{iPhone Rewind} :: August

Haircut day with my girl :)

"Helping" Daddy get settled in his new office

I hope I always get sweet notes from my sweet boy {Aiden} 

Mike was able to get away on the pastor's retreat again this year. I'm so glad he is able to have this time with these guys.

Aiden was so excited to finally lose another tooth! We're not exactly sure where it went...he woke up one morning and it was gone haha.

We went to Sam's, and they had this skeleton "driving" around! The kids kept trying to figure out how it was possible haha

National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day! :)

Yay for $1 summer movies! We got to see Despicable Me 4

The kids got a fun coupon book from the library for completing their summer reading program. First up on their list of prizes: a free Italian ice from Rita's!

I'm not exactly sure what's going on here, but it doesn't look good...

The boys have started helping make breakfast :)

Remnants of summer...

Flowers from my love :)

It's a panda bear!

After all of his hard work, this sweet boy has had to start patching again. To say that he was disappointed is an understatement, but he has dug in and had a fantastic attitude the past 3 months. He hasn't complained once, and I have not had to remind him once to patch. We had a follow up with the eye doctor, and his hard work has paid off! We're not out of the woods yet, but I am so, SO proud of this boy!

We're prepping for our fall Bible study!

A sweet church member heard that Aiden was having a Star Wars birthday and gave him a LEGO!

May the Force Be With You

This year's birthday theme was Star Wars! :)

The funny thing is that the kids haven't seen a single Star Wars movie yet, but Aiden has read multiple Star Wars books from the library, and he has fallen in love with the characters. And not seeing the movies did not diminish the fun one bit!

It was fun to decorate for him, though I managed to choose some sort of boot-leg version from Amazon, so if you looked too closely at some of the characters, you'd realize they were slightly off haha. But Aiden didn't seem to mind, and it still made the house festive :)

After a yummy breakfast, we opened presents. There was no shortage of Star Wars-themed gifts, but he has received a fun Pooh Bear hat, a fun new game, and some GI Joes! I love that the kids make cards for each other; it's such a sweet little tradition. And I love how they hide them, and how excited they get to give them to each other.

Of course, no Star Wars birthday would be complete without epic light saber battles! Aiden was excited to receive a hood {to dress up as a Jedi, of course, but he has also wanted a hood for other dress up needs as well haha}, and the light sabers he received light up and make the official sounds and everything. Every little boy's dream! :)

The rest of the day, we played at the park, played our new game {SkyJo}, played with GI Joes, brushed up on our Star Wars knowledge, and had more epic light saber battles. We got to chat with family in Texas, and even received a special message from Darth Vader {Uncle Bryan}!

And, of course, there was cake! Happy Birthday, Aiden...may the force be with you!

Aiden :: 8 Years

Happy 8th Birthday, my sweet boy!

My Dearest Aiden,

You have been talking for months about your birthday. Counting down the days, talking about themes, adding to your wishlist...to say that you are excited about your birthday is an understatement :)

Yesterday, when you woke up, I gave you a super long hug and said I was just going to have to hold you all day, since it was your last day of being 7 years old. You laughed, and pulled away, and said, "Mo-om" in that annoyed little boy way, and my heart knew that I couldn't keep you little forever. I have known that for many years now. But because you are my Aiden, you still came back for an extra hug anyway, and my heart was just so grateful for your heart. How you love big and fully. 

You are in that unique transition of being a little boy, wanting to play and be silly and still needing your Mama, but also wanting to grow up and be a big kid and do big kid things. You are still into battles and sports and wrestling and building forts and playing in the dirt. Pooh is still by your side. You say the wildest things sometimes, and make me laugh on a regular basis. I love watching you build your relationship with your brother and your sister. 

I love you, sweet boy, and I have loved celebrating YOU on your birthday! I love your hugs and snuggles, and I am so grateful you are my 8 year old boy!

Love,

Mom

McCullough Schoolhouse :: 4th + 3rd Grade

Today was our first day back to {home}school! Eli and Maddie started 4rd Grade, and Aiden is a 3rd Grader :)

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Year 5! It's hard to believe, but I am grateful for another year of homeschooling. I feel like we are "in deep" at this point haha...I have so many plans for what I want to teach, where I want our schooling to go, and I have us on that trajectory for multiple years in the future. It's mostly exciting, somewhat nerve-wracking, and I just feel so grateful that we get to jump in for another year.

Even with that, I have been "ready" to start for a few weeks...all the curriculum was set, worksheets ready, books in place. But mentally, I probably could have used another couple of weeks before we started. This summer was busy, and I don't necessarily feel rested and ready for a full semester of school. But even getting started this morning, I am grateful for "past me" already doing the prep work so that we could ease into the year. I'm thankful that we have good routines in place, and the kids already know {for the most part} what to expect. I am looking forward to our learning rhythm, and I look forward to seeing another year of growth!

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Here's a look at what we have in store for fourth and third grade this year:

Morning Time: This time will remain fairly consistent from previous years:

• Daily hymn- a selected hymn each week from Then Sings My Soul by Robert J. Morgan
• Catechism- we use The New City Catechism for Kids from The Gospel Coalition
• Character Cards- we use the Character Matters Cards from September and Co
• World Prayer- we pray for one country or people group a week from the Window on the World: An Operation World Prayer Resource book. 

Bible: We will continue making our way through Foundations of the Bible by Driven by Grace. We will finish Volume 2: Judges to Jesus and then complete the year with Volume 3: Gospels to Revelation. The kids really enjoyed this curriculum last year, so we are looking forward to finishing out the rest of the volumes.

