Story time

Years ago story time at our local library was such an ingrained part of our week, but since the years have passed it has been something that has kind of gone by the wayside.  We’ve hit it here and there but nothing consistent like in the past.

This year I have purposed to once again make it a staple in our week. Instead of viewing it as something to do “if” we have time I am looking at it as part of school for my little ones.  We quit  going as my last batch of little ones started outgrowing it and losing interest. My newest batch of little ones LOVES it! It takes a bit a determination on my part to get out of the house and go. It has also taken a bit a managing of sorts to juggle the boys math class and piano lessons which take place at the same time. Fortunately we have a great piano teacher that comes to our home and doesn’t mind teaching my little ones first so we can run out the door to make it on time to story time.

The last two years I have really gotten away from the “fun” stuff with school. I’ve turned into a “let’s just get this done and over  with mom”, you know, the no fluff kind of gal. I saw Lolly start out so enthusiastic for school and watched that enthusiasm get snuffed out fast. I’m working hard at changing that and also not making the same mistakes with the newest enthusiastic kindergartener. It takes a bit of bending and sacrifice on my part but they are so worth it! \ Head, shoulders, knees, and toes…..

Calendar Board

We love our calendar board here! This is included in part of our table time together.  I had a friend ask me about it so I thought I would share the links where I found all these goodies! I’m not one to reinvent the wheel when someone else has already conquered it and thankfully there are a few wonderful ladies that have done this for me!  Links below! Confessions of a Homeschooler

Homeschool Creations

1+ 1 + 1 =1

I’ve mentioned Erica, from Confessions of a Homeschooler before. She is amazing and comes up with some of the best curriculum!  We used her Letter of the Week last year and also her Road Trip USA. We weren’t disappointed!

School room changes

As we gear up and prepare for another school year we’ve made some changes in our school room.  We had hoped to have made a school room in the garage by now, but that hasn’t happened yet so we are trying to utilize the room we use currently as efficiently as we can.

We added a set of IKEA bookshelves where we originally had another desk and computer. Last year I noticed that desk didn’t get as much use and took up space. When the monitor broke I decided it’s time to save up for a laptop that can be used at the kitchen table and use this corner for something else. My calendar wall was on this wall but since it’s now covered by the bookshelf that had to be moved too. I decided to use my bulletin board for our calendar wall. I will miss having a place to display all the sweet art work that is made here, but my other option was moving our “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” tree and since I will be having a new kindergartener we will need a place to add her letters that she’s learning. Our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree The bulletin board ended up being a perfect fit to hold all our calendar pieces. My little ones saw me moving this around and were begging to do “calendar time”! Hopefully they hold on to that enthusiasm! One other little change was to remove all crayons, markers, scissors, and glue out of reach my little Picasso.  He loves nothing more than a handful of markers and my floor to occupy his time.  I had some IKEA (have I mentioned my love for IKEA?) spice racks that I wasn’t using so  my hubby cut them down to fit this area and after a coat of spray paint they were ready to go. I’m sure Shiro will figure out how to drag a chair over to climb up and grab them, but at least it gives this prego body a chance to intercept him!

School Planning

Summer is quickly coming to an end. For us homeschoolers that means time to plan and prepare for our upcoming school year.  I’m a bit overwhelmed this year as normally I am done with this by now, but this year that is not the case. With just 4 weeks left until school starts I am scampering to wrap this up. 

I’ll have 7 students this year. This is the most I will probably ever have at a time. (whew!!) I’ll have two highschoolers as Shayden will be in 9th, (How did that happen?) one jr high, and four elementary.

For my high schoolers and jr higher I’m trying something new called Homeschool Tracker. Its taking some work right now to input everything for an entire year but when I don’t have to think twice about lesson plans the rest of the year it will be worth it.  It’s not necessary to create lesson plans for the whole school year but I’ve done this for the last several years and found that the amount of work I put into it over the summer pays off when I don’t have to worry about it during the busyness of the school year. Come December I also plan on cuddling a new little one and the last thing I’ll want to think about is lesson plans!

For my younger students I’m still using my binder system. We’ve been doing this for a few years and I love it. It has taken away the dread I used to feel on Sunday nights as I prepared for our new week of school. Now all I do it grab the folder for the month of work they are doing and load binders! Viola!

Hopefully I can get this all completed in the next couple of weeks so I can spend the last week before school starts relaxing with my kiddos! This is what my dining table has been looking like. Somehow we have still managed to eat! That’s always a good thing! I’m  a good girl and have my water bottle and my jar of pregnancy tea here to sip on throughout the many hours of planning. 

