Creation

We survived the creation unit! There were really times I was beginning to wonder. One things for sure, the first couple weeks ended up being much harder than I had expected. This is my first year trying to teach two different grade levels with 2 separate curriculum's, and take care of a toddler. Even though I'm trying to involve both girls in most things it's definitely more challenging than when Boo was just tagging along. We've been switching around our schedule trying to find what works and what doesn't.

 After our pretty successful first day we basically had to write day 2 off as a fail! Baby Bear woke up and decided she no longer wanted to wear clothes or diapers. She also decided she no longer needed her nap! She stripped probably 20 times throughout the day, and had more accidents than I can count. I finally put her down for her nap to do our creation book. She was so quiet I thought she had worn herself out. Well, she must have actually felt left out of craft time, because she decided to paint her crib with poop. I'm sure all of you mom's can relate to those kind of days! We managed to finish our work, but I was in tears by the end of the day! After that things calmed down a bit, and I think we're finally starting to fall into some sort of routine.

Boo ended up really enjoying the creation unit and Sis told me this is her favorite school year so far, so I guess things are not as bad as they seem to me. This was an introduction unit so we did an overview and review of the whole alphabet. This was actually Boo's first exposure to lowercase letters. She's had such a struggle with capital letters that I've never tried to teach her those yet. I was actually impressed with how many she could remember at the end of our unit. Next week we will begin focusing on one letter a week for the rest of the year to match our science theme. Creation was actually a perfect intro topic, because in just a few weeks we have a big trip planned to the Creation Museum in KY! Every vacation is actually a big field trip in this family! Hopefully we will see a lot of neat things there that we learned about this past couple weeks, and maybe learn even more about God's creation.

The one thing the girls were most excited about doing was the creation snacks/treat to go along with Boos lessons, so I managed to get all the stuff we needed to make those each day. We probably could have come up with some healthier options for most of the days , but oh well it was fun!
Here's what we came up with:

Day7: God Rested- We talked about how Sunday is our day of rest, so we relaxed, watched a movie and   had Ice-cream sundays!

We also made a creation book with one page for each lesson. I just stapled together 8 sheets of construction paper (all pink and purple of course!) and each day we made a page using our crayons, construction paper, stickers, and felt .

Day 7 is just a blank page with the number 7 that says "God rested."

We even squeezed in a little trip to the pet store to see how many kinds of birds and fish we could count to go along with day 5. Of course, her favorite fish was the pink and purple glo-fish! We didn't find any pink and purple birds, but there was a pretty cool parrot.

SIS HIGHLIGHT: 

Sis has been working on memorizing states and capitals. In just this last couple weeks she's actually got quite a few of them down! She's been using the "Yo Sacramento" book and The Little man on the Map.  She started learning her multiplication facts too. She'll be memorizing all of those over the course of this year. I am really bad at math so even though she's excited, I'm secretly crying that we're moving on from multiple digit subtraction. I'm thinking a few years from now dad's gonna be the math teacher! She also got 100% on her first spelling test of the year!

I love this Melissa & Doug floor puzzle we bought. It has individual state pieces and capitals too. 

Here are some pics from our water pressure experiment. We learned what happens to our lungs under deep ocean water...they shrink!

She also LOVES the "Tour the States" song and listens to it everyday. She has most of the words memorized. It is a pretty catchy tune. It's stuck in my head about 5 days out of the week which is annoying, but it's helping her to remember her states and capitals. 

Well the first 7 days of our school year and our Creation Introduction Unit are in the books! Next week Boo moves on to our first Alphabet themed unit: Ss is for Sun.

                                       

Our First Day of School

Our Back-to-School pics...We couldn't leave out Baby Bear  :) 

Over all our first day went pretty well, although we had a slow start. I am NOT a morning person and never will be. The two things I dislike the most in life are going to bed at night and getting up in the morning. If you try to speak to me before my 3rd snooze I tend to be not so nice. So seriously, hats off to all you Moms who wake up early full of joy praising the Lord.  For a long time I felt guilty for not being a "happy morning Mom." After many failed attempts at trying to be something I'm not, I've learned to accept the fact that for whatever reason God made me nocturnal. Last year we failed miserably at our school start time. It lasted only a couple weeks. So this year we set more realistic goals. Another reason I love homeschooling: we can start whatever time works best for us instead of having to be up before the sun to catch the big yellow bus. We plan to start school early enough each day to be finished with lessons and chores by the time Dad gets home from work. 

We started out our first day with a little meeting about what to expect this year. Last year I introduced morning routine charts to help them get ready for school on their own. They loved those, and they worked great until all the magnets started falling off. Within a few months they were useless! This year I found a similar idea on Pinterest, but I'm hoping these will hold up better. I put each girl's name on a foam door hanger with foam stickers, then I wrote their "to do" items on clothes pins. After they complete an activity such as brushing teeth they move it to the "done" side. So after explaining I gave them 15 mins to complete all the tasks on their hangers. The rest of the year they'll be expected to complete their morning tasks when they first get up before we start school. Also each girl has her own school clothes basket, which I fill the night before with an outfit for the next day so that they know where to find clothes in the morning to complete their "get dressed" pin.

