BOX DAY!

First let me say that for some reason, I cannot add a title to this post.  Not sure why ...

Today was our second box day from Sonlight!  It was less than a year ago when we had our first box day: The remaining books from Core P3/4 (we had ordered some from Amazon and other places previously) and all of Core P4/5.  We have been having a wonderful time with Core P4/5 and various other things like Math-U-See and Handwriting Without Tears.

So, today's Box Day was full of Core K.  It is recommended for children ages 5 to 7, so that fits Aaron and Alayna nicely.  I love that they can use the same curriculum and learn together!  Aaron tore into the box and fell in love with the Usborne Children's Encyclopedia right away.  I can tell this is going to be another great year with Sonlight.

And also for buying the full Core I received a wonderful gift.  I need to find a necklace to hold it, and then I will show it off.  It's beautiful and so thoughtful.

Now comes to fun work of putting the Core in the new Expedit.  We won't be using Core K for about a month, so in the meantime I need to buy some quality laminate to protect the paperbacks.  That's always a fun job ... not!  But it's worth it.  The books that I covered from last year still look new, and I know they will be around for a long time to teach my younger children, and who knows, maybe even my grandchildren someday!

A weekly update will be coming soon!  And I really need to figure out why I cannot add a title to this post.

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I think I'm going to give a weekly update on what we've done for the week.  Last week ... just random reading and an occasional workbook because we were all sick in various degrees.  Tomorrow starts our new week (yes, I know, our schedule is weird!) so I hope to have more interesting things to say next time. ;-)

Oh, I do have something cool to share:  We have 25 lbs of books from Sonlight coming next week!  That's always exciting!

More later!

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I don't have a lot of time to blog right now (or lately!) but I wanted to share a picture of our new homeschooling shelf.  You may recall seeing the 2x4 cube shelf from IKEA.  This one is the 5x5 cube shelf.  Enormous.  Perfect.  And there's room for the next Sonlight Core, too! 

We were about to play Chutes and Ladders. :-)

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Yesterday we had our homeschooling friends come over and we made some homemade play dough.  A mess, but fun!  I just love the feeling of warm play dough.  Well, I didn't take any pictures because I was busy making the dough!  Don't worry, the children wanted to play with it today so at breaktime, I pulled out the dough.  We have red, yellow, orange, blue, purple and I still need to make green. 

Here are my little play doughers:

Coming soon - a post about our Christmas. :-)

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Still here, still homeschooling, although it's a bit lazy here from pre-Thanksgiving (hunting) until after Christmas.  Ahh, the beauty of homeschooling, to continue with what we're doing but at a slower pace so that we can fully enjoy the holiday season.

I'm sure in January we'll have more fun adventures to share!  Until then!

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I have a homeschooling friend that I met at our local library, and our children are around the same age - right now they are almost 7, almost 6, 5, 3, almost 3, and the babies are 9 months (born just a few days apart).  We decided to meet and do a group activity with all of the children once a week.  Whether or not we actually do it weekly, we'll see!  But at least we can try.  It'll be good for the winter when everyone is cooped up and bored of being inside.

Here are a few pictures of our last meeting.  Me, reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (actually I was singing it!):

And here is a cute pic of our babies, playing so nicely together.  This little guy was born in the same hospital as Maria and they met when she was hours old and he was 3 days old. :-)

Homeschooling friends are fun!

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Remember this post about my homeschooling space?  I thought I was done messing with it, but no ... not so.  My brain wouldn't deviate from wanting to improve it (believe me, I tried to stop).  So ... we had to go down to IKEA again because my hubby wanted a new frame for his new TV. You can see that "frame" over there (on my other blog) if you'd like, but this is about homeschooling so I won't waste your time on other stuff.

So, IKEA again.  I bought a few more things to make the shelf (which shall be called the Expedit 2x4 or just 2x4 from now on) more organized.  I'll have to buy the 4x4 Expedit shelf later when we had the other 2 children to our homeschooling mix, though!  When I do that, I'll bring the 2x4 upstairs, turn it on its side, put some short legs on it, and I'll have an amazing scrapbooking station.  Woo hoo! 

