Our new school year has begun.  We started last week.  We are using a variety of materials - including Rod and Staff, Pathway Readers, Right Start Math, State History, Trisms history, Sonlight History,  Learning English with the Bible.  This just names a few.

Our year is going to be exciting because around the first of January, we will be moving to Pennsylvania.  So I will have a whole new set of rules, regulations and requirements to deal with now.  Plus, we just moved from one house to another house in our town at the beginning of July.  This ought to be fun!  At least this time, we will not be moving ourselves.  However it will be the third move in less than a year and a half.

 

Here is a picture of our family at Chirstmas

This has been a really strange day!  It all started with me not sleeping well last night.  Then my children have been sort of bouncing off the walls -even after gymnastics class.  We then had some friends to the house which did not go badly.  Afterwards we had to take something to my dh at his work and traffic was crazy.

I am trying to work on lesson plans for the rest of the year.  At the same time I am trying to pick our curriculum for next year.  It is just such a strange day.

Today has been a day.  The children are all over the place.  They do not seem to what to focus on anything.  We just can't afford to have this kind of interruption.    I have finally finished my new schedule based on the MOTH system.  Now to get it up where the children can see it.    I am also going to get back to working on my home management binder.  I have got to get the housework back under control along with the grading of their schoolwork. 

I am also starting to work on getting back to a daily devotional time.  I know I need to get God back at the center of my world.  I need to focus on His Word.  I also need to help my children see that as part of my daily routine.

My dh has started back to school and is beginning his third week today.  He is getting an undergraduate degree in Religious Studies so he can then get into his school's seminary program to get his Divinity degree.  Once he gets his degree, he will go full time in the Active Army as a Chaplain, which will result in a lot of changes for our family - many more than when he went full-time in the Army Reserves.  It is going to be interesting to see how the children react to this.

I

Well tonight we have started a new journey.  My husband has started back to school.  He is working on his divinity degree.  He is doing it all online while being full time in the military.  So now in addition to helping my dc with their work, I will also be helping him with his schoolwork.  Life is going to get very interesting for us.

I am working on planning curriculum for next year and it is coming together pretty nicely.

I am truly thankful for my family.  My mom basically cooked my entire Thanksgiving meal for me.  (She came to stay at our house for the holiday.  She is so wonderful with my children.  My chldren helped her with various parts of the meal and then helped with the serving and setting the table at various times during the weekend.

On Friday morning, my dh woke up sick (my mom and I were supposed to be getting out for a little while by ourselves.  Since dh could not handle keeping the children by himself, we ended up changing our plans and doing some window shopping with the children.  While we were out she bought some things that needed to be put together, so my children did that as a group.  It was so wonderful to see them working together. 

Tomorrow it is back to school for the children and back to work for my dh. 

Well it has been a pretty good day.  For the most part the children did not avoid their work.  They only did this a little bit today. Tomorrow we begin a new adventure.  It will be the first parents meeting for Girl Scouts.  Our daughter is going to be a Daisy and I am going to be her leader.  We have our first committee meeting for Cub Scouts and have our younger two sons involved in this. 

The children are involved in gymnastics and are really enjoying it.  They attend a homeschool class during the day on Thursdays.  They were supposed to be starting a homeschool band class this week, but we have decided to hold off on that right now.

Last Sunday we had quite a lot of excitement around our house.  My oldest son woke up complaining of stomach pain so I ended up staying home from church with him.  He started feeling a little better after he ate.  Then around 3 pm he wound up saying it hurt again a little. A couple of hours later he threw up a couple of times and started having the symptoms of appendix problems.  So we took him to the emergency room while my mom stayed and watched the other three.  On the way there he threw up again twice.  When we got there, we went to the non emergency side of the er where they got us back in a room quickly.  Once the doctor took a look at him, he decided to move us over to the main er.  So my son got to take a ride in a wheel chair.

They put an IV in and then started giving him fluids and some nausea medicine.  AFter a couple of hours they released him and allowed him to go home.  So it was definitely a week with me monitoring him to make sure he was okay!

Well we made it through the socializer getting his stitches out on Monday. His foot healed pretty good.  Then on Tuesday, I had to serve on grand jury duty.  Going in I had no idea of how long I was going to be there.  Fortunately I was only there until around 1:30.  In between all this I somehow managed to do some homeschooling with the children.  Now I am just trying to make it until Saturday afternoon when my dh gets home.   We might be going out (just the two of us)  for dinner to celebrate being married for 15 years on the 22nd of this month. 

Well it is another week here.  I am not looking forward to tomorrow.  I have to serve on a grand jury and my dh is gone.  So a friend is going to watch all 4 of my children for an undetermined amount of time tomorrow.  Moreover, I have to be out of the house by about 7:45 so I can drop of the children and get over to the courthouse and find a parking spot.  Then on Wednesday we will be back to school as usual!

