Cool Cloth Diaper Giveaway!

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Something Exciting I Just Had To Share!

I received the most exciting email moments ago from christianbook.com. It actually was pointing out that Th eOld Schoolhouse is having a warehouse clearance sale! They are offering back issues of the magazine, their cool tote bag, and free goodies all for $25!!! I can't believe it! If you post it so that others can take advantage you get more freebies. I just wanted to get it out to all of my other homeschool mommies so that they could all take advantage of this cool offer!

I have got to get better about this!

Man, this blogging is hard work. I can't seem to make the time for it regularly but I REALLY would love to record the memories. It seems like my kids are growing everyday by leaps and bounds. And cute.....boy are they cute. Always making me laugh, leaving me guessing about what will come out of their mouth, and the games they come up with......such great imaginations.

We finished up the school year for Ty on May 20th. He was so excited to be out for the summer before his sister. We finished out with testing on his last day. That was funny. If Hayley had come home and said that she would be taking tests on the last day of school I would have thought that her teacher was such an old fuddy-dud. And yet, here I am testing right up until the end. Now who is the fuddy-dud? We didn't have an "end of the year" party as the next week was Hayley's last day of school and we then switched into her end of year festivities. She graduated 5th grade on May 24th at 6:30pm. It was a simple ceremony and over in a flash. We went to dinner at Ruby Tuesday's with all of the family following graduation. It was really nice.

Hayley is 11 years old and what a beautiful young lady she is becoming. I am not biased at all, though. She is curently playing softball and loving it. She really wants me to help her learn to pitch. I am debating on whether I really want to do this. She seems dedicated enough so we will see. She is also all signed up for another year of cheerleading. This is her first sports love. She would easily quit everything else if I made her choose. She is good at it. It is great for her socialization and helps her to learn to be more outgoing. Plus she is so tiny, they just throw her everywhere. She has no fear when it comes to stunting. She will try just about anything, making me a very nervous wreck. She also continues to fish. She has started fishing in some open tournaments with her Uncle Buddy, along with the kids tournaments. I guess you could say she is an all around tomboy. Well, a dress wearing, jewelry loving, pink dolled-up tomboy. Is that possible?

Ty is now 9 years old and I just do not know when that happened. I mean, I was there when he was born, I was at his birthday party but MAN where did the time go? I have a hard time telling people I have an 11yr old and 9 yr old. I keep wanting to say 11 and 8. I look at him and see him rapidly changing before my eyes everyday. He has grown so much over the last year physically, intellectually and emotionally. I think pulling him from the public school system allowed him to rebuild his self-esteem. It helped him to realize that, yes he DOES know something. We have had to make modifications throughout the year to accomodate for what he was able to focus on and pay attention to. But that was one of the GREATEST advantages to homeschooling this year. I was able to specifically focus on Ty and not have to worry about 30 other students and their learning styles. I am soooo excited about next year, I am ready to begin now. What is even better is Ty has come to me asking to repeat some of the cool experiments we have done so that he can show his sister. That is a love of learning that I hope to keep going in Ty and to bring back in Hayley. Ty played soccer for hte first time this season and he LOVED it. I figured it was right up his ally, high energy, constant moving. But he would cry if he had to miss practice, chose to skip spring football to go to soccer practice when they overlapped, those things surprised me. He has since shifted his focus as football starts back up on August 1st. I love watching him (and his sister for that matter) play their sports.

The kids have started the summer youth program at the church we have been attending. I am REALLY loving it and so are the kids. They are making tons of friends and learning so much. There is Camp Read-A-Lot first, where the kids are reading books and getting prizes for reading so many. Then there is The Plunge, where the kids play in the water and learn about God through music. The church also offers an amazing bible study for married couples and parents through the summer. I am learning a lot and really loving that while the kids are playing in their program I am also growing closer to God. VBS is coming up the end of the month and music camp is next month so the kids will have plenty of activities to keep them entertained.

