This week's theme...

"This week’s theme is about sharing your 2008-09 homeschool agendas and plans. So this week I hope you will share what you’re doing this year for your homeschool agenda. Share the different curriculum you’re using. You can also include what age/grade you’re using it for, how long you’ve been using it, and why you like it. Please share a Bible verse that has encouraged you or inspired you during this planning-process, and how."

My favorite part of homeschooling (other than the field trips!) is the planning! I usually get started in the spring for the following year. I love to plan out what is to come. I use a program called Homeschool Tracker and it really helps me with getting everything laid out. I even printed my kids their own Agendas this year, with personalized covers and bound them. They love them. Each day's assignments are on a separate page and they check off each subject when it's done. There is also a place to put scores if they've taken a test or done something else that I need to keep track of the grade. Then, I can just pull their agendas every couple of weeks and enter their grades into the computer.

I decided to use several curricula that were new to us this year. Of course, we stayed with some tried and true favorites, as well. We kept the Saxon math and the Bob Jones English and then added almost everything else new.

For Bible, we are using Character Building for Families - which we actually began last year, but I didn't follow through too well with it. I switched early in the year to everyone reading their own Day to Day Bible. The Character Building for Families is working out better this time... I think we were all ready for it this year.

Both kids struggled with vocabulary on their end-of-the-year tests, so I figured I'd try Wordly Wise 3000 with both of them this year. It is going well, both kids enjoy it so far. The second week, several of the words from my daughter's list were in a book she's reading for pleasure! I explained how that was God showing her how useful doing vocabulary as a school subject is!

Nick also had a hard time with spelling on his testing, but did fantastic with his spelling all throughout the year. That told me he could memorize words for a week, but he really wasn't learning how to spell. The choices he made on the test acutally sounded out correctly, phonetically, but we needed a new type of learning because most of them were wrong! I checked around and found AVKO Sequential Spelling 1 to be what it seemed like would help him. We are a couple weeks into it and he's doing great!

I'm also using Handwriting Without Tears 3rd Grade Cursive program with him. I should have done this instead of teaching him D'Nealian printing from the beginning. His printing is so hard to read, but so far with HWT, his cursive is beautiful! And, he's writing it when he isn't asked to...that's a plus!

We are using GeoMatter's Trail Guide to World Geography instead of a history program. I never learned Geography in school and wanted my kids to have a better grasp on where places are in this beautiful world of ours, so I decided we'd use that as our base and learn some history of the countries we're studying. We're having a good time with that curriculum, as well. I can teach to both of them, and then they do individualized work based on their grade. They are able to do some projects together, which is fun. Here is a picture of the Terra Cotta Soldiers that they made, representing the 8099 life size terra cotta soldiers buried in China:

For science - a subject that I lack interest in - I decided to go with The Complete Book of Science for each of them, based on their grades. There are a lot of worksheet pages, but a lot of hands on learning and experiments, too. I think that was a great choice as well. I planned out the year lining their units up so they would be working on the same topics at the same time. They seem to like it and they really look forward to whatever experiments we're doing each week. Here they are with their snails, which Ciara has to observe for 2 weeks:

I'm assigning reading to both of them, and if the book is on the Book Adventure site, they are taking the quiz after reading. They are also both reading for pleasure this year, a lot more than in the past. We finally found a series of books that Ciara enjoys and she's reading more than doing any other free time activity right now (I'm a reader too, so this warms my heart!)

I've used the Manager's of Their Homes guide to set up a schedule several years ago, and we're trying to stick as close to it as we can, at least during school hours. I'm still having trouble fitting in the housecleaning, but I think that's a defect in my brain - I just can't seem to make it a top priority! I tried to post a copy of our daily schedule here, but it's so small you can't read it. (Can anyone explain to me how to put a picture in a post that can be clicked on to enlarge???)

I hope I haven't droned on and on and bored you to death. This is the first year I've felt entirely comfortable with my curriculum choices, and we're having a great start to the year.

