Helllllllloooooo!

I know…it's been a few weeks since the last time that I posted. I'll be honest, the school room reno really really threw me for a bit of a loop. I should have figured that it would have taken longer than I thought. It was exhausting and frustrating and….I am so glad we did it because I LOVE our new classroom! 

I also definitely had a few " oh crap!" moments prior to actually starting school this week. The first day of public school here was the worst. Oldest was pretty upset about not getting to go to school with her friends, and I let Satan tell me that I was crazy, and I momentarily agreed with him.

Praise Heavenly Father and Jesus though. It's amazing how truly personal spiritual confirmations can be. I prayed that night, the night that public school started, and I just poured my heart out, talking to Him about how scared I was, how I had no idea how to teach my children, that I was just making this up as I go, and what if I am going to do more damage than good by pulling them? What if I can't reach them, and change their hearts the way I know that He wants me to? What if I am just not good enough myself to do this for my children?

I went to bed, and felt better the next day. In the evening I got onto Facebook, and my Primary President sent me an article about incorporating the gospel into homeschool. This was literally the first time she had even interacted with me on the internet, though we talk often in real life, so she knew about my desire to focus on learning the gospel in our homeschool.

I read the article, and Heavenly Father answered my prayer with a simple thought that had been echoing in my brain, but I obviously needed to hear it outside of myself for it to click.

" It doesn't matter what you teach, Jen. Strive to have the Spirit surround your home and children and they will learn what I need them to know."

I was so grateful for my Primary President for being in tune with the Spirit and sharing that article with me. 

So, I moved forward with faith at that point!

It took us a full 3 weeks to get the school room to the point where it was usable, so the first day of school was not in the school room. I worked hard not to let it drag me down tho, so we started on time in our dining room!

Middle was not at all happy about doing school. This was him trying not to smile for a picture…and honestly it just went down hill from here. Bad enough that I didn't try to do school with him the rest of the week. We're in the school room now...I'm hoping that that will help us focus better, and I have cut his subjects to just the very very basics.

Oldest was really ready to start school, so she breezed through her lessons on day one. I didn't go full schedule with her either this week….we did religion, phonics/spelling, reading, math, hand writing, and on a couple of days we managed to squeeze in a little history. We didn't do music, art, or science at all.

There are a few other families from my ward that are homeschooling this year, and we have talked about doing a co-op with them, but then I didn't hear back anything until this week finally. So we're going to plan to go to co-op once a week, and we will cover History and Science with them. I have some great music and art curriculum which have a heavy focus on music and art appreciation and then a lap book and some art projects thrown in for fun that I think will actually be perfect for us. So I do intend to start those as soon as I can get them printed and put into binders.

There were a few things that I learned this week. 1) It takes us a lot longer to get through those core subjects than I anticipated. We do take brain breaks when needed, stop for lunch, and don't start school until after 9 am, so I guess that is where some of our time goes. But we were not finished a single day this week before 2:30 in the afternoon. I'm hoping that once we get more used to our schedule, we'll pick up pace a bit. 2) Projects are fun, but not necessary. We may bust out a project every now and then, but I think those are going to be special, and not an every week thing, like I had originally planned. I've been prompted that our time can be better spent by learning homemaking skills and doing things that serve others, starting with serving our family. So there we are! Our first week of school in a nutshell! Wanna see what Baby did during the school time??

Nothing like a snack of raisins and some pot and pan action to keep you occupied! Hehehe.

Oh! I'm sure you also want to see some pictures of the school room! 

The shelves are still waiting for a few final pieces to be attached, as well as sanding and painting obviously, but they are useable! I have no idea when I'll get them painted….hopefully before November, but I'm not sure I can promise anything at this point, if our first week of school is any indication…

We're happy though! It's functional, and clean, and organized, and school focussed and perfect for us. I think we are really going to enjoy this blessing of a school room!

Okay, I've rambled enough for today!

happy homeschooling!

School Room Reno: Install part 1

Well the weekend I have been waiting for finally came! Our friend got here on Friday afternoon, and after a brief planning session the men took off to the store to buy the supplies. Here's what we were looking at the night before we started building:

My spirits were SUPER high at this point…I could not wait for the boys to get started. It really was too late to start anything tho…and they were hoping to go see a movie together. So this was as far as we got on Friday night.

