This year, our homeschooling has primarily focused on our oldest with our middle child doing small bits of work but nothing required and our youngest just learning to sit and focus on a small task for a bit of time. He is my ALL boy so he needs lots of outside time and loves any type of water work and trucks. Lots and lots of trucks.

Last night when they were getting ready for bed, I sang them the ABC song as they swished their fluoride and for some reason, this was the time he wanted to know all about the ABC’s. He went to bed singing the song and it stayed with him until morning. He brought me the sandpaper letters and asked to learn his ABC’s. So we sat down and had a little phonics lesson with our little 3 year old. The older two were pleased as punch to listen to him doing “big kid” work and he was rather pleased with himself as well. He is sure to remind me daily he IS NOT a baby anymore. I have to remind Jackson to stop correcting him or giggling at him, and Chloe to stop helping him and just LET HIM BE! Oh the poor third child has so many Mommies.

I am also experimenting with starting Jackson on a work plan idea, so that I can sit and work with the younger two. The idea being, I give Jackson his list of things to be done for the day, and he begins working on the things, that he can do without my total aid and support, giving me time to work on other things with the younger two that he already has mastered. Today I saw a little glimpse of that working out. I walked around today like I was the most organized innovative teacher around. You’d of thought I won the Noble peace prize or something.

Give me the props peeps!

I have found a few great links for you to use with your kids at home. I always enjoy getting a good tip so I thought I would give you all a few links that may inspire you over your Winter Break.

Science with Me is a good resource for science based worksheets, ebooks and projects.  It is may be helpful to throw into your homeschooling mix.

Family Fun Time is a site with tons of ideas on crafts, recipes and ways to have “family time”.  My partners and I have been slowly working on this over the past few months.  It has been a labor of love for all of us.

And last but certainly not least is Me and My Girl.  If you have been around my blog much at all you may be familiar with Randi a loyal commenter.  Her blog is a great read but her second site Me and My Girl gives great tips and crafts to do with your little ones at home.  Especially if you need help with hand craft ideas.

So there you have it!  Have fun!

I have a 3 and a 4 year old rambling around throughout our schooling day.  I have found several activities to keep their busy hands…well busy if you know what I mean.

Our children love to be in the kitchen and our youngest is no exception.  A “cutting work” is always one of his favorite activities.  Bananas, cheese, watermelon and cucumbers  are all worthy candidates for beginning cutting activities.   For my older children I may try this though.

 Today, I let our three year old spread natural peanut butter on his banana slices.  Focus, control, attention to detail and fine motor skills all come into play.  Plus a bonus, he is getting his own snack.  He was very proud of himself accomplishing this skill…and I was very happy to have him busy.

I have found a wonderful free software that allows you to download  handwriting fonts onto your computer and create tons of handwriting activities for your preschooler.

I can customize them, and then save them on my desktop and use them over and over.  We have  one notebook that we keep all of our work in.  Keeps our days a bit more streamlined.

Next week we begin week #12 of AO year 1 cirr.  We will then have our oral exams.  I am adding some grace and courtesy things in to the exam but for the most part will use what AO prescribes.

I have done a good job of staying on target.  It is amazing how flexible we have been with our schedule but still been able to stay in task with what we need to finish in the way of course work.

Overall we have had a great beginning.  I am still weak on foreign language and hand craft. We will work on that in term #2. I have mostly been doing painting and cooking in the kitchen for all three as our handcraft.  Our youngest (just three this Sunday) is happy as a clam with his Montessori style practical life works.  Our daughter jumps in and out of lessons as she is drawn to them.  She always sits through her older brothers literature readings an phonics Lessons and requests some of her own too.  She also loves her MUS primer.  Our oldest just read “The Story of Ferdinand” by himself yesterday and giggled the whole way through.  He was so tickled that he was reading a real book and not a “learning reader or phonics lesson”  afterwards he said, “Mom can’t I just read a few pages of Ferdinand everyday instead of having a phonics lesson?”  We only have 20 left so I want to finish them through so I have the experience of teaching it for our next children. 

I love how well rounded the entire course cirr is.  How everything spirals into each other.  It is one masterpiece that is being painted in front of your child, from history to art study to what is going on with Gods People. I am not tweaking anything but doing what AO has prescribed completely and that is why I love it.  I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. ANYONE can do this, really!  Honestly, I am not a trained teacher.  I never liked to play teacher as a child.  I hate busy paper work type things.  In my mind I thought that was what homeschooling was.  I laugh at myself now. 

If this blog does anything, my prayer is that people on the outside looking in would see that you really can do this. So that is my term one update! Thanks for all the encouragement along the way and for everyone who pointed me in this direction. There are too many to name, but I am deeply grateful to all.

Peace to you on this rainy October morning~

I can’t say enough about the Ambleside Online website and its free curriculum resources for the Charlotte Mason method.  I am deeply indebted to all the people and all the hours spent on creating well rounded, balanced resources for parents to implement in their home schools. 

