A book I love to read to the kids around Thanksgiving is Corn is Maize: The Gift of the Indians. It is written and illustrated by Aliki. It starts out talking about what corn is and how it grows and then goes into the history of corn. It was in a cave in Mexico where people once lived that scraps of plants and tiny ears of ancient corn were found. Aliki shares how Native Americans thousands of years ago found and nourished a wild grass plant (corn) and made it an important part of their lives. They learned the best ways to grow and store and use its fat yellow kernels and eventually they shared this knowledge with the new settlers that came to America.
Annie made us a cake and decorated it like Indian corn. She used Reeses Pieces to decorate it.
To see other Fall Fun we have had this year visit, HERE.
Yesterday was the 1 year anniversary of moving into our home!
Here are the latest additions I made to the house this past month. You can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them.
I added some wording to this wall in the kitchen.
It says "family, lifes greatest blessing"
I found this topiary at the thrift store for the bar area in the kitchen.
I found this large clock on clearance at Kirkland's for the living room. I had been searching for a while and had seen some at Hobby Lobby and some at Kirkland's. All of the clocks this size run from 70-100$. This one from Kirkland's was priced originally at 75$ and had been marked down on clearance to 40$. We had a coupon for an additional amount off and just happen to hit the store on a day that had all of their clocks marked down an additional amount too. After tax, I got the clock for 24$. It's not really a good picture of it- I think it's much prettier in person. It's an old world clock.
I added these two plates to this wall area that faces over the living room. They are plates I already had but hadn't done anything with yet.
I added some decor around the mirror in the entry.
I found the wooden floral pieces at Walmart and the Hope and Love writing at Ross.
I added this picture frame to the column off the entry.
If you want to see other home posts throughout this past year click, HERE. You can scroll down through all of them by hitting older posts at the bottom of each page. I did around one post a month.
Bryan's parents
A visit from Bryan's mom and Larry this past Spring
Sunday dinners with Bryan's dad and Halyna this year
Family near and far
Close friends
New Friendships
Ball Room Dance class for the girls
The ability to be home with my kids every day
Homeschooling
Good friends for the kids
Emmy's best friend Abby who is like another daughter
My FIAR family
The FIAR Message Boards
The FIAR Staff who prays for us often and is like family to us
Our Cozy Home
Having a Homeschool Room again
Having a Guest Room
Good Neighbors
The Location of our Home
Living out in the country
How dark it is at our home in the evenings and how bright the stars shine
Our Home Library
Reading to the kids
Our Pets, Duke, Bear, Tabby, and Cuddles
Our Church
Our pastor's teachings
Compassion International and their heart and work for orphans
Our Compassion Kids
Plenty of food to eat
New Recipes discovered in 2012
My Kitchen
2 Ovens
Being able to watch movies from the kitchen while I cook
The ability to cook for others
Once again having enough room to have others over for dinner
Traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas foods
Food that reminds me of loved ones
The new restaurants we got to experience this year
Dates with just Bryan
Heaters for those cold nights
Warm blankets
A wood burning fireplace because I love the smell and atmosphere of it
Plenty of clothes for everyone
Air Conditioning during the summer
Thrift stores
Discovering a new great book store this year
Computers & the Internet which allows us to stay in touch with family that is far
Pinterest and all the new fun it has brought into my life this year
Our Garden
Our blackberry bushes which provided us plenty of jam this year
The ability to decorate our home and make it a special place for us to live
Music - all kinds
Celebrations
Christmas
Christmas music
The smell of a live Christmas tree
Christmas movies
Christmas traditions
Getting Christmas Cards in the mail
Christmas decorations
Sending out Christmas Cards
My Camera
Pictures from the past
Fall and Winter Seasons
Cool weather
Hot Chocolate, Cider, and Teas
The smell of pumpkin pie baking
The Macy's and Rose Parades
Traditions from my childhood that bring sweet memories
Foods that remind me of loves ones
The smell of cookies or yeast bread right out of the oven
The ability and good enough eye sight to read
Christian Fiction
Historical Fiction
Biographies
Being born in the United States of America
History
Art
Art Museums
Laughter of my kids
My kids imaginations
