This morning as I was checking my Facebook page, this article came up on my news feed. Its title piqued my interest and so I began read. The title of this article is "Being a Stay-at-Home Mother Is Not a Job". That right there was enough to get me going! I was so upset by reading this! Are you kidding me!!! Are you seriously saying that what I do 24/7 is NOT a job!! For real!!!
In order to get the full scope of the article I knew I needed to read it all, and not jump to conclusions from the title alone. So I read it, and my conclusion is this... she is really coming at it from the aspect of stay at home moms claiming that this is their "career". Somehow that offends her to the point that her "real career" is diminished because she chose to work outside her home. Well this article makes me feel like my choice to stay at home is diminished and that what I do isn't a "real" job!!
I think though that her point was that full time working outside the home moms still have to do everything that we do as well. They still have to clean their house, cook meals, and do laundry, along with helping with homework and things like that. You know what, I totally get that! I worked outside my home for a time, and it was really hard!!! It was not fun to work all day, come home and cook dinner for my family, then bathe my children and put them to bed barely getting to spend anytime with them. Which is the exact reason that my family sacrifices so that I am able to be home and take care of my children! Its a HARD job!!! And yes I do believe that what I do is a JOB! A career...NO! But a job none the less!
Do I judge working moms, absolutely NOT!! I certainly do not think that they love their children any less because they send them to daycare and go to work! We each make these decisions based on what we feel is best for our own families!!
I guess my reason for wanting to write this post was to make a point of lets not judge each other! We are all moms trying to raise our children to the best of our ability and wouldn't it be so much easier if we all supported each other instead of trying to diminish each others personal choices!!
That is all!!! Thank you! Rant over!
Showing posts with label homeschool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homeschool. Show all posts
Monday, March 16, 2015
Monday, February 23, 2015
Our New Home
In case you missed our house buying story you can check out part one here and part two here. Today I will share about our new house and a little bit about why we moved.
First of all, we were renting our old house from my parents, with the intention to buy it soon. We really loved the location of the house, but it just was not meeting our needs right now. It really was not something we wanted to buy. The house consisted of 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (only one shower), a living room, dining room, and kitchen. We also had a nice big storage room and rec room in our basement. The rec room was more of a lego explosion room than anything else. :)
What wasn't working in that house was that we had the three boys sharing the smaller bedroom (it was about 8 x 8 room) in order to have a designated school room. We chose this option because I was stressing out over using our dining room as a school area and having school stuff spread through out the entire house. Having all three boys in one room was NOT working for us! We have one that is an early riser, one that is a sleep in-er, and one that is noisy when he wakes up! That combination did not work well! In other words when the early riser got up at 6:00 or 6:30 they were all up! Which left a grumpy one, and one that didn't know how to just chill out and play quietly. If you haven't caught on, I am NOT a morning person, and I prefer to ease in to my day.
The criteria we used when looking for a new home, included the following: At least 3 bedrooms, at least 2 bathrooms (one of those being a master bath), two living spaces, a dining room, and a designated area for school. Things that we were hoping to find but were not deciding factors were: an updated kitchen, an attached garage, and a nice size yard.
I am so happy to say that we got almost everything we were hoping for!! We found a split level 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom home with two living areas, an attached garage and a nice size yard. The one thing I had to compromise on was the kitchen. Its not terrible, but its tiny, and could use a little updating.
Here is how we are using our new spaces. We have a master bedroom with a bathroom. We have two of our boys, Noah (the sleep in-er) and Zach (the noisy one, who will also sleep in if given the chance), sharing a room, and then Elijah gets his own room. This has been amazing for all of us! They now sleep in until about 7 or 7:30! In our basement area, we have a large family room and the fourth bedroom which we are using as our school area. There is also a half bath down stairs which works wonderfully for when we are doing schoolwork and Zach needs to use the potty.
I don't have great pictures right now of our spaces, but here is a little glimpse of where we do school and our outside space. I hope to post better photos later and give you a little tour of our home.