Edited to include our verse for this year: "I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you." Psalm 32:8



Hope you are having a Blessed Day in your homeschool,


Lisa

All About Me...

"This week, we want to hear about YOU. The author behind the words. The Momma behind all the homeschooling kiddos. Just write up something about you, your family, and your home. How long you’ve been homeschooling and why you decided to homeschool."

This is the first weekly theme from Homeschool Blog Awards. I've decided to participate in this meme, mostly because it will give me an incentive to update my Blog more than once every 9 or 10 months! I've wanted to post more regularly, but I've just not made time for it. Now, I've got a goal, and a motivator - thank you Homeschool Blog Awards!

Ok, about me... I'm a 42 year old, child of God, stay-at-home, homeschooling mom. I also handle the office end of my hubby's contracting business and am active in our church. I have been married to my Jr. High Sweetheart for over 24 years! We have four wonderful, beautiful children, two of which are already adults. We did not homeschool them... by the time I'd considered homeschooling, they were in upper Middle School and High School and they were WAY smarter than me, so I just let them finish out their Advanced Placement and Honors classes in the public school system and they turned out just fine... both are in college and working and terrific people.

My hubby and I met the summer before I started 9th grade and we've been together ever since. We married a month after I graduated High School. We lived in Michigan. Right after we married, my parents retired to Florida. We stayed in Michigan about another 2 1/2 years and then decided to move down to Florida, too. I've always been very close to my parents, and couldn't live 1200 miles away from them any longer! We ended up just a mile away from them, and we've been so blessed because of it.

We lived in a mobile home when we first moved down here, that my dad had arranged for us to buy, sight unseen. It was very, very old, and pretty small, and in an All-Adult park of about 10 trailers. It was cheap enough that we could afford it no matter what jobs we were able to get. About 6 months after we moved in, it was destroyed by a tornado and we had to find a new place to live. God's grace was upon us, even though we weren't aware of it, even back then. We found a new trailer to buy, with the insurance money from the old one, and continued making small monthly payments to the owner of the first trailer - which he had agreed to, for us. Right after moving into that new trailer, we found out we were pregnant with our first child. Amazingly, God had already gotten us out of that "Adult-Only" trailer park, which was a huge blessing, since we would have never been able to sell that old trailer and get into something else, somewhere else.

Anyway, we got pregnant with our second child about 8 months after the first one was born and I knew we wouldn't be comfortable raising two children in a tiny mobile home, so we started looking for a home to buy. We found one getting ready to be forclosed on (which back then, the realtor couldn't tell us, he just advised us to "bid low"). We bought our home, moved in before baby number 2 was born and we are still living here 19 years later! We have added on to our home so many times that we've actually doubled the square footage of it.

We were both working full time and raising our children when my hubby decided he wanted to try starting a business of his own. He'd been in construction since he was 17 years old, so we took a leap of faith and he began his own drywall contracting business. After about 3 years of him being in business, I was finally able to quit working and stay at home.

At this time, our third child was about 1 1/2 years old. I did preschool with her when she was 4 and she just shined! We both really enjoyed that year! When it was time to put her in Kindergarten, our local school's principal (who had been the elementary principal when my two oldest went to that school) decided to take a new job at a charter school and about 17 of the teachers from our elementary went with him. I panicked! It was summer and all I could think was that we were going to have nothing but substitute teachers teaching and with my daughter being so smart and so social, she would be nothing but trouble to those inexperienced teachers. (I have to edit this to add I don't think all substitute teachers are inexperienced...but in our county, they only have to have graduated High School or obtained their G.E.D. and pass a test to be a sutstitute - the test is at about an 8th grader's level - they'll let anyone basically be a substitute here and we have many, many subs who have never gone to school to be teachers.) I checked out Christian schools in our area, but they were so expensive, and she knew almost everything that they would be teaching her in Kindergarten already, except how to tie her shoes!, I didn't want to pay $300+ a month for that! Two of my good friends (who had both gone to school to become teachers and actually had teaching degrees!) talked me into trying homeschooling, as that's what they were going to do with their children who were also ready to start school. I resigned to homeschool "just kindergarten" as it was easy... she knew almost everything anyway, and I couldn't mess it up, much. We jumped in, loved it, and we've been going strong for 6 years now. Our fourth child was born in 2000 and I began Kindergarten with him when he was just 4 years old. We've had a two student classroom for four years now (three students if you count me, as I am learning a lot right along with them!)

