Ah, the family vacation at the beach. This year was so much quieter than last year. Remember there was a riot because people tend to act like idiots when they drink too much! The City enacted a beach alcohol ban, and the difference was amazing this year.

Of course the girls still climb the trees 



and we celebrate birthdays and trans fats

and do the hula



and veg out in front of the TV!

Good times!!

Leslie thought that you might like to know what the kids are doing for school this year, so she's guest-writing this post! :) 

We're starting our 5th year of homeschooling, and continuing to use Sonlight as our main curriculum. Elijah and Rebekah have finished 2 years of World History, so we're moving on to Part 1 of the 2-year Introduction to American History (called "Core 3"):

That's a lot of books, isn't it?!! I'm so glad that my kids are readers just like I am, so that I have good reason to keep buying loads of quality books! That picture represents Elijah's & Rebekah's History, Geography, Bible and Read-alouds, which they do together, and Elijah's Readers (they do their Language Arts & Math separately, on the level that best suits them).

When I bought the Core, I purchased the Grade 2 Regular Readers for Rebekah, but she read read read over the summer, and her skills have improved so much that she's already read all of the readers for the year! We get free shipping from Sonlight (by virture of having bought so much stuff from them!), so I went ahead & ordered the next level of Language Arts for her.

We're trying a few new things this year. Elijah is doing a writing course called Institute of Excellence in Writing, and I am VERY impressed. The course is on DVD, and the teacher uses great techniques to make writing interesting and fun for the student. Elijah is semi-enjoying it, and learning quickly how to become a good writer, so I am happy!

Another new thing we're doing with Elijah & Rebekah is a new Science book. In the past, we've used Sonlight's Science program, which comes with many books & activity sheets. The kids enjoyed it, but I wanted to use something more focused, so we decided to use Apologia's Elementary Science, and we chose Flying Creatures of the 5th Day and got a lab kit to go with it:

It's different from what we're used to, with Apologia being a textbook, but now that we've been doing school for a couple of weeks, we're getting into a good groove.

Joanna started Kindergarten this year! One of the virtues of homeschooling, though, is that we can school each child at his/her own pace, so we had actually started her Core earlier this year. She's using Core 4/5 "Exploring God's World" with her own K readers, and she really enjoys it. Here's what hers looks like:

This is her Social Studies, Science, Bible, Read-alouds & Readers. Here is her Language Arts:

plus a few optional workbooks (listed as optional in the I.G., but SHE doesn't know that!) She's doing really well with her reading. I think that it's a natural affinity, combined with all those hours of being read to, watching Leapfrog Word Factory DVDs, and playing on Starfall.com while I schooled the older kids!

All of our students use Math-U-See for their math. Elijah is in Delta (which he actually started at the end of our last school year):

Rebekah just started Beta:

And Joanna is using Primer (though she had picked up so much from listening to her older siblings & watching Leapfrog math videos that we started her at Lesson 9!):

When they start out with the Math-U-See program, they use these manipulatives to help them learn the concepts, though they are gradually weaned off of their use (or ditch them on their own!):

So we're off to a great start for our year, and it's only a matter of time before Rachel starts clamoring for school of her own, and I start pestering Mike to find out if there's room in the budget to purchase Core P3/4 for little ones: "Fiction, Fairy Tales & Fun for Little Learners", which I've been drooling over since they started offering it last spring!

Doesn't it look like fun?!!! :)

The Royal Rangers group from church organized a family hike at Missions Trails Regional Park. One of the leaders has gone through a detailed training process from Mission Trails and is now an official guide at the park. He led the group around the "Old Mission Dam" where Mike and the kids went to the event. They started pretty close to the area of the dam and were given great information about the park and the dam and the original Padres (Franciscan friars) who came to San Diego and oversaw this project.

Rachel knows where they are going .. water.


Fearless leader


Monument at the dam remembering the project and the workers




Inner boys group "Alpha 3"


"Joanna 1"


The dam still works. Here is the flue.


Rachel using Brad as a sun shade


Cool Joanna on the way home

Today was our first day of school. As tradition requires, we had a "Principal's Breakfast", where Mike (the principal of our school) took the school-aged children out to breakfast & talked about the goals we have for them for this year. Since Joanna started Kindergarten this year, she got to join the Principal's Breakfast for the first time.

Leslie stays home with the non-school-aged children (just Rachel this year). Where's the justice in that?! :)

(it's hard to read the board, but if you click on the picture, you'll see a bigger version)