Normalcy

I feel like we are settling into a normal routine here!  It feels good since I don't like chaos.  Mondays are still rough--at least this upcoming Monday is a holiday so I can skip it!  Just a few pictures of the week (I didn't pick the camera up much):

Samuel finished his 1st math chapter!  For a "test", he made a shape animal (he chose cat).  He's been doing really well with his Kindergarten work (= math, handwriting and reading program) in the morning.  He doesn't participate much in the afternoon but I'm not pressing him on that right now.  He LOVES All About Reading and the sticker he gets to put on the chart every day.  He is a rhyming machine now!  :)

We were in China this week for Geography.  What a great curriculum this has been!!  We had a lot of fun pretending to be in China each day, ending with some yummy Chinese food tonight.  Their souvenir was a Chinese fan and the kids loved this craft.

Otherwise, we have been keeping busy with all of our subjects.  Some days I wonder how we'll get it all done but we do (without stress!) so I'm happy with how it's going.  We are reading Pollyanna right now and that's been a really fun book for us (free for the Kindle!).  

I had Playstation passes that expired today so we got to use those this week.  I said it was a gym field trip.  :)  Any outing is now a field trip--ha!  

Hunter's Scouts started back up and Brian is his den leader this year.  They have been working on the chess belt loop as I type this.  Hunter loves it and I think it's really made him happy to have Brian lead this year.

Lily started gymnastics--same night as Scouts so it's nice to get it all done in 1 night!  She seemed happy with it after her first night.

10 days of school done!  Not bad at all.  I'm still pretty tired but I feel like things are running smoothly.  I've relaxed on some topics and reminded myself that the lesson plan is not as important as their understanding.  I'm sure I'll need to remind myself of that again.  Happy Weekend!!!

1 Week Down

Yes, we have completed 1 week of school!  It was completely exhausting!!  At least for me it was.  I got together with a couple other homeschool Moms, 1 of which had started on Monday like me, and she felt the same way.  We were totally worn out!!  So I guess that shows we enjoyed our lazy summer days, too!

We had a rough start to the new school year but things improved over time.  I had a small gift for the kids each day to celebrate the start of school and that ensured their enthusiasm!  :)

Samuel is working hard on his All About Reading letter activity.  Nathan is working on his Dora lapbook I made him (from 1+1+1=1 blog).  Notice Ziggy the zebra is out--he is the biggest hit of the school year thus far.  They all just love that puppet!  Samuel even asked to do reading one day after we had already done all his schoolwork.  I would've said yes but we were leaving!

Expedition Earth (found here) has been a lot of fun.  The kids made maps of their room so here they are explaining it to me.

Oh Nathan.  This week, he took lids off at least half the markers and dumped them all together in a bowl, dumped the counting bears, took all the cups out of the kitchen, mixed 3 puzzles and stuffed the toilet full of toilet paper--all in 1 afternoon.  Yes, he keeps me hopping.  The biggest problem I seem to have is that he screams during read aloud time--every day!  I'm not sure why he hates it.  I was letting them play with Thinking Putty and the kids miss that but Nathan wasn't behaving with it (it will ruin clothes and carpet--found that out last year!) so I put it all up.  

A blurry picture but this shows our pajama day--Wednesday because it's the only day of the week we have zero therapy appointments  We were playing the Continent Hop game (found here).

Samuel and I made newspaper hats for math because we've been learning about shapes this week. 

I thought this was funny.  Every morning, Samuel and I take the pointer and sing the ABC song and then Samuel points to the letter we're learning that day.  Nathan always joins us and gets excited about it all so I wasn't totally surprised to find him in the hallway, learning letters by himself.  :)

Paper mache earth.  I can barely say more.  I just don't know that we will do this ever again as long as I live.  I had picked out an alternate craft and the kids didn't know paper mache was an option but they saw it on some cartoon and specifically asked to do it.  Sigh.  We did it.  

In art this week, we learned about Picasso.  We looked at some of his paintings and they picked one to recreate in their own way.  

Lily chose Le Moulin de la Galette because of all the fancy ladies in the picture.  :)

Hunter chose The Altar Boy.  It was funny because the boy in the picture is holding a candle lighter/snuffer thing (no idea of formal name) but the kids have no clue what an altar boy is or what he would be holding.  Hunter was sure it was a paintbrush and Lily was convinced it was a large toothpick.  Ha!

I got into my groove by the end and I'm feeling better about things now.  I do think it's going to take some time to figure out how to get energy back and how to school and clean and keep Nathan contained.  :)  Still, not bad for our 1st week!

A New School Year!

