Goodness gracious! It's been a little while since I made a blog post!
We had a wonderful visit with our family over the Christmas holidays and a pretty uneventful trip home (though we did have a sudden repair we needed to do to our van before we left). And as wonderful as it was to be with our family we were happy to be home with our own things and our animals. I know just about everyone has to agree that there really is "no place like home". The dogs were over the moon that we were home and the friend who watched the animals did an awesome job!
It took a few days to get back into our routine since we really just "decompressed" for a few days. And now we're pretty much back into "the swing of things". However, we have adjusted our weekly schedule to make it so that our "on" days are: Mon., Tues., Wed., Fri., and Sat. And our "off" days are Thurs. and Sun. ...
These really aren't "off" days as Thursday is usually spent in exploring topics that interest us individually and Sundays are spiritual days. Learning is done on both days ... just not text book learning. So far this is pretty much working for us. It means we don't have two days off in a row making Mondays (or whichever day we decide to start on) all the harder to get moving on and it allows for a break in between formal lessons so that none of us overload too much.
We've been enjoying Kentucky weather so very very much! Although it's cold around here right now (it IS winter after all) we've only had a little snow and that was Nov. 1st!!! So, we've had some temperatures that have kept us indoors but not mounds and mounds of snow which we're thouroughly enjoying right now. I LOVE snow ... to look at. I HATE shoveling, frozen gloves and children, wet sopping floors from dogs going in and out, slick roads, etc...
Our 2015 goals are moving along pretty well (they were pretty broad after all)... My crochet orders are coming in, Peanut is learning to use her easy bake oven (and helping Mommy cook) as well as working with play money to "get the hang of it", YCJ has been working on her music, and ECJ grew 1/4 of an inch!!! Our home renovations won't begin until further into the year when the weather warms up some more and we're a long way from getting to the place we want to be by the end of the year.
Are lessons happening every day? Nope. Not. At. All. ... Why not? Um... Why should they? Most days we're "supposed" to do lessons we do break out the books and do our lessons. Some days we break out puzzles and books and work on our states, story telling, reading, or just plain fun. Every single thing we do I could give you at least one aspect of it that we're learning from ... How? Well, we've been doing this awhile now and you start spotting what I call "non-learning/learning methods". By that I mean measuring while cooking, nature shows we get caught up in on PBS, finding items at the library, random questions that lead to research and curiosity, etc...
So, we're on track goal wise and lesson wise (mostly, we still have a bit to catch up on from the move but not much) and since we school year round that's just fine with us.
Now, since Peanut is finally sleeping through the night (first time since the move that I was able to give her melatonin to help her sleep) I'm off to bed myself. Time to rest and spend a few minutes with Daddy then go to sleep for a peaceful night without a six year old putting her knees into my back ;-)
Showing posts with label Family Journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family Journal. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Monday, September 22, 2014
Knowing When to Take a Break
We're only going into our 3rd week of fall lessons so we don't need a huge break yet...
But there's days when we do need that moment to take a break from the books and do something hands on, outside, or just plain different!
The other day this became abundantly apparent to me as all three campers were getting frustrated with their book work, giving me attitudes, and generally being unhappy campers. I glanced outside, checked the forecast, and decided our nature walk (scheduled for the next day) could happen right then before it began to rain. Just a short walk, with nature journals to happen during lunch, and then back to work we'd go!
And you know what?
It worked like a charm!
It was chilly outside but no one minded. They all wanted a longer walk but it was threatening to rain. We did pause to visit with the neighbor behind us who has a brand new puppy. When we came in ECJ made lunch, all three drew and labeled their findings (most of which was leftover hay from the farm field), and when we got back to our book work it was finished in no time flat!!
We did take another nature walk the next day for a bit longer and during our scheduled time... I also threw in some videos about how hay is grown, fed to animals, and hay bales are used for growing gardens now.
My point is, homeschool mama, YOU know your children and yourself best!!!! Need a break to switch those attitudes around? Take one! Go for a walk, do a science experiment, do a craft or art project, turn on the radio and dance .... Whatever it takes get that break done!!!
Sometimes you just need to know when to take a break. ;-)
And for those of you who have yet to look us up on Facebook you can find us there by following this link . As yet it is the only social media account we can be found at.
But there's days when we do need that moment to take a break from the books and do something hands on, outside, or just plain different!
The other day this became abundantly apparent to me as all three campers were getting frustrated with their book work, giving me attitudes, and generally being unhappy campers. I glanced outside, checked the forecast, and decided our nature walk (scheduled for the next day) could happen right then before it began to rain. Just a short walk, with nature journals to happen during lunch, and then back to work we'd go!
