What's New?

Thoughts on curriculum:

Overall I feel really good about our curriculum this year. Aliyah and Ally are using First Language Lessons and Writing with Ease for Language Arts. We are using Answers in Genesis for Science. This is a huge set of books, it was a huge leap of faith buying the whole set but I'm really liking it. We have completed Our Universe, which the girls really liked. We are learning about Ancient Times using Story of the World. This is a fun book reading about different ancient times and sometimes includes stories of people in history. I love ancient history so I'm always happy when its SS time. There are often fun projects too. We've built a model of the Nile River, made noodle necklaces by dying the noodles purple with blueberry juice, scrolls ect. We are learning about Pioneer Canadians as well. For bible I purchased this simple curriculum, where we read a portion of the bible and then illustrate it. It's lots of fun. We also enjoy many wholesome shows on a christian streaming subscription that the school has made available to us, and worship, always worship :) For Math all the kids except Ally use as online course, which works really good for us. Especially Joshua. I can say go do your math and he generally doesn't need any help as of late. Now we come to the part where I'm not happy about a curriculum choice...Ally's math, but more on that later....

Kate and Joshua's year is going well. Kaitlin is doing online English. It's quite a challenge for her but she is doing well. It's nice we can always see her grade which she had dropped down to 70%. After doing corrections on a weeks assignments she had gotten a low mark on and an excellent week of receiving 100% she has brought her mark up to 85%. 85!...Kinda taunting me, sitting at 1% away from an A. The kids are doing Socials together. It's kinda dry and boring but I like that everything is contained in one book. Next year though Ancient history so I'm super excited about that! Joshua is doing a new way of learning, using a program called Quest Atlantis. It's a computer game format. It covers outcomes for bible, health, science and Language Arts. It is going pretty good but we don't plan for it again next year. 

Decisions for next year:
Because Joshua will not be doing the QA next year and because Kate and Josh are only a year apart I have made the decision to also do an extra science with Joshua this year. We are seeing how it goes. I am also trying to get 2 Socials studies done for him this year and part of next year. In doing this hard work now I will be able to combine everything for Kate and Josh except for Math. When homeschooling the BEST thing you can do is combine as much as possible!!!

And back to the dud...Ally's math. I had Alpha and Omega's lifepacs for Ms. Ally this year. This consists of 10 little 'lifepacs' about 34 pages each. They are all over the place in what they cover, the teacher book is horrendous and I just found she really isn't grasping concepts. Even though its quite late in the year I took the plunge and ordered a downloadable program today called Math Mammoth:Light Blue Series. We had a great day of math. Because its late in the year we started at the beginning and are doing every other question. I will skip things that we've already done if she's getting it. Every curriculum has different methods of teaching so I wanted to make sure we had a handle on this programs methods. She got 7 pages done today!

And that is a glimpse of what's going on this year. 

A New Year...

Ok, so it was requested that I blog again. So as requested, here it is Amanda, I hope you enjoy! The new school year has begun, and thankfully we were not affected by the teachers strike that was happening here in BC. We got our start on September 15th. I think I've done a schedule at least 3 times and am now on revising it yet again! So far the year is going good. Aliyah and Alexandra are doing everything together except for math. I love their socials studies, Story of the World. We are learning about Ancient Times, which I adore, I'm not sure who is enjoying it more, me or the girls! Kaitlin is doing online English this year. She has completed 3 full weeks of work and she has 87%. She is really liking it. I like it because I don't have to be so hands on but she does need help from time to time. All but Alexandra are doing this amazing online math program. It has a multimedia lesson that they watch on the computer and then they have questions. They complete that then do a printed worksheet. I mark the worksheets, enter in their scores and it keeps track of everything. It's perfect and SO much better than the dreaded JUMP MATH! Joshua is doing a fun, interactive, virtual world type program this year. It covers science, health, bible and Language arts. I find it a bit confusing but the teacher is still getting things in order so hopefully it will get better and also hopefully I'll get better at understanding it. It really frees up my time though. For the most part my curriculum choices were much better this year than last. I adore our science books, which was a huge purchase so thankfully they are good! The girls Language Arts is fantastic! It literally tells me exactly what to say. I didn't know how they would like it because last year they had 3-5 workbooks each for LA and they love workbooks but they both really like it. The only curriculum dud was bible. I got given a new testament workbook for grade 6 so I changed Kate to that. I was going to continue the girls on what I bought but then thought why? The bible and learning about God, connecting with Him and learning His truths is the MOST important aspect of their schooling to me. We should like it! The curriculum I was using was dry and boring and I could tell they didn't really like it. So I went to a trusted friend-google! Google didn't fail me and I was able to find a free curriculum I could use. This was a sunday school curriculum but easily adaptable. At the beginning there is even an movie clip of the bible story. Which is great because my girls adore that kind of thing. They are learning practical things that I want them to know. We are on our second week of showing hospitality. I want my girls to be loving and caring. I don't want my kids to say they are a christian but have their lives not show it. These lessons will hopefully translate into their everyday life. Homeschooling is a tough job and last year I stopped going to my ladies life group meeting (a bible study type thing). I decided this year though I needed to take the time and go. So every tuesday morning the kids are given a list of things to do and off I go. I've gone 2 times and it was so nice to have that time away. I think I need this time away to get some adult time and just have a break where I don't have to think of what I need to do. That being said my bed is calling :)

