Fabulous First Week

The kids have been in bed for nearly three hours and I'm totally exhausted right now.  I really should have been asleep long ago.  Yet, I'm feeling so happy over our week that I just couldn't wait to finish blogging about it.  This has been a wonderful week!  There is seriously nothing better than having school with these awesome kids.  It seems like it should add difficulties into our family life, but it really makes things easier!  Woohoo!  This is when I really berate myself for letting kidschool drop during the summer.  Why oh why do I do that?!!

 

Anyway, I've been enjoying our week so much that I've continued to take pictures (gasp!), and I intend to have this whole week documented.  No worries; I won't be documenting every day this school year.  That would be rather monotonous!

 

Wednesday didn't go as planned, so I might say it was our negative day this week, although it really wasn't a bad day.  My sleep was interrupted so much between two children the night before that I never really woke up that day.  I seriously didn't feel alert for even five minutes that day.  Plus Jim took a long lunch break to run a very important errand with me and that ate up our school time.  The one thing we did that was part of the 'plan' was family devotional.  Amazingly I took a picture, though I can't remember why.  I think Annie chose to read us a chapter our of Job here; for some reason she really likes to read out of the book of Job.  :)

The morning didn't come together like I'd hoped, so by the time we'd finished family devotional it was time to run our errand.  Then when we were home again it was late afternoon and I couldn't see straight.  The kids ended up just having personal reading time during naps that day.  So it wasn't the best day, but it wasn't bad either.  That's how life goes sometimes.

Yesterday and today were magic, though.  Yesterday we got things going at a reasonable time.  We had a positive devotional and then moved into math.  They did their daily review and then we played BINGO to reinforce the new concept we were learning.

After math we wrote penpal letters.

Alex has been relishing his school time with me this week.  He and I did a hand-over-hand letter this day.  He thought that was the neatest thing ever!  I'm sitting down with him during math review time to color or 'work' in his books and he just can't get enough.  His behavior has improved tenfold this week as a result.  Yay!

We then had lunch and painted our volcano.  I love how Alex wanted to wear his chef's hat for painting.

The last official part of kidschool was real aloud time.  Then we did some family work and moved into quiet time.  Annie and Logan have been totally absorbed in their books during quiet time, and Alex has been taking his nap again.  It's been very refreshing and re-charging for me!

Today was almost identical to yesterday.  We had devotional, math review, math lesson, penpal letters again (these aren't usually an every day thing), and erupted our volcano.

We read aloud, did some family work, and by quiet time I was feeling incredibly happy.  The peace and harmony that I was looking forward to with the start of kidschool had engulfed me.  I can't really describe it, but it is the best feeling in the world.  I was actually very tired today because Abby didn't sleep well last night, but I was too happy to take a nap (I didn't know that was possible!).  These days that I've described here sound very plain and full of work, but they bring an incredible amount of happiness to our family.  I am so incredibly grateful for the privilege of teaching my children every day and watching them learn and grow!

I was pretty much giddy with joy by quiet time and then I had a double bonus.  First, Jim arrived home very early from work.  Then while he took advantage of the opportunity for a nap (while snuggling with Logan who was excited Daddy was home), I realized I had an opportunity for some one on one time with Annie.  We had an impromptu date and went for a walk.  It was wonderful! 

When we arrived home again, I was in such a good mood that I made chocolate chip pancakes for dinner as a treat for everyone (this was a first in our family and they are begging for it again).  After dinner the kids redeemed their beans in our school store.  That was pretty exciting for them since they'd worked hard all week to earn them. 

  Logan 'bought' a family movie night, so we watched "Up" this evening.  ("I can smell you!"  I think Dug is my favorite cartoon character.)

Alex 'bought' two pieces of candy.

Annie 'bought' an extra bedtime story and two pieces of candy.

The other part that went so well the last half of the week was this sweet baby.  We worked things around her nap schedule so nicely that I was free to work with the other kids while she was asleep and I could also give her attention while she was awake.

Hooray for the first week of school!  I'm excited for next week!

First Days Back

We had our first day of school yesterday.  I got it in my head somewhere that I wanted to make it special, so I actually made some preparations.  On Sunday evening Jim gave each of the children a father's blessing; I also requested one.  Then after the kids went to bed I prepped our 'School Store'.  This was an idea I'd thought out earlier in the afternoon.  The idea is that there are certain school related activities that they can earn beans for all week, and then on Fridays they can redeem their beans for prizes.  I made bean containers for each child and put the rules on the fridge.  When they woke up yesterday morning, they were super excited!  :)

The things they can earn beans for are: correct math problems, reading scriptures, reading non-fiction, and writing letters or stories.  Alex can earn beans by listening to scriptures or non-fiction, and drawing pictures.  The prizes are: small piece of candy, big piece of candy, extra bedtime story, staying up 1 hour past bedtime, park, drive with Dad, movie night, family bike ride, Dollar Tree trip, bike ride alone with Mom, McDonald's outing, and ice cream date with Dad.

