2013-14 Curriculum

Here is a run down of our curriculum choices for the up coming school year.

Elijah
3rd Grade

My Fathers World Adventures in U.S. History
          -U.S. History/ Geography
          -Science
          -Bible

Spelling- All About Spelling Level 3

Math- Math U See Beta

English- English For The Thoughtful Child

Handwriting- A Reason for Handwriting Transition Book

Latin- Song School Latin Level 1

Art- Draw, Write Now books 2 and 5 (using periodically throughout the year)

Typing- BBC Typing Online

Piano- Piano Is Easy 


Noah
Kindergarten

My Fathers World Kindergarten God's Creation from A-Z
           -Math
           -Bible
           -Science
           -Reading
       

History- Will join Elijah in studying U.S. History and Geography

Handwriting- A Reason for Handwriting Kindergarten

Latin- Song School Latin Level 1


Zach
Tot School

Last year I thought I would do more with Zach as far as directed learning, but that didn't happen.  This year he will be 2 so we will begin to add him into some of our lessons.  I am not quite sure how that will look at this point.  I also plan to use 1+1+1=1, and Confessions of a Homeschooler for their Tot School printable packets.  I am also planning on using Busy Bags/Boxes to keep him occupied.






 

This post is linking up to the 5th Annual Not Back to School Blog hop!  So hop on over and check out all the great things going on!!

Homeschool Room Re Do

This weekend my hubby and I will be celebrating 13 years of marriage!!  For our anniversary we decided to take a shopping trip to Ikea and the Container Store!!  Yippeee!!!  Ok so really I decided that's what we were going to do.  He will get to go to the Apple store so he is happy!

All year I have been re working our homeschool room, mostly in my head.  Our room currently looks something like this...

My objective in redesigning the school room came down to two things, more storage and more storage out of the toddlers reach!  We currently have a small filing cabinet that holds most of my writing utensils, extra workbooks, paper, and various other items.  The toddler seems to think that is his playground!  It has made for some fun times here!  *sigh*

Here is what we hope to be purchasing at Ikea..

Expedit Shelving Unit 

Linnmon/Alex Table

The Expedit Shelving Unit will be used as a bookcase, toy shelf, and teacher supply shelf.  I am looking forward to having a nice spot, high up to store some things.  The Linnmon/Alex Table will be used as my desk.

I am really excited about these new additions to our room.   We recently inherited a round table that we will try using for the boys instead of desks.  I look forward to sharing with you all the finished room when its done.

Homeschool Binder

Last week I talked about my home management binder, this week will be the homeschool binder!!  Once again I went straight to Pinterest for some ideas, and once again I was over loaded with them!

What it came down to for me, was taking the best of every one that I found and making it work for me. So in the end this is what I came up with...

The front cover of my Homeschool Binder.

Divider page for the Homeschool Binder.

I chose these sections for my homeschool binder: this years plans, records, curriculum information, book lists, homeschool helps, art recipes, and notes.

Here is a run down of what is behind each section:

This Years Plans- an over view of our school year, each child will get their own page which will include books read, field trips and activities to do/completed.

Book Lists- books I would like to read to them, books I would like my kids to read, books that go along with a unit we are doing, books I'd like to own

Records- with drawl letters from school, HSLDA information, our state homeschool laws printed out from the HSLDA web site (our state doesn't require us to keep track of attendance or anything, but this would be a great spot for it if you need to)

Homeschool Helps- articles I have printed out, a list of web sites I frequent or might find useful in the future, notes taken from homeschool convention

Curriculum Info- receipts, purchase orders,  or catalogs from our current curriculum

Art Recipes- really this just holds ideas for art projects, or "recipes" for home made art materials

Notes- I put some lined notebook paper here to write down ideas that I come up with, or things I would like to purchase

To find out where I gathered my information you can look at my Homeschool Pinterest board.  Sorry my Pinterest board is kind of a mess!!  If you are looking for where I gathered the most information you can find it here at La Famille, she has an amazing homeschool binder filled with great information!!

I would love see what you are using as a homeschool or home management binder!!

Home Management Binder

Now that the school year has finished its time to clean up!  Who's with me!!  I am so looking forward to this part.  I feel that throughout the year things got a little chaotic, and now its time to put some order to everything!

