First Days of School

So the first few days of school have brought a LOT of field trips. We went to the Children's Discovery Museum for a day, and the kids had a blast painting on the glass wall, building with legos, and shopping in the pretend store.

We went to Safety Town, which is a neat place for the kids to ride bikes....they have stop lights and stop signs and an overpass that Nathan had fun zooming down. This year, he's really starting to get into riding his bike (with training wheels, of course) and I think he was laughing the whole time.

We also went to the Lakeview museum, because they were having a lego exhibit. The sunflower above was really neat...I don't know how to change the picture to vertical.

And of course, we have actual school time. Nathan works on math mostly, and Becca works on writing. Lately we've been doing our lessons outside. We do reading and read-a-louds before bedtime, and Bible over lunch.

We LOVE the freedom of homeschooling!!!

Day in the life...

I've been participating in Heart of the Matter's Not Back to School Hop over the past month and this week's topic is the typical day in the life of a homeschooler....We're still new at this, but here goes....

9am--We get up between 9 and 10. I'm hoping to move this back to between 8 and 9, but we've stayed up late a lot this summer. The kids get their own breakfast, usually....poptarts for Nathan, granola bar or cereal for Becca. We usually have to help her. I know I'm not going to win any "Mother of the Year" awards for my breakfast skills. I'm not a morning person.

The kids also get about an hour of TV at this time...we're still into the preschool shows, Sesame Street, Dora, Mickey Mouse, etc.

Mark works 2nd shift, so the mornings are our family time. Sometimes we have appointments, or sometimes we hang out and play with daddy. Just depends on what's going on around here.

12pm--Lunch prep for Mom. I'm trying to get better about cooking ahead, but I haven't done so well at it since we moved to the new house.

1pm--Lunch. This is the other reason I don't do a very elaborate breakfast. We eat our big meal of the day at lunch to accommodate Daddy's schedule. We read our Bible lesson at lunch...it's worked best for us at this time, because we're all together.

2pm--QUIET TIME. Kids are supposed to be playing in their separate rooms. Most of the time, they end up playing together. Quiet time has become more about giving me a break than them actually being in their separate rooms.

3:30pm--School time. Nathan does math and handwriting...anything else is bonus. Becca does some writing and some other skill, like coloring, painting, cutting with scissors, etc. Sometimes we do this outside, sometimes downstairs.

After this, they play outside or we swim or something. Maybe we'll play a game.

6pm--Dinner, which for us is more like lunch.

At bedtime, which is typically around 9, I have Nathan read me a page out of his reader, and then I read the read aloud book. Because of all that, they don't end up in bed until 10, hence getting up so late. I need to push it earlier, but it's been so hot, that I haven't let them play outside until 7:30 or so.

On Mondays, we have Mommy Moments in the mornings, and on Fridays, both kids have gymnastics. I hope to also start the kids in AWANAs this fall, but I haven't decided where they will do that.

Daddy is supposed to do science on Fridays, and we don't do much school other than that on that day. Sometimes we school on the weekends, just because the kids are bored and don't know the difference between weekends and weekdays. I haven't integrated the whole history part of Sonlight yet, I'm not sure how I want to add it. We basically spend a lot of time reading and talking about what they're interested in right now.

My main goals for the day are that Nathan does a math lesson, a language arts lesson, reads his assigned reader. Becca's goal for the year is to learn to write all her letters. I feel like we've accomplished a good day when all those goals happen.

I'd be interested to see if there are any other 2nd shift families out there and how they schedule their day.

The most amazing sight....

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in your mother's womb. Psalm 139:19

Schoolroom

I wasn't going to do a "schoolroom" but since we moved, homeschooling all over the house hasn't worked the same way that it did at the other house. Although this house is double the size of our other one, the floor plan is a lot more closed off. At the old house, we did workbooks at the kitchen bar, or dining room table, or sometimes in the basement with bean bag chairs and lap desks. At this house, though, there really isn't room for us all in the dining room, especially once the baby comes.