Well, I'm sure I've typed and told way more than anyone wanted to read, and I'm sorry if I've bored you. If you're still reading this far in, thank you for your patience! I'm hoping to get to know some more Homeschooling mom's through this meme! I'd love to hear any comments you have about my post.

Until next time... I hope you have a Blessed Day in your homeschool!

Lisa

Easing back into the routine.

Well, after a long, hot, rainy summer, we are back to school. We are using a lot of new curriculum this year, and we've completed a week and a day at this point and all's well! The kids even told their friends that we had a "great" first week back to school. That warmed my heart.

Nick got sick midway through the first week, and after giving him some medicine, I found him asleep on the couch with his science book open across his chest. I felt so bad for him. You know what I did? I took his picture! Then, when he woke up, reminded him that he still needed to finish his science. He's got a tough teacher this year!

Ciara is struggling through a Heroes of the Faith biography and it's got me wondering if I need to require these later in her homeschool journey. She is just now really loving reading for fun, and I certainly don't want to bog her down with books she doesn't care for. Especially when there is so much good literature out there for her to choose from. I think after she finishes this one, I'll put the rest of the series on hold until high school. Maybe I'll have her read the Around the World in Eighty Mysteries books that I bought to go along with our Geography Trail Guide studies. They seem like much more fun for a 6th grader!

We're having a hard time getting up on time in the mornings, especially with us having caught a bug of some sort. We're still getting started earlier than we were at the end of last year, but I'd like to start earlier so we can be completely done with school by lunchtime.

I just joined the Blogger Class Mates 2008-2009 group tonight and am anxiously awaiting my first assignment. If you are interested in getting to know more Homeschool Moms and like to write, check it out. The information is here: The Homeschool Blog Awards » Blog Archive » Blogger Class Mates 2008-2009 It sounds like it's going to be fun!

Schooling on the road...

We had a great trip to North Carolina recently, and got some schooling in on our trip! We had cold, windy, rainy weather most of the days, but we were fortunate to have a couple of days where the sun was out and the temperature wasn't frigid, so we ventured outside!

We started off the trip visiting with good friends of ours who recently moved up there. The day we arrived was exceptionally chilly and grey and we were welcomed into their home by a roaring fire in their fireplace. I could have stayed in their living room, in front of a fire for the whole week! We enjoyed hanging out with our friends very much .

From their house, we traveled to Kill Devil Hill and Kitty Hawk. On the way there, we stopped at Digger's Dungeon, which for those of you who don't follow "Monster Truck's", is the home of Grave Digger, my son's favorite Monster Truck and it's driver, Dennis Anderson. They have a store there that sells Grave Digger merchandise, and the shop is there where they work on the truck. There were trucks outside, and giant wheels, too, as they had just had an Easter Egg Hunt on their property the week before and apparently needed somewhere to hide eggs. While we were there, my hubby recognized the voice of the owner of Grave Digger, speaking to some people who were apparently putting up a diner on the property, soon to be opened as "Digger's Diner"! He went over and asked if we could take a picture of him with our son and he was more than happy to oblige. What a nice guy! He talked to us for a while and then we went on our way, deciding that was the highlight of our trip! Above are a few photos of that fun stop!

We also got to see (and play on) the largest sand dunes in Eastern North America at Jockey's Ridge State Park. Our pictures don't do it justice, but it was awesome! We climbed huge dunes and then the kids and dad rolled down them... they loved it, although dad was dizzy and couldn't get his balance for a few seconds after the rolling stopped.