We renewed our Dollywood/Splash Country passes so that is something else we plan on taking advantage of this summer. The kids will also be doing worksheets to keep current on their math facts because I can't just let that go completely.

Well, this long, long post tells you where we've been and let me say (as I think I have said with every post) that I hope to be posting more frequently. I hate letting all of these memories go and not getting them down on paper.

Until next time,
Jenn

And Back To School We Go.....

So when I woke up this morning I was sooo excited to get back into our normal school routine (minus getting Hayley off to school as she still has a few days left of winter break). The kids are just finally starting to sleep in, lol. No, no, no! Time to wake up and get this day a-going. Ty wasn't too bad to wake up, of course, he was asleep by 10pm last night. Anyone who knows Ty knows that is WAY early for him. I guess his inner clock knew Mom would come a-knockin' earlier than usual this morning.

Ty actually was a bit excited to get school going himself. He ate his breakfast while I did some tidying up and then he was ready to go. "Mommy can we start with English?" Who could resist? Not me! Fortunately he kept that motivation the entire time. No whining, no complaining, no stalling. Just "get 'er done" kind of work. Lots of effort and eagerness to answer my review questions, lots of effort to get the answers right the first time, even asked for more math because I only gave him a 25 problem review sheet. Are you kidding me? Am I dreaming? I really expected some resistence to the routine since we haven't done it in a little over a week and there are all of these shiny new toys to play with. But, boy was I wrong.

I think we will spend our afternoon at the community center getting in some exercise and swimming. The weather is chilly and I don't think I could do anything outdoors at this point. I am really looking forward to spring where we can do more outdoor activities for longer periods of time.

All in all, a great way to spend a Monday. No complaining from this homeschool Momma!

So where have you been????

Hmmm, where to start……

How about August, where I left off.  Well we really got into a routine with homeschoooling.  We both love it, making it much easier to adapt to the things that we needed to change.  As our routine balanced with Ty’s school, Hayley’s schedule on public school, football and cheerleading I had to put off some things. This blog ended up being one of them.  Now that Christmas has come (and sadly gone) the schedule is lightening (at least till softball and baseball start).

As I said before we are REALLY enjoying homeschool.  Ty has really excelled at Math and English.  English was a surprise.  I didn’t realize he would enjoy that so much.  Some changes we have made to the curriculum are that we are only using MFW for the history and geography.  I love that aspect of their curriculum.  We also read the literature that is included with the program.  We do use their Bible lessons as a guideline but I felt it was a little light for him and have given it more substance.  We have taken up Apologia’s Exploring Creation through Zoology 1 for science.  I LOVE IT!! I was really struggling getting into the MFW science curriculum and it made me very nervous about Apologia’s just because I felt like I was going to have to force myself to teach it though I was bored.  Well let me tell you how wrong I was!  I really enjoy his Zoology.  The reading is so easy and yet interesting.  The experiments do not require a lot of things you wouldn’t normally have around the house but they are still so cool to do.  I don’t think we have made any other changes to our curriculum.  I guess that is a good thing since it is time to start thinking about what we are going to do in August.  I will have 2 that are homeschooled next year.  I am REALLY looking forward to that.  I miss Hayley every day while she is at school.  I  just want her home experiencing the things that Ty and I are.

I also learned of a homeschool co-op not too far from our house so I will be checking into that for the kids next school year. 

Hayley will be playing softball again here in the next few months.  Ty has decided he may want to try his hand at baseball also.  This will be his first year playing baseball.  He did have one year of T-Ball but that was all, it didn’t really hold his interest.  I don’t know what he will think of it this time around.  He is very hard to read until he tries something.

We have had a colder than usual winter here with lots of snow.  The kids have enjoyed their snow days, spending them sledding and tubing.  The snow has been real dry so very hard to build a snowman.  They did finally get one built but it was a stout little thing. We are looking forward to more snow in January and having more fun.  I think we’ll get it, lol.

