Ideal VS. Reality ~ Schooling

Lately I have been stuck in this limbo between my "ideal" life and reality.

All in all, my life is awesome.  I love where I am and how we have gotten here.  But there are some things that are coming up that I always thought would go one way... and now they are going another.

It bums me out because I feel like most of the reason they are going another way is because of me.  But I am to the point where I have to do what is best for me and the peace in our household.

 

 

Are you following??

Here is what I am beginning to see as reality... 

For the last few years we have planned to home school our kids.  I took Bubba Love out of preschool and home schooled the kids this year.  It has been fun(ish), but really exhausting and trying on me.  I LOVE my kids and I want to spend time with them, but I think we are all ready for a break from each other.  The sibling fighting and rivalry have gotten out of control lately and I think it is because they are ALWAYS together.  I can't take it anymore and I have started to loose my patience.  Not to mention the fact that I am going to be adding another baby to mix.  Mama needs some help!  Soooooo after a lot of prayer and a lot of discussion, Daddy and I have decided to put both of the kids into school next year.  Bubba Love into kindergarten and Buddy Boy into preschool.  It makes me sad just thinking about it... all the reasons we wanted to home school and all the reasons I really don't like public school.  But when looking at the whole picture, sending them to school is going to be best for our home right now.  Maybe that will change in a few years... we shall see.

Homeschool Happenings ~ Isabelle

We have been trying all sorts of new stuff these last couple weeks.

But what the kids are most excited about right now is Isabelle.

Isabelle (who is now just Bell in our house) is a site words caterpillar.  She randomly grows bigger during the week with a new site word.

She was my mom's when my mom was teaching kindergarten.  I actually made her over 8 years ago when I was helping in her class one summer.  Funny how things come around:)

So Bell goes with a set of books from McGraw-Hill called Pre-Decodables Level A.  Every book has 1-5 new site words, so as we learn them we progress through the books. 

Here is an example from book 2.

Site words:

Reading them:



We just started this today and both the kids can read through the first book. They are SO proud and excited!!

Here is Bubba Love this morning...



Homeschool Happenings

Over the last week, the kids and I have been busy making new creations for our homeschool days.

I was busy making... they were busy enjoying!

For Bubba Love:

Print outs from Confessions Of a Homeschooler

Put into sheet protectors.

If you use a dry erase marker, these just wipe clean.

No more printing and no more buying extra worksheets.

We can use these over and over!

For both the older kiddos:

We found these print outs at Confession of a Homeschooler also.

We have lowercase letters, uppercase letters and 1-10.

I added in the site words so they can start to recognize them.

And we did every one's name and our last name:)

For Buddy Boy:

Bead number sorting.

If you can't tell, there are numbers in each of the ice sections and I have exactly the right number of beads in the ziploc.

So he sits and counts them out ~ it's a perfect 3 year old activity!

You can see credits for all of these and lots of other ideas on my homeshool pinterest board!

While there, make sure you follow me.

Have I shown you all our homeschool "room"?

It is actually in Bubba Love's room.

Since we are a family of 5 (almost 6) and we only have 3 bedrooms, we have to use rooms for multi functions.

She doesn't mind though, in fact she loves to get her room cleaned for school time every morning.

This is our desk and work area.

We are currently working on a character builders study.

First we learned about diligence and now it is on our character builders tree.

We are currently working on gentleness, which we are spending a lot of time on!

Lastly, Daddy saw an ad for ABCMouse.com on Sunday.

He checked it out and got us a free month trial.

So far the kids are really liking it.  They have never used the computer before so just learning how everything works was a great lesson.  Now they get 20 minutes a day IF their chores are done and they have been practicing gentleness.

It has been a great educational tool and motivation for the kids!

Blueberries For Sal

My all time favorite book when I was a little girl was Blueberries For Sal.

This was my mom's from when she was little, that she gave to me when I was a little girl.

I have read it to my kids countless times, but it was getting old and fragile.  So away on a shelf it went.

A week or two before Christmas, we were over at Yammie's house playing in the play room. And what do I find??  A NEW Blueberries For Sal.  I couldn't believe my eyes!

So I took it... haha... without asking!

She knows now and is more then happy to hand it over. 

 

We will be reading this for many bedtimes to come.

LOVE this book!

Day At The Museum

A few months back we got a really good deal through LivingSocial.com for passes to a new local Children's Museum.  I hadn't heard great things about this place... but I figured for a family of 5 to get in for $7, it was worth the risk. 

We had a really fun time.  Since Daddy had to work, Aunt Ruthy came with to get in on the fun;)  All the things I had heard about the place were true though.  It was small.  It didn't have too many activities.  And it is expensive (if you are paying full price obviously). 

However, it was a fun activity to get the kids out of the house on a rainy day.  Luckily it wasn't very busy and the kids played at each center a few times so we were there for a while. 

Ok, now for the photo explosion!

Like I said, the kids had a blast.  But when I reminded them of the other Children's Museum that we have gone to before, they said they would much rather go there.  So I am thinking another museum trip is in store for us soon:)

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!

My good friend has school tonight but didn't want to miss out on the fun, so we celebrated St. Patrick's day with her and her family yesterday.

We started off the evening with a little story time, reading and learning about St. Patrick. The kids seemed to enjoy the story, but were ready for the fun stuff!

After story time, we made our own paper bag leprechaun puppets. This is the one that me and Buddy Boy made. It was the best looking one, thanks so Mama:)

After making puppets, we found the first clue that the leprechaun left us for our treasure hunt. The hunt led us all over the house, finally finishing at a pot of "gold" (which were chocolate coins). This was the best part for the kiddos, they loved running around the house looking for the clues. This morning Bubba Love informed me that she knew there was no such thing as leprechauns and that I really hid all that stuff. I laughed and said "really??" which she replied "yeah, right????" Haha! I love it!

Last on our St. Patty's agenda was rainbow making. Being that we are an organics only household, Froot Loops are NEVER allowed. But I made an exception for this really cute project and over all the kids were pretty good at keeping the cereal on their paper and not in their mouths! This was such a fun activity and there was little to explain, the girls knew exactly what to do and got it done.

We ended the evening with some corned beef, potatoes and dill bread (oh, and some beer & whiskey, yummm).

Then let the kids play for a few hours until they could no longer keep their eyes open.

It was hard to get the kids up this morning for preschool, but we did. Bubba Love wore her best green dress and enjoyed a party at school with her friends:)