Salvation Army: Feeding Those in Need

Our church, Valley Creek, provides lunch on the first Sunday of every month to the homeless and those in need at the Lewisville Salvation Army's Soup Kitchen.  Rachel and I signed up to bring a family size Stouffer's lasagna and to serve.

The Salvation Army serves free lunch regularly during the week with their own volunteers but churches and other organization can help fill the gaps on the weekends.

We helped to set up the food line and we served people as they came through.  Once they were seated we went back around to see if they needed more water or wanted a cookie for dessert.  

We also took a tour of the facilities and learned more about all that this local Salvation Army office does for the community.  They provide free lunch, shower facilities, clothing, toiletries, and Bibles.

They also have a small food pantry where they give out Bags of Love full of food for people in need.  Rachel has spent a few hours working on decorating their bags with pretty pictures and inspirational words to brighten the recipient's day.

They also provide some vocational rehabilitation and referrals to help get people back on their feet.  We first had contact with the Salvation Army back during the 1000 Year Flood in south Louisiana when Stuart's parents' house flooded.  We were there removing wet belongings and soaked sheet rock and the Salvation Army was the first group to bring a hot meal to us.  They are such a blessing to the communities they serve.

Anne of Green Gables

For a fun read aloud in our homeschool, we have been reading Anne of Green Gables (*affiliate link). The book was written in 1908 by L.M. Montgomery.  It is a children's classic but I had never read it.  We all enjoyed it.  It is about an 11 year old little orphan girl who seems to have a knack for getting herself into trouble.  We took several months to finish it.  I read aloud to them and at the end of each chapter they would take turns narrating to me what had happened and then tell me their thoughts on the story.  Unfortunately, we didn't have time in our schedule to read it on a regular basis like I would have liked.  We would have gotten through it more quickly if I had but that's ok.  It worked out perfectly because we finished it up just as the Artisan Center Theater was producing their Anne of Green Gables play!

As a special treat, we were able to get tickets for a weekend performance so Daddy was able to come with us.  He doesn't usually get to come on homeschool field trips with us so this made it especially fun.

The performance was great!  I may have gotten teary a time or two.  Afterwards Rachel was excited to get to meet the girl who played Anne.

We are working on picking out our next read aloud book.  There are just so many great books I want them to read!!!  We love reading aloud together.  It's a great way to experience the story together and we enjoy being able to discuss it and share in the excitement together.  For a great resource for inspiration for reading aloud with your family and even some great booklists, check out Sarah MacKenzie's Read Aloud Revival site.  

*This post contains an affiliate link to Amazon.  If you purchase the Anne of Green Gables book through this link I will get a very small payment that just goes to pay for this blog.  It will not affect the cost you pay for the book.

American Heritage Girls Mid-Year Awards Ceremony

Rachel is a first year Explorer in American Heritage Girls this year.  She loves spending time with her AHG friends and she is excited about all of the fun things they are learning together.  We had our mid-year award ceremony last night and Rachel earned quite a few awards.

She earned the following badges which she is excited to sew onto her Explorer vest all by herself.

• Archery
• Camping
• Climb On! (rock climbing)
• Family Campout
• Fundraiser Achiever
• Insect-a Inspect-a
• Living in the USA
• National Day of Service
• Needle Arts
• Sewing

She also earned the Skating pin for her work this semester in ice hockey.

In addition to these she also earned a special award and got called up on stage by herself to receive it.  She earned the P.R.A.Y. God and Me award.  For this she got a medallion to pin on her vest and a little certificate.  She worked hard on this award for a couple of months so she is very proud of it.

We are proud of her too.  Since she has moved up to the Explorer level it has become more challenging to earn awards but she enjoys the activities much more than she did at the Tenderheart level so she is motivated to do them.

A Girl's Day Out at Shen Yun

When I was little my mom often took me to plays and the symphony.  We would get all dressed up and have a fancy dinner before and then enjoy an amazing evening of culture and art.  Recently my mom heard about a traveling production called Shen Yun.  It tells stories of the ancient Chinese culture through music and Chinese dance with beautiful flowing costumes.  Mom thought Rachel would love it so she bought us tickets to attend.  Isn't that amazing?