Surprises
Gifts from friends
Tight Hugs from Bryan
Lying in Bryan's arms at night while watching TV
Camping
Sitting around a campfire with Bryan and the kids
Rain and Thunderstorms
Lightning Storms
My Bed and Pillows
New furniture
Crawling into bed when the sheets have just been washed
My Comfy, Cute, PJ's
Favorite TV Shows and Movies that I watch over and over again, especially 80's shows
Movies that make me smile and laugh
Beautiful clouds
Hot bubble baths in my jaccuzi tub
My favorite bubble bath, Japanese Cherry Blossom
Scented candles
Poetry
Doctors and medicine
Shopping sprees with the girls
One on one time with the kids
Playing games with the kids
Doing crafts with the kids
My kids interests
Living in a country where chocolate is easy to find and buy
Blogging
Visting other blogs that encourage my heart
The Publishing and Media companies I review books for
My Fibro, because it reminds me daily of the Grace of God and my need for Him
We hosted an early Thanksgiving dinner this past Saturday night with friends and family. It was a really fun evening of getting together with loved ones that we are thankful for. The dinner was at 5pm. The girls and I spent all day Friday preparing which was just as much fun for me as the dinner. We started at 9am and went until 8pm on Friday and we watched Christmas movies all day long while cooking and baking. There is something special about the smell of sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie coming from the oven as your watching Christmas movies. Makes me smile!
We had 12 adults and 12 children that came. Two families we invited were unable to join us. Bryan's dad and his wife were able to come and we had our neighbor Maria and her 4 children here. We also had Emmy's best friend Abby and her mom and dad and two of her siblings, and we had two couples (friends) from Bryan's office that were able to come.
While we have hosted dinners this past year, this was the largest we had done since moving into this home one year ago. I am loving how large our formal dining room is! We had a large formal dining room in NC too but we didn't actually use that room as our main dining room. The floor plan was set up in a way that we used the dining area in the kitchen as our dining room and it only had room for the one table because we had a kitchen island. Our formal dining room up there ended up being more of an extension of our living room in that house. We hosted some pretty huge events in NC. We even did a baby shower that had a little over 50 people at it and our kitchen was large enough to do so but every time we hosted sit down dinners and our small group from church we just ended up sitting around the living room in chairs and couches and setting up a buffet on our table and island in the kitchen.
That's the long way of saying, I am so thankful for a dining area that is large enough for 3 large tables which is what we had set up on Saturday night. I actually used the one against the wall as a drink table and we had the two tables you see above set up for all of the adults. I wanted all of the drinks close to where everyone was sitting and also close to the living room as I figured everyone would want drinks while visiting before and after dinner. We set up two tables in the school room which is off of the kitchen, for all of the kids.
Table 1.
I have a place setting of 12 for our nice dinner dishes. We also have a setting of 8 Christmas dinner plates but since this was a Thanksgiving dinner, I didn't want to use my Christmas plates, nor did I really want to use paper plates even though I know that would have been fine. I also didn't want to spend a lot of money on another set of 8 dinner plates. I'll show you in a minute the solution we came up with.
We had baskets on the tables that we put the yeast rolls in.
Table 2.
These dark blue glass plates were our solution. Emmy, Annie, and I found them at the dollar tree, of all places. We bought 8. I love the color and thought they went well with our brown and beige color theme in the dining room. It felt really fall to me.
The one thing I don't have that I hope to get one day soon is nice napkin holders and cloth napkins to go with my plates. I found these paper napkin rings on Pinterest and printed them out. I thought they turned out cute! I just used paper napkins in fall colors in them. Every place setting had mini cornucopias filled with M&M's too. Annie and I took pointed waffle cones and dipped the tips in warm water for 20 seconds and then microwaved them for 20 seconds. We then rolled the end around a clean pencil to make the cornucopia shape.
The drink table in the dining room. We had water, soft drinks, sweet tea, hot cider, and hot teas available.
Bible verse I framed for the drink table. I found it on Pinterest.
