Homeschooling Year 1 Review: What I learned

Our First Day of Homeschool for 2014

Okay so our first year homeschooling was rough.  There is no sugar coating it.  Toward the end of the school year I was ready to throw in the towel.  To the point that Señor Hotness contacted the school, and I began drilling the kids on the standardized test they would take as a re-entry assessment.  Then we did something simple but kind of radical (for us anyway).

  We banned the TV.  We didn't get rid of it, but we did unplug it and banned it from our house during the week, and it is only watched by the kids during quiet time on Saturdays and Sundays.  (I will confess that they watched TV almost non-stop during our month long summer break.  Things got ugly.)  Do you want to have your children explore their talents?  Read more?  Play better together?  I can tell you getting rid of TV watching is the way to go.  Our house is more peaceful without the TV.  My ladies fight less, and I find that my patience is better when there isn't a constant amount of background noise happening behind the noise we already make.  Believe me when I say the mini horde produce more than enough noise all on their own.  Cutting the TV revitalized our family, and gave me the hope that homeschooling really could work in our home.

Another thing homeschooling taught me was not to skimp on breakfast!  While cereal is quick, easy and tasty, brain food it is not.  My crew was drastically less cranky, and much more able to get work done and concentrate when we had a good home cooked breakfast.  Our favorite is doing breakfast hash, muffins, oatmeal, or homemade granola.  Cereal is a rare thing now.  What about pancakes you ask?  I will confess that we don't ever eat pancakes for breakfast.  Pancakes are a dinner meal around here.

I learned that family style learning is awesome, but certainly not all the time.  At least for us.  So we do a few things family style, and then we break up to finish out our school day.  What do we do family style you ask?  We do scripture study, and handwriting family style.  Everything else is more independent.

I learned that life is happier, neater, and I get much less screamy when everyone pulls their weight in the chore department.  No matter how small.

I learned that individual desks aren't necessary, but sure are nice.  Thanks to some really awesome people at church who gave these to us (you know who you are).  I will be forever grateful.  Our girls get WAY more into doing their work knowing that they have their own special place to do it.  They also want to dress these up so stay tuned to see what we do with them.

I learned to never undervalue the need for a really good pencil sharpener.  I bought our first electric one from Walmart.  It broke within the first week.  I bought our second from an office supply store, but I made a huge mistake when I bought the mid-grade one thinking it was still better than the Walmart variety.  It was, but we still managed to kill that one within a month.  So then I went in and got their most expensive model.  Sometimes how expensive something is really is a good reflection of quality.  This one while it looks simple is a workhorse, and has withstood all kinds of wear and tear.  Destructo Girl even tried to sharpen her eraser in this thing.  After I got the eraser out it was as good as new.  The downfall of having such an awesome sharpener is that it can literally sharpen a new pencil down to a nub if you aren't careful.  You've been warned.

I learned that a well stocked crayon box...or two...or three is a truly priceless tool for homeschooling smaller kiddos.  Each subject lesson for the younger kiddos is nothing more than a few minutes long, and doesn't take long to complete.  So whats a kid to do in a house with banned TV?  They LOVE to color, and are crazy about mazes (here is our favorite site for free maze printables).  So what we do is have coloring time between each of their lessons which lets me help my older girls with their work as needed.  Heaven bless crayons.

I learned the value of uplifting music.  While the songs playing on the regular radio may not be bad, they also don't cultivate a feeling of calm, happiness, and focus.  So during school hours we often listen to the Mormon Music Channel, which is a free online streaming radio station.  We have discovered that this sets the tone for the day we want to have.  We save the more energetic tunes for after school hours.

I have learned that if we take a short 15 minute cleaning break every couple of hours our house is much less likely to feel trashed by the end of the day.  A less trashed house equals a much happier mom, and a much happier mom equals a much happier teacher.  Which equals much happier students in a learning environment not stifled by clutter.  In all honesty we struggle with this one.  I will find myself having a hard time not being lazy, and dragging the horde down with me into laziness.  Its a work in progress.

I have learned that a laser printer is worth its weight in gold.  THE. END.

I have learned that a detailed meal plan is a lifesaver.  Its better if I'm not having to think up a meal on the spot while I'm already managing several other things.  Its nice to look at a menu to see whats for dinner, and then prepare accordingly.   This too is a work in progress.

So long story short I am a fickle person, and while I told many people that we were putting them back in public school...I lied.  We made changes and are keeping them home, and why wouldn't I when my kids are this stinking awesome.

Miss E my 7th grader is trying out jazz hands

Miss H my 5th grader, and Miss P the photobomber.