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Why I Do It

“I hate homeschooling!”, came the ugly words from my mouth as I scampered around trying to collect all the school samples that I had to turn into our counselor at our meeting the next morning.  Why do I do this to myself? Wouldn’t it be so much easier to just put them all in school?

So why do I do this? I may have my down days and feel like I’m deep in the trenches. I may stress over children knowing math facts, or spelling properly and the thought of having to help with algebra is enough to make me cry, but yet here I am, going on 18 years of homeschooling.

When we started out we made a list of why we were choosing to go down this path that wasn’t so well beaten back then. We were odd in the sight of many and they questioned if we were sane or not. Sometimes I question if I’m sane for doing this! lol On those days when I’m questioning my sanity and feeling overwhelmed I think back to my list. These are only but a few of the many reasons we chose to home school.

~Character is not what you do in front of people, but what you do when you think no one is watching~

Is it enough that my children can read, write, and know their math facts? No. Education is so much more than just academics. It is mainly a matter of character development.  Here at home I have the privilege of teaching and training their character. Self-discipline seems lost with today’s youth, but it is needed in every area of their lives. Patience, gentleness, kindness have many chances to be practiced here at home with the people who stretch you most in these areas.

Do I want my children simply to be nice, well-behaved, and safe from peer pressure? Not at all! I want them to be men and women of integrity, not conformity. It isn’t enough for them to be polished and pretty on the outside but yet be dirty on the inside.

Neither academics, nor character, nor how polished they look on the outside will matter if they are dead in their sins and separated from God. I want my children to love the Lord with all their hearts, minds, and souls! I want them to shake the very gates of hell as they go out and boldly tell the world of the saving grace of the cross! Will public school help us in our effort to see these things come to fruition in our children's life? We think not.

God placed the responsibility for child training and our children’s education on us. This is not a task for the weak or the wimpy, of which I many times feel I am. It is a job we take serious, one that we are blessed to have been given. We don’t want mediocre for our children’s live, we want God’s very best. Homeschooling for us, is one of the vehicles God is using as we aim for the highest the Lord has for our children.

As I gear up, plan, and prepare for yet another year of homeschooling I am pondering over the reasons we do what we do. I need to remember these things. It serves to help me keep my eye on the goal. Not my goal, but His goal for my children.

How to Feed a Praying Mantis

First you get some tweezers and a unsuspecting cricket  You then feed the unsuspecting cricket to the praying mantis You then watch the poor cricket get its legs torn off and eaten (eewwie) Stare with utter disgust at what you are seeing! Yum, yum, yum!

The one room school house

This is my 16th year of homeschooling! I really am shocked when I think about how long I’ve been doing this. We started out with Shyloh with the intentions of just “trying” it out for a year. Well, here we are 16 years later and it’s pretty safe to say we are in it for the long haul.

This year I have a 10th, 8th, 7th, 5th, 2nd, 1st, and a preschooler. Our days are kept very busy and I really need to give up the idea that there is ever a “normal” when it comes to homeschooling, because there isn’t. The Lord really does have a sense of humor and has worked on teaching me lots of flexibility over the years!

I am so blessed to be able to be home all day, every day with my children. I really couldn’t imagine having them gone from me everyday. This is such a privilege, one that I am so grateful to have. Lolly tracing her numbers Tiny girl working diligently Teddy bear math

Skip counting puzzles from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I love, love, love this blog. This year I purchased her “Letter of the Week” curriculum for Shylie, and also her “Road Trip USA” to do with Shadd, Poppet, and Lolly. We have not been disappointed at all. The kids ask to do geography!

20 Great Reasons You Homeschool

Drive Thru History

I am so excited! I ordered Drive Thru History, Foundations of Character, and it came today! I have been watching this for a while and finally decided that this would be a good addition to our Table Time this school year. We did some America history last year but a lot of it fell by the wayside once fundraising kicked in. I’m looking forward to working thru this as a family. I really like David Barton and though I haven’t personally watched any of the Drive Thru History programs I’m looking forward to doing so this year! 

“It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.” 

 ~George Washington 

(wouldn’t it be lovely if our leaders led our country today with this being their motto?)

Daily binder

Today I took it easy on my arm again. It’s feeling somewhat better but not all the way so I didn’t want to push it.  The kids worked at trying to restore some sanity to our messy school room. I tore it apart Monday sorting thru all my 15 years worth of curriculum, and then add in the normal wear and tear to the room and it equaled a disaster.

