Preperations and Good Deals

Busy-Busy-BUSY! I could be singing a song from Seth's Thomas the Train movie! I am determined to be as prepared as possible for the start of homeschool come August, and that means that I can't let a day go by without preparations of some sort! Today I made great headway into supplies as I took advantage of the 20 cent spiral notebooks, the 15 cent folders and $3.00 3" binders at Wal*Mart! I also found a large 2011-2012 Planner that I'm going to use to layout the different things I want to incorporate each month into our curriculum. I was REALLY excited to find a bunch of goodies at our Dollar Tree store. That's a store (in case you don't know) where EVERYTHING is only $1.00...and they have educational supplies! I found some fabulous word cards with various packages like "adverbs" and "nouns" as well as blank ones for writing your own and then packs of Sight Words for Pre-K and Kindergarten (I, Am, Can, Are,---those kind of words).

I also went thru and wrote down prices for other random things I would like to have in the classroom like whiteboards, electric sharpeners, world maps, and other things like that. I will be taking Seth shopping with me later this month for him to choose out his supplies like crayons, glue, scissors, ect and will finalize my shopping then. I just wanted some ballpark numbers to how much $$ to bring with me.

My box of manilla file folders should be coming this week which will help me start getting the units set up. I have a nice (if slightly battered) black double drawer file cabinet that I am converting into school use. So I need to get that cleaned out this week.

So much to do...and still so much fun!

One more thing we are thinking about is investing in an E-Reader of some sort...so we don't fill up the house with too many curriculum books. So I'm checking out our options between Kindle, Nook Color and an Ipad. We'll see how that turns out. I think it would be very beneficial especially when travelling.

So that's where we are! Oh and I'm also writing out various schedules to get an idea on how my day *should* flow. As anyone who does homeschooling knows, schedules are always made to be broken, so I'm keeping it VERY fluid. LOL!

If anyone has any imput regarding E-readers or nifty organizational things, I'd love to hear from you!

July Happenings

It is hard to believe we are already in the SECOND week of July! This year is just flying by! We had a great 4th of July weekend and I hope you and your family did too. Now that we are in the middle of summer we are trying to stay cool!

We were pretty excited this week because we received our Homeschool Curriculum yesterday! Oh what fun to tear into that box! We about had to threaten Seth with punishment to get him to stop digging! LOL! I have been reading the teachers guide so that I can get a good handle on things and to add to my ever increasing list of materials needed before school starts.

I found a sweet deal on EBAY for file folders--a box of 100 for just $5.00! That included shipping! Once those arrive I'm kicking it into gear with getting my lessons planned out. I'm on the search for magazines of all kinds that I can use for the projects we have ahead of us. I mostly just get cooking and crafting ones so there isn't much in there! LOL!

Next comes our school supplies list and then we get to go shopping for Seth his special school stuff. I always loved shopping for the new supplies. I adore the smell of new crayons. Did you know that is one of the top 5 most recognizable smells? There is just something about a new box of unused crayons that makes my heart go pitterpatter! LOL!

Justin is getting so big...I'm trying to make sure I can plan a good portion of my lessons around his naptime/downtime. I think it will be a great opportunity to incorporate blanket time in preperation for church behavior too. He is working on more teeth and outgrowing his 12 month clothing. Can you believe he'll be one in less than a month?? Shocking!

Seth has big news...he lost his first tooth! That was quite the big day! Now he just looks so big with the gap in there. I'm thankful though that he finally lost it because his new one was already up and behind it. NOw it's starting to turn foward and not so crooked. It just needed more room.

Well, I'll keep you informed as our homeschooling preparations continue. I was able to make contact with a fairly local co-op group and look forward to our first in-person get together!

Have a great week!

Time for a New Adventure!

It is hard to believe, but Seth is getting ready to go into Kindergarten in just a little over a month. (sob!) After much discussion, John and I decided that we are going to be homeschooling the boys. (gulp!) We just do NOT like the way that public school is heading and with my training in Education in college mixed with my job as a substitute teacher I can comfortably say that I think it's a good decision for us. We don't live a *good* school district which is one of the MANY reasons we are choosing to go this route.

I've been spending the last week pouring over homeschooling curriculum's, trying to decide which one will work *best* for Seth...of course as any homeschool family knows, choosing a curriculum is almost like playing Russian Roulette! But one of the joys of homeschooling is that you CAN CHANGE at any time if it's not working. So I'm just trying to take into consideration what WE want him to learn as well as the way he seems to learn (he's one of those who likes visual, audio AND hands on). I've pretty much narrowed it down to an all inclusive curriculum (MY FATHER'S WORLD) with an additional Language Arts unit called FIVE IN A ROW (or FIAR) which is a GREAT curriculum from what I've seen in terms of using it WITH something else.

I've decided to continue to use this blog not just for updates on the boys, but updates on our adventure in homeschooling too. I hope you will enjoy this new ride WITH us...It's very exciting and we can't wait to get started!