The next morning they were up and at 'em by 8 am though!

First thing they had to do was set up the tools and get all of the smaller cuts done. They had the guys at Home Depot cut a lot of the boards down for them so they could fit in our van, but there was still quite a bit of cutting to do

While our friend worked on getting the first cuts done, hubby set to the task of taking off the base board and getting the carpet pulled back. We are *eventually* going to replace the flooring in the entire downstairs, and we knew we didn't want a chunk of carpet sitting under these cabinets. so straight down to the slab we went!

Here they are getting the tacking strip up and vacuuming all of the concrete dust. Our friend had worked on getting part of the bases for the cabinets built while hubby was still working on the base boards. 

They made the bases to the cabinets in 2 pieces….the two large cabinets and the window seat was one big piece and then the cabinet on the right side had it's base contracted separately for ease in fitting together.

The first cabinet they attached was the small one for the window seat.

The they worked on attaching the two cabinets on the left of the window seat.

Once that was done, we flipped them over and they worked on getting the right cabinet fitted and then attaching them all to the wall.

At this point it was early evening and they needed to make another run for supplies that we had forgotten. With plans to head out and come back with a little time to hopefully finish constructing the window seat and get the counters on, they left. But the shopping trip that was only supposed to take an hour ended up taking three…partly because of traffic, and partly because my husband's ADD kicked in. They didn't make it back to the house until 10:30, and no more work was getting accomplished on Saturday. So that was where the day ended…and this is what my living room look like at the end of the night:

Awesome right? I love construction zones with little kids!

I'l be honest…I was starting to freak out a little bit. At this point in the project we had hoped to have the bulk of the construction done with the cabinets, possibly even start working on prepping the walls for the shelves if we were doing really good. Our friend only had a limited amount of hours to work on Sunday and then he had to head home…and that window seat was laughing at me, I could hear it.

My husband had warned me last week that he felt if they got the cabinets finished by the end of the weekend, then he would call the weekend a success. Which, sure…I get that. Projects like these always come with little surprises that make the timeline stretch out. But I'm a realist…I knew whatever they didn't get done on this weekend, I would be doing myself. And I preferred not to be putting those shelves up.

I didn't get as many pictures taken on Sunday in-between taking care of the kids and going to church. Here is a picture of hubby working on the window seat:

And here's what it looked like when our friend left to travel home again. It looks great huh?? I mean…I seriously love that window seat, and they did put in a full weekend of work. And we were SO grateful for our friend to take time away from his family and come up and help us.

But yeah…we still have a bit of work ahead of us. We'll get there though…this is a good learning experience for us!

School start is quickly approaching!! Are you ready? I'm not nervous at all…hehehe!

happy homeschooling!

Reading, reading, reading….

Goodness, this week flew! Do you ever have those weeks that just kinda get out of control and you are always one step behind? Yeah…that was me this week! I missed one of Middle's OT appointments because I slept in past my alarm, I TOTALLY forgot about Scouts on Tuesday…

You can tell I haven't been using my planner again. It's terrible…I know I function better if I write things down and yet…weeks go by where I don't touch my planner. It's a problem…

School prep was on the slow side this week. Just a bit of printing and laminating while I twiddle my thumbs waiting for the room to be finished. T-minus ONE WEEK people! Woot woot!

I've become obsessed with the site Teachers Pay Teachers. There are a lot of really cool things on there! It's true, the bulk of it is geared towards public school teachers, but you can find some homeschooling gems on there as well. They also had a Back To School Sale this week, and you can bet I took advantage of that! So here's what I got:

I got both of these for Middle to help with our reading programs. My heart would call for a strict phonics program with all of my children, but Heavenly Father keeps whispering to me that I need to be creative with Middle. Lots of repetition and not so many rules right now. So we're going to tackle reading with sight words and word 'chunks'. I hope that these will brighten our classroom and help Middle be enthusiastic about reading. Click on the pictures to pick them up yourself!

I also got this for Oldest:

It's slightly above grade level for her, but there were several parts of the packet I thought were valuable, so we'll do what we can and save the rest for when we cover the American Revolution in middle school again.