Last week I began re-organizing our family home binder.  In re-organizing it I am hoping to better utilize it.  In the past its just been a place to keep things from piling on the counter.  Now that I have re-done it, I am hoping to actually use it!

So in my home binder I have the following sections:  calendar, menu plan, finances, coupons, contacts, medical, homemade products, and holiday.

I got the front cover and divider printables from New Bee Homeschooler, she has a ton of things you can print out for free to go into your binder.  I used my label maker to label the dividers, which are pocket dividers.  I like these pocket dividers  because they have a pocket on both sides!!  


Here is what is behind each section:

Calendar- our families monthly calendar, any activities that are going to take place or appointments

Menu Plan- our monthly menu and my grocery lists

Finances- (this is where I want to really get back on track!) monthly budget sheet and an annual bill schedule form.  I am also planning on storing receipts in here for the month (great use for the pocket dividers!)

Coupons-  this holds all of my coupons that I plan to use

Contacts- I keep a sheet of address labels and stamps here, birthday and anniversary list and a  family and friends contact list

Medical- our medical information like immunization lists (copies of), insurance card information (copies  of)

Homemade Products-  I make a lot of things homemade, like laundry detergent, so I decided to keep all of the "recipes" for those things in our family binder instead of my recipe binder.

Holiday- things I would like to do or make at the holidays

This is still a major work in progress, but I am hoping to continue working with it until it functions the way I want.

If you are interested in where I found my ideas for my binder you can look at my Pinterest board of Home Management.  There are a TON of awesome ideas!!  I eventually just had to write down what I needed in our binder and go from there to make it work for us!

Next I will talk about my newly revised homeschool binder!!  So stay tuned...

We finished!!

Hip hip hooray!!  We finished school!!  Last friday was our official last day of school for the year!  To celebrate we took the kids to a really cool old fashioned style candy store in our town.  They love it there and don't get to go very often.  So it was a special treat for them.  They each got to pick out a few types of candy and then we browsed through the little toy section of the store.  This week we will head to the zoo!  We have not been able to go since last spring, so I know they are super excited about this trip!

Elijah

Noah

I love looking at these comparison pictures, it amazes me how much they have changed throughout the school year.  I think Elijah grew about 4 inches!!  The picture collages were done through Pic Monkey, love that site, in case you were wondering.

Here's to a great relaxing and refreshing summer!!

They've Hatched!!

A few weeks ago we noticed that a robin was building a nest right out side our front door!!  Literally right out side!!  At first we weren't so sure about it and thought about knocking it down, but since we had just begun our study of robins I thought it would be cool to watch the process.  So after a day or so I decided to take a picture of the the inside of the nest, since we can't see the top very well.  To my surprise there were 3 little blue eggs inside!!

We kept closely monitoring them over the last few weeks and yesterday they hatched!!  We were so excited to come home from church and see that there were little babies inside!!

Aren't they just so sweet!  This has been the perfect end to our study of robins.  Now we get to watch and observe how the mommy and daddy robin feed and care for the babies until they leave the nest!

Winding Down

Well we are on the last week of school!  I can not believe that its almost over!  I can not believe that we actually did it!  All of my children are still alive and I am still sane!!

Noah actually finished his preschool work two weeks ago.  He was so proud of himself and I am so amazed at how much he learned through out the year.  He went from not being able to hold a pencil or crayon to writing his name!  He went from not wanting to sit still for ANYTHING to being able to sit and work or play on his own for 30 minutes or more!  He is so excited to start Kindergarten in the fall. We received our curriculum about a month ago and he saw all the fun stuff in it, I think that motivated him to finish preschool.  I made him a preschool certificate, he was so proud!

Elijah will be finishing up this week.  We have already finished Science, History, Bible, and Math.  Really all he has left is Language/Phonics, and Spelling.  This has been a hard couple of weeks for him because Noah is already finished not to mention the weather here has been super nice for the most part. I actually was planning on going another week, just to finish up a few extra things, but after seeing how ready he is to be done, I decided against it.  What a great benefit to homeschooling!!

Next week as a reward for finished up the school year well, we are going to head to the zoo!  They are so excited!!