Do You Want to Build a Snowman?

Shortly before Christmas, our family went out to see the movie Frozen. It is seriously adorable, and Olaf (the snowman) provides some great comic relief. The kids have all been singing the summer song the last several weeks. Haven't heard? Take the time to YouTube it! I promise you'll be cracking up.

Anyway, in keeping with my goal of doing weekly art projects, we decided to create our very own Olaf!

The idea initially came to me when I was killing time on Pinterest and found a simple cut out activity over on My Mommy Reads. I first had the kids paint a winter scene using watercolors since we were studying Audobon's paintings. Even Baby Boy got in on the action after he woke up from his nap!

Then I took the cutout pieces and let the kids arrange them as they saw fit. They came out really cute and now any time Baby Boy enters the room, he yells out "happy snowman!"

Like what you've seen here? Get your own cut out Olaf here!

Happy New Year!

For me 2013 was a chaotic year. It was an excited chaotic as we anxiously awaited and welcomed our 4th child and older kids explored new activities and sports. It was a difficult chaotic as I struggled with depression and toxic familial relationships. Fortunately, God was always there during those difficult times, even if in just small ways like having me stumble upon old favorites of mine on YouTube.

Seriously, this song always brings a smile to my face because this is so me, right down to the lack of patience and the scatterbrain. It is such a reminder to me that God is ALWAYS there even when we forget to look at Him!

Now on to 2014! I'm looking forward to what God wants to do in my life personally, in our home, and in our school. I'm big on setting goals at the beginning of each year and coming up with an actual plan of meeting each of those goals. Like most, I'm not always the best at keeping them, but I figure that every little step forward is better than standing still.

Goals for our school in 2014:

• Accumulate fewer fines at our local library! Do this by packing our books the night before our weekly trip when we are not as rushed and tending to forget things.
• Stay on top of inter-library loan orders, so I'm not waiting on materials for lessons. I'm trying something new for this quarter to see if it will help. I ordered all the books up front requesting them for the length I needed them (some up to 9 weeks), so I only have to worry about returning them on time. (I'll look at doing another blog post on how I manage my ILL's so I don't return something too early by accident.)
• Do our morning routine on a daily basis. This includes reading a chapter from Psalms, calendar, counting practice, mental math, patterns, and money. This also includes getting the kids to put their own stickers on the attendance chart again instead of me doing this. (I'm bad about just doing things for them instead of holding them responsible for what they should be doing on their own.)
• Making art a bigger part of our school week. Big Girl loves art, so she's always a more eager student if she knows there is an art project to be done! Big Boy isn't as into art, but I have noticed that really enjoys the break from lessons that art gives him.

So, that's it! I can think of about a million more things I could add to this list, but these really feel like the big ones. I feel like they can really be summed up by saying be more organized, more diligent, and more fun!

What are your goals for 2014?

My Absence from Blogging

As you probably noticed, I've been gone a few weeks. One of my personal goals for this year has been to keep up with my writing, so these last few weeks have been kind of difficult for me knowing that I'm not meeting that goal, even if for a VERY good reason...

BABY GIRL ARRIVED!

Since our pumpkin patch trip, we have kept ourselves busy. School has honestly been hit and miss, but we've kept up with what we can and even managed to get in a few art projects here and there. First up was silly skeletons. Then we did a brief lesson on pointillism, and what a better project for fall than pumpkins!

We are a homeschool family that does celebrate Halloween, so in keeping with our usual tradition, we carved a pumpkin. The kids decided on a simple design for this year's jack-o-lantern. We also did some trick-or-treating as Catwoman, Batman, and Robin!

Since Halloween, we took a step back in waiting for Baby Girl's arrival. Mommy was tired, and the rest of the family was excited. All of us were having our patience tested, though, as baby girl decided to arrival a whole 2 weeks late! She has absolutely been worth the wait, though, and even Baby Boy has taken to her!

Our family had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. We were all thankful for the newest member of our family and for our health. In the couple of weeks that have followed, we have learned just how thankful for our health we are, as we ALL decided to catch a nasty head cold. Even Baby Girl has decided to get in on the fun.

