Day #......I lost track

It was brought to my attention that the last thing we need is another blog that makes homeschooling look perfect. I want you all to know that I am in no way at all perfect and homeschooling is difficult. It is fun but difficult. I dont want anyone to look at my blog and say this woman has it all together and she knows what she is doing. I dont want you to think that I have it all together because I dont and I am FAR from perfect. My children are little monsters most days and most days we dont get our work done but that does not mean that I dont try. Even if we are doing something at least we are doing!! Included are a few pictures of my day today, my messy and hectic day of getting very little done at all and I must say that I am both stressed out and relieved. I am trying to not stress but knowing that this is yet another day that I am not completing what I feel to be a full day of school is STRESSFULL!!!!

 

My oldest son and oldest daughter screwing around in the kitchen. DS11 is suppose to be doing the dishes and DD4 was just caught spanking her brother with the wooden spoon.

 

 

DD4 caught red handed with the wooden spoon!! UGH!!!! She also is not dressed and her hair is a mess!

 

 

DS9 sitting in the livingroom going on an hour of working on a science project. A VERY SIMPLE SCIENCE PROJECT AT THAT!!!! It is going to be a longer day than I thought!!  And if you notice, there is a couch FULL of clean laundry that needs to be folded. Yeah, it has been there for days.

Here DS11 is again. I didnt catch what he was doing in the photo but needless to say he was not doing the dishes!!

 

I am in no way perfect at all. I prefer to post pics and posts about the good days because it makes me feel better but if I am going to help homeschooling moms all around they need to see that I am struggling as well.

 

 

 



Day 8

Today went well. I am actually having a lot of fun with the kids even though I feel like I am on them about everything. I am trying to find a way however to make reading comprehension easier for my boys. They both seem to be stuggling with it but one more than the other. This is going to be a short post because I am really tired. Just wanted to pop in and leave a note.

Happy Homeschooling!!!!!!

Day 6 & Day 7

Well I am really hoping that with everything else I have going on with life I can get into the habit of actually blogging every single school day for us and then some. Unfortunately my almost 2 year old baby girl was diagnosed with pneumonia yesterday and so as you can imagine I just didn't have time for school, caring for her, and blogging so here I am tonight catching up. Yesterday we did end up finishing our work but it was around dinner time once we finished because of doctor appointments and chest x-rays. So as for yesterday I couldn't tell you anymore other than WE FINISHED!! Which in and of it self was a miracle.

Today went on to be so far the best day ever. We got a late start of 11:30 but as I was looking over their work I told the boys, "Look there is no reason what so ever that it should take you guys 6 hours to complete this work today. It should only take you maybe 2 hours if that." So I went over their work with them and they got right on it and they were done by 1:30. I was such a happy and blessed mama. Later this evening though we sat down to do some catch up work on a few of our fun activities and then I sent them to bed.

 

Kids In Bed + Quiet Time = Some School Planning For Me

 

The reason I am planning is because I am trying to go over each assignment before we sit down to do it together. This way I am prepared and if there are any pages that need copied or any supplies I need to get I have it all ready so that our lesson will go off without a hitch. I am starting to see quickly how much easier this make homeschooling life for me. Plus I get to enjoy the time I have with them instead of being to frustrated to do anything other than slam papers around because I should have prepared myself better. (Yes I am a Christian but we are not perfect, I to throw fits on occasion).

 

So now I am reading all these things that we get to do next week and I am so excited. There is a fun building activity that we get to do on Monday and my husband is off that day so he gets to participate. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Ohh nice try, you thought I was going to actually tell you what it was. Well you will have to wait till Monday to find out.

 

Okay well I am going to finish up my planning, I just wanted to jot down my thoughts so that I didnt forget and then I am off to bed.

 

HAPPY HOMESCHOOLING!!

Day 5

Sorry that I didn't post yesterday. I was exhausted by the end of the day and checked out early. It was a slow day for the most part. We only had L.A. to do for the day but was also trying to catch up on our history from Thursday. It was not really because they didn't do the work, it was mostly my fault for not being prepared enough. So I bought a laminating machine last night at walmart and laminated the little people for our timeline. I was just so tired yesterday from all week of taking my husband to work at 4am that I am glad it was a slow day.

 

Today I woke up at almost 6am and as I lay there I decided to get up and take a shower and then spend some time alone with God. I actually had a great little study to myself with Him. However I will not post my journal on here because this is about home school so I will be adding a new blog titled, "Little Moments with my God."

 

This is what I will leave you with about yesterday because this is what our life has been about since November 2nd, 2011. You see my kids Nana, my Mother passed away from a horrible form of brain cancer that took her life in 5 months from onset of symptoms. Its called Glioblastoma Multiform. There is NO cure for this. Even though she never had a chance to get chemotherapy for it she did loose a good portion of her hair from the surgery to remove the bulk of the tumor. She decided it looked so bad that she had them shave the rest of her hair off. With all this said I decided after he passing that I would be growing my hair out to donate to the organization, "Locks of Love." So yesterday was the big day. I got my hair cut and I have pictures of the process. Enjoy. I dedicate this post to my dear mother

 

May you Rest in Peace Mother, Nana, Sister, Wife, Aunt, Cousin, and most of all our best friend.

Carolynn Marie Alexander

July 1st, 1946 - November 2nd, 2011

We love and miss you mom and you will never be forgotten.