And you know what?
It worked like a charm!
We did take another nature walk the next day for a bit longer and during our scheduled time... I also threw in some videos about how hay is grown, fed to animals, and hay bales are used for growing gardens now.
My point is, homeschool mama, YOU know your children and yourself best!!!! Need a break to switch those attitudes around? Take one! Go for a walk, do a science experiment, do a craft or art project, turn on the radio and dance .... Whatever it takes get that break done!!!
Sometimes you just need to know when to take a break. ;-)
And for those of you who have yet to look us up on Facebook you can find us there by following this link . As yet it is the only social media account we can be found at.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Just Another Week in ....
This week had it's ups and downs ... they're not ones the children really knew about and we'll be sharing a lot about them next week so you'll just have to wait in suspense! Other than that this was "Just Another Week in Paradise" (though paradise is not what I call it around here lol).
Monday and Tuesday we had regular scheduled programming around here! Here's some photos of what our lessons looked like:
Wednesday we took an impromptu trip to Gaga and Papa's house where Daddy and the campers toiled in the soil pulling weeds and replanting shrubs (Papa was nice enough to pay the campers for their work). Meanwhile Gaga and I were busy inside trading family gossip and working on a gift for my mother (Gaga has much finer hand sewn stitches than I and helped me with some finishing touches.) Later we had neighbors over for BBQ.
Thursday we did both Wednesday and Thursday's lessons. Plus we managed to get a nature walk, journal, and drawing session in as well!!
So, that brings us to Friday... And as I'm finishing writing this up Thursday evening Friday hasn't happened yet. But, we have a full day of lessons planned including some work with our musical instruments and some videos on the production and uses of hay. And of course we plan to get outside one heck of a lot more again tomorrow!!! (And I have about a billion things to work on crochet wise alone one of which is repairing a 75 year old afghan for a family/friend *gulp*.)
Posts you may have missed this week:
Peanut Turns 6!
A Look Back at our Year Outside (TONS of pictures)
Who we're linking up to this week:
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Faithful Mom of 9
Squishable Baby
Our 4 Kiddos
Homegrown Learners
*If you first see this and the links to the other blogs where the link ups are just know that their link ups have not become available at the time you view it and as they do become available I'll be adding their link in. Thank you.*
And for those of you who have yet to look us up on Facebook you can find us there by following this link . As yet it is the only social media account we can be found at.
Monday and Tuesday we had regular scheduled programming around here! Here's some photos of what our lessons looked like:
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| YCJ saying her rosary while ECJ reads from his prayer book (YCJ has several rosaries, currently her bracelet that holds one decade is her favorite to use.) |
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| ECJ reading a Bible story to the girls by the sunshine coming through our side window! |
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| It's a catch all bag she can use at work in the hospital and wash as needed. |
Thursday we did both Wednesday and Thursday's lessons. Plus we managed to get a nature walk, journal, and drawing session in as well!!
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| Cracker Jacks watching CNN Student news together. |
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| Gathering hay bits on our nature walk |
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| The ever camera shy Daddy :-) |
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| Snail we found on nature walk that Peanut spotted first. |
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| Other side of snail. |
So, that brings us to Friday... And as I'm finishing writing this up Thursday evening Friday hasn't happened yet. But, we have a full day of lessons planned including some work with our musical instruments and some videos on the production and uses of hay. And of course we plan to get outside one heck of a lot more again tomorrow!!! (And I have about a billion things to work on crochet wise alone one of which is repairing a 75 year old afghan for a family/friend *gulp*.)
Posts you may have missed this week:
Peanut Turns 6!
A Look Back at our Year Outside (TONS of pictures)
Who we're linking up to this week:
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Faithful Mom of 9
Squishable Baby
Our 4 Kiddos
Homegrown Learners
*If you first see this and the links to the other blogs where the link ups are just know that their link ups have not become available at the time you view it and as they do become available I'll be adding their link in. Thank you.*
And for those of you who have yet to look us up on Facebook you can find us there by following this link . As yet it is the only social media account we can be found at.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Peanut Turns 6!
It's not every day that you have a birthday, and you only turn six once! Peanut turned six just this past Saturday and we attempted to make it as perfect for her as possible.
Peanut woke up to a giant surprise ... talk about becoming a princess over night!!
We used some temporary pink and purple hair coloring that you just comb in and kind of reminds me of crayons. Even ECJ and Daddy got into it. ECJ opted for stripes and Daddy had a streak of pink on either side of his beard for the day (no staining and it all washed out rather easily). The girls also were allowed a set of press on princess nails each for the day (these ended up coming off right after cake and ice cream).