 

After our meeting and hangers, I introduced Boo to her morning board. We did our calendar and other activities on the board. This is Boo putting her first straw in her place value cups. She will add one straw to the "ones" cup every day. When she gets to 10 we will bundle them up with a rubber band and place our bundle in the "tens" cup. When we get ten bundles of 10 we will add them all to our hundreds cup and celebrate the 100th day of school!

We also sang our Days of the week song and This is My Father's World. I found these cute posters at the dollar store (love that place!) to help her sing along. 

Here's a link to our My Father's World song and video on Youtube, which our curriculum suggests. The girls loved this and made me play it 3 times. We will listen to it every morning for a while until they know it.

This is My Father's World

Next we did a  "First day of school" interview for our portfolios. I always get a laugh from some of the answers we get on these kind of things. I'm thinking of using this same sheet in the years to come so that we can see how the answers change. Here's a link if you would like to download a copy for your first school day. Click HERE for free download.

Then we had our annual backyard back-to-school hunt. Our tradition is to hide new school supplies in the backyard and have a treasure hunt for them. This year we put each girl's supplies in a new backpack so they only had one item to hunt for. They were so excited to find these though. I had another mom ask me what my kids actually use a backpack for. The answer is TONS of things! We take them to church, road trips, overnights at Grandmas and just to play with too.

We tried to keep book work light on our first day. We all did our Bible lesson together. Then Sis and I did her first Apologia zoology lesson outside in the backyard while boo tried out her new colored pencils and jumped on the trampoline. 

Tomorrow Boo will start her 2 week unit on Creation and Sis will get to start her new math and spelling books. Day one was a success. I'm sure the excitement will wear off pretty quickly, and I'll be dragging them out of bed too in a few days. For those following, I plan on updating our blog after each unit. We start out with a 2 week unit on Creation followed by weekly science themed units after that.

 After school we celebrated our first day by spending the rest of the day at our County fair with friends.

Organizing and Prep for Kindergarten

We start back to school in just 1 week! So this last couple weeks has been "Get Ready" time. We've  done a lot of supply shopping, cleaning, and just getting ourselves mentally prepared for back to school. I've been doing my best to start this year off organized, even though it usually doesn't last long.

Kindergarten looks like it's going to be a lot of fun though and Boo asks every day if it's time to start. This will be our first time doing K since Sis skipped it and went right to 1st grade at age 5. I kind of regret that decision now that I see how much fun K is even though she was ready for 1st grade. On the other hand she's super excited to be tagging along and helping Boo with her K activities now, because its all new to her. This way she's not going to miss out on anything even if it is 3 years late. I think she's going to be a great helper for me though.

Since we will be doing unit studies with a different theme each week, I came up with the idea of making a bulletin board to display our letter of the week, theme, and our, "words to remember for the week." I found clip art on the internet and printed a picture to go along with each unit. I think they will be excited every Monday to wake up and see the new theme announced on the bulletin board.

Here's a look at our board and all of our images before it's put together...

Here's our finished product!

To organize all of our papers, books and activities by unit, I bought a large plastic filing crate and hanging file folders. I labeled 26 folders with the unit themes. I then filed all student sheets, bulletin board pictures, read aloud books, and any other theme related items in the appropriate folders. Now I can just pull out the folder at the beginning of each week and have everything I will need all in one spot. I also left a few extra folders to keep 3rd grade worksheets and activities filed for Sis's curriculum.

I made copies of the weekly calendar from the teacher's manual, hole punched them and put them in a 3 ring binder to use as our planner. This way I can check off the activities as we do them and make notes without having to write in my manual so that I can re-use it for Baby Bear. I love that MFW does all the work for us and provides these nice weekly schedules. I also made Sis her own 3 ring binder with a planner so that we can have all of her 3rd grade school work scheduled for the week. Since I'm putting together her curriculum myself this year it was a lot of work, and made me appreciate all MFW does for us even more! 

One of the things we will be doing for K is earning badges! For completing each of the themed units Boo will earn a badge sort of like girl scouts! This was a little different than MFW suggested, but she loved the idea so much I decided to go with it. I found this adorable caterpiller online. Each badge has her words to remember for the week on it. We will display him on our school room wall as she earns her badges. I knew Sis would be a little jealous of the badges so, I made her one of each too that she will earn for helping Boo with each unit. He was too long to fit in a pic but here is some of him. I have to say I'm in love with this little guy!

