Gone to church camp

LittleA and LittleE are at church camp this week. This is their favorite time of the whole year, and this year they get to go together since both of them are high school.

We stuffed the trunk with everything they thought they would need for the week.

We didn't have to make the 2 hr. trip ourselves this year. They are going along with a sister church in their church bus.

The bus was filled with 7 seven girls and all their "necessities". One girl takes her own full length mirror!?

Have a great week girls!!

Additional VBS pictures

VBS concluded on Thursday evening with much success. The kids had a wonderful time! We set up our VBS with rotation centers. The groups are of mixed ages and travel together to the various centers after assembly time and opening music. Here they are learning some new songs.

Bible exploration is a great place for the kids to participate in a Bible story. Here they are getting ready to cross the Jordon River and enter the Promised Land. The ark of the covenant is leading the procession. A couple of Kindergarteners were great ark carriers.

They also ate at the Pharisee's house another day.

They made prayer journals one of the days for crafts.

Here they are making an ichythus (fish) suncatcher.

Snacks are always a welcome treat. We put them right in the middle of the evening and both groups eat together outside. Less clean-up!!

After snack time they attend discovery lab where they participate in a science experiment related to the Bible truth for the day.

And you can't forget about games. Water games are always a home run! Run fast before the water leaks out of all those holes in your cup!

We also played a great version of musical chairs. Take out chairs but not kids. Eveyone stays in the game but must pile on top of each other as the chairs get fewer and fewer. They loved it!
That's a rap for this year. See you all next year for another week of laughs and learning.

Summer Filming at Camp W

For 3 summers now we have been traveling to a friends house in Michigan in order to participate in a summer filming project. We've done Robin Hood, King Arthur, and last week Ivanhoe. Our director is "LW", a seventeen year old homeschool girl who aspires to be a movie director/actress some day. Here she is in full costume as Ivanhoe.
This summer's cast was great!! They were prepared with their lines memorized and ready for action when called. We spent 4 days together- eating, sleeping, playing, and filming. Mr. and Mrs. W provided room and board for over 40 people. You guys are awesome!!

They also provided "limo" service to grandma's field and woods next door. It's time to squeeze! LittleA played Lady Rebecca and LittleE played Maid Marion. If you know the story of Ivanhoe, Robin Hood makes a small appearance. In LW's version, Maid Marion leads a band of outlaws in helping King Richard return to the throne.
Here she is in the field rehersing her lines and preparing for a scene.Sometimes LittleA doubled as an outlaw.

Of course we did have a Robin Hood as well. Check out his real sword! And the brave knight hoping the sword really is unsharpened!!

Here's LittleE doubling as a knight. LW needed lots of extras this year in order to help make the battle scenes look more realistic.
Here is a battle scene between the King John's knights (BOO!), and the outlaws helping King Richard (YEA!).

LittleA's scenes as Lady Rebecca were much calmer. She spent much of her time waiting to be rescued from the castle.

Here's one part of the castle set up behind the barn and goat pen.

The garage served as the interior of the castle.

Here are a few more miscellaneous pictures....knights...

...Lady Rowena riding in on Little Joe...

...King John and others at the dais...

...and Mr. W borrowing the Dark Knight's helmet. Boy was that heavy!
Now LW heads to the editing room and we wait for the premier showing sometime in August.

VBS Camp E.D.G.E has begun!

Remember this room that needed to be transformed into a forest campground?

Well, here it is!! I think it turned out great. The one thing that's still missing are the oak tree branches we wanted to hang from the ceiling. We just weren't able to get them up in time. Here is a closer view of the ranger station, a.k.a the puppet theater........ ......for Sparx The Fox. And here are some of the kids learning the motions and music to this year's VBS songs.
There will be more pictures later of bible adventure, discovery lab, crafts, snacks, and games.

Space Robots

LittleE had her dance show yesterday afternoon at the Canton Palace Theater. She and two other girls from her class did a hip-hop style number they called Space Robots. It was very cool!

Her dance studio does a show only once per year so this is a HUGE deal. She loved it!

This is LittleE in her dance costume during dress rehersal.

This picture was taken from the balcony with the stage in the background.

She loves it and wants more, more, more!! In the fall it'll be jazz class. Way to go, LittleE!

Music Camp for LittleA

We just got back from picking up LittleA from Music Camp at Cedarville University. She loved it!! We drove her down on Monday and she lived in the dorms all week, sang lots of music, had music theory class and private lessons, climbed the rock wall, and went canoeing.

Here are a few pictures. Hmmm.....messy, just like at home! The rooms were nice and big, as far as dorm rooms go anyway.

They have a huge rock climbing wall that the kids were able to climb if they wanted. This picture shows the size of the wall.

Here's LittleA on her way up. She made it to the top!

She said the food in the cafeteria was actually pretty good, even though it's hard to tell from this photo of breakfast at 7:30 am!! All in all, a great experience. She's looking forward to college!!

VBS is in only 2 weeks!

Yikes!! Every year for VBS I handle the challenge of decorating. This year is an exteme outdoor sports theme using Cokesbury's VBS kit. This is our 5th year using their curriculum and it has gone very well.

So...what am I making out of this?

It's suppose to be an Ark of the Covenant, the gold-covered box the Israelites carried with them in the desert, and into the Promised Land as a symbol of God's presence and power with His people.

So...here's the final product!

I think that will work. Now on to the next project.....

transforming this room into a forest campsite.

Indiana Adventures

Jones, that is. Indiana Jones. He's one of our all-time favorite movie characters. He's intelligent, courageous, compelling, determined, and well, lucky. We were so glad they made Kingdom of The Crystal Skull, and have enjoyed watching it many times along with Raiders of the Lost Ark, and my favorite The Last Crusade.

We haven't watched Temple of Doom together yet, but decided to read the book when BigJ saw it at the library yesterday.

Our summer read aloud adventure has begun!

Teen Legacy fun coming this fall

Last year at Legacy Co-op we had a great time learning with friends. The teens are all about hanging out together so in the fall we'll be having 1) gym class (of course!), 2) drama, and 3) Think! Challenges. Now before your teens cry boo-hoo at the word "Think", this class will be lots of fun as we try to build things out of practically nothing. Field trips will also be included as well. Here are a few pictures from last year.

We did a service project trip to the USO distribution center near the Akron-Canton Airport. The director talked to us about shipping packages to the troops, and then the kids spent time packing candy to be sent in the boxes.

Sorry I don't have more, but next year I'll be bringing the camera every week !!

Math Pondering and Planning

Planning for next school year is in full swing. There are so many ideas and new things to consider; it takes me a while to ponder and decide!! Here are the tried and true favorites we'll continue to use the coming year.

Teaching Textbooks for higher level math has been wonderful. LittleE will continue on to Algebra 2 next year. LittleA has completed TT Geometry, which includes just enough trigonometry to answer questions on the ACT. She's completed all her high school math. YEA!

This year I'm switching over to Miquon Math for BigJ. I used this many years ago with the olders but thought BigJ needed something more concrete. I don't like how the "something else" is going so I'm switching back to this more hands-on approach. I'm hoping it will be the visual "glue" he needs to solidify the concepts.

I'm adding in the Get A Grip math lab from TOPS Science. I also used this years ago with the olders and am getting it back out. Yea! Math will be a lot more fun this year. This will work great for starting a math journal; a new idea I want to try this year with BigJ.
By the way, those brown things in the bottom of the box are lentils. They are great to work with. LittleJ loved scooping and pouring today as I tried to get my pictures.