Here is our homeschooling corner of our living room:

I took this picture as I was sitting at our large homeschooling table - the IKEA Norden Gateleg (that has the two wonderful fold-down leaves).  See the paper that is yellow-stickied to the shelf?  That's week 17 of our Sonlight IG for P4/5.

So ... starting from the top, we have:

Our small CD player, my Aloe plant from Cathy (in a gigantic coffee cup pot!) and then in the top left is Alayna's workbooks and materials and the top right is Aaron's workbooks and materials.

The 2nd shelf is:

Core P3/4 (or Core A) and the right is Core P4/5 (or Core B).  Nicely color coded - Sonlight had me in mind for that, I think!  I should add that I have laminated all paperback covers and used dust jacket protectors for these books (Vernon Library Supplies) so that we will be able to use them for many more years and for more children!

Next shelves are:

Right and left are 6 bins from IKEA (Trofast).  They hold misc. art supplies, Math U See blocks, crayons, Handwriting Without Tears manipulatives, and blank and lined paper (for now).  I may move these things around when I get some construction paper.  The bottom 2 canvas bins are from Target.  Funny story about these .... I was looking through 1000+ pictures of Expedit shelves on Flickr and saw a picture of someone who used these bins and kindly stated where they were purchased.  I went to Target and picked up a few and WOW.  I LOVE THEM.  They fit the entire area of the cubby (approx 13.5 inches square).  They don't just fall out, you have to give them a little tug - which is GREAT because Maria won't be able to just pull them out and get into them!  THANK YOU to the person who posted that picture, without you, I would never have known.  The brand for them is called Itso.  Anyway, the red canvas has all of our educational Discovery Toys, and the blue canvas has homeschooling supplies such as the letter cards, etc, from Language Arts.

So, there you have it.

Everything has a place and that makes me extremely happy.  I am always much more productive when things are organized and clutter-free.  I love IKEA, Target (for the awesome canvas!), and my dear husband for indulging me in my organizational quest.  It may seem frivilous but when you live in a small home (approx. 1000 sqaure feet for 6 people) ... you need to maximize your space as best you can!  And if you want to see an example of that, be sure to see my other blog for the Expedit 5x5!   I had to strike a deal with my hubby for that.

Pictures of my precious ones actually using the space will be coming soon!

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Today Serena showed me how she can sort these pegs by color and by shape.  I love it when we get to do "school" together.  Usually I am busy reading instructions (for the older 2) in a workbook, or reading from a book, or doing a messy craft. 

What I love is that she could tell me the colors and the names of the shapes (except for the hexagon) - and I didn't directly teach her these things.  I remember trying so hard to get Aaron to remember his colors, by using crayons or colored blocks.  He didn't seem to care!  With Serena, she just picks this stuff up through everyday life.  It helps to have a big brother and big sister to teach you things, too!  She surprises me daily with the things she knows at age 2 - things that the older children didn't know at that age!  I have to stifle feelings of regret (because I was just so busy with 3 under 3 at that stage in our lives).  Anyway ...

Good job, Serena!  She wanted me to take a picture of her finished project:

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Way to go, Alayna! 

Her handwriting has come a long way!  Now on to Handwriting Without Tears Kindergarten!

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Apparently we've been a naughty homeschool group, because our first field trip was to the county jail!  This is a place that my husband is very familiar with.  I'll leave you with the assumption that he spends a lot of time there, ROFL.  What a bum.

Our entire family went, and even better, our best-friend-family (Cathy and her crew) were there too.  The plan was for the homeschool group to tour the jail, (led by one of the homeschool group's husband, who works there also) and then view a bloodhound and police dog demonstration. 

I had the camera at various times during our tour, so I can post a few pictures.

Here we are, walking down one of the long hallways toward the visitor's entrance of the jail.  At least we weren't entering through the "bad guy" entrance!

Here is Serena in one of the unoccupied pods, trying to make herself at home with the steel bunkbed.  This girl climbs EVERYTHING.

I really wish I would have taken more pictures.  The one way glass was very interesting to my older children.  Seeing actual people in the pods made "the jail" seem more real to them.  Our "tour guide" was very informative and took a lot of interesting and cute questions from the children, such as, "Do they get to eat here?"  I love the questions that children ask!   It was a good jail tour.