Ok, so once you start homeschooling, even though you may have great intentions of blogging, for me it just doesn`t happen. So what`s been happening? Hopefully something that resembles success. We have had one report card and one is approaching. All the kids did great, which was a huge relief. You really don't realize what a reflection this is on you as a teacher/parent until you go through it.

My favourites of the year:

Apologia Science: Land Animals of the 6th Day. It doesn't get better than this. I'm amazed every time I read this book at the Presence of God in the text. Science and God really do go together despite what the world would have us believe.

Outlooks: New Beginnings: This is Kate and Joshua's grade 4 Socials Studies. The convenience of this is the biggest draw for me. All learning outcomes in one book. Thanks to Sarah for lending it to us!

Spelling Workout: The kids LOVE this spelling program. Kaitlin who struggles with spelling has really excelled using this curriculum. She has gotten an A on nearly every test and no lower than a B.

Cricket in Times Square Novel study: This was an hilarious book that Kate and Josh didn't only enjoy but I did too. There are some great free novel study downloads online. Looking forward to our next novel: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and yes I was able to find another great free download for the study.

Things I've learned, things I've made:

So I'm not going to list the countless things I've learned because I am seriously learning new things daily. I love it. What I'm going to talk about are things I've learned about the kids. Joshua, despite my loving Apologia, does not so I think next year we will do a different curriculum that takes a different approach. Another thing I've learned about Joshua is he can actually do art well. I think he does better at home with this because time isn't such an issue. I've been really amazed at some of the artwork he has done!  Aliyah and Ally: LOVE WORKBOOKS. I am shocked and surprised to say they do not like to color, cut, paste ect too much during school. Speaking of workbooks I recently made a diy workbook station. Recently I've read about workboxes on other homeschooling sites. This is basically having a set of drawers one with each workbook and a simple schedule the student can follow and do independently. Independence is something I strive for in our classroom since there are 4 of them and only 1 of me. So I took a loose approach to this idea and created something similar. For each girl I took an old crib rail. I leaned it against the wall by their desks so the bars are horizontal. I then stapled on folders to make pockets in which their workbooks go in. I have a time slot on our schedule (did I mention our schedule has changed a zillion times!?) for the girls to do their workbooks. They are allowed to choose in any order they want. Wow, have they loved this. They are so happy and proud that they can choose which book to do, take it out of the folder and put it back in. Yes I still help them (alot) but they really love the independence this gives them and I love to see how proud it makes them feel of themselves.  If I could I'd share pictures of my workbook station but my sd card isn't working right now.

First Month Done! (Well minus 1 day)!

Ok so the first month of school is complete! For those of you wondering, it has been going really good! We have a daily routine (which I try to stick to but doesn't always happen!) Our day starts around 8:40 and begins with prayer, a song, then exercise. I have a different person assigned to prayer each day then that person also gets to pick the worship song and gets to use the exercise bike. After all that is done we settle down and get to work. Language arts was a struggle for Aliyah at first, she would just give up and shut down really easily, whoo am I glad that didn't last long! Kaitlin and Joshua have been doing a novel study on Farmer Boy this first month and Monday is the first day I will have to sit down and teach them LA, I may have to readjust my schedule which doesn't make me too happy, pretty sure I worked on schedules for at least 10 hours! I'd spend time on one then find out nope, don't like it, start a new one, nope don't like it, onto my third and I'm liking it. So this may sound strange but I feel more calm, less hassled homeschooling than I did when my kids went to school. Always having to be on the go go go, was really stressful and I feel like our whole family has calmed down. No more stress of being up at 6:40 and out the door by 7:25, no more stress of getting homework done before bedtime, no more stress of bedtime! Yes they still have a bedtime but if they go over, big deal! The weight of time and not enough of it has been lifted up off our shoulders (for the most part anyways), which is funny because I'm reading the book The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom. Interesting story to say the least. The only day that is a wee bit stressful time wise is thursdays which have swimming at 2. So with all this time and all this curriculum money we are keeping really busy. The kids have Pioneer Club on tuesdays. This is a great badge earning program put on by the Salvation Army that is bible based. I couldn't be more happy than to send my kids to this free club. Wednesdays the girls have Highland dance, (which of course they are really happy about!). Thursday is swimming. Kate will take gymnastics in the spring and Josh will take soccer then too. I must say that I am so very thankful to my husband. He is here during the day and he does math with Kaitlin, Josh and even Aliyah most of the time. Math is not my thing so this makes me able to concentrate on other things. Also it enables me to teach Aliyah and Ally while Kate and Josh are doing math with help from dad. Also my husband has helped me out by cooking. He cooked dinner for me two times last week since I was getting home late from lessons. It's really been a blessing to not have to think about dinner on those days when I do school, rush to drive them to one of their activities and then come back home and have dinner ready. So this month I have seen what needs changing and I will introduce these changes on monday. I am going to be stricter on keeping the school room clean, these kids are pigs! Ha ha. I have put a point system in place and weekly jobs to help the kids put away their books and clean up after themselves. I have a giant bin of toys and things that they can cash their points in for at the end of each week. I'm looking forward to the changes and the kids were even excited when I told them they'd have jobs! Now I will leave you with some pictures, until next month....