First of all, we were renting our old house from my parents, with the intention to buy it soon. We really loved the location of the house, but it just was not meeting our needs right now. It really was not something we wanted to buy. The house consisted of 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (only one shower), a living room, dining room, and kitchen. We also had a nice big storage room and rec room in our basement. The rec room was more of a lego explosion room than anything else. :)
What wasn't working in that house was that we had the three boys sharing the smaller bedroom (it was about 8 x 8 room) in order to have a designated school room. We chose this option because I was stressing out over using our dining room as a school area and having school stuff spread through out the entire house. Having all three boys in one room was NOT working for us! We have one that is an early riser, one that is a sleep in-er, and one that is noisy when he wakes up! That combination did not work well! In other words when the early riser got up at 6:00 or 6:30 they were all up! Which left a grumpy one, and one that didn't know how to just chill out and play quietly. If you haven't caught on, I am NOT a morning person, and I prefer to ease in to my day.
The criteria we used when looking for a new home, included the following: At least 3 bedrooms, at least 2 bathrooms (one of those being a master bath), two living spaces, a dining room, and a designated area for school. Things that we were hoping to find but were not deciding factors were: an updated kitchen, an attached garage, and a nice size yard.
I am so happy to say that we got almost everything we were hoping for!! We found a split level 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom home with two living areas, an attached garage and a nice size yard. The one thing I had to compromise on was the kitchen. Its not terrible, but its tiny, and could use a little updating.
Here is how we are using our new spaces. We have a master bedroom with a bathroom. We have two of our boys, Noah (the sleep in-er) and Zach (the noisy one, who will also sleep in if given the chance), sharing a room, and then Elijah gets his own room. This has been amazing for all of us! They now sleep in until about 7 or 7:30! In our basement area, we have a large family room and the fourth bedroom which we are using as our school area. There is also a half bath down stairs which works wonderfully for when we are doing schoolwork and Zach needs to use the potty.
I don't have great pictures right now of our spaces, but here is a little glimpse of where we do school and our outside space. I hope to post better photos later and give you a little tour of our home.
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| To the left in the picture is my oldest sons desk, he's the tall one in the photo. To the right is my middle sons desk, he is not in the picture. The little on in the picture is our three year old. |
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| We were so lucky that the previous owners left this great play set. It has a climbing wall, a slide, monkey bars, and swings. |
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Where have I been?
In case you were wondering, yes I am still alive! These past almost 6 months have been insanely crazy at our house and blogging was put on the back burner. I did want to come and give a brief overview of how our schooling went the our second semester though. So here it is!
For Elijah, we finished up Adventures in U.S. History by studying the 50 States and when they came into the union. We also studied some inventions and inventors that were important to our country. In math he continued in Math U See Gamma, learning his multiplication facts. We stopped about half way through the book, and will pick it back up next year. He finished out his school year very well, and we look forward to all that we will learn next year!
Noah finished up his Kindergarten work in April and for the last few weeks of our school year we focused on learning to read and improving his handwriting skills. At the beginning of the school year he just wasn't quite ready to read yet, so I put off the reading lessons. In about January we picked up with Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read, and that worked really well for us, for about a month. After that it was a struggle to get him interested in doing his reading lessons. So I picked up Ruth Beechick's book A Home Start in Reading, it gave me a lot of great information and tools to use in helping him learn to read. After implementing some of her ideas he began doing really well. We played sight word games and used our letter tiles from All About Spelling that Elijah is using.
We finished up our official school year on May 21, and I must say that we were all ready to be finished for the year! All in all I think our school year was a success. The boys both learned a lot and finished strong. I am very proud of what they accomplished this year! I look forward to see what the Lord has in store for us next year. Stay tuned to see what we will be using next year for our curriculum.
To stay with tradition, here is our side by side comparison pictures of the first and last day of school. Enjoy!
For Elijah, we finished up Adventures in U.S. History by studying the 50 States and when they came into the union. We also studied some inventions and inventors that were important to our country. In math he continued in Math U See Gamma, learning his multiplication facts. We stopped about half way through the book, and will pick it back up next year. He finished out his school year very well, and we look forward to all that we will learn next year!