I found these place cards on Pinterest too and printed one out for each dish in the kitchen and the desserts and cider. It really helped people know what was available. I didn't make place card settings for everyone because I wanted everyone to be free to sit wherever they wanted too.
I had Thanksgiving dinner menus printed out on each table. The menu, place cards with the foods on them, and the napkin rings, all matched. We added a few things at the last minute that were not on the menu. Here is what the final menu was.
* Ham in Maple Glaze
* Velvetta Chicken Spaghetti
* Mozzarella Stuffed Meatballs
* Sweet Potato Souffle
* Cornbread Dressing
* Corn Casserole
* Dirty Rice
* Pinto Beans (brought by my neighbor Maria)
* Refried beans (brought by my neighbor Maria)
* Green Salad (brought by a friend)
* Potato Salad (brought by Bryan's dad)
* Strawberry Pretzel Salad
* Frozen Fruit Salad
* Deviled Eggs (brought by Bryan's dad)
*Yeast rolls
My favorite table was the dessert table. What does that say about me? LOL! I set it up in the kitchen.
That is the same bible verse I had on the drink table, just a different color.
For desserts I made the following,
* Mini pumpkin pies
(did the crusts in my muffin tin)
* Praline Pumpkin Pie
* Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake
* Strawberry Cake
* Magic Cookie Bars
(Abby's older sister made)
* Chocolate Cake
(My neighbor brought)
* Peanut butter cookies for kids
(Annie made)
The praline pumpkin pie was a new recipe I found at Taste of Home. It was yummy. The recipe is, HERE.
I first made this chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake for Thanksgiving 2000. Wow- just really hit me when I wrote the date out that that was 12 years ago. Through the years I have made it some years for Thanksgiving and Christmas and sometimes not. Every time I have made it for other people- it has ALWAYS been a huge hit! It was the one dessert from the night that was completely gone by the end of the night! The recipe also came from Taste of Home and you can find it, HERE.
The strawberry cake was a new recipe I found over on Pinterest. It has a butter cream frosting that is really rich! The recipe is, HERE.
The cookies Annie made for all of the kids that came. She baked peanut butter cookies and wrapped them each individually and then taped turkey faces to the front and feathers to the back of the cookie. They turned out so cute!
Now for the really surprising part- I let the entire evening slip by without getting one picture of any of our guests! Can you believe that! I almost never forget to take pictures, even when I am hosting, but I just got so busy talking to everyone Saturday night that I didn't even think about taking any pictures! Bryan was shocked! LOL! Surprised myself too.
And now today, we are once again watching Christmas movies and baking and cooking for tomorrow but on a smaller scale. It will be just our family tomorrow. We are looking forward to staying in our PJ's and watching the Macy's Parade tomorrow morning and then having our Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow afternoon. We always play games together on Thanksgiving day. It is a tradition we started back in Tennessee, since the Indians and Pilgrims played games together at the first Thanksgiving.
I hope you each have a very blessed Thanksgiving day tomorrow with your loved ones!
"Enter his gates with Thanksgiving, and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name."
We read The Wall by Eve Bunting. It is a story of a father and son that visit the memorial wall in Washington D.C. and look for their grandfather's name on it. We talked about what it means to be a Veteran and talked about the kids great-grandfather's and my dad who all served in the army in different wars. My dad fought in the Vietnam War.
We made these army men in remembrance of all Veteran's. We used sponges to paint on the camo.
"Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." (Joshua 1:9)
It's funny, since writing my last review for the TOS crew a little over a week ago I keep feeling like I am forgetting something. I keep checking the calendar because I am so used to keeping track of the date of reviews and spending time almost every evening writing a little on blog posts for those reviews that I have had to remind myself that I am now FREE. *Grin* Free to just share and write about anything once again here on my blog. I am hoping to pick up the pace and share more of our lives as a result.
With that said- here are a few pictures from October and November of some fall fun we had.
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Building and decorating fall gingerbread houses with our neighbors.....
Our traditional jack o' lantern face sandwiches for lunch one day........
Our favorite scarecrow book......
A very sweet story about the friendship between a scarecrow and a spider and God's love for both.
