Beyond FIAR Co-op: Neil Armstrong 1

Our Beyond FIAR co-op is on its last book.  *sniff sniff*  I'm so not ready for this to end!  Thankfully, the group is not ready to end our times of learning together either and we are planning to do more literature studies together next year.  Our topics are still in the planning stages, but I will be sure to post about them.

Our final book of the year is Neil Armstrong - one of the Childhood of Famous Americans series.  We covered topics from the first three lessons in this meeting.  

We started with a devotion from this book on the dreams and hopes we have and how those sometimes look different and yet can still come true.  

Our topics for today included the 1930s and Englad.  

We talked about Edward the VIII, King of England and his abdication.  This came up in the story as the Armstrong family listened to a radio broadcast about his abdication and the ensuing coronation of his brother as King.

We also listened to part of the speech of the new King - George VI.

While the students were listening to information on the history of England, their hands were busy in coloring a flag and map of England.

They listened to 60+ interesting facts on England.  Click on the link to read some for yourself!  We did not read or share all of these with the children.

Some of the information was familiar and some was not.  Here is a peek at the first three.

1. Big Ben does not refer to the clock, but actually the bell.
2. London has been called Londonium, Ludenwic, and Ludenburg in the past.
3. French was the official language for about 300 years

The last part of our morning was spend learning about the comedy style that was popular in the 1930s - slapstick.  They learned about the elements of this style of humor.

Then we watched some ourselves.  They really enjoyed this too.  Pictured below is the routine "Who's on First".

Our food was a down home meal made by Mrs. Armstrong - fried chicken (nuggets), mashed potatoes and green beans.  Yum!

We went home with a timeline of England to work on later.  My boys did this together doing some research on their own for as much as possible.

This was a delightful start to our unit and I look forward to more fun times!

Blessings

Leslie

Book Club: Daughter of Time

We read the book Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey.  It is a detective novel set in the 1950s in which a police officer tries to unravel the details about the alleged crimes of King Richard III.  It was a fascinating look into a time period and events about which I did not have a lot of knowledge.  (It also tied in nicely with some of the history of England which came up in the boys' studies that same week.)

We enjoyed the book as historical fiction seems to be a popular genre with the whole group.

A quite English dessert with tea, scones and cookies to enjoy after our discussion.

The girls seem more talkative and lively during this part of the evening.  I'm glad that they have this time together to laugh and learn and have fun.

Its a sweet time for the Moms as well.  I'm thankful for this group of friends!

I've been purposing to read more books myself this year and have given myself more time to read.  I often try to go to bed a little earlier so that I have more time then.  I've enjoyed 9 books so far this year. I know that isn't many to some but its an improvement for me.  :-)  I do love to read.

I hope you are enjoying a good book this week too.  We are always open to recommendations that you might have for a mother daughter book club too!

Blessings
Leslie

Never a dull moment

Life is never dull or boring and most of the time I like it that way.  (What I don't like is when "exciting" includes the hospital or other medically related problems.)  Daily life with the people I love - that is my kind of excitement.

Eliana brings her own brand of energy to our days.  Rebecca does her best to infuse a level of "girliness" into her sister, but it is hard to outweigh 4 brothers.  LOL  Rebecca does a fabulous job of giving her sister amazing hair styles.  Its always easy to tell who fixes her hair each day.  If it looks outstanding ... then it was Rebecca!  Here is one of her latest styles.  Isn't it cute?!

Want a peek at some Eliana happenings?  One day she was calling me from the kitchen.  I walked in and found her like this.  She then indicated that she wanted to open the microwave.  What I didn't realize then was that she had already opened it.

And put in a box of taco shells to heat and eat.  LOL

Later that same day, when Roger arrived home from work,  he called me upstairs.  Our bathroom was very foggy because someone had been taking a shower.  And Eliana was standing there in a "ta da" pose showing us what George had been doing.

She was excited to go on an egg hunt in the neighborhood this year.  She liked finding the eggs and really didn't care about what was in them.  Thankfully there were a lot missed at the beginning of the hunt as she was not going to go quickly or fight the crowd to get to the eggs.

She was just as happy to be swinging with her friend George.  Yes, he is a pretty constant companion.

Some days our medical appointments include everyone.  Not my favorite, but it is doable.  This is at our eye doctors.  ALL of them are patients there.

Check out our little chicky with her new glasses.  She is not terribly found of wearing them so we are practicing.

Heading to therapy.  We have the same routines coming and going.  As we walk in, she points to each door and asks me  "this one".  She waits for me to say no, or she will say no if I don't answer correctly.

Just a peek.  We are thankful for this little bundle of cuteness.  We are thankful for EACH one of our children.  EACH was prayed for and desired very much.  We are so THANKFUL to be parents to 6 amazing children.  God is very good.

