Two weeks in!

It's been two weeks in the new school year and so far things are going well. It obviously hasn't been perfect, I've lost my shizz at least twice, we haven't done everything I planned on the day I planned it for, but we have been learning, having fun, reading lots of books, and doing life.

A few things I've learned:
1. Having a schedule really helps. I put together a schedule for myself and the girls. The girl's each includes the subjects they're doing each day (the same each day except art and music on Fridays), and mine includes my commitments and chores for each day. We have a big house and it's a challenge to keep up with the housework. So on my daily schedule I assigned myself one or two chores, taking into account I probably don't want to wash the floor the day before women's group (read: messy kids everywhere). So: Sunday- review school plan and prepare and plan meal/grocery list, Monday- grocery day, Tuesday- laundry wash and fold and clean bathrooms (alternating upstairs and downstairs for now), Wednesday- wash hardwoods, Thursday- vacuum all carpets, Friday- monthly chore like clean out car, fridge, or dusting.
2. This is my "job." When I think of homeschooling my children and running my household as a "job" it's easier to take seriously and keep my time sacred. This involves, mainly, saying no to things. Sorry, I can't do this-or-that, we have school. Obviously there are exceptions, and we're only 2 weeks in so we'll see how this realistically works out, but I am practicing being more "selfish" with our time.
3. Number 1 and 2 are easier when I have planned "Mommy time" i.e. women's group. My weekly gathering with other Christian women is essential to my sanity. It reminds me of who I am first and foremost: a lover of Jesus Christ. I adore opening up my home each week to upwards of 12 ladies and their children to study the Bible and build community. It's also essential that I have face-to-face interactions with others, as much as I adore my children.
4. Getting up earlier than the kids also helps. I am still working on this habit. The days that I do drag myself out of bed at 5am, workout, and have prayer time are usually smoother and easier to deal with. But I do love sleeping in. Hoping to refine this habit throughout this year so that's it's just second-nature.

Summer is drawing to a close...

I can see the start of school year 2012-13 on my calendar and am so excited to start on Tuesday! I have a lot of fun things planned for this fall. We are going to learn about the Founding Fathers, government, the electoral process and presidents! I am also going to attempt to be better about studying music and art with the girls, and keeping Wesley occupied during school instead of continually throwing food at him and pulling my hair out in frustration.

We've had a great summer. Busy, but not so busy I couldn't keep up. We balanced our busy weeks with some chill weeks. We didn't really go anywhere, but still took many day trips, although the kids did go to Astoria for two full weeks.

I have realized though that Caley may do better with a schedule like we have in school. She is 7.5 and over the summer started to do some of her old behaviors like refusing to put on shoes or complain that her clothes don't feel right. Issues I thought we had overcome. So I'm excited to see how she does over the next few weeks as we ease into a new structure to our days.

I also am going to make a better effort at being "selfish" with my/our time. If I say yes to anything and everything, school just isn't going to go very well. Examining my motives will be a discipline I get to work on.

Mommy's goals for this school year, posted here for my personal benefit (not to boast but to keep myself accountable):
-Wake up earlier than the kids (5am) to spend time with Jesus, workout, and get a head start on the day
-Keep "school time" sacred and not obligate our time to other things without good reason
-Make yummy, nutritious meals throughout the year, with healthy snacks throughout each day to keep the kid's minds sharp
(I'll add more to this list as the year goes on.)

Summer School

We finished school the first week of June and my best intentions of doing a wrap up on this blog didn't pan out...such is life. We are enjoying our summer vacation. I toyed with the idea of doing a scheduled and organized summer school and it hasn't happened. June flew by between "Grama Camp" and swimming lessons and then July has spun by too with VBS, another week of "Grama Camp" and holidays. August...we have nothing planned. Nothing. Okay, one thing, Amelia's birthday party. But after that, nothing. And I plan on keeping it that way. We will go to the park, have community group, women's group and various playdates here and there, but I hope to spend most of August enjoying the weather, our garden, and our little family.

Today we had an impromptu day at home and did a "Dinosaurs for Della" day! We read books about dinosaurs, watched library book videos about dinosaurs, made salt dough fossils, fossil sugar cookies, and watched "Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs"! The kids loved it!! (and so did Mommy) I hope we can do a few more of these "school" days this summer. No pressure, just fun learning. Later tonight we watched the Olympic opening ceremony in London which was also a great learning experience.

I love my kids and my husband, I love this life.

Update!

It's been a while since this blog was updated! That seems to be how I begin every entry. I became convicted a few years ago that I was devoting more time to making the blog look good than actually being intentional with my children. So rest assured, we are regularly having school lessons and everyone's getting educated around here even if I am not updating the blog.

Since my last post, we have studied boats, airplanes, flight and floating, and we are currently in a mini-unit on the attributes of God (omniscient, holy, loving, omnipresent, eternal, immutable, omnipotent, etc). For our boats and floating unit we learned about Archimedes' principle of displacement and did an experiment in which we observed water being displaced with marbles, then made an aluminum foil boat. The kids had a lot of fun playing in the bathtub with their boats, it was actually quite a mess. During the airplanes and flight study we did the hairdryer and ping-pong ball experiment in which we floated the ball in the stream of hair dryer air and then made it shoot farther using a toilet paper tube to illustrate Bernoulli's principle (air increases in speed in small spaces). It was so fun! We also made paper helicopters and airplanes and threw them off the second floor landing.

Our Attributes of God unit was something I threw in between the "Trust" and "Stewardship" units. It's part of the "Honor" unit in KONOS and had so many fun activities and biblical tie-ins that I couldn't skip it. Another thing I love about homeschooling, especially not working with a district--I don't have to feel bad about teaching my kids about Jesus during "school time"! I actually made this mini-unit two weeks longer than originally planned so we are devoting a whole month to it. We have played with playdough to illustrate omnipotence, identified circles around the house to show eternalness, and Caley has also been learning how to use a dictionary to look up meanings of words. This week we studied God being eternal and read Revelation 1:8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end." This nicely lead us to learn a bit of Greek! We learned the Greek alphabet in a song and copied some Greek text. The girls loved it!

I have been trying a new thing regarding school--doing it in the afternoon! This way Wesley has more time to play with Caley and Amelia during the day instead of trying to keep him occupied while I do lessons with the girls. It has worked well, because he usually takes a good afternoon nap. School time usually takes 2-2.5 hours so we still have time for quiet time ourselves which is very helpful for mama's sanity.

I promise to post pictures soon, but there's a quick update for ya!

Two of my favorite things: Homeschooling and Ryan Gosling!

I can't describe how awesome this is. You'll just have to see for yourself.

More here: http://homeschoolingryangosling.tumblr.com/