Noah finished up his Kindergarten work in April and for the last few weeks of our school year we focused on learning to read and improving his handwriting skills. At the beginning of the school year he just wasn't quite ready to read yet, so I put off the reading lessons. In about January we picked up with Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read, and that worked really well for us, for about a month. After that it was a struggle to get him interested in doing his reading lessons. So I picked up Ruth Beechick's book A Home Start in Reading, it gave me a lot of great information and tools to use in helping him learn to read. After implementing some of her ideas he began doing really well. We played sight word games and used our letter tiles from All About Spelling that Elijah is using.
We finished up our official school year on May 21, and I must say that we were all ready to be finished for the year! All in all I think our school year was a success. The boys both learned a lot and finished strong. I am very proud of what they accomplished this year! I look forward to see what the Lord has in store for us next year. Stay tuned to see what we will be using next year for our curriculum.
To stay with tradition, here is our side by side comparison pictures of the first and last day of school. Enjoy!
Friday, December 20, 2013
Good Bye 2013!
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| What you see driving around my town! |
In 3rd Grade Elijah is moving right along and I am so proud of him for finishing up his math book so he will be moving on to the next level. When we began homeschooling last year about half way through the year I realized that he was not catching on as quickly in math as the program was moving. So last January we switched to Math U See, after taking the placement test we put in him the Alpha level and he quickly moved through that and finished by May. I could really tell it was clicking for him! So this year we began using Beta, and again he moved really quickly and was able to finish it up! For Gamma I am anticipating getting about half way through the book before we end our school year in May, which is fine with me. I feel like he is finally getting caught up to where he should be in math at the 3rd grade level.
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| In October we visited a Dairy Farm! This is Elijah right after he scared the little calf! |
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| Noah and Zach watching the goats. |
Spelling has been the same way for him, we are almost finished with Level 3 in All About Spelling and we will be moving on to Level 4 sometime in January. Once again this is one subject I felt he was falling behind in and we made the choice last January to switch to All About Spelling. That was a great decision for us, he has been making great strides and really catching on to the concepts quickly.
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| My 3 Little Indians ready for Thanksgiving! |
In Kindergarten we have had a rough road this past month. Back in October we began adding in reading lessons, those were not going well! Noah was struggling to remember how to put the sounds together and making them into words. So with much thought and struggle on my part, we have decided to not pursue the reading lessons at this time. I have heard, and been given the advice, to shelve it and come back to it. He is just not ready! On the other hand I found a computer learning program that he loves! ABC Mouse.com!! So he loves doing his "school" on the computer! We are still using a majority of the My Fathers World Kindergarten, we use the Bible lessons, the sound cards and sound discrimination pages, and we are also using the handwriting pages. I have hopes that he will come around before summer to want to learn to read, but I have heard account of young boys not being ready to read until the age of 7, so I am trying to prepare myself for that! Its hard to think of because Elijah was an early reader, and loves to read.
Tot school for Zach has been reading, puzzles, playing with rice, and Daniel Tigers Neighborhood! The poor kid is going through a lot right now, we are getting ready to remove his "babis" (i.e. pacifier) and he is not too happy about that! On a good note though I am so impressed at how much that kid is picking up! He can identify all of the letters in the alphabet and is working on learning their sounds.
Starting today we are on a two week break from school! We will be starting back up on January 6th! I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you all in 2014!
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| My Pinterest Success! A felt Nativity play set. This is what it looked like at night. |
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| This is what it looked like by 9 am the next day! He loves it though. |
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| My Boys getting ready to go play in the snow. |
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| Merry Christmas! |
Friday, August 30, 2013
Easing into our Routine (Part 2)
Along with getting back to school, it was also time to get back to chores! Over the summer we had pretty much slacked in making the kids do their chores. They got used to getting up in the morning and eating breakfast while watching TV.
I had totally intended to do a Back to School Boot Camp type of thing the two weeks leading up to school starting. With my parents still being in town, and wanting to spend time with the kids that didn't happen. So we started it last week, this meant, no TV in the morning, eating breakfast at the table, and completing chores in the morning.
