First Day of Fall

Yesterday was the first official day of Autumn... so we at Little Owl School decided to celebrate (read: K loves any reason for a "tea party" and J loves candy corn).

After getting morning lessons done, we had our Fall Festival...

We discussed the four seasons and made a list of things we think of when we hear the word Autumn. We talked about ways in which animals prepare for winter, and how people do some of the same kinds of things. We played a matching game with leaves cut out of cardboard. We read a few books. We pretended to be leaves blowing in the wind, and being raked up by momma. We had our Autumn tea party, with apples and candy corn. And everyone was happy!

Happy fall, y'all!
OWL MOMMA

Happy Birthday K!

Today is K's 5th birthday! I can hardly believe it!

Here she is just a few hours old

And here's my little Daddy's Girl, hanging out with Owl Poppa

And now she seems so grown up! Five years old already!

Here she is celebrating with Grandma over the weekend

And here she is today... officially FIVE YEARS OLD!

Happy Happy Birthday, Sweetie!

Love,

OWL MOMMA

Laughing At Myself -- otherwise entitled This Year's Schedule

I was all set to type out this school year's schedule for y'all, and realized it is exactly like our summer schedule. We did pretty much nothing all summer due to illness and moving. C'est la vie, non?

Here are the only additions/changes:

Language Arts: we're starting First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind, G.U.M Drops, and Spelling Workout for J.

Math Decisions: we are bumping J to Saxon 2, and letting K work through several lessons at a time in Saxon K.

Character Building: we have a new character building program that is due to arrive on Tuesday. I'll post later about whether or not we like it :)

I guess I'll save my energy for a post on what our school days look like... maybe that will be more interesting!

Laughing at Myself,
OWL MOMMA

Back to School and Other Milestones

First off, this is my 100th post! Amazing. Didn't think I'd ever have that much to blog about :) And it seems like a fitting milestone for blowing the dust off this old blog and starting anew!

That's the thing I love about back to school time. Even more so than New Year's, there is a feeling of fresh beginnings. I love the new pencils, the stacks of notebooks waiting to be filled, the promise of the upcoming school year. And it isn't just the school year that is changing. The world is slowly changing too, preparing for winter. I love the sense of anticipation the fall brings... looking forward to being another year older, the the birthdays of my children, to the magic of the holidays... I love it!

It's also time to reign in the focus of this blog. I have decided to keep it (fairly) strictly to just homeschooling and kid related stuff. I have another blog in the works to give me a place to keep track of my deep thoughts :) I'll keep the Little Owls as the stars of Little Owl Learning!

After a flurry of end of summer events, including a fairly last-minute trip to the coast (the first time my children have been to a beach), we started back to our school routine this past Monday. We're slowly getting back into the swing of things. After completing this first week, I feel pretty good!

Our lesson plans look pretty much like out previous ones. We'll be adding in spelling and grammar for J, and we now officially have a third student... W refuses to be left out of all the fun. He has been running around the house calling me "teacher"... too cute!

We had a big back to school kick off... Each of the kids got a pencil box full of little back to school treats... markers, mini notebooks, new school socks :) We had a little party including owl cupcakes... they were a huge hit (though I used homemade chocolate cake and buttercream frosting, YUM). Then after all the lessons were complete, we took the kids to the library, and the big kids got their first official library cards... they were SO excited! And then the fun continued Tuesday with a "Not Back to School" party with our homeschool group.

Looking forward to the new year!

OWL MOMMA