Cocoa's puppies are two weeks old today.  All of them are around 1lb.  I'll start today with some sleep pictures - nothing cuter than puppies all piled up together snoozing!

The puppies' lives continue to revolve around eating and sleeping - two very important things for young puppies!  Cocoa spends most of her time with the puppies, but she is starting to spend short blocks of time resting on her bed or playing outside.  Below are their individual pictures.  One major change from last week, of course, is their eyes!  They opened them over the weekend.  Holly was first on Saturday, followed by Strawberry on Sunday, and everyone else on Monday.  You can click on them to see more pictures.  They were all very wiggly during photo time this week!  As soon as I set them down for a picture, they were off in search of a meal or something warm.  I focused on faces so you can see their eyes.

We continue to work our way down our waiting list.  Thanks again for your patience as we do so.  Thanks for stopping by my blog!

I feel like a real homeschool mom now by doing a "curriculum picks" post.  (If you aren't familiar with these posts, just browse a few homeschool blogs, and you'll soon understand what I mean.)  Before you read this post, you may find it helpful to read my review of the Abeka K4 program that we used in the 2015-2016 school year.

Let me begin by explaining some factors that were important to me as I went curriculum shopping.  These aren't necessarily in order of importance.

1. Biblical worldview – We wanted a curriculum that supported our Biblical worldview – especially in the subjects of science and history.  We also considered this for the subjects of language arts - reading, spelling, grammar, & phonics.
2. Multi-level teaching – As we’ve learned more about structuring our homeschool, the idea of teaching our kids together for the subjects of Bible, history, science, music, art, and gym began to appeal to us.  We were delighted to learn that there are curricula out there that are set up to teach these subjects with a multi-level approach.  We still feel it is important to teach our children on their individual levels for language arts and math, but for nearly everything else they can be combined and do assignments that are appropriate for them.  Some of the reasons we like this approach are time saving, family bonding, and sanity for me.
3. Creative & Hands-on – While I appreciate workbooks and the purpose they have in schooling, I wanted something that had creative, hands-on activities planned into the curriculum.
4. Living Books – Living books are “real” books as opposed to textbooks.  Think children’s literature.  I wanted a curriculum that incorporated living books.  I believe textbooks have their place as well, but I didn't want only textbooks.
5. Reasonably priced & resuable – Price certainly played a factor as we shopped.  We are willing to pay for good quality materials, but there is a limit.  We also wanted something that could be reused for the next little pumpkin coming along.  Of course, we understand there will be workbooks or worksheets that will need to be purchased every year.

 
So, here’s the run down of what we are doing here at Russell Homestead for the 2016-2017 school year.
 
The core of our curriculum for 2016-2017 is My Father’s World (MFW).  My Father’s World is a curriculum written by David & Marie Hazell.  I like the fact that the Hazells have served as Bible translators, and Marie has a teaching degree and teaching experience.  You can read more about their company on their website, but here is a brief overview.  We were BLESSED to have a homeschool friend lend us the kindergarten program to try out this spring.  We used it for 8 weeks, and we loved it!
 
MFW has complete programs (all subjects – even music & art if you purchase the deluxe packages) for kindergarten and grade 1.  Starting in grade 2, they have a “family learning cycle” where you teach all your kiddos the same Bible, science, and history.  Beginning at grade 2, they do not offer language arts and math.
 
The grades for our crew this school year are AJ – grade 1 and CJ – K.  MFW recommends that you teach all of K and all of Grade 1 to each of your kiddos, if you happen to have children in both grades.  However, as I looked over the programs, I felt like that would be too much for us with two preschoolers (three come October when baby #5 is due to debut).  So, I’m using the K curriculum as my base since AJ didn’t do it last year.  I will teach all of the science, Bible, history, art, and music from the K curriculum to both AJ & CJ.  Then for language arts and math, I will do the K with CJ and the Grade 1 with AJ.  (The following year, I would like to use the same approach, but do the science, Bible, history, art, and music from Grade 1.)
 
In addition to MFW, we will be doing a kit from Exploration Science.  The kit is designed for physical science for grades K-3.  It is set up to do 1 lesson and 1 experiment/activity per week.  There are 4 projects in the curriculum, such as building a car and a scale.  The reason we chose to purchase this kit is for Mr. Russell to have a part in our homeschool curriculum.  He is at home one morning per week and wanted to do some type of science lesson.  Rather than having me explain the science lesson in our the MFW world curriculum and what we’ve done thus far, we think it will be easier for him to have his own thing to do with the kids.  Plus, since it is only designed for one lesson a week, it fits perfectly.  So, yes, our boys will get double science, but I doubt it will hurt them.
 
We will also be using Character Trails from Character Concepts.  We were introduced to this curriculum at the CHAP (Christian Homeschoolers Association of PA) in May.  We heard the authors, Rick & Marilyn Boyer speak.  This curriculum teaches 12 character concepts through the use of stories – 1 Bible story, 1 story from history, and 1 story from everyday life.  The curriculum is a hardbound book with the stories and CD with stories that expound on the stories in the book.  There are no workbooks or anything.  It is a character training course.  We plan to do it over breakfast.  On mornings that I’m especially busy, I will pop in the CD with Uncle Rick and on other mornings I will read the stories.
 
As we look at the summer, we are eager for a break from schooling, but we are very excited to use our new curriculum in the fall.

​P.S. If you haven't seen Cocoa's 2016 puppies - see them here!

Cocoa's puppies are one week old today!  Each puppy has now doubled his/her birth weight - a very important accomplishment that should be reached by 7-10 days old.  Above are new pictures of each puppy.  Click on their pictures to go to their individual pages where I added several more photos (scroll down to the bottom of their individual pages for the newest photos).  The photos may look similar to their newborn photos, but remember they are now double in size!

At this young age, the puppies' lives revolve around eating and sleeping.  Their eyes and ears are still closed, but they are becoming more and more active.  They can pull themselves all over their whelping box in search of Mama, a meal, or a warm sibling.  As we observe them, we look for them to be piled up with siblings and to be twitching while they sleep - 2 signs of healthy, happy puppies.
 
At this point, Cooca takes complete care of the puppies' needs.  We focus on keep Cocoa well-fed and hydrated.  We keep the bedding clean in their box.  We do not allow our children to handle them until their eyes open, but the adults of the household do some handling to weigh them or just cuddle them.  Their whelping box is in a main area of our house, which means even from this tender age, they are becoming accustomed to typical household smells, sights, and sounds.

To those on our waiting list, thanks for your patience!  We are in the process of working our way down the list.  We keep the "Status of the Puppies" on the "Current Litter" page as up-to-date as possible.