Miss A is my sassy 1st grader.

Miss J wasn't happy at all to be taking start of school pictures without her stuffed animal entourage, but Miss P was more than delighted with another photobombing opportunity.

Miss P is always game for another photo-op.

Any and all pictures at our house ALWAYS have to include a funny face picture.

I'm looking forward to this upcoming school year when my ladies and I will learn together.

Linked up at: www.savvysouthernstyle.net, jannolson.blogspot.com, thebrambleberrycottage.blogspot.com

Hidden In Plain Sight

Remember how I said we were not going to be homeschooling this next year?  I would just like to apologize for being a huge fibber.  We have made some huge changes in our family recently, and decided to steamroll ahead for one more year. (I'm going to be blogging about what we are doing differently, but hint hint it involves the TV.)

Ok so we homeschool in our regular living space.  I'm super selfish, and don't want to dedicate any one space as strictly homeschool.  Our house is much spacier than our last home, but not so spacey that I feel like I can dedicate a room to it.  So here at our house we homeschool in the kitchen.  If you have been hanging around for a while you will know that we have a ginormous (technical term) island that you can read about here.  It is roughly nine feet long by five feet wide.  It can easily seat 12, but I only have seating for 8.  It is one of my favorite things about this house.  It provides tons of space for my girls to spread out their school work, and get to working on it. (or cooking or anything else)

For all that I needed something to store all of our homeschool supplies, and there were plenty of them.  It also needed to look at home in my kitchen.  So I started scouring Craigslist for the perfect piece.  This one Señor Hotness had a demand for, however, I had to find a piece that didn't need to be worked on.  As you all can guess this was so hard for me to agree to because that meant I was going to have to find something that was full price that actually matched my idea of cool.  I was so happy to find something that I loved that looked good with the room, and didn't break the bank.  Thank you desperate movers!

Isn't it beautiful!  My appliances are black so the color was perfect, and the style matched that of my cabinets perfectly.

When we got this the glass was kind of a problem for me.  This piece was all about concealing its actual purpose.  Helping it blend into the background.  Then I had an idea.  It involved tissue paper, my DIY decoupage glue (that you can find here).  I wanted to frost the windows, but I didn't want it to be permanent.  So I was all about mocking the look.  While the front of this is paned the back side of the doors are just one solid piece of glass.  So my thought was that I could just paint decoupage on the backside of the doors where the glass is solid then place the tissue paper over it.  Word to the wise unless you are crazy awesome this WILL wrinkle.  I personally like the wrinkled look.  I used a full-sized sheet on there.  This had excess hanging all over the place.  When the decoupage fully dried I used a butter knife, and gently cute the edges and pulled off the excess.  Then I went over the entire thing with another layer of decoupage glue.  Warning, be careful.  Tissue paper is super fragile period, but its even more fragile when wet.  So this will be crazy easy to tear, but when you are all done it will come out looking like this.

I really like how it turned out, and it was beyond super duper easy to do.

This faux frosting also hid the fact that what is stored in this isn't cutsie dishes, but where I keep our extra curriculum packets, crayons, markers, scissors, counting blocks, etc.

This gives you a view of what we keep inside, and what the inside of the doors look like.

Now let me tell you about the bottom.  In the bottom we keep what I call our "school tubs".  The ladies all have individual containers that hold all the packets that we are currently working on.

The tubs are the perfect fit. 

In the drawers we keep books.

In the crate on the left we keep more books and magazines.

In the crate on the right we keep all of our extra spiral notebooks.

An just to throw everyone off.  We keep the cook books in the metal magazine holders in the middle.

In the end we have a piece that doesn't look out of place in the kitchen, but allows us to have a class room when we need it or a completely mundane kitchen when we want it.  Oh how I wish my entire house was this organized.

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When Teething and Homeschooling Collide. A Good Money Making Opportunity?

Finally we were finding a groove.

Finally we were getting a schedule.

Finally everyone seemed to be adapting...well almost everyone.

I have discovered the quickest path to an extremely upset baby is sitting down, and trying to review letters and letter sounds with two of her sisters.

What ensues can only be described as pure chaos. On the flip side my girls will have no problem learning, studying, or functioning in a noisy college environment.

So in a way this is valuable college prep.  I could probably hire out my clingy, teething child to small families so that their children will know how to deal in the chaotic crowds that seem to abound at college campuses the world over.