Peanut helped to make and decorate her cake: white cake with real strawberries sliced up into it before baking, shocking pink frosting with sprinkles decorated with more strawberry halves.
Grandma and Papa came out and some close neighbors came over to with her a happy birthday and give her gifts.
Clothing and a coloring set from Grandma and Papa...
A movie from the neighbors...
A tambourine, play dough Ariel castle and doll, giant princess pen, and a dollar from Mommy and Daddy...
Then of course cake and ice cream and visiting!!!!
Afterwards they played, had a junk food dinner (whatever they wanted to snack on they could as we'd eaten a huge late lunch), and then bedtime!
The next morning Peanut came out of her room dressed like this:
And a few days ago (Wednesday) Peanut celebrated her birthday with Noni!
Noni bought her a lot of Strawberry Shortcake items for her birthday and a few other things.
So, this month's (September's) day in a life post is for September 13th.
Previous Months Posts:
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
Check out what's going on in everyone else's lives (or link up a day of your own life) over at Our Busy Homeschool on the 20th of every month!
And for those of you who have yet to look us up on Facebook you can find us there by following this link . As yet it is the only social media account we can be found at.
Peanut woke up to a giant surprise ... talk about becoming a princess over night!!
We used some temporary pink and purple hair coloring that you just comb in and kind of reminds me of crayons. Even ECJ and Daddy got into it. ECJ opted for stripes and Daddy had a streak of pink on either side of his beard for the day (no staining and it all washed out rather easily). The girls also were allowed a set of press on princess nails each for the day (these ended up coming off right after cake and ice cream).
Peanut helped to make and decorate her cake: white cake with real strawberries sliced up into it before baking, shocking pink frosting with sprinkles decorated with more strawberry halves.
Clothing and a coloring set from Grandma and Papa...
A movie from the neighbors...
Then of course cake and ice cream and visiting!!!!
Afterwards they played, had a junk food dinner (whatever they wanted to snack on they could as we'd eaten a huge late lunch), and then bedtime!
The next morning Peanut came out of her room dressed like this:
And a few days ago (Wednesday) Peanut celebrated her birthday with Noni!
Noni bought her a lot of Strawberry Shortcake items for her birthday and a few other things.
So, this month's (September's) day in a life post is for September 13th.
Previous Months Posts:
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
Check out what's going on in everyone else's lives (or link up a day of your own life) over at Our Busy Homeschool on the 20th of every month!
And for those of you who have yet to look us up on Facebook you can find us there by following this link . As yet it is the only social media account we can be found at.
Friday, September 12, 2014
First Week "Back"
This has been one of those interesting, first week of the new school year, life gets messy, kind of weeks.
Monday I didn't have to work and it was our first day back to fall lessons. I'd purposely made the first half of this week lesson light so that there wouldn't be any arguments or fussing when it was time to do school so it ended up being even lighter than our summer lessons. We only did our Spelling You See lessons and our new math lessons (well, of course our Bible studies were in there but we never skip those). For Spelling You See the girls are both doing the Jack and Jill level together and ECJ is going to work through the entirety of the level that we helped test before it's general release (it's not available yet for purchase). The Cracker Jacks are working on Saxon math for the first time and Peanut cracked her first grade McGruffy math book. Here's a photo explosion of our first day...
Yeah... that was pretty much our day in pictures... We did some binder and folder decorating after our lessons, plus some wall decorations for fall. Took a trip to a beach side park about half an hour or so from the house (where of course they had to feel how chilly the water was). After a kid crafting explosion, during which Peanut either colored or hid under our round coffee table, we had a supper of hot dogs and mac and cheese. It was a really good day.
Tuesday lessons got finished before I went into work for the day and everyone had a relaxed day after Mommy left as the only thing they had left on their schedules to do was pray the rosary and watch a few of the next episodes of Liberty Kids (I picked up the entire series, 40 episodes, for $5 at WalMart on the 3rd).
On Wednesday we'd planned on doing lessons but slept over just a bit and by the time chores, prayers, breakfast, and personal hygiene issues were taken care of Noni got here! So, it was off to the first stop of the day. We'd been aiming for Chuckie Cheese and ended up at Bounce and Play because they'd taken over Chuckie's old place in the mall. I wasn't impressed at the prices, games, or bounce houses but the kids enjoyed themselves...
Then we stopped into a candy store at the mall where we saw this:
It's a 28 pound gummy python that costs $150 to order!!! There were other large gummies there as well but this one caught the campers attention. ECJ also got himself a banana flavored sucker with a scorpion (no stinger) encased inside *shudderEWshudder*. After which we went over to Toys R Us where the children picked out a few early birthday gifts and un-birthday treats and then headed home for an early celebration with cake for Peanut since Noni has to work this weekend when Peanut turns 6...
