First football Games!

Yup, we spent the day at the park today. It was a long tiring day, and I think the girl and I wore the wrong outfits lol. We had to be at the park at 7 in the morning, and it was freezing! I wore sweats, a sweater, and was still cold. I put my daughter in jeans, and a white shirt that said the teams name. About noon, the sun came out and it was so hot, I about melted. My daughter played in the dirt, and was so filthy. I hope it doesn't stain her shirt.

I watched the games with my daughter, while my husband worked on the field. It was a fun day, and the bonus is that both my boys won their games!

Orion had the first game of the day. See all the fog? And the bleachers were soaking wet! We emptied out the boys bag (the duffle that holds all their gear), and sat on that to avoid being soaked.

Raymond watched his brothers game and cheered for him every time he was on the field. Oops, I guess he sat on the bleachers lol.

This was Raymond's game. Notice the weather change? And my awesome husband is wearing the bright orange vest on the field, doing his duties as MPR. So those were their first games, and were hoping for a great season. Go Wolverines!

Slow, but steady!

So our first week of schooling went over well, but with a few fusses. Raymond complained and whined his way through the first 2 days, and that was hard. It took him those first few days to realize that home really is school now too. My other 2 took to homeschool like fish to water!

Our first day, we got up, ate breakfast, and got dressed. We started school about 10 that day.

Raymond on his first day of 4th grade. Orion was sitting on that desk with him, but once Olivia finished her work, Orion abandoned him to take over her desk.

Orion on his first day of 2nd grade. He a lot of one on one help with his schoolwork, so he likes working on the smaller desk next to me.

Olivia on her first day of preschool. She chose to do an alphabet puzzle on the couch, after she did some busy work.

Lately though, this is how we've been doing our school work....

Learning about proteins, and how our bodies turn sugar into energy.

Learning about different flowers. He loves working with dry erase!

B is for beans!

Cut and paste letter A.

So, notice the trend? Yup, we've been working in our pajamas! Oh well, that's something we'll work on next week!

Almost Done!

For about a week now, I've been printing and cutting, copying, hole punching, organizing, and running out for last minute things, but..... I'm almost done! I'm pushing myself so we'll be able to start school on Monday, or Tuesday lol.

The other day I took the boys Abeka books to Staples and had the bindings cut off, and bought a bunch of binders. Then I came home, hole punched them (all 8 books worth!), and put them in the binders. Looking at those binders, just makes me smile. I love how neat and organized everything looks now.

I printed out a few games and printables from 1+1+1= 1, homeschool creations, confessions of a homeschooler, and a few others that I'm so sorry but I can't remember :( But of course, now I can't for the life of me find my laminator. The thing is years old, but worked great! To make room for our supplies in the garage, all of our stored boxes were stacked taller than I am, so it makes it hard for me to get into them. A friend told me she got her laminator from Walmart, so I guess I'm in the market for a new laminator. The best part though, is that I found the laminating pouches really cheap!

Oh, and I found an organizing method that looks like it's going to work for us! It's the adapted workfolder/workbox method from homeschool creations. I have a binder with dividers for every day of the week, that I'll put their work into (1 week at a time) , then move it every night into their work folder. Each of my boys has a tray that their work folder will be in along with their bulky items that don't fit into the folder. My daughter has a large tupperware container that holds her folder and bulky items. It's not overly complicated, and doesn't seem like it will overwhelm them either.

Now I'm off to make my own version of workbox strips for my kids!

Disorganize to Organize

I should have taken pictures of the process, but let's just say that what I was looking at was beyond scary. Anyway, the last few weeks, we've been preparing our house for our new venture into homeschooling. I did most of it on my own, because the hubby works so much (and football practice for the boys runs a bit late for us) he's only home long enough to eat dinner, shower, and sleep.

I started in the garage, and cleaned off our old kitchen table. Our house is really small, so the kids have been eating on a small children's table, and us adult folk have been using t.v. trays. The little table we've been using for the kids is too small for them to spread out and work on, so I had to bring out the big one. Our house and garage have been a huge mess the last few weeks because of all this. Anyway, I put the big table in my living room (which stood there for about a week and a half), then cleared out the corner that my sewing stuff is in, and put both the little and big table in the corner.

Back in the garage, I had to find a place for all the stuff I cleared off the big table, find places for all of my sewing stuff (machines, fabric, and notions), and make room for all of our school supplies and books (2 shelving units worth). I cleared out a lot of things we no longer need, stuff that broke when the dogs got in there, old strollers, so there was lots of trash.

