In Texas, spring vacations are all about relaxing, sight seeing, and getting a tan. Well, that's exactly what we did minus the tan plus fishing. More like sunburns for our fair skin-ded family. (Texas word)
Speaking of burns...boy were we burnt-out with school. So hitting the road for a week of guilt free vacation was just in time.
We started at a gator farm in Grand Saline where Katie was greeted with a baby alligator to pet......
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| (No, we didn't pet these!) |
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| ....and a ferret named Prissy. |
Then headed out to Lake Caddo:
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| The Lotus' were beautiful. |
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| Daddy scowled about her short shorts only to remember he packed her bag :) Katie and I will be cleaning out some drawers this week! |
To top it off, we just by chance ended up taking vacation the week of the Homeschool Bookfair. My husband attended the bookfair with us for the first time this year. Even though it's crowded, it's encouraging to see so many families like us!
At the book fair, we purchased the little reader story books that Katie loves by Rod and Staff. These story books are written and illustrated by the Anabaptist community and cost about $2 and some change per copy. Katie loves anabaptists and mennonites because of their cotton dresses, bonnets, and simple way of living. The books aren't bright and stimulating but instead peaceful, simple, and classical storylines. It's about kids helping their parents, being kind to others, and being creative. She couldn't wait to get home and read the stories!
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| Katie's favorite |
We also purchased some readers about Christian Heroes from YWAM. (stands for Youth With A Mission) I could have purchased them all (yikes) but I started with 2 female heroes since Katie is a female. One particular book about a lady named Amy Carmichael inspired Katie to start praying about opening an orphanage. :)
Most little ones usually really love math or dread it. Mine is a dreader. "Oh mom, do we have to do Math? Can we do Math last?" While we purchased our normal ACE curriculum at the book fair, I was scouting out something to make math interesting for miss Katie. Just something fun to merge with our current math. We came across a booth called Math-U-See. We stopped and let the salesman do the demo. While, it had lots of colorful interesting blocks, I am always skeptical of "new concepts". So we picked up theses recommended books called Life of Fred. It takes you through a fictional character's life named Fred who encounters the need to use Math in everyday life. After all, even at 30 years old, I still don't understand why we need Algebra! We came home and whizzed through 40 pages of Life of Fred giggling the whole way! I finally said, "Okay, lets save some for later!" If you have a Math dreader like me, you might want to check out Life of Fred.
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| Life of Fred Butterflies |