So this is the room that we decided would be the best schoolroom:

This is where I play bartender (I mean teacher).

I store all the school supplies in old diaper wipe containers...(crayons, glue, markers, etc.) In the organizing of this room, I discovered that I collect school supplies, and that I probably have enough for an entire kindergarten class.

On this shelf, I put the stuff that we use on a daily basis. The readers and read aloud books are still upstairs, but the math book, science stuff, and language arts stay down here. The other materials are stored underneath the bar....

Cricut: A homeschooler's best friend

A map and our "calendar" station. Right now, I'm having Nathan write in each day and the weather of that day. I have Becca count the days and sing our "days of the week" song and we talk about the month. I want to make this a little more fancy, but this works for right now. Maybe I'll get motivated with my cricut.

There are a few "mirrored walls" in this house, and they work great as dry-erase boards. This did say "Welcome to School, Nathan and Becca" but then the kids discovered that they could write on it too...so this is how it turned out. =)

This is what is all over the floor...for now....but when the baby comes, the Geotrax are going to be evicted to another part of the basement. The baby will need a spot in the school room too.

Look who else can swim

Becca's learning to swim too....but she doesn't come up for air. She can hold her breath a long time though.

The lens fogs up towards the end...sorry about the quality.

swimming

Nathan can swim!!

Curriculum

This is our first year of officially homeschooling. We're excited, so I thought I'd share a little bit about what we plan on doing this year.

We're doing Sonlight Core K this year. We've read one book so far and the kids are loving it. As much as I want to stay in the instructor's guide everyday, I don't think that's the way that it's going to be. My goal is to finish everything, but at our pace. I don't want to sprint through this year, but enjoy all the twists and turns.

I did pick up the Sonlight Language Arts 1, because Nathan was doing really well on learning to read, but it's kinda slowed down with the pregnancy and moving. Plus, I lost the book I was using to teach him in the move. (Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons) . We're also doing the Explode the Code as soon as I find it (it should be in the same place as the reading lesson book). I know that the books made it to this house, they were in the garage when we were moving our stuff in, and I thought that would be a safe place, but then everything got shuffled around between the garage and the shed, and we can't find them anywhere AHHHHHHHHHH!

We're also doing 1st grade Handwriting without Tears. We did the Kindergarten level last year with much success. I think it helped with learning to read too.

We are about 35 lessons into Horizons K Math. It's taught in a spiral fashion, which I didn't think that I would like, but now that we're used to it, both of us like it. It's getting harder right now, and he gets frustrated writing the numbers...he understands the math fine, but the writing part is difficult, so sometimes, I make him write half of it, and then I write his answers for the other half.

Dad is in charge of science, and they're going to do Sonlight science K. It's mostly usborne books, and they love the books. Science probably won't be every day, more like every few days, but they can have fun with it. I don't think that science is 'necessary' for kindergärtners anyway, I knew the instructor's guide would give them some structure for it.

Becca can do most of this with us....she'll be listening with the readers and read alouds, she can follow along with the science experiments, she can work on her handwriting as well. I might do some "letter of the week" stuff with her and let Nathan play along with that too.

Vacation Bible School

Our church doesn't do VBS, so we had to find another church to send them to. They both loved it. Nathan wants to go again next week. Last night was the parents' program, and I got to hear them sing many songs and recite their memory verses. I can't believe how much they've learned over the past few days; Nathan could recite the verses and tell the stories back to me. I even got to volunteer a couple of days. I love VBS!

Afterwards, we played outside at our swingset, and I played around with my camera. I took a camera class shortly after I bought it, but I think I've forgotten everything since then. I would love to take a class or something.

Becca's Dancing

Becca's been taking dance class for the last 7 weeks. It's 1/2 tap and 1/2 ballet. She doesn't care too much for the ballet, but she's loving the tap. I love watching her dance. I'm trying to decide whether or not to sign her up for lessons at a studio (where they don't allow parents to watch the kids dance) or to have her do 1/2 dance 1/2 gymnastics class at our favorite gymnastics place. I think I'm leaning toward the gymnastics....I love watching her, I can't imagine giving that up yet.

