Rich For A Day

The children are given weekly writing assignments in their English books. They come up with some of the best stories. Rebecca recently wrote this short story and I thought I'd share it with you. The topic was: Rich for a Day. Enjoy!

Rich for a Day

     "Any new news?" Mr. Maxwell asked as he came inside from shoveling snow. 

     "No, none that I've seen," replied Mrs. Maxwell as she placed a bottle of orange juice on the baby's tray. "Only more snow. But you watch for me now. I need to clean up this breakfast."

     Mr. Maxwell sat down in a seat at the table and looked up at the small, cracked TV. The Maxwells couldn't afford to get a nice TV. They were running out money because they had been tricked and lost a lot of their money. They had lost enough money to pay for a house. It had been a huge loss. 

     The baby, Jenny, began to cry and Mrs. Maxwell picked her up. "She's cranky," she said with a sigh. "Jason's still asleep and Ellie just left to go to the mall. She'd better not spend much."

     "Oh, don't worry," said Mr. Maxwell, not looking away from the TV. "She knows what state we're in."

     Mrs. Maxwell didn't reply. "Jason!" she yelled. "Get out of bed or you won't get breakfast."  

     "I'm coming!" ten-year-old Jason yelled back. "Wait for me!"

     "Shhh!" Mr. Maxwell suddenly shushed everyone up. 

     "Who want's to join a contest?" said a guy with a baseball cap on."We have a huge snow sculpture contest right now! Send us pictures of your snow sculpture and maybe you can win One thousand dollars!"

     "We can win that," Mr. Maxwell said as he stood up and began to bundle himself up in a heavy coat. 

     "Go ahead and try," Mrs. Maxwell said, as she put Jenny down on the floor. "You won't come close."

     "Oh, I guess not," Mr. Maxwell said carelessly. "But it can't hurt to try, can it?"

     "No, but don't expect to win," Mrs. Maxwell said as she cleaned up Jenny's breakfast. 

     "Mom, can I enter the next Lego contest?" Jason asked as he came downstairs with a piece of paper in his hands. "If I win, I can get one thousand dollars! And you can use the money! You only get this reward every ten years!"

     "Sure, but I doubt you'll win," Mrs. Maxwell said taking the piece of paper. "You know that."

     "Yeah, but I still want to do it," Jason said hopefully. "It's free."

     "I know," replied Mrs. Maxwell. "You can do it."

     Mr. Maxwell and Jason had pictures to send by lunchtime. They sent the pictures before the mailman came, and waited. 

     Twelve-year-old Ellie came home right in time for dinner. 

     "How much did you spend?" Mrs. Maxwell asked.

     "Only about eight dollars," Ellie replied truthfully. "And that was all for lunch. I had enough fun with just looking at all the stuff."

     "Good," Mrs. Maxwell said in relief. "Maybe you can go next week, too."

     "Yeah, that would be fun!"

     The next day, everyone got a surprise. Mr. Maxwell had won the thousand dollars!

     "You didn't tell me you'd entered a contest!" Ellie said, surprised. "Does this mean everything will be better now?"

     "Much better!" Mrs. Maxwell said, hardly believing the news. 

     "Speaking of contests," Ellie said nervously. But she was interrupted.

     "For the Lego contest," the contest guy shouted. "We have Jason maxwell!" 

     "Me?"  Jason said in disbelief. "It wasn't even that good!" 

     "You did it!" Mr. Maxwell beamed at his son. "Wow!"

     "Uh, wonderful!" Ellie exclaimed, looking at the TV anxiously. "We're rich now, right?"

     "Yes, we can pay off the bills now, and actually live happily!" Mr. Maxwell said.

     Mrs. Maxwell was speechless. Rich?! No, she was dreaming. 

     "The winner of the designer's contest is..." the guy on the TV unfolded a piece of paper. Ellie held her breath. No one else was really listening. "Ellie Maxwell!" The name caught everyone's attention. "For five hundred dollars."

     "Ellie, does he mean you?" Mrs. Maxwell asked, looking at her daughter. 

     "Yesterday, I signed up for a contest and did it," Ellie could hardly believe it. "I won!"

     Everyone was speechless. 

     

    That day, the Maxwells had a bunch of fun, spending all of their money so that they only had one thousand dollars left. They donated Ellie's five hundred dollars to an orphanage and to a few other places. They spent Jason's money on having a bunch of fun, and used Mr. Maxwell's money to get back to normal life. The Maxwells decided that they enjoyed being a normal family instead of being rich so they spent the leftover money on things that would help them. They had been rich for one day, which was enough for them. 

School With My Babies

My little girls, or "babies" as I like to call them, have been wanting to "do school" like their siblings. I was introduced to these fabulous workbooks while we were at the seminary in Indiana. (That seems so long ago.)

These books come from Rod and Staff Publishers and  I love them right down to the covers. They're very simple.

The inside is also very simple. I love it because they don't cause over stimulation which can occur from super busy books. 

The girls get to work on fine motor skills while learning about colors and shapes in the first book.

While I knew Elizabeth has an incredible attention span when it comes to coloring, I had no idea Anna would have the same stamina. She enjoys these books so much that she wants to keep going.

With just a year apart in age there is still a definite difference in the attention to detail department. Can you tell?

Shurley

Have you gotten back into a school routine yet? We are getting there in our household. While we did have school all summer it was a bit more low key interspersed with some breaks here and there. Now we are trying to get back into things full boar! Some people have asked what curricula we use, so maybe I'll fill you in over the next few days or weeks. Our current grammar program is Shurley English. We tried a different program as well, but ultimately enjoy this program. It has worked well for teaching as well as being easy to understand for the children.

