The Children Playing

This video was taken in May, but I am just figuring out how to post videos.

Happy 6th Birthday Joshua!!

Yum! Birthday Cinnamon Rolls!

 

A Day Out With Thomas

Today the children went to the Orange Railway Museum in Perris for the "Day Out With Thomas" event. Joshua & Mercy on the caboose.
Say, "Thomas the Tank Engine!"

How Long Did It Take You To Vote?

Well, yesterday was Election Day and like a good little American I headed to the polls. Jason & I did not go until after he was home from work, so we expected a bit of a crowd. What we did not expect was a line about 80 people long when we arrived.

Our polling place was a homeowner’s association clubhouse in Chino (near Don Lugo). The building is set back from the street with a little parking lot out front. The line came out of the building, across the little lawn, down towards the street, & wrapped around to the sidewalk. Jason dropped me off to get in line. Good thing too, because the line kept getting longer. At one point I looked back & saw the line ended almost two houses down from the clubhouse!

We were told by the man in charge of the poll that they were having a problem with the polling machines (the paper was jamming & running out). We were all assured that we were going to be able to vote as long as we were in line by 8pm. At one point we were told that we could turn in our sample ballots and they would be counted! YEAH RIGHT! Some people did choose this option.

Finally, someone from the Registrar of Voters came out to fix the machines and the line started moving. Jason voted with a paper ballot. I voted electronically. Did our votes count?

In the end we waited over an hour and a half! As we drove off at 8:02 pm, the line was still out to the street.

First Grade: The 2nd Month

We had an exciting month! We started the month by reading Miss Nelson is Missing! to go along with our literature program (Veritas Press). At the end of that week Jason and I took Joshua to see a play based on the book at the Victoria Garden's Cultural Center. It was a great opportunity to expose Joshua to live theatre & he liked the fact that he was familiar with the story already.

In math we have been working on addition facts, counting money, telling time, fractions, reading & creating graphs, and patterns. Our reading covered some poetry, and we just started reading about Abram. Joshua is doing great in all of his studies! For the most part he has a good attitude about his work but we do have some bad days.

We had some field trips this past month:

• Disneyland! Very educational :)
• Irvine Park. We had a picnic lunch, visited the zoo, rode the train, checked out the pumpkin patch, & explored nature. We were so interested in the acorn woodpeckers we saw that we decided to study them for a week for Life Science.
• Pumpkin carving event with our homeschool group. We don't celebrate Halloween. And Joshua has never carved a pumpkin. But this was an interesting activity using a book entitled The Pumpkin Gospel. It describes how carving a pumpkin can be representative of God's saving work in a sinner's life. The inside of the pumpkin is like sin in our heart: yucky & smelly. We clean out our pumpkins just as Jesus cleans us out when He saves us, scooping out all the yucky stuff. Jesus puts a happy face on those He saves & gives us His light (the candle in the pumpkin) for us to shine for Him.

Well, November beckons with Thanksgiving, Joshua's birthday, the end of winterball, and holiday preparations!