Changes for the New Year

A couple of weeks before we were going to break for Christmas, Josh's school work had become torture.

Torture!

I realized we had fallen into the black hole of worksheets again and Josh was suddenly hating every minute of our school day that didn't involve our "living" books that he loves so much.

It's true what they say, you can take the girl out of school but you can't take the school out of the girl.  I unknowingly was making our day look more and more like a typical school day again instead of focusing on learning as a part of life.

I began searching through a few of my favorite blogs for some fun printables and came across these Lego math activities.  

I also did a search on pinterest and Teachers pay Teachers for some Christmas activities that we could do together. 

We had a MUCH better week after that and once again we started to enjoy that time together.

While we've been on break I've done some analyzing of our curriculum and decided he needs a change in the phonics department (we were using Horizons Phonics and Reading).  We've hit this slump before.  Last year when this happened I purchased All About Reading level one for him.  For the most part I love this program for him, there's no writing required and it involves a lot of reading games that he enjoys.  We've continued using it this year at a slower pace as reading practice.  The only thing Josh does not like about the program is the reading review pages at the end of each lesson, some of them are 3 pages long so I spread it out over the course of two or three days.  I also try to make it more fun by stamping (either on regular paper or play dough) the words or using the chalk board/ white board. 

After weighing my options I decided to have him try Explode the Code.  It's a bit of slower pace than what we've been using and I'm hoping it will give him more confidence before moving on.  The first book (which is what I ordered) will be review but I have a feeling it will be good for him.  

He's only in Kindergarten, after all, and I want him to enjoy the learning process!!  More than anything, I want all of our boys to become life long learners.  

We are continuing with Horizons Math since Josh is doing wonderful with that program and our Sonlight books for History/ Geography, Bible and Science which the boys LOVE!  

Wishing you all a blessed New Year!

Our "School" Room

I can't believe it, it's already been a year since we made the decision to homeschool our boys!

What a crazy, fun, busy year it's been.

When I think back on how we came to this decision I'm still blown away at how God led us here and I'm overwhelmed with gratitude.

I have been planning on blogging about how I set up a "classroom" for the boys for... a long time now but kept putting it off (and, side note, neither one of the older two boys nap in the afternoons anymore and since David is into EVERYTHING we get a lot done during his nap... so I don't really have a down time until they're all in bed for the night now).

So here it is, how I created a "school" space for us.

While doing my hours and hours of research online after we made our decision I found that many families had a space or separate room for their school work and I was anxious to figure out how we could do something similar in our house so we wouldn't have to use our kitchen table for everything.

With a tape measure and the Ikea website I made it work (with a lot of help from my VERY supportive, amazing husband! :)

As you can see, this corner of the room is their bedroom.  (They were elated when they heard they were going to have bunk beds!!!)

 I loved the idea from pinterest to use an oil drip pan as a magnetic board for our letters and numbers :)

 Haha, as I said, I took these pictures awhile ago :)  In fact, those alphabet cards below the calendar are no longer there, David quickly discovered that he enjoyed ripping those off the wall!  (I knew it would happen eventually but it was nice for a time.)

As you can see, the teacher in me really came out once we made this decision and I couldn't be happier with our work space!