Our Apple Celebration

September 26 is Johnny Appleseed's birthday! And for the past week the Owl Nest has been in Apple Celebration mode!

On the 26th, we celebrated with books and apple pie... super yummy. I think apple pie is my favorite pie ever. We have been listening to the story of Johnny Appleseed (read by Garrison Keillor) in the car, reading books about apples, and eating lots of fresh apples for snacks. And of course we've been singing the Johnny Appleseed song.

One of our favorite apple books is Apples, Apples, Apples... the little owls can't wait until they can go apple picking... I have had to break it to them that in Central Texas, apple picking is over in July :( We will go to the pumpkin patch at the apple orchard though so that might be close enough for them. Last year at the pumpking patch, they got a tour of the apple sorting facility. Hopefully we'll get to do that again.

Another great book is Apple Cider Making Days... we may try making some (with buying cider at Costco as our backup plan, lol).

We're also reading The Apple-Pip Princess, Cider Apples, Johnny Appleseed, Golden Delicious: A Cinderella Apple Story, and we watched the Disney story of Johnny Appleseed in the American Legends movie.

This year, we also read The Apple Doll. This sweet story includes instructions for making an apple doll of our own, so of course, we are trying it.

Here are a few pics of the process...

W might have had the most fun, peeling and eating apples

K is planning and J is munching

W was determined to peel his apple

The apples had to soak in lemon juice. We found the bag to be the only way to keep the apples covered without needing many bottles of lemon juice!

And here are the apples before drying out... and one other little cutie face!

The apple doll heads are in the process of drying out now, and it could take several more days for them to finish. I will post pics of the finished product when we get there!

Yay for apples,

OWL MOMMA

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

random complaint

I have some new plans for the direction I'd like to take this blog... will probably have more updates in the near future. But in the meantime...

We've only had our new phone service and phone number for 24 hours, and have already received a telemarketing call. In Spanish no less.

Now, honestly! 24 hours people!

More on Thankfulness

A friend of mine gave me a beautiful owl themed journal. No occasion, just because she was thinking of me. (Friend, you know who you are! :) Thank you again) But I haven't been able to bring my self to write in it yet... not wanting to use such a thoughtful gift and such a beautiful book for writing grocery lists or something mundane like that.

This upcoming move, in addition to making me stressed out and somewhat crazy, has left me feeling contemplative. One of the things that has come out of my late night deep thoughts is that I have decided to record, at the end of each day, just a little blurb about what we did that day. So that we (the kids and I) can look back over it and see what we've done and who we've seen. It's so easy to lose track of the little things we do. I don't want to forget the little things that count so much, like spontaneous trips to the park, cool things we find along the way, or other random fun times we share. The kinds of moments I am thankful to be able to share with my kids, and that can be easily forgotten in the "dailyness" of life. This is something that has been on my heart for awhile, and I haven't acted on it yet, not having the perfect place to record these things.

Do you see where this is going?

Tonight, I'll be making my first entry about our daily happenings in my new Owl journal. I am excited and thankful and happy at the way it has all come about.