We went out front and learned how to spell Earth using things from the Earth. It hurt my souls to let them pick my flowers but it does look so pretty.

Next project we learned about ocean pollution. We went through our recycling bin and used some trash from breakfast to be our pollution. Then we filled our bin with fresh water and added all the junk. We even had an olive “oil” spill.

It was pretty gross. I asked the kids if they’d like to swim in that water and they were like ewwww mom! I told them that parts of our oceans really do look this way. We discussed the importance of recycling and using as little plastic as we can. Then I asked them if they could bring the water back to fresh.

Of course it was not easy. But they sure tried. I feel like they really grasped the importance of recycling and not littering.

On our white board we talked about all the things we could do differently to help the Earth. My kids love doing this. I write the words and they draw most of the pictures.

And now I’ve created little Earth police. They are very serious about turning lights off now.

For art they colored their own Earth and added bandaids with ideas of how to heal the Earth. My kids love wasting bandaids so this was fun for them.

We ended our week with a trip to the beach to learn about Sea Beans. I was amazed to learn that these little beans travel as far as Africa and end up on our shores.

Somehow our bean search turned into hermit crab catching and now we have 2 new pets: George & Steve.

Grace caught a bunch of sea beans that looked like mini pine cones. Well when we got home apparently shrimp were living in them because we had hundreds of them swimming around.

Lydia had fun with her baby friends. I took the cutest picture of her and one of her boyfriends. Lydia only likes boys. So she has like 4 boyfriends and 1 girlfriend that when they’re together they literally fight the whole time!

I’m obsessed. I love my garden. It is not large by any means but this tiny rectangle of goodness brings me so much joy.

The sunflowers have just started to bloom and it brings back so many good memories. I remember planting them with my mom in our backyard on Long Island when I was a kid.

I can’t wait until they all are blooming. Up against the white fence it’s going to look beautiful.

The lettuce was a fail. From far away it looks like the healthiest thing but I never pulled out the weaker links and now it’s just jam packed and covered in aphids.

The tomatoes are doing ok as long as I caterpillar pick every day. Those things are relentless but I can’t kill them. So every morning I go out and toss them over my fence into the neighbors yard. It really is hard to garden without pesticides but we are doing it. Some tomatoes have been sacrificed because of it.

My pride and joy though is these carrots! You can’t see them growing so it’s so rewarding to pull out a big orange carrot. Like every time more exciting than the next. You might say I’m a little crazy about these carrots. I am.

And they taste even better. We have so many that we let friends come over and pick their own.

My second favorite is the sweet peas. For awhile they just looked like a huge messy weed but then they started flowering and now everyday we pick 6-8 pods. My kids love it.

My cucumbers died. I am in mourning. I think the peas choked them out. And the eggplant even tho they were all planted the same day is still a small plant. I guess they just grow slower. This has been such an awesome experience for my kids. I let them take care of it from weeding the beginning gardening and planting the seeds, making the compost dirt, watering and pick off caterpillars to the harvest. They always ask me, “Are we real farmers mom?” We sure are guys.

Celebrating the Last Supper with my babies and their friends is the best tradition I’ve ever started.

This is our third annual Last Supper. We get mini plastic “wine” glasses, we break bread and read the story of the Last Supper.

After we went outside with our pitcher of water. We sat in a circle, read the Bible story of the washing of the feet then we passed the pitcher around washing our friends feet. Listening to the giggles and the story come to life for them just makes my whole day.

Seeing Lydia be a part of it this year was the best. Every year builds on the year before and my kids will always know the truth of Easter. That Jesus died for their sins and that He loves them more than they will ever know.

And while we still celebrate with the bunny and the eggs, nothing is more special than the day we celebrate the last supper.

This year I tried it with just Lydia and her little friends. And you know what, they totally got it. They loved the wine glasses, the sharing of the bread and the washing of the feet. They may not know the reason behind all this but next year they might just remember a little bit of it and smile.

Our spring unit ended with a trip to Butterfly World. It was a such a treat because Madeline, Max, Ben, Brynn and Jolie met us there.

The tour guide was so great. She caught several butterflies for us to see up close and we got to touch a caterpillar.

But nothing beat the Butterfly that landed on Max face!!

He looks like the poster child for Butterfly World.

They even have a big museum 🤢

We took home some milkweed plants and were lucky enough to find 2 monarch caterpillars.

I love Easter, it’s all the Jesus minus the stress. Christmas is beautiful but Easter has a more laid back vibe. No big presents, no extreme baking and easier part… I don’t host this holiday. We go to my sisters.

Lydia’s baby class started off the holiday with a little party. We had bunny booty pancakes for snack.

I read to them One More Tickle and Biscuits Easter. They actually listened. I was stunned. I tried all kinds of things today to keep them happy. I brought bubble wrap and bubbles, an Easter egg sensory bin and stickers. I’m pretty sure this little judges were impressed and they are a hard group to please. .

The homeschool celebrations continued with a Park day that I put together with pin the tail of the bunny, bunny hop races, “egg” and spoon races and an Easter egg hunt. The kids had the best time!

Even the Easter Bunny made an appearance!

Easter with my family was so sweet. There are so many little babies. Check out this cousin crew!

They don’t even know how lucky they are. Soon we will be adding little Matilda to the group. It’s crazy in one year we’ve doubled cousins.

But where it all began… my faves of all the world!

It’s sometimes sad to realize we don’t all live in the same house anymore. We aren’t fighting o we sharing clothes or eating the last of the English muffins. We blinked and we all have our own families. But these people are my first loves. My bffs.

