Kindergarten

After several years (yes, years) of prayer, Darren and I decided to home school Nate.  We never dreamed of home schooling our children.  That's for weirdos who want to have little or no contact with the outside world, right?  I honestly hadn't even heard a lot about home school until we started noticing a whole lot of families in our church family home school...and they are all perfectly normal and extremely social.  The more we learned about it, the more we began to seriously pray about it for our family.  We continued to receive confirmation after confirmation pointing us toward home school.  

So, we decided we were going to home school.  Now we had to tell our families and friends.  I was nervous about this because there are not a whole lot of families who home school in our neck of the woods.  Our church family is located in another county, where home school has been on the rise for years and now is pretty common.  Not everyone has been positive, but most people have.  I have honestly gotten a lot more encouragement than expected. 

We started Monday, July 29th.  Nate and I were very excited!  I taught for six years and was a media specialist (librarian) for two years.  I forgot how much I enjoy lesson planning and teaching.

We had a great first day!

Here are some other highlights from our first week.  All of these ideas came from Pinterest.  I love putting ideas together and executing them, but I am not very creative.

 

Squirting sight words

Build the word activity

Writing letters in shaving cream (mental note: you only need a very thin layer for this)

Shaving cream art (since we had a pan full of shaving cream)

Painting like cave men with things from nature...and crayola washable paint :)

Completed shaving cream art

One of my biggest concerns with home school involved where we were going to have school and how I would organize school supplies, books, etc.  I really wanted to have a school room, but by the time I came to that decision it was almost time for school to start.  For now we are doing school in the living area - either on the couch for reading or using Nate's table for writing and craft activities.  I am storing our supplies in a cabinet my parents gave us.  They found a great piece of furniture at a yard sale for $15.00 several weeks ago.  It had been sitting in their storage building just waiting to be discovered. :) My dad had already stripped and sanded it.  All it needed was some paint and a little distressing.

I am still working on how to display Nate's work. This iron piece was already in our living area.  It occurred to me that I could use magnets to hang Nate's work until we can come up with a better plan.  This is working well so far and a great way for Nate to show Darren what he's accomplished/created during the school day. 

I have been working on this post for several days (mainly due to blogger issues) and now two weeks of school have come and gone.  Our second week was just as fun and encouraging as our first.  We certainly had some challenges each day, but overall it's been a great experience.  I am so thankful for God's grace, wisdom, and provision. 

Company Braves Game

Thanks to Darren's employer, we enjoyed a Braves game yesterday.  It was hat day and we all received a free Braves hat.

We had a great day.  The weather was perfect - overcast and somewhat cool for July.  Nate was definitely bored at times, but overall I think he enjoyed the game...and this strawberry milkshake. :)

Happy 6th Birthday Nate!

We had a wonderful week celebrating Nate's birthday.  We kicked things off with a water slide/Ninjago party.  I found several free Ninjago printables at Craft, Interrupted. 

We did not plan to rent the mammoth water slide you see below.  Our plan A water slide fell through at the last minute.  Nate's party was on his birthday, Wednesday, July 10th, and I was trying to find a water slide on Monday!  It was just a tiny bit stressful. :)

It was actually a blessing in disguise.  I thought we would have between 10 and 15 kids, but we ended up having 25.  This slide was much better for that many kids. 

We love this boy so much!  He is smart, funny, kind, considerate, compassionate, feisty, and just. plain. awesome.

It was such a blessing to have so many friends and family join us to celebrate Nate's special day.

I love this picture.  The kids were singing to Nate and he was truly enjoying the moment.  He had been looking forward to this party for weeks. 

Nate wanted to have a girls against boys water balloon fight. 

I think the boys enjoyed it a little more than the girls. :)

The party was so much fun.  The kids also played "Pin the Beard on Sensei Wu" and broke a pinata.  We had to rush those activities because of a thunderstorm so I didn't get any pictures.  

The celebration continued Thursday night at Tae Kwon Do.  They celebrate with a "belt line."  All of the kids take off their belts and form two lines.  The birthday boy (or girl) runs down the line while the other kids give them a (gentle) pop on the behind.  This was something Nate had also been looking forward to for weeks. 

Nate wanted Darren to be part of the line.

The celebration also included board breaking.

Finally, we celebrated with our immediate family Monday night.  We have been doing this since Nate's third birthday.  We get together, enjoy some yummy food, and watch a slide show of pictures of Nate from the year.  Nate calls the slide show the "Nate movie" and gets so excited about it.  When he watched it the first time, he was literally jumping with excitement. 

Nate requested brownies for this celebration.

I wanted to get pictures of Nate with the grandparents too...then I got distracted and that never happened. 

This year Nate's birthday requests were star wars legos, star wars action figures and "a book or two." This light saber was, by far, Nate's favorite birthday gift.  Thank you Aunt Lynn and Uncle Gavan!

May the Force be with you. ;)

June

June has been a fun and busy month.  We have been working on our summer bucket list. 

We had a photo shoot early in June with a friend from church. 



Darren and I tried paddle boarding for the first time.  It was much easier than I expected and so much fun. 

We had a great time with friends from church at Point Mallard water park.  This was Nate's first water park experience and he loved it. 

We spent a long weekend at Wind Creek.  We had a great camp site and the weather was very pleasant.  We had a great time swimming, relaxing and enjoying being outdoors.  One of my favorite memories of the weekend was eating watermelon and spitting seeds.  I'm pretty sure Nate enjoyed it too.

We got to enjoy the super moon.

We spent a lot of time in the water.  Our final day in the water we saw a snake!  I have been camping for years and this was my first time to ever see a snake in the water.  I am thankful we saw it on our last day. 

Nate lost his third tooth. 

My final high point of the month is Nate learning to ride his bike.  We do not have a great place to ride at our house (no paved drive) and live on an extremely busy highway so learning to ride hasn't been at the top of our priority list.