Finding a routine.

 

I had found what I thought was the perfect routine for our family.  We would get up and moving about 8:30 or 9am.  I was so proud.  I always wanted to be an early morning homeschool family, but this was as early as we could do it.  By 10 am everyone would be working on their schoolwork.  They would work until about noon.  That’s when we would break for lunch.  The kids would help me make lunch, we would eat and then take a small 30-45 minute break.  By 1 or 1:30 we would do a “family quick clean” that’s where everyone would clean for about 10 or 15 minutes.  The house would look clean enough after that and then we would sit down and watch CNN Student News and then discuss things.  Then we would read aloud a chapter in a book. Then we would each go back to individual works.  In the morning I would spend my time helping the younger kids with what they needed me to teach or needed my help on.  The afternoon was left for the older kids and what I needed to teach or help them with.  We would be done with school every day by 2:30 or 3.  Some days we had co-op and our routine just got smooshed together a little more, but stayed basically the same.

Then we moved far away. Our lives changed dramatically.

We moved toward the end of the “school year”  so no co-ops to join or classes to get involved in. 

Our schedule changed.  We started waking up later, like 10 or 11am.  Ahhh!  I know.

We are much slower to get going in the mornings.

We have cut out things like CNN Student News and our read aloud due to not having enough time. 

We generally don’t even start schoolwork until after lunch, which is about 1:30 or 2.  So we are now working on schoolwork from 2-6 or later each day.  And having to do some on the weekends. We eat dinner about 7 (instead of 6:30 like we used to). 

This leaves my children doing schoolwork in the afternoons and while it’s working, I DON’T LIKE IT!

I was us to go back to when we are getting done with school about 2:30 not just getting started then.

I need a fresh start in the routine department for us.

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. 

 

G is for Gardening {mishaps}

 

Let me just start off by saying that I live in Zone 4 which is a cold climate.  We have cold winters, very cold, and dry warm summers.

There is a standard rule to NOT plant outdoors before Mother’s Day EVER!  No matter how warm it gets in Feb, or March, even April.  DON’T PLANT BEFORE MOTHER’S DAY!

I knew this rule.  I have known this rule my entire life since I was a child.  We never planted before Mother’s Day.  Now I live in an even colder climate.

It all started one March day.  I had been taking some gardening classes at the library.  I got all gung ho and came home and planted some seeds in these self watering pots I made out of 2 liter bottles.  I kept them inside on my window ledges. 

They got very big, very quickly.  In just a few weeks many of the plants had out grown the pots.  So my husband talked me into planting them outside.  YES, I am totally blaming him, and he knows it!

I have a raised bed with a green house screen that fits over the top of it. 

The very next day after we planted our plants out there the winds were fierce!  I mean fierce!  55-80 mile and hour wind gusts and the temperature was around 40 F.  We did our best to protect the plants.

NONE of them survived! NONE of them.

I was so sad! I am so sad. 

I do have a small 2sqft box that I plant my cold weather seeds in.  Peas, Radishes and Lettuce.  They all survived, although, I think the lettuce, just barely.

 

I have yet to plant more seeds in my house.  I think I am just going to wait until after Mother’s Day to go buy some already started plants. 

The garden will go on!

Simplifying the Schedule

 

My life has been so crazy hectic that I kept thinking I could manage it if I laid out a very specific schedule.  One that supposedly keeps me on task and lets me see what I should be doing when. 

This is just not who I really am.  I am spontaneous, my kids are spontaneous.  The rigid schedule I had planned was stifling who we are as well as causing more chaos and heartache than it was worth.  I was also putting so much time into planning it and tweaking it when it didn’t work out just right that it was sucking up any free time and creative projects (blogging) I would have loved to do. 

For the past few weeks I have been following this schedule as far as homeschooling goes.

Each Monday we start out with a meeting, we go over expectations of the week, the schedule, the dinner plan for the week and anything we need to discuss or go over together. We also eat breakfast together this day.   This meeting has only been taking about 30 min. From 9-11:30am each child has a list that I laminated of what they are to get done each day.

Katey does history on Mondays and Tuesdays and science on Thursdays and Fridays.  So her card has two sides, one for Monday & Tuesdays and one for Thursdays and Fridays. 

We go to co-op on Wednesdays so the kids all just have to do reading and math on those days.

