What's new?

So since beginning to homeschool I started another blog that is all about our homeschooling journey.  I was intending to keep this one as well, to continue with that was going on in our family.  BUT unfortunately I just can't seem to keep up on both!  So I might occasionally come back and post something, but if you really want to keep up to date you can go to my Freedom Knights Academy blog.  There you will get to know what we are doing on a more regular basis!  I would love to have some followers so if you would like just hop over there and follow that blog as well!  Thanks!

Preschooler, Toddlers and Homeschooling, OH MY!!

That is what I feel like lately!  Oh my goodness there have been some rough days around our house!  Dealing with two straight weeks of sickness, and then stress, and then rainy weather, its enough to make this momma go batty!

To start out the baby was sick, then I got sick and then the older boys got sick!  That lasted a total of TWO weeks!!  Then we had a week of all of all of us feeling better and now the baby is sick AGAIN!!  Then we had about two weeks of cool, and rainy weather, then it warmed up (which is possibly why we had all the sickness), and now its warming up again but also a bit rainy.  OK enough of my little rants about sickness!

What have we been up to... well lets see, since the baby has stopped napping in the morning that leaves us with a new challenge in our schooling.  I am having to find things to keep him busy while we "try" to focus on some education!  This is not easy for a very active little boy!!  He gets into everything and if he is bored he starts to cry.  (But as I am writing this he is very quietly sitting and playing with a toy, go figure!)  Anyway, although it is nice that he takes a good nap in the afternoon, I kinda liked that morning nap as well.

 I have been scouring the internet looking for ideas to keep a little toddler busy, but since he is still so young (only 14 months), its hard to find age appropriate things.  I have found some great ideas though, that hopefully given the next few months of training he will be able to do.  Like putting pipe cleaning through a colander, using crayons to color, bean scooping, and other things like that.  I also found a great recipe for edible finger paint, I can not wait to try that!!  Yesterday I was reading another blog, Sprittibee, that was touching on this very topic!  She had a TON of fantastic ideas that I look forward to trying.  She also links to a ton of other bloggers who also have a bazillion ideas!

The Beginning...

Well its that time!  Time to start our homeschooling adventure!  I will be documenting the trials and triumphs of our first year homeschooling!  You can see that through the Adventures In Homeschooling tab.

Ready, Set, Here We Go!!!!

Curriculum

Curriculum....what to choose???  Its such a tough decision, so many choices.  What if me make the wrong choice?  Do you go with an all included package, or do we pick and choose from different companies?  OH  MY GOODNESS!!  With this being our first year to homeschool we really had no idea where to start.  I started researching online, and asking around to see what people used, what they liked, didn't like and so on.  While talking to a good friend who home schools she suggested that I first look into what style I wanted to use (Charlotte Mason, classical, unit study, ect.).  I then purchased off of Amazon Cathy Duffys book 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum.    So after reading that book I then was able to come to the conclusion that we will be doing a traditional homeschooling method.

After looking into all the choices we had that fit how we wanted to school our children we were able to narrow our choices down to two!  Pretty good considering we had about 6 that looked great!  Our first factor to narrow down was cost, we knew which ones we couldn't afford so we stopped looking at those! Pretty easy!  That got us down to about 3, and then we decided we wanted to try and school all of our children together using pretty much the same curriculum.  That brought us to 2!!  YEAH we are finally getting somewhere!  Lastly it came back to cost and then doing the easy all in one packaged curriculum.  So our final choice was Christian Liberty Press for Big E, he will be in second grade.

Big E's Curriculum from Christian Liberty Press

Some of Little N's Curriculum

Then for Little N we originally decided to just do a few work books here and there and let him explore.  BUT after thinking long and hard, I believe that he will also want to be included in the workbook process, especially since we are using workboxes!  :)  So we went ahead and bought a few Kumon workbooks, a Bright Start Workbook, and we already had a Preschool Workbook.  So I began to look and try to plan for Little N's school and realized that its really hard to come up with stuff to keep him busy.  I had found a preschool curriculum a few weeks back and just couldn't decide if we wanted to get it.  Well last night I went ahead and ordered it.  Its called ABC Jesus Loves Me and I like it because its all laid out for me, it tells me what to teach and when to teach it!  :)  We will still use the Kumon books and other books for extra practice.

Workboxes

Recently I have been introduced to the Workbox system for homeschooling.  Its a system developed by a lady named Sue Patrick.  She has a whole book on the topic but I have not read it, I have just been researching other peoples blogs to get ideas.  I found this blog called Confessions of a Homeschooler that had a great system and I really fell in love with it.  She used scrapbooking carts to organize her kids workboxes.  I love it!!

Basically the workbox system goes like this:  each child has a cart/shelf/file box or whatever works for your family.  There are 12 of them and each box contains one subject or activity.  The children then proceed through their boxes and when they reach box 12 then they are done with school for the day.

I will be adapting this system to meet the needs of my family so we will be doing our workboxes this way.  I bought these scrapbooking carts, one for each of my older boys.  I used velcro dots and placed two on each box.  Each box will contain one subject or project along with all the supplies they will need to complete that subject or project.  Each of my boys will also have a grid card that also has velcro dots on it, when they complete their box they will take the number card off of it and place it onto their grid card.  Some boxes will also contain a "Work with mom" card or a special card like computer time, outside time or something like that.  I will be posting on the final details later, right now we are in the process of just setting it up.