Well we have officially started schooling and now I am workiing on organizing my materials, my lesson plans and working on getting our schedule refined along wtih my home management binder.  So far school is going fairly smoothly with the children.  I try to keep a schedule that is reasonable and allows the students time to finish their work.  I am also trying to organize our chores into manageable chunks that can be completed during down times.

So far I have to say I am happy with my curriculum choices and the children seem to be enjoying them as well.  This week I haveworked a little on fixing folders of learning actiivities they can do when they finish something early or are waiting for me to help them with something.  I am still trying to refine handling the education of four children's  individual needs while meeting the needs of the others. This is proving especially challenging with my younger two who are still learning that patience is a virtue.

Well school is back in session for us.  We had our first day yesterday and things  went pretty good.  I am pretty glad of the curriculum selections we made.   It seems like things fit pretty good with our children.

We are getting ready to start a brand new Bible program on Thursday and I am really excited about it.  It seems to be awesome.

Well I guess I better get back to work!

Almost all of my materials for the new year are in now.  I am beginning to make lesson plans and to get organized for the next school year.  It is interesting considering I am going to be homeschooling all four children.  I have made up our weekly schedule and am working on getting our new MOTH schedule put together.  All in all it ought to be a very exciting year.

Beginning on Friday, my younger three children will officially be done with public school and we  will begin working on homeschooling all four children.  Next week we have cub scout day camp, which all 6 of us will be participating in...and then the following week, our oldest will be going to Boy Scout camp.  After that I hope things will settle down a little.  We have recently moved and have tons of boxes to unpack, so I hope the week after next, I will be able to concentrate on that.  After all, I have to get my house in order so I am ready to homeschool.

We picked out all of our curriculum we want to use next year, so it is just a matter of getting the curriculum in and organizing everything.

Well, we have finished moving and now I am working on getting unpacked so we can get ready for the next year.  I am really looking forward to homeschooling all 4 children.  The only area that still concerns me is finding the right reading program.  I found one I liked but couldn't get the company to ship to it me.  They had a ton of excuses for not completing the order.  But I have found several programs I like so hopefully one of them will work out. 

We have selected everything else for next year already.  So now it is just a matter of getting the money together so we can order it.

We attended our first homeschool convention last week!  It was wonderful!  I met alot of nice people, attened some wonderful seminars, received some wonderful information, and was completely amazed by the book fair.  The good news is that my husband and I picked out our entire curriculum for all 4 children - now it is just a matter of ordering it.  I know God will bless us with our endeavors.

Boy have big changes been happening to our family!  Dennis got a promotion back in January and we decided it was time to think about moving out of military housing.  So we started looking around and almost immediately found one at the beginning of April.  Then dh had to go to Florida for a week so the children and I went with him.  We had a blast!  We stayed at the Royal Pacific Resort at Universal Studios.  It was really a fantastic place to stay.  We met another homeschool family from near us which was neat. 

So now we are back and getting serious about moving.  In addition to moving, dh and I have decided I should homeschool all 4 children starting in the fall.  So this is going to be a time of preparation. 

Our new house is over two times as large as our old one so this is going to be quite a novelty for us.  We also have an above ground swimming pool, which will be interesting for us.

Well I guess I better run for now!

 

Boy have big changes been happening to our family!  Dennis got a promotion back in January and we decided it was time to think about moving out of military housing.  So we started looking around and almost immediately found one at the beginning of April.  Then dh had to go to Florida for a week so the children and I went with him.  We had a blast!  We stayed at the Royal Pacific Resort at Universal Studios.  It was really a fantastic place to stay.  We met another homeschool family from near us which was neat. 

So now we are back and getting serious about moving.  In addition to moving, dh and I have decided I should homeschool all 4 children starting in the fall.  So this is going to be a time of preparation. 

Our new house is over two times as large as our old one so this is going to be quite a novelty for us.  We also have an above ground swimming pool, which will be interesting for us.

Well I guess I better run for now!

 

Boy have big changes been happening to our family!  Dennis got a promotion back in January and we decided it was time to think about moving out of military housing.  So we started looking around and almost immediately found one at the beginning of April.  Then dh had to go to Florida for a week so the children and I went with him.  We had a blast!  We stayed at the Royal Pacific Resort at Universal Studios.  It was really a fantastic place to stay.  We met another homeschool family from near us which was neat. 

So now we are back and getting serious about moving.  In addition to moving, dh and I have decided I should homeschool all 4 children starting in the fall.  So this is going to be a time of preparation. 

Our new house is over two times as large as our old one so this is going to be quite a novelty for us.  We also have an above ground swimming pool, which will be interesting for us.

Well I guess I better run for now!

 

Well, after our family went through a time with everyone sick through the Christmas holidays we are trying to get in the groove.  Hopefully we are getting things back together.  During the holidays, I also decided to change from using lifepacs to using the Well-Trained mind philosophy.  I am really excited about this.  So far it seems to be working really well for us.  Our ds seems to be really good with this format.  We are getting ready to really start working on the writing portion of the work.