{Not} Back to School Pics

We are just about to start our 2013 - 2014 school year on Monday/Tuesday, so we just did our {Not} back to school pictures.

This year Dude is in 1st grade:

Strawberry is in Pre-Kindergarten:

Linebacker is just along for the ride:

And we couldn't leave Boy Wonder out:

Then it was time for a group shot....let's just pretend this only took 1 attempt, haha.

The kids all picked their desks, and I have all their individual work setup in them, so they wanted a picture at their desks:

We are planning to start next Monday/Tuesday and I already know of one thing that will put one day on hold. I have only planned a 4-day week, so we should be able to get it accomplished. Did I mention we are away camping this weekend.......



For His Glory!



I am linking up with iHomeschool Network's Not Back To School BlogHop

Spotlight: Dude

I was thinking that I would write a little bit about each of my kids. Then I realized this would be a good exercise for me, personally, to think hard about each of my children and what makes them who they are. This could be fun!

Today, I am going to focus on Dude.

He is our first-born, like me. He is 5 years old. He is stubborn and strongwilled, er...like me. He is full of Energy. All. The. Time. He has always been incredibly active. He started walking at 8 1/2 months old and has never looked back. He has his own way of doing things and is passionate about it (read: strongwilled). He is compassionate and sweet.

He loves playing with his siblings and has a special relationship with each of them.

His little sister, Strawberry, looks up to him and wants to please him and do everything he does. They are the best of friends....until they disagree.


He is a protector to his younger brother, Linebacker. When we went out to a store last week, he took it upon himself to hold his hand and get him in and out of the store safely. It was such a sweet moment.


He is just getting to know his littlest brother, Boy Wonder. He enjoys spending time with him and loves to work smiles out of him by doing crazy dances and funny faces.


Dude can be very difficult to corale some days, but I was listening to Focus on the Family's radio show last week and it gave me hope that this Strong Will is going to be a positive thing one day. We just have to get there.

Dude is going to be working at a 1st grade level this fall, he has a love for learning that we hope to maintain and build on. He is very inquisitive right now and we are doing our best to satiate his need for knowledge. I can't wait to get to know who this little man is going to grow into!


For His Glory!

Looking ahead

I have spent the last few weeks getting things planned and in order for the fall. I am really excited to do more formal schooling with Strawberry in addition to Dude and have 2 kids to work with everyday. I have a lot of thoughts for this coming school year, and I think we will have a lot more intensity this year. This year kind of worked as our prep year to get the kids used to doing some formal activities and to start some scheduled times during our day.

I have laid out all my plans and here they are:


I have laid out a plan of action for each child. Daddy and I have to have, what I hope will become, our annual goal setting meeting. We will sit down and make a plan for each child as to what we hope they will accomplish in the coming school year and set some goals for each.

Our plans:

* Contiue using our Children Desiring God curriculum with Dude and Strawberry and include Linebacker informally.

* Continue using Math U See Primer with Dude

* Teach Strawberry to recognize and write her numbers, if accomplished start her on MUS Primer

* I took the plunge and ordered All About Learning Press curriculum last night (already got the shipping notice this morning!!!). Dude will be using All About Reading level 1 and All About Spelling level 1. Strawberry will be using All About Reading pre-reading level. Now, I just have to wait patiently for it to arrive....and check the tracking obsessively.

* I plan to use The ABCs for Godly Children (which was included in one of the e-bundles I've purchased) for Dude and Strawberry.

* I am going to use Expedition Earth (all included in the e-bundle) to help teach some geography

* I want to work through a book list with the kids and have some comprehension questions to go with them.

* There was a good resource in an e-bundle I have about notebooking, and so that is in the plan as well.

* I am going to work in some LOTW and RRSP activities for Strawberry.

* I want to prep some lapbook games and busy bags for their workboxes as well. That way I can plan one child doing a game/activity independantly while I work more intensely with the other one.

* I am also going to try to have a bit of a totschool routine with Linebacker

* I want to include Darlene's prayer cards for children into our morning prayer time. I have them printed and 1/2 cutout, just need to laminate and put on a ring for each child.


I can't wait! I have a lot to do to prep for the year, but I am an organizing junkie who loved school, so that shouldn't be hard for me. I am so excited to get in our new schoolroom with all our new plans and start....Hopefully the kids will be excited, too.