Well, that's the update from the last few weeks. I hope this finds you all happy and above all healthy as we head into the Christmas season! Come back next week for a new entry and continued writing from yours truly!

A Day at the Farm

So, last week I completely missed posting. Baby Boy decided to come down with the flu, and in caring for him and keeping an eye out for symptoms in the rest of the family, blogging went to the wayside. I return this week, however, with a recap of our recent field trip to the pumpkin patch!

For the younger crowd, our homeschool group usually does an annual trip to one of our local pumpkin patches. Whoever plans it decides which one. This year, I volunteered and set us up with my favorite one, which is run by a wonderful Christian family and truly has a farm feel to it!

We started things off with a hayride, and yes, we rode through the countryside on real bales of hay in wagons pulled my a tractor - no commercialized vehicles here! There's always one part of this ride where I'm always nervous and convinced we are going to tip although it's never happened. On one side of the wagon it drops off to a creek bed several feet down as you bump across a little rock bridge. Once we got past this "scary" part, we spent the rest of the ride trying to identify the many trees along the way!

After the hayride, we headed into the barn where we sat on hay bales in the main area between rows of animal stalls (open to the outside, so the animals were able to come and go as they pleased) where we listened to the farmer herself tell how a pumpkin grows from seed to fruit and showed us the many varieties of pumpkin they grow at the farm. No videos here! We got the real deal!

From there, we were able to meet some of the animals on the farm - a dairy cow, miniature horse, donkey, geese, ducks, goats, lambs, pigs and turkeys - before heading off to the real excitement for the kids, the play area!!! My kids especially love the corn bin, even though it grosses me out just a tad thinking about all the little bodies that have already been in there and where that corn could have ended up before my kids jumped in. *shudder*

We let them play a good 45 minutes or so before heading out to the patch and picking out our pumpkins! Each kid was able to pick out a miniature pumpkin or gourd to take home. They had some really cool looking gourds, but my husband told me we couldn't go to a pumpkin patch and NOT bring home pumpkins. Anyway, I love this pic so much, I've got to show you the unedited version!

Off to the left of the above picture, you can see the entrance to the HUGE corn maze they have. We did take a few minutes to go through it just long enough to find the exit (as opposed to go for the prize by finding the hidden items) before heading back home. 

All-in-all it was a great day, and I was able to cross something off our family's fall bucket list! 

What About Socialization?

As I sit watching "18 Kids and Counting" on Netflix, I'm hearing one question over and over in regards to homeschooling. What about socialization?

I think before I can answer this question for myself (and I truly believe most homeschoolers would answer in a similar way), I think I need to first define the term socialization. According to Dictionary.com (the definition was not found on the Merriam-Webster online dictionary), socialization is the process by which one acquires social skills. Socialize means to associate or mingle with others. Very similar definitions, yes; however, we are talking a difference between the learning of skills and the application of those skills.

I find in my personal experience that when I am asked the socialization question, what I'm really being asked is do my children ever get to interact with other children. As in, do they ever socialize with others? The answer is a resounding YES! Ask when and where this socializing occurs, and you'll get as many answers as there are homeschooling families. Here are my answers:

Karate Class - As part of our curriculum, my kids take karate classes. During class, they are not only learning self-defense skills and discipline, but they are running around laughing, talking, and playing games at different times. Also, every other week I drive a friend's son to class. The 30 minute trip involves plenty of talking, giggling, and good-natured teasing in the backseat!

Weekly Bible Club - They attend a weekly Bible club at their grandparents's church, where they not only learn more about our values and beliefs, but they are able to interact with kids from the community (many of which attend the public school system).

Children's Church - This takes place each Sunday at our church. We attend a different church than either of our parents in a different town than where we live, so this is a whole different group of kids that they see each Bible club meeting. Again, they learning core values/beliefs, playing games, talking, laughing, etc. with kids who attend either our private church school or the public schools of that community.

Homeschool Group - Once a month, our homeschool group gets together for field trips. Our group is very diverse as far as beliefs go. The only thing some of us have in common are the fact that we educate our children at home. We live in different communities ranging in size from miles away from anyone else to cities of 60,000 people. Of those that do attend church, very few of us actually attend the same church, and our denominations vary from LDS to Baptist to Pentecostal to non-denominational. Family sizes range from 2 children to 11 children. Some homeschooling moms have education degrees (up through masters) while others have high school diplomas. As you can see, we come from different walks of life and are raising our children with different beliefs in different communities.