Tonight there was a storm and it’s been months since it’s really rained here. So we took the kids out in the yard and all laid on the futon and watched the storm roll in. I always loved doing that as a kid. We counted the seconds between thunder and lightning and I told them how when I was little my grandma told me that thunder was just the angels bowling.

There is nothing I love more about our homeschool than snuggled up reading with my kids. Right now we are reading Winnie the Pooh. It makes my day when they make a connection and retell the story to me.

My pretty little farmer girl.

Lydia loves her little rocker. Sitting on the front porch is our new nightly thing before bath.

Timmy wrote a book today. He says he’s an author now. I love his drawings..

I just love Lydia’s baby walk. It a belly first kind of a skip hop run. Like she’s bouncing along to her destination. It’s so cute.

I am starting to understand her baby talk. Yesterday she asked to to close a door and open a snack. She’s so happy that I finally can translate her language. Her new word for No is NUH UH with a head shake. Her favorite thing to eat is apples. Eats them just like a big kid.

We picked basil from the garden to add to our soup. The kids watched as I cleaned and dried it. Then came the cutting. Grace is like, “Mommmm what are you doing? We didn’t just grow it so you could kill it!”

I love the sunrise and I really want my kids to love it too. So I woke them up at 6:30, packed us a breakfast, some baggies for shells and their paint set. It was the most beautiful sunrise ever. This time of year is a good time to go with the time change. Just add it to the list of the amazing benefits of homeschooling. I kept them in their pjs and that’s how we started our school day.

When we got home they made seashell necklaces.

We had a couple parties for St Patrick’s Day. On especially for Lydia’s little buddies and one for our church group.

For Lydia’s baby party I bought green balloons, shamrock cookies, fruit loops, green grapes, green apples and decorated their tables pretty.

I love that I’m able to spend this alone time with Lydia and her friends. Sometimes I feel bad that she has to tag along with all the big kid events. But hard work??!! These babies give me a run for my money. So far the only way to their heart is food and bubbles.

For our church group we learned all about St Patrick’s life and good works. The kids love the legend that he drive out all the snakes. The shamrock really is a great way to teach the trinity. I guess St Patrick knew what he was doing.

We were lucky that Father walked in just as we were preparing to pray over our food so he said the blessing for us.

On the morning of St Patrick’s Day my kids woke up to some leprechaun magic. And by magic I mean green pee and gold glitter foot prints.

The rest of the day my kids were setting up evidence that a leprechaun was in our house. This one is a half eaten applesauce and juice box with gold pipe cleaners as “shoes” that the leprechaun left behind.

I printed some St Patricks math worksheets to go with Lucky Charms cereal. We made green pancakes and that was the end of the holiday.

March started off really warm. For sure we thought winter was over and summer was here. But we were wrong. Since these pictures we’ve actually had to put the pool away. I love cool weather. Every summer I beg for it but I’m ready for a little summer.

We celebrated Dr Seuss birthday in style! Our homeschool group moms really put their heart into this get together. We even had the kids dress up as book characters. Timmy was the grinch, Grace was Cindy Lou Who and Lydia was a mini cat in the hat girl. I’m so glad that my kids have all these friends. Homeschool kids may actually be more socialized than the world thinks. Sometimes I struggle more with finding time to do school work because we has so many play dates.

We went to Sea World twice in March because the weather was amazing. Mornings were in the 50’s and afternoons in the 70’s. Plus we are almost up on our season passes so we wanted to get our monies worth. We love Sea World especially the penguins. I know not everybody is a fan and I get that but as a Homeschooler I just can’t think of a better way to spark a love of learning when it comes to the ocean. I still remember seeing the Shamu show as a kid and thinking I want to save animals too! There were 2 new pilot whales there and they were so cute! Loved the kids it was like they were smiling. We took Tims parents with us to treat them for their anniversary. It was nice for Tim to spend time with his parents.

Our kids are so big. Tall enough to ride all the kid rides alone. They were so excited.

Look at Timmy with his arms around her being protective. He’s so sweet. Lydia on the other hand not a huge fan of any rides. It starts off good and well you’ll see in the photos lol.

We had lunch at the Shark Restaurant and I can’t rave about it enough. Food was amazing but the view was totally cool!

Timmy and Grace got their very first library cards. They were so excited. I gave them both their own bags to check out as many books as they can carry.when we got home they played librarian.

We made slime for the millionth time but this time was different. Grace made it into a tiara and put it in her hair. I have ptsd from the time she cut all her hair off so I panicked and threw her in the tub to wash it all out. I wasn’t sure how it was gonna go down since it’s made of glue but it was fine.

We painted little gardens.

I love seeing the way Timmy spells. He actually hates to spell on his own. He hates not being right. I was debating whether spelling should be part of our curriculum but when he cried today that he wishes he could spell it broke my heart. I’m so proud of his little sounded out word creations but I think I might have to add spelling to the Language Arts Loop.

We planted a flower garden in the front yard. Spring is definitely in the air. I love waking up to the sounds of the birds at the crack of dawn. For real I do. I love how they take their baths in our bird baths every day.I don’t know if you can see the Mama cardinal in our glass bird bath but she’s there scrub a dub dub.

We did the food coloring and white carnations experiment. Another mom gifted us this test tube holder because she awesome. Grave loves flowers so this whole spring Unit is rocking her world.

I wish I took more pictures at the end because it was amazing how dark in color they were.

We made a resurrection garden for the first time this year. What a concrete way of teaching Easter.

We ordered ladybugs for our garden and invited some friends over to help us release them. It was fun until all the kids were crawling with ladybugs.

We bought a Venus fly trap and that’s been entertaining. Blows my mind every time.

Some pretty pictures, some funny and other just look like I torture them to smile.