A few things I learned on our first day of homeschooling

As I began writing this post, our first day of homeschooling wasn't even over yet and I could the reflections and observations piling up in my mind. Here are the things I noticed to change in the future; like, tomorrow. 

1. 10 work boxes is WAY too many for a preschooler on the first day and too much to get through even for a seven year old without a solid break...oops. By the 9th box, Wiggly was in tears after I told him that he'd have to redo his writing assignment after rushing sloppily through it the first time.  I felt for him though; we'd all had enough by that point.   

2. A distractible child is a distractible child, no matter the environment.  As I typed this, I was witnessing Wiggly watch his sister and sing the words of the video she was watching on her leapster instead of doing his spelling. She even had headphones on to limit the distraction! 

3. For some reason, I was expecting eager learners... And I had eager learners... For about 20 minutes. In the remaining two hours, eagerness was wholeheartedly replaced by whininess. 

4. Once the daily routine of things has been established, things will go more smoothly, right???

5. I am only one teacher/mom with two arms, not the super-mom octopus teacher I thought I was.

6. We all deserve milkshakes after this. We ended up getting frosties and fishing at a friend's pond as an afternoon treat. 

7. I am doing the right thing. While it wasn't exactly all roses like I'd hoped it might be, we'll figure it out together.  We're all a bit new at this... :0) 

 

 

(FINALLY!) We are Ready to Begin!

Hello! I'm so excited that Monday will be our first day of homeschooling! FINALLY! It seems like I've been waiting for this day forever! (or at least a few months) :0) The classroom is (mostly) set up and all of my curriculum materials have been collected.  We are ready.  I was a little concerned about Wiggly's attitude toward the homeschool idea now that the public school year is over and he knows he's not going back (at least of a few years).  But last week he asked me, "When are we going to start homeschooling? I want to start." YAY! At least he doesn't hold too many bad feelings about the new change.  I've been keeping him up on the different materials and curriculum I've been gathering for him so he's at least informed about what he's going to be learning.  I also make sure to keep the kids out of the classroom and the materials "sacred" to only classroom use.  I think that's made them both more curious about all the building blocks and manipulatives I've been collecting because NO ONE is allowed to just "play" with them. 

I know I haven't blogged in awhile, so I'll update you on what's been going on this last month.  My blogging absence has been due to some major room shuffling once we found our that baby #4 is going to be a GIRL! Yes, that makes one boy and three girls to complete our family... having two daughters makes me uneasy some days, so the idea of having THREE girls has been a bit of a shock for the whole family! I can hear them now; "so-and-so stole my favorite shirt and RUINED it!", or "so-and-so has been in the bathroom for an HOUR!"... and all of this is screamed through my entire house at a high pitched, panicked level... Wiggly will thank me someday for moving him into the upstairs space above our garage, trust me. 

So recently, the rooms in our house are currently being shifted from one purpose to another.  The classroom is being shifted into Wiggly's new room, and the playroom has now become the classroom.  Since our playroom space has been dissolved, the toys will be going back into the rooms of our children (dread).  Hopefully our unfinished basement space will be on its way to serving as the new playroom soon, but in the meantime... toys in the kids' rooms.  Blech.  Am I the only one who hates having the kids' toys in their rooms??? I definitely have been spoiled to have the playroom upstairs and off the main living area of our home.  It could be messy and I didn't have to see the mess unless I was brave enough to actually go up there.  Now, all the toys will slowly trickle out of the bedrooms into the main part of the house constantly.  Like I said, blech. 

Anyways, since we no longer have a playroom and the kids will have to store their toys in their bedrooms, Miss A will be getting Wiggly's old room and have a room to herself with all of the girl toys (since she's the oldest girl after all).   She and Peanut Pie have always shared a room, so it'll be interesting to see how Miss A adjusts to being by herself once her room is finished.  The two littlest girls will share Peanut's room; Peanut's not going to minds since she's already used to sharing a room.  I think it'll all work out. 

So, the part I feel guilty about is moving Wiggly from the only bedroom he remembers.  My mother painted clouds and an awesome fighter plane on his walls when we first moved in.  It is HIS room.  And his sisters are forcing him into a faraway wing of the house that isn't nearly as close to the bathroom.  (Ok, it's not THAT far away, but still...)  So I've been spending quite a bit of time on Pinterest finding some pretty cool "bigger" boys rooms to make the move a little easier.   I bought some paint, and today I'm going to paint his dressers.  I'm pretty excited about it.  Here's the before picture of the dresser and night stand.  I'm going to paint them a deep navy blue, possibly with a red stripe... but we'll see.  I'll be sure to post a pic of the finished products too!