Rachel talked about it for days before the show and kept reminding me of the countdown of days until we would go.  The day finally came and we got all dressed up.

The performance was at 1:00 but on our way we stopped at the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Las Colinas to have a fancy breakfast buffet.  Rachel kept talking about how fancy the hotel was and how she couldn't imagine staying at such a beautiful place.

The restaurant in the hotel is called Trevi's.  I had never been there before but I wanted a nice place to dine that was along our way to the Music Hall at Fair Park where Shen Yun was performing.  Trevi's turned out to be perfect for what I was looking for.

There was a wide selection of warm foods like oatmeal, pancakes, french toast, chorizo with eggs, scrambled eggs, bacon, and two types of sausage.

Rachel loved all of the fresh fruit options for her pancake.

There was also a a wide choice of cold cereals and granola.  Rachel chose Fruit Loops!  I never buy them because they have a lot of sugar in them so it was a real treat for her to have some.

She was just dazed by how elegant her breakfast was and she loved being able to go back to the buffet for more yummy things.

I enjoyed a made to order omelette.  Rachel wants to be a chef someday so she enjoyed watching the chef make it right in front of us.

There was also a wide selection of pastries, bagels, and fresh bread along with several choices of toppings.  There were just too many choices to be able to try everything.  I guess we will have to come back sometime soon.

We made it the Music Hall at Fair Park and found our seats easily.  We were on the 5th row and Rachel just couldn't wait for the show to begin.

Photography of the show is not allowed.  It always makes me sad when performances say that because I wish I could share the beauty of the performance with you.  Needless to say, Rachel was in awe the whole time.  She loved it and would love to go back again next year.

A Few Pics from our Living Education Co-op

Our Living Education co-op is based on the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education.  Miss Mason was a British educator in the early 1900's.  She believed that education needed to focus on the whole child, not just their mind...."Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life."  She believed in giving children a feast of living books, thoughts, and ideas and not just have them memorize a bunch of facts.  There is so much more to the Charlotte Mason method but it would require a whole series of posts to cover it all.

Our co-op is made up of other homeschool families.  We meet every other week at a local church.  Moms teach the classes and some of the classes include choir, art, handicrafts, Spanish, theater, Shakespeare, public speaking, composer study, artist study, and nature study - all of those wonderful enrichment classes that I never have time to cover with my children.  We have students from preschool up through high school.  I teach Nature Study at the end of the day but I am also a "room mom" for the 1st - 3rd graders so I stay with them all day to make sure they get to their next class, manage any overly chatty kids, and essentially help out their teachers any way that I can.  I don't see much of Nicholas during the day except at choir and lunch time when we are all together.

This week in Handicrafts, Rachel started a string art project.  The teacher provided everyone with a board, a hammer, nails, and a clothespin.  The children used stencils to mark a pattern on their boards.

Then she began hammering the nails into the board along the lines.  We found that hammering on the tables was quite loud.  Because the tables are plastic they absorbed a lot of the energy from each stroke of the hammer which unfortunately took away some of the energy needed to get the nail to go in.  We decided to move to the floor for our hammering, much to the chagrin of the church workers below us on the first floor!

I love that the teacher thought to include a clothespin so the children could use that to hold their nail and keep their little fingers from getting smashed if they missed the nail.

In nature study this week I took them out to the creek by the church for the first time.  They loved it!

It has been cold and although it was warmer today Rachel found a thin sheet of ice on top of the water which she carefully picked up to show everyone.

She posed with it quickly then threw it as hard as she could into the creek to watch it shatter.  The kids loved that and promptly looked around and found other sheets of ice to play with.

The kids found ice, bugs, and lots of shells.  They enjoyed showing others what they found as they explored.

The children have nature journals and for each nature walk I encourage them to sketch at least one interesting thing they find in nature.  But this time they were having so much fun climbing and jumping around on the rocks that no nature journals made it out of their backpacks.  And that's ok.  We all had a great time.