Grade material. She needs to finish New American Cursive 1, StoryTime Treasures series, and a few more pages in Copybook 2 and she’s done. Well I suppose she also has a few pages left in Rod & Staff Beginning Arithmetic 1 part 2 as well. This has been an interesting year as we’ve had Seton Math 2, Beginning Arithmetic 1 part 2 and now adding in Saxon Math 2 part 2. It is very interesting to see the differences between these. (We also have Math Mammoth Light Blue, but that’s been back burner – it’s the only one with color). I think that Beginning Arithmetic or the Rod & Staff Living Math for a Christian Studies (or something named like that – top of the head here) is my favorite. I like the workbooks, I like the teacher’s manual, and I love the Biblical references in word problems and such. However, without new enrollment this year, we have got to get on board with Saxon 3, so we’ve jumped into Saxon 2 to see what we can do. Math aside, Memoria Press is my favorite thing. I love their lesson plans and I adore their Enrichment, it’s the best part of our schooling as always.

What’s next?

Well we are not continuing with Seton. It’s just not challenging enough and I prefer a Classical methodology anyway. As of this spring, God be praised! Veritas Press Scholars Academy (VPSA) has now been accredited. So we are moving our enrollment from Seton to Veritas Press. Yet of course, I refuse to give up Memoria Press Curriculum for the most part so there are some things of overlap. I’ll give more details as we get closer to a true start date. For now it’s self-paced courses and finishing up the First Grade materials and she will turn six years old in a matter of weeks!

Before AppleBlossom, the super hero obsessed child turns six, baby Rascal will turn one, and after them both the Princess will turn four years old! Then, after all the birthday business I plan to start real school again. This year with some real preschool business as well. The Princess will have a bit of Simply Classical Level C and Memoria Press Classical Core Curriculum for the Junior Kindergarten year… but that’s all a long tangent I need to go into another time or you’ll never hear me stop talking… or typing as it may be.

Cross Stitching and Quilting

As it happens, AppleBlossom has not done much stitching of late, but she has played with her violin a bit. I worked a bit more on my Patriotic Angel, before putting it away and I believe it will be another year until the finishing. I’ve gotten out AppleBlossom’s Holly Hobbie birth sampler and I’ve been working on it for a bit and getting quite a bit accomplished. I’ve also finished another quilt top minus the borders. I’m sorry I don’t see to have many pictures.

Let’s see, anything else?

A little bit of genealogy. One first tooth lost, and another one about to go. Rascal says “mama”, “diddy”, “yel-come”, and “give”. All cuteness abounds. Princess is just around and doing her thing, she loves all things feminine, sparkily and princess related. Frontier Girls… that’s another post I need to write! One Penguin and now a new Otter!!!