And here are two pictures of our classroom in its current state.  I'm guessing once we start using the space and find out what works and what doesn't it'll change again.  Thank you to my hubby for ordering and installing our awesome whiteboard this week! I can already imagine complex mathematical problems just like in Good Will Hunting scrawled across it on a daily basis from my prodigy seven year old child... ok, definitely not, but it made me smile. :0) Wish us luck!!!

 

 

Mother's Day and Cinnamon Rolls

Now what says "I love you" more than gooey baked goods on Mother's Day? I got the recipe from the May issue of  Food Network Magazine and it is fantastic to say the least.  Baked goods and yeast breads don't usually like me, mostly because I'm not patient enough to give the yeast the time it needs to do its thing.  Well, I resisted sticking them in the oven before they had truly "doubled in size", and boy were we rewarded!

And I am SO thankful to share these yummy rolls with these fantastic kids.  I love being your mom!  My Mother's Day has been MADE. :0)

The Waiting Game

I haven't had much to blog about lately as I am waiting on two things to come around so we can begin this homeschooling adventure...

1.) Wiggly needs to be finished with public school! Only two and a half weeks left and I can hardly wait! Wiggly went to a birthday party this weekend and when talking to the mother, I mentioned that I was going to homeschool my older two next year.  She said, "You've just about made it through Mrs. O and now you're going to pull him out?" (She's had to deal with this particular teacher a couple times since she has foster children and a few older children of her own.) I know it might seem backwards that we stayed through a horrible teacher only to withdraw afterwards, but we still feel it's the right decision for our son. The field trips and the personalized lessons that are going to keep him engaged and that he's passionate about? I'm so excited!
Recently, our Lutheran church in town put together an enrichment program for the month of April where kids grades K-5 could choose two classes to take on saturday mornings.  There were over 30 different classes to choose from including cooking, photography, guitar lessons, watercolors, gym class, robotics, etc.  They had over 250 kids sign up, which was huge for our little community.  Wiggly got into the Crazy Science class and just LOVED it.  Since then, I've been busy looking up lots of science activities to do this school year.  I also looked up the STEM program, but they don't have anything available in our area, which is too bad because I really think Wiggly would enjoy such a program.  And then the other thing I'm waiting on is:

2.) Are we having a boy or a girl?  I'm currently pregnant with our fourth child, and this little one is holding up the whole homeschool classroom process! It's amazing that he/she holds so much power already! :0) Since we already have two girls and a boy, if it's a boy, then there's no problem and I can go on with removing the guest bed from our current classroom and start hanging stuff up. Classroom ready to go.  Super exciting! However, if it's a girl, Wiggly will be moving into the classroom as his littlest sister will be taking up his old room.  So where will the classroom go?  Good question.  I'm guessing it'll go something like this: Baby moves into Wiggly's room, Wiggly moves into classroom, classroom moves into playroom, toys move into bedrooms/basement/garage sale? And then since our playroom is actually a larger space than we really need for a classroom, can I partition it off so it can serve both purposes? These questions and my hormones keep me up at night... I'm not sure if seeing everyone else's cute classrooms is hurting or helping my sleepless nights; there are so many cute organizational ideas out there! Curse you, Pinterest!

Little Achievement

Last night, after I tucked the girls into bed, I walked into Wiggly's room to tell him goodnight.  He was laying in bed reading Super Fly-Guy.  All by himself.  Without me prompting, "Why don't we read a book?" or "Have you done your reading today?" It was awesome.  He was a couple pages in when I plopped down beside him to listen.  Did he miss some words? Yes, but that's ok.  He's taking interest in reading and I'm doing back flips, I'm so happy for him.  And for those of you who have had struggling/reluctant readers, you know it's a HUGE step.

Husband was just saying how impressed he was when they were at the store picking out golf balls, Wiggly was working to read the words on the packages around him.  He's never tried to do that before... and I'm just so proud of him.

Just thought I'd share our little achievement :0)

Let's Make a Schedule

Although I don't know of I can openly admit this to many people (especially my husband), I have found that since I becoming a SAHM, I do not operate around the house as productively as I did when I was working. There... I said it. I may have been crabby and overwhelmed 110% of the time when I came home from work every evening, but I still managed to feed everyone, keep filth from piling up around the house during the weekends, and usually had clean clothes for the family to wear for the week ahead. My house wasn't spotless by any means, but it was good enough.

Once I began staying home, my husband and I both had these thoughts of grander that the house would be properly maintained, the kids would be spotless, and cleanliness would all just magically come together, mostly because well, I was HOME now. All you veteran SAHM's can openly laugh at me now... Now, while I am SO much happier and more relaxed, (this is as a general rule, I DO have my moments) the house work has not magically fallen into place like I though it would. I would even say that our house is dirtier now that we're home all day than when I was working and only half-cleaning. It's taken me two years to say it out loud, but I NEED A SCHEDULE.