For His Glory!

Homeschool Schedule mid-year changes.

After an extended Christmas break....okay, okay, November until the middle of January type extended break, we are back at it! I took the week before we started up again to re-evaluate our plans and the things we were doing and decided we needed to change things up a little.

We started the year out with this schedule that I blogged about back in September: Our Homeschool Learning, but are now on a new schedule and it seems to be going great so far!

The 1st change I made was to scrap the calendar binders, honestly they got boring and old quick. We now just start by putting the date up on our calendar

Each day we just add the date, and then say the day and month. This is what we are using as our calendar. I just created and laminated the month cards and the number cards myself, and did a different theme for every month.

After we do the date, we pray. This is something I didn't think to add to our schedule in September. The kids each take a turn thanking Jesus for things, usually for Daddy's work, his safety at work, and hoping for a good time with school today.

After our prayer time we sing a song. I try to find it on YouTube to play and we sing along. Today we did "Our God is an Awesome God". They are just learning these songs and are not able to sing a long very well right now but they love it and I think they will know the songs soon enough!

Next we do our Bible memory verse. KDude (age 5) memorizes the verse he is supposed to for Sunday School each week and Strawberry (age 3) is memorizing the verses that I ordered with our Bible curriculum. They are both excellent at doing this and Strawberry surprises a lot of people when she recites a verse complete with correct reference at 3 years old. We do 1 verse a week and it seems to be exactly the right pace for both of them. Once they are readers there is so much more we could do during this time.

After we do our memory work it is on to what they call "Bible Time".

We are still using the same curriculum we started with, which was Children Desiring God's "He Established a Testimony". The only change we have made in the Bible teaching time is that I have complimented this curriculum with Betty Luken's Bible in Felt. It is a little pricey but will be used for so long that it is completely worth it. Just get ready to cut! The 600+ pieces it advertises.....you cut each one of them out. This has really helped engage the kids during the story, instead of trying to picture it for themselves they remember because of the visuals. This week's lesson is about Abraham and Sarah and the birth of Isaac.

The next subject we move on to is Math. We are still using Math-U-See's Primer. On Monday's we watch the video of Steve instructing the week's lesson

Then there are 6 worksheets pages per lesson and we just divide those up through the week. Dude did the first one for this week today, we are doing the first lesson on addition!

We finish off everyday with our Language lessons. Dude has now mastered his letters upper and lowercase. He knows which upper goes with which lowercase letter. He can write them all, and he can find them if I call them out. So, we have moved on to the sounds they make in preparation for reading. I found an amazing site to help with this (and more advanced stuff too). It is Starfall. We have just started with 3 letters per day, and he works through them himself and checks them off on his list as he completes each one. We will likely repeat this cycle a few times until he really gets it.

There you have it. Our new homeschool day. This is the reason I love homeschool, we can just change anything at anytime to make it suit us. This schedule is going really well and we are really learning a lot with it. YAY! So, we will continue like this....until its time to freshen it up again, that is.


For His Glory!

Our Homeschool Learning

After years of looking for and researching curriculum choices it was finally time to decide to actually order something. This actually felt quite overwhelming, I was so concerned that I needed to make the right choices and now there was a lot of pressure.

Daddy is extremely supportive of homeschooling our children, but is more of a pick what you want and than just let me know kind of person. So, really it was all up to me to find something that would work. I looked into so many different things and couldn't decide what to go with.

I asked my really good friend what she was planning to use this year (her kids are slightly older than each of mine) and she gave some great ideas that I thought could also work for us. So, here is what we have gone with (we are only 1 week in, so things could change):

We start out with a calendar binder. I got this idea from 1+1+1=1

They write out the date on the calendar, trace the day and month, graph the weather conditions, the temperature and fill out our 100 days of school tally. They really enjoy doing this part.

Next we do our Bible time. I chose to go with Children Desiring God's He Established A Testimony. It is meant for Sunday School classes but is easily adapted to a weekly format by me.
This curriculum will take us through the entire Old Testament and than there is another one to go through the New Testament. This week the kids worked on Creation and put together a creation timeline.

