April Happenings in pictures

 

We had a very busy April this year.  I took a few pictures to be able to share that with you.

I really want to get better at updating my blog and I hope to be able to do this more often.

First things first. 

Remember, we just made a major move the end of March.

I registered for and began Real Estate School.  I am working on being done by the middle of May. Then our crazy life will really begin, as I go to work as a real estate agent all while homeschooling and being a mom and a wife.

I ran my first 10K race. I ran it in 1:11.  I am pretty proud of that.  The fact that I was able to keep training during the packing and moving sounds crazy, but I did it!

Our kids got season passes to an amusement park for Easter.  We took them to an Easter Egg Hunt there and to spend a day there.  We got to see a peacock all spread out. 

Tyler has spent tons of time on La La Logic on the iPad.  We love these simple logic games.  

Our tarantula molted.  This was very exciting! 

Katey and Tyler build a fun fort while I was mopping the floor and read and played with some Usborne cards.

For Christmas Katey got a science kit and one day we got it out and made some eyeballs!  The kids really loved doing this.

We took a little road trip to spring clean our family cabin.  We had to get up really early to leave.  Most people in the car slept while Emily and I stayed awake.

We did lots of cleaning and had lots of fun!

Even a food fight!

Emily had a friend  from our old town come and stay with us.   We did tons of stuff with her.

Some of the highlights were us going to a chalk festival.

Emily and Tyler made brownies.  It was pretty cute to see them work together.

The weather has been so great that we spend a lot of evenings at the parks near us. 

 

Tyler and I have been reading his book My Silly Body and Book and doing the activities in it.  This really is a great book.

Softball season started for Emily.  She plays short stop and catcher.  I am really proud of her and it is neat to see how far she has came in softball.

 

We did all of these things along with more along with our normal day to day schoolwork and household stuff.

WOW!

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.

Seriously, why can’t I….

 

The struggle is real people. 

I am not a morning person.  I want to be.  I am trying my darndest to be.  I just can’t get up when my alarm goes off.  It doesn’t matter when I set it.  It can be at 6 am or at 9 am.  I just feel the need to fall back asleep after shutting it off.  It doesn’t matter whether I get 6 hours or 11 hours of sleep.

I recently read a book, The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.  I realize that I can change my life and create more for myself and my family if I follow his morning routine suggestion.  There are 6 things, he calls them SAVERS.

S = Silence

A = Affirmation

V = Visualization

E = Exercise

R = Reading

S = Scribe (writing)

I have woken up and done these things a few mornings and my days were great, much more productive.  I also felt really great about myself. I was so proud. 

It lasted for 3 days.

I have tried and tried for 2 months to get back on and complete my 30 day goal of doing The Miracle Morning routine.  I have struggled.

As I sit here at 1:30am writing this blog post, I realize that it probably has to do with my bedtime routine.  So for the next little while I am going to focus my time more on having a proper bed time routine for myself and my kids.  We need a set bedtime and routine at night.  I hate being a slave to a schedule though.  That has never been who I am. I will need flexibility and realistic according to our lifestyle.

I am hoping this is a great change for me.  I am hoping we can all embrace it.  I know we are going to start slow with baby steps.  I know we will get a rhythm and routine going.

I can’t wait!!

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How I became more productive by doing less.

 

I have been working this year on finding balance in my life.  In an effort to find that balance, I have decided to almost completely stop multitasking. 

• No more cooking dinner and blogging at the same time. 
• No more paying bills while I am supposed to be helping the kids with schoolwork.
• No more having my phone downstairs during the day.
• No more cleaning during school hours.

Now I didn’t just stop doing those things all together.

I still have to cook, I still enjoy blogging, I still have to pay the bills and help the kids with schoolwork. 