For mom school each day we have been reading in The Story of the World, Vol 2 and doing the activities from the Activity Book.

This new simplified schedule along with some other things I simplified in my life has been working out very well for us.  I even found time to blog!! YAY!

This is my daughter, educating you…..

 

 

How to type a blog post.

First you need a topic such as, something you do every day, or just some fun thing that want to do.

Second you need to be able to have correct spelling and grammar, also use fancy words to make yourself sound sophisticated.

Third you need to write a rough draft then do all the other spelling things.

Well I’ve decided to just write this I’m bored and don’t really write blogs I’m just wasting time until mom catches me and tells me I need to finish my school so I’m going to start writing random things uhhh 

My name’s Emily and I’m just wasting time blah blah blah blah I’m 12 blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Mtn. Dew blah blah blah bacon blah blah blah blah money blah blah blah do you know how hard it is to write a lot of blah blah’s this is boring how does mom do this this is like really boring she should get paid for this I’M BORED!!!!!!!!!!!! I should probably go do hunter education now but I don’t want to it takes FOREVER but I do need to finish all my school before softball practice

Kelsie is my best friend she’s awesome, funny, weird, just like me, and just plain crazy!!!!!!!!!

ok this is getting boring I ‘m done typing random things for like 10 minutes and she still hasn’t caught me!!!!!!!!!!!!!

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blabber jabber mouth eggs and bacon eggs and bacon eggs and bacon eggs and bacon eggs and bacon eggs and bacon eggs and bacon  

 

This is part of

Summer fun!

We took a drive to the fish hatchery which is at the bottom of a magnificent canyon.
 
It was really neat to see all the stages of fish, we even saw how they load them into trucks to transport them to surrounding lakes. There were literally thousands of fish in each bay.
  
It was very neat to see them jumping at the waterfall from the water cycling through.

We learned how the hatcheries do a lot of research on aquatic life as well as that the water is all from a natural spring.  They take extra precautions to be sure if you won’t contaminate their water with microorganisms from the nearby stream that the spring forms.  You can hike down along the stream to the Green River and picnic.  It was a four mile hike, we chose not to do it, we had our picnic right near the parking lot.

After that we chose to take a different scenic route home, which took us to a lodge we like to eat at, near Flaming Gorge Reservoir.  We rented a paddle boat and took the kids out for a ride on a small lake that was there.  t




After that we drove to another place for dinner.  Then we made the 30 minute drive home and hit the sack.
It was really quite the day. 

A workshop with Julie from Leelou Blogs. And a GIVEAWAY!!!

A while ago I went to a really cool workshop.  It was put on by My Memories. (see discount code in sidebar) It consisted of 3 classes. 


The first class was a photography class taught by Scott Jarvie of Jarvie Digital.  It was seriously amazing and I feel I learned so much from him.
He said the biggest thing you can do to become a better photographer is to really get to know the camera you already own.  Read the manual.  That made me feel really great because as much as I really want a great Nikon or whatever, I just haven’t been able to justify the purchase just yet.
 

The next class we took was on the My Memories software itself and all the neat things you can do with it.  It truly is such an amazing and versatile software.  You don’t need a class to be able to use this software it truly is so user friendly. This class showed some shortcuts and was great to meet other digi-scrappers and some of the designers.

The last class of the day was a blog design class.  How to design a blog using My Memories Software. It was taught by Julie of Leelou Blogs. 
She offers amazing free blog templates and designs.  I haven’t really had a lot of time to spend fixing up my blog with the information I learned. However the blog header and button I have now were created using My Memories before this class.  My Facebook timeline cover was created after the class. 

Julie is so cute and fun.

My Memories offers many tips and tricks on their blog and in their newsletters.  Along with discount codes.  Right now they are offering a free photo book.   Plus today is National Scrapbooking Day and they are having tons of sales this weekend. 
Check out My Memories on Facebook!

Would you like to win a copy of My Memories Software? 
Check out the Rafflecopter for how to win.

We’ve got the Fever!!!

 

We have definitely had a fever going on around here.  Spring Fever that is!

A recent campfire dinner we had with some friends.

 

We are wrapping up the rest of our schooling for this year. We are on track to be done with our current curriculum (K12) by the end of May.  We are going to take a few weeks off from actual curriculum.  Of course we will still be reading and math each day. 

