My first time watching lunar eclipse

One day I watched the lunar eclipse. And at first the left bottom side of the moon got darker and darker and darker. Then when the lunar eclipse was actually starting I saw it got bluish-blackish, and then it was getting kind of orangish. And then it got red. Then it was finally almost over and I had fell asleep.

Temptation in the wilderness

This is me and my friends and we're coloring Jesus in the wilderness.

This day in church we learned about temptation. Temptation is when you really want to do something, but you know you shouldn't. Once we learned about a lady who made cookies and she told her son to wait and he didn't wait. He was feeling temptation. But he snuck one, and then him and his friend snuck another and another and they said that wouldn't be too much. But they didn't eat their dinner. Her mother said, "You ate some cookies, didn't you?" So what I learned is you should wait.

This is the picture we were coloring: Jesus was really hungry, but he knew he shouldn't use his powers to turn anything into food. And the devil came down and said, "If you are the son of the Lord, then turn those rocks into bread."

Whoa. This was taken our last day of church in Big Rapids and Addy dictated this to me 4 weeks later. I can't believe her recall. I barely remember talking about the cookies — and I was the teacher. It sure is nice to know that when I feel like I'm herding cats in the Sunday School classroom, something is actually sticking.

Making teepees

This is me and Dori making teepees. First you take a half piece of a circle and then you like fold it into a cone shape and leave a hole in the top. And you put the straws through the hole. And then you tie the teepees together. Then you stick it onto a piece of paper!

We really like the Usbourne book "Living Long Ago," which is part of our history and geography curriculum. This was part of the unit about houses and homes people lived in. The book offers lots of fun activity ideas for trying the concepts learned in the reading. Of course Addy wants to do every single one. It's nice that Dori can start to participate now, too. This was back in Reed City.

I went to see John McCain

I went to see John McCain, but I ended up seeing Mrs. McCain. We had a book for John McCain to sign, but when we found out Mrs. McCain was there we didn't ask anybody to sign it because John McCain wasn't there. I learned a lot. It was very very very very very fun.

The night before Michigan's Super Tuesday, it was more important for John McCain to be at the Auto Show in Detroit rather than in Grand Rapids, so we met Cindy at a rally at the Kent County Republican Headquarters instead. The next day Addy wondered if we could go door-to-door campaigning in Reed City for McCain. We let her hang a poster in her room instead.

At the rally we made her shake hands with U.S. Sen. John Thune from South Dakota and with Cindy McCain, telling her she would appreciate it later. At left is Addy with Cindy, at right we're standing in front of the Straight Talk America bus.

Pilgrims

This is my Pilgrim village. Their boat to get here was the Mayflower. Actually the Mayflower wasn't the first boat to get here.

I built this village by myself. I put everything around where I wanted. I let Mommy and Daddy help me. It was very fun, but after we took a picture of it we had to throw it away.

We're obviously behind on the blog; she made this village before Thanksgiving with a paper punch-out kit Aunt Carol found somewhere. I did make her sacrifice it when we were packing for the move. : ( It had been up for three months by then.

Note from Mom

It has been wonderful to watch Addy learn and grow this year. We were off school a couple weeks while I was in and out of the hospital, so once we got back into things it allowed me to see her in a new light. I suppose it's sort of how you never notice your own kids getting taller, but the kids you see once a month shoot up each time.

It's the little things this week that shed light on what's going on in her mind. We opened her art book and she recognized a painting by Picasso, something I couldn't do until ... oh, about three years ago. So what if she called him Kipasso?

Bob and I were talking to each other and mentioned something about the numbers 7 and 5. Addy, who wasn't really part of the conversation, piped up in what I did not believe was enough time to do any addition and said, "Oh, so there are 12 of them?" I had to use my fingers — no kidding — to figure out what she was talking about.

I read from the Bible and began to tell about a famine. She interrupted me: "Oh, I know this story! It's about the seven fat cows and the seven skinny cows and the seven fat cows meant seven good years and the seven skinny cows meant the people would be hungry!" This happened to be a different famine story, but I was amazed at her recall. Soon enough she'll learn there are plenty of famine stories in the Bible!

I went to a spelling bee.

I went to a spelling bee. Everybody had fun watching me and I had fun in the spelling bee. I spelled mop, M-O-P. I spelled hat. And I spelled dad.

It was really hard to wait for my turn because I like spelling words. There were two kids who talked a little bit loud.

I won first place and I got a certificate and a coupon to Pizza Hut and M&Ms. I ate the M&Ms right after the spelling bee.

Maggie and Nini came.

Thirteen Grand Rapids area homeschoolers participated in the kindergarten spelling bee. They were all so very cute and all improved a great deal since the practice in November. They were given a list of 120 three- and four-letter words to study, ranging in difficulty from CAT to PUMP. After each round, any child who misspelled two words got a round of applause, certificate and prizes, then sat down. They didn't do a spell-down to the end as they would with older kids. Addy was one of five of the 13 who made no spelling mistakes, so they each received first-place stickers on their certificates.

Link to the results: http://www.homeschoolbuilding.org/Item.php3?id=7062