                                                                Kate, feeling the vibrations

                                                   Alexandra made her name using clay for LA

                                              Aliyah wearing her communities project as a hat!

      Joshua making music with a science experiment

Artwork, I'm enjoying doing it with them too!

Let the countdown begin...

Summer is nearly over and our home school adventure is about to begin! I`m excited, yet nervous. I`m praying into this. This is important. This is my children`s education. I get to be a part of this, yet it`s such a huge responsibility! I`m glad that my God will give me strength, that He will fill my every need. I pray that I see my children grow academically and spiritually this year. That they will surprise me by their knowledge...yesterday Alexandra was reading a book and blew me away when she sounded out the word doctor...I`d have never thought she could tackle that word yet but she did. I need to remember to step back and let them try. This is going to be a learning experience for me, I just know it!
 Recently my pastor did something really neat. He just stood up and read the book of James. Did not preach on it, did not teach on it, he just read it. I LOVE James, its so full of tidbits we can learn from and apply to our lives. It`s timeless. I was perplexed when Pastor Brian read this scripture before starting the reading of James: 1 Timothy 4:13 (Niv) Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. Do we do this in the modern church? Devote ourselves to the public reading of scripture? We are keen to preach and teach but this is lacking.  I've never been a part of it before that day and it was so amazing to just let the Holy Spirit do His work and speak to us. This is what jumped out at me, (I have read this verse countless times but that day it jumped out at me, this was what the Holy Spirit was wanting me to hear...) My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. James 1:19 Niv.  Good advice for me, a mom, with 4 kids who easily looses patience, I often find myself doing the opposite of this verse, Lord help me!
So like I said, our adventure is nearly here. I am trying to figure out student learning plans, a schedule, making file folder games and downloading some great lapbooks. I'm eager to shop and decorate my school room even more and get some new school supplies. We will start this Tuesday but plan to ease in to it a bit. On the agenda the first week: All about Me lapbook, math, bible and Kaitlin and Joshua need to read Farmer Boy. The week after that, it's full gear, oh boy!

Floods, Ninja's, lakes, weddings and Baptisms!