Note about the video...I'm taking the video through a window, so the noise is the people in the waiting area, the kids are in a separate room. And once I zoom in, the video feature on my digital camera doesn't allow me to zoom out past that. Makes the video look ridiculous when she's close...sorry.

T-ball

Nathan's been doing t-ball for awhile, and the last few games the coaches have been pitching to them a little. Here's a video of his first (and only) hit at the very last game. Yes, I know, technically, he's out, but there are no outs in t-ball so he got a single =)

I wish the coaches would have him choke up, the bat's too heavy and he doesn't usually swing fast enough to hit it.

He's really enjoyed t-ball though, much more than soccer. He likes that everyone gets a turn and that he doesn't have to run so much. He gets to play t-ball again next year too.

Because we need more chaos right now....

Since I've announced on Facebook, I can put it here too! We're having another baby!!!!

I'm due on December 19, though the baby will be earlier than that due to the c-section. I'm feeling pretty lousy right now, all day nausea and chills. I'm on progesterone shots too, and they are really starting to hurt.

We're trying to stay positive though. (Mark made me promise that we'd never combine pregnancy with moving ever again, LOL). We feel so blessed right now, we heard the little heartbeat a few days ago, and we know that s/he's growing and doing well. The kids are really excited....Nathan's asking God for a boy, while Becca wants a girl, of course. I'm going to try not to find out this time and let it be a surprise =).

New house!!

We put our house up for sale in Feb, but nothing really happened. All of a sudden, last week, someone came in and bought our house! We found this one and put an offer down. Here's Nathan in front of the house

Here's the side view, look at the big yard!
Here's the family room, maybe where I'll put the piano, not completely sure yet what I'm going to do with this space.
Here's Nathan's room, think Buzz Lightyear (built in bunk beds, desk, and shelves)
Our favorite room...the pool! And it's indoors!! (the seller is going to clean the pool and get it running before we move in)

One side of the basement, with the wetbar.

Kids' bathroom. Both the 2nd floor baths are gigantic!

We're excited, but we're sad to leave our neighborhood. We love playing outside with the kids everyday, and I know that the kids and I will really miss it.

Birthdays

Jan. and Feb. bring birthday fun to our house. Nathan's now five, and had a spaceship cake for his birthday. I can't believe my baby is 5!!!!!!

Becca's birthday party was cancelled twice, because Nathan had a nasty bout with pneumonia. He's ok now, it was a little scary though, we had 2 trips to the hospital. We did have a little castle cake for her birthday, but we're going to have a little party with the neighbor kids hopefully this week.

When I'm....

As birthday season approaches, so does the additions of some freedoms and responsibilities. Nathan's always asking when he will be permitted to do this or that, so we've starting assigning ages to it, so that he stops begging to do those things...

Here's a combination of what we've agreed upon...

When he's five, he'll sleep in his own bed at night (my idea)

When he's five, he'll get to have school at home (both of our ideas)

When he's five, he'll will make his own food (his idea)

When he's five, he'll make a pb&j (my idea)

When he's five, he'll have to work on the house with tools (his idea)

When he's six, he can cross the street to play with my friends.

Last night, he couldn't sleep, so he started talking about marriage. He said that when he's six, he'll get married. I told him that, when he's 25, he could get married. He said that he has to marry me, but I told him that I'm already married to daddy, so he decided he'd marry one of the neighbor girls. I told him that when he got married that he'd have to have his own house, and he told me that he'd live next door to me. So sweet....I hope to remember this conversation when he's a teenager and trying to get away from me.

