Category: All About Homeschooling!

Our General Homeschooling 4

Our General Homeschooling

I’ve been itching to do a posting about our general homeschool schedule/day. What things we cover aside from the units I so often post about. Reading: Both DD and LD are good readers now.  DD is reading easier chapter books while LD is on longer chapter books now. They both get up in the morning and read while eating breakfast. I always sprinkle our dining room room table with books...

Collection — Our Morning Circle Time 0

Collection — Our Morning Circle Time

 Our mornings have been really lovely this semester. I tried to change things up a bit and I’m really enjoying the flow of the day.  Usually ED and I are the first ones up.  Since the weather has cooled down and we still haven’t turned on the furnace, I have been lighting a fire in our wood stove in the homeschool room.  ED and I snuggle up and read while...

Our Monthly Family Meeting 6

Our Monthly Family Meeting

We started something new in our family this year.  We decided the kids were old enough for a monthly family meeting. Here are some of the things we do in our family meeting: We gathered and went around the circle and said one nice thing about somebody else at the table. We brainstormed on something fun to do together as a family after the family meeting.  We wrote down our...

Math Update (LD, 3rd grade and DD 1st grade) 0

Math Update (LD, 3rd grade and DD 1st grade)

Life’s been rolling along, but it’s been hard to find time to post. Partly because odd jobs have taken up my spare time — painting a hallway, cutting wood for the wood stove in our homeschool room, creating a new garden for some more blueberry plants, mountains of laundry and trying to clean and catch up with the house. It’s left little time for the computer. One thing I haven’t...

Practical Life: Manners 2

Practical Life: Manners

We have had a day of the week for each child for several years now.  We call it L-day or D-day or E-day. On that day that child gets to go into the car first and a couple other things, but also they have some extra responsibilities on that day like emptying the dishwasher and doing a bathroom swish-and-swipe (which they love, believe it or not!) Well, I decided L-day...

Losing Someone 14

Losing Someone

I just found out that one of my dearest friends, Debbie, died.  My heart is so sad, I’m having a tough time quelling the tears. Debbie was one of the most beautiful people you’d ever meet — someone who was an inspiration in the way she lived her life. She  had a deep faith that kept her going through the loss of her husband and raising her three young children...

Starting Our New Routine 5

Starting Our New Routine

Sorry about the endless postings about our ocean unit… just a couple more and that’s that!  Blogs are funny because they sure don’t show the whole picture. From looking at our blog our days are consumed by oceans!!  Heh heh! Well, that’s not at all accurate.  I read and read, planned and planned and finally the older kids started back to school last week. As you’ve seen, ED has been...

LD turned 8 4

LD turned 8

LD turned 8 almost two weeks ago.We had a family celebration on his big day since my brother-in-law and nephew were here on LD’s birthday.  Then we had a small party for friends last weekend. He likes Harry Potter and is reading through those books — thus the Hogwart’s Castle cake (or my attempt!!)

Earthquake 8

Earthquake

The east coast just had an earthquake.  The news says it was 5.8 on the richtor scale — and what that meant for us was lots and lots of shaking and rattling. A few things fell of our shelves in the pantry, but we don’t see any other damage at this point. We read that the Capitol, Pentagon and White House are being evacuated.  It sure scared us!

Skip Counting Songs for learning the 6s, 7s and 8s 3

Skip Counting Songs for learning the 6s, 7s and 8s

Late at night my brain often whirls with ideas.  Last spring I put the skip counting patterns to familiar tunes since LD is working on his basic multiplication facts.  For example, I put the 7s to the tune of ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat.’  LD learned that so well I went back and created another tune for the 6s and the 8s which he’ll be working on again this fall....

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Preschool Routine, Tuesdays

ED’s Tuesday Routine: So you heard yesterday that I’m planning to use biome/habitat themes with ED this fall. This is what I have planned in a general way for Tuesdays: Arts and Crafts (based on the theme) Montessori Math Beads; Math Activities Science Sorts (Long post and link to my 30-pages of notes, etc.!) Arts and Crafts The girls painted boxes to make a diorama. Now all this needs is...

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Preschool Routine, Mondays

ED’s Monday Routine: The idea of planning all this is so that I can change up ED’s activities, keep them fresh, interesting with the minimum of thought on my part.  I expect to skip days, but then I’ll just pick up on the appropriate day and continue on.  The routine is (hopefully) to make it easier on me to keep things engaging for ED. Mailbox Letters and Scavenger Hunt Montessori...

Our Homeschool Room Setup 0

Our Homeschool Room Setup

I often enjoy having a glimpse at other people’s homeschool setups.  We had quite a small house over in Australia, but we are now blessed with this amazingly large, airy homeschool room. We have bright colorful workboxes. Each kid has their own row, but I do not fill them every day with new things. Instead their basic subjects get stored here (including the manipulatives, new games, activities and printouts).  It...