And a craft to go with it.......
On Halloween morning the kids awoke to a surprise. Look who came to visit us.....
Elfie!! He brought pumpkins and some candy snowflakes to the kids. Ally and Cam were soooo excited! They have talked about him on and off all year long. He left a note for them.
It helped build the excitement for his soon to be visits, not that we really need to build that excitement. LOL! It was the last thing they expected on Halloween though. We placed him back on the mantel like we do every day in December and the next morning he was still there! *Gasp* Someone was slacking on the their job. It was funny though because Camden said as soon as he saw Elfie still here the 2nd day "Mom, he's hanging around to watch us for Santa and make sure we are being good!" So on the 2nd morning Elfie was still on the mantel. Yes, someone once again forgot. Camden is always the first one up. He had walked into the living room and checked first thing. When I heard him in there and realized I had once again forgotten, I made a point to run into the living room and grab him while Camden was in the bathroom and then I crawled back into bed. Camden came out the bathroom and was shocked Elfie was gone when he was just there a few minutes before. He came running into our bedroom and said "Elfie flew back to the North Pole mom! He was there one minute and gone the next!" He thought it was pretty cool. I guess that was my practice run for December. Obviously I needed the practice to get my rear in gear once again. *Grin*
A couple of years ago we were very blessed to discover the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). Since that time we have been using writing, poetry, and grammar programs from IEW in our homeschool. If you are unfamiliar with IEW you can read more about them, HERE.
We LOVE everything we have ever gotten our hands on that came from IEW. So when given the opportunity to review their Primary Arts of Language program, I jumped at the chance.
ABOUT PRIMARY ARTS OF LANGUAGE:
While most of the products offered by IEW are geared towards older children, the Primary Arts of Language program is geared towards the younger readers and writers. IEW'S Primary Arts of Language program is based on Anna Ingham's award winning Blended Sound Sight System of Learning and it combines Classical, Charlotte Mason and Montessori philosophies in it. It is geared towards K-2nd graders and covers reading, writing, and spelling.
The program contains 2 core parts, one for reading and one for writing, and both complement each other.
Using poetry, the reading portion of the Primary Arts of Language teaches phonics and whole words. Students are introduced to letters through letter stories and discover the vowel and consonant pairs that help us read. Daily games played during “Activity Time” reinforce the phonetic concepts so that a student can know them completely.
This is an impressive program that offers everything you will need for your beginning reader.
You get all of that for the low price of $69.00. If you were to purchase each of the above products separately the total cost would be $98.00.
With the reading portion their are a few supplies that you will need but they are things that most if not all homeschoolers would already have on hand. They include-
I really appreciated the instructional DVD that was included. I also love this program because it uses poetry with its lessons. I have been using this program with my youngest, Camden, who is 6 years old. He loves the phonetic games and folder with stickers.
The writing portion is divided into three parts: printing, copy work, and composition. Spelling is included throughout the course. The printing section provides an entire handwriting program to teach your student how to correctly form his letters. The copy work exercises will make printing automatic in preparation for the composition lessons, which will gently teach your student to write stories and paragraphs with style.
The entire writing portion of the program includes-
* Units 1 & 2 in the K–2 Classroom MP3 Audio by Shirley George
* Unit 3 in the K–2 Classroom MP3 Audio by Shirley George
* Preparing the K-2 Writing Environment MP3 Audio by Richelle Palmer
Supplies that you will need for the writing portion of this program include,
* A composition notebook to use as a daily journal
* Wide-ruled notebook paper
* 3x5 card box for All About Spelling student materials
* Magnetic whiteboard, optional for use with the spelling tiles
As you can see you get a lot with both of these programs. The cost of the entire writing portion program is $89.00. Each part may be purchased separately just as with the reading portion. The total cost if you purchase everything separately for the writing would be $113.00.
The teachers manuals for both of the above programs are very user friendly and thorough. This program does need some planning from you the teacher. Everything is included that you will need to use (with the exception of the few supplies I have listed) but you will need to watch the videos prior to starting your lessons and decide each week on the games to use as well as pulling all of the materials together and putting together the file folder games so that your ready to go at the start of your week. This is a very thorough, high quality, program and all in all it takes around 45 minutes to an hour each day to use. We have been using it several days a week minus the spelling portion which we haven't started yet.
