Our new chore set-up

I've decided recently to encourage and engage the kids in the running of our household. I've decided they are willing and finally ABLE to contribute to some of the cleaning around the house daily. I have pinned several "chore boards" the last while, but none of them seemed to fit our style or suit what I wanted. Most of them were focused on earning money, or reward tickets that after a certain amount they got a toy or prize. This was not the approach I wanted to take with our kids. I find, that despite our best efforts, the "Entitlement Generation" as I like to call it, is creeping into our home as well. I don't want my kids to help around the house with a monetary goal in mind because that is only encouraging selfishness, which in elementary/preschoolers is ever-present and something we are trying to teach them out of. I want them to help around the house because they want to be contributing members of our family and because they feel more confident in themselves as a result. We need to start young, so that by the time they are ready to start their own homes, they have all the skills necessary to run and manage their own homes.....and don't need to call and ask how to make scrambled eggs (Seriously, my sister has done this twice!!!). My goal for my kids (boys and girl) is for them to be able to do all the homemaking skills, I want to be able to say "your welcome" to my sons wives one day, beacause we have trained them to be thoughtful, helpful men!

Anyway, back to the "chores", I hate that word! It brings negative thoughts when you say it, or when completing them. If my own mantra in completing household tasks is Colossians 3:23 - "Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people", than calling them "chores" just doesn't suit me well. I've been wracking my brain the last while trying to come up with an alternative, and finally it came to me....Contributions! That's what my goal is, to have them contribute to the running of the family, so it just makes sense.

Next, I had to come up with a system...Boards, and because my kids can't read yet, pictures it was! I went around the house taking pictures of things that they could do everyday. Everything was ready to create, so I went to Dollarama last night and browsed for supplies I could use....

This is what I found:

These cork tiles came in a 2-pack and they are thin, so I was able to attach them to the wall with pushpins in the corners.

Next I found these:

4-pack of self adhesive clips (I forgot to take the pic before opening). I stuck these clips onto the cork tiles:

Next, I printed a few copies of the pictures I took the other day:

Then, I busted out the Cricut to make the name labels and title area for the boards:

I stuck the names and title onto a piece of black paper, I used my paper trimmer (couldn't live without this). This is mine:

I was really happy with how they looked.

Now it was time to laminate everything. I couldn't imagine my life without my laminator. I have a constant wall file of "to be laminated" stuff...as you can see, I was laminating more then just the stuff for this project. This is the one I have here.

After cutting everything out, it was time to assemble the area. Here is the finished product:

I added a couple of boxes. One for the kids to put completed pictures into, and another for me to store the pictures in. Now, to see if our new system works......

Organization....it's my thing!

I have a confession, I'm an organization junky. I love to organize and find new ways to organize. I am actually known among my friends circle for being extremely organized. They have even asked many times for me to organize their houses, haha.

I like things neat, I like things minimal and would prefer my rooms nearly bare, both of these I have had to give up since having kids. Today, however, I thought I would give some of my organization tips and tricks ;)

First, I love tea. I was introduced to loose leaf tea a couple of years ago. Now, loose leaf entails more then just a box in the cupboard. So, the best I could come up with was to use my turntable cupboard in the corner. I moved the spices that were in there to a drawer, and it was now the perfect cupboard for tea tins!(note: the tins are 2 rows deep)

We don't have a lot of movies/CDs compared to a lot of people, but instead of spending more money on a DVD or CD shelf, we just bought a $50 bookshelf from Walmart and use that.

I had a really stressful time dealing with our front entry way. Coats everywhere, hats, mitts, sunglasses, raincoats, etc. I started with a coat stand, but the kids couldn't reach and they only hold so many. Then, tried hooks on the wall, but there was always too many items and snowpants hung too far and fell off because they were resting on the floor, and there was no place for hats or mitts. This past winter, I finally came up with a solution:

They just throw their stuff in and I put the lid on! Another tip: if your house is like ours, you can never find one of the mitts, they misplace them constantly, so, this past winter I went to Dollarama and bought a bunch of their mitts/gloves (not for playing in the snow) and threw them in the bin - this worked because my kids hands are close enough in size. There were always mitts/gloves to go out! The inside of the bin is a disaster chaos not pretty, but I can handle it because there is a lid and because the kids can access it themselves to get and put away their own stuff. The inside:

Books!!! Books get everywhere! The shelves never stay put together, the kids pull one book off and 6 others come with it. My solution that is working, so far, is book bins. I sorted the books by category, made laminated pics and labelled the bins and put the bins on the bookshelf and it stays organized! The kids take a book and return it to the bin, it works great! Our bookshelf (I should mention, the green bin in front is for our church library books):

Hats! My husband is a hat man. He always wears a hat and has several hats, I couldn't figure out what to do with them....My solution was an over-the-door hook "thingy" haha. It is on the outside of the laundry room door, right by our side door and his wallet and keys. It's hard to see in this pic but there are 4-5 hats per hook.

