Saturday, October 30, 2010

My Master Plan

Tomorrow is the big due date - not that I put much stock in that. I've never gone on or before my due date. I'm okay with that this time around. I am feeling pretty good. Not sleeping well because my lovely husband has taken to snoring so loud I feel like the house is shaking. Not sure why he has decided to do that now . . . He's impossible to wake up, too. Last night I was literally cracking up laughing because it was so loud and almost unreal! I'm going to try and get it on video tonight, just to show him how ridiculous it is.

Anyway, I have this master plan this week to clean (CLEAN) every room in the house. I started today with the kids room. I cleaned out their closet and drawers and swapped the last of the winter clothes in and the summer clothes out. I got rid of stuff we don't want or need and I even vacuumed under the bed! It feels good. Now, I just need to keep the kids out of there the rest of the week!

Tomorrow, I am hoping to organize our craft shelves and bins. The kids really did a number on them the other day when I was talking on the phone. They were so quiet, I knew something must have been up!

Well, I hope to have a post about a baby boy soon, but if not, I'll figure something to post about!

Monday, October 25, 2010

M is for Moon

In a little of my spare time I've been searching for blogs specifically about homeschooling. I haven't really found one that I want to keep following. Let me know if you have any suggestions for me.

I have enjoyed reading YOUR blogs about your home school adventures so I decided to start documenting ours!

I am going to skip our first two weeks. I'm not too excited about back tracking and I didn't take too many pictures those weeks. AND, I didn't really add too many extras to it, so it was a little boring. This past week, I really ramped it up and we had more fun!

Our curriculum (My Father's World) focus' on one letter and one main theme per week. This week was the letter M and we learned LOADS about the Moon. We also learned that "I am the light of the world." Just as the moon reflects the sun's light, we reflect the light of Jesus. This has been a fun lesson for us!

This week we:
Made a Space Ship in the living room and read books in it about the moon. We read about Neil Armstrong and Apollo 11.

We measured how high Gavin can jump and then multiplied it by six to see how high he could jump on the moon.

We learned the phases of the moon, made a chart of what of the moon looks like each night (this will continue for another week), we made a book of the phases of the moon and we baked sugar cookies in the shapes of moons.

We made a Space Mobile to hang in the kids room and we made a moon out of marshmallows (we ate quite a few, too!).

We read the book "Little Bear" and made a space helmet to travel to the moon just like a chapter in the book.

We made a get well card for someone we knew was sick so that we could be "the light of the world."

We did three experiments to demonstrate 1.how the moon reflects the suns light 2. to see the distance from the earth to the moon and 3. to see why the moon seems to change shape. For these experiments we used a mirror, a flashlight and playdough. It was pretty fun to see Gavin start to understand how it all works.

I would have loved to plan a trip to the Adler Planetarium here in Chicago, but it didn't quite work out this week. I hope to get there soon, before Gavin forgets we even studied this!

In addition to all of that we also followed our reading plan, did our letter worksheets and worked on our handwriting (Gavin's WORST subject!!!).

Here are some pictures of our cool school - week three! I wish I would have taken more!
I Can't wait to post about week 4!



Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Homeschool!

Throw me some culottes and throw out the t.v. - We are a homeschool family!

We've got two weeks of homeschooling under our belts and we feel great. Our family is thriving, Gavin is learning and we are doing life together. Every day I love it more and more.

I ordered the curriculum My Father's World. I like it for the most part, but am finding that I need to supplement quite a bit - especially in Math and Reading. I love that it is centered around God's Word and how it applies to the world around us.

I am doing TONS of research on curricula for next year. I've ordered lot's of brochures and catalogs. I placed "The Well Trained Mind" on hold at the library and can't wait to pick it up. Has anyone read Cathy Duffys "100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum"? I am looking into purchasing it on Amazon. It looks like a good resource.

Here is a picture of our school nook in the house. I need to work on getting a desk for Charlotte - she feels very left out sometimes.



I hope to blog more about our home school adventures, but we're having so much fun we don't have a lot of time! The next time I blog it will probably be about our new baby brother - only two weeks left!

Thursday, October 07, 2010

September = worst month ever!

September was such a hard month for the Dobbertin's. We were way too busy and our family life was in shambles. Ryan has BIG THINGS happening at work, we had two major ministry commitments that were kicking off (each at a different church campus), Gavin started school, I am VERY pregnant and we were all sick at one point. One day it all came crashing down around me. I had a major break down and was sobbing uncontrollably. My poor husband wasn't sure what to do with me. I'm usually not so emotional. He did the best thing, though - went and got a pizza for dinner!

We spent the next few days in prayer and evaluating our priorities (family first!). We had some meetings with our pastor and are scaling back on our ministry responsibilities. I also pulled Gavin out of school. We started homeschooling this week. I love homeschooling. It just fits our family so well. This week I've felt enormous amounts of peace and I've started to enjoy our life again.

Baby boy is coming in just three short weeks. THREE WEEKS! I am beyond excited to meet this little guy. I really have not had much time to think about it until this week. He still has no name, although we are narrowing our list. I think we'll just have to see him before we attach a name to him.

Well, that's what's been going on with us in a nutshell. I hope to be more active in the blogging world, but no promises! I am just enjoying our life and soaking it all in these days. I hope your lives are all going well and your focus is where you want it to be! Life can be so much better when your head is on straight and you are doing what you love!