Spring Break 2013

For the past couple of months Craig and I have been planning a road trip to visit family and friends.  Unfortunately, last week Craig found out he has to go on a business trip the week we were planning to be out of town.  After reviewing his schedule (with this new information) he found that this week was the only time he could take some time off so we decided to have a staycation.

Josh then proceeded to contract a stomach bug... surprised?  Nope!

So, the first couple of days turned into Craig and I taking turns going out and having some time to ourselves.  He went golfing, I got a pedicure and massage :)

Wednesday Josh was feeling better so we took the boys to a local park and had lunch and fished a bit.

 I still can't get over the look on David's face in this picture... HILARIOUS! 

Thursday we decided to visit the aquarium.

 Getting to view a squid up close :)

We then found ourselves stuck at home again on Friday when the bug Josh caught decided it wasn't done torturing the poor boy.  Thankfully it seems to finally be leaving his little body and we might actually be able to attend our church's Easter service and our family dinner/egg hunt!

Overall it was a nice relaxing week with a lot of time spent with Daddy :)

At Home with a Purpose

Since I can remember I've wanted to be two things (besides a wife to an amazing husband): a mother and a teacher.

I can't describe in words how incredible it feels to be living the life of my dreams.

Did I ever imagine that I would be doing so in the comfort of my own home? Absolutely not!

Does it feel amazing? YES!

Living this lifestyle has completely changed my outlook on parenting. I'm no longer just their mom that plays the role of cook, maid and chauffeur. I'm the one they look to for the answers to their every question. I'm no longer having to ask question after question wondering what my son learned at school that day and hearing, "nothing".

It is so much fun watching Josh learn to read and learn new math concepts.  Math is something he really enjoys, mostly because he finds it easy and that means it can be done quickly :)

In fact, the week before last we were in a bit of a rut and Josh was dreading his Language Arts worksheets each day so much that I decided to spend last week just doing a letter a day in his Writing Without Tears book and math.

I also printed out some fun math activities from Homeschool Creations; the St. Patrick's Day "Tracking with Tally Marks" and the Angry Birds Roll and Graph worksheets with die.

 You can tell from the expression on his face that he enjoyed our week of math.  That look of excitement is what I love about homeschooling... when something isn't working we reevaluate and make it work for us.  I'm also loving the fact that none of the kids are required to complete any school work this year so we are taking our time and figuring out what fits best into our lifestyle.

 We continued with our read-alouds which is still one of his favorite things about homeschooling!  When he saw the cover of this Magic Tree House book he ran and found his coon skin hat that his Grandma and Grandpa bought him so he could look like Jack and Annie while he listened to the story :)

  That was last week, this week we are taking our Spring Break.  I'll try to post some fun pictures from our adventures with Daddy soon.

Butterflies

Thanks to a certain uncle (thanks again, Piet!) the boys and I embarked on a butterfly journey back in January.  Our family really enjoyed watching the caterpillars change each day.  We marked the arrival of our caterpillars by creating a couple of our own:

The boys would check on them every day and were very excited when they made their way to the top of the cup to begin their chrysalis stage.  

A couple weeks later we came home from church to find one of our butterflies had completed his transformation and had emerged.

Unfortunately, even though we were lucky enough that all 5 of our caterpillars arrived alive and completed their transformations, we did not get to witness any of them emerge from their chrysalides.  Even though we were at home (besides the first one while we were at church) we were either sleeping or working on something in another room/outside.

We observed our 5 beautiful butterflies for about a week and when the weather was nice and warm we decided to let them go.

To wrap it all up we did a butterfly craft:

Research Research Research

Choices, choices, choices....

Reviews, reviews, reviews...

Do your research about homeschool curriculum choices.  CHECK!

For someone new to the home education world the choices for curriculum seem endless.  So, I got to work, doing my research about every type of curriculum I could find.  Any moment I had; when the boys were playing outside, when they were napping, or after they were in bed I would crack open my laptop and do some more reading.

The wonderful thing about homeschooling these days is the opportunity to discover all of this from the comfort of my own home, on my computer... most of the time in my pajamas :)

I quickly discovered that there are several ways families go about educating their children at home (or on the road).

Some of these methods include:

*Traditional- where your day at home resembles that of a public/private school setting.

*Charlotte Mason- instead of using traditional textbooks you read "living" books (a.k.a. novels, biographies) to bring that information to life for your child through read-alouds and/or readers. 

*Unschooling- when you don't force the child to learn anything they aren't ready or showing an interest in learning, it's a student-led approach.

*Unit Studies- you implement all subjects into a unit with one theme/topic.

*Eclectic- taking from several different approaches and creating your own unique experience.

These are just some of the many examples that I've read about in some books and/or blogs over the past few months.  

Once I had a handle on the different methods I did some experimenting with the boys at home, getting into a routine and figuring out what works for us.  As homeschooling itself isn't for everyone, one homeschooling approach that works for one family may not work for another.

I quickly found that although I love working within the traditional school method (because, let's face it, that's what I grew up doing and how I was taught to teach) my boys could only take so much of it.  After the first week of doing calendar time and worksheets together it was no longer new and exciting and they didn't want much more of that and I knew we needed to change our approach a bit.  I know part of their reluctance toward this approach is their age and short attention spans so I decided to try breaking up the couple of worksheets I wanted Josh to complete in a day (usually only 2 or 3... Nathan only a little when he feels like joining us, since he's only 3) in 15-20 minute increments.  I also stopped doing a full calendar routine every morning, which they seem to appreciate.

One method that I was very interested in during my research was Charlotte Mason's approach.  I know from my own experience that history didn't come alive until a professor in college told us the information in story form and we didn't have to read it in a textbook and fill out countless worksheets.  I then started reading the Magic Tree House series to Josh and he LOVES being read to and remembers the historical parts of the stories better than I ever thought he would.  

So, after looking at a couple of different curriculums that use this approach I have decided to use Sonlight's program as the Core of our curriculum. This will include read-alouds and using "living" books for History/Geography.

We are, however, taking a traditional approach to Language Arts and Math with Horizons (since there are just some things that are best taught through worksheets).

As for Science I'm still a little torn.  I have heard wonderful things about Sonlight's science program but I'm intrigued with Apologia's science program.  Apologia uses a notebook approach and has recently included junior notebooks for children in primary grade levels.  Since I am holding off starting Sonlight's Core units until Josh's first grade year (until Nathan is a bit older and I can use one core for the two of them) I decided to start with Apologia's Swimming Creatures of the fifth day along with their junior notebook.  (Notebooking along with a student-led approach since Josh specifically requested to learn more about the ocean this year :)  (I also got a good deal through Christianbook.com with their overstock discounts.)  I will then be able to make an informed decision on what science program to go with later.

So for now, call us Eclectic ;)