While we're by the laundry room, I have a few tips for organizing in there. The laundry room is where I keep my cleaning stuff. Long before Pinterest came around I had a few things in place. My most used cleaning bottles are hanging on a towel bar, really accessible to me.

Behind my door in the laundry room is a shoe pocket hanging organizer with all my other cleaning supplies.

Lost socks. I will never understand this phenomenon, but there are many. My solution? A "wanted" board beside the dryer:

Lego, Dude has TONS of Lego. We use the Trofast system from Ikea. It was sorted by colour at one point.

Clothing, don't you find that if you don't see it, you don't wear it? I do. I put our clothes in the drawers so that everything can be seen when you open the drawer. Everyone's drawers in our house are like this:

I also find the best way to store my pants is hanging in the closet, otherwise they take up too much space in my drawers.

With 3 boys, I store a lot of clothes for the next boy to wear. I have tried many ways...bins, but some sizes have more then others, bags but they were hard to stack... Finally, I found an idea that worked! I went to Dollarama and loaded a basket with "under the bed storage bags" they are cheap and some have ripped a bit, but even ripped a little they work great. They stack great in the closet!

A little tip (not life changing at all) I found worked in my bathroom was that rolled towels took up much less space then folded towels:

Lastly, I just want to be clear, I owned this before Pinterest (actually surprised people didn't realize this before Pinterest) I store bed sheets in the pillowcase for that set. Just grab and go! (middle shelf)

Just some of my little notebook tips, enjoy!




For His Glory!

I'm linked up with:

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!

Laundry, Dishes and Mopping....oh my!

I was one of those people who's house was spotless before having my children. I enjoyed cleaning, and my house was so clean I would have to make a mess on purpose or invent something just so I could clean it. Fast forward 6 years and I can barely keep up! My house is "clean" but keeping it "tidy" is a different story. I am constantly picking up toys, books, socks and pieces of food all over the house. I needed to come up with something to keep me on task or I would spend everyday doing this repetitive motion without ever getting to the real cleaning that needed to be done.

A couple of weeks ago there was an e-bundle that a group of homemaking bloggers put together and had on sale for a couple of days. As soon as it was advertised, I was sold. I wanted it! Well, the day came and it was available. The price was really good, but I hesitated for a few minutes....I had to resolve within myself that I couldn't just purchase and download and read this bundle, but that I would actually implement it. I decided that I was going to get more productive with my time, I had too, I was falling behind.

During the beginning of skimming this e-bundle, I also discovered an alternative to the Home Management Binder. This was exciting to me because I have tried more then once to start and use a Home Management Binder and it never worked for me. This new system was perfect for me! It is the File Crate System and I love it! I didn't set up the file folders exactly like she does, but fairly similar with what I wanted to include each week. I found enough free printables online to use and it was very easy to pull together. It works so well for my day-to-day cleaning and homemaking, but also will be very beneficial to our homeschooling scheduling. I am a list person, so this setup is exactly what I needed.

I am able to list what I want to accomplish each day, keep track of it all, have my weekly meal plan, weekly calendar and my weekly blogging schedule (that should keep me regular finally) all in one place. Aaaahhh, I feel functional again!

Housekeeping comes easy to me, I love it, so that is not a huge problem. My problem comes when I just bounce around doing a little bit here and there and not actually finishing anything. Now, though, I have a plan everyday and I make it my mission to check off those little boxes.

I have found the key for me is all about the laundry. I hate laundry! I mean, I do it because I have to, but I would prefer not to have to :) I have to stay on top of the laundry to be successful. I am not the person who can do it all in 1-2 days and be done. I have to do 1-2 loads everyday or I won't bother. I start the load as soon as I come downstairs in the morning, then fold while the kids are playing together. Once they are occupied at the table for lunch, I head upstairs and put it all away. I have tried other methods such as assigning each person a day and doing all their clothes on that day, but if we are not home on one of the days, I am behind and can't catch up easily. This way I just wash everyone's together and your clothes are back in your drawer 12-15 hours after wearing them.

It's funny, but the laundry sets my cleaning *mood* for the day. If I get the laundry done first thing, I just feel more productive. So, the key to it all......is laundry? really? I guess for me, it is.

Since downloading the Homemaking e-bundle I have cleaned and purged my entire kitchen, the junk closet, the downstairs bathroom and what will be our new Schoolroom (I'll share about that tomorrow). I feel good, there is no clutter on our main floor where we spend most of our time, and that takes a lot of the stress away.

A key to completeing these mundane tasks for me is this verse Colossians 3:23 - "Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people." (NLT) I keep this in my head all day and keep thinking it when I get frustrated with doing these tasks. I have a friend/mentor who actually has a white glove that she puts in her pocket whenever she has the wrong attitude as a way to remind herself of who she is serving. I may steal this idea from her, just so I keep remembering why I am doing this.

Well, have to get back to my list and check some more things off.....Colossians 3:23......Colossians 3:23.....Colossians 3:23

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!