Neighborhood Kids - Our neighborhood is full of kids, and my family is the ONLY one who homeschools. Come 3:00pm, our doorbell often starts ringing asking for play dates. This is probably our least diverse group of kids when compared with each other but still very different from our family. Most come from single parent homes, are of mixed race, and do not attend church of any kind. They are all great kids, and my kids love playing with them!

Library Activities -  Each week, we attend storytime. The two age groups are pretty small, but it is another opportunity to get the kids out in the community and playing with other kids.

Misc Community Activities - We do our best to keep an eye out for different camps and fun days. In the past couple of years, we've participated in kids games at community events, education camps put on by the regional education service center, cheerleading camp put on by the local public school, back to school bash put on by the local public school, community VBS celebrations, and summer sports teams.

As you can see, there is no shortage here of socializing that my kids get. As I initially said, this is the application of the socialization (the learning of social skills) they receive from Mom and Dad through watching us, family discussions, character education, etiquette education, etc.

This is how we tackle socializing in our family. How do you make sure your kids get in socializing? How do you handle this question when asked?

October...Already?!?!

Wow! Is it really October already?

We've completed our first full month of schooling for this academic year, and while there are a few minor changes I would make if I could travel back in time, I've been very pleased with our progress so far!

Big Boy is adjusting so well to the new heavier schedule of 1st grade, and Big Girl is actually really enjoying math this year! I cannot tell you what a relief these two things are for me. I really was worried about them looking back on last year.

Baby Boy continues to be a challenge. My school-only activities and toys are not working to keep him as entertained as I had hoped. Sure he enjoys what I've gotten, but he is such a perfectionist (much like older sister and mom) that he gets frustrated if the slightest thing goes "wrong". I'm really looking at scrapping the plans I have in place for him and trying to figure something else out.

Looking forward, October is set up to be a pretty busy month.

• College homecoming
• Hometown homecoming/fall festival
• Husband's 15 year class reunion
• Trip to a local pumpkin patch
• Piano performance in nearby town
• History day with the homeschool group
• Halloween

How about you? Any big plans for the coming month/season?

Homeschooling with Chronic Illness

This is a post I've been wanting to write for quite some time; however, every time I started I just didn't  know where to go with it. As I sit here faced with another bout of pain, I thought I'd share my plans for the day and hopefully show how you, too, can still homeschool through chronic illness.

First of all, my diagnosis. I have a handful of what are considered "invisible" illnesses. This simply means that I most people can't see the symptoms of said illness like you would see the runny nose, cough, and watery eyes of seasonal allergies (which I also happen to have every spring and fall). I regularly fight juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and Raynaud's phenomenon. The symptoms are always there but don't always effect my ability to school.

My symptoms include:

JRA

• joint pain & swelling
• stiffness & difficulty moving after sitting or lying for long periods
• fatigue

Fibromyalgia

• pain
• fatigue
• concentration problems
• depression
• headaches (gotta love those migraines)
• morning stiffness
• sleep problems (have a hard time getting into a deep, restful sleep)
• numbness in hands, feet, and legs
• tender points (all over dull aching with random pinpoint shoots of severe pain)

Raynaud's

• numbness in hands, feet, and nose from poor blood circulation
• effected areas get ice cold and turn white/blue
• effected areas turn blue then bright red when trying to warm up often with painful tingling

In addition to my invisible illnesses and seasonal allergies, I'm also pregnant with our fourth child. Each pregnancy has brought on severe morning sickness that lasts from about 8 weeks until birth. This time around has been no different in that area.

As you can see, I face a whole host of obstacles in my homeschool journey. So how do I do it with all of this going on? Well, to be honest, there are a lot of days I don't. School often gets cancelled because I'm utterly exhausted or fall asleep without warning from the fatigue. (Funny story: Just last week Big Girl woke me up because I fell asleep in the middle of reading a science lesson. Big Boy thought it was hilarious!)

