First Day of School!

We finally made it to this day. I never thought it was going to come. But I also was not wanting it to come at the same time. Does that make sense?

Life is crazy right now. And I see no end in sight for it. Just as I start to get a good routine down, we add one more thing to our life.

This time it's soccer.

The two older boys are both old enough to play "competitive" soccer. Which means, a night of practice each, one Saturday soccer game each, and twice the cost! Plus, they are in different age brackets. Different teams, different game schedule, different parks. 😱

Please don't ask how we are going to do it. I have no idea but to just try. My husband will head coach one team with a friend who has a child in the same age group and assistant coach the other with different friend who has a child in the same age bracket as well. We are hoping to schedule practices on the same day, at the same park, and hopefully one right after the other. That way I rarely have to go to practices. And I can just help out at games.

So now that the boys are signed up for it and we have a plan somewhat in place. I was finally able to sit down and get school planned out. Well, let's be honest. I was able to sit down and get the FIRST DAY planned out.

This year is different. I have a first grader that is taking on the same curriculum as his older brother. So teaching at the same time just may not work out like it did last year. Independent work will take a few weeks to start happening for my 6 year old. And my oldest is learning new math concepts and writing techniques. Multiplication and cursive writing have entered our home.

Let's just say the day did not start well for my oldest. But my 1st grader was super excited to finally do school "like his brother". 💓 My older son is just too much of a perfectionist. And having to learn new concepts stresses him out so much it takes a while for him to get out of his funk. Thankfully, he was able to get there. Once he realized that he knew multiplication and saw how easy it was for him, he was able to get on track. And spelling and reading right now are just review so that helps a ton just having to introduce one new thing at a time for him.

I have only ordered half of our curriculum to get us started and I will order the rest of it as this month progresses. But moving slow like this will be good for now. Having a baby to hold sometimes, finding time to work at my job and trying to keep both boys focused so we are not having to spend all day doing school is going to be a learning process for me. I would love to eventually get to a place where we can do school altogether and not have to spend my day teaching one in the morning and one in the afternoon. That just won't work for me. Any tips out there are greatly appreciated!

I can't wait to share this new phase/journey with all of you! I need an outlet you are it! ENJOY!

***And yes, we did school in our pajamas!

Donna

A 2nd go???

Its been 3 years since I wrote my last blog post.

What happened???

So much!

Let me begin with yes, I am still homeschooling. Yes, I will be starting my 4th year of it. My oldest son will be 9 this year and starting 3rd grade. My MIDDLE son is 6 and starting 1st grade.

That's right folks! You heard me correctly! I said my middle son. 3 years ago I had only 2 boys. Now I have 3! This past February I gave birth to our 3rd son. He is beautiful!

This post will be a catch up. It will be a fill in the blanks/last 3 years post. If you follow me on Instagram then you know what I have been up to.

But I am going to try my hand to keep up my Facebook account, email account, blog and Instagram.

Since the last blog...

I am no longer a stay at home mom. A year after being a SAHM and after my first full year of homeschooling, the Lord laid it on my heart to go back to work. A job I love. A job that I have a
passion for. I have been a youth pastor/volunteer for the last 18 years. I was volunteering in our youth ministry at church when I was approached to head up the Jr. High group. I spent 6 months praying about it and felt complete peace over it. So I started in June of 2015 and I have been doing it ever since. I can work from home or I can take my kids to the church and I can work there. I am only part time so that is also a huge benefit. I am so thankful that my church has been completely flexible with me so I can still serve on staff there.

My husband has been a great source of encouragement and support for me. I am a working homeschool mom of 3 but before all of that I am a wife to an amazing man that wants to see me succeed at it all.

So now onto our baby. He is a what we are calling our "surprise blessing". Not necessarily unplanned or unexpected. But we had been wanting to get pregnant for 3 years with no success. Then, right as we started to pray more seriously about adoption, those two pink lines showed up!!! And 39.5 weeks later, this guy showed up. He is our little happy, easy going baby bundle of joy!

So now in our tiny home that we still live in. We are going to attempt to homeschool 2 boys, watch our baby boy start to become more mobile and expressive, serve on staff at our church, play soccer with my husband every week (that's a riot to watch), and continue to see where God takes us!

Stay tuned...

Donna

My first 14 weeks of homeschooling

I am headed into our 2nd Sabbath Week. Our 7th week of school we take off so we can rest and regroup. I can plan and prepare for the next 6 weeks and my boys can have a break. Our first Sabbath week was so busy and crazy that I felt I never really got a break. We spent that week in California for my husband's grandmother's 100th birthday. We ended up staying for 7 days because of wonderful blessings that came our way. Like a free trip to Disneyland! I spent nights after the boys were in bed during our 6th week of school just getting the next 6 weeks ready before we left on vacation.