To begin with we worked on the kids staying in bed until 7:30, which by the end of the week turned into, staying in bed until mommy comes to get you! Then after they get up, immediately they are to make their beds, get dressed, brush teeth, and do their devotions. Ideally this should give me time to make breakfast, so far that hasn't been the case, like I said we are working on it. We call all of that our morning checklist.
After breakfast, its time to start our morning chores. Over the summer I worked hard finding a perfect chore system. I realized that none exist! In the end I decided to go with one that is similar to our workbox system. So far the kids love it, it helps them know what is done and what still needs to be done. I used the printable chore cards from Homeschool Creations, but I made my own charts. I wanted them to be color coded using their family color. Here is what our charts look like:
If you are looking for some great chore chart ideas you can check out my Pinterest board! I have a ton of things pinned that I scoured over for a long time trying to decide what I liked the best!
I had totally intended to do a Back to School Boot Camp type of thing the two weeks leading up to school starting. With my parents still being in town, and wanting to spend time with the kids that didn't happen. So we started it last week, this meant, no TV in the morning, eating breakfast at the table, and completing chores in the morning.
To begin with we worked on the kids staying in bed until 7:30, which by the end of the week turned into, staying in bed until mommy comes to get you! Then after they get up, immediately they are to make their beds, get dressed, brush teeth, and do their devotions. Ideally this should give me time to make breakfast, so far that hasn't been the case, like I said we are working on it. We call all of that our morning checklist.
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| These are permanent, not removable cards, since these are the same every day. |
After breakfast, its time to start our morning chores. Over the summer I worked hard finding a perfect chore system. I realized that none exist! In the end I decided to go with one that is similar to our workbox system. So far the kids love it, it helps them know what is done and what still needs to be done. I used the printable chore cards from Homeschool Creations, but I made my own charts. I wanted them to be color coded using their family color. Here is what our charts look like:
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| Here is our set up, this is in our kitchen right under our family dry erase calendar. |
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| Typically I will give the kids 4 chores a day, I just threw some up to show what they look like filled. |
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| When the chore is completed they place their cards in this magnetic box attached to our refrigerator. |
If you are looking for some great chore chart ideas you can check out my Pinterest board! I have a ton of things pinned that I scoured over for a long time trying to decide what I liked the best!
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Wrapping up the first week
To wrap up our first week of school, I thought I would share our week in pictures. This is what went down in our homeschool this week!
How did your week go? Have you started school yet, or are you soaking up these last few days of summer?
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| Brushing up on some math skills, before we start our Math U See next week. |
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| Recess!! |
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| Add caption |
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| Calendar Time |
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| Add caption |
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| Bible Time Craft- We drew with white crayon and then water colored over it. |
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| Chore Time |
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| More Math practice |
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| Science Experiment: Will it float in salt water? Those are eggs and we put salt in one cup and no salt in the other. |
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
The First Day of School
We had our first day of school on Monday this week. We did a shortened schedule to get ourselves back into the swing of things. I think it went ok! We all survived, only one meltdown! Here are some pictures from our first day back to school, including our "school pictures". I like to take the pictures in our living room in front of the fire place because then I can compare at the end of the year how tall my kiddos have gotten! Last year it was an astonishing difference!
Here is a video of my boys singing Go Fish's This is My Father's World to end our first homeschool day.
I am linking this post up to the 5th Annual NOT Back to School Hop with the iHomeschool Network! Be sure to hop on over and check out all the other great back to school photos this week!
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| Noah age 5 Kindergarten |
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| Elijah age 8 3rd Grade |
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| All three of my Students |
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| The silly first day of school picture |
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| Brushing up on some math |
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| RECESS!!! |
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| Add caption |
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Here is a video of my boys singing Go Fish's This is My Father's World to end our first homeschool day.
I am linking this post up to the 5th Annual NOT Back to School Hop with the iHomeschool Network! Be sure to hop on over and check out all the other great back to school photos this week!
