Obama says Palin has no experience? Hmm... Let's examine this.

I just have to say that I saw this little compilation and thought it was awesome. These are the facts. When you put away the sweet talking and the charisma they you have the truth. The facts are what we need to look at. You will need to stop or pause the music player at the bottom of the blog while you play this video.

My Ballerinas

Hannah and Rebekah started Ballet today. Hannah took it briefly before when we lived in Colorado, but for Rebekah this was her first time. The looked so pretty all dressed in their black leotards, pink tights, ballet shoes, and hair in buns. I am impressed with thier teacher. She has studied in some major ballet companies and I believe she will be a great teacher. The girls did a good job. I spoke with the teacher briefly after class and she said they did well. She said that though Rebekah was shy when it was her turn to do something by herself that she did well and got over it. I hope it will bring her out of her fear of performance the same way that getting a dog has gotten her over her fear of dogs. They were so excited to tell me all about their class and came home and showed me some of what they learned. I was impressed that in the first class they already learned 3rd position. Before bed tonight Hannah was disapointed to learn that they will not be going to ballet every day but only once a week. Ah well... Keren on the other hand had a fit because she had to leave her "sissys" and couldn't dance with them. She is so used to doing everything ( even "school" ) right along side of them that she doesn't understand why she can't take ballet with them. Co-op on Wednesdays and Ballet on Thrusdays may be wierd for her for a while. It sure is easier for me to run a few errands with only one though :)

School Days, School Days

John left 4 1/2 weeks ago for Ft Benning for some Army Training. He will be gone for almost 6 months all together. We have really missed him but since he has been gone we have been very busy.We started back to school 4 Mondays ago. We have really been enjoying it this year!!! We are using a Charlotte Mason based approach to education and are loving it. We have fun reading, reading, and reading. The kids have really enjoyed reading about various birds in the Burgess Bird Book, and about fairy tales in the Blue Fairy Book. They have learned some great classic information which will help them in the Great Conversation. They learned about the Brave 300 Spartans who held back the Persain invasion of Greece and about Alexander the Great and his horse. They have learned about the coming of the Romans to England and how the Brittans were so brave and feriece that Cesear left with much respect for them. We are learning about Geography through a great Caldecot book named Paddle to the Sea. So far they have learned about the Great Lakes and how the rivers flow from one to the other and thus on to the Ocean.
Poetry is one of their favorites. They love to hear great poetry about children like themselves. Right now Beauty and the Beast stands out as the favorite story by far. At first, as I was reading it, Hannah tried to tell me that that was not how it went (she only knew the disney version), but soon she was very interested and wanted to know how it would end. She told her daddy all about it!
For math we are learning with a great program called Math U See. The kids love playing with the blocks to learn place value and figure out problems.
I am most excited about our new Spell to Write and Read program. So far the kids have learned all of the sounds of all of the letters and have them well memorized. They are currently working on the multiletter phonograms (or blends) and are doing very well memorizing them. We will start our first spelling list of 20 words on Monday. I dictated the word "apron" yesterday to Hannah and she spelled it correctly!!! The emphasis of this program is to learn all of the sounds of letters and multi letter phonograms first, spell second, and learn to write and read as a result of correct spelling. So far I see the benefit and am excited.
On Wednesdays Hannah and Bekah are going to a co-op. They are taking Art, Math, and Spanish there. They spend an hour on each and come home at 12:30. Today was their first day and they had so much fun. We have some Spanish homework to work on for next week.
Hannah and Bekah will be taking Ballet on Thursday afternoon. It is with a Christian fine arts company and has a basis in letting our talents be our worship. The kids are so excited about this! We went and got their ballet shoes on Monday and they have been wanting to wear them.
Fridays are our fun day.
We go on Nature Walks. We usually go to the Roper Mountain Science Center. While there we walk on the nature trails and look for new things to see (bugs, turtles, moss, fungus, etc...), and then head to the butterfly garden and pond. There is lots of great pond life and beautiful flowers to study.
This past friday we went to the Childrens Garden in Downtown Greenville. The kids got to look at the river and see how the water flows. They saw ducks and we discussed how the water flows off of their backs. They identified flowers and smelled some of the more fragrant plants in the herb garden. It was a lot of fun for them. Afterwards we made a trip to the interactive fountain where they had fun playing and getting wet.

Friday evening John came home for Labor Day weekend. We had a great time together as a family. We spent a lot of time just hanging out at home. We went to church together and just spent time being a family.
On Sat night John and I went on a date to Rio Grill. It was sooooooo good!!!!! Oh my word that steak was to die for!!!