 

So now that we are done with another chunk of school I thought I would give you some insight into what we do, what we love and what we are changing.

First, Bible time. We love this time. And I think it has a lot to do with the book I chose. Its nothing more than activities. Perfect for my little boys. I would recommend this book to anyone that already knows the Bible stories and is just looking for a way to incorporate fun ways to help remember them. Telling God's Story activity book is awesome because each story has about 5 activities to go with it. So you are teaching the same story all week to help them remember it and also give them something different each week. We have colored, painted, used glitter, played games, baked cookies, and so much more. I like that I can pick and choose what we do based on what supplies I have at home.

 

Next is our Science. I have been using Apologia Exploring Creation Through Botany. I didn't buy the Junior addition because I knew that we wouldn't be using this all year and we would want to use this later in school when my boys are older. But I needed it for some ideas and also for terms that I didn't know otherwise. The activities we chose from the book were fun. Looking at seeds, planting seeds, collecting leaves, etc. Those helped my kindergartener so much in remembering terms. But we are going to take a break from this for the rest of the year and work on other life skills.

For everything else I bought the K4 curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. My overall impression with this curriculum is that it is very well thought out and organized. It has everything to begin school with your young ones and the price is right so you can change and not feel like you are losing money. However, if you did have your child in former preschool (like us), the first 6-8 weeks of this curriculum and some later on will all be review and if they are like my kid will fly through all the work. He loves it but he is not as challenged as I hoped he would be for being 14 weeks into school. Reading and sight words is new for him so I love how she does have this set up. He has picked up on phonics and reading because of her way of teaching two new words a week. And only working on those words.

 

We have been having so much fun with homeschool. My kids are truly enjoying all that we do together. And my 3 year old is getting more interested so I plan on working with him in January. Right now he joins in and does some of the activities but I let him have a little more freedom with what he wants to do.

 

After this Sabbath week, I am adding 1st grade math skills. I went with Math-U-See Alpha curriculum and I am looking forward to telling you all about it. We also will be doing the A Beka Think and Learn book. I am also going add in Life Skills lessons that I make up. Things like dialing a phone (my kinder absolutely hates talking on the phone), tying shoes (we are desert rats and wear flip flops all the time), address, emergency phone numbers, fire escapes plans, etc. I plan on spending this next week preparing and planning and resting. Adding in this week of rest was the smartest thing for me. 

Our first 6 weeks of homeschool

I would say that our first 6 weeks went better than expected. I have a boy that loves school and loves having something new to do every day. He looks forwarded to it and I rarely have to get on him to be ready for the day.

The one thing that we struggle with is when something does not come easily to him, he wants to give up and not keep trying. This is the case with phonics and letter blending. So we broke out the "I want to give up" jar. Every time I hear this or something similar to it, I take gems out of the jar. If he can stay above the line by the end of the week we will go to the .99 store and buy a prize. This has totally worked and we get through more and more challenges as the week progresses. Yay!

Science has been the most fun and interactive. We have been studying plants and seeds so far. And we are "patiently" waiting for our seeds to sprout sunflowers. Its been a little over a week and we haven't seen anything. Hoping a little green pokes through the dirt soon. ;)

After 6 weeks of school we will be taking our first week off. We are headed to California to celebrate my husband's grandmother's 100th birthday! It will be a nice little vacation since we probably won't get another little getaway for at least a year since my husband just switched jobs and will have earn his vacation hours again.

I am also looking forward to some extra time to get more of the year planned out and organized! Thank you for taking this journey with me.

 Here are some fun pictures from our first 6 weeks.

4 in 1 room redo!

Since we decided to homeschool a little less than a year ago, I have been going through my mind what to do, where to do it and how to make room for one more thing on my list. We live in a very small 3 bedroom house. There our 4 of us in a house that is less than 1300 sq. feet. Our 2 boys share a room because our 3rd bedroom is right off of our living room. Its more like a den/office than it is a bedroom but with its closet, its considered a bedroom. We have always made that room an office, guest room or playroom. Or all 3. Well now, we have also added school room to those three others uses for that room.

I wanted to take you through our redo of the room and show you why we chose to use the furniture and lay out we did.

About a year and a half ago we redid our floors in our living room area with laminate wood floors. Along with that we redecorated it all to a style that I have finally fell in love with. I love neutral backgrounds with bright colors as accents. Now this room blends well with our living room.