While the kids worked on cleaning and organizing I spent most of my day working on my binders. I have a Home Management binder that I love, but I realized I really didn’t need to be hauling it out daily when there were only a few sections that would be used every day.

I decided to fine tune it and create a smaller binder for daily use, something that had everything in it I needed on a daily basis. I broke it up into sections:

Calendar: monthly calendars for the entire year printed out

My daily planner sheets: this is a sheet I made to have my day at a glance and mark things off as I go

Our daily routines section: Every day has an assigned duty such as Monday being our “kitchen” day. I’ve listed the things that need to be done on Mondays such as specific cleaning in the kitchen or extra meals made, salad dressings made, granola, or snacks for the week.

A daily chore section: This has a detailed chore list so the kids and I can look at what chores each child has. We have our house broken up into “zones”, such as kitchen, living room, etc. Each child bids on a zone and that’s the part of the house they are responsible for maintaining. We keep a copy of each zone and the duties that go with the zone printed up and hanging somewhere in that room but we also have copies of each zone list and what needs to be done in that zone in this section of the binder.

Weekly, monthly, and semi annually chore lists: This is just chore lists for things we only do weekly, monthly, or even less often than that. We do detailed cleaning of each zone in our home on the weekends. We only focus on one zone a week. I really don’t think we need to deep clean the bathroom every week. That may sound gross but when it’s swept and wiped down daily that makes it easier to maintain and doesn’t usually require the heavy duty cleaning every week.

Table time: This section keeps track of the things we do together at the table for school. We’ve really been slacking in this area over the last few months of fundraising and preparing for Shelbie’s trip. I’m anxious to get back into the swing of things!

Lesson plans: Instead of having my lesson plan book sitting around where it always gets misplaced, I cut off the binding, 3 hole punched it and popped it right into a binder that I knew we would being using daily. The less I have to keep up with the better!

Reading logs: I make my kids individual reading logs for school every year. Usually they go into our big school binder that holds all of our tests results from the school or other info that we don’t need daily or sometimes even monthly. I decided that having a section for this eliminates me having to pull down that heavy binder every time someone completes' a book and they don’t have to look it up on the computer either. It’s right at my finger tips!

I’m sure I’ll continue to tweak and fine tune this over the rest of the summer. Hopefully by the time we start school it’s working the way I hope it will!

“ He who gains time gains everything.”

Busy days

Seems like life has been moving at lightening speed here in Neyville. Between school, house projects that need our attention and fundraising there really isn’t time for much else.  My kitchen is always a mess with cake pops these days. Everyone has been helping Shelbie and there are days when she has a large order due that we have an assembly line going of rolling, dipping, decorating, and packaging. We can’t forget licking the spoons which seems to by Shylie’s job.

School has been consisting of just the basics with not a lot of extras so last week I really made an effort to change that up a bit. We got a new game on Africa so the kids played that quite a bit. It’s a great way for them to learn a bit about the place their sister will call home this summer.

    

Shadd and the little girls have also been playing a fun new game called “Fish Stix”

The girls have also been playing “church” in their free time. I remember doing this with my brother!  

And of course these yummy little things are all over our house!

Schoolwork helper…or not?

 

I think not!

What are homeschoolers hiding?

Schools are for fish

Mini-Offices

A couple of weeks ago we made Mini-Offices. They are file folders glued together (like a lapbook) and filled with information or reference charts for your child to have when doing their schoolwork. 

We don’t have lots of wall space in our school room to put up lots of maps, graphs, and charts that you may see on the walls in a school room so the mini offices puts all that info right at the child's fingertips.  It helps to promote independence too.  Instead of, “MAMA! how do you spell _____?” Or “MAMA! How many feet are in a mile?”, I can tell them to check their mini office.

Each mini office is made according to each child’s grade and what they need to know.  The kids love these nifty little lapbooks and of course I love anything that simplifies my life!

  This is Poppet’s mini office.

Poppet has phonics info, months of the year, days of weeks, money, shapes, and a map of the U.S. on the back as well as a few other things.

   

For my boys we broke it up into sections: math, language, and history/geography. The content varies according to what they are doing in these subjects this year.

Activity sheets for our binders

With two little schooler’s this year that aren’t fully reading yet I needed to come up with something to help them know what extra activities they needed to do.  I load their binders every weekend with their book work but I can’t fit in a binder extra things like lace kits, puzzles, playdough, or even books they do with Mama. They don’t read yet so a lesson plan sheet does no good.

