Days 3, 4 and 5 of our first week.

I can't believe our first week of homeschooling is under our belt. It kinda seems surreal. Tuesday was a hard day but despite that, and even through that, I feel really blessed to be doing this. A small part of me feels like we're breaking some kind of rule because it seems too good to be true to have my kids home with me, and I feel like someone's gonna come say "Hey...get those kids back in school!!" and make them leave.

Happily, I know that's not gonna happen and I will get to keep enjoying them and watching them grow closer together. I have to say how amazed I am that in such a short time they do seem to be growing closer. Because they've been out of school now for over 3 weeks with Christmas break, they've been spending a lot of time together, and the more they do, the more they seem to get along. Yesterday they were in their room for almost an hour just playing together. I couldn't be happier about that, and its those times that I will focus on when things get tough.

One other cute thing I've really enjoyed is, every morning the kids bless themselves with Holy water before we start our day, and since then I have caught Katie several times, pushing a little chair over to the wall where the holy water font is and saying "holy water" in her cute, little innocent voice and then dipping her hand in saying "amen". She loves it! And I love that she does!!

DAY 3

Wednesday was a good day. We had a trip to the store planned with "Mom mom" (their grandmom) to get supplies to make rosary boxes. (Little boxes to hold their rosaries.) Because we knew we had a trip planned we didn't have a long school day planned and that made them happy, as well as motivated them to finish quickly.


*(Click on any picture to see it bigger)

Charlie is practicing writing his letters.



He is such a little Sunshine! :)




Jackson was practicing cursive for his first time. They learned pre-cursive at school, so I figured I'd better start slowly breaking him into cursive.




Katie was busy updating her own blogs on all her laptops! :)




Jackson with his completed letters. I was so impressed for his first time how well he did.




Charlie also did a great job!




Boys are such characters...I remember many a picture growing up with my brother making some kind of a silly face.

We're back from our shopping trip with Mom Mom and ready to paint and decorate our rosary boxes.

Jackson and Mom Mom are working very intently!

Everybody enjoys painting.

Wednesday afternoon we had friends over. The girls wanted to pretend to do homeschooling too! :)

My niece and possible future teacher like her mama...she's already teaching her classmates to read in kindergarten!

Our backyard fire pit in the freezing South Florida weather. :)




DAY 4

The rosary boxes after the paint dried and we decorated them.

That's my only picture from day 4. We had a trip to the grocery planned. I got all ambitious and decided I would make it a "learning" trip, so I gave them a lesson on rounding up or down to the nearest dollar thinking maybe it would keep their interest and be fun if they could help me keep a running tally on where we were at with prices at the store. Well, I think the concept was a little lost on them, and it might have worked better if I was only picking up 5-10 items, but we ended up getting a big cart full and after two isles, they cared no longer. Oh well...I tried. :)


DAY 5 (We made it to the end of the week...yippee!!) :)

Showing off their boxes with pride.

So because we had shopping trips planned on Wednesday and Thursday I wanted to have today be all about school. We accomplished a lot, the boys were really good, and we even managed to do a fun little science experiment.


I had read online about a fun, easy experiment with ants. You fill 4 or 5 small cups up with different edible items and put them near an ant hill and guess which thing you think the ants will go after most. Then you leave them for a half hour or so and see if you were right and what they liked.

We have our items all ready to go.

We tried syrup.

Cookie crumbs.

Sugar

And pickle...just to switch it up a little.

We tried our best to find a good ant hill...we found two or three stray ants and figured that was the best we were going to get.

We all made our predictions: Jackson- syrup

Charlie- cookie crumbs

Mom- sugar

Jackson declared himself the winner because when we went back all the syrup was gone, hence the #1 finger in the air. (I didn't have the heart to tell him that I was pretty sure it all just spilled out into the ground and got absorbed by the earth.) I didn't see more than one or two ants and I think they were "crazy ants" because they seemed to just be running all around. We may have to try this one again in the spring when there are more ants around.

So we close our first week. I feel like I am learning a lot about thinking more "outside the box", and know I still have a looooong way to go, but so far, its been a fun journey! :)

Please keep checking back in. I think I'll try to update once a week or if something neat or interesting happens.

2nd Day of School

Alright, so the second day was a lot harder than the first. I had anticipated these first few months being the toughest, with all the adjusting all parties involved would have to do, and sure enough the tough days kicked in right away!

We started off pretty good.

Here's Jackson with his math book and some poker chips to make it counting more fun. (The red ones are supposed to be "tens" and the white are "ones".)