They were pretty motivated by this yesterday; they all did extra things outside of our regular work to earn extra beans.  Logan made an especial push; he earned 45 beans in one day!

We started kidschool with a family devotional.  The kids were so happy to put that back into our routine.  I hadn't meant to drop it during the summer, but I did.  :(  We had a prayer, some scripture time, and went through all 13 Articles of Faith to see how well they remembered them.  They'd forgotten some, but did pretty well!  (Last year we memorized them per the kids request.)  Then we sang some songs before moving into academics. 

This year my plan is to do math first since nobody is learning to read.  So that's where we started after devotional.  Both Annie and Logan aced their math review!  Nice!  While they did their reviews, I sat down with Alex to color.  I'm not pushing him to learn anything academic this year, but just giving him some one on one attention that we call school.  We do what is termed 'delayed academics' for preschool age.  There are many studies showing that kids who don't have academic preschool do better in the early school years.  Plus my experience has been that kids will learn colors, numbers, letters, and shapes naturally anyway.  Why turn it needlessly into work?

After their review we made cookie dough for our math activity.  They read and followed the recipe themselves.  They also measured and converted it (we needed a double batch) on their own.

The cookies served a double purpose.  We worked on fractions, multiplying, and following directions.  Then that evening we took them to our neighbors to introduce ourselves (and to say hello to the ones we'd already met).

After math we did a second project which overwhelmed me and served as a reminder for why we never have more than one project per day.  Energetic and enthusiastic children are great, but when all want to help and you have a tiny counter space it can quickly become crazy.  Nevertheless, we opened a science kit the kids had been given and started building a volcano. 

After our volcano building, we had lunch and then I read out loud to everyone for a while.  The kids were on their own after that.  They did their own reading mixed with playing as they desired for the remainder of the afternoon.  It was really a very good day.

Today we had a library day for school.  I LOVE our new library and I felt we had a really successful time finding quality books today.  Yeah!

Logan spent his time reading in the aisles.

Annie and Alex chose books to bring home.  Then since the library is still new to us, they were excited to play.

After we came home Logan dumped the books and has been reading ever since.  I seriously doubt he'll stop before bedtime.  New books are always super engrossing.

Annie has also been reading for several hours.

This is how Logan felt about something he read in one of those books.  It was too strange for him.  Funny guy.

 

Our first two days were positive, but I can tell it's going to take a little while to get into a good rhythm now that we have the 'baby element'.  I felt rather busy juggling little miss Abigail with our other activities yesterday.  Today was fine, but library days are always our easiest days.  I'm excited to be back into our normal routine, though.  I think it's been a relief to all of us.



Homeschool Perk

A few days ago I walked into Wal-Mart and noticed the school supplies.  Since they were cheap and in abundance I decided to see if there was anything we needed.  I spent a whopping $5 re-stocking for this school year.  Yeah!  I am so glad I don't have to mess with school supplies lists...

Pizza Hut BOOK IT!

We just enrolled for the Pizza Hut BOOK IT! program for this coming school year.  I thought I'd share the homeschool link for anyone who is interested.  You just fill out the form, and then they mail you everything you need.  You and your children choose their reading goals and then they can earn a free personal pan pizza or child's buffet each month.  Logan loved this last year, and Annie is super excited to be old enough to do it this year.

http://www.formstack.com/forms/bookitprogram-201314_homeschool_enrollment_form

Gearing Up

By June I was quite ready for a break, and boy did we get one!  During the last few weeks of July I was dreaming of getting back to our normal kidschool routine, and we're (finally) almost there!  We needed to get through company and the move first.  Now I need want to have my home in a certain state of order to calm my obsessive compulsive nature.  It's almost there.  I'm aiming to begin normal life again by the end of next week.  You might say it's my deadline to finish unpacking.  If I'm feeling really good I might even have a few kidschool days sooner. 

I'm excited.  Super excited.  Why?  Because it means peace and harmony will return to this frazzled momma.  I'm excited to start school with Alex this year.  He's ready to be part of kidschool and I'm ready to give this little guy the attention he's been needing these last few weeks.  Somehow I just know that this is going to calm his mischievous tendencies.  I can't wait to sit down and do activities with him.  I'm excited to explore things with Logan and Annie.  We don't need 'learning to read' time on our schedule this year, so I think I'll try to have more hands on learning in that time slot. 

I'm excited to have library books again.  We're keeping most of our books packed up until we buy another house, so we've already gone to our new library.  The kids were in heaven.  It took Logan an hour to choose five books to bring home because he kept getting side tracked by reading the books he thought looked interesting.  Then I had to drag the kids out of there when it was time to go.  Now that we have library books again, we're also having quiet time again.  Hooray!  (Alex is also taking a daily nap again.  Double hooray!)  I'm reading an amazing book, The Hiding Place.  I can't believe I haven't read it before!  It's definitely a healing book.  Today I submitted a request for the Book It! program and Annie is super excited that she's old enough finally.  This year is going to be good.  It's going to be real good.