So that was me for school this week. I have to admit that I am getting *slightly* nervous about school starting. I actually think I'm feeling the pressure of public school starting and my children not going! I scheduled us to officially start school almost two weeks later than public school does…I want to spend the next three weeks getting into a routine of sorts. Start turning off the TV earlier, start expecting more consistency with chores, and start trying to do some structured activities with Baby running around like a crazy person.

We've had reading time instituted all summer, but some days are definitely better than others. Oldest has a love/hate relationship with reading right now. She wants to read big chapter books, I think to prove that she can read and so she doesn't need to practice, but she just really can't handle the text at this point. She barely has enough fluency to read those beginning readers. So I've started to structure our reading time differently over the last week or so. Twice a day ( mid-day and bed time) we sit down in my chair together and she reads a chapter out of a book I choose for her, and then I read a chapter to her out of a book we are reading together ( This week we're reading Amelia Bedelia and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and she pretends not to like them, but then she can't help giggling at the crazy shenanigans of these great characters!).

Like I said before…her fluency is terrible, and she gets stuck on very easy words that she should know by heart like "she" and "there", which makes me really worried. BUT, I have noticed that her comprehension is already improving a TON! Which is another thing I was getting concerned about. She would read something and I would ask her questions and she would not know a single thing about what she just read. But I think that reading aloud more frequently to her is helping her to retain the stories. On top of all the reading together, we also try to have quiet reading time once a day where she can pick the book and she has to read for 15 minutes to herself. Even Middle and Baby are starting to get in on the joy of reading! Middle and I are tackling The Complete Tales of Winnie The Pooh, which he amazingly sits for, and Baby and I read a few of her favorites several times a day, but we are also working through Michael Hague's Read-to-Me Book of Fairy Tales, which I am totally loving! I spent more hours reading aloud to children in my lap this week then I thought possible! The truth is, house work keeps. But my chance to make joyful lifetime readers out of my children is fleeting, and I need to make the best of my time now while I have it!

Alright…I've rambled enough for today! I hope you have a productive week!

happy homeschooling!

Hello all!

I have nothing to report on the school room reno this week. Now that the painting is done, we're pretty much just waiting for our family friends to come visit and help us build the built ins!

I can't believe how close it is getting to school starting. My lead therapist for Middle just emailed me his fall schedule, it's crazy to think that public school starts up again in about 3 weeks! And that we'll official start homeschool in about 4 weeks! This summer seriously has flown for me…

This is what part of my days have looked like recently…

Yes, I like to be comfortable when I am planning school! Sometimes I work at the table if Middle and Oldest are running around like banshees.

I've got us planned up to January at this point. I may go farther since I'm really just sitting around twiddling my thumbs and I can't decorate and organize our school room yet…although I did get these done this week…

I'm pretty sure there might just be an organizing heart suppressed somewhere in side of me, because these labels were probably the most satisfying thing I did all week! This is a free printable label I got from here.  I wanted something simple but fun…this is going to be a child-focussed area. And these labels made me smile, so they felt perfect. I can also change them out when I get bored, so no worries.

Now that the walls are painted I have TONS of ideas going through my head of how I am going to decorate this room up…there will be a circle time station with a calendar and weather chart, and alphabet cards. Addition and subtraction posters, and a poster on how to tell time. There will be a sight word caterpillar, and a beehive for when we memorize our Article's of Faith, and then our daily schedule…

Can you tell I'm getting really anxious? Ha!

Anyway…so that was what I worked on for school this week. Hope you are enjoying the 'lazy' days of summer, because they are almost gone!

happy homeschooling!

School Room Reno: Paint

We made some more progress on the school room this week, so I'm fairly stoked about that!

 I wasn't actually planning on painting this week, but Oldest had a rough day early in the week, as we were carting Middle around to all of his various appointments. I feel for her…I really do. So much of what Middle has to do for therapy seems like 'play', mostly with things we don't have available to use at the house. And he gets individualized attention from an adult who goes out of their way to make things fun and interesting. I'm sure to her, it does seem really unfair at times. And it's hard to remember that she is young too…they are only 18-months apart. She doesn't understand that what would be play for her is really a whole lot of work for him.

