Category Archives: Homeschooling

Taking a few “Sun” days….

Gardening, Getting Organized, Homeschooling
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So Friday, Monday and today, we’ve been taking some “Sun” days from home schooling(you know, instead of “Snow” days, since we don’t get much snow here in the valley ). It has been raining so much this past month that I decided to just let them play outside most of the day the last few days while I get some spring cleaning done in the house and some yard work and flower planting done outside.

My house still is in need of more organisation, but I’ve got Mount Washmore almost eradicated, and the living room and dining room are mostly cleared and swept and vacuumed and dishes all got done yesterday so I don’t have so many to do tonight. Feels good to be able to be able to get outside and plant some flowers too. I can’t wait till they start blooming!

It is raining now again. Started just as I was finishing up outside.Good old Oregon lol

So my next project is to start on the garden out back. I want to get some planting soil and raise the area up and put a border around it to keep it contained. Then I’m planning on planting some corn, carrots, beans and tomatoes. My goal is to plant things that I can easily freeze for the winter, with the exception of the tomatoes.  I have a dream of having property some day, but for now, I’ll have to pretend to homestead here in town :)

Well, hope you all are having a wonderful productive Spring so far!

Back to Homeschool, Schedule and an Awesome Desk!!

Getting Organized, Homeschooling,
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Our New Homeschooling Wall Desk
Our new homeschooling wall desk

I’m back!! I’m up late working on a website for my brother so I thought I might as well write a little and tell you all what’s been going on lately. :)

So we started back to homeschooling this week! Being a disorganized mom of 3, plus trying to run a home business…or several….and take care of the house, hubby and so on…. I have my work cut out for me trying to stay on a schedule this year. We are going on day 4 of homeschooling and so far I have been able to stick to the schooling schedule at least. Everything else has been in disarray , but hopefully things will smooth out in another week or so…hopefully(sigh).

So this is what our schedule looks like this week. Nboy is homeschooling 2nd grade this year. Ekid is doing preschool/kindergarten and Baby(who is having his 2nd birthday this Sunday on 9/11 ) will be working on keeping out of trouble, and potty training :) hehe

So back to the schedule!
7am I wake up, get dressed, do some Flylady routines, study my Bible, prayer, and then maybe work on a website or get a batch of candles started.

8am wake the boys up, get them breakfast.

8:30 start school time. Nboy starts with math, then reading/writing/spelling,

then exercise time around 10am-10:30, then at

10:30 we work on his website(he wanted me to teach him how to make a website!)

Ekid works in his workbooks doing whatever his little heart desires, so he skips around to different pages and does ones that catch his eye LOL.

Then usually around 9am I do one lesson out of the “Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons” So far I’m very impressed with the method used in the book! I have to be careful, though, because Ekid does become bored easily, so sometimes we’ve had to kind of hurry through the lesson and not go over things as many times as it says to. But he seems to be doing fine with it so far nonetheless.

So for now, we are getting done with school around 11am. I plan on adding some Science a couple times a week, and History too. We’ll probably do those in the afternoon, so that will fill in some down time when they are normally getting bored.

I’m excited for this year, but this week has been frustrating because I haven’t been able to do much else but schooling and trying to clean the house. I have candle orders that need to get done and shipped, and a couple websites that need to be worked on and finished! Hoping next week will go more smoothly.

2:32 am and I need to get up at 7! Oye!

P.S. The picture below is of our new-to-us wall desk thingy(?). It is absolutely wonderful!! We got it from the church my uncle is a pastor of. I love it and the kids do too! Love that it can fold up too :D

Christopher Columbus hero or villain?

Homeschooling
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So I had planned on teaching Nboy about Christopher Columbus today. I mean, when I was in grade school Christopher Columbus was the man! He was a hero. He discovered America.

Now, since then, I’ve learned that he did not in fact discover America, but when I googled Christopher Columbus today so that I might teach my first grader about his accomplishments and what he did for this country, I found out some things I’d never known. He was not a good guy. I plan on teaching Nboy about him and other explorers that landed here in America, but I want to do it with all the facts, and obviously what I was taught when I was a child were not facts, or were incorrect facts anyway.

So was Christopher Columbus hero or villain? That’s what I intend to find out. From what I’ve seen, he seems to be falling more on the villain side of things, I mean, killing Indians that were very peaceful and not even armed? Sentenced to life in prison by the Spanish for thievery, and something else I can’t remember at the moment?

But maybe, just maybe with some digging we may find out that he is somewhere in between. Or maybe not….

So I guess what I’m planning on doing is just to start teaching about the first explorers who landed here in America, and how our country got it’s start. I thought that since it was Columbus day today, that it would be fun to look up the simple facts about him, but what I found is that it’s not as simple as I thought! So back to the drawing board!

Fall craft project poster

Kid’s fall craft project-Autumn Poster

Craft Projects, Getting Organized
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Hello. Long time no talk. So I haven’t had much to write about this week and I’ve been busy trying to keep a schedule and actually clean my house at certain times during the day and do a load of laundry every day, plus working on candles, and I’ve had a couple sick kids, so I just haven’t felt like I’ve had anything interesting to write about. But have been planning this post for a few days now.