I just focus on the task at hand and each task has been taking me less time. Instead of taking an hour to pay bills while helping kids with schoolwork at the table.  We do schoolwork for 20 minutes and I can have the weekly bills paid in 20 minutes. That saves me 20 minutes, or 1/3 of my time. Instead of cooking dinner and blogging at the same time, where cooking dinner would take 1 and a half hours and blogging would take 2 hours.  I can cook dinner in 30 minutes to 1 hour and blogging only takes about 45 minutes.  That saves me anywhere from 30-45 minutes together. Also my blog posts get more attention and I can pay more attention to details then.  And… our dinner doesn’t burn.

While often we think that multitasking saves time, I have found in many areas of my life that is actually costs me time as well as costs me giving the task my best.

I have recently found time to get my house as clean as I like it and I have organized my sewing supplies and set up a sewing area and I have even done quite a bit of mending and hemming of my pants for the cooler months.

Do you multitask?

How our homeschool is organized.

 

I live in a smaller house and we do not have the luxury of having a dedicated school room.  Here is how we have organized for this year.

Each child has a container for their books and work.  This is where any book they are using on a regular basis goes.  Next to it is our library basket.

Most schoolwork is either done at our kitchen table.

Our counter, or on the couch.

We have one main bookshelf downstairs and each of the kids has one or more bookshelves in their room.  I also have a large closet with our curriculum books. I have this small bookshelf next to our big one which is really a catch all, so my counters don’t get cluttered.

Around the corner from that is a 9 cubby shelf.  I have it organized from left to right, top to bottom; mail, random mom books and a pen caddy, my purse, books the older kids share for curriculum, crayons etc., our out the door basket (it has things like a lint roller, a hairbrush, sunscreen, bug spray, kids sunglasses, etc.), nothing, curriculum that we are using but not daily, our science kits from Physics Quest.

On top of the shelf I have my household binder. and some random things that need to be put away.  I have a family calendar hanging on the wall as well as the library calendar and a community even calendar on a clipboard.  The dry erase board I use for lists of all kinds.

Living in a small house and homeschooling so many proves to be challenging at times. So I have resorted to using our hallway to teach All About Spelling.  Sometimes we use the hallway to teach other things as well.

What can I say we learn everywhere! 

Homeschooling when life happens.

Let’s face it, life doesn’t stop just so we can homeschool. 

Some actually use that as their excuse not to. 

But why not make life school? 

This past year we have faced quite a few challenges.  My kids (and I) have learned and grown from it.  The biggest thing I can say is that you are not alone. 

Life Happens.  Your kids are going to get an education whether you like it or not.  They will learn what they have the opportunity to learn.

I take opportunities in life and turn them into teaching moments.  It is not always easy.  Sometimes it’s easier to send your kids to the other room and handle life. 

Some personal examples of this:

I made my daughter at 10 stand in line (with me) at the customer service counter to return an item.  I made her do all the talking.  Sure it would have been just as easy for me to do it myself, but she got first hand experience.

When we have a family vacation the kids are completely involved in the budget, the miles we have to drive, how much gas costs, what activities we have planned, how much accommodations are, and all that.  Sure, it would be easy for my husband and I to just take charge and take the kids along for the ride, but then the first time they would get actual vacation planning experience would be when they are on their own.

At 8, we do laundry training and my children begin taking charge of their own laundry.

When my children turn 9, they begin cooking a meal once a week for the family.  They do have supervision and I am willing to help them if they ask me. Each child above 9 is required to plan and prepare a meal. They have to provide me with an ingredient list for their meal by a deadline. (currently Tuesday mornings)

When my oldest was 14, he started filling out and figuring my husbands expense reports for us.  Paul always looks them over before turning them in. Tommy has been doing great.

Regular household chores are also a part of what we include in our children’s education.

Life is full of seasons and soon enough this one will be over, and your kids will be out on their own.  I think that learning how to live and function in life is more important the any history or math fact.   Enjoy life.  Enjoy your family.

See what other’s wrote about this topic by visiting HERE!!

 

Motivation and Encouragement for moms! Social hour!