In all seriousness, though, here's how many of our "Mommy is sick" days goes and what I rely on to get through.

Netflix of all things has been a blessing! There are so many documentaries on history and science that I can easily put on for the kids to watch while I rest.

School in Bed. There are some days I just can't get out of bed. These are admittedly my worst days, but they do happen more frequently than I'd like. Big Girl will run downstairs and grab all of our materials for a given subject. Then she, Big Boy, and I cuddle under the covers while I read to them. Baby Boy gets to play in his room on these days, so we are often serenaded by the Jake & the Neverland Pirates theme song.

Cut our work in half. We'll start a bit later in the day and only do the basics - reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Just push through. I know this is probably the least helpful of everything I said, but there are days when the symptoms are there but not as severe. Those days, I just have to pray for an extra dose of patience and energy and push through the pain and fatigue. By the end of the "push through" days, I'm often in bed by 8:30pm with the kids.

Do any of you out there face physical obstacles in your homeschooling journey? How do you work through the tough days? I'm always on the look out for new ideas!

Discover the Dinosaurs

This past weekend we had a great trip with my parents to a "Discover the Dinosaurs" exhibit! Although we aren't studying dinosaurs at this moment (land dinosaurs won't happen until next year), I still thought it would be a great educational field trip.

Big Girl had a blast the whole day! She really hammed it up for photos, especially with the meat eaters posing "mid-scream" as if they were about to attack. She had us all cracking up with her antics.

Big Boy started off the most excited about the day, but once he saw how big the dinosaurs were, he wasn't so sure. At one point, when an allosaurus started moving, he ran and hid behind grandma. Poor guy! (I realize the pic below is actually a tyrannosaurus rex. My allosaurus pic didn't come out very well. I figure they're related, so it sufficiently illustrates the scary factor.)

Baby Boy was timid but not in the same fearful way as big brother. He loved looking at all the movement and even the big dinosaurs but did get a little worried the few times we turned his back to them for pictures.

All three kids really enjoyed the dinosaur dig areas and the "Dino-theatre" presentation. They were all excited to see Dr. Scott the paleontologist from one of their favorite shows, Dinosaur Train!

All in all it was a great day and a great break in routine from the normal school week!

Our New Classroom!

I've always had a very hodgepodge classroom (when I've had one) up until this year. I really wanted something a bit more cohesive and fun for my kids. I'll admit that Pinterest had a big influence on this desire!

Of course, Big Girl wanted princes or Monster High or something equally girly, but Big Boy wasn't having any of that! He wanted something that was all boy. I told them we needed something both boys and girls would like. Mickey Mouse was our compromise, and I think I may have gone a little crazy with it!

Much of the big aspects of our classroom stayed the same. It's still set up much like a traditional classroom. I tend to do better keeping the kids focused with this set up. 

First up is our alphabet strip. We had a really nice one last year, but it just didn't go with our phonics curriculum. It was hard for Big Boy to remember his key words for sounds and letters with nothing matching up. Also, Big Girl is starting cursive this year, so I wanted something with cursive letters.

Look below the alphabet strip to the left, you'll find our 100 number chart. We had one that came with our curriculum that I've used for a few years now. It is on a 12x12 sheet of paper, and with my poor eyesight, I wanted something bigger.

Below our number chart is our attendance charts and family birthday calendar. Each day when the kids finish up with their workboxes, they take a sticker and place it on the appropriate day of the calendar. This helps me track their attendance and make sure we meet that 180 day requirement for the state.

Below the charts is our bookshelf of this year's school items. I keep my teachers manuals, student portfolios, student dictionary/thesaurus, box of math manipulatives, library books for the week, and a coloring books for Baby Boy. The Celtic cross on top is both a nod to our faith and our heritage!

Moving right, the next thing you see is our whiteboard and math meeting space. Our white board is used for pretty much everything. The rest is math specific. We use Saxon curriculum, and after writing and re-writing everything on a daily basis for a few years, I was tired. I made up all of our stuff and laminated it, so it could be done with a dry erase marker. You'll see spaces for our pattern of the day, number of the day, problem of the day, calendar activities, our Mickey bank for practicing money counting, and (not pictured) a clock for practicing time. There is also a weather component built into the curriculum, but we don't do this because we tend to hold daily weather discussions when choosing our attire for the day. I see no point in duplicating that just because a curriculum tells us to do so.