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So it's been a busy summer. We've been going to the lake lots, enjoying a crazy nice summer this year in the Cariboo, especially nice since last year (or was it the year before?) summer really didn't happen here. This year we discovered Kosta's Cove, the back side of the popular lake here in town that is a really nice spot to go and the water seems cleaner there is no seaweed and it comes with a Tarzan swing much to Kate's delight!  Another bonus is it is only an 8 minute drive from our house! Not everything has been sunshine and lollipops though...awhile back we had a flood in the basement when the hot water tank broke. Insurance will cover it thankfully but what a pain. I had set up my school room already in the basement, luckily no books were down there yet and really none of our stuff was damaged. When something bad happens though I always try to find positives from the situation....life is too short to get depressed and to let our problems overtake us and really a flood in the basement not big on my list of problems this year...more an annoyance :) So maybe I can teach someone how to give a positive spin to a negative situation, (and in doing so that would be another positive thing to come out of my flood, haha!) 1. At least I have a house to flood. 2. It could have been way worse, we could have been out when it happened. 3. Insurance! 4. New carpet and a wall had to be replaced in the kids room downstairs (some of which had never been on in the first place, just the framework of part of the wall but no wall) and when all the carpet was out before the new carpet was added I painted and it looks so much better! 5. Another opportunity for God to work on my patience! I really want to get everything set up again :) Soon Tina, Soon I tell myself! Anyways the flood is really the only thing at home that hasn't gone good this summer and that is a blessing. Speaking of blessings this is the summer of weddings, yes love is in the air. My sister got married in June (I'm so proud of her).  I don't know how to put why I am into words but I am and she knows it! My bestfriend's mom also got married in June. She's like a mom to me and is grandma to my kids. She is a widower and her husband that passed away was not only my beloved pastor but like a second father to me also. I thought her getting married again would be hard but I really like her new husband and no one can deny his adoration for her and the love they share with one another, so really all I am is completely happy for them! This summer also brought probably the highlight of not my summer but my year and one of the proudest moments I've had as a mother. Back in June Aliyah, (my 7 year old) told me she wanted to get baptized at church camp. She understood what baptism is about and was SO excited about it. She was telling everyone and counting the days till the big day. But.....the big day came and she froze...she would not do it. I was thankful that our pastor was so understanding. So some time passed and then Kaitlin tells me she wants to be baptized, then Joshua is talking about it too! Then Aliyah says she wants to try again. All talk at our house for awhile is baptism. We go out to Kosta's cove and Aliyah and Alexandra are baptizing their life jackets, haha! So we decide at the last minute to have all 3 of them baptized at Kosta's cove. Grandma baptized Kaitlin and Aliyah (with daddy's help) and Joshua was baptized by his uncle who he decided he wanted to ask all on his own and so called him up, it was really special. As a christian mother what a joy it was to see 3 of my 4 children commit their lives to Jesus in such a way and to publicly display their faith in Him. Wow, I'm still overwhelmed thinking about it! Kaitlin had a vision of heaven when she was baptized...already the Holy Spirit is at work! Robin (an AMAZING) photographer from church took some photos...er Robin, where are they??? It was just a great day! And now I will end with Ninja's. I think I should start calling my children little ninja's...they have been cracking me up the last day or so. The older two are obsessed with the show American Ninja Warrior and have since (along with the little girls) make up their own American Ninja Warrior courses in the yard using the swing set. My favourite stunt is the Warp wall. On the show the warp wall is this huge wall that competitors have to run up and there isn't alot of space in front to get a good run at it....my kids version, run up the slide...so funny! So that in a very big nutshell is a glimpse of our summer. Above is an American Ninja Warrior video and also a link to Robin's blog which is beautifully written and of course has amazing photography.

Almost Done!!!

Ok so I`m not sure who is more excited for school to be done, me or the kids. Today is sports day and awards ceremony and tomorrow is the last day. Today as I woke up the girls all I could think was after today one more day of waking you up at such an early hour. My little girls are not morning people and like to wake up on their own, sometimes I spend a full 10 minutes waking them up...most times actually! Letting them wake up on their own is one of the biggest draws for me to homeschool. I think if they slept as much as they needed to they would be much happier girls. Speaking of draws I shall write them down in point form for anyone who may be thinking ``is she crazy or what?" (in no particular order!)
1. Being able to work in our own time frame! I am going to have a strict schedule however we will start when we start, I want them well rested.
2. Flexibility at bedtime. Not having to be so very strict with bedtime, it will be so nice to be able to on occasion be out past their bedtime or to be able to finish that show we were watching as a family.
3. Getting to be a part of their learning and being able to choose which books to use. A good example of this is Kate and Josh's Science. I am overwhelmed with the content. I chose Apologia' s Exploring Creation with Zoology 3: Land Amimals of the Sixth Day. God is so throughout this book it's amazing! Often I look through it in amazement and just read it on my own time!
4. Getting to spend more time as a family. Mike has gotten a sweet sleeping night shift so he is home daily and will be able to be around if I need help during the day...this is a BIGGIE! Also when school work is done we then can do things as a family if we want.
5. To learn! When I was in school I really didn't like it and I just know that throughout this experience I'm going to learn alot, (as an adult I love learning! Probably the reason I like to read historical fiction and fiction books on other cultures. Reading such books often has me searching and making sure the content was accurate.)  I will learn not only academically but about myself. I think this will be a real character building adventure not just for me but our whole family. I really think homeschooling will bring us closer together <3
6. I love my kids! Simple as that! As I stated before in my previous post I want to be there to see the wonder on their faces as they learn something new that excites them. Don't get me wrong I know it's not all going to be sunshine and lollipops and that they are going to do their work grudgingly  sometimes too...and there is where the character building will take place, something we shouldn't shy away from but rather should embrace.
7. A greater need for God! I can NOT do this on my own. I will and am already leaning on God to guide me through. Our relationship will only get better and better as I call on him to help me.

So I'm sure there are many more but that is all I can think of now. I've been sitting here trying to think of a witty way to end this post but nothing is coming so that's it :)