40 days of moving while homeschooling….during the holidays. {Day 36}

 

 

Ahhh, Sunday, glorious Sunday.

I woke up early this morning.  My husband had to work early and I just got up when he left. 

I began by cleaning my house some.

I did the dishes, some laundry and just general cleaning.

I then cut out the remaining fabric for the pilgrim costumes and began ironing it before sewing.  My friend and I had agreed that we would meet back at 10 then next morning to finish them up. 

We didn’t actually start until 11am.

We worked clear through until 2:45, which is when I had to leave for work.  But we got all the costumes done.  (Here is a picture from the play)

I worked the rest of the night.

Tomorrow we will get some moving stuff done.  You will see! 

40 days of homeschooling while moving…..through the holidays. {Day 37}

 

Here we are at Saturday….

What happened Saturday? 

I woke up and went grocery shopping.

Then I made a moving checklist.  I searched and searched on Pinterest.  I printed one off but it just didn’t fit my wants.  I decided to just make a moving notebook.

I made a list of a last out first in box. 

I learned after last time to do that.  We moved in and the toilet paper was packed, the soap was packed. The towels and cleaners were packed.  The snacks were packed.  And most disturbing is that the music and speakers were packed.  I don’t know how we were supposed to get anything done with no tunes! 

My older kids were gone down to the city to watch a college football game live.

About 2pm a college football game came on TV.  A different team then the one my kids went to see.

I had a friend come over and help me sew the pilgrim costumes during the football game.  We ended up working for 6 hours straight and had to go to get more fabric once.

That night I went out with a group of friends to do Karaoke, which had been planned for weeks. 

As you can see not much of any thing moving related got done that day.

40 Days of moving while homeschooling…. through the holidays. {Day 38}

 

We went back to the house again today to actually take measurements of the rooms since I was kindly reminded by my husband that I forgot to do.  In my defense, I did measure my couch and table and had the kids make sure they measure whatever they wanted so we could see about furniture placement. 

I know this sounds silly but we are just so crammed in our little house now.  So we are all just so excited to be able to spread out so much more!

I got a few boxes out of our crawl space and we also did regular school on this day as well.

I began sewing the pilgrim costumes.

I had a friend over since both our husbands were gone and we just relaxed and had a good time.

It was nice and much needed for both of us.

Stories of the Pilgrims–An audiobook resource.

 

It’s almost Thanksgiving…… 

For the past few years we have taken some time right before Thanksgiving to learn about the pilgrims and their coming to America for religious freedom. 

To keep things different each year we use a different resource. 

This year I was able to review a wonderful resource.

Stories of the Pilgrims Audiobook by Jim Hodges.

Audiobooks are a tradition in our house as well, we often listen to them while we do our daily chores or while we play quietly with Legos or doing a puzzle.

Are you traveling over Thanksgiving.  This would be a wonderful way to pass the time!! 

This one fit in perfect. 

Often times we would find ourselves wanting to pause the stories and look things up on the internet or discuss things.

One of the neat things was when the book mentioned the wooden shoes of Holland. We had to stop it and take the time to look up pictures of wooden shoes and I have a friend who’s husband served a church mission in Holland and we were able to see some in real life a few days later. 

This 43 chapter audiobook is just over 4 hours long.  The chapters were engaging and held our interest well.  Often days the kids would want to keep listening.  This is a living history book.  You feel like you are right there with them seeing the gorgeous flowers in Holland and smelling them too.  You picture the thatched roofs and cobble sidewalks. 

There were some ups and downs in the book and even some adventure scenes.  We found ourselves rooting for the pilgrims throughout the book.

This book is on sale for November for just $15

For an additional $5 you can get a nice study guide to go along with the book.

The study guide is quite flexible.  It includes so much and you can pick and choose what you use.  Vocabulary words, projects and Venn diagraming are just some of the things you can choose from in the study guide.

40 Days of Moving While Homeschooling….through the Holidays {Day 39}

 

Day 39 is also known as 29 days until the actual moving day!

Crap! 

I have a lot to do!

Obviously I have been extremely busy, or I would have written this post way sooner! 

Here I am writing this 5 days late. 

Oh well, such is life.

Some things I got done on this day are big ones though.  I also want to note that on top of this we also did all of our regular schooling for that day!

I gave our 30 days notice to where we live now and got our move out checklist.

I got out my sewing machine, ya know, to sew those pilgrim costumes!

I actually planned ahead this day and got out freezer meal for dinner.  Whoo hoo!  I am so grateful for freezer meals.

I signed up to do another freezer meal exchange.  This will help me, right? 

I made the grocery list for the 10 lasagnas I plan on making and I also menu planned out 2 and 1/2 weeks worth of dinners using food mostly from my pantry.

I paid bills…… ugghhhh….