This will be our 2nd year using our "workbox" folder system for Big Sis and her 3rd grade work. So far it's worked out great for her. I file all work that can be done independently for the day in her folders by subject (usually math worksheets, spelling practice, handwriting assignments, etc.)  She works on them in whatever order she wants, and then marks each completed by flipping the folder over when she puts it back. I wrote "DONE" on the back of each. This helps her to be able to visualize how much work she has left and see what she's completed. It also makes her more independent with her work so that I have more time to spend with the younger ones. She will complete all of her folder work first thing in the morning so that she has time to join Boo for all the crafts and projects in K. Then Big Sis and I will do History and Science together, and anything else that she needs one on one time with.

This is also our 2nd year using "book baskets." I got their baskets at the Dollar Tree and each girls has their own. At the start of each unit I fill their baskets with library books. I try to find books related to anything we're learning about, mostly educational books with lots of pictures, science books, books about animals, easy readers, etc. I also let each girl pick a couple "just for fun" books from the library to add to their basket. Every day we have "book basket time." This is separate from their regular reading when they practice phonic and reading skills, or our family read-aloud time. This is independent quiet reading time for 20 mins. Each girl takes her own basket to a quiet spot and can look through pictures, or read anything in her basket that she wants.

The most excited thing to me while preparing was putting together our "Morning board" or more like "morning wall." This will be Boo's daily morning routine while Sis is working on her folders. We will add the date to our calendar (I'm super excited about this new pocket calendar I found online), review the month and day of the week, do our daily weather chart and graph, add a number to our 100 chart, add a straw to our place value cups, and introduce our letter for the week and theme. We'll also be singing our "Days of the week" song sung to the Adams family tune, and the "Months of the year" song Sis and I made up when she was little (she still sings them to this day!)

Now I just have a few more things to buy, a few things to prep for Big Sis, a LOT more cleaning to do, and we're ready to start!

Called to Homeschool

Let me begin by saying I LOVE homeschooling my girls! Often, I think I get more excited about the lessons, crafts, and school books than they do. Artistic craftiness runs through my veins, and having the experience of teaching children at my church for the past 16 years, probably makes homeschooling a little bit easier for me. 

However, I'm a firm believer that anyone can homeschool.  Regardless of educational experience or artistic abilities, if God calls you down this path he will give you the grace and tools you need to fulfill that calling. I always say you only have to be one lesson smarter than your student. 

In my opinion there is nothing more rewarding. There's just something about seeing the look in your child's eyes when she reads her first word, or when something "clicks" and after countless lessons she suddenly understand the gospel. Homeschooling is so much more to me than giving my kids an academic education. It's about being together as a family, the closeness that develops between siblings who have grown and learned together, being able to not miss any moment in their short childhood, the flexibility to have school on your own schedule whenever and where ever, the opportunity to learn through life experiences rather than sitting behind a desk, and being able to know exactly what they are being taught and influence by.

Most importantly homeschooling is about discipleship. God calls us as parents to disciple our children, to teach them and train them in the ways of the Lord. I'm thankful to be able to use curriculum that helps them to see history, science, and all subjects from a Christian perspective, and understand that all things in life point to our Creator. Our morning Bible lessons to me are the most important part of our day. There have been countless moments when our lessons have brought up deep conversation topics and questions from them that they would not be asking me if they were away at school. I'm thankful that I get to be the one to answer those hard questions. I believe that by being with them all the time and learning together as a family, they are more comfortable to be open and share things with me. One of my favorite school memories was last year sitting in the backyard after reading our lesson on India in geography, my 8 year old looked up from her shovel with tears in her eyes and said "Mom I can't quit thinking about the children of India. I feel like God might want me to be a missionary someday." Moments like those are priceless!

However, I think that often times homeschoolers get falsely viewed as having only joyful school days with a bunch of well behaved children working together in the kitchen to bake a pie. There are definitely those moments, but homeschooling is not all fun or happy. Often it's down right hard. I am not a naturally patient person and have a tendency to yell. I have to pray everyday for God to help me exercise the fruits of the Spirit.  Our home is almost always so loud that it would drive the most patient person nutty! My kids know how to make bigger messes quicker than anyone I know. Tattling, arguing, and sibling jealousy are daily battles around here. There are some days that nobody can focus and I feel like throwing our school books out the window or I've had to explain the same math concept so many times that I want to pull out my hair! There's been a lot of trial and error over the last 3 years. Homeschooling is not easy, but to me the benefits out way the challenges, and I've never considered anything else.

Having said that, I do not believe that homeschooling is for everyone. If you have chosen a different path the purpose of this blog is not to make you feel inferior, or that homeschooling is the choice you should choose.  I know beyond a doubt that God has called OUR family down this path in life, but I believe also every family is different. He has a unique calling and plan for each family, and homeschooling is not the only way for christian parents to give their children a strong christian education. Each family must seek God as to what is his will for them be it public, private, or homeschool. I have been so encouraged by reading weekly blogs from other homeschool moms. Taking a peek into the lives of others using the same curriculum as us has been especially motivating. I hope to do the same for someone else. So,  my intent in this blog is to give ideas and encouragement to others who may be headed down this road, and to give a little insight into our personal homeschool experiences. Thanks for reading!