Our Homeschool Name Announced

Our homeschool finally has a name!! After months of brainstorming, we finally narrowed it down to two yesterday on a 3 hours road trip for a family reunion.  We are so happy and proud to announce our homeschool name:


Freedom Knights Academy!!  :)

If you saw a few days ago I had the tab "Adventures in Homeschooling" at the top of my blog.  It didn't occur to me to search and see if that was already taken, so today I did that search.  As it turns out someone else already has that as a title for their blog, so I decided to change that tab to our homeschool name.  So if you are interested in finding out more about our first year in homeschooling, you can click that tab and it will take you to my new blog.

This blog I will keep as a family blog and try to keep the homeschooling stuff on the Freedom Knights page.

Summer Fun Part 1

This has been a crazy busy summer!!  Not really sure what we have been doing, but its been busy!  We started off June with really nice weather.  So that allowed us to get outside into our pools!!  We did make it to a few parks in our area.

We made our own little water slide!  

Baby Z's first pool experience!

Big brothers were so excited for Baby to be in the pool with them!

We worked on a Ten Commandment Study this summer this is one of the crafts.

Big E with his craft.

Baby Z learned to pull himself and stand!  He was so proud!

Learning to protect his toys with the Light Saber

He really loves his swing!

Unfortunately June turned into BLAZING HOT temps and this momma had to get very creative!  There has been lots of indoor activities and homemade products.  We have made homemade water colors, painted rocks, and got our home organized for homeschooling!  :)  

My next post will cover our July Summer Fun!

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!!!!

Purging time!!!

In an effort to scale down our home to just the basics, and also with the prospect of a garage sale coming up we have been going through every corner of our house.  A while ago I saw someone had bought these really cool DVD cases and I thought they would be awesome.  So we went to Target and found them and decided to think on it a bit.  Well just a few weeks ago we went back and got them.  I can not tell you how amazing they are!!  We had a ton of DVD's and were in desperate need to get rid of the cabinet they were held in.  So in doing this were were able to put all of our DCVD's (with the exception of our series, like Friends and Star Wars) into these cases.  They take up very little space now and can be stored in  a drawer in the cabinet that our TV sits on.  AMAZING!!

A few of what we started with.

Almost all of the videos fit into this box.

These are what we used.  Each case holds 2 DVD's.  I actually had to go back and get a third one but didn't use all of that one.

Its almost the start of summer.  Big E has just 2 days left of school and Little N finished his school last week.  I am so excited to start a vacation!!  Here a just a few pictures of my little sweeties!

Baby Z and his big smile!

They thought it would be fun to dress alike

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!! :)