Keeping It Simple

While driving home today from a homeschool activity with my son and my nephews, it was observed that one of the young ladies who did participate is no longer attending. This of course leads to a conversation: Kyle: Yeah, she goes to public school now. Me: I wonder what happened. Kyle: Her parents made her go. Me: Oh, how do you know that? Kyle: Well, they must have. Who doesn't want to homeschool? We get to do school in our pajamas!! No reason for this picture- just some happy homeschoolers. Then, I sat down to eat lunch with my boys. Our conversation was about becoming fluent in speaking Spanish. James is excited because a friend's mom speaks Spanish (and very little English), so he is enjoying the opportunity to jump in and try talking- although he says he probably sounds like a 2 year old. I was telling my boys to look for opportunities to speak to people who are fluent. In explaining some opportunities their sisters had, I mentioned that their one sist...

NOT BLOG HOP I love to participate in the Not Back To School Blog Hops. August was just not having it though! So here is our "Not Back to School All in One" post. Meet the students: Our oldest student at home is Paul. He is 15. He LOVES volleyball! If there is a kid around, he/she will usually find Paul. He is always willing to give a ride, read a book, or have a good wrestling match with the little ones in his life. He loves to be doing- biking, boarding, snow boarding, long boarding... School, he does not love so much, but always mostly keeps a great attitude. Mark is "the middle child" in our homeschool. Mark loves football (playing flag and watching the Raiders), anything to do with the Civil War, dogs (that's his dog Fozzie up there), drawing, and generally being a goof ball. If there is a fussy baby in the crowd, Mark is your man. He has patience galore with the little ones. As far as studies go, he is an interest led man- if he ...

We began our dog unit study today. I just posted a really cute, fun little movie that might lead you to believe that it was all sugar and spice and everything nice around here today. Oh, that's right- I have boys! What was I thinking? ;) Plan A (the one that did not go smoothly): 1- We walk out to the school room to find an unexpected mess (another story all together). 2- The dog notebook pages that I thought I had bookmarked on my computer weren't there. 3- Found some notebook pages at a good price. It took ten minutes to find a credit card to pay for them, and then the download would not work. 4- Four vocabulary words were just too much for my 10yo to write (picture big crocodile tears). 5- 8yo had a major case of the sillies. 6- Every time I turned around, the item I needed at that moment went missing. Sigh!! Big sis walks in and offers to take the boys to the pool this afternoon- my first thought: No! They are going to stay and get this done. My s...

The thing that strikes me most is how different my "day in the life" looks now than it ever has. I am homeschooling with no littles!! Sad, but true! While browsing through the other posts  (on the not back to school blog hop), I read many by those who are still in "that phase" of schooling, and I honestly do forget how exhausting and challenging those days were!! Our days are a bit more predictable now. This is our "plan", so to speak. It is known to change at the drop of a hat (or an invitation to the beach--- as the case may be!)                                                 Our Morning Routine Wake Make breakfast (helper assigned), boys eat while I read to them Family prayer time Chores- I find that starting the day with the h...

One of the things that I love in our homeschool is that the older children can ( get to ) work with the younger ones. There are two angles on this: 1. I get a break. Always a good angle. ;) 2. More importantly, just like we, as adults, learn so much from teaching our children, the older children learn when they teach too. Nothing cements a concept like teaching it! One more plus-- some of these "little kid" projects are really fun, and this format allows the older children to participate without doing "little kid school". They take pride in being the teacher. In this setting (doing a sink and float experiment back in January), Mark (9yo) is more the facilitator than the teacher for his little brother (6yo), and he is doing a great job. He brought a lot of enthusiasm to the project that I probably would not have. After the official experiment was finished, the boys continued, in one form or another, to play with this on and off all day. :) *I s...