school: day 1

What a day! I know I say that a lot but, today, I mean it!

School went well. I tried my best to set my bar really low. Not because I had low expectations of my children, which would be sad, but because I had low expectations of me. I am not a great teacher and I am completely inexperienced. I had no idea what to do if the kids became disruptive. Do you kick them out of school? Suspension on the first day? That would be rough. Do I require them to raise their hands? Or just say “Excuse me, Mommy?” I was clueless.

I was determined, however, not to sweat it. I knew that, even if I completely bombed, tomorrow would be a new day, and I could learn from whatever it was that had made today disastrous.

But it wasn’t disastrous. Stressful, yes. Mind-numbing, in a sense. But did we accomplish what we set out to do? Definitely!

What I have learned already, regarding each child:

Noah:

• This kid was born for school! He loves it! And at this point, that is the most important thing to me. He calls me “Teacher Mommy”. I told him he doesn’t have to do that, but he insists. What manners!
• He raises his hand before he speaks a word. He must have learned that at church. It’s super-cute and his brothers are catching on quickly. Plus, it helps me to not lose my mind!
• We have been lazy with catechism since we moved to New Mexico, but he retained much of it. He sped right through it today. That’s a relief!
• He looked at me like he was insulted as he worked through his critical thinking in about less than one minute. I haven’t looked much ahead, but I hope it gets more challenging.
• Math was great! He wasn’t excited about it at first but as soon as he saw there were cutouts and he got to glue them all, he loved it!
• The kid knows more about phonics than I thought he did.
• In summary, I am beyond impressed.

Samuel:

• He is ready for some, but not all, of what we are doing. Circle time= great! Phonics= great! Unit Study= Not so much. It is very long and very scripted. As I was reading through it with them today, I thought to myself: “I am going to have to paraphrase a lot of this. It is a little boring and they already understand a lot of what it is trying to get across.” I remember thinking that it feels so scripted that if someone had been in our dining room watching me teach, I would have been so embarrassed by how much I felt like I was reading off a teleprompter. I have some tweaking to do to engage Sammy as well.
• Critical thinking and math were at the end of school and, by that point, his brain was so fried I didn’t even bother. I gave him some different (and easier) math and he enjoyed that. He thought he was playing and he was actually learning (thanks for the tip, Kacie)!
• Sammy definitely has to be engaged. And he does best if it is individually. I am trying to look at him more when I am talking. Noah doesn’t really need me to look at him as much. I kind of feel like I am short-changing Noah. If it persists or gets worse, I’ll reevaluate.

Simon:

• The kid is doing circle time with us and he loves it! He kinda dances around like we are playing ring around the rosey, but it’s super cute.
• He raises his hands (yes, both hands) when the other boys do and waits for me to call on him. When I do, he says “banana” or something irrelevant. Actually, it wasn’t irrelevant. It was during phonics and we were doing the letter “b”. He kept shouting “bbbbbbbuh!” with his brothers and seemed to actually get it! He is able to participate a lot more than I thought he could. YAY!
• When we sing he thinks it is the funniest thing in the world. He runs around laughing and tries to jump up and down, even though he can’t really jump yet.

Myself:

• Continue to chill out. Like I said, every day is a new day!
• Do as many crock pot meals as possible. After school, my brain was fried and the last thing I wanted to do was cook!
• Have something prepared in advance for Simon to do during his room time. Today I stopped to get him to his playpen and find him some books and toys and it totally threw the other two off course.

P.S. The boys are really excited that God’s gift to them was the world. They have been talking about it all day. They also made “Timmy Triangles” with popsicle sticks and that was really exciting for them too=)

my first box day (as all the other gals call it)

Our math books came today! I am so excited I think I wanted to do them myself. They really look like they won’t be much of a challenge for Noah, but maybe I am overestimating his intelligence LOL! We’ll see! Now we wait for the rest!

*sigh* I did it…I’m glad I did it…I feel relieved…and now I feel ready!

A month or two back, I was doubting (seriously doubting) my ability to school the boys. Maybe it was the morning sickness? I’m not sure. Whatever it was, I was utterly blessed to have many homeschooling friends come alongside me and challenge me (encourage me, exhort me, whatever…) to evaluate why I doubting myself and really helped me to examine my motives.

Fast forward to this month and, well, here I am… ready to go! I’m not planning a very intensive first year, as a baby will arrive in January, but here is what I (I could say we, but I would be lying, wouldn’t I?) went with:

Phonics/Reading: Teach Your Child To Read In A Hundred Easy Lessons. I really, really wanted to go with a program that I thought would work better with Sammy as well, such as Sing, Spell, Read, and Write, but it was NOT a budget-friendly option so it was out. I figure it can’t hurt to try it (since we already owned it) and see how it goes, especially with Noah. If I am not pleased with it, I may switched to Happy Phonics, either in the winter or next fall.

Math: Singapore Math Earlybird Kindergarten Activity Books A and B. I am in love with the concept behind Singapore Math and really never considered any other curriculum. Kacie- I did go with the activity books through Singapore Math. As I was reading the information on the other earlybird books at Rainbow Resource it said that those books, although they carried the name Earlybird, were not made by the makers of Singapore Math. I don’t know if you knew that. Never-the-less, I know you loved them, but I thought I would give these others a try. We’ll see! The only thing that concerns is that I didn’t realize until after I placed my order that I ordered kindergarten, and not pre-k, math. I guess I am going to find out how good in fact my children are at math=)! If these books are too advanced, I may order something different and saves these for later.

Critical Thinking: Building Thinking Skills and Visual Perceptual Skill Building Book1 by Critical Thinking Company. I am probably most excited about these books than anything else I ordered!