Just above our math meeting board is our writing space. I found these great graphics of step-by-step Mickey drawings and thought they'd make a great visual for the steps in the writing process!

The kids' desks sit facing the big wall for easy visibility. You can see my teacher chair and workboxes in the background.

Moving further to the right is our workboxes. Each kids have a set of drawers for organizing their daily school work. Each drawer is labeled with a subject and they work through from top to bottom doing our group subjects first. I printed off labels in the kids' favorite colors with letters in the Disney font to match the rest of the room. Their pictures set on top of the appropriate set of drawers.

As we continue around the room to the right and pass the staircase, it's our fruits of the Spirit display. Big Girl studied these last year and colored a fruit for each one. I thought she did such a great job with it that I decided to put it up in our classroom. I am probably going to make a big label for this wall with the Bible reference before the end of the year.

Next is our Tapestry of Grace map of the humanities. It's honestly not something we reference very often, but I like having it up. For a while my ILs were very concerned that we had spent so much time on world history and none on American history. I found that being able to show them this map, they could see exactly where we were going with our history studies. It has really helped to ease their minds about their grandchildren's education.

Our second map is a large world map because really what classroom would be complete without one! MIL is a librarian and had a couple of these sent to her. She graciously passed one along to me for our studies!

Next we come to my desk, but honestly it's still such a mess I didn't take a picture. Not only does it function as my teacher desk but as a household command center and Big Girl's and my sewing table. It also houses our seriously awesome color laser printer! I thought we wouldn't be able to afford one for many years but hated how much ink we were going through with the old inkjet we had. I'm seriously in love with this printer!

Last but certainly not least is our behavior management wall. The rules posted are basically our usual household rules. I felt that having them posted would help give the kids a visual reminder. Each day the kids start out with the Mickey/Minnie markers on "ready to learn" and are able to move up for good behavior to either "great job" or "super student". If they break any of the posted rules they must move down to first "make better choices" then "talk with daddy". Not only does this help them see how they are doing, but my husband doesn't have to ask how the day went. He can see it when he walks in from work.

So far I'm loving our set up. I know it's only been a week, but it really seems to be working out well for us!

Our First Week

A bit late with this week's post...

We officially started school on Tuesday of this week. I took the first couple of days to really get Big Boy transitioned to having to sit still and listen. I still have lots of activities where he gets to wiggle, but there are also going to be times this year where he just needs to listen to me read material that is a bit longer than he's used to.

Also, with the major room redo I did I really wanted to take time to get both Big Girl and Big Boy used to the new set up. Even though Big Girl has been doing this for 6 years, it was still an adjustment to bring in her brother on many of her subjects.

The first thing we discussed was our schedule. You can read more about that in my Day in the Life post.

Next, I showed them all the new things that have made their way onto our classroom walls before covering my new behavior management system. The rules posted here are just some of our normal house rules, but they are all issues where one or more of the kids struggle. I thought having the posted might help be a reminder for them.

Our second day was pretty laid back as well. Wednesdays will be our "test days" rather than learning days. This is because Wednesdays are also our errands days. I didn't want to completely cancel school on these days, so I thought is was a perfect built in shortened day.

Big Girl and I took some time to set some goals for the year. This is the first year we've done this, but I felt it was important  for both learning self-evaluation and to give us something to aim for beyond "learn our times tables".

Thursday and Friday were our first two full learning days. The older two kids did great! Baby Boy had trouble with the transition. He did NOT like being in his own area even with him being both in sight and having new special toys for school time only. I'm still working on getting some toddler school activities together to keep him entertained. Friday was better than Thursday, though, so I think once we get a couple of more days under our belt, he'll do just fine.

Overall, it was a good starting week. I'm pleased to see how well the first few days have gone and excited to see how our year continues to go using the new things I've put into place. I hope it is a successful year and I can use a similar setup for next year when Baby Boy most likely starts preschool!