Okay, onto the outside portion of the field trip.  The first demonstration was by Custody the Bloodhound.  The "bad guy" ran off and she had to track him down.  I don't think they children were meant to FOLLOW the officer and her dog but they did and had a blast tracking down the bad guy, too!  My 2 ran up there with the horde.

Upon the bad guy's capture, he said they had to take him to jail because he cheated on his math homework!!!  ROFL!

Well, then the bad guy escaped, so they sent the canine officer after him.  Pictures tell the story!

Aaron said that this was the BEST FIELDTRIP EVER!  Not bad, for his first "official" field trip, I'd say!

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I haven't blogged about this on any of my blogs, but for the last few weeks I have been in a major organizing/decluttering mood.  Think "nesting", only for homeschooling, kitchen, and toy space.  What prompted this was the loss of our porch.  It gets too cold in the fall/winter/spring, and we're too cheap to heat it!  So our "3-season porch" is really a 1-season (summer), and when we cloesd it, I lost toy storage and study space. 

So, I've been on a mission.  I posted about it on the Sonlight forums and also did searches for organizational help.  I found many posts with IKEA products in them and so ... of course I had to plan a trip down (2 hours away) to IKEA.  Oh. My. Goodness.  What a store!  I could blog about it for days but let me just say that I was in heaven.

This is what my living room looked like before:

You can't see all of it, but there is a couch on the wall to the right and a loveseat to the left.  By the loveseat was another shelf of books.  The majority of our books were in the living room.  Toys were brought out and sometimes stayed for days, because they lost their play space in the porch.  We did our homeschooling on the kitchen table.  It was hard to do this for a number of reasons - but the big ones were that I always was cleaning something off the table to do the next thing.  Piles of schoolwork were accumulating, or magazines, or mail, or whatever! 

Here are some after pictures:

Here is our new homeschooling area!  We purchased this table from IKEA, called "Norden Gateleg".  It has 3 drawers on one side, and 3 drawers on the other.  This is plently big for the children to work on something on one side and me to work on my studying on the other side!  All of our homeschooling supplies are either in the drawers or they are in the shelf from IKEA, called "Expedit".  I could have purchased a larger one but I didn't want to overwhelm the living room.  I will probably buy another when I can because this wasn't big enough for all of our books!  So my books are upstairs, children's non-homeschooling books are in their room. 

Here is the best part ... when we are done with our schooling and studies ... I can do this:

Now the table doesn't overpower the living room!  We still have our couch and TV on the other side of thel living room but we put the loveseat in the porch for now.  Our living room was just too cluttered before, but now it is much more functional for what we need!  This will make homeschooling so much more streamlined.  I did buy a little table and 2 chairs from IKEA called "Latt" - this will be a great place for Serena to spend time on her "school" while I work with the older ones. 

I have other improvements for our home organization, but I will probably post them on my other blog - since this is my "homeschooling" blog. ;-)

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I love homeschooling.  Where else can I study (M-TEC, Medical Transcription Education Center), Alayna can do Handwriting (Handwriting Without Tears), Aaron can do Math (Math U See), and Serena can do Handwriting (the Handwriting Without Tears "stamp and see screen")?  It could only happen at home!

Alayna and I at the table, doing our studying ...

Aaron and I, doing more studying ...

Serena (who was next to me while studying), makes a B with the magnetic pieces!

I love it!  Praise God that He has equipped me to teach my precious children from home!

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Homeschooling has begun again!  Today is the end of our first week.  But, you say, it's Monday today!  Yes, it is ... I have decided to do our school days around my husband's work schedule.  He works 6 days and then has 3 days off, so the days that he has off always change.  Today is his last day to work, so it is our last day of school for the week.    It was too difficult to school on regular Monday through Friday days, because the activities on those days change from week to week! 

More later, as I have to make lunch, do some more schooling, and keep up with the other 2 blogs!  I've been busy, but I do want to share what we're doing with our schooling.  It helps me to see how far we've come, and if you people want to read, too - that's fine with me!

~Sarah

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I'm not leaving HSB.  I'm going to stay, and just post homeschooling stuff, and leave the other blog for whatever. :-)

I don't want to lose the friends I have made here!

