I'm still alive!

Well its been a while since I had the time/energy/motivation to post! A lot has happened in the last few months! The main reason I have been on hiatus is that I am expecting baby #4 in March! This has been by far the most difficult pregnancy I have had. Morning sickness...actually all day sickness...which seemed to be never ending, fatigue, hot flashes and on and on!

It is really funny though after a few weeks which I thought would never end I can't imagine that I really felt that bad! It is really amazing how memory works. It is like that for me in labor too....at the time I feel like I might die...but just a short while after giving birth I seem to think it wasn't all that bad. There must be some sort of selective memory function for mothers!!!

Anyway in the midst of all the sickness, my husband started a new job working 2nd shift which has been an adjustment to say the least and I started homeschooling my 5 year old. It has been going relatively well all things considered! We are following the alphabet path from the Serendipity blog. We are already beginning letter F this week

Here's a quick recap with no pictures since I didn't have the energy or presence of mind to take out the camera (one of my main purposes for blogging in the first place *sigh*)

A is for apples. We read some books about apples and apple orchards and we cut apart an apple to see the star shape inside. A is for ants we read a book about ants and made an ant hill drawing with raisins for ants. A is for Alligator we read about alligators and painted a giant alligator. Finally A is for Air we read a book about air and did some air experiments with balloons and bubbles. We also read books by the author Frank Asch



B is for Birds. We read bird books all week and played a matching game with parts of a bird cards, learned about bird feet and matched bird tracks to the correct bird, painted a bird and looked at where different birds live. We also did Bubble painting by putting dish soap, food coloring and water in a baking pan, blew bubbles in with a straw and then set a piece of white paper on the bubbles to make a bubble print! We read books by Jan Brett.



C is for clouds we read the Cloud book by Tommie de Paola and made cotton ball clouds. C is for continents we traced the continents from our big continent puzzle,
colored them in and drew on a landmark for each continent, Grand Canyon North America, Rain forests South America, Penguins Antarctica, Desert Africa, Castles Europe, Great Wall of China Asia and the Great Barrier Reef Australia. We read books by author Eric Carle.



D is for Dinosaurs. We read lots of dinosaur books, looked at our dinosaur figures to separate carnivores from herbivores, drew a picture of what we thought happened to make the dinosaurs extinct with a description of what happened and colored a picture of a dinosaur fossil complete with an attached narrative explaining how fossils are made. We read books by author Tommie de Paola.



E is for Experiments and we fell completely flat on this week!! We did 0 experiments all week. It was all we could do to get our reading, math, handwriting and poetry in. We did read books by author Lois Ehlert.



Too bad but hopefully we will be back on track this week for F week! F is for Flowers and Fire Safety!!

I will post again soon to share the other everyday school activities we do for math, reading, phonics, religion, and handwriting! I hope to get back to posting more regularly now that I am feeling better! We have really been enjoying ourselves!!

Katie

Little Flower Bugs

I wanted to just give an explanation of how I named my blog! I have had a special devotion to St Therese for many years, in fact my oldest daughter is named after her! So I knew that I wanted to honor her in the title. As for the bugs!! There is a story about how the lady bug got it's name as "Our Lady's bug" which I have pasted here:

The most commonly circulated story about how the ladybug got its name is quite interesting. According to that account, quite a long time ago in Europe, a small farming village was experiencing unprecedented problems with insects that kept devouring the crops. Faced with certain ruin, the peasants fell to their knees and began to beg the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary to send help in their calamity. Their simple faith was soon rewarded. The farmers began to notice a change in the crops. The dying foliage started to revitalize and greenness once again appeared on the landscape. Something was definitely reversing the devastation. As they looked closer, the farmers noticed small red bugs with black dots festooning their tiny concave, shell-like, bodies. Like soldiers called in to battle, they were eating the culprits—destructive aphids.

“Our Lady’s bugs, Our Lady’s beetles,” the grateful villagers proclaimed. Eventually, as the small insects became a familiar part of their lives, the people shortened their name to ladybugs, the term by which they are still known today and perhaps one of the reasons why they are so well-loved. Whatever the case, ladybugs are the allies of farmers; they are tiny soldiers that patrol the fields making sure there will be food on the table for everyone.

So I decided that since bugs and flowers go together I could honor both St Therese and the Blessed Mother in the title of my blog to hopefully remind me to live each day with a childlike spirit like St Therese and to always stay close to the Blessed Mother as model of Mother.

Katie

Adventures in Blogging

Well here it goes! After following blogs for some time now, I have decided to give it a try! I have thought about blogging for a while but have been intimidated to begin!

I have found so many great ideas on other blogs and I never seem to find the time to DO the great things I find because I am always finding other great ideas! I am hoping that this blog will help me to be accountable for being creative with my children. I am also planning on posting about our upcoming homeschool adventures this fall. I am thinking that blogging a few times a week will give me accountability in holding to our school schedule!

I am not sure that I will have lots of fantastic ideas to share but this will be a place for me to document the adventures of daily life in our family. It will be a place for me to see the ways that I am succeeding as a mother, teacher, wife and daughter of God and the ways in which I need to grow in these areas. I am looking forward to "meeting" others in the blogging world and sharing in their adventures too!

Katie