Also, one that he brings up.....when he's 100, he'll get to go to Heaven and see Spike. I had to assign that an age, because he kept telling me that he was going to go to Heaven soon....so we told him that you have to be 100 to go to Heaven, and that he's only 4, so he has a long time to wait =)

End of Preschool Angst

We pulled Nathan from preschool. Let' s just say that his teacher was an idiot, and we didn't trust her. The woman really shouldn't be a preschool teacher...we were hoping that things would be better when she went on maternity leave, but really, we couldn't wait that long. I don't really want to go into all the details on the blog. Nathan wasn't happy with preschool and when we told him that he didn't have to go anymore, he said, YAY!! I'm sad that we don't get to go on more field trips, or to mom's night, or to preschool graduation, but I'm kinda happy that we don't have to get up to the alarm clock anymore!!!

Resolutions...

Now that I'm finally caught up with Christmas, I can focus on the new year! My resolutions are....

1. blog more. I like reading other people's blogs and I want to keep up on this.

2. continue with last year's goal of getting organized. I've made great strides with this, but I haven't totally conquered the clutter monster.

3. return my library books on time. Right now I have a giant fine, so I haven't checked out any books in awhile, but boy do I miss the library.

4. Track my spending. Mark and I do a good job of spending less than we make, but we seem to not be able to save as much as we want to. I've started a spending journal to see where the money goes.

5. Teach Nathan to read (and teach them both how to write). That's the first step of homeschooling, and once we conquer that, I feel like we can do anything.

What are your resolutions??

Christmas Funnies....

Some fun stories from our Christmas....

--On Christmas Eve, I decided to get an early start on present-wrapping and assembling, so I decided to begin during the kids' quiet time. They NEVER get out of their rooms (unless it's to sneak to the other's room) during quiet time without asking so I knew that I'd be ok. I also told the kids that we weren't playing in the basement that day and stayed upstairs instead.

SO, as I finish assembling Becca's dollhouse and am messing around with one of Nathan's toys, Nathan pops downstairs and asks if he can help me wrap. I quickly try to hide his toy, and say no, go back upstairs, and then he asks if he can play with "that green and blue thing" (his leapster) that I had tried to hide. So much for trying to keep the presents hidden.

Then, later that night, he cannot sleep....he stayed up til at least 10:30 (we put him to bed at 8) trying to wait up for Santa. He even stuck his head down the laundry chute and saw more presents. He told me about them....a yellow lego box and a green game. He was still ready for Santa to come, and wasn't disappointed at all the next morning.

--Becca decided she had to have a teddy bear because she saw one in Santa's sleigh in 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (which Nathan memorized). Mark and I weren't thrilled with the idea of another stuffed animal that wouldn't be played with, but I found a set at Hobby Lobby that had 2 teddy bears and 4 princess costumes (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Tinkerbell) and I figured that at least, she could dress up her dolls in the costumes. But, she does love her bears and now does everything with her princess teddy bears.

--Becca got so wrapped up in her presents that she didn't finish her stocking until yesterday.

Christmas

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. Christmas season was busy for us! The kids loved seeing Santa, not shy at all. They were very anxiously awaiting Christmas, I think we had 3 different countdown calendars going. I can't believe how big they're getting...it was fun to buy big kid toys for Christmas though!!

Nathan's favorite gifts were: a Leapster, a Marble Run, a remote control airplane, and hot wheels track. Right now he's playing his leapster in his bed tent.

Becca's favorites were her dollhouse, princess teddy bears, and her Tag books. And right now, she's jealous of Nathan's bed tent, so I had to build her one over her bed.

One accomplishment I'm proud of this year: I finally caught up on our Christmas stockings! Becca's is finally done and added to the collection!

Here's Nathan walking in with his preschool class. All the kids had to carry a canned good to donate to the food pantry. The teacher collected the cans at the beginning of class, but randomly distributed them before the program, so Nathan ended up carrying a can of fruit cocktail, which is something he rarely gets, but loves a ton. So as he's walking in front of me, he asks me if he can take it home =) The other video I had from the program didn't turn out well, so I won't post it.