~Sarah

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I must confess; I haven't always been a dedicated reader to my children.  Sure, we've always had books (our own and library books) and I have read them, but it wasn't something I really loved or something I put a lot of thought into.  Perhaps it was because I didn't know how or what book to choose.  It's funny because I love to read and I knew I wanted my children to love to read too.

So I did some investigating into Sonlight (and many other curriculums).  The very IDEA appealed to me and made me want to learn more.  I realized I could get book lists and create a curriculum with great books, without much expense.  However, I know myself and I knew that if I was going to succeed with homeschooling, I needed a plan - and NOT a plan that I had to spend hours putting together!  I'm not a natural born teacher, by any means.  Growing up I always said there is ONE profession I could not do.  I could NOT teach kids! 

LOL!  The Lord has His way of giving you tasks that you cannot do, so you have to rely fully on Him, huh?  It was the same way with children - I didn't even give the idea of children much thought, because I didn't like them!  And look at me now - married for 7 years with 4 young children.  And loving it - most of the time!

So anyway, now that we have finished our first week with Sonlight, I am so pleased to report that it is going well with the children.  For a few weeks beforehand, I had been purchasing the Core P3/4 (Core A) books and reading them to the children, and they loved it.  When the big box arrived, they didn't think it was unusual at all to have tons of books in the living room shelves!  Now the only problem is that they want to read ALL of them, every day!  Thankfully that means the TV is sloooowly getting pushed aside ... slowly.  Aaron is still clinging to his "kid shows".  We're weaning him from that!

All that said, here are some pictures I took today.  Serena had been reading to Maria as she was lying on the floor (P4/5's Family Time Bible).  I asked Serena if she wanted to sit on the couch with Maria and she could keep "reading".  I placed Maria next to Serena and then Aaron and Alayna hopped up with some books too!  Before long, they all were listening to Aaron read, "Katy and the Big Snow" (Mike Mulligan and More) from P3/4.

Precious, huh?!

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We received our Sonlight box on Friday, the 18th.  On Tuesday, the 22nd, we received a smaller box - a box of Math-U-See!  At first all the children wanted to just build with the blocks ... uh, the manipulatives.  That was fine - that kept them busy while I watched the DVD.  After Aaron had made quite the impressive ship (sorry, no picture of that one!) I had him dismantle it so that we could actually DO our math.  This is our first math curriculum and I am pretty impressed so far.  It was meant for Aaron but Alayna loves it too so I let her work alongside him.

Woo hoo for FUN curriculum!

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It's BOX DAY!  The Sonlight box came today and it was better than Christmas morning.  I had Aaron begin taking pictures, and then had Alayna take some.  I won't make any comments - it's easy to see what's going on, especially if you are already familiar with Sonlight.

Here's a happy boy (and a happy Mama)!!!

And what was Maria doing this entire time?  Praise the Lord, she was SLEEPING! 

And this is a bookshelf that I emptied out, in anticipation of both my M-Tec curriculum and the children's Sonlight curriculum.  Now it's nearly full! 

Closer looks ... the first shipment of my M-Tec curriculum that I'll be diving into:

Some of our Core P3/4 (formerly Core A) library (I know Serena had one or two out during this picture):

Finally, Core P4/5 in it's glorious bookly spendor (with some additional materials - Handwriting Without Tears, Explode the Code):

Now you probably won't hear from me for weeks, I'll be so busy!  I'm looking forward to it, too.  Oh, don't worry ... there are always cute pictures of the children that I just HAVE to post.

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Aaron has been bugging me to make him a plane.  I think he has checked out every plane book that the library has - he's pretty obsessed with them right now!

I told him I'd try to make a stealth-type plane using heavy tagboard.  Here he is coloring the cutout I made:

I planned to take pictures throughout the process but forgot until the plane was finished!  Here it is:

During the plane making process, he kept saying, "Mom is SO cool.  Mom, you are SO cool because you know how to make planes.  I love you SO much because you make me planes" .... ROFL!  I guess I better keep making planes?!  This type of thing is NOT my style at ALL ... I'm amazed it looks like a plane at all!

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