Math

Most of our math will be games and Life of Fred, other than review items of course. 

Reading

Reading will be kids choice.  With some added in notebooking about what they read.  We have recently started notebooking and sharing our pages with each other.  It is a really neat way to see what each child took away from the book/lesson.  Check out Tristan’s posts, it’s a 3 part series to see why I decided to give notebooking a try.

Other

We will also do Science and Art once a week.  We are going to finish out Christian Kids Explore Physics. Over the summer this will be the perfect fit, it is gentle enough, yet still fun! 

I don’t exactly have art planned out yet. I am still deciding.  I think we may focus more on art forms than actual artists.  Next school year, I do have plans for us to focus one week on a composer and then one week on an artist.

We plan on doing lots of camping, hiking, boating and more.  Plus right now we are in the middle of softball season and both my girls play softball. Emily will also be attending a 4H overnight camp as well as some sewing day camps.  Tommy has lots of fun Summer plans too.  He is going on Trek, some scout campouts and is going to be working hard at his MMA so he is ready to compete in NAGA.  Katey and Tyler are pretty much going to have a care free Summer.  We will attend some community events geared toward children as well as swimming, lemonade stands and lazy days.

We will start back up full day schooling around August.  Stay with us for Summer fun times.

Do you have anything fun planned for Summer?

 

A day in the life of my First Grader

 

This is a real day in Katey’s life She is in 1st grade.  She is almost 7. 

She wakes up and eats breakfast (usually cereal or oatmeal) then she sits around on the couch reading some Kindle books.  This one was Reading Power! Sight Words Kindergarten, that I got free from Amazon.

 

After that we did some sentence diagraming on the white board. 

( I just wrote some sentences with no capital letters and no punctuation.  She had to correct those parts and circle the nouns.) 

She went and got dressed and ready for the day.

She came back downstairs and did a math worksheet using math blocks.

She did a few lessons on Reading Eggs.

 

She played Dance Party 3 with Tyler and Emily, while I cooked lunch. 

We ate lunch, it was fish, tatortots and oranges that day.

After lunch we did science. She is doing a weather unit currently, we used an orange as the sun to have our inflatable globe rotate around.  She learned what that has to do with the seasons.  

She played with her sister building a tower out of the math blocks.

She had free time to read and explore the rest of the day….

UNTIL 3:00.  That is when we do a family clean up of the day.  Katey’s chores are usually emptying the silver wear and any lower cupboard dishes.  Then she had to sweep up the piles that an older kid swept.  

 

 

The rest of the afternoon she has free time. She plays with friends or brothers and sister.  Sometimes she even spends time with me.  She loves to help me cook dinner and explore. 

Not all her days are exactly the same.  We alternate history and science.  Also we usually do read alouds which we didn’t do that day. 

A day in the life

This is my first in a new series of posts I will be doing in an effort to keep it real on my blog. 

 

Here is a picture of my sad sad plant.  I don’t know what is happening to it.  Sad! (Never mind the dirty dishes in the sink.)

Today as I was cooking dinner, thanks to E-MEALZ !  It was Chicken Corn Chowder and Cornbread.

 

Anyways, Tyler saw me get an egg out of the fridge to add to the cornbread mix and next thing I knew….

He had cracked his own egg ON THE GROUND.  Oh such a helper.  I had Katey hold him back while I got the camera to take this picture. 

Also while our dinner was cooking, after the egg incident.  Tyler lined some of his cars along the counter.

That night at dinner, Tommy inspected his food with a magnifying glass before eating it.  Come to think of it, he didn’t eat very much of it, I wonder if he found anything.  HMMMM…

Here is “My” bookshelf.  It is where I keep all my supplies that do not go into our workboxes. 

Katey was trying to be sneaky and make a slide out of the couch cushions.  She noticed she was caught at I was taking the picture.  She put it back.  What a mean mom! 

Emily had been begging me to have a friends read-a-thon.  She invited quite a few friends.  We supplied popcorn and lemonade.   Only one friend showed up.  Everyone had a great time.  Even Tyler who was not silent.    Then as that friend left, 3 more showed up, all younger.  They were more rowdy and less reading got done then.  It was still fun.  

This isn’t really my whole day in a post, just mostly the evening.  Maybe next time I will do the morning.   

Disclosure:  My family room is only clean because I made them clean it to have the read-a-thon.