Satori Smiles » Other Thoughts

Sortable Literature List working again

admin — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:14:49 +0000

The sortable literature list was down for a few months, it is now working again.

Also, my web hosting company had a technical failure on the server that hosted this blog, so Satori Smiles was down or very slow/unresponsive for the past few weeks. They finally moved my sites to a new server and it seems to be working fast once again. Now, to ask for a month or two credit for it being down so long!

I will slowly start blogging once again. Satori also has a new blog she started this spring for her stories, I will share that URL soon. In the meantime, we are in the process of building her a new computer. Daddy took her old one into his office, but it will be nice to have her computer be right next to mine in the Learning Loft once again.

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Fall 2011 Back to “School” pictures

Angela — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 16:08:12 +0000

It’s been awhile since I’ve used my Nikon DSLR camera for portraits. Here’s a few updates we took this week for Satori’s Fall 2011 photos.

Since she has lost quite a few teeth, we have four different smiles for Satori to use when getting her picture taken. Here’s #1 smile (pleasant smile, no teeth).

And here’s she’s escalated to the full-blown, all-out, #4 smile – all teeth showing in a typical Satori laugh.

Satori loves her Crocs so much, it was a challenge to get her to wear these super cute shoes.

And just so you know that Satori isn’t always all “smiles”, here’s a picture of a glum Satori. (Due to being forced to wear aforementioned shoes for this picture).

Not to end her photo shoot on a negative note, here’s a smiley Satori once again.

David asked me to take his portrait this weekend as well, so I’m adding his new LinkedIn photo. We wanted to take advantage of the aspens turning colors which we just noticed starting yesterday.

The excavation of our driveway leaves a nice rocky background for a portrait.

Good ole’ Maddie loves her David.

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Back to “school” update

Angela — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 21:21:40 +0000

We’ve been busy at Fox Mountain Academy the past few weeks, so I haven’t had time to blog much! (That’s the name we put on our homeschool ID cards and what we call ourselves.) We started September 6th with official second grade. Since Daddy has been in Chile a lot lately (and is there for two weeks), we are sending him a picture of Satori doing her work. She’s lost quite a few teeth recently, so one of her new nicknames is “Toothless”.

So far we’ve been very happy with all our curriculum, I think I’m finally getting good at picking out what might be a success in our homeschool. Some new curriculum we are trying out this fall include:

Adventures in America (plus our own additional readings for American/US History)
English From the Roots Up (just a few minutes a few times a week, so far we learned PHOTO and GRAPH)
Minimus Latin (another fun Latin we started after Song School Latin)
Writing With Ease 2(third time’s a charm, we flew through WWE1 in a few weeks and started 2)
Reading lots of books! Just finished Mary Poppins and The Hobbit this week. Starting Lord of the Rings and The Voyages of Dr. DoLittle
and a few others we haven’t started yet

We have moved to the next level/year in:

RSO Earth & Space
Story of the World – Middle Ages
All About Spelling Level 5
Wordly Wise Book 3
Evan Moor Daily Geography Practice, Grade 3

Satori is also attending a Colorado homeschool enrichment program called OPTIONS. We are in love with her first grade teacher!!! She’s been a dream… always so positive, creative, and nurturing. She even has a blog with included student family permission and no names listed of course. You can see what Satori did in her second week of school. Satori can be spotted in the second picture, next to her best friend! She loves hanging out with her friends but is glad it’s only one day a week. She tells me excitedly about everything they learn – the wordless books by David Weisner, all about the rainforest, warm and dry colors in art, her new Spanish teacher, and so on…

While I write this blog post, after she finished her independent work, she then started putting name tags on a half dozen of her stuffed animals, so they can learn along with her and I can ask the whole “class” questions. New students include: Peter Rabbit, Roxie Dog, Pixel Bear, Cobbler the dog, and Tigriss Tiger.

It’s getting cooler and we see snow up on the mountain tops when we leave the gulch we live by. We had to turn our heat on one day already.

We miss you Daddy and Gramy and Grampy!!!

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Organizing and IKEA

Angela — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:20:33 +0000

In attempts to prepare for the upcoming school year in which we start in earnest September 6th, I wanted to creative a more engaging atmosphere in our Learning Loft. Yesterday while shopping at our brand new local IKEA, I scored this “as-is” Trofast frame! Nothing was wrong with it except no packaging and it was all assembled.

If you’re curious about what’s sitting on top, head to my Vocabulary Power Flip books post to learn more.

We cleared out a spot for it in the loft and today I set about making labels for the subjects.

We haven’t gotten into the Workbox system, but I did have this sheet made by Heather, a fellow homeschooler/scrapbooker/workboxer, so I thought it would add to the motivation to get our subjects completed each day. (This was over two years ago and she most likely isn’t offering to do this for just $10 anymore, I see she just had a baby.) I framed her chart and laminated the numbers so they’d last longer. Currently they’re attached by magnets, although she originally used velcro on them.

Underneath the Workbox chart is a clipboard with timer attached that shows our actual schedule. I print this out everyday from Homeschool Skedtrack, the free online scheduling program we use.

I figured we’d put it on all our subject bins each morning and then add them back to the chart as we get done with each subject. Hopefully by the end of each day we’ll have a full chart. It’s been awhile since I read my Sue Patrick Workbox System guide, but I don’t think they specifically label the bins. We’ll modify the system to work for us though.

There are a few subjects we do in our Reading Room library, so I have three subject bins in the library closet – Story of the World, Writing with Ease, and MCT Grammar Island. These are stored in the tall, white IKEA frame that has ten slides to insert bins/shelves.

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AAS $50 Giveaway winner contacted

Angela — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 23:55:29 +0000

Congratulations to Cindy, who won the All About Spelling $50 giveaway! Thanks everyone who entered.

I plan to do a few more contests/giveaways to kickoff the typical start of a school year. I am going to be blog-reviewing a few of our favorite products and will likely do some giveaways of those products. I’d also like to give out some Amazon gift certificates. Check on back in the next few weeks for updates!

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Cataloging our Book Collection

Angela — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 22:43:49 +0000

This past week I’ve been obsessed with books and what better project to do next than to start cataloging our book collection! I’ve been playing around with four book catalog software systems and hopefully next month emerge with our favorite. Our new barcode scanner (just $30) arrived today to make cataloging a cinch.

Satori and I made a video to show how easy it can be to catalog your very own book collection. In this video we are using Collectorz. One of these days we will learn how to make our videos more professional and smoother.

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