I decided the boys and I should do a fun fall craft project that would be easy for them to help with, yet would look nice for a fall decoration in our school room/dining room/play room…..

I’ve had this hankerin’ to decorate my home for fall. I love decorating my house and I don’t usually get to, except at Christmas time. So in the name of “homeschooling” I’ve decided to decorate for the seasons this year! So I went out last week and bought a piece of yellow poster board. I also bought a pack of 75 fabric leaves from Target in their dollar section, and Tuesday I went to Joannes fabric and bought a 35 pack of even nicer, real looking fall leaves for 50% off which came out to $1. Before I went to check out, though, I was very, very tempted to purchase more fall floral stuff since it was all 50% off! Oh, how I love Joannes!! I decided to wait a bit before buying more fall stuff from there though, because usually they end up at 75% once it gets closer to winter and I wanted to be wise in my spending.

But I was oh so tempted….. must….wait…..patience!

Kid's fall craft project materials

So anyway, then I printed off some fall/harvest/thanksgiving pictures from the computer onto some photo paper and cut them out. I let Nboy help with some of the cutting and then he and Ekid helped me glue the pictures on first and then the leaves around the edge of the poster. I didn’t think the leaves were going to stick well at first until we left off gluing them and then I came back later and they were stuck firm. The fabric leaves just take a bit longer to dry, so be patient.

Kids working on fall craft project

And here’s the finished product! We all enjoyed this easy fall craft project. I loved it because it’s not very messy and it’s something that is pretty easy for young kids to help with. I plan on making a poster like this for each season, and then I can just save them and bring them out the following year and reuse them!

Fall craft project poster

I decided to go with the not so realistic looking leaves from Target because I hated the thought of gluing those beautiful real looking ones from Joannes forever to a poster.lol  I plan on using those for maybe just spreading out on a shelf, or using them when I take pictures of my candles for my fall specials.

 

Homeschooling first grade-Day 1….

Getting Organized, Homeschooling
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Well, it’s that time of year again. The kids go back to school, the rain starts in, and it gets dark way too early. I do love fall though. Summer and Fall are my favorite seasons.

My oldest, Nboy, turns 7 in November and we started homeschooling first grade yesterday.  Sure we “homeschooled” Kindergarten, if you really want to call it “school”(it just gets me that people think you “have” to send your kids to Kindergarten, but that’s another topic for another day), but yesterday we started official schooling.

The nice thing, is that my mindset has changed. All year this year, I’ve been trying to get myself to get up at 7am and get the kids up at 8am. Wasn’t working. But now, I guess with the homeschooling being “official” I’ve got a motivation to get up and that’s what I’ve done the past 2 mornings. This is my plan for the school year, schedule wise:

  • Up at 6:50 am-Study Bible and Prayer time
  • 7:10 am-8am Eat breakfast, do morning routine(put clean dishes away, fold laundry,etc)
  • Post on Twitter, blog, etc….
  • 8am, get the boys up and eating breakfast
  • 8:30 am Start school
  • 11 am School done

So that’s a rough schedule for now, but it gives you an idea.

Yesterday we started at 8:30 on the dot and opened with prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. Then we did some review in math and counting. Nboy can count easily to 100 and beyond, so we don’t need to work on that. Ekid, who will be 4 in December, can count to 10 pretty easily too. He’s not officially doing school, but I let him sit in and learn too.

So Nboy also did some addition problems and I had to remind him how to count on his fingers when adding larger numbers like 8+6, but other than that, he did pretty well on his own. I also wrote the numbers 1-9 in the front of his math section in his binder and drew the dots on them so he can learn to just count that way(that’s what they did when I was in grade school and it made it so easy), and then eventually do it in his head. We’ll be starting addition, and subtraction of double digit numbers pretty soon too.

Next we did Art. I bought big pieces of poster board, 4 of them, to stable 2 together for Nboy and Ekid and make them into big pockets for their artwork that they do throughout the year. They both got to paint one piece of poster board yesterday and will finish them today and then we’ll stable 3 sides together and they’ll just slip in their artwork. This is an idea I learned in my art class my Freshman year in high school.

By the way, Baby was still sleeping at this point, which was sooooo nice because he didn’t wake up till about 9:30 when we were done with the painting.

Now I think I’m going to switch it up today and do reading and writing before art, because yesterday Nboy was pretty tired after art and started getting easily frustrated with the reading and didn’t really want to do it.

So we started reading/writing time off with going over the alphabet and then I used alphabet flashcards and held each one up for Nboy to say what letter it was, then for Ekid to say it(he just copied his brother) and then held the same one up for Nboy to say the sound, and then Ekid to do the same. For reading we are working through the McGuffy’s readers, starting with the Primer. We were already a little more than halfway through it before summer started, so we just jumped in where we left off. He’s doing really well and only needed my help a few times, and even then I would just give him hints and he figured it out on his own.

So after reading, we had exercise time and I put on some kids christian music and we jumped, hopped, skipped to the music and had a fun time while getting a bit of a workout(at least for me anyway!)

That’s what we did our first day of homeschooling first grade.  I’m going to add Science and some History into our day somewhere as well, so stay tuned for more on our homeschooling journey!

Do you homeschool? What did you do for your first day back to “school”?

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