We visited the Wright Brother Memorial and saw where those amazing first flights took place. We saw replicas of the first planes and where the gliders took off from, as well as where the first successful powered flights lifted off from, and how far (or not-so-far) they flew! We learned a lot about the Wright Brothers and already knew some of it, from our previous study on them.

We got to see the world famous lighthouse at Cape Hattaras. It was beautiful! I'm hoping to be able to frame one of my shots of this scene and hang it in our home!

I'll try and post soon about the rest of our trip!

Have a Blessed Day in your Homeschool!

Springtime....Planning time!!!

This is officially my favorite time of the school year... Springtime! Even though we're all looking forward to the current school year to be finished, I can't help getting into the planning-for-next- year mood! I love to plan the upcoming school year. I love looking through the curriculum catalogs and websites and trying to imagine what would be best for us to use in the coming year. I keep a few tried-and-true basics... Saxon Math, Bob Jones Writing and Grammer, but the rest usually changes from year to year.

I had been considering a local co-op for next year, but after a lot of praying and talking to a few friends, decided against it. My kids are doing amazingly well with what we're doing here at home, and I don't need to add anything more structured to it right now.

I'm planning on doing a Geography study this year, in place of history, and I'll use the same text for both kids. I found what appears to be a great book, Trail Guide to World Geography, which looks really interesting. I think it will be a fun study for all of us (especially me, as I am terribly geographically challenged!). I'm looking forward to studying not only the geographic location of different parts of this world God created, but the people, culture, history, etc. of the world. I hope my excitement is matched by my children's in this area!

For science, since I feel I've been a little lax as a teacher in that subject, I'm going to use The Complete Book of Science for each of the kids, in their grade level. I hope this will give them a well rounded year's worth of science, so that next year, I can begin the Apologia Science series with them. That series teaches a specific type of science in each book, so I'll feel better if they get a little of all areas of science this coming year, before honing in on specific branches in the following years.

I'm still not sure what I'm going to use for spelling for my youngest. Right now, he's using a 2nd grade workbook from Scholastic and he's doing great with it. I don't know if I'll just purchase the 3rd grade book in that series, or if I'll switch to something else. I haven't found anything that I love the looks of yet, so I'm still looking.

I think I'm going to have my oldest start Rosetta Stone's Spanish this coming year. I'd like to commit to studying it with her, but we'll see! LOL!!! I feel like one of those old dogs that just can't learn any new tricks!

We're studying the Civil War this week, and going to see the re-enacters at a local battle site this Friday. Unfortunately, we'll miss the re-enactment of the battle, but we will get to tour the grounds, and learn all about how the soldiers and their families lived during that period of history. We will be leaving for a week's vacation to North Carolina on Saturday, and will be visiting some great historical areas of the Civil War, which will add a little more hands-on learning to our studies. We're looking forward to the trip. Especially because we're getting to visit some wonderful friends who recently moved up there, that we miss very much!

I hope you all have a Blessed Day in your Homeschool,

Considering a Co-Op

I've been invited to enroll my children in a local Homeschool Co-Op and I'm actually really considering it. A couple of my friends have their children in this particular group and from some of the things I've heard, it sounds like a great experience. I've asked some of the ladies for more information, and I'm going to go visit and check it out later this month. My daughter was completely against it until she found out that one of the kids at church that she really likes is in it. Now, she's totally up for it. You can tell where her priorities are!

I'd love to hear about any experiences that any of you readers have had with homeschool co-ops. I've been doing this at home, alone for so long, that it's a little intimidating to think someone else will be teaching my children, and finding out how much they already know.

The parents are required to either teach a class, or assist in 3 classes, if I have understood that correctly. I don't know that I'll feel confident enough to teach anything right off the bat, so I'm sure I'll be assisting and learning from 3 other teachers. Although, maybe they'd let me teach cooking. I might be able to handle that!