 

 

Day 4

Well another day of life. My daughter has either a horrible reaction to the amoxacillin that she was taking or she is allergic to some food that she is eating. We are not sure yet. So today I had her in the doctors office which took up time. But its okay cause its life. My boys learned today that my daughters health is more important than math or science. But on a good note they did complete their math, language arts, and for the most part their science so really it was not a total waste of a school day. Tomorrow was suppose to be a light day with just a math test and some small work in language arts but we will be adding in the unfinished  science and our history.

 

I do not like these short posts with just words in them so I will include a couple photos of something that I compleated for MOH last night to get the boys ready for our endevor.

 

Our Timeline

This covers MOH volume 1, Creation and the Early Civilizations. We are so excited to start adding things to our timeline. Tomorrow the kids and I will start at the bottom with Gods creation the first 7 days. We are in love with MOH because it not only teaches history but it shows the lineage of Christ throughout history which is what we never will learn in ANY public school.

 

Enjoy and Happy Homeschooling!

 

Day 3

Well today was a very stressful day. First off I had to take my husband to work at 4am and then when I got home I could not fall back to sleep. When I finally did fall back to sleep I had to wake up in an hour. So for starters I was running off of 4 hours of sleep. Then I had MOPS (Mother Of Pre Schoolers) today from 9am to 11:30am. When I was done there I went home only to realize that I had to go half way to the other side of town that I was earlier in the day to get chicken feed because what we had left molded. So again I left and returned home after doing my errand. So then I get home and have to feed everyone lunch and then put the baby down for a nap. So began homeschooling for the day at 1pm. Needless to say we were doing school for a while this evening. We really didn't do any fun projects today but we did learn that we will be starting our MOH (Mystery Of History) timeline tomorrow.

You may all be wondering what is the point in the above story about her day that mostly had nothing to do with homeschooling! Well it was a day of homeschooling because it was a day of "LIFE". You see a lot of the time your children need to see that life does not revolve around schedules and such. Life is just that, life. Sometimes things come up and you have to take care of them then, sometimes you have doctor appointments or someone is sick and it throws your entire day off schedule. Yes even though you are not doing 1-2-3 and a-b-c does not mean that you are not teaching your children valuable life lessons. So today was one of my life lesson days but I learned something. I learned that I have to plan out the kids school for a week and go over what we will be doing first. This way I am not spending 30 minutes for each subject trying to figure out the assignment before I can teach it to my children. So it is now 12:20am, Thursday morning and I am getting ready to go to bed with the knowledge of today's lessons in my head and the fact that I know the next two days will be very easy days because I sat here and planned out the rest of our week.

So I leave you with this. Homeschooling is not always spelling, math, history, or science but in fact it is so much more than that. Homeschooling is life. As always, Happy Homeschooling.

Day 2

Today was again, a very interesting day. We started earlier but still took a good 6-7 hours to complete with the breaks we took and lunch and dealing with the 2 and 4 year old girls. UGH!!!! Like I said, interesting. We did however learn that we, meaning my 11 year old son and I, need to learn how to mark stressed syllables and understand them concretely. Him and I both understand the concept but its not concrete.

Both my boys, ages 9 and 11, and my 4 year old daughter had a lot of fun doing our history activity. I let my daughter in on it cause it was creating an animal like God created animals. With this project we had to create a creature like nothing that is on the earth and then name it like God instructed Adam to do. I took photos to document our fun from day 2.

This is my son Adrian (11) creating his creature for Mystery of History. He named it "Cookie Thing."

 

Here he is again with his completed creature.

And here is "Cookie Thing" all alone. There is even a wart on his nose. Strange child I have.

This is my daughter Abbiegail (4) creating her, "Pink Giraffe". Her assignment was a little different because she is younger. She just had to create an animal that God already created, but being that she is only 4 she put her own little twist on it. LOL. I could not tell her that giraffes' are not pink.

Here is her again in the process of creating her giraffe. Love this little girl. We were having a bad hair day today following a week of being sick and on antibiotics.

And here is little miss' creation. Her "Pink Giraffe."

 

 

This is my son Tristin (9) in the process of creating his animal. Anyone want to take a guess??

"Rainbow Colored Bear." He even outloud did ROY G BIV and got the wonderful colors of Gods promise right all on his own.

 

 

And last but not least, ME!! My name is Crystal (30) and I am creating my animal. I am just working on a whim here so I didnt have a name for it yet, but.........

.....here you have it. My creature, the "Zizard." Yes I could not let my kids play with Play-Doh alone, I to had to enjoy this endevor into creating my own creature and naming it.

 

 

 

Hope you enjoy our pictures of our wonderful creations. As always Happy Homeschooling.

Day 1

Well we did it, FINALLY!! We completed our first full day of homeschooling. I must say that homeschooling boys is very interesting. You have to keep them busy every single second that they are working or they fall asleep. I am also creating my very first blog, which I am totally new at but I wanted a way to journal our homeschooling adventure for other families to follow. Other homeschooling families that may need incite to what they are doing because believe me it has taken me a full year and then some to figure out curriculum and scheduling and I am still not there yet. I am hoping that by following this blog that you not only see what we do in our homeschooling lives but also that you may be able to learn from our experiences or get ideas for your homeschooling journey. Well I am off to bed so that I can be ready for tomorrows big adventures. HAPPY HOMESCHOOLING! :)