Between all of the articles archived on the site and all the discussion threads contained in the yahoo groups, anyone who wants to provide a well rounded, classical education for their children can jump right in and get started.  The thing that overwhelmed me the most about homeschooling before I got started was the many different types of curriculum out their and how prepacked so much of it felt.  I know that works wonderfully for so many, but somehow it wasn’t inspiring me.

To really grasp something and own it I need to be inspired by it and that is what I am getting through this website.  If you need a little inspiration or direction with your homeschool, check out their site or the new CM Blog Carnival that has started. There are so many tips and thoughts it will keep you inspired for your homeschool journey.  

Our first home school field trip with our local PEC group was so much fun.  My dear Mom watched the youngest children so I could go with our six year old alone.  It was such a joy.  All I could think of as I heard his cries of wonder and enjoyment was, “This is why I am homeschooling! This could of been experienced by some teacher fresh out of college.  She would of barely noticed because her class room is too crowded and she isn’t making enough money to live here and my little treasure would of been lost in the cracks.”    It was a very fufilling day.

I also connected with another home school Mom who is using AO for her daughters YRS1 and 4 so I am thankful to find a local resource to bounce things off of.  

Here is Jackson with the figures of the Astronauts.  I think it is so sweet how he is holding the big ones hand. 

This is the device that projected the images on the planetarium’s dome.  They were beautiful and Jackson was mesmerized.

He could of stayed all day at the science games. 

He asked if this was the name of some Pharaoh out of a book we read a few weeks ago.  It took me a minute to remember who he was talking about.   I said “No, just a small child sized mummy.”  We wondered who it was and how their life could of been.

All in all it was wonderful. Go explore something new in your community this week.  It is a BLAST!

Well, everyday is read out loud day here, but it REALLY is today.  5am and it is raining, and raining and raining.  It has been raining consistently for 10 days now so the kids and I will snuggle up with some good books today.

I am very excited about The Lion Tree that Ruth Willms just sent me.  I started reading it out loud yesterday to the kids and they are hooked in Chapter 1.  It is a fiction book based on the facts of Jonah, Job and Queen Esther.  It has the feel of Chronicles of Narnia so I will keep you posted on how it goes and do  an in depth book review when we are done.

Peace to all~ 

My thought was to do a little school each day while we have been away at Sea World.  Firstly, I forgot my computer so Kim and I have been sharing one and secondly, WE ARE AT SEA WORLD!  What was I thinking?

We have  loosely read through our literature and listened to some extra reading in the car thanks to librivox. Life is learning and petting dolphins qualifies as a bit of school if you ask me.  Not only that, we have been experimenting with tons of nature photos around here.  I will post those soon.

We pray all is well with you all, where ever you may be.

Grace and Peace to you.

I am happy to announce that I am hosting the second Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival. It will be centered around music/composer study. We would love to have your submissions no later than October 1,st by 11:59pm. The carnival will be hosted on this site on the 2nd and you can submit your entries here. I look forward to learning new tips from everyone.

Here is a great homeschool resource. Librivox offers tons of audio books free to download.  We are downloading several to listen to in the car during our travels.  Why not listen to some books on your next long road trip insteda of knee jerking and bringing the portable DVD player. 

Yesterday the children and I went to a local wildlife center to enjoy God’s creation together.  I took an entire photo journal of our time so check out our nature blog.

We love the library.  We are on a first name basis with the librarian.  We check out our home school books for the week, a few Spanish children’s books and an appropriate DVD. 

Some time ago, we checked out Rescue Heroes for our youngest.  He adored it and I KNOW we returned it to the library. At least I think we did. He asks for it all the time.  The library can’t find it and we have renewed it 3x hoping it would pop up. It hasn’t.  We have torn the house and van apart looking for our lost item:-(  So now the library said, I could pay for it with them at the cost of 24.95 with a 4.95 processing fee. WHAT…do they think it was made of gold?

So I just reordered it today on Amazon for 4.91 with 2.95 shipping.  Once I receive it, with the shipping and late fees, that I can’t stop until I produce something to them, I will have about $9 in…$13 if they charge me the processing fee.  Much better than $30 don’t ya think.

I guess it is bound to happen, but it irks me!  I guess we do borrow hundreds of dollars of books a week from them, so one missed item isn’t a bad track record.

So I salvaged my hard week last week on Friday by making sure we had “Something to do, something to think about and something to love”! 

I actually took “the show” on the road and went to our favorite park located adjacent to a marine rescue center.  We did some of our lessons in a favorite forest that shaded us from the heat!

Doing narration from high up in a tree always makes it more exciting.  We read Travel and imagined we were hunting for our own “deserted city”.  Mommy had fun too!

By the end of the day the children were back on track, happy and cooperative.  I think we all had cabin fever.  Outdoor time is so important and not just in your front yard but new places as well. 

