Thursday, August 10, 2017

Our First Day of School 2017-2018



Here we go with a new year of school!  Homeschooling has truly become a way of life for our family and we are learning to some extent every day throughout the year.  Still, I like having some special traditions and check in's at the "beginning" of each new traditional school year!  We are trying some new things out this year and thrilled to join a co-op of  Catholic Schoolhouse in our community one day a week.  This year we are most excited to, God willing, welcome a new member to our little school in February!  We are blessed that homeschooling grants us the flexibility to flow with life changes in our family.
Ryan-


Age:  7 1/2 years old
Grade: 2nd Grade
Favorite Subject:  Math/Science
Future Occupation:  Priest and Entomologist / Myrmecologist


Connor-


Age:  5 1/2 years old
Grade:  1st Grade
Favorite Subject:  Music/Math
Future Occupation:  Piano Composer/ Farmer


Luke-


Age:  4 years old
Grade:  Pre - Kindergarten
Favorite Subject: Science/ Story time
Future Occupation: Paleontologist


Peter-



Age:  1 1/2 years old 
Grade:  Nursery School
Favorite Subject:  Art/Music/Story time
Future Occupation:  ??


Baby-


Age:  Due February 2018! (Currently 13 weeks)
Grade:  Nursery School
Favorite Subject:  Winning the Hearts of the Family
Future Occupation:  ??
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Friday, June 30, 2017

Celebrating 10 Years

My husband and I celebrated our 10th year wedding anniversary this June!  In some ways it feels like it's been a life time and in other ways it has simply flown by.  We've had quite a journey through helping support each other through finishing school, getting new jobs, moving, starting a family and more.  We have been blessed with 7 children including 4 wonderful sons, 2 little saints in Heaven, and 1 on the way!  My husband converted to Catholicism.  We started a journey of homeschooling. We have lost loved family members, had family joys and family trials.  We have lived in 6 different houses within 2 different states.  We have traveled to Illinois, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas, California, The Bahamas, New York, South Carolina, Florida, Mexico and more.  We have owned 1 ferret, 3 dogs, and 8 chickens. It has been quite the journey and I cannot wait to see what the future holds for us.
 
We were so lucky to be able to sneak away for an early Anniversary trip in May to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  My parents offered that they could help watch the kids for a few days and we jumped immediately on the opportunity to get a little time away!  Usually when my husband and I travel we have always gone to areas where we stay very busy and active with tourism or activities.  This time we decided we wanted to slow down, relax and enjoy each other!  We went to an adult all inclusive resort on the beach and we hardly left.  It was a beautiful way to reconnect.  It's been a wonderful l0 years and I look forward to many more.
 
 
Photo Credit: Flytographer
















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Sunday, June 25, 2017

Our New Homeschool Room - A Tour

 Our New Homeschool Room - A Tour


We moved to a new home this past March and a fun part about a new home is finding a flow within the home for how things will work best!  The upstairs of our new home (hopefully I can give an entire house tour later) is all for the kids.  They love that they have an entire floor to themselves.  It technically has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, but it also has 3 "extra" rooms (two of them are for our homeschooling and one is a playroom).  To give a full tour of our new homeschool room I actually need to start in the big kids bedroom!

 
Our oldest 3 boys, currently ages 7, 5, and 4 all share a room with two sets of bunk beds.  I would guess that our 1 1/2 year old son will also want to join his brothers once he is in a big boy bed.  From their room, there is an entrance to what was a HUGE walk in closet, which then flowed into a large room over top of the garage.  Well with a lot of boys who don't really care about clothes and a lot of books which the boys LOVE we decided to turn the walk in closet into the library.  Each boy still has their own dresser in their bedroom to separate their clothes.  In our past house the library was in the basement, so it was hard for the kids to get another book at night when they wanted one.  Now we constantly find them getting new books when they are ready to read a new one at night!

 
At the entrance of this space we have a wall hanging of St. Jerome; the patron saint of librarians and also a crucifix.  We are using the same system to organize our books with color coordinating stickers that we started in our past home.  Check it out here:
Organizing Books
 
 
On the opposite side of the library room we have a small desk.  One thing that I really wanted to create in our new home was more individualized work areas.  As our children are getting older I know that they will want more separate quiet areas to work.  There is also a desk in the kids room at the end cap of the one set of bunk beds that they can use as well.

 
From the library (or old walk in closet) you then enter a big room above the garage.  We turned this room into our main homeschool space.  We will probably not ALWAYS do school in this space, but it is very nice to have a space for everything.  We got the big bookshelves with bins at Coscto.  The outer (tall bookshelves) are filled with puzzles, educational games and flashcards.  The center bookshelf has a bin for each individual child's book work and then some art bins, etc.

