31 days of blogging

31 Days of blogging.

I got this list from here.  I am planning on blogging for 31 days straight starting tomorrow. 

YIKES!!

I am horrible with follow through on these types of things.  Here’s to hoping!

Day:
01 - A few things about yourself
02 - Things you are good at
03 - I am looking forward to…
04 - Today’s playlist
05 - Weekend goals
06 - Least favorite words
07 - If I won $100,000,000 in the lottery, I would…
08 - In my bag
09 - My favorite things
10 - On my wishlist
11 - Things I collect
12 - Daily rituals
13 - DIYs I want to try
14 - Things I love about _________
15 - On my shopping list
16 - Places to see in your town
17 - Words that are hard to spell
18 - Road trip must haves
19 - Recipes I want to try
20 - Celebrity crushes
21 - Things to do this spring

22 - Today I saw
23 - Guilty pleasures
24 - I make lists for…
25 - Things I’d rather be doing right now
26 - My favorite books
27 - Lessons learned
28 - Vacations to take
29 - Favorite foods
30 - Today’s to do list

31 – What’s for Dinner?

 

A glimpse of our not typical day…

 

Sometimes as a blogger you feel like your days aren’t good enough, you don’t get enough done, you are not creative enough.  You aren’t doing enough hands on activities to share about.

Today was what I would consider an ideal day for us!

That’s why I’m so eager to share it with you.

Now these types of days don’t happen very often at all, so I definitely want to document when they do.

I woke up about 7:30am and lay in bed for about an hour reading on my phone and checking Facebook, my bank account and the like…

I got up and took a shower.  I was ready for the day by 9am and started getting kids up. 

Mr. 5 got up and got dressed and ate breakfast while my oldest two got showers and ready for the day and started independently on their schoolwork. 

I started schoolwork with Mr. 5, which he is to the point that he can work through his daily workbook alone and the Get Set for the Code book that he just started in alone for the most part. 

While he was working on those I got up Ms. 9 and got her sometime to eat.

It was now about 11am.  I got her working on her Teaching Textbooks math lesson independently, then I went back to work on All About Reading with Mr. 5.

After that, Ms 9 was done with math, so I set her up to paint like Michelangelo while I read to her about Rome from A Child’s Geography.  When I was done reading she continued to paint while I cooked lunch.  It was sweet and sour little smokies with broccoli and hollandaise sauce.  We all ate lunch about noon. 

After lunch Mr. 5 watched The Magic School Bus: Makes a Stink. Ms. 9 read in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  This is the first book I have ever had to stop her from reading.  In her Lightning Literature Curriculum she stops and does worksheets and we discuss things from the book.  So really, this is a good thing and a bad thing. 

After the younger kids were done with schoolwork, I met with each of my older kids to see what else they needed to do and to verify and correct their work.

By 1:30 everyone was done.  We decided to make Christmas Cards with stamps to mail out to family and friends. 

We enjoyed our day and my house was clean and dinner was in the crock pot! 

It was heaven!

Then came bedtime…. That’s another story. 

 

The Evolution of our Homeschool. {YEAR 1}

 

 

As I am looking forward to the future of our homeschool, I couldn’t help but take a look back through where we have been.

Our first year, I pulled the oldest two out of public school in October.  They went for about 6 weeks of public school that school year.  My oldest was in 5th grade and my next was in 3rd.  I had my 4 year who I had in a preschool program (with many problems, and much of my homeschooling her has stemmed from that.)  She was pulled from preschool to do homeschool preschool in October as well. I later found out that her preschool teacher had been fired in December for not treating the children properly after many complaints from parents.  This was also the year I had a baby.  He was just 3 months when I began homeschooling.  CRAZY, I know!

During that first year I was able to teach my then 3rd grader cursive, all by myself.  We did many fun unit studies, including this one on architecture.  My 3rd grader was an avid reader and I just had to take her to the library often enough to keep a fresh book in her hands.  My then 5th grader was/is more of a hands on learner. He was able to do so many projects that year and earned many scouting badges.  

The main subjects we did and what we used:

Handwriting:  We used Handwriting Without Tears.  This was actually the first piece of curriculum that I purchased.