Denise was so kind to interview me at her WAHM-Articles blog.  If you have time, and are inclinded go check it out.

If you are interested in driving traffic back to your website or blog, a great way to do it for free is through article submission or written press releases.  Consider an event that is newsworthy or a topic you would like to explore and write an article on it.  (around 500 words)  You then have the opportunity to list an author bio at the bottom of the piece with link backs to your blog or website.  These articles are then viewed constantly for addition to newsletters, blogs and other forms of online media.  Here is an example of a piece I wrote on building Christmas traditions.

I have been invited to be the “Resident Homeschooling Expert” at WHAM-Articles .com. I will be writing a monthly column about homeschooling, tips, resources and reviews.  I was very honored to be asked and am excited to add it to my writing mix.  I will be on the look our for great ideas and tips so if you have something that you think is newsworthy, drop me a line and let me know.

really, I  am not kidding. 

Let me tell you why?  I was wondering if this was really children’s programming or not.  Let me back up.  We are teaching the kids Spanish.  We are learning too of course and are using various methods of fumbling about with it.

We check out children’s books in Spanish at the library and read through them with ease and so I thought that a Spanish DVD looked good for teaching them some more.  I was wrong.  Not only was it cheesy it had a 20 something model in a skimpy dress and heels “dancing” around in circles while singing the colors in Spanish.  Honestly, I gave them about 5 minutes to see if they would move on.  Nope they didn’t.  Sexy, female in skimpy clothing teaching Spanish words to young children. That’s a winner?!

Well, let’s just say “no me’gusta”.

Bye - Bye

I have currently been reading “Hints on Child Training” by H. Clay Trumbull. It is a book written about 100 years ago by Elizabeth Elliott’s Great-Grandfather. It is a wonderfully pragmatic look at how to train you children with the “big picture” in mind. In fact, after reading it once through, I have determined to read it again. It has so many gems in it, that reading it once is not enough to assimilate all of Trumbull’s wisdom. Especially once you are passing through the toddler years and on into early childhood.

In today’s fast past world, child training is rarely embraced as a proactive way to help your children become fully functioning adults. This book hints at the wonder of parenting and the blessing of training early in life. It has been a valuable resource for our family’s thinking on parenting our children.

I think if parents were armed with this information early they would determine to live simply and make sure the stress everywhere else in their life is minimized.  Once you realize how the environment you create for your children forms them deeply, you will be careful to not let “mindless” things slip in. As parents, our  specific mindset of where we are leading our children is key to navigating the parenting roadblocks that inevitably arise along our children’s path to adult hood. It is a sobering thought to realize the weaknesses that will occur in our children as adults are due to our weaknesses as a parents when they are young. This is a must have for a families library. It is one of those books that you will highlight and underline and refer to often.

This year I am keeping a record of all of our activities digitally.  I am keeping a monthly project going with picaboo to keep all of our adventures organized and kept in one place.  I plan to scan certain written work that is appropriate and drawn narrations to add to the piece.  It will be a fun family keepsake. 

The children have one from the former preschool and they cherish it.  I wish to keep the tradition going without all the actual cutting and pasting.  It is a whole new digital world and I intend to use it like a tool.

 Grace and Peace to all,

I am ALWAYS finding myself stuck on Lindafay’s home school blog Higher up and Further In.  It is very comforting to read through her many years of home schooling experience for tips, ideas etc.  I have been slowly reworking my blogs organization.  It is becoming my home school dashboard.  Thoughts, wonderings, resources and other inspiring people to read found in my blog roll.  Jackson is on it as much as I am tooling through the resources.  He LOVES THIS! My hope is that one day this site would be an encouragement to a brand new home schooling mama who is excited and nervous and wondering if she can ever pull this off.  And then voila, she will find this blog and she will say to herself, “Oh my goodness if SHE could do it I will have no problem!”  So keep watching the links come in.  (I hope you find them as helpful and inspiring as I do) I will soon begin adding book reviews and the kids and I will be starting a nature blog here soon.  Their sketches are still scribble and I want them to have a place to see what they are recording.  I taught Jackson how to use the digital camera and he routinely goes out and snaps shots of local wildlife.  Mostly flowers and trees.  Yesterday we went to a little park called “Peanut Island”.  During the summer we go every Monday night with my parents in their boat.  We saw a spotted manta ray with a 5 foot wing span and 2 mini hermit crabs walking along.  I wished we had our camera.  So now we wont leave home without it.     Speaking of blogging…I wish other really experienced homeschoolers I know (not to mention any names, Chenoa Styron and Carolyn Hanson) would start a blog like Lindafay’s so more newbie’s can bask in their wisdom.  It is such a gift.  I am thankful for their encouraging words along the way.  Anyway….no pressure, I was just thinking how cool it would be if I could scroll through their brain and not bug them all the time with calls and emails.