Language Arts: 

• Spelling- Eli and Maddie will move to Modern Curriculum Press' Spelling Workout D, and Aiden will start with Spelling Workout C.
• Grammar- We will do grammar twice a week, and we will use First Language Lessons- Level Four from the Well Trained Mind. Aiden is still a rockstar, keeping up with Eli and Maddie!
• Writing- We will continue our daily handwriting practice with Zaner-Bloser Handwriting workbooks. Everyone will continue practicing cursive. We will also start Writing with Ease Level 4 for literature and writing skills. When I first started this program, Level 4 was mapped out for 4th grade. They have since revised the program, but I was able to find a copy for us to finish out our 4th year and hopefully give the kids a solid foundation before we move on to a more skilled program. We're still working on the mechanics of our writing, so here's to a year of more growth!
• Reading- This is the year of reading practice for everyone! We have made it through all of our phonics programs, and now we are just working on comprehension {Maddie} and fluency {Eli and Aiden}.  

Family Read Alouds: Over the summer, we started The Green Ember series by S.D. Smith, and the kids have loved it! This year, we also have some more classics lined up:

• The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois
• The Swiss Family Robinson by Robinson Crusoe
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Borrowers by Mary Norton
• Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
• The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
• Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
• The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser

Math: We are continuing with the same curriculum. Eli will be moving forward with Kate Snow's Fourth Grade Math with Confidence, and Maddie and Aiden will complete Third Grade Math with Confidence {which they started last spring}, starting Fourth Grade Math with Confidence next spring. 

History: This year, we will continue making our way through The Story of the World Volume 3: Early Modern Times and Our Star-Spangled Story from Notgrass History. Because we worked through both last year, and added unit studies on the Constitution and the Presidency, it slowed our pace down, so we will just keep making our way through. We will continue the unit study on the Presidency, and we will add unit studies on Compassionate Americans, Clever Americans, and Creative Americans. We will end the year with a unity study on the U.S. Civil War {all unit studies are from Delightfully Feasting Press}.

We will be supplementing with the following:

• Usborne Book of World History
• The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia
• The Kingfisher Illustrated History of the World
• Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History
• Relevant library books

And for the unit studies:

• The Constitution Decoded
• Basher Civics: Democracy Rules!
• Basher Basics: U.S. Presidents
• Weird But True: Presidents
• The Presidents Visual Encyclopedia
• We the People and the President
• Scholastic Books of Outstanding Americans
• Two Miserable Presidents
• DK Eyewitness: Civil War
• Relevant library books

We will also have a mixture of read alouds and narration, maps/coloring pages, and activities/crafts. 

Geography: We will be doing a U.S. geography study through the National Parks! We will get to learn about the unique culture, historical events, people, and natural wonders of each park, and there are varying activities throughout the study. Delightfully Feasting Press offers 4 volumes to walk through most of the U.S. parks, and I am looking forward to this unique approach to geography. 

Science: Science the last couple of years has been a bit of a flop, so I decided to make a complete pivot. Our evaluator recommended Science Shepherd, so we are going to try Introductory Science. It will give us a good base of a lot of different topics, as we decide if this curriculum is going to work for us. I like that all of the kids can do the core curriculum learning together, but then there is a Level A and Level B workbook, so they can split the course work based on their age/grade level. There is a combination of videos, activities/experiments, and review pages. It also leaves room for additional exploration of topics to dive deeper if we want. So here's to a better year in science!

Foreign Language- Latin: We will continue with our Latin curriculum from last year, moving to Latina Christiana from Memoria Press. I plan to use the videos a lot more than we did last year, {instead of just the audio pronunciation}, so I will be interested to see how the kids enjoy having someone else teach them. Maddie loved Latin, mostly because she is excited to have a "base" language to learn more languages later. The boys...not so much haha.

Typing: Eli and Maddie will continue practicing their typing, and I will start Aiden with the same program in the spring {Typing.com}. 

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Here we go...4th and 3rd grade!

{iPhone Rewind} :: July

Aiden's turban nest. He said, "send that to the president." This kid's got jokes!

We had a long stretch of 100-degree days, and the humidity was stifling. Not our favorite summer days...

4th of July flowers from Mike

Maddie was super excited about the free samples at Trader Joe's :)

A beautiful {double} rainbow after a storm

Lunch and a show {our neighbors were having a tree removed}  :)

Happy 15th Anniversary to us!

I wonder how many days are left of seeing this bear on the stairs...

This little guy spent a lot of time climbing around our living room window, flying into our back door, and hanging out on our patio table. I'm pretty sure he was either a baby learning to fly, or he was hurt and needing to recover. I'm choosing to maintain our Disney backyard aesthetic and believe he eventually gained the strength to fly safely away on his own :)

They're both WAY too big to snuggle on top of Mommy, but where there is a will, there is a way...

 

We ventured into Rainforest Falls for VBS this year! Our Super Sloth, Jumpin' Jaguar, and Amazing Anaconda learned all about the nature of God, and it was a fun week full of praising our all-knowing and faithful Creator!

Aiden accidentally left Pooh Bear at a friend's house...and he took a journey to make it back safely home :)

Our little World Cup junkies haha

One of our missionaries from the Netherlands {same one Mike visited earlier this year} has come back to Virginia for the summer, and he taught a class on the 4 gospels: Four Portraits, One Jesus. I always enjoy learning from him, but was doubly excited for this class, as I prepare for our Luke Bible study this Fall!

After almost 40 years of faithful ministry, Milt and Val said "see you later" to our CBC family. We had a sweet morning hearing Milt's last sermon as our Shepherding Pastor, and then enjoying an all-church picnic with family and friends throughout the years.

These two thought it was hilarious to stuff the Pooh bear costume with blankets and have been carrying it around like an extra person. They have been dancing with it, sleeping with it, and I find it propped up in random places.