Bible: We will use The Big Book of Questions and Answers. We already own it. We haven’t really used it much and I have heard nothing but wonderful things about it!

I also ordered the Alpha Omega Weaver Interlock preschool program. It is Unit Study-esque and I am oh-so-excited about it. And- thanks to Kacie- I found it at Rainbow Resource for almost $20 off retail price. YAY!

I want to say I can’t believe it, but I can.

Check out this article from Dr. Mohler’s blog.

Great Resource!

Have you seen Homeschool Enrichment? If not, you should check it out! My friend, Heather, mentioned it a while back, but since her site is private, you probably didn’t see it!

You can request a free issue of their magazine, Homeschool Enrichment. I got mine a couple days ago and it is a great magazine! The homeschooling family themselves who run the website are actually the editors of the magazine.

Check out their site and request your free copy today!

Saturdays are great days for long posts!

What a beautiful northeastern New Mexico day! We’ve spent the majority of it in Colorado, but it’s the same thing basically…

I feel like I have so much to say today! How can I condense it before my “incapable of napping” kiddos begin to scream? I’ll try. Daddy is upstairs watching the Cardinals play so he is kinda keeping an ear out for them as well.

I love links and I love resources so I’ll start there. I found what I am sure will be an AWESOME CD from an always awesome group, the Getty’s. They have put out a children’s CD entitled Songs That Jesus Said: Scripture Into Music. It is on sale for back to school and I will for sure be purchasing it with my BLOW money for the month! Check it out here!

Secondly, I cannot say that I have always been the biggest Mercy Me fan, but I do love their song from the album Coming Up To Breathe, “Bring The Rain.” Here are the lyrics:

I can count a million times
People asking me how I
Can praise You with all that
I’ve gone through
The question just amazes me
Can circumstances possibly
Change who I forever am in You

Maybe since my life was changed
Long before these rainy days
It’s never really ever crossed my mind
To turn my back on you, oh Lord
My only shelter from the storm
But instead I draw closer through these times
So I pray

Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there’ll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that’s what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

I am yours regardless of the clouds that may
loom above because you are much greater than
my pain you who made a way for me suffering
your destiny so tell me whats a little rain
So I pray

Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there’ll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that’s what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy
is the lord God almighty
is the lord God almighty
I’m forever singing

Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy
is the lord God almighty
is the lord God almighty

everybody singing
Holy holy holy
you are holy
you are holy

Today has been a busy, but great, family day. We went over the pass to Colorado to do our grocery shopping. We took the boys to a fantastic park, which was VERY comparable to the waterfront in Louisville. The river, however, was much much smaller. That’s the “partial” desert for you. Shopping for groceries for 2 weeks is tough stuff with 3 kiddos in carts, especially when you are doing you Sam’s Club-esque shopping, without the Sam’s club of course=)

When we got home from the store, I came to one stark realization: the fridge needed help. The situation was not pretty. Are any of you brave enough to admit that there are just times when you thank God that the department of sanitation didn’t decide to stop by because if they had, the next phone call would have been made to social services, which would result in your children being taken into foster care? LOL… I am admitting it! You name it: old veggies, bad elk meat, probably some iced tea that was far past its “full of antioxidants” phase! But at least it is clean now and you actually see the items in the fridge in compartments (meat, dairy, veggies, etc…)

Simon is almost 1! That just can’t be right! I was just pregnant with him. This reality struck me today as I bought formula for the last time. We have tried him on milk and sippy cups and he is doing great so we are going to begin the initial switch to cow’s milk this month. I also know that we are approaching the end of his baby food days. He simply wants what we are eating and baby food is so expensive as well. And the last thing I have time to do is make homemade baby food. I am saddened because, as a mother, I know this transition is one place where I usually perform poorly. Once my kids are off formula and baby food, it usually signifies the beginning of the juice addiction and an incomplete portion of daily fruits and veggies. In New Mexico you HAVE to drink water…lots of it. So I can at least be fairly certain that Simon won’t have the juice addiction as I have now finally broken the boys from it. Our family of five used to go through 3 to 4 bottles of juice a week. Now it is one. They get one cup of juice a day. I plan to honestly not put juice in sippys for Simon for the most part so that we won’t have the same problem. My friend Traci just does not give her boys any juice so they never have wanted it. I am sad, though. My baby is growing up! I have a hard time without an infant. I love the infant phase!

On the way home from the store, David and I had a schooling chat. We discussed our plans for this year. He wanted to go through the “how it’s gonna work” chat again since he has never really expressed any strong feelings toward home or public schooling in the past. I explained to him some things I had been researching. I told him of the pearls each of you had shared with me. He shared as well some things he had been reading. One floored me.

In David’s current read, entitled Hurt, by Chap Clark, he has been learning much about the world today for teenagers. On the issue of school (public), he quoted me something he had recently read himself:

“A high school junior who arrives home from school promptly at 5:30 after volleyball practice begins a four- to- six hour nightly ordeal called homework- on an average night. She has dinner over a textbook, which allows her to avoid conversation with her mom, and falls asleep exhausted at midnight, only to rise at 5:30 the next morning for band practice before her 7:00 AP calculus class.”

Can you believe that? I can. I experienced it. And this is one area that furthermore sparks mine, and David’s, interest in schooling our children. With a much smaller ratio and, from home, the ability to see where our children find most of their interest, our kids will be much more capable of spending their time wisely as opposed to much of the time that we feel just isn’t necessary in many public schools today. And, as parents of boys, we feel that especially in the elementary years, we can give our children the much-needed time to just be kids and PLAY! I hope this makes sense. It made sense to us, but sometimes I have a hard time conveying=)

I hope you all have an excellent weekend full of rest, worship, and fun!