Charlie wanted some too....but mostly for "building with". :)

So we started off good, but after that everything seemed like such a chore for them. It was like pulling teeth to get them to keep moving. I even had "typing" planned as fun activity for Jackson after one of his more difficult subjects (English) to try to entice him to hurry along. It didn't work, but unfortunately threats of "sassy sauce" did the trick. I have been really wanting to make school fun and don't want to be on them or yell or fuss, I don't want them to have a bad taste for it. But at the same time the need to learn that just because we're home it doesn't mean we're not going to work. Like I said we have a lot of adjusting to do. (ALL of us.)

We did eventually make it to typing.

I found this neat electric typewriter on Craigslist for $15!!! I was so excited. Here we're working on Jackson learning the home keys. I have a print out of a keyboard and a picture of two hands and where they should go on the board in front of him. Then Jackson puts his hands on the home keys and I hold a paper over his hands so he can't see them or the keys and I'll tell him which home key to press. If he needs help he just looks at the board in front of him, not his hands, and this should train him to not need to look at the computer. I have to say we both really enjoyed this, and had much needed fun together. :)

We finished a few more school subjects, then Jackson's last box was a logic puzzle, that was fun and it helped us end they day well. (I have to admit between the pictures of the typing and the logic puzzles, there were some more unpleasant "conversations"-if that's what you want to call them. But we made it!

So day 2 was hard, at times I was tempted to call his school and ask for his spot back....but I know that's just a part of it. And I didn't make this decision because I thought it would be easy, I did it because I love my kids and want to give them my best, even if that means giving them my all...and by my all I mean ALL my patience!!

I just pray that Day 3 goes smoother, and if it doesn't then I pray God gives me the strength to get through it. :)

Our 1st Day of Homeschooling...ever!

Okay so today was our 1st day of Homeschooling..ever!!



*(Click on any pictures to see bigger)




I had been anticipating this day for a couple of months now. I have been busy researching, reading up, talking to other HS moms, and scouring the Internet for ideas, information and help. So by the time today arrived I felt as prepared as possible for going into the great "unknown".


One of the great tools I came across while researching on the Internet was this awesome organizational system by this lady named Sue Patrick. She created something called the "workbox system". Briefly, you get workboxes for each kid, up to 12 each (we're starting out using 9 each). Anyway, you lay their whole day out in these workboxes and something called schedule strips that co-ordinate with the workboxes. So the kids start with their workbox labeled 1 (it has their 1st subject or project in it, and any and every thing they may need..i.e. a pencil, scissors, glue, etc.). Then they go onto workbox 2 and so on. The system is supposed to help foster independence, they can go get their next subject when they're done with the previous one. As well as providing them some structure and letting them know exactly how much they have left, thus eliminating the question every 5 minutes of "how much do we have left". Its all laid out for them, they know exactly whats left.






Here are the boxes empty before I filled them, you can see the numbers on the outside. (Each kid has 3 to a shelf).





Here they are full, ready for the kids!


After getting the workbox system in place I felt really good that I had a handle on things and was ready for our first day. At lease I would look like I knew what I was doing..haha.


So first thing after the kids woke up and had breakfast they had to report to their chore chart.





After they finished a chore they would take it off the ribbon and put it in the envelope.

Then after all the chores were complete (which I have to say the RACED through...I don't know if it was the excitement of the 1st day, or if it was the satisfaction of getting to take off a pic and put it in the envelope, or both, but they got them done in record time!) it was time for them to "check in" to school.




They really liked this part.



Now onto school...




They each grabbed their "schedule strips" and reported to the dining room table.

Here are my little cuties all ready to start!

*Note that they each had their water bottles with them...part of the fun of homeschooling. :)

So we started by blessing ourselves with Holy Water (meant to include a picture..sorry), Lord knows I'm going to need all the help I can with the task He put me up to, so I figure I need the blessing and so do they! :) Then we do our morning prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance (I need a flag). I was very impressed, both of them knew the words by heart...great one less thing for me to worry about! ;)

Then we did calendar, days of the week, and the Saint of the Day. Interestingly enough the Saint today was Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton who founded Catholic education in America and who our curriculum is named after, Seton. Just another little confirmation that this is right where we are meant to be.

After our group time it is on to the workboxes and school work.

We're off to a great start!

After a couple of subjects they were ready for snack.

Then back to the ole grindstone.

PE today was jump rope...it was great for about 5 minutes, but then they all complained that it was too cold.

Even Katie got into the mix. :)

Back to finish up the work.

Finally a nice group activity that even Katie got to do!

Over all our 1st day went really really well. I found out that 4 year olds don't have the same attention spans for working that "almost 7" year olds have. And I also realized that "almost 7" year olds are very concerned with why the 4 year old is not doing as much as him. I have some tweaking and adjusting to do for sure, but so far couldn't be happier with how our 1st day went!!

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my blog!! I've decided to create this blog to document and share our family's journey into Homeschooling. I wanted a visual way to record our activities, as well as an easy way to share with family and friends.

I hope you enjoy this glimpse into our lives. :)