The really great thing about this program is that everything is written out for you-- I mean everything, all the way down to what to a script to read to your children when you are teaching them. The program is laid out in a way that makes everything predictable which is how most children thrive. They know that they have jingles to practice, then there is a little review, and then a new lesson is taught. A few days a week there is also vocabulary where they get to use their dictionary skills.

Some days are a little repetitive, so, for us, sometimes we'll skip a lesson here or there. Right now, this seems to be the case with Thomas. He is picking things up so quickly that we've been able to move along and we're almost half way finished with his book. We should be starting Level 2 sooner rather than later. One of the many reasons I love to school our children at home is that we can move at a pace that works for each child.

School Days

Some days juggling school for 4 children can get a little crazy. While my older girls are more independent they still need to be taught. 

We've slowly started adding more work for David, but since he isn't reading yet he requires more help. Then there are times that we're so engrossed in school work that I'll forget to feed my children. The whining begins and I realize that I haven't even made lunch and it's almost 1pm. Oops!

Having two little ones also adds to the craziness. Anna is a total Momma's girl demanding attention quite often. I can keep her occupied for awhile with her Little People. She loves to line them up like they're in a parade or stick them in time out somewhere in the barn.

Elizabeth loves puzzles. These pattern blocks are her favorite. This keeps her busy for a long time. She gets pretty excited when she gets one of these patterns finished. I actually highly recommend this activity for little ones. Most of my children have loved these blocks. I can get work done with older children while the little children are patterning their blocks!

Reading

When you get a bunch of homeschool moms together, often times the topic of curricula comes up. Having friends that are just getting started with their homeschool journey, the curricula topic comes up, so I thought I'd share a what we have been using lately. In the past, for reading, we have used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. While I still think this is a great book, it just doesn't seem to fit the program we are using now. I was trying to use the two programs together, but that doesn't really work either. I had heard many great things about The Writing Road to Reading. After looking into it, it looked really intense. Then I found Spell to Write and Read. It is similar to The Writing Road to Reading, but written for homeschoolers. 

The idea is that children learn phonograms in order to spell, therefore making them able to read. There are 70 phonograms in the English language. Just about every English word follows a spelling rule and uses the phonograms.

There are 26 single letter phonograms that the children learn first. In our home we just drill them over and over again. David even knows these. Then you begin learning and drilling the multi-letter phonograms. Here is the -ed phonogram.

On the back of each card it lists all the sounds that, that particular phonogram makes. In this case there are three sounds. The children memorize this. Once they've mastered all the phonograms they begin spelling words.

This book WISE Guide for Spelling, comes with the program and is meant to be used concurrently with Spell to Write and Read.

Inside is a spelling lesson on one side. The next side shows the spelling rules used to spell the words and markings for letters, so the children know which sounds to use. There are also little grammar lessons to go along with all of this. It's pretty handy, although not too comprehensive.

Thomas has finally begun his learning log. This is where he writes all of his spelling words along with spelling rules and how they are to be used.

On this page consonants are written out at the top and vowels, along with examples, are written a the bottom.

This was Thomas' first spelling lesson. Not too shabby, eh? Hopefully, that sheds some light on what we do around here. Stay tuned for more...

California Pizza Kitchen

I took the older kids on a field trip to the California Pizza Kitchen. The kids got to make their own pizzas. First they start out with premade dough.  Good thing because it could have gotten a little messy. Thomas wasn’t so sure at first.  He actually wanted to stay home. Rebecca’s an old pro at this because we make pizza at home quite often. Rachel loves doing this kind of thing. For you Rhonda, since you forgot your camera.  :)  We, moms even got to make a pizza. Cheese was next.Then came the toppings. When we finished making our pizzas, they gave us a tour of the restaurant. It was pretty neat to see things behind the scenes. Anyone for a drink? There’s the oven where our pizzas were cooked.  Cool, huh?  After the tour our pizzas were out of the oven waiting for us! The kids really enjoyed this field trip and so did I.  Did you know that the average person eats 23.5 pounds of cheese per year?  Did you think it was more or less than that?  Our family loves cheese, so I thought it would have been more like 50 pounds.  I was way off.  See?  I learned something from this field trip too.

Typical Thomas

Twice a week, while the three little kids are napping we learn Latin.  When I say it’s time for Latin, Thomas gets excited and he’s usually the first one to get to the table.  Sometimes he gets so excited that he can’t keep himself awake.  Looks comfortable doesn’t it?

Insect Fables

Earlier this week the older kids and I took a field trip to the Butterfly Pavilion.  They had a special program called Insect Fables going on.   It was a real hoot.  They learned about all sorts of invertebrates, crustaceans, butterflies, and arachnids.This was a great program.  The Colorado Chambers Players came and performed as one of the members read fable like stories. There was an oboe, bass, viola, violin, percussion instruments as well as digital piano. That belonged to a huge lobster. Cocoons.  Neat, huh? That’s a stick bug.  Those were fun.  Since they blend in with their surrounding it’s almost a hunt to find them. The kids even did a little dancing and played a game. How would like to find one of those in your house? And of course the kids always want to hold Rosie the Spider whenever we visit. It sort of tickles the hand. Shedding a little skin. And this is when my camera battery died.  :(  I think the kids were looking at spiders or something.

 

The rest of these photos I took with my phone. They’re not great, but there were some cool insects and butterflies to see.

There were butterflies everywhere.  It was awesome!  They were so pretty.

The kids and their friends.  I think they were all getting a little warm.  It was quite muggy inside too. Then the kids got to go to the education area where there was a maze, some puzzles, a climbing apparatus, and a zip line!