So, then we came to Thursday... the anniversary of 9/11/11. We meant to do our regular lessons this day as well but ended up talking more about what happened 13 years ago instead. Which was just fine with us. I won't get up on my soap box and talk on and on about why we think it is important that our children, who didn't see the event first hand, know all about this event ... Let's just leave it that we thought it important enough to spend the entire day on it.
And now it's Friday and we'll be finishing up this week's lessons today. The plan is a nature walk this afternoon if the weather holds, I'll be breaking out the jackets because it's supposed to only reach 60* today (last week at this time it was 90*!). After which I'll be dedicating a lot of time working on my crochet. I have several Christmas orders to finish, a few projects I'm doing for stitch-a-longs, and Christmas gifts for family. I know that I won't get them all finished this weekend but I also have a few small things I need to make for Halloween to finish up some costumes. In other words I'm going to be hugely busy this weekend stitching.
Here's the start of one of the lovies I'm finishing up today...
Here's a link to a bunch of lovies on Pinterest which will show you basically what these are if you didn't know... crochet lovies
Since I didn't post earlier this week here's a shot of Moragon "playing" with her new toy:
Who I'm linking up to this week:
Our 4 Kiddos
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Faithful Mom of 9
Homegrown Learners
And for those of you who have yet to look us up on Facebook you can find us there by following this link . As yet it is the only social media account we can be found at.
Monday I didn't have to work and it was our first day back to fall lessons. I'd purposely made the first half of this week lesson light so that there wouldn't be any arguments or fussing when it was time to do school so it ended up being even lighter than our summer lessons. We only did our Spelling You See lessons and our new math lessons (well, of course our Bible studies were in there but we never skip those). For Spelling You See the girls are both doing the Jack and Jill level together and ECJ is going to work through the entirety of the level that we helped test before it's general release (it's not available yet for purchase). The Cracker Jacks are working on Saxon math for the first time and Peanut cracked her first grade McGruffy math book. Here's a photo explosion of our first day...Tuesday lessons got finished before I went into work for the day and everyone had a relaxed day after Mommy left as the only thing they had left on their schedules to do was pray the rosary and watch a few of the next episodes of Liberty Kids (I picked up the entire series, 40 episodes, for $5 at WalMart on the 3rd).
On Wednesday we'd planned on doing lessons but slept over just a bit and by the time chores, prayers, breakfast, and personal hygiene issues were taken care of Noni got here! So, it was off to the first stop of the day. We'd been aiming for Chuckie Cheese and ended up at Bounce and Play because they'd taken over Chuckie's old place in the mall. I wasn't impressed at the prices, games, or bounce houses but the kids enjoyed themselves...
Then we stopped into a candy store at the mall where we saw this:
It's a 28 pound gummy python that costs $150 to order!!! There were other large gummies there as well but this one caught the campers attention. ECJ also got himself a banana flavored sucker with a scorpion (no stinger) encased inside *shudderEWshudder*. After which we went over to Toys R Us where the children picked out a few early birthday gifts and un-birthday treats and then headed home for an early celebration with cake for Peanut since Noni has to work this weekend when Peanut turns 6...
So, then we came to Thursday... the anniversary of 9/11/11. We meant to do our regular lessons this day as well but ended up talking more about what happened 13 years ago instead. Which was just fine with us. I won't get up on my soap box and talk on and on about why we think it is important that our children, who didn't see the event first hand, know all about this event ... Let's just leave it that we thought it important enough to spend the entire day on it.And now it's Friday and we'll be finishing up this week's lessons today. The plan is a nature walk this afternoon if the weather holds, I'll be breaking out the jackets because it's supposed to only reach 60* today (last week at this time it was 90*!). After which I'll be dedicating a lot of time working on my crochet. I have several Christmas orders to finish, a few projects I'm doing for stitch-a-longs, and Christmas gifts for family. I know that I won't get them all finished this weekend but I also have a few small things I need to make for Halloween to finish up some costumes. In other words I'm going to be hugely busy this weekend stitching.
Here's the start of one of the lovies I'm finishing up today...
Since I didn't post earlier this week here's a shot of Moragon "playing" with her new toy:
Who I'm linking up to this week:
Our 4 Kiddos
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Faithful Mom of 9
Homegrown Learners
And for those of you who have yet to look us up on Facebook you can find us there by following this link . As yet it is the only social media account we can be found at.
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