I went over to the house and took pictures of every room so I could see the layout as I was packing.  This way I can decide what room what is going to go in as it is getting packed in order to label the boxes correctly.

I also worked that night!

Christmas Comes to America

Homeschool Legacy has a Once a Week Unit Study for your family to celebrate the Christmas season in a stress free, actually fun, educational style. I was sent their new Christmas one to review and share with you! 

Christmas Comes To America is a Once a Week Unit Study that will teach you about Christmas traditions from around the world, all the while incorporating scripture and is NO PREP for the parent.  (other than gathering a few library books and supplies)

You get to learn which settlers brought these traditions to America.

About The Company:

Homeschool Legacy offers many Once A Week Unit Studies and is constantly coming out with new ones. 

Some of the ones they offer are:

• Birds of A Feather
• Forest for the Trees
• Weather on the Move
• Horsing Around
• Native America
• Early Settlers in America
• Revolutionary Ideas
• We The People {Check out my review of that one here!}
• Lewis and Clark, From Sea to Shining Sea
• Westward Ho, Part 1
• Westward Ho, Part 2
• Knights and Nobles
• Christmas Comes to America

and coming soon:

• The Civil War, A Nation Divided

Each Once A Week Unit Study meets requirements for a Boy Scout Merit Badge, and all but two meet requirements for American Heritage Girl Badges.  Many 4H requirements are met too!

About The Product:

Once a Week Unit Studies are designed with simplicity for the homeschool parent in mind.  They get it, we are busy, we want to create amazing memories while learning with our children. 

Revolving around a family read aloud Christmas Comes to America fits that bill perfectly.

It is a 4 week Christmas study.  Each week you learn about a different culture’s Christmas traditions and which ones were brought to the USA. 

• Week 1 The Dutch
• Week 2 The English
• Week 3 The Germans
• Week 4 An American Christmas

 

It begins with a recommended list each week.  Don’t worry, you don’t need to read them all.  Usually one or two will suffice.

Every day each week you spend some time with the family read aloud book.  Then one day a week you dive deep into the Once A Week Unit Study.  By doing the suggested devotional and/or some of the suggested activities. 

Once A Week Unit Studies also suggest a family night, playing games going on a field trip or watching themed movies.  {I love this suggestion, often we forget how important fun family time really is!}

Each Week comes with a list of recommended books for readers and non readers alike.

A supply list.

A list of ways you can cross teach using the Once A Week Unit Study.  Things like:

• History
• Writing
• Geography
• Research Skills
• Life Skills (Cooking, crafting, being generous and the like)
• Family time!

Your child can meet requirements for Music in both Boy Scouts or American Heritage Girls.

This 52 paperback unit study book is just $17.95.

See a sample of it here! (Click where it says sample week)

A day/week in our life:

We followed the suggested schedule pretty much to a T.  It really is laid out so it is easy to incorporate.  Each day we spent about 15 minutes doing our chosen read aloud from the list of suggestions.  Then once a week, we chose a weekend day, since that worked best for us, we would do some of the suggested activities. 

Some of our favorite activities from Christmas Comes to America are:

• making homemade, from scratch marshmallows and decorating them to go in homemade hot cocoa
• making homemade wassail
• designing our own Christmas cards
• making gingerbread houses
• learning about concert/event etiquette
• playing Christmas Trivia

and many more!

So now you can really see the memories you can make with your children this December. 

Our thoughts and feelings:

With the busy Christmas season upon us I know that I want my children to still be able to be immersed in learning, but my time is stretched even thinner and I need the simplicity that is offered here.  I also am so grateful for the memories we are creating using this study.   If me, a working, blogging homeschool mom could fit this in and make learning fun through the holiday season, so can you!

  

 

 

“Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

40 Days of moving while homeschooling… through the holidays.

 

That’s right.  We are going to move in 30 days. 

I have moved while homeschooling before, but never during the holidays. 

I think.

I might.

Be crazy.

Yea, so, I decided we had better publically document this whole ordeal.

 

First let me share with you what I already have going on.

I homeschool my 4 children.  One is in Pre-K, one is in 3rd grade, one is in 7th grade and one is in 9th grade.

I work anywhere between 20-24 hours per week as a grocery store supervisor at a small local grocery store. 

I have my kids in way too many outside activities, such as plays, and drama club, music class, art class, weight training, women in history, Lego club, and science class.

I teach the science class.

Sometimes I substitute teach in the weight training class.

I volunteered to sew 14 of the pilgrim costumes for the play by Monday the 18th of November.

I am part of a very active mom’s group.

I am part of a monthly book club.

I blog. (sometimes)

I write reviews. After actually using and reviewing the items.  That is very time consuming.

I am a mom.

I am a wife.

My husband works in the oilfield and is gone often.

I am going to move across town in 30 days.

The holidays are coming.

This is the start of my journey.

Is my crazy showing yet?