With each poetry lesson a rhyme is used and discussed. That same rhyme is used in several lessons following which gives the opportunity for memorization. I love that! The games are file folder type games which are used to reinforce the lessons. The worksheets are also used as a reinforcement to the lesson each time.
This is a program that I can confidently recommend with excitement. I would recommend purchasing all of the components and I will say- the teacher's manuals are needed in my opinion. I know on some programs you can skip those teacher's manuals and wing it but I wouldn't recommend doing so with this program. You'll be thankful you have them in your hands to guide you.
Here is a video from Andrew Pudewa where he shares more about the program.
Honestly this program is so in depth that I feel like it would be impossible to do it justice in one blog post so, HERE, is an hour long Webinar that will tell you everything you need to know about the program.
To see what other TOS Homeschool Members are saying about IEW's Primary Arts of Language visit the crew blog, HERE.
Many thanks to IEW for the opportunity to review this program. Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew we were sent this program for FREE in exchange for my honest review on this blog. No other compensation was received. All opinions on this blog are my own.
Through the years we have done all different things for Halloween. We prefer to celebrate "fall" here in our home rather than all the gore and scary stuff that goes along with Halloween. I don't like to participate in the evil aspects of the holiday, especially knowing its origins. At the same time, we want the kids to have fun and create special memories for all of the holidays.
When the older kids were really young, our church in Tuscaloosa did a fall festival on a farm. We always went and the kids loved the hayrides, cake walk, and games. When we moved to TN our church was a larger church and they did a big fall festival each year in the gym of the church. They had a lot of games set up, train and horse rides in the parking lot, served food, and the kids always dressed up for the festival. In NC our church was very small and they therefore didn't do anything for Halloween. We lived in a neighborhood with a lot of children and we knew our neighbors really well. Everyone went trick or treating so we began doing so for the first time in NC with our neighbors. It was a pretty big deal with the families on our street. We had 19 kids within the 8 houses around us and we all went in a group together throughout the neighborhood. I always enjoyed the time talking to the other moms and grandma's. We always stayed just in our neighborhood and the kids always had a ball with their neighborhood friends on Halloween night and came home with a large loot of candy. For the past 4 years after moving back down here to AL, we continued trick or treating in our neighborhood with neighbor friends in Vance. Our church here is large but they do not celebrate the holiday or hold any fall festivals.
This was our first Halloween here in our new home. We are now out in the country with only a few homes directly around us and the other homes in the area are scattered. We are far enough out that their isn't any trick or treating at our home. We therefore knew we needed a new tradition for the holiday and with the kids used to dressing up and getting candy- I wanted to find something that would still offer them that. The area around Bryan's work and our church has a lot of other large churches and places that hold fall festivals throughout October. We decided to attend one this year in Veteran's Park in Hoover and see what we thought of it.
We went last Saturday evening and it was really fun. Of course for the younger kids the big deal at Halloween is the candy and one of the reasons I chose this festival is because they have a "trick or treat trail" where the kids can dress up and go trick or treating through booths set up by local businesses.
Each year the park gets around 6,000 people that come through for the festival which is a 3 hour time period. They set up shuttle rides from a nearby high school so people can park at the high school and be transported over to the park.
Annie & Ally on the shuttle to the park.
This year we had a bag of peanut M&M's, a 3 Musketeers bar, and a Darth Vader.
Abby (Em's best friend) went with us. Annie, Abby, and Emmy.
Before entering the trick or treat trail.
All of the booths were set up by local businesses. My estimation is that their were probably around 80 businesses total and it took us around an hour and a half to get through the trail and that was skipping one line of tables.
The park had hayrides around the lake.........
They had face painting........
And Camden's favorite part of the night was the magic show......
Waiting for the show to begin.
Back at home with their loot......
We enjoyed the festival enough that I believe we are going to make it a yearly tradition.