It is truly amazing and interesting how much my social life has turned around in the past year, or two.  I will share with you how I reached out and found friends who like me for me. 

I will share with you where and how I get my encouragement.

Finally I will share with you where I get my motivation from. 

Just having friends can make a huge difference in my frame of mind.  3 1/2 years ago I moved to a small town where I knew literally no one.   I joined a local homeschool group on yahoo. Which I quickly found out was very slow.  No one really got together.  Then I decided to jump out of my comfort zone and plan a Valentine’s Day Party. It was a huge hit.  Things were still slow on the Yahoo group and then someone created a group on Facebook and it just exploded. 

The year I held the Valentines party at my house we had 5 families.  The next year we had 60.  This past year we had 120.  As of now our local Facebook group as reached over 200 families.  They are screened that they have to live local and be homeschooling or looking into homeschooling. 

This group, I call a co-op is really a commonwealth of parents.  It works for us.  It has gotten so big now that classes fill up super fast and some moms have chosen to start smaller co-ops within the commonwealth.  This group is usually just used for homeschooling teaching and questions.

I also am a moderator of my local moms group on Facebook.  This group is a lot more strict.  We have a code of conduct, an application process, participation requirements and more.  We have activities weekly.  This group does things like park days, freezer meal swaps, craft days, moms night out and more.

I am also a part of some online groups.  The biggest and best one in my opinion is The Schoolhouse Review Crew.  Along with the review items we get, we are part of an amazing forum and it keeps me blogging.  I am part of some smaller homeschool and homemaking pages as well.  I read blogs because I feel like I can relate and it makes me feel social.  

I am a member of a local Teaching Self Government Circle.  This is a very small group of us (10).  We meet monthly for this. This is great and probably my favorite one.

I have actually been so busy with my kids and these social things that I have had to cut back on some social offerings in order to be a mom and homeschooler.

How do you meet friends as a homeschooling parent?

Check out some of my awesome bloggy friends, who are also blogging in the Back to Homeschool Hop!

 

Laura @ My (re)Viewpoint
Anne @ Upstate Ramblings
Julie @ Nurturing Learning

Breaking the school year into bite size chunks – Lesson Planning

Lesson Planning has been fully underway for me.  I do feel like some changes had to be made this year.  We had lesson plans and all last year, but there was too much flexibility in them and we took advantage of more opportunities than we should have.  Not that the opportunities weren’t great, some of them were even necessary.  It’s more along the lines of we did way to much. I realize that spontaneity is in my families nature, and we love to travel.  So I needed lesson plans that were realistic and flexible. Here is what I have come up with.

I began by choosing our curriculum. Then I am planning it out in chunks, or blocks. I have been using the Hey Mama Planner from The Old Schoolhouse. They are supposed to average about 6 weeks.  However after looking at our calendar and some travel plans I decided to work those in to our schooling.  We have some 5 week blocks and some 6 week blocks.  After every block we get anywhere from 3-5 days without plans.  The kids can use that time to catch up if needed.  They can also just take a break, or dive into a subject they want. They may need this time to finish up work missed due to a family event that we chose to do.

Our first block is planned out and looks like this:

I also did our plans weekly within our block.  That way the kids know what they have to accomplish in a weeks time.  Last year I gave them to much freedom and we got off track so that when the end of the year came we had to work hard, too hard really to get where I wanted us to be.  We never did make it as far as my original goal.  That is life. 

So instead of taking a full summer we will take a shorter summer with these breaks built in. This has made lesson planning less intense, it opens up opportunities for change as needed.  It gives us a little break when we need it for trips, like weddings, seeing out of town family, and traveling in the off season!

This is making so much sense in my head that I really believe it will work better for us. 

Check out some of my awesome bloggy friends, who are also blogging in the Back to Homeschool Hop!

 

Laura @ My (re)Viewpoint
Anne @ Upstate Ramblings
Julie @ Nurturing Learning