The kids were actually really excited last night to begin a new school year.  I was, too--I could barely sleep. Unfortunately, it's been an extremely busy day and not much has gone well.  Oh well!  At least pictures are done!

Lily, 8 years old

Hunter, 8 years old

Samuel, 5 years old

Nathan, 2 years old

An attempt at getting all 4 kids in a picture...didn't work out!!  :)

School Room

Another blog hop post...I love this one because I love organization and I can look at other people's school rooms forever!!! I feel like our school room has stayed pretty similar to last year's but I did add more storage!  I don't know if it will stay in this arrangement forever but it's working right now!  Most of this room has been furnished by IKEA, fyi.  :)

Kids still sitting here and, yes, there's only 2 chairs.  We'll be doing a lot of things together so we'll see how it goes.  I'm not worried.  All 3 school kids have a nameplate taped down (all free, thanks to my teacher-sister and a giveaway hosted by a local Christian school).  You can see stickers have been added to their cabinets.  There's 2 kids to a cabinet but so far, so good.

White board is super useful and we love it.  The cups for holding school supplies are also super useful and I love having cute storage for necessary things.

I added a small bookshelf to the big one we had already.  It's FULL.  The cabinets hide my "teacher stuff".  

This cabinet has a lot of educational toys/games/manipulatives and art/craft supplies.  It's full!  Up on top is an old fruit box full of more craft items and a jar of gumballs.  :)  The side of the cabinet has the start of our pirate word wall that Samuel and I will be using this year.

We are all ready for our geography!  This map came in the Little Passports' starter package.  The books on the lower 2 shelves are all relevant to our geography introduction.  The highest shelf has books from my childhood that I loved but are falling apart so I keep them up!  The wall has labels for the animals we'll discover in the different countries we'll explore.

Our calendar area.  I have 2 trofast shelves now and these are super fun.  The green one has calendar supplies, coloring book, paper, etc.  The red one mainly has fun, learning items...geoboards, lacing buttons, piggy bank, nesting blocks, etc.  These items are going to help a ton (I hope) in keeping Nathan busy.  Our calendar time this year will consist of the pledge of allegiance, the date, weather, safety info (address/phone, which I've yellowed out in the picture), vocabulary word of the week (from a fun book I purchased at our homeschool conference) and a math review (right now it's shapes because I thought I'd start off easy but there's also counting to 100, skip counting, etc. on the packet).  

Samuel's alphabet posters for All About Reading are in the hall.

Also in the hall is my favorite frame with a fun picture just for decorative purposes.  The file folders hold workbooks that the kids can work on independently.  The subjects are visual discrimination, counting, listening skills, etc.  No major schedule or plan with these.

Our living room holds a shelf with a couple fun items that, again, I hope keep Nathan entertained (the learning room is an extension of the living room so he'll be close by).  Wedgits in the basket and city blocks in the bucket with a wooden Noah's ark on the floor.  I'm trying to have plenty to keep him occupied so I can give everyone the time they need!

That's our school room for this year or month or whatever.  I change things around a lot as I use items because I need it to be easy and organized.  :)

Curriculum 2012-2013

It's already time for the "Not Back to School Blog Hop"!!  I love reading through these posts and last year I got to participate for the 1st time!!  Last year was the beginning of my continual homeschool updates, which I like to think my parents and in-laws enjoy reading.  It's fun to have a record of it all so here I go again!

Samuel:

Read: All About Reading

Math: BJU K

Handwriting: 2 Teaching Mommies printables, various printables from there

All else will be combined with the others, explanation below.

Hunter:

Read: Various books planned, working on words that he struggles with 

Math: CLE continuing where he left off this summer

Handwriting: Handwriting without Tears Cursive 

Lily:

Read: Various books planned, working on reading aloud 

Math: Teaching Textbooks and a daily math book I bought at the NICHE conference

Handwriting: Handwriting without Tears Cursive

Combination::::

All 3, to some degree:

Science: Christian Kids Explore Earth and Space 

Bible: Apologia's Who is God?

Geography: COAH's Expedition Earth

Poetry: A weekly thing we're going to attempt because it was fun last year...using A.A. Milne's poems

Art: COAH's Artist studies

Just the twins:

English: BJU English 3 has grammar and writing so we're giving it a try...a little hesitant about the fit for Hunter but I can always use it flexibly! 

Spelling: All About Spelling, continuing where they left off

*This is a hefty plan (in my opinion) but not everything is every day and we're just going to see how it works around all the therapy appointments for the next couple months.  I'm determined to be flexible and I'm looking forward to our 2nd year homeschooling!!*