So when she said to me "Mommy, I wish I could be like Middle." on Tuesday after OT, I knew we needed to do something out of the ordinary that day, and have a little mommy/ daughter time.

And why not seize the opportunity to check off a to-do at the same time?! Ha!

So there's Oldest. She's a fun kid, and thankfully not really afraid of hard work! She was excited to paint, she hadn't had an opportunity to do it again since we painted our formal dining room when we first moved in over 2 years ago.

I decided to paint the school room white. I was talking with my sister-in-law about this decision later in the week and she says " White? Really? You know in the Waldorf school we looked at they painted their walls purple, because purple is supposed to keep the children calm and help them focus."

I don't know much about how color effects people, but I agree with wanting the room to be a place where my children can focus. White seemed like the least distracting color possible! And there are going to be pops of color…I mean this is a school room, for goodness sake!

One thing I do have to say about painting a room white though….choose good paint. Or use a primer, even if you buy the "paint and primer in one" kind of paint like we did. This is what the room looked like after two coats of paint:

Ugh…another coat?? Seriously?? I'm not sure we bought enough paint…

Thankfully the 3rd coat rocked it! Phew! (And yes, there is Middle. Now you have met all of the kids!)

If you are wondering, the wall with the window didn't get painted because we have some very special plans for that wall in the upcoming weeks. Eeeeekk! I can't wait!

I've also been busy this week finishing up my lesson plans for the first 8 weeks, and working on some final touches for the school room. This week I worked up some box numbers for the kid's work boxes, and I thought I would share! There are enough labels for 8 work boxes.  Just click on the picture to grab them for yourself!

Oldest got Disney Princess because they're classic and timeless. Middle got Super Hero Lego Mini-figs…because we're all about super heroes and legos in this house!

Well that's all for this week!

happy homeschooling!

School Room Reno : Before

So we're planing to have the school room finished by mid-August, and I could not be MORE excited. Seriously.

We moved into this house 2.5 years ago, and I had GRAND dreams of everything I wanted to do to personalize every room. It hasn't quiet turned out like I expected, but when does it ever?

So far…we've painted the main rooms downstairs. and when I say main rooms I mean the formal dining, living, and foyer. The kitchen is still a nasty burnt orange... that is likely my next plan of attack after the school room..

That's it. I don't even have my pictures hung…pitiful. No wonder I've had a hard time adjusting here!

In my defense I did get pregnant within three months of moving here. And I was siiiiiiiiiiiick that whole 10 months. And then I had to survive the first year with three kids. Which brings us roughly to today!

So here's what the playroom/future school room looks like today…

It's cluttered. Clutter is my enemy. And we've actually pared down A LOT on what toys we have in here. I have just been so tired of the mess. The only reason it is as clean as it is in this picture is because the clutter is somewhat manageable now!

I love our kidney bean table. That was a craigslist find shortly after we moved here. Middle's therapists stressed the need for him to have a table short enough to put his feet on the floor. The man who sold it to me was so kind…I think he had another buyer who wanted it for a preschool but he felt we needed it more. And it has been well loved. We will continue to use this table for homeschool.

Those unfinished cabinets are going to be part of the reno. Another craigslist find. There is a guy in my area who does custom built utility sheds, but wants to branch out into custom cabinetry. In the real world these cabinets should have cost me upwards of 500$. But I was able to get all 4 of them for about 240$.

I've started to get things organized into these nifty clear shoeboxes from Michaels. Heavenly Father is pretty awesome…He inspired me to go check on a workbox cart I have been waiting to go on sale since January. Not only was the cart on sale, but ALL storage was on sale, with an additional 25% off coupon! So I picked up a couple of these boxed sets of 14 clear plastic boxes! Yay!

Annnnnnnnnd then there is this…

Who doesn't love a baby who tries to get in on the action when you're taking picture?

happy homeschooling!

Hello world...

I'm fairly certain I've attempted to write a blog upwards of twenty times in the last eight years. It's amazing how my desire to write, and my apparent lack of anything to write about always conflict with one another! But here we go again…

It's a big year of changes for us…our first year of homeschooling. I have a desire to document the journey. And if, as an extra benefit, a reader is inspired by something I have posted here…then, thank you Heavenly Father for allowing me to be a tool in your hands.

happy homeschooling!