last full day in Shenyang

We had a great day today. Both kiddos slept until 6:30am. What an improvement! The day is not only long but super long when they wake up at 3 am. We feel like we lived an entire day before breakfast.

It was "bath day" again for this little man. We knew it would be hard but it had to happen. We heard from his nannies that he does actually love taking a bath. So, we figure it's the "being so vulnerable" that he is getting used to. The bath lasted longer, 2.5 minutes, I was able to wash more of him and he cried for a bit longer afterwards. We strategically followed up bath time with lunch. He was right as rain within minutes and back to his fun-loving self.

At breakfast he used a straw for his juice. He didn't seem to be able to drink from an open cup or use a straw as of 4 days ago. The nannies told us he still got a bottle each morning. I also taught him how to hold a spoon properly at lunch. He loved that. He seems eager to feed himself. We were also told that part of Chinese culture is that the children don't do much for themselves so teaching him these things is fun and he seems excited to do them.

Some bum-push-ups today with dad.

He hasn't been a fan of quick movements but today he enjoyed this little ride.

All smiles!

Sorry for the bum shot of daddy-O but I wanted to show little man checking on his little sister. This was the first time that he was awake before her at nap time. He really wanted to get her up to play. So cute. When one of them is awake they think the other one should be too.

Horsey rides with dad.

He loved this as you can tell.

It's hard to get a good picture of this little guy.

He's so quick.

Another blurry yet adorable picture of this sparkle!

Little mommy caring for her bro. This is one of his sad moments.

Literally LH runs to get a tissue and come rub his back to help soothe him.

Best parts of the day:
-- we (the parents) for to hang out during nap time, watch a movie and pack for our travels tomorrow. One of both of us usually nap when they do.

-- baby girl said to her daddy this afternoon,"Dad you go sit. I'm playing with TyTy."
They played together for about 40 minutes. So cool!

--little man rolled toward me during nap time today and fell asleep. We usually put him in the middle of our huge bed for his nap. He plays for a bit and then lays down to sleep.

Something very interesting:
Our guide from CCAI came to our hotel room tonight to deliver the official documents we need for the next city. Ty had just woken up so daddy was holding him. I needed to review each piece for accuracy (10 documents with 5 pages in each set) so we asked him to come in and have a seat. Daddy tried to put our little guy down and he totally melted. Out came the crying. Poor guy. We wondered if he associated our guide with the loss he is feeling. Daddy quickly picked him back up and he settled, oh and another snack. Our guide has been with us for each step of the process translating and taking care of the legal documents.

So many choices! History/Geography

This is one of the most enjoyable topics for me! I love to learn about other people groups and cultures...and I love to expose my kids to them too! We have worked through a few curriculums over the past 4 years and are excited to start something new this coming year.

Our first year of "I get to pick our curriculum" we went with My Father's World. We really resonated with their philosophy. We learned a lot about MFW at the Modesto Homeschool Conference (held around July each year) by attending their workshops. As first-time homeschoolers in the "I get to pick our curriculum" group vs. a charter where it is mostly picked for you, we really got a lot out of attending the conference! I really recommend attending a conference when you are getting started! It was important that both my husband and I were there to receive information and talk it through. Because we both heard from the speakers we we were able to decide which curriculum best suited our family. Like anything it is best to hear it first-hand.

Anyhow, we used the MFW History/Geography/Bible curriculum for all of our three kids. The two years I am gong to mention with MFW our kids were in 3rd, 1st, PreK and 4th, 2nd and K.

We started out with the MFW Adventures in US History. (This is recommended for families if your oldest child is in 2nd or 3rd grade.) It was a fun exploration of the country we live in. Doing this first gives kids an idea of who they are in relation to people they can relate to first before heading around the world to other people groups. One of the things I enjoyed the most was that the supporting literature MFW recommends are written with kids in mind. Specifically, they are from a child's perspective. An example is that as people immigrated to the US from other countries the journey was told from the perspective of a child and how they would have felt with the challenges and excitement that comes with such a large undertaking. This curriculum leads you through the 50 states.

The next year we did with MFW was Exploring Countries and Cultures. I was so excited to study this and really open our kid's eyes up to people groups they (we) have never even heard of. We studies the 7 continents and some of the main countries in each as well as some indigenous groups. It was fantastic! My two favorite supplemental books in this set were the biographies of the "missionaries" and Kingdom Tales (near the bottom of the picture). Our whole family loved these and used them as Read-Alongs in the evenings. The kids always asked for another chapter to be read!

MFW covers geography with their sets.

One thing that we enjoyed a few years ago were smaller consumable books specific to map reading skills. They come in levels from about 2nd to 8th grade and all pages are full color. The book pictured below is what Fashion Faith did for 2nd grade. C-dub did Level D. You can find them here. I ordered them with a group of other moms. I'm not sure if you can order them as singles or not.

This coming year our plan is to start volume 1 of Mystery of History. It was a toss up between that and The Story of the World. Both were appealing to me because not only is there a book with each week's lessons that includes fun hands-on activities but you can also get the read-aloud section on audio CD! We live about 20 minutes from a few of the activities that we are involved in so I think this will be a good use of our time. We may listen to it at home as well but I like having the option of the kids listening too to take a read-aloud off my plate, especially with the year we are anticipating of adoption. (Whew, that was a long run-on sentence.) I have heard great things from many friends about both of these curriculums.

We have started listening to The Story of the World this summer in the car and the kids are really enjoying it. We will switch to listening to Mystery of History when those CDs arrive. Why not get the info into them in more than one way more than once?

Here are pictures of both...

On my search for curriculum earlier this spring I found this geography curriculum while searching through Veritas Press for Composition Guides for our literature: Legends and Leagues. It looks really cute and follows a four year cycle. Again, I LOVE when all or most of my kids can learn the same thing. This curriculum has activities for younger and older students. (Probably 2-6th grades) We'll see how it works out. It has a read-along portion and then activities. The child's consumable book is full color and so is the read-along booklet. We are starting with South and will work our way through north, east and west. I am doing this with all of my school-aged kids this coming year (6th, 4th, 2nd). The lesson plan recommends doing it every other week. 

I am also looking forward to our oldest being in the Mapping the World By Heart class next year. I hope it works out. They're still trying to get a teacher for that class at our co-op location.  I'm not sure what curriculum they are using yet. My husband did this in his 6th grade class when he was younger. I think it would be a fun class to teach too. :)