This is how I think the advertisement should read:

Offering Whiney One Year Old Teether, and a Plethora of Assorted Sisters to Create Chaos and General Discord.  How Best to Help Your Child Learn to Learn in a Noisy Dorm/Fraternity/Sorority/Apartment Than with These Fun Loving Girls Who Love to Run, Laugh, Giggle, Fight and Cling to Any Available Appendage When You REALLY Need to Concentrate.  Also Available to Newly Married Couples Looking to Experience an Afternoon of Parenthood to See if You Really Are Ready to Get With Child.  Best to Rent Directly Prior to Any and All Important Phone Conversations.  When Careful Listening, and Prompt Replying is a Necessity.

The Good, the Bad, and the Homeschooling Fail...and Its Only Week Two.

Ok so we are in our second week of homeschooling. Yay!  Already I love it.  Already I can feel the girls spirits shrivel as they realize that they are now firmly in my grasp!  Already I can feel us drawing closer together as a family, and I am experiencing the joy of being such an integral part of their education.  

That being said for just about everything that is awesome there is usually also an equally unawesome downside.  I'm sure you are probably wondering what the heck?  This is week two, how could you possible have found a downside.  Its possible my friends.  Especially if you are an over achiever like me.  Things have been going great.  The little girls haven't been as big of a distraction as I thought, and our lessons have gone smoothly. So I thought we can totally handle Family Room learning time...it was too soon my friends.  Far, far too soon.  It was a big fat epic FAIL.

Picture of the laziness,

and more laziness.

A little sister poking at a lazy sister,

and a little sister trying to figure out how best to join in the laziness.

It's hard to learn, and try and absorb anything when you are laying on a heap in the floor.  Also apparently the chickens get extra clucky when they are laying eggs.  We don't really hear it in the kitchen, but we totally could in the living room.  I had more than a few super concerned 'egg gatherers' on my hands.

The lesson I learned from this is this could be a fun way to do one subject maybe, as a treat, but certainly not a full load only two weeks into this whole process.  So back to the kitchen island it is.

Oh the productivity!

The littlest little is even happy so long as she's getting fed regularly.

We have an apple tv, and use the computer as a big part of the learning process.  With our apple tv I'm able to link my laptop screen wirelessly to the tv that we keep mounted in the kitchen.  We use it to look up facts, find songs, and we use it in place of a white board or chalk board.  We may or may not have had homeschooling heavily on the mind when we were thinking about this kitchen layout.

I have always loved being a stay-at-home mother, and have felt blessed to have a loving awesome husband who sustained me in that role.  I now feel an even greater appreciation for my wonderful husband as he has helped me on our homeschooling journey to here.  He has helped me research, and organize our materials so that everything has gone as smoothly as possible.  He has also offered me insight from his own personal experience of being homeschooled as a child.  

I am excited about this new path our family is heading down.  I can't wait to chronicle our successes, our laughter, our tears, and yes even our failures, but whatever we're doing I can guarantee it will be awesome!

Getting Ready for School

Usually getting ready for school means

• Franticly looking for school supply lists for the appropriate school and grade.

• Franticly shopping for clothes, and shoes in stores that are already crazy picked over.

• Trying to calm down frantic kiddos that are suffering last minute nerves about a new school year.

• Sadly saying goodbye to summer vacation.

• Basically just a ton of frantic-ness, if that's a word.

This year is going to be a little bit different

• We aren't mourning the passing of summer.

• We have opted out of frantic school shopping. We'll get more clothes and shoes when we need them.

• The kids aren't having anxiety over a the new school year.

• This year we are making our own school supply list.

Why is this year different?  This is the year that we start homeschooling.

We have toyed with the idea for years, but this is the year we actually do it. The kiddos have already started doing their math, and they are super hyped about getting started in our curriculum this year.  We are planning on starting early this year since it might take us a bit to figure out the groove that works best for us.

Our math curriculum that we are going with is Aleks.com.  I had my math teacher friend, Awesome Kristie, look over it for me.  She gave it two thumbs up.  It is a fully online program.  I like it because I can hop on with my parents login every evening, and check up on their progress.  How they did that day with lessons, what they perhaps struggled with, and I can also set up quizzes for them. The kiddos LOVE it, but that might be because they get to do it on our iPads.

Our curriculum that we are going to be doing is through lifeschoolk12.org.  They are an LDS based accredited curriculum.  We just got it in over the weekend, and I'm beyond excited to get started with it.  I love that it incorporates scripture into all the lessons in ways that I never would have thought to apply to our everyday life.  

We are excited about the freedom that we are going to have this year.  The fun that we will be having with our homeschool buddies, and the many awesome field trips that we will be able to take.  This year is going to be great.