January

January Fun!

Having great friends is one of the best gifts in life and Lily definitely has been blessed in friends. Boston is a great best friend!

 Lily loved her cake decorationg class. She learned so much and did such a great job!

 Lily loves learning at New Life on Fridays. Here they made funny characters and wrote about them!

Daddy took the oldest three children to the Springfield Little Theater to watch Seussical the Musical!

 Also at New Life, we do so many activities to work on really learning our classical memory work. Here the children are putting the mountains with their continents to help memorize them!

 Lily and Eli worked on a huge puzzle to work on critical thinking skills.

 The children have a geat babysitter who also does activities with them like building a whole village of paper people and castles!

November and December

In November and December, it is always a very busy time of holiday fun. However, it is also filled with leanring. Classical Conversations had many great learning experiences for us. Here is Katelyn and Jelaina dissecting and owl pellet.

Here Ms. Amy Martin and Ms. Melissa Smith are teaching Lily's class about the Earth's rotation.

 We also went to a wonderful museum where we learned a great deal about the tools and lifestyle of the American Indians.

 In Bible, we focused on the book, What Would Jesus Do? The kids learned so much and enjoyed their time.

We also learned about the government and voting as we helped friends with their poling locations and giving out information on the candidates.

Lily has really become a great artist! Enjoying this age!

Lily again at CC. This time she is using playdough to make a flower and then labeling the parts.

For one of Lily's presentations, she taught about Indians. She learned about how they wrote using pictures and about their life and shared it with her class.

Lily was a China Princess for halloween and so we learned a little about the culture in China.

 I just love this. Lily drew these pictures of her best friend and her.

 Playing with clay!

Lily learning how to use a bow and arrow!

 Lily had a big recital. She sang in front of a large group. She sang, A Whole New World, from Aladdin. She did an amazing job! What a beautiful voice!

 Daddy is very proud!

 Lily has been doing a beautiful job on her writing. We are really working on neatness. She is a fast writer and can sometimes get messy!

We had friends over to make holiday cookies and to learn about how each tradition teaches us about the Lord.

We went to Silver Dollar City and the kids got to participate in the Frosty the Snowman show!

 We made Christmas trees using ice cream cones and m & m's  and frosting. Yummy!

October

October school fun! We got to participate in the Branson Belle's advertisement for on their website. We had dinner and watched a show. We learned about how the boat runs and about how the photographer and producer advertise a business. It was a great learning experience and lots of fun!

 Lily bought her first American girl doll off of craigslist. She saved up for it and learned about money in the process. She also loves reading the American girl books.

 We had a fun day doing Fall activities with friends. We counted pumpkin seeds and made art using them. We also did an estimation activity.

 We learned about spiders also.

We did a fun craft to decorate our house. We did handprint art to make a spider.

Lily and Boston have really been into making pictures and selling them.

These are just some fun crafts and field trips, but Lily has also been busy learning to skip count all the way up to 15 x 15 and learning to borrow and carry when she adds and subtracts. She has also been working on grammer usage and much more.

September

When I first started looking through the pictures for September, I thought "Wow, Valerie is having a lot more fun in kindergarten then Lily is having in third grade!" Luckily, I kept looking and realized that third grade is pretty darn fun too!

 Lily took up tennis lessons at the Cooper Complex! Tennis is officially her favorite sport and she improved so much over a month period. She looked so forward to her tennis lessons that were twice a week. I just wish it wasn't a 40 minute drive to get to the Cooper Complex!

 

We had a fun field trip to the air show in Camdenton, Mo. Lily loved looking at all of the air planes.

My favorite project that we have been working on so far this year is her Story of the World Journal. We listen to these cds that are called Story of the World and they tell all about history. As we listen, we draw pictures to help us remember what we are learning.

Another awesome thing about Story of the World is that it matches up with our Classical Conversations memory work so Lily is constantly making connections.

We also had a great field trip to the Wonders of Wildlife that is connected to Bass Pro. I guess it was actually at the learning center. We went on a scavenger hunt and Lily wrote down all of the animals in either the invertebrate or vertebrate categories.

We also had a wonderful speaker teaches us about invertebrates and then we did art projects to go with it. Here Lily is with her jellyfish. She also made a crab and a worm farm.

We love having friends over so we invited our lifegroup friends over for a day of pumpkin fun. We made pumpkin pie scented.

 We also sent all of our friends home with a snack of pumpkin poop! :)

At Classical Conversations, we are having so much fun with our presentations. The other week she did a presentation on her favorite animal which is a horse. These presentations really motivate our writing lessons. We love that! She also did a persuasive presentation the other day where she convinced everyone that garage sale shopping is better than regualar shopping!

Lily loves her best friend Boston. Boston often comes over after CC on Mondays and lately they have been drawing together. Then they set up a table in the front yard and they sell their work. I am shocked to say that in two weeks they made almost $5.00.  Very proud of these awesome girls!!!

Third grade!

Lily is now my big 7 year old and she is ready to start 3rd grade! I have loved watching her grow in knowledge and skills each year. I am looking forward to seeing what this year has in store for Lily!

 

We went on a field trip to the City Utilities Transportation department to learn about the bus system. Lily did a great job of listening and asking questions. She really enjoyed looking at the maps and learning about the routes that the bus takes.

Lily is also back at Classical Conversations. She is really becoming a great public speaker. This last week she did a presentation on her favorite book. She drew pictures to help her narrate what was happening in the story. The she presented it in front of her class!

We had a field trip with our friends to Ha Ha Tonka. Lily loved reading the map and learning the history of the castle ruins!

 

Then we went over to the Creation Xpo in Camdenton, Mo to learn about dinosaurs, space, and many other things. She loved it and since she knows the place very well, she enjoyed showing her friends around!

 

I love learning with my girls! I can't wait to see all that we accomplish this year!