Homeschool Hubbub

We have been back in the swing of homeschooling for almost two months now so I thought I would take a quick second to lay out what we are doing this year. Owen is technically in 1st grade so he has a plethora of subjects to work through. Caeden is a preschooler so I have a few workbooks for him to work on like Explode the Code and a set of preschool books published by Rod and Staff. And Elliot, well I just try to keep track of him and keep him from eating toothpaste and writing on my bedspread with permanent marker (not that he would ever do these things!!!! :) Owen is just now finishing up his phonics primer The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and we will soon start spelling using Spelling Workout. We are using Writing with Ease for writing and First Language Lessons for the well-trained mind for grammar. For math, we finished up Saxon Math 1 and have moved onto Saxon Math 2. We are also doing history a couple of times a week using The Story of the World. We didn't do a very good job last year of getting in his art lessons so we are starting over this year using the same curriculum, Artistic Pursuits. Both older boys are currently participating in Upward Soccer and we are excited to also do a little co-op this year with some sweet ladies from our church who all have kids the same age. Yes, our days and weeks are full but we are grateful for the opportunity to educate our boys from a gospel-centered worldview!

Summer Fun!

I guess since it is almost October, summer should be officially over. We had a great summer! We loved having Chris around for a couple of months and it was such a welcomed break for me after a difficult school year being pregnant. A lot of our summer was spent adjusting to having a new baby and entertaining family and friends that graciously helped out after Hudson was born. But despite all the transition we did manage to make a few trips out to Huber's Orchard to pick strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, peaches, apples and concord grapes. We love having this local orchard available to stock up on produce to can and freeze for the winter. The boys also loved having a yard to play in, a sprinkler to run through and a pool to cool off in! Here are some pictures of our summer fun!

It's funny how I always thought of apple picking as a fall thing because it was about 90 degrees when we picked these at like 10:00 in the morning. Yikes! Elliot attempted to carry them but they were a wee bit too heavy.