Math: We used Math U See. Beta for my then 3rd grader and Epsilon for my then 5th grader.

Reading:  We did fun reading unit studies that went along with the books we read.  I remember doing Charlotte’s Web and The Secret Garden.  I know we did more than that.  We just did fun activities that went along with the books we read out of.  I just found the activities around the internet or made them up.

History:  We used History Odyssey.  We loved this program.  I don’t know why I ever went away from it. I often themed our food around what we were studying.

Unit Studies:  We did some fun Unit Studies this year.  The 4th curriculum I purchased was a Valentine Unit Study.  We learned about Idioms and the heart. This and history were all of our favorite subjects.  I also got my lesson plan organization under way.

I still had overwhelming moments when I thought I couldn’t handle everything.

We made some more fun memories while doing History Odyssey… I still can’t think of why we quit using that.  I am thinking I am going to have to pull it back out. 

Over the summer we worked through Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Botany.  We dissected a flower! 

Other highlights from our first year were the fact that we reached out and joined our local homeschool co-op group.  We were also able to travel and take school with us.  We really incorporated real life learning into our children’s lives.

I’ve had a lot of fun looking back at the year we started. 

Stay tuned to see our highlights from year two. 

 

10 Favorite Phone Photos. 1st Edition.

 

 

I try to take pictures with my phone to remember the memories. 

Then the pictures just sit on my phone until I load them onto my hard drive, then they sit there. 

I never do much with them. 

Occasionally I post them here, or on Facebook or Instagram.  But most just sit in digital land…

I decided as a way to show and share my life with you all I would share some of these hidden gems. 

My goal is to post my 10 favorite phone photos each month.

1Katey and I had a special day.

2

I found this picture and made it my screen saver on my phone.

3 & 4

Katey and I went in the Zorb Balls at one of our towns holiday events.

5

After Thanksgiving Dinner we decorated a Gingerbread house.  I never did get a picture of it fully decorated before the kids started eating off it.

6

Some of my friends and I went out to eat in our Ugly Sweaters.  So much fun!

7

Tyler was learning about Volcanoes for science and he got to make one explode.  It was AWESOME!

8

My little guy knows how to cut a rug.  He is always the star of the show at weddings with a dance floor!

9

Same wedding.  I asked someone to take our picture since we were all gussied up and while there are good (non blurry) ones on my phone this one is my fav.

10

This is not one of my favorites because one of my kids got hurt.  It is one of my favorite because I was so grateful she was able to get treated quickly and that the ER was not busy that night. Katey burned her hand cooking dinner on the Monday before Thanksgiving.  We spent that night in the ER getting burn care.  She is fine now and the blister has popped. 

Friday Fun

 

Today Katey and I had a mom and daughter day. 

When she got done with her school work we headed out to the ice rink.

We had a ton of fun there, just the two of us.

Then we came home and made dinner.  She made Sloppy Joes with my help.

After dinner we cleaned up and then made a bunch of cards for Little Addie.

We had so much fun today and I realize that I need to spend more one on one time with each of my kids. 

Back to the basics!

 

Photo Credit

Sometimes life just gets so overwhelming.  I have deep thoughts and I have a hard time putting them into words.   I know what I believe in and why, I have the self confidence struggle to put it all out there.  I am not a controversial person.  That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in something one way or the other. It just means that I don’t put my believes out there for all to know…

I haven’t been blogging as much as I would like to because I keep thinking that I have to write about something deep and meaningful.  I blog to write about OUR LIFE!  I blog to show everyone a glimpse into OUR HOMESCHOOL! I blog to share MY OPINION on products with you!  Most of all I BLOG BECAUSE I WANT TO!

I BLOG FOR ME!!

I don’t have to blog about my feelings on things going on in the world today.  (But, I can if I want to.)  I don’t have to blog about the fight I have been having with my youngest to get his schoolwork done.  (But, I can if I want to.)

In all this deep thinking I have decided that I just needed to get over it all and write a blog post about this. 

Some ways I am going to ease back into blogging is by creating a daily routine where I actually turn on my laptop and do something on it. 

I truly want to blog.  Sometimes I just don’t feel important enough to write something.  On the other hand I don’t want the pressure of being so important. 

See ya on the flip side!