Sorry it is blurry, but every year since October 2015, we take a Tree House Photo… Here are the ones from past…
October 2019 – in the treehouse at the “new house”.
The next photo taken in October 2019, will more than likely be the last of its kind. The last photo in the original tree house at the “old house”, because we are passing our beloved home onto another family, while we continue to make memories at our “new house”.
What a great way to start off our journey back to homeschooling (more on this tomorrow)! We learned about many different science topics today at the Infinity Science Center, and we had a blast! We even got to watch Daddy put out a van fire on the side of the Interstate, and I was able to make it to an afternoon closing! Success! Tomorrow, we crack the books of the new curriculum! Here is to another 180 curriculum days of the 2019-2020 school year!
September garden pics..
Unfortunately, Iz was sick, but Roo enjoyed these activities very much! 
Happy Birthday Roo!
I love this pink flamingo!
09/20/2019
Dear Teacher,
We see how hard you work during school hours, but we know your work day doesn’t end there. We know you sometimes have to grade papers, complete lesson plans, or other work related activities at home. We know your passion for your students’ success is part of who you are, and continues beyond the 4 walls of BASIS Baton Rouge. For this, we are extremely thankful, and some of the reasons this is such a difficult letter to write.
We have decided to go back to homeschooling our children. Though we support the vision of BASIS and think it is a great asset to the Baton Rouge community, we have come to realize that it is not the right fit for us. We have come to feel as though the teachers, staff, and student families are like an extended family, so this decision has not come lightly. Continue reading “A letter to the girls’ teachers…”
So, we will begin year 2 at BASIS again. There is much we love about this school. As we navigate through 4th and 5th grade, we will continue to evaluate if it is the right fit for our family. The academic load was intense last year, especially since our girls are dyslexic, BUT, they still managed to maintain the 90s club recognition through the entire year last year… so we shall continue on this road. Also, we love that they have breaks, recesses, PE and Jiu Jitsu, drama, engineering, art, foreign language, etc. As long as our kids are happy, and making progress, we will keep them where they are. Though, there is much to love and to be missed about homeschooling.
And this guy, will be in Pre-K4 4x/week!
The girls did a great job tonight! They said the camp staff assigned roles based on personality. Isabella was a hotel manager, equipped with a clipboard… And Riley was always ready serve, as a bellhop! Spot on!
Since week 1 of Homeschooling the girls (and boy) have been able to spend some time with their cousins and grandparents, and we have eased into our lessons. They have been swimming, spent some time on the farm playing with the mini-horses, completed a 2 week job of watering plants for a neighbor, etc… and completed their school work.
Week 2 of Homeschooling was Lance’s first week as solo teacher, and he did a fantastic job. Our goal was for him to get comfortable with our Math and Reading curriculum. The kids not only did their math and reading, they practiced piano, prepared a few meals (from scratch), yoga, estimated and measured how many bricks we would need for a brick walkway (and were only off by 1). The kids were well behaved all the way through bedtime, which to me means they were happy and content.
Week 3 of Homeschooling… this is our week 3, and Lance and I are co-teaching this week.
I must say I am 100% pleased with the All About Reading curriculum, and the girls are loving it as well. Not only do they get to manipulate letter tiles and review old and learn new reading concepts, they get to do really fun activities too. Roo is on chapter 3 of her reader and has fed a monster, played phonogram bingo, cut and paste activities, etc. Iz has had some really cute activities as well. She got to design her own floor plan (which lends itself to math), but went along with a story that she read about a family living on a houseboat for a summer… She got to “buy” different breeds of dogs as she learned her words… and she is moving right along!
As far as math goes, Roo has been working on graphs this week. She enjoyed making her own graphs with stickers and dot paint and answering questions about how many more or fewer… and she is about to move on to a new concept, and Iz is doing some algebra through 100. She particularly liked a dice rolling game where she rolled two dice and made a two digit number, and then had to come up with the other number that when added to the number she rolled would equal 100. She also completed a 5 square activity similar to sudoko but with larger numbers.
Typing (Orton Gillingham based), and handwriting have also been pretty regular around here.
And for recess… well, they enjoyed our “pond in the works” (aka: “mud puddle”).
We still have a couple of days of week 3 to go. Besides the basics, we plan on putting some more plants in the ground (with the kids), and getting some ladybugs and learning of their benefits in the garden… working some more on the “mud puddle”. We were supposed to be going to the aquarium, but the trip was cancelled. Instead we bought some algea fish for our ponds and will be learning about them and livebearer fish.
Beyond the Elm 