Blessings
Leslie

Before FIAR co-op: Prayer for a Child

This meeting of our Before Co-op focused on the book Prayer for a Child.  We started out with a devotion and a song on Jesus Loves the Little Children.  There is a beautiful picture in the book of children from all over the world.  We watched a video of this song that also had lovely pictures of a wide variety of children.

We read the story.

Eliana is interacting so animatedly with Curious George (who is a dear friend and goes with her everywhere!).  

 We talked about shapes and looked at a variety of objects and identified the shapes.

 THen they were given a puzzle to work.  Each child got these papers and also a baggie with cut-up shapes inside.  Eat shape was cut into 2 pieces and some of them were trickier than you might think.

Eliana was happy to glue these two pieces together and then she was done.  We took it home to work on it another time.

 The other kids did make the puzzles though.

 Meanwhile the older boys were treated to another lesson day with one of the Dads!  They learned about the human body.

 We also played a shapes game.  Isn't this a great use of a tablecloth?  There were 8 different shapes drawn onto it.

 One of the moms called out a shape and the child then tried to toss a beanbag onto the correct shape.  Eliana liked this one and it was fun to see her participate.  (She doesn't always join in.)

 Each child had 3 beanbags to try on 3 different shapes.

 Boys listening to their heartbeat.

Snack time for this book was obvious as the girl was thankful for milk and bread!  I offered to make and bring gluten free bread for Eliana.  I tried a new mix.  I thought it looked really pretty but the results were only OK according to everyone that tried it.  (I didn't have any as this was during my juice fast.)

 Eliana having her snack.  This was a good spot for her away from the other bread.

 Everyone enjoying the yummy foods.

The last activity of the day was a craft project.  They made little hands and could write on each finger someone that they were praying for.

 Eliana enjoys cutting.

She also likes trying to trace her own hands.

 The children work so diligently.

 Just a cutie!

Rebecca helped Daniel again with his project for show and tell.  It was an awesome one too!  This was again from a story in the Mad Scientist Club.  In this particular story, the boys rig up some pranks to make a house seem haunted.  One of them was using magnets to hold up the pictures on the walls - and also to make them fall off.  

 Daniel's pictures were also held up by magnets and thus would fall down when removed.  Love all the details that they added to the room too.  He and Rebecca have both had fun with these projects.

 As always, this is a fun morning with friends.  I sometimes wish that Eliana was more cooperative in participating with the activities, but we'll keep working on it and take any improvements where they happen.

Looking forward to fun with Jesse Bear next month.

Blessings
Leslie

Misc happenings in March

So many things that don't really fit into a day or a theme, but are just parts of life.  Most of life is that way.  Not a celebration or an event, but just the daily happenings that make up our life.

Here is a peek at a few things that happened last month.  I was able to spend a week-end with friends scrapbooking!  I haven't done this since before Eliana was born and it was so much fun!

Roger and the children went to a friend's house to hang out so that we could have the house for the girls week-end!  Did I mention that it was fun?!

 And I got so much done.  That was encouraging.  I still have much to do though.  Its a project that always seems to be behind.  LOL  More than just getting things done though, it was fun to have this time with my friends.  I'm so thankful for my friends (those here and those not).

Our weeks always include therapy.  Eliana has speech and occupational therapy.  This is a fuzzy picture, but its my big girl riding a trike and doing a great job!

 And doctor's appointments too.  We have had so many the last few months it seems.  Some are routine and others are diagnostic.  Joshua had a great (but LONG) diabetes clinic visit last month.  His A1C had improved greatly and it encouraged me a lot!

 After co-op one day, some of my friends and I were talking about health and how to achieve better health.  We talked about doing a juice fast.  We decided to try to do this together.  To encourage each other.  I never would have done it on my own!

After the first couple of days, I wasn't sure that I was glad that I started it either.  My first couple of drinks were not good!  This was the first one.  It needed way more apples to balance out all of that kale.

 The first couple of days I was VERY cold, grumpy and hungry!  I was dropping weight pretty quickly (for me) and finally figured out how to get in more calories to slow that down.  By the 4th day, I felt GREAT!  My head was clear, I was not tired.  No headaches.  And LOTS of energy!  It was as though I had never realized that I wasn't feeling good.  It was very encouraging.

I stayed on the fast for 7 days.  I weaned off of it slowly, but still found that I felt badly eating a lot of more traditional foods.  I'm still trying to figure out how best to eat healthy.  I have cut out wheat (which I had mostly done before) and white sugar.  I'm trying to eat mostly whole foods and foods made from scratch.  Its a journey and one that I know I will continue to learn about.  I'm thankful for friends to have done this with me!

So, there's a peek into an interesting couple of weeks at our house.  More soon.  I'm hoping to post each day this week.

Blessings
Leslie