We are also beginning planning for our summer vacation.  Hmmm, where to go?  I don’t know, we shall see.  Lots and lots going on here, but looking forward to more time to post on here as I do enjoy it.

Week One In Review

So with two whole days under our belt I can honestly say I am loving homeschooling Ty. It is so neat to watch him learn and see what he knows. I love that he wants to cuddle with me in most everything we do. I have a hard time getting pictures of him because he wants to be a cuddle-bug most of the time. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world because I know one day that won't be what he is in to anymore. We basically had a "preview" kind of week. We did do some math and english lessons. I was really curious to see what he knew. Thursday was hard because his brain didn't wake up with his body and he really just needed to go back to bed. Of course, Friday my brain wasn't into it after working all night Thursday night so we took things really slow. I really love the convenience of homeschooling. I learned that lesson week one. This week will contain many more "meaty" lessons and some hands-on stuff. We are super excited about that.

These are a few pictures of Ty with some things we introduced him to for his Adventures in My Father's World curriculum (one is his US notebook as we start to study each of the US States and the other is his Discoverer's Bible, which I am loving listening to him read with ease).

This is Ty doing an English practice page. I love his concentration and expression. That is so typical Ty. He is such a joy to be teaching and I only hope I do him justice with it. Now I am off to prep the book basket for the week and make sure I have all of the craft supplies ready to go.

First Day of School

School started for Hayley on Thursday. Her fifth grade year! Wow, how did that happen? I got up and gave her some options for breakfast. She decided she wanted toaster strudel and eggs. As I went about fixing her breakfast she got ready for school. I mean dressed, hair done, teeth brushed, bag packed....EVERYTHING. And I never had to remind her. She is such a joyful, wonderful girl that I can't imagine my days without her. She is so full of personality and wits that she makes me laugh so much. I just hate that she is maturing SO fast. I like having to "parent" her. It never consists of more than "Please don't do that". She is no trouble at all. She really showed her age and maturity when she took off getting ready for school with no prompts from me. She came home from school laughing. She had taken a "test" on following directions carefully and failed. It was one of those tricky ones that the first directions says "Read all directions carefully before doing anything" and then it tells you to do a bunch of stuff but then the last one says "Now only do #2." Lol, oops. She only has a couple of friends from last year in her class but she informed me she got to see all of the others plenty. I asked her if seeing her friends changed her feelings about being homeschooled next year and she said no, awww. I love her so much. This is her headed out the door Thursday morning.
So we started school on Thursday with Ty also. I figured an abbreviated week would give us an opportunity to get into the swing of things without it being too overwhelming for Ty or causing any meltdowns for me. The lessons were modified to extend into next week so that "if", after all of this planning and organizing, we were missing something I would have time to fix it. He woke up fairly easily after not going to bed until the wee hours of the morning (he refuses to give up his summer schedule). He quickly listened to all of the information I had to give him about rules and expectations, routines, subjects we will cover, things we will do, etc. I let him choose what we would start with and he chose English. I was shocked. I thought for sure it would be math or history. So we got started.....with English. He was very sleepy and you could tell his brain was not with it. We worked through it though. I mean it's the first day, you can't possibly get out early on day one. When we got to math he was falling asleep watching his Math U See demonstration. I felt bad for him but we hung with it and finished in about an hour and a half. He said "We are done? Completely done? I can have recess and play wii the rest of the day done?" I said "Yes." He said "How many hours until we go get Hayley?" I said "About 4." He said "I LOVE homeschool!" LOL He quickly told Hayley that again when we picked her up. She didn't mind hearing that and I hope she continues to feel that way. I worry she will feel left out or something because I chose not to homeschool her this year. She has NEVER given me any indication that she feels this way and is very good about telling you if something is bothering her. So this is Ty's picture of his first morning as a third grader. I don't enforce a dress code, I enforce comfort. You can't see it in the picture but he also had a fleece blanket he kept snuggling with while he listened and worked.