The 4 in 1 room use to be brown and dark. After our remodel I wanted it to be fun. I also knew it was going to be a room for learning, a room for guests, a room for my boys to play in and room for me to work on the computer when needed.

So without further ado, here is the before and after of the room. Enjoy!

Browns, couches, toys, messes, oh my!! That's the only way to describe what the room was before. 

Now, its bright, vibrant, warm, and welcoming. It has a table that has legs that can come off easily for storage so we can pull out the roll away bed. We have toys in baskets at the bottom of the bookcase and all the books and school supplies in the other 3 levels. 

This is our school room, office, guest room and play room. I hope you enjoyed the before and after.

Why we are homeschooling...

 

I have thought long and hard about how to put my thoughts about homeschooling in to this blog post. So I guess I will start with a little background of how I saw homeschooled kids. When I was in college, I knew of a few kids that were homeschooled. They had to be the most healthy family I have ever met. I even stayed a couple of nights with the kids so the parents could go away and I was so amazed by how well they all were with me in charge as a 19 year old.

Now fast forward 3 years and I graduated college, moved out of state, and became a youth pastor. I met another homeschooling family. And their family dynamic was very unhealthy. The kids were sheltered to the point that even church events were some times off limits. The parents were very controlling to the point of constantly yelling and demeaning the kids in public. Those kids I had to watch as they pushed boundaries and rebelled with a force that I have never seen before. It broke my heart in two.

Then fast forward two years after that, I am about to marry a public school teacher. We are talking about how we would want our future children to be educated. And we talked about every possibility. Because of the first family I was not completely turned off from homeschooling. My husband, because of the 2nd family was a little more. Thankfully, because of his open mind to allowing kids to learn the best way that fits their needs, he wasn't completely against the idea.

And now, 9 years later...

I am no longer a youth pastor but a stay at home mom. My husband is no longer a public school teacher because they don't pay teachers enough for him to support his family. However, we have family members that are very active in the public school system.

I had always thought that I would put my children in the best public school in our district. I was a substitute teacher in the very same district (where my husband was also a teacher). I was able to see and experience and get into the inside, where most parents don't get to, and decide based on all of my 8 years of experience which school was, in my opinion, the best school to put my son. I was ready, I had the open enrollment form all filled out and ready to turn in the very next day. I knew he was going to get the very best education our school district had to offer. I loved the principle, the teachers, and the parents at this school. There was not one hint of hesitancy in my mind that this is where my kids would go.

Then, I started to brush my teeth for bed. My husband was getting ready for bed as well. I turn to him and I say, "I think I want to homeschool our kids." His response, "Ok, why?" And all I could say was, "I am home full time now. You and I both have degrees in education. We both have taught kids from every age group, from every background, why would I send my kid some where to be taught when I could easily teach him here? And you can help." After that moment, my husband got really excited about being able to be involved as well because his work schedule would allow for it. He liked that our state is a very homeschool friendly state and that there are plenty of ways to keep our boys involved in the world around them.

See, my big hiccup with homeschool was that people want to shelter their kids. Keep them surrounded by other like minded kids and families.  And yes, I see that they need that more than ever in a world where people are forced to grow up too fast. But I want my boys to see the world through the eyes of Jesus. I want them to be in the middle of the world of the lost and love on them and show them the Way to Jesus. I don't want them to not know that there are lost souls out there and I won't let them near them. I want them "to be in the world and not of the world".  Jesus didn't stay home and stay away from others until it was time for him to give himself up for the sins of the world. He was out there ministering and serving and loving on the MOST unlovable people. I want to show my kids how to  love the people in this world the way Jesus did/does.

This is my journey. My oldest has 5 days left in preschool. After that, I am going to homeschool my kids. Whether you agree with my reasons or not. Isn't that the joy of homeschool? You don't have to go along with my plans. :) You can do what you feel is best for your family. And if you are intrigued by my reasons, then please, take this journey with me. Let's learn together. I am really looking forward to my first year and God willing many more years to come.

 These are my boys. I love them so much that I want to do this for them. I really feel this is what the Lord is calling us as a family to do.

I Am On Facebook!

A lot of times I will just post daily activities on Facebook. Find me and like that page if you just want to see what is going on day to day with homeschooling. The Homeschool Cottage is the name and I will be on that daily. I may not blog daily but posting pictures daily is a mother's daily habit. :) So just click on the link above and like me on Facebook. THANKS SO MUCH FOR TAKING THIS JOURNEY WITH US!

Today was all about Geoboards! As I get new things I let the boys try them out. It gets them excited for when we start school in August!