I just found a great list of list of homeschool resources that Jen shared on her Forever, For Always, No Matter What Facebook page.  Jen found the list from Allison at Totus Tuus Family & Catholic Homeschool .
And now I'm sharing the link, Links of Interest to Homeschoolers, for my own reference now and in the future and I wanted to share it with others.  Thanks Allison!

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I'm linking this post to Heart of the Matter where this week's theme being "Tell us about your school room".  We started back into a homeschool routine on August 1 and our room this year is a similar layout as last year's.  So here is our room:


We are blessed to have one large room designated for our classroom in our home.  This photo is the view from the entrance of our classroom.

In one corner of the room is a closet that I have art supplies/manipulatives/resources stored in and an art area.  I won the art table several years ago and we have enjoyed it a lot!

It's been a busy weekend with trying to adjust to having our new Australian Bearded Dragon Lizard, Leo, and our 5 one-year old hens that we got last week from some friends.  I am grateful that our new pets are fairly low maintenance and the kids are having fun with them.  I  am one of the leaders of our local homeschool group so we had a 2.5 hour meeting last night to plan for our upcoming school year. I am also trying to slowly get back into a homeschool schedule with my children with doing alot of morning work and I will gradually add more subjects throughout August.  So with all that is going on it is getting more and more difficult to post regularly, but since I enjoy updating my blog, I will do what I can to document a slice of Smith life :) 


Our chickens are really fun to watch and we have let them roam outside their coop during the day in our backyard.  When we first let them out of the coop this past Saturday, they were chasing all the crickets (a treat for them) and eating them!  They love our woods and it's amazing how they know when to go back into the coop in the evening then we lock the coop up for the night and let them out again the next day.  They have laid about 7 eggs for us so far and they are pretty and yummy!  Here are some pictures of a slice of chicken life :)


Three of my children and a neighbor friend point to the first egg that was laid.  My children are so excited to look for eggs in the coop each day!  Easter egg hunt everyday! 


Here are our 5 chickens enjoying their first day of freedom outside the coop:


2 of our chickens lay brown eggs...

And we had these delicious, rich eggs for breakfast on Sunday morning before Mass.  Our eggs were served on nice fine paper plates :)

Our 3 smaller hens lay smaller white eggs.



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I hope I will be a good mama to Leo and 5 chickens since having pets (especially these unique creatures) is so out of my comfort zone!  I also wonder if anyone else has such a unique combination of pets like us?????




And here's Leo.......

And here's our 5 chickens that we just got tonight!  We are now the proud owners of 5 one-year old hens.  We have two Buff Orpingtons and three smaller ones are Golden Duckwing Phoenix Bantams.  I took this quick shot of the chickens tonight.  This is where they sleep in their coop.  More pics to come later I'm sure :)   

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Last week the kids and I took our annual trip to a beach about 45 minutes from our home to visit some friends. In the waterway, there are hermit crabs crawling in the water near the shoreline and a highlight for my children is collecting the crabs in a small pool. Here are some pictures I took of our day:



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