Our parish is having a coffee house this coming Sunday as a fundraiser for the youth group. It's loads of fun with talent from many corners of the parish, food and fellowship. To help raise a bit more cash, there will be a raffle. I thought I'd try to make some things for the raffle. I made a doll, her cat and a quilt for them both to snuggle under. When Nolan saw the cat he asked if it was Jaws (our cat...yes, I know the name is crazy). You have to understand that Nolan has a love/hate relationship with Jaws. Jaws enjoys batting at Nolan when he walks by and, well, that cat's claws are sharp. Anyway, I said, I was thinking it wasn't a very good looking cat and Nolan replied that he thought it was a devil (horns on top and all) that's why he thought it was Jaws. LOL! Well, it was my first attempt at a simple kitty. I thought the quilt turned out quite nice......
In other quilty news, I finished up a baby quilt for a friend. Since she reads this blog, I can't show you the whole thing yet. Here's a little snippet from the machine. I'll show the whole thing after I give it to her. And the quilt I donated? Sold in under 7 hours! Yeah. Wish I had more time. If you do, consider donating something to Stitching Hope. Proceeds benefit Haiti relief.
I donated my stacked coins in the snow quilt to Stitching Hope which benefits Haiti. It is interesting to see how someone else prices one's quilts. So, if you've been wanting to donate a little something for Haiti relief and could use a little quilt......click here.
I don't have the gift of words and fortunately Michele over at The Family Centered Life has written my heart about Lent. Please read what she has to say here.
What to do when you know you'll be snowed in all weekend? Quilt, of course! I've been itching to begin another quilt since I finished this one. I'm not sure why finishing something always makes me want to start something new. I have two quilts in mind for two friends who are having babies. Those quilts require I take a trip for new fabric. In the mean time, I've been thinking about trying to make some quilts using only my scrap box. I looked at some ideas and finally determined to make a stacked coins quilt. The instructions can be found here. 
My goal was to make the entire quilt in one weekend without having to leave the house for supplies. Goal completed. I finished the machine quilting, hand binding, washing and drying last night. I didn't even have to make new binding. I always save my left overs and I had enough for this quilt!
The most amazing thing is that I did so many other things as well: baked cookies, shoveled snow, made homemade pancakes, shoveled snow, cooked beef stew, shoveled snow, read a few Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, shoveled snow, built a snow fort in the backyard and had a good old snowball fight with the entire family. It was a great weekend. I hope yours was, too.
I have to admit that I still feel a little silly about these organization posts. However, since I started I guess I should finish. In the last post I showed you the folder we use to store our papers from day to day. Today I'll show you the other notebooks I use with the kids.
In a beautiful, perfect world, every Friday the boys get out their large three ring binder and organize their work by subject and in chronological order. 
Since our house doesn't exist in that beautiful, perfect world but in some much less perfect place, we get to this about every two or three weeks.
It sure goes faster if they do it every week so we'll keep aiming for this. I find that having this kind of a binder really helps when we are making their portfolios at the end of the year. We know just where everything is and it is easy to pick out the work we want. I have a terrible memory so organization is my friend.The other notebooks are for specific subjects. We are using the Institute for Excellence in Writing this year and the Student Writing Intensive includes a notebook. 
Since we borrowed the program from a friend, I made up our own notebooks so it would be easier to follow along with the DVD's. We store all our writing in this notebook and don't transfer it into the larger binder.
I also made the boys a science notebook. This is just a small folder with pockets and three tabs for papers. To be honest, this actually helps me more than them. I loosely use the science recommendations in The Well Trained Mind. So this year we are covering earth science and astronomy using How the Earth Works and How the Universe Works. TWTM recommends reading a topic, doing an experiment, answering questions using the scientific method, illustrating the topic and writing a one page report each week. To be honest, the experiments in How the Earth Works are often either too simple or require too many materials. We were reading, drawing and writing and science was becoming a real chore for the boys. So I decided to change things up to make science more fun and exciting. I took the geology unit, decided what topics we would study, ordered some supplies and created a notebook for the experiments we would be completing. My lesson plans are in my black notebook and the pages they need each day are in order in their little notebooks. (Below is a picture of step one of our limestone caves experiment).
This week is the end of our study of geology and we will be moving on to Weather. So, I need to sit down and write up some lesson plans. We will make a cover sheet for our Geology study and move all those papers into the big binder at the end of this week. So our science binder will be refreshed with sheets pertaining to the study of weather.
If I have to pick the thing that helps me stay organized and on task, I'd have to say my weekend and long term planning. The notebooks help keep the paper under control but really it is taking the time to make a plan that helps the most. This year we are doing several lessons that are about 6 weeks each. In science I planned for a block of geology, weather and astronomy and in social studies we are working our way through the southern hemisphere continents. For each of these units, when I took the time to plan out the whole thing (always having room for modifications) the unit went much smoother and we covered more material than when I planned day to day. Even when we modified school to be with Mike's Dad in his last days, this planning paid off. The boys didn't do quite as much geology as we had originally planned, but we still got a whole lot accomplished. I don't think that would have happened if I hadn't planned ahead. 
As you can see by my plan in the above picture, it isn't complicated! Really it's just deciding what topics to cover, where we can find the information and what experiments to accomplish. I then created pages for the boys that complemented the day's study. So some of their pages included answering questions according to the scientific method, filling in a table, illustrating and labeling, etc. Keep it simple but organized is my mantra.
Wow! What a long post. I apologize to those three readers out there. I don't know if that was at all helpful to anyone or not. My system may seem a bit anal to some but it works for us. And now, on this snowy Sunday morning (the boys served at Mass last night), I'm off to plan our weather unit!
Wow. I knew I hadn't posted in a while but I guess I didn't realize just how long it had been. One of the reasons I blog (I'm sure I've said this many times) is to keep a record of some parts of our lives. So this post is March in a nutshell. We found it to be very busy and I'm glad April is around the corner. Seeing the spring bulbs blooming always brightens my outlook on life. The boys and I have been trying to take daily walks. We are watching the trees come to life with buds and birds. One glorious Friday we stopped school at noon and went on a hike at a local nature preserve called Tucquan Glen. One of the first things we came upon was this skeleton.
Of course the boys instantly began making hypotheses about what kind of animal it was and how it met it's demise. Very entertaining. We didn't have time to make it the whole length of the hike but we saw some really beautiful scenery. 
Of course, the boys each did what they do best. Nolan climbed and jumped, Nathan observed in a more serious manner. The water fall that I put at the beginning of my post was one of the best parts of the hike (after the skeleton, of course).
As a homeschooling mom I am thankful that I have the time to give the boys some experiences that we wouldn't have time for if they were in school. I feel strongly about teaching the boys to help others and to give of their time and other resources.
With that in mind, we offered to paint a room of the Catholic Worker House that is being opened by one of our parishioners. I don't have an "after" picture yet but it was quite a transformation. 
The boys liked getting out of several days of regular school work but by the end of the week they realized that painting isn't necessarily easier than math and grammar. All in all it was a great project for our family.
Of course, March is always the birthday month for Nathan. He rarely asks for more than one or two presents. This year he was VERY surprised by the gift his Nana gave him....Mario Kart!
Finally, I made another hanging with one of Mike's Nana's broken medals. Mike's cousin is getting married in June and I attended her bridal shower over the weekend. I used a St. Anne medal and a design inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. I'm in the process of working on another baby quilt for a dear friend. I love how it's turning out so far. I'll try to get a sneak peak up next week. As this is Holy Week I know I won't be posting again until after Easter. Have a blessed Holy week and a glorious Easter everyone.
