Dakota's Photography

Here are some layouts Dakota did with some pictures he took of Elijah last week.

I can't decide which set I like best.

Dakota - Working

I thought I'd share a picture of how Dakota spends a lot of time.

Dakota has been busy working on our homeschool website.
http://www.nelcha.org/

In the picture above he has 3 screens hooked up to one computer so he can see three pages at the same time. It's really cool how you can scroll the one mouse from screen to screen.

People would really not believe the insane amount of hours Dakota puts into working on this website. Co-op is starting up so there's a lot of extra work in the fall and also in the spring when we plan for the next school year. Once he gets over this hump he'll only have the newsletter each month and that won't be bad at all. It only gets hairy when everything is due at once.

So now you have a peek into Dakota's world.

Family Day

Today is Jody's day off so we headed out to have family day. All three of the guys enjoy taking pictures so that is what we set off to do. I didn't take any pictures so I'm sharing pictures Elijah took. I hope to share some from Jody and Dakota later.

This is an old train track that crosses over the Ouachita River. My mom tells stories of walking across this train bridge when she was a little girl.


They guys seem to love to take water pictures.

Elijah snapped this picture of Dakota in the van.



It's always interesting to see what Elijah took pictures of. You never know what he'll get.




We had a fun day. They guys took some pictures and we had lunch out, a trip to Hobby Lobby and got a snow cone on the way home.

Back to our workboxes

Now that we are starting back with school it means workbox time again. I really love these workboxes.

This year we are going to start off using them a bit different than we did before and see how it goes.

Since Elijah and I are doing this notebook rotation several boxes will stay the same all week. Some of the fun boxes will change up.


This week are focusing on these notebooks; World History, Copy Work, Creation, Presidents and Stamps. Each day we will also do spelling and math.

I should say that I'm not a fan of spelling for young children. Spelling list are pointless and do not teach spelling. I came across All About Spelling . It's not just a spelling program, it will help with reading issues.

This week in workboxes we have:
1. Math Wizardry
2. All About Spelling
3. Cat in the Hat unit
4. World History
5. pipe cleaner craft
6. Presidents
7. Copy work
8. Creation
9. Stamp collecting
10. Egypt dig
11. Reader Rabbit language computer game
12. Tri-Ominos game

My Art Journal

Both Dakota and Elijah have been busy working on various art projects. I decided to start an art journal and have fun with them.

I bought this sketch book at Wal-Mart.

I am not an artist so I really had no idea what I would put in this art journal. So on the first page I just doodled.

Then I decided to do some of the same projects Elijah was also doing.

A friend had a blog post "Are You Part of the Herd?" This picture reminded me of her post so I wrote a little bit about that here.
I used colored pencils on this picture.


I used oil pastels on this drawing.

Elijah was very impressed with my eye for some reason. This was done with colored pencils.

Elijah and I both did this abstract face. His turned out much better than mine.
This was done with water color paints.


I've had a great time working in my art journal. It's fun doing art while the kids are also doing art and encouraging one another. Elijah seems to be very impressed with my art. He asked me if I took art lessons when I was a kid. I love his innocent eyes viewing my art.

I would like to encourage you to try doing art for yourself while the kids are doing art. You probably feel like you don't have time to do art for yourself, but you should always make the time to make memories with your kids.

Summer Swap

I signed Elijah up for a little summer swap going on through someones blog. He ended up with a pal from Texas who is also a 9 year old boy.

Elijah fixed up a box of goodies and sent to his summer swap pal and this is what his pal sent him.
I excited about the Greece book. We will use that when we study Ancient Greece this year.

It was a fun swap.

fruit basket

Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Dear Lord,
Dump the fruit basket on me!