Category: organizing so you can actually use and find and do stuff

Continuing Right Along

I took the afternoon to finish Rachael’s Kindergarten lesson plans for the year. Yep, friends, for the YEAR.

I was thrilled to organize the remaining 18 lessons into 6 day bundles per lesson (dividing out each subject’s work and bundling them together by days). So pretty much now if I die someone can pick up my teacher book and teach Rachael the remainder of her Kindergarten year (P.S. No intent on dying, just happy to get this completed).

I also calculated out the days we have completed of school (I wasn’t tracking it before – oops) and have a game-plan for the remaining school year’s required days.

Just trying to get more organized here so I can

a). Not have to lesson plan each week.

b). make it a habit to track school days so…

c). I can have a written record should I need to prove the days we have homeschooled [With no idea where God will take us in the years after Matt graduates, I wanted to be prepared to meet other states’ stricter homeschooling requirements should we end up moving there.]

and d). Be more pro-active in planning fun things during our school year based upon future weeks’ themes.

It feels good to finally get a grasp on advanced forward panning for Rachael’s school year after just struggling to get into a regular school groove post-boys.

And it’s also been really exciting to make some changes in organization of educating multiple children in multiple grades, while balancing a baby on my hip (Hannah’s no longer taking morning naps).

I really like our new groove. And I’m excited and less stressed about the remaining school year.

Abi’s coming along quite well in her first year of preschool. She;s picking up things quite quickly thanks to being a byproduct of a homeschool listener. The alphabet and numbers are coming much more naturally to her and I’m excited at the increased fine motor skills in tracing and writing her own name.

And Rachael is really coming into her own in her Kindergarten schooling. It’s fun to watch her take confidence in developing the skills that began a looong (relatively) time ago when she first learned the alphabet. It’s also really neat to watch her manipulate her knowledge to apply it in different settings. And it’s downright fun to encourage her as she is beginning to read. Very…. very… slowly… she has begun sounding out words… one…. at…. a… time. And then her memory kicks in and she puts the words together into a sentence. It’s also fun to see her reading comprehension growing through a really fun workbook I picked up for a buck (Yay dollar store find!). She has enjoyed hearing the princess fairy tales and then learning to write sentences to answer the questions following the story.

I must say, I really enjoy homeschooling. And now that I’m more practically organized, I am enjoying it all the more.

I look forward to the wonder and excitement of the remainder of the school year. =)

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The Medium of Homeschooling

We’re getting ready to start the homeschooling season again. We have taken the longest break ever from directed teaching due to the boys arrival being mashed in with summer. We moved from more focused academics to more play and discovery. But I have to be honest, I’m really excited to start back into a more directed study time.

Big Guy started school last week so that forced us to become more regulated and routined. Honestly, I am really happy about that. I love Big Guy, but the entire dynamic and hyperactivity level of this household takes a shift back into our discovery norms when he’s at school. Our days kind of slow down and become more natural feeling to me. It becomes less about burning a kid out and more about discovering our world together. I feel more calm because there are more opportunities for quiet in our household and for this introvert that is really important to me. Odd that four kids can feel quiet, but it really is true – especially during the babies’ morning naps. Things allot themselves more naturally to sit-down teaching in the morning and hands-on learning in the afternoon.

But one of the things I look most forward to during this school year is returning to reading. Reading a book on my own. Our missions reading before nap times. Oh our snuggling reading on the couch has stayed consistent throughout the summer, but just the calm of enjoying a good read – that I look forward to so much.

It was nearly impossible to instill missions reading over the summer, sadly. Big Guy’s attention span is very, very short. And reading to the girls before nap time always left Big Guy out since sitting in the hallway between the boys and girls’ rooms rocking my nurser created a very fussy nurser that I nearly had to yell over to read. Yeah… less calming.

Rachael actually leapt for joy when I returned to my rocking chair with a missions book in hand at nap time. “YEAH! Mommy’s going to read missions novels to us again!” She couldn’t contain herself. I love that she remembers that about me. I love that she, at such a young age, is already enjoying longer chapter books. And I have noticed that since I stopped reading to the girls at nap time, my Abi’s vocabulary hasn’t built as quickly… and her annunciation just flat-out needs work. Funny but reading aloud to her will help a lot with those things as she is more accustomed to broad vocabulary and listens to my sounding out foreign city names.

But really, even if it had no educational piece to it…. I just love sharing that time with them. I love talking about what God has done in and through people. I love learning, myself! And it’s also a helpful gauge for telling if Rachael is ready to transition from naps. If she can stay awake for the full chapter, then she may not need a nap that day. See, reading has MANY benefits. 😉

I’ve decided to begin homeschooling after Hannah’s first birthday. Summer has been a little hectic and draining, quite honestly, despite the large amount of fun as well. So I’d like to feel ready. I’d like to include Rachael and Abi in decorating the homeschool wall. I’d like to solicit their ownership of their portfolios this year, decorating the cover and putting the dividers in. I’d like to settle into a routine of reading and more consistent morning naps for the babies and in many ways healing from a wonderful, but long summer of greater demands on me for the enjoyment of the kids. I’d like to read ahead in our curriculum, get hyped up and have everything settled really nicely before day 1. And the beauty of homeschooling is… we can do that. We can afford to start our school year whenever we’re ready. Truly ready.

I love homeschooling. It’s a passion of mine. No it’s not for everyone. Yes, it’s draining, but the investment is really an utter delight. I LOVE sitting beside my children and soaking in their worlds. I love discovering life with them. I love hearing the Scriptures return without void. I love praying over their math problems, piano lessons, and puzzle play. I just love doing life with them. And I love knowing precisely what they are learning, from the books to the social interactions to the Scripture. No, it’s not for the purpose of controlling them. It’s for the purpose of training a child in the way they should go… that God would bless their paths to be more straight. I just love being a missionary to my kids. Oh and I pray that light would overcome their darkness, in turn allowing them to be light to the world and sisters in Christ.

