The hubby is away cavorting with Presbyterian teenagers and the kids and I are managing. Today we slept in and cleaned a bit. The girls went to a birthday party, we then prowled around target playing with every toy and reading every book. What fun! When I came home I decided to make something from my fused plastic experiment. Here is a couple of pics of the front and back of a purse I made for my eldest. I'm hooked.

front (Alaska Grown - Alaska Nuggets potatoes)

back (Pizza Rolls)

Hope I've inspired you to melt some plastic!

The biggest thing going on in our family right now is a change in schooling habit and ideas. We're trying something new this year, after alot of thought and prayer. When I first started homeschooling my children I used a program called The Weaver. Life got hectic with the birth of my youngest the next year and we have basically been unschooling since. Unschooling has been fun, but there is a restlessness in my household, and a longing from my children for order and structure(it could have something to do with moving 4 times in one year).

Since moving to Alaska we have heard many wonderful things about I.D.E.A.  http://www.ideafamilies.org/ and had been considering becoming apart of this program for the last 9 months or so. The idea of having 8600.00 a year from the state of Alaska to spend on the education of my children was very tempting, to say the least. So we looked to the homeschool legal defense site for advice. They said that the progran is wonderful and they see nothing wrong with it and they went on to praise Alaska as a wonderful place to homeschool. They did however say that anytime you accept money from a government organization you are putting the freedom in homeschooling at risk. So we thought hard about it and decided that we should continue to unschool using the materials we have on hand and the library.

Now it is October and we've changed our minds.........

Our family has offically joined the Interior Distance Education of Alaska program. As it turns out spending 8600.00 of the education of my 5 children is great fun.....ecspecially since it is not my 8600.00. The only thing I have to do to recieve this money is allow the state to test my children as a part of the no child left behind program. I also will submit a sample of their work every so often. Also, I.D.E.A. won't allow you to pay for any faith based cirriculum for your children so you are limited in what you can buy in that aspect, but you can pick and choose and build your own schooling and they will pay for it and ad your own bible etc at your expense. Our choices have led us to Sonlight for this year. We will be schooling the 2 girls together and the 3 boys together. Isaiah will be recieving a new IEP and his autism will be considered in his testing at the end of the year. The few items that IDEA won't pay for in the Sonlight pack we are more than happy to pay for. IDEA will also pay for swimming lessons, ice skating lessons and piano/ guitar this year and anything else we see fit to add. I'm most excited about the forgien language requirement, we've ordered the Rosetta Stone Latin America Spanish for all of the kids. This means I can sit in and learn along side them. We'll all get a chance to use it next year, on our missions trip to Mexico. Pretty soon everyone will be bilingual just like Daddy.

It is my goal to start blogging about our schooling more and look forward to telling you what I think of the program and the cirriculum I ordered.

Blessings!

We're visiting our friends in Kasilof. Its beautiful here and we love hanging out at the beach.

Today we found many a wonderous thing....

What kid wouldn't want to find such treasures? Dead shark anyone?

I know the dog didn't mind the new shark perfume and fishbone snack :)

More Dead animals

Cool foreign beach trash.

Finaly something alive! Do you see the cute little froggy?

They did. Brie let the little ones take turns holding the frog.

We obsessively picked crow berries (because blue berries were rare).

I think the little brother might have stolen his blueberry......

Beauty at the beach.....Mt. Redoubt

 No better way to end the day....a bonfire and smores.