 
On one side of the room we have a comfy reading chair, a small table where the children can work individually with me for instruction and then a television.  I debated putting a TV in their school room, but we have been watching DVD's for Latin instruction and a few other instructional movies so it is nice to have it all in the same space.


 
On the other side of the room we have old fashioned desk; a double set and a smaller single one.  We also have a computer desk.  Our older children have started to learn to type and also enjoy researching topics on the computer.  We use The Circle device to monitor internet usage and Covenant Eyes to help monitor internet content.
 
That's it for our homeschool room at our new house!  Thanks for stopping by!

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Monday, June 19, 2017

Curriculum Plans for 2017-2018

It's that time again to start planning for the next homeschool year.  I love that as time goes on we can continue to add new things and explore new curriculum and ideas while also keeping with things that we love!  Here are our plans for the 2017-2018 school year.

First of all, the biggest change is that we are joining a Catholic Schoolhouse co-op!  I have looked at this program for years and always loved the concept of it, but always got nervous when it was time to take the leap.  But this year, we leaped and we couldn't be more excited.  As each new school year approaches I like to take time to pray and reflect about my needs and preferences as the mother and teacher and then our children's needs and preferences.  These were a few things I wanted to focus on as priorities this next year:
  • Continuing to prioritize faith based learning and a relationship with God (attending daily Mass, family and individualized prayer time, praying the Rosary more together, etc)
  • Foster and increase a love for learning
  • Finding a way to promote more in depth the "extra" subjects beyond Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (music, art, science, history) more consistently each week
  • Promoting and fostering positive friendships consistently for each child
  • Allowing for our children to gain role models and respect elders outside of me as their mother and teacher
When thinking about and focusing on these priorities I realized that a Catholic Schoolhouse co - op promotes each of these!  We will meet one day a week for 4 hours with a wonderful group of Catholic homeschooling families in our community where each of our children will be in different "classrooms" (including our 1/ 1/2 year old in the nursery).  They will learn about history, art, music, religion, math, Latin and memory work each week from different instructors.  This coming year we will be doing Tour 1 which is American History.


In the past we have enrolled or strongly used Seton for our work at home, but with this big change of adding Catholic Schoolhouse we are also making ANOTHER big change.  We decided to switch to focusing on Catholic Heritage Curricula as our main core at home.  We have used a lot of their products in the past and love them, but a huge reason we chose to make this change is because their curriculum follows a four day week (instead of 5 days with Seton).  So now on the days that we do our Catholic Schoolhouse Curriculum we can focus on that for 4 hours and then be done for the day and not feel like we are getting behind.  So, here are our plans for the 2017-2018 school year!

Ryan (7 1/2 years old) 2nd/3rd Grade

Mathematics:
Religion:

English/Spelling:
Reading:

Geography:
Handwriting:
Science:
History:

Latin:

Art/Music/Enrichment:

Connor (5 1/2 years old) 1st/2nd Grade


Mathematics:
Religion: 
  • Faith and Life Series:  Our Heavenly Father
    • He did Seton's 1st grade Religion book last year, but we choose to do CHC's 1st grade religion curriculum this year because we are not yet preparing him to receive his First Reconciliation and First Communion this next year.
  • Catholic Mosiac
  • Catechesis of the Good Shepard: Level 2

English/Spelling
Reading:
  • Memoria Press Story Time Treasures
    • Billy and Blaze
    • Blaze and the Forest Fire
    • The Story About Ping
    • Keep the Lights Burning, Abby
    • Stone Soup
    • The Little House
    • Miss Rumphius
  • Independent Reading

Geography:
  • Maps, Charts and Graphs B
Handwriting:
Science:
History:

Latin:
 

Art/Music/Enrichment:
  • Weekly Art Lessons with Catholic Schoolhouse
  • Weekly Piano Lessons
  • Memoria Press Kindergarten Enrichment
    • He did the 1st grade enrichment along with his older brother last year.  This next year I am going to teach the Kindergarten and 2nd grade, so he can follow with either and / or both of them.
Luke (4 years old) Pre School / Kindergarten


Mathematics:
Religion:

English/Phonics/Handwriting:
Reading:
Art/Music/Enrichment:
  • Weekly Art Lessons at Catholic Schoolhouse
  • Making Music Praying Twice at Catholic Schoolhouse
  • Memoria Press Kindergarten Enrichment
Peter ( 1 1/2) - Tot School

Reading Stories, Cuddling, Playtime and hopefully taking a nap once a day for us to have some time to focus on more structured lesson time!

See what we have done in the years past at our Homeschooling Page!




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