As we're getting close to spring, I'm getting the FEVER! I'm ready for school to be wrapping up. I've ordered the kid's testing materials for the end of the year, and I'm happy to see us have fewer and fewer lessons left in their books to cover.

We took a day off last week and went to Sea World. We took my dad along with us and even my hubby was able to join us in the afternoon. It was a great day. We hadn't been there in a long time, so it was fun to see some of our favorite shows. I want to hit the beach soon, too, before it gets too hot and too crowded. Maybe we can take some of our school work with us and go on a week day. The kids probably won't mind doing their daily reading out on the beach! I know I wouldn't!

Remember, if you've had experience with a Homeschool Co-Op, share it with me. I'd love to hear about it!

Until next time,

Have a Blessed Day in your Homeschool!

Six months have passed...

Since we lost my mom, and I keep feeling like she's coming back. Like I've gone long enough without having her around and God's going to just give her back. Sounds crazy... doesn't it? I feel crazy sometimes. I miss her more than I ever knew would be possible. I'm glad for her that she's in heaven, in the presence of our Lord, but selfishly, I really wish she was still here, with me.

There are restaurants that we "always" used to go to, and when I drive by them, I feel so sad that we won't ever get to go there again, together. I used to take her to the doctor about every other week, and even driving down that road, I get sad. She hated having to go to the doctor so much, and get her blood count checked, but we always enjoyed our time together, so I even miss those doctor appointments.

We had our annual SuperBowl party Sunday evening, and it's the first time in as long as I can remember that she wasn't over here pigging out with the rest of us on more food than we could possibly eat in one evening.

Three of my children have had birthday's since she passed, and my hubby's was yesterday. I don't like that we have to go on without her here to celebrate with us. I cried a lot yesterday. My sweet 7 year old, (even though I had yelled at him just about all morning because for some reason, he can't remember any of his addition facts) - came into my room while I was sobbing, looked at me, and said "I miss her, too." I know he does, and he's going to miss out on her the most, as he's the youngest. My oldest kids will be able to look back at so many years of memories with her, but my little guy only got 6 years with her. It's hard to remember stuff that happened when you were that young. I don't want him to not have memories of her when he's older. It just makes me so sad for him.

I know that God has our days numbered, and that he has a plan for each one of us, and I really believe that He took her home when it was her time, but I have so many thoughts in my head, all the "what if's" that I have such a hard time with. "What if I hadn't told her she needed to have the surgery?" "What if I'd insisted they keep her in the hospital another day after the surgery was done?" "What if I'd been with her when she said she felt she was going to die?" I have to force myself to remember God's in charge and it was His decision, not mine, that brought her home to Him.

I wish I could dream about her. At least I'd feel like I got to spend a little more time with her. There are days when I feel really sorry for myself, as I'm the baby of the family and I think things like "my brother got to have her for 58 years", "my sister got to have her for 51 years" and "I only got to have her for 41 years, and it's not enough!". Man, I'm a mess!

I am so thankful that I treasured the time I did get to spend with her. Living only a mile a way from my parents was the blessing to all of us that I knew it would be when we bought this house 19 years ago. We DID spend a lot of time together. I DID make her a priority. She DID know how much I loved her. My kids DID share their life with her. She WAS the best mom I could have had, and I told her that time and again. I believe she's in heaven cheering us on, loving us from above and patiently waiting for us to join her. That is the blessing... I will see her again. And, she's enjoying this time with the family that preceeded her to heaven. Her baby sister that she never got to see grow up, her parents that she lost before I was ever born, her three brothers that she just adored. And our Jesus, that cared for her and about her since God first thought her into being. If I could just stay focused on everything I just wrote in this paragraph, maybe I wouldn't be such a mess!

Well, it's time to get started with our school day. I'm grateful that I had a place to express all that I've been feeling, here on this blog. I'm sure it will be something I'll come back to and read occasionally. Thanks for letting me share my heart about my mom.

Have a Blessed Day in your Homeschool!