Friday, August 2, 2013
Calendar Time
In our homeschool, we try to be pretty consistent with our calendar time. Having younger students makes it a fun add on to our day. Even though we mostly do it for the younger ones, Elijah still loves it! I found some awesome printables for our Calendar Notebooks that we will be using along with our calendar and weather items on the wall. Here is our set up:
Last year I kinda threw together a calendar notebook a few months into school. I used a little bit of 3 different peoples ideas. It really didn't flow well! So this year I am sticking with the one I think will fit our needs the best. This year we are using only Confessions of a Homeschoolers calendar notebook. She has Elementary, Kindergarten and Pre School to choose from. The Tot Time notebook is from 1+1+1=1.
Here is what the Elementary Daily Learning notebook looks like for Elijah. His notebook consists of the following items:
Noah's notebook is pretty similar to Elijah's but I used the Kindergarten printables from Confessions. They are little easier for him to use. So this is what I included in Noah's learning notebook:
-What Day is it? (each day has its own page)
-What Time is it?
-What is the temperature?
-I can write my name
-Monthly Calendars
-Monthly Weather Charts
For my Tot Notebook, I used printable pages from 1+1+1=1. Zach's notebook consists of number and letter pages for him to dry erase on. I will add different pages throughout the year to keep it fresh for him. All of his pages go into page protectors, and I printed them double sided to save paper.
I would love to see your calendar time set up!!
Last year I kinda threw together a calendar notebook a few months into school. I used a little bit of 3 different peoples ideas. It really didn't flow well! So this year I am sticking with the one I think will fit our needs the best. This year we are using only Confessions of a Homeschoolers calendar notebook. She has Elementary, Kindergarten and Pre School to choose from. The Tot Time notebook is from 1+1+1=1.
Here is what the Elementary Daily Learning notebook looks like for Elijah. His notebook consists of the following items:
-What Day is it?
-Write the Date
-What is today's number?
-Write the number word for today's date
-Days in School- Hundreds, Tens, Ones
-The temperature/ What to wear
-What Time is it?
-How much money? (Make the date in coins) I used printable coins from Mama Jenn
**I use a binder pouch to keep the coins right in his binder.**
-Tally Marks to count the days we do school each month
-Write Your Name
-100 Day Chart
-Monthly Calendar Pages and Weather charts
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| What Day is it? Write the Date. |
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| Calendar and Weather Chart Page |
Noah's notebook is pretty similar to Elijah's but I used the Kindergarten printables from Confessions. They are little easier for him to use. So this is what I included in Noah's learning notebook:
-What Day is it? (each day has its own page)
-What Time is it?
-What is the temperature?
-I can write my name
-Monthly Calendars
-Monthly Weather Charts
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| What Day is it? |
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| Weather Chart |
Items needed to create these Daily Learning Notebooks:
-Printable calendar pages
-Page Protectors
-3 Hold punch
-Adhesive Reinforcement Tabs (so the pages that aren't in page protectors don't rip out)
-1/2 inch binders
-Dry Erase/Wet Erase Markers
-Pencils, Markers, Crayons, etc. (whatever they prefer to write with)
Assembly of the notebooks:
Print out the pages as directed. I did double sided printing to save paper. The pages that we use daily I put in page protectors, so the What day is it, what's the temperature, etc. go into page protectors. The rest I hole punch and put reinforcement tabs on and put in the binder.
For my Tot Notebook, I used printable pages from 1+1+1=1. Zach's notebook consists of number and letter pages for him to dry erase on. I will add different pages throughout the year to keep it fresh for him. All of his pages go into page protectors, and I printed them double sided to save paper.
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| Alphabet Pages |
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| Number and Shapes pager |
How we use them:
Every morning at the beginning of our school day we sit down and go through our notebooks. We use our wall calendar and then the boys fill in their notebooks. Some days they prefer to just do their notebooks and other days they just want to do the wall calendar, and some days we do both. Either way is fine with me, I don't force them to do all of it. I also will add the Days of the Week and Months of the year song. Occasionally we will sing either our 50 States and Capitols song (via the Animaniacs!), or the Presidents song.
Other places to find great calendar notebook ideas are:
I would love to see your calendar time set up!!
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