So thanks be to God, for this season of preparation. Preparation of our minds and our hearts and our souls for all that He will teach us this year

through the medium of homeschooling.

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Flipping

This week my Matthew is off to a youth missions trip for six days. And thanks to our precious Aunt Sarah, who just completed her freshman year of college, we’re having a new roommate and helper with the masses this week. So I’ve taken the opportunity of extra hands during the day, when she’s not working, to bite off my huge summer projects.

This week I’m flipping the bedroom furniture in the kids’ rooms and going through all the stored kid clothing (they are already boxed by size, but the boxes need to be weeded through since some of the lids don’t fit and I just throw the clothes into the boxes as a child grows out of the articles with some regard to condition). We’re donating any unwanted furniture/clothing to the women’s center (a place supporting women who would have otherwise opted for an abortion) and other second-hand shops.

I got an email a while back from my sister’s in-laws saying they had the top bunk of the set of bunkbeds they gave us now available for pick-up, along with the generous donation of two dressers. And just a week after a sweet friend of mine offered me her kiddo’s old baby crib. Since Hannah was shaking the bolts free of her crib (resume skill), I thought it a good idea to do some crib switching.

So with that, the wooden furniture is headed into the boys’ room (more gender neutral furniture anyway) and the white furniture (more feminine, but at the time of setting up the room it was an incomplete bunk set and I needed the completed bunks for the girls over the femininity) is headed into the girls’ room. It started with the cribs, then the dressers, then followed by the beds while picking off clothing boxes and general storage amidst the whole project.

The project could take someone without kids just a a day or maybe even a day and a half when you add in the clothing, but since life still needs to go on around these parts, and there are morning and afternoon naps to be had, I’m easing the project in phases over a the entire week. Afterall, if the kids are a wreck because of pushing the project too hard, then I’m the one that needs to pick up the pieces… without Daddy.

I took some “before” pictures since Matt’ll be taking the camera on the mission trip. So I give you these pictures and hope to post my “after” pictures sometime at the end of this week or start of next week (depending on my sleep deprivation level). =)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAEntering into the Girls’ Room

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWall 1 by the door.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe other 3 walls in the girls’ room.

And the boys’ room (warning: less tidy)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERADoorway entrance (closet is one the left wall similar to the girls’ layout).

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe 3 walls.

We. Will. Conquer. This!

 

P.S. I know the boys’ room is kinda plain. I’m working on that. 😉

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It Pays Off

To declutter.

Start:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA(No worries, this is not a typical location for the baby. We don’t keep her in the garage…. always. Tehehe.)

Finish:

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So we can continue to fit like a glove.

garage

Because loading 5 kids in the car while it’s raining is not on my agenda if it doesn’t have to be. 😉 I mean as much as I love the smell of musty, wet dog…. yeah. I love my garage.

Took me 3 hours from start to sweeping finish (keep in mind that it included a trip to the store to get a few more hooks, stopping to care for children, etc).

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This With This and That

A while back I tackled this:

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And made it into this:

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By using these:

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Made out of these:

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And then I did this:

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With This:

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And this:

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With this:

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Yay for practical and organized!

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A Review

Last week:

  • Celebrated Aunt Sarah’s 19th Birthday with the fam.
  • Big Guy, Rachael and I took the cats to the yearly vet appointment on Monday and got their shots updated in time to give the record to our caseworker on Wednesday.
  • Started only blogging when the kids are in bed/asleep.
  • Little Man started rolling from belly to back. (YAY!!!)
  • We focused on sleep training for Little Man and reintroduced sleeping in his bassinet after he had to sleep the past two weeks in a bouncer due to sickness drainage.
  • Almost broke Abi’s new bad habit of getting out of her bed when told to go to sleep. (We’re pretty well there.)
  • Moved Hannah out of Matt and my room (we’re no longer dueling bassinets on either side of the bed. YAY!) into “the girls’ room” where she did AWESOME in the transition and continued her middle-of-the-night feeding (around 4am) without disturbing her sisters.
  • Matt and I had our first date night in weeks (months?) – thanks Grandpa for staying with the masses. =D
  • Hannah had her follow-up Dr. appt for her double ear infection, thus ending antibiotics.
  • Big Guy had his physical done for preschool with shots (boo).
  • Hannah started solid food. (Yay peas!!!)
  • Big Guy toured the preschool that he started today. (YAY!!!!! He likes!!!!)
  • Our foster care caseworker visited and met our new kids. =)
  • The boys’ GAL (court attorney voice) visited and gave me much more info about the case.
  • We had a second outbreak of lice (BOO!!!!!!) and this time my 2 yr old got it. (SO not cool).
  • Began planning for and hunting for tickets for our trip to CA in April. (WOOT!!!)
  • Upward basketball practice for Daddy and a movie night for us.
  • Nit combing, nit combing, nit combing…. hair treating (non-toxic, but still annoying).
  • Matt went to his brother’s Bachelor’s party.
  • Matt’s brother William married his lovely fiance (and now bride), Koutrney, Saturday so we hauled the masses out there to attend and celebrate.
  • I tried to do homeschooling prep so we could start homeschooling this week (goodbye 3.5 week break!!)
  • I cleaned like a beast, rearranged our room a bit (since Hannah moved out), caught up on my Bible Study, got those “twins” back on a feasible post-sickness schedule, treated our cloth diapers and got “the twins” into cloth, got my laundry routine rolling.
  • And we OVERCAME LICE!!!!!!!!!

And I survived to tell it all.

(Deep breath) Feels good to be almost on track! =D

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