Update before the new school year (and wrapping up the past school year)

Wow! I just realized that I haven't posted anything here since May! We finished up our school year at the end of May with a short study on rocks, plants, and animal classification. We also finished our math book (Saxon K) unceremoniously and Caley is making amazing progress on her reading skills. It seriously blows me away that I have a reader! She read her first chapter book this summer and also earned a "Finisher" award from the library in which she got to choose a free book.

Also in May we had a tea party for Mother's Day and went to Lobster Mania at Cost Cutter and played at the park. Caley will also continue her speech therapy into the next school year because she still qualifies. For some reason I thought she'd be tested again in order to qualify, but her test from 2010 guarantees her services until 2012, so it was just our therapist's discretion whether we should continue. Caley enjoys it and we've seen progress so we will continue it and reevaluate at the end of next year.

It was a good first "official" year of homeschooling!
Was it hard? Yes, at times, but I think anyone with three little kids would agree it's a challenging season regardless of their schooling. There were some challenging times because of Wesley dropping his morning nap and then discovering and enduring the first trimester of pregnancy.
What would I change? As far as curricula, I'd change nothing. What I would change (and will this fall) is making school time sacred from other activities (for the most part). I seemed to get more frustrated when I had too much on my plate. So, going into next year, I have to consider my time and commitments outside of the home. We aim to do school 4 times a week instead of 3.
What was the best part? Getting to see my kids learn! And learn to love each other! Sure, they bicker and such, but those "difficult times" are simply more opportunities for my kids to learn sharing, forgiveness, patience, and repentance!

 Wesley's first attempt with playdough, and he didn't eat any! I was impressed!

 We visited Cost Cutter for their annual Lobster Mania event. I'm glad we did, because in July they closed the store. :(

I'm hoping to make these pictures of First and Last Day of School a tradition.

 Here's what the school room looks like! It's fun to put their crafts up on the walls and remember what we've studied.

 We went to Kirkland beach to open the envelope after our ultrasound and found out we're having a baby girl!

Caley picked this book for free from the library summer reading program.

I think I am ready for this next year, and looking forward to getting back into a routine!

A reminder

I don't think our family qualifies as "large" but it's definitely larger than I imagined it would be when I was little. Here is a blog post by a mother of 9 who homeschools and are some things I am realizing are important regardless of family size while homeschooling. http://largefamilylogistics.blogspot.com/2008/10/large-family-homeschooling.html

Large Family Homeschooling

Edited 10/31/08

1. Learning happens all the time all the time all the time

2. Turn off the media and live your own life

3. Learn to learn

4. Lots of books: reference books such as Usborne, DK, classics, dictionaries (more than one), biographies, and of course the Bible and Bible reference books

5. Play outside and use the imagination

6. Chores, indoors and out

7. Animals: pets, livestock

8. Garden

9. Real life experiences develop a can-do attitude

10. Talk about life and current events

11. Older children naturally teach the younger children--a beautiful thing when the older children are taught well

12. Use non-consumable curriculum and pass it down the line

13. Spiral notebooks and sketchbooks--don't let them tear paper out to avoid the paper mess they can quickly create

So, apparently this homeschooling thing is more about my sanctification as a mother than about the kids learning stuff. Yes they are learning stuff, but it's not always about reading, writing, and 'rithmetic. And I'm learning more than they are.

Easter Crafts!

This past week we skipped traditional school and just did Easter crafts! It was great! I decided to do this because a main reason we chose to homeschool is because we want the girls to be exposed to Jesus more than if they were in public school. (Obviously if Caley was in public kindergarten, we would still teach her about Jesus, but the amount of time we spend with her being homeschooled just increases the opportunities of telling her about Jesus.) I didn't want to be overwhelmed with doing what I'd originally planned for school (with math and writing and reading) and do Easter crafts last week. Oh the freedom!

 Here are some of the crafts we made:

 The sign on the middle cross says "Our King"

And the grand finale was the empty tomb resurrection cake!

 He is risen indeed!

Saturday we went to an egg hunt! And Sunday we went to Qwest Field for Mars Hill's Easter service. It was amazing!! Each child got a coloring book with crayons and the pictures were from the Doctrine series, which tells the basic theology of what we believe. It's a great tool and the girls had a fun time coloring!

Spring Break!

We took a Spring Break this week, but didn't do much differently in our activities except I didn't feel the pressure to do Caley's math and KONOS studies. We did however go to the Children's Museum and help at the new church building planting plants. The kids got totally messy but it was really fun!

We will pick up Monday with a new KONOS unit in Orderliness. We will cover such topics as calendars and seasons, planets, sequencing, and animal, plant, and rock classification and the unit will take us to the end of May when our school year will be over. I can hardly believe we are nearly done with the first year of homeschooling! I have learned so much!

As Wesley gets older and is now walking all over the place, homeschooling is reaching another challenge because Wesley always wants in on the fun. He is very good about taking an afternoon nap, but that is also the girls' quiet time and my rest time so I am hesitant to give up the afternoon nap to doing school work. But if we try to do school work at the table while Wesley is awake, he is quite the hand-full. I am hoping to be able to teach him to do something while we do school, at least during the writing, math and reading time for Caley. He is fine if we are doing projects and can be involved or if the girls are independently working I can keep him busy, but it's not always like that.

I also picked up next year's math book for Caley, we are going to use Saxon Math 1. She has really seemed to enjoy the Math K book and Math 1 is similar so it's worth a shot. I've been able to use my own manipulatives instead of buying the Saxon ones which are very expensive. Instead of unifix cubes we use legos, and instead of counting bears we use little plastic figures. When it calls for number cards I just cut up paper and make my own. With the 1st grade book though it begins to move into worksheets which I'll need to purchase.

Now that we will have a new baby at the end of October/beginning of November, I'm not sure how next year will look. I've contemplated starting early in August, taking a break in November and December (as we did last year with the Christmas rush) and then re-beginning in January. But I feel unsure about starting school when it's still beautiful weather and we'd rather be outside in the sprinkler. Alternately, we could start in September, take a break in November and December, then start again in January and go all the way through June or even into July the next summer. I'm really primarily concerned about Caley's math book, which I'd like to finish. But since we'll probably do things flying solo again, I guess it doesn't really matter when we do what. :)
I'll leave you with a sweet picture of my two girls reading.