Reviews of this system are amazing!  The workbox system is supposed to help support independent work and helping with the flow of the day, so you can get in the fun things you want to do but also the academic gets done.  If you are curious about this system all you have to do is google "workboxes for homeschooling" and you will get a ton of hits.  Everybody has a different way of doing and they all seem to work.  So if you have a small space and can't use the carts, I saw someone had used a dish drainer.  Or even just a plastic file box with folders inside.  There are so many options to use with this system, that's why I love it!

Our workboxes.

Exploring what is in the workboxes.

Little N doing a great fine motor activity, placing beans into a bottle.

So happy and proud!

Whirlwind!!

So this past month has been such a whirlwind adventure!  In the beginning of the month I began thinking about homeschooling.  So that brought me to a whole months worth of researching, asking friends who homeschool questions, observing some friends styles and so on!

Our conclusion is that we will be homeschooling next year!!  I am so excited, nervous, anxious....!  After doing a TON of research on learning styles, teaching styles, homeschooling styles, I think we have it narrowed down to our final choices!  I am so amazed at the free resources that are out there.  I am finding tons of web sites, and books that offer lists of websites with free resources.

Although I am finding lots of free resources or nearly free online I still feel that a formal curriculum for Big E will be the best since he is used to being in school and does really well.  For Little N I am going to go for a more relaxed teaching and allowing him lots of free play along with the basic pre school knowledge stuff!  He is struggling with some little things like writing, coloring, tracing, mostly because he has never liked doing those things so we never made him.  So for Little N I am coming up with manipulative games for him to play, he will also be doing some writing workbooks, and basic coloring/following directions type of activities.

Little N with one of the games I found at Confessions of a Homeschooler!

In the beginning I was strongly leaning towards a formal curriculum for Little N, mostly because Big E would have one so why not.  Then the more we narrowed down and found what we would be using for Big E, I realized that we would be doing some subjects together so instead of wasting money on a curriculum that we would only use half of, why not just get a few workbooks for him to go through and use those.  Subjects that we will be doing together, hopefully, are Bible, Science and maybe History/Geography.

I am ready for this homeschool conference that is coming up in a few weeks, I am ready to actually see the stuff we have only been able to look at online!  I am such a planner that I am getting antsy not knowing for a positive what will be taking place next year!!  I know CRAZY!!  I think I am driving my dear hubby nuts!!

Here are all the books I have accumulated in the last month!  Most I found on Amazon, some at Goodwill!

We are also needing to buy a bookcase, and we are struggling to find a good quality one that doesn't cost a ton.  The one we found is at IKEA, and that is a 3 hour drive for us, plus we can't take our children with us or we wouldn't be able to get the bookcase home.  So then we need to find someone willing to watch our children for an entire day!  Hopefully over the summer we will find time to get up there.  In the meantime we are scouring second hand store, craigslist, and now garage sales are starting!! :)

Home-schooling??!!!

Home-schooling.... REALLY!!!  God are you serious?!  I can not even believe this word is existing in my vocabulary!  I was always the one that said "No way I could EVER home-school my kids!".  I have learned though that you should never say never, because that is when God will say "Oh yeah, we'll see about that!"  HAA HAA!

Let me start at the beginning... It all started last Monday night, my husband came home from work and here is our conversation:

Me: Hunny I think I have gone and lost my mind!
Hubby:  Why, what happened!? {probably thinking the boys had done something}
Me:  I think I am considering home-schooling next year.
Hubby:  {huge smile creeping onto his face} Oh really?!


After that reaction from my hubby I realized that he has been wanting me to do this for a while.  I have  been really resistant to it though because Big E and I are too much alike and butt heads way too much!  But over the last few weeks I think God has been placing thoughts in my head that maybe I could do it and most of all maybe its what He wants me to do!  While having a conversation with a close friend who is at the beginning of her home-school journey, I was saying something like how well Big E was reading. That he was reading way above his grade level.  Then I proceeded to say that they wouldn't let him get too much further because they wanted to make sure the comprehension was there (sounded reasonable to me at the time).  She just asked me why they wouldn't if he was comprehending it.  Huh?  I don't know, that's a good question.

Then I ran into an old friend while visiting a church who is home-schooling her kids.  She has a 9 year old, a 5 year old and a 3 year old.  They all seemed to be doing well, and she said she is able to do school 3 days a week and have the rest free for other activities.  Wow, that sounds wonderful!!

Then while at a Mary Kay open house, of all places, there was a lady there talking about her home-schooled kids.   One was about to get married, one was taking college classes at the age of 16 and the others were doing great.  How awesome is that to be taking college classes while other 16 year olds are just being immature and getting into trouble!?

All of those interactions built on what was already going through my head.  Also I had not been too pleased with some areas of Big E's schooling.  Like I said he is excelling in reading but not doing great with handwriting.  BUT I am not seeing where they are helping him to have better handwriting.

  So back to the conversation with the hubby, he was all for it!  That began a world wide web search for curriculum and answers as to how much would this cost and what laws are there to follow.  Fortunately we live in a really easy state that has very few home-schooling laws so that is not going to be an issue.  As far as curriculum, we had set aside money to pay for Little N's preschool next year (which by the way we will home-school him as well) and that will be plenty to get curriculum and supplies for the year!  How amazing that God laid all that out just when we needed it!  Not to mention there is a home-schooling convention coming up in our area next month!

I am so excited about this new journey that is being placed before us and I can't wait to get started!!