Next was time for Math. I (with a suggestion from my friend) went with Math-U-See's Primer. It is great so far and I can really see it being the perfect fit. We watched the first lesson on the DVD:

And then Dude does his lesson in the workbook (he really enjoys using the manipulatives:

The next thing we do is Language Arts. Right now, because Dude has mastered writing his letters and is working on lowercase, I decided to add in some sight words using the Dolch Word List (something I had never even heard of until my friend mentioned it).
This week our words were "a" and "and". I am amazed at how well he has grasped these. I sent him to find them in a book the other day and he did very well! Although, I never thought about it before, when I wrote out his cards with the sight words I used a regular "a" and in most books it has the old typeface one. I will have to pay more attention to this.

Lastly, we are doing Science. Kind of. I am just finding a science topic he is interested in and than each day we are doing a science experiment about it. Last week, Dude was facinated by the fog one morning and wondering where it comes from. This led us into the concept of evaporation. So...this week science has been about evaporation! We did our first experiment, pouring water outside and tracing around it to watch it evaporate.
Before:

and our After:

All in all we are having a great time and accomplishing everything we have set out to accomplish. School is taking us about 45 minutes to an hour each day. Not long in time but we are learning as much as I'm sure they are learning at school in the 6 1/2 hours the kids are there. So, we spend in a week about 4-5 hours doing "school" (less time than most kids are there in a single day) but that's the joy of homeschooling! I have realized that there is only so much that Dude can retain in a day. If we try to do too much he won't understand anything, so we do just enough that he is constantly learning. That is only the actual scheduled sit-down learning time, we are constantly teaching/learning all day at home.

They are also learning to be contributing members to our famiy by completing jobs around the house. At age 4 1/2 Dude is now the "vacuum guy" and he is very good at it! He doesn't miss a thing! I am so proud that they are learning so much more than just "school stuff". Strawberry is learning to do laundry, she is my little homemaker in training.

I love Homeschooling!!!!!!!!!



For His Glory!

It's Finally Here

It's finally here, it's actually here! Having made the decision to homeschool our children when our oldest was only 6 months old, it was a very long wait to actually start doing it, officially atleast.

When Dude was 6 months old, I started to look into some information on homeschooling. I reached out to some friends who had been homeschooled themselves but also is the president of HSLDA Canada. Really, everyone needs a great friend like this :) He passed along some great information and studies about homeschooling. It actually became a fairly easy decision for us! Now, while I completely respect the decisions any of you have made for your children, we just could not knowingly put our children in the public school environment (cue paranoid government rant). Anyways, our decision was arrived at very easily. The only thing that seemed like a con at the time was the whole idea of "socialization", we have since come to view this in an entirely different manner and now realize that socialization is NOT being surrounded by 30 kids the same age as you all day, everyday. But, at the time we thought about what we thought was socialization and Daddy and I realized that all of our friends throughout school and the ones we have remained friends with, were ALL from our church...not school! This was very reassuring to us that we were making the right decisions for our family.

Well, since we arrived at this decision quickly and easily....now what?!?! It was kind of like a wedding and we were in that middle of planning lull. We had made the decision and now just had to wait 4 years!?!?! Oh boy, as a very type A, over-organized, slightly anal person this was a lot to ask!

I have researched, read, studied, read, watched videos, read, etc all about homeschooling in the last 4 years. I also found some homeschooling blogs that I loved and started to follow and slowly build some lessons and worksheets from over the last few years. I researched lessons, and curriculum so much that everything began to just blend together, I knew too much!!! There was sooo much to choose from and unfortunately now I knew about everything that was available. What else was I going to do during the last 4 years of waiting to start homeschooling? I will expand on what we are using and how *I* chose it in my next post.

So, cue Monday September 10th, 2012....OUR FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!
yay! It's here! I can finally put everything I have learned in the last 4 years to good use.

Dude is a Kindergartener!!!

Strawberry is a PreSchooler!!! (really that just means she wants to participate, so I make extra copies for her)

And last but not least Linebacker is in "totschool" (just to include him)

Actually getting started was so exciting and the kids were very receptive and really enjoyed it.

And just a fun picture of what happens a lot around here, at the end of our photo session a royal rumble. And as usual, instigated by the youngest.

For His Glory!