Today, one of our boxes from Abeka (the books we chose for mostly everything this year) came, and the other is due in tomorrow. Once I get all the books together, I'll have to go through and make our lesson plans. I'm ordering math mammoth through a co-op, so we won't be doing math for another few weeks (until I get the CD in, and have copies made for the boys). I also ordered superstar speech for Orion (he has a diagnosed speech delay and articulation issues), and am hoping this helps us to help him.

I'm hoping to start school next week, since we already have our first field trip planned for the week after. The rest of this week though, will be spent cleaning the rest of the garage, getting our house into order, and meeting up with our homeschool group. Ice cream social, here we come!

Pre-k

I found a box full of stuff from my days as a preschool teacher. I sorted it all out, paper clipped it, and now it's sitting... waiting for me to photocopy it into a consumable workbook for my Bunny. I offered to make copies for my friends children also, so hopefully they see these pictures and let me know what they want copies of.


This group is full of seasonal/holiday sheets. Everything from winter, Easter, Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, Father's Day, to St. Patrick's Day and beyond. Some are bag puppet pieces, coloring pages, activities, etc.

This group is what I like to call pre-math. It has sheets like bigger and smaller, matching, line correspondence, opposites, more and less, and same size.


This group is the different shapes, and a variety of exercises to go along with them.

This group is a great place to start when your just beginning with a little one who hasn't gotten in much pencil or scissor practice (great for fine motor skills). These are just tracing pages, that have straight lines, wavy lines, zig zag lines, and exercises to practice the different lines. There's also pages with different lines to practice cutting.


These are just random animal and insect pages. There's a butterfly craft using an egg carton, an animal mask, a bird bag puppet, and a few others.


This group is all the letters of the alphabet (a few different sheets per letter), and some exercises to work on them.


This is the last group which is numbers 1-10 (a few different sheets per number), and some exercises to practice them.

So that's all my consumable pre-k stuff, that I've acquired over the years. I have more workbooks and such, but their geared for an older level, so I'll save those for supplementing Bunny's kindergarten year :)

Homeschool

After much thought and deliberation, I've decided to file my own private school affidavit (psa for short). I looked into our options, and we were going to go with a resource center (which files it's own psa, and would have kept our records for us), but the cost was $375. I know that's not unreasonable, but after looking at different curriculum's, I couldn't justify the cost. For a little extra effort on my part, I can keep my own records for free, and by filing my own psa I now have more freedom on what I want to teach my kids.
I finally decided on which books I want for the boys for the year, and I'm hoping to acquire a few more throughout the year to see what fits us best. Were going with math mammoth for math (for now), Abeka for most everything else, and growing with grammar and spelling as a complimentary aid. I'm hoping to toss in either singapore math, or saxon math to mix with our math mammoth. Orion will also be using superstar speech, to help with his speech delay and articulation issues. Of course these will be our main books, and I'll be using other books and aids as supplements, like Global Wonders for geography. Olivia will use a big combination of preschool books and consumables that I collected through my time teaching preschool. I still have to sort through them and see what will fit her learning style, but I have a ton of manipulative's to help her along also.

I'm almost done setting up our homeschool area of the house, and it's going to change the whole structure of our house, since it's so small. I'm giving up my whole sewing corner to give the kids an area without distractions, and I cleared out an area and a shelving unit for all of our supplies. I think I still need another shelving unit though, for more books.... so it looks like I'll be putting away some of my fabric to make room for that. It's all going to be worth it though, because over the past few months I've noticed how much happier my kids are when their with me. I let them be themselves, and it's working for us.

Football.... Go get some!

Raymond and Orion started football. I'm nervous and scared at the same time. I'm not an athletic person by any means, don't understand any sport, and am petrified of my boys hurting themselves. I'm trying so hard to be a good sport about this, but well.... it's terrifying! I go back day after day (5 days a week), drop the boys off at the park (with the in laws), pick the husband up at work, drive back to the park, we stay there till about 8:30 p.m, and are home about 9 p.m. Our days are long!

Raymond does well in practice, doesn't complain or cry (which is my Babe's core personality trait lol), and is even excited to go back day after day. Orion.... meh, not so much. Orion messes around a lot during practice, and we think it's because it's flag football, and not the tackle kind his brother is playing. Maybe next year he'll take more of an interest when it's his turn for tackle. Orion's taken more hits falling off the bleachers (note to other parents: cleats have no grip on metal bleachers) than he has playing football, that reminds me that I need to keep that kid far away from the bleachers from now on. He is making friends though, and that makes me smile :)


Raymond gets to wear lots of pads to practice, and looks so adorable in his little get-up. All the pictures I have are of Raymond, because well.... if I post any of Orion, you'll see him standing around, playing in the dirt, flipping his jersey up, and yeah... you get the picture! I'm hoping we'll get tons of pics of Orion once the games start, cross your fingers!