I've seen those "clean your entire house in 30 minutes a day!" schedules on Pinterest... I've even tried a few of them, and none of them have stuck. The only thing I've discovered is that there's no way I can vacuum/scrub/wash/wipe ANYTHING in my entire house in 30 minutes, even if I DID do it every week. But really what it comes down to is that the schedules I've tried created by other people just haven't fit for us. Then I read other people's advice about being flexible in your house cleaning and fit it in 10-15 minutes here and there, but the problem with that is that I'm TOO flexible (and a horrible procrastinator). If I didn't fit it in today, ah, I'll just do it tomorrow... or the next day, or the next... or just whenever...and Surprise! It doesn't get done.

So the epiphany I've had recently is this: I need a set schedule to operate in order to be productive. Period. One that needs to be set in stone, not just a rough idea in my head. Homeschooling may have been just what I needed to get this started. I understand that if I don't have a schedule for homeschooling, nothing's going to get done, and my children's education is a little more important than a clean house. And following along with homeschooling, my two oldest are at the age where some they can have some responsibilities of their own in helping around the house. As it stands, once we start homeschooling, my idea is that chores will be done before we start school at 9. And if the kids are going to have a set schedule for chores, so should I. Other people's schedules weren't working, so I created my own that I'm hoping will work for our family. This will probably need tweaked once we implement it, but hey, it's a start...

April's Home Schedule
(appox. 45 min.-1 hour each day)

Daily- dishes, wipe table/counters, general pick-up, sweep hallway as needed
Kids chores/pick up playroom

Week 1-Monday- vacuum & dust Living/Piano room

Tuesday- vacuum & dust Bedrooms, vacuum Hallway

Wednesday- clean Master Bathroom

Thursday- Meal Planning/ Grocery

Friday- clean Laundry Room/ Hallway, Half-bath

Saturday- clean Kitchen, do Laundry

Sunday- do Laundry, gather trash

Week 2- Monday- vacuum & dust Living/Piano room

Tuesday- vacuum Bedrooms/Hallway, clean/vacuum Playroom

Wednesday- clean Kids' Bathroom

Thursday- Meal Planning/ Grocery

Friday- clean Laundry Room, hallway, half bath

Saturday- clean Kitchen, do Laundry

Sunday- do Laundry, gather trash

Some of these chores I'll be able to enlist my kids' help in, which will be good for them. I tried to organize the cleaning according to "zones" in our house... Our bedrooms are in one section, and our larger kitchen gets the brunt of the "filth" during a week's time, so it gets a day all to itself. And lastly, I included meal planning/grocery because I try to only go to the grocery once a week. I enjoy knowing what meals I'm going to make during the week; it really takes the guess work out of "what am I going to make for dinner?" But, planning it all out and going through recipes usually takes me an hour, so I wanted to make sure it was on a set day. Also, Thursday afternoons and Fridays are hopefully going to be our out and about days where we can take day trips, run errands, and make appointments. The plan now is to not homeschool on Fridays.

If you're giggling at my nativity in my attempt to tame my house, just know that I'm laughing too... If it all falls apart at my fingertips, all is well...we'll just go back to the drawing board and try, try again. :0)

I love my Laminator!

Hello! I just wanted to share with you all how much I love my laminator as I continue to prepare to start our homeschooling adventure this summer.  

I am SUPER excited about homeschooling; Wiggly, less so.  We talk about it frequently and he knows that he's going to be going to school at home, but he tells me he's sad about not being able to see his friends everyday.  I feel for him.  I told him that there's a group of other homeschooled kids in our community (a VERY small group) and he'd make some new friends as well as keeping in touch with his old friends.  He's still going to be in cub scouts and sports activities.  I hope he comes around and isn't too upset about taking him away from his social group.  Homeschooling is definitely out of the norm for our small, rural community. 

Ok, I got off topic... on to my laminating adventures! 

 We bought the Scotch Thermal Laminator and it was the last one our store had in stock. It has been very much worth the investment so far, mostly for Miss A's preschool activities.  The paper activities are going to last so much longer than just plain card stock.

Our laminator in action... Laminating the Chicka Chicka letters for the tree and letter E activities from Erica's Letter of the Week Curriculum.

As I was laminating and trimming, Miss A couldn't wait to try out her new "school stuff".  Here's she's working on a lacing card.  

I also decided to get the Chicka palm tree and monthly calendar laminated, but had to use our local printing shop because the pieces were bigger than what my laminator could do... I'm really embarrassed to admit this, but I didn't ask for an estimate... it couldn't be more than $30... I've run things through the laminator when I taught school and I know it's not that hard. They called me last week to tell me it was finished... the total is $103.  My fault for not asking how much it was going to be before I handed the stuff over. Hard lesson learned... (gulp)