Aa Week

Aa is For Angels, Saint Anne, and Apples

Big Boy's work.
Do-A-Dot ABC's Book

Princess' copywork.

Virtue Alphabet Coloring Page

Angel dot to dot

The Children's Book of Heroes

This book is filled with wonderful stories that lend themselves naturally to narrations. I will be using stories from this book to supplement our journey down the alphabet path this year. For Aa week we read and narrated Angels and How the Animals Got Sunshine.

The Apple Doll
With apple dolls of our own. Directions are provided in the back of the book.

Apple Picking Time
Amazing Apples
Anna and the Letter A
Apples Here!
The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree

We also studied the life cycle of an apple tree using montessori for everyone's 3 part cards.

Angel in the Waters
3 in 1: A Picture of God
Pascual and the Kitchen Angels
After reading Pascual and the Kitchen Angels the kids decided to raid our pantry to donate food to the poor. Gotta love how quality literature inspires.
If the weather improves, we will try to head out to the Apple Orchard today for a field trip. One of the perks I love about homeschooling!

Sounds from Day Out with Thomas

First Week of School

First Day of Co-op

First Day Presents

One of the few presents
Binocular Gift Set – Rainforest Life

Welcome First Day Signs

Exploring the Schoolroom

Math-U-See Alpha

Explode the Code


How to Build an A

On the Reading Menu

K is for Kick: A Soccer Alphabet

Zoe and Her Zebra

The Abcs of Habitats

Thomas' ABC Book

The Alphabet Tree

The Boy and His Rock Collection

Once there was a little boy, who loved all rocks. One day he came across a path that he could not resist all the pretty rocks. The boy desired all the rocks, but ran into one small problem...

This is why Mama has a one rock rule!!!

Day Out with Thomas

PEEP! PEEP!

Hello! I'm Thomas!

Anyone of you who has a child obsessed with trains knows this saying all too well. It is a language spoken quite often in our household. When we heard Thomas was coming not too far from us, we decided to pack a lunch and visit the Island of Sodor...
Baby Bear even enjoyed her time at the Island of Sodor!



The kiddos enjoyed a tour of some old steam trains. They thought it was Tinman Sheds!

First Train Rides
...including the dolls.

the boys

And Baby Bear.

Enjoying the view.

Showing off their certificates.

Bye Bye Thomas!

Do you think we could use this as our family Christmas photo?

We ended the day by getting temporary Thomas tattoos.

American Girl

What could be more fitting for a newly 6 year old then taking a trip to the American Girl Store? Of course purchasing a Just Like Me Doll! If you've haven't been to a store, the only way to describe it is overwhelmingly delightful. Princess, since she was 2 years old has been salivating over the American Girl magazines when they arrive in the mail. Imagine if you can, all the stuff in the magazines all on display and then some. Add to it glitzy, jewelery store lights and you have every little girl's dream shopping experience. Here are the three choices the employee picked out to look just like Princess. As you can tell in the following picture, she was not too happy about it. Though, to Princess' credit, she was gracious about it. To be honest with you, none of those dolls looked like her at all. And Princess did not want to even take the doll out of the box. This is when I knew we had to find one that worked for her.
We walked over to the otherside of the store and found another one that did have the correct hair and eye color. To which someone was very excited.
Here's the two of them posing together in front of the Lanie display.
Look who's tuckered out after a long day shopping...

2010-2011 School Plans

This year will be filled with a year of focusing on the basics of reading, writing, math, and religion.

For phonics instruction we'll continue using Explode the code workbooks with Little Stories for Little Folks. Princess enjoys this very much.

For writing we'll continue with Handwriting Without Tears and copywork. I didn't make a ton of prewritten copywork sheets, because I would like Princess to advace from copying the dots to actual copying of the words and eventually sentences. Hopefully over the year she'll feel comfortable with writing more and more.


For Math we're trying Math U See Alpha. I hope the manipulative based program will be enjoyed by all.


For Religion we'll continue with our Liturgical Year plans. Twice a week, we'll work on My First Catechism and read the coordinating stories from Angel Food For Boys and Girls using this chart.

After much thought I decided to have Princess with Big Boy tagging along walk the Alphabet Path again. For Princess we'll beef it up with narrations and focus on animals and their habitats this year. I will keep track of our weeks under the Alphabet Path tab. When we get to Hh week I'll introduce our history study. For first grade we'll be using Mary Daly's First Timeline coordinated each week with various picture books from this list. We'll cover one historical figure each week. I figure it will probably spill over into next year to finish it up.