In come my laminator! Have I ever mentioned how much I love my laminator? It’s kind of silly, but I do! This was just another excuse to use it!

I took pictures of all the extra school activities I wanted Poppet and Lolly to do. I then glued them to a piece of cardstock and laminated them. Now when I load binders on the weekend I just slip in their activity sheets and they know exactly what order they are to do their work in.

Lace kits

Draw Write Now book

The girls know now if it’s puzzle time, time to do language lessons with Mama, or even if they get computer time! Makes my life easier!

Week one of school

“A goal without a plan is just a wish”
Herm Edwards

I realized once again this week just how important it is to have a plan…for everything, from school, to meals, cleaning, and even for our day. School started Monday and I must confess that this year I was just not “there”. We have the general backbone of what our day needs to entail but we are definitely in need of some fine tuning.

Binders were loaded and ready to go Monday morning but it just wasn’t quite enough. I am doing Language different with the boys this year and I didn’t have that written down for them so I was being called for help over and over and over and….you get the idea.

Shelbie is also helping tutor Poppet and Lolly for me this year but she really wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do and what things I was doing with them. Lolly is a very eager little kindergartener but needs much more direction. That girl went thru all her binder work for the week by Wednesday!

I’m grateful that we are easing into the new year otherwise we’d all be in trouble. This week was a trial practice of sorts and we are seeing exactly what needs to change. It’s definitely a year that is going to need to be much more structured since I have a 1st grader, a kindergartener, a 2 year old, and a baby with five other students! There is no winging it!

This week my goal is to plan…everything!

May he give you the desire of your heart and
make all your plans succeed.
Psalm 20:4

Having a plan

“If you aim at nothing you will hit it.”

It’s that time of the year again…a new school year.  Usually I am a little more prepared than I am this year but I’m going to use the excuse of having a new baby…okay, okay, for anyone that knows my sweet Shiro then you know that’s not the case since he is such an easy baby. I’m way behind out of pure laziness. There I said it! Laziness is such an ugly word!

My guys were camping last weekend so since it was just us girls I figured I better just dive in and get my school planning done. I had a 2:30 am, 4:00 am, and a 1:00 night (I’m way to old for that!) and accomplished quite a lot.  Besides making some copies for history, our lapbooks, and some art stuff for my little girls I am just about done. YAY!

It is so overwhelming to get everything ready for our new year but it really is critical for our year running smoothly. I have been homeschooling for almost 15 years now and I’ve learned how important “planning” is. It’s actually very important to every aspect of our lives.

With a family our size we can’t just “wing it”.  It doesn’t work at all. I’ve learned and am continuing to learn that I must plan ahead for meals, chores, school, and pretty much every other area in our home if I want our home to run smoothly and efficiently.

I can honestly say that I have not arrived and the Lord is continuing to grow me in this area but I am always seeking and working towards this goal. I really don’t think that just big families can benefit from having a plan of action.  For large families I think it’s critical, but I think even when we only had 4 or 5 children our home ran much smoother with a plan of action.

I have a goal..a plan, and I’m aiming for it!  I pray the Lord covers this new school year and it is one of our best school year’s yet! In two weeks we’ll be off and running!

"Let all things be done decently and in order."

1 Corinthians 14:40

Stamp pads and smiles

We let the little girls play with the stamp pad set the other day, even Shylie...seemed harmless enough at the moment. Much can change in a matter of moments. I think its safe to say she had fun!

Our week in review

Boy, this week really flew by. I know time does fly, but sometimes we have weeks that we blink and we’re at the end. That was this week.

We did our regular school work and we also worked on our Thanksgiving lapbooks. We really waited longer than we should have to start these so who knows if they will be done by Thanksgiving or not.

Lolly is working on learning her ABC’s and doing a simple lapbook for each letter. Even though Poppet is way past that she likes doing some of the projects and crafts with Lolly. This week we were finishing up the letter B. B as in butterfly. We made some fun coffee filter butterflies.

This was a fun little project!

I really didn’t want to deal with the mess I knew I would have if I let Shylie into the water paints so she had blanket time with a lace up kit.

I also made a couple trips to Rite Aid this week to take advantage of their great deals.

I paid $4.20 for everything in the first picture and came back with $5.00 in UP Rewards. I paid $8.55 for everything in the second picture and came home with $3.00 in UP Rewards. Have I mentioned how much I like Rite Aid. :o)

This real highlight of our week was today. Shelbie got her license!!

Is this a look of excitement or what??

Congratulations Shelbie!!