We’re starting our 9th year of homeschooling! I’m so excited. It just gets better and better.

Many people ask, is that legal?? Yes! It’s legal.

Lots of people homeschool, including here in 29 Palms. Here is a website with some tips about getting started:

CHEA Of CA

If you are considering homeschooling, send me a message! I’d love to help you get started. I recommend being an independent homeschooler. You have much more freedom with this option. You are not obligated to any one curriculum, or even to a certain schedule. You have the freedom to choose curriculum that fits your children’s learning styles. You have the freedom to make your own school schedule.

One of the biggest benefits for us is being able to take off of school when my husband is able to take leave.

The other reason that we love homeschooling is that we are free to talk about God any time we want! We can pray and learn and be a family that worships the Lord 24/7.

Do you have any of their products? I love them! The books and the manipulatives.

We were given this set of My First Animal cards. Leah loves them. Here are some pictures of her loving the box. She’ll play with it for a long time. LOL

Here is the rabbit card. The cards are very strong cardboard. And on each animal there is a “feel” spot. I’ve been working on one animal at a time while she sits on my lap. This morning was cow and then I’d say moooo. She started saying moo too. She loves feeling the cards also. I love having easy items like this that encourage me to encourage learning in my little ones.

Are you a homeschooler moving to 29 Palms?  Welcome!!  There are many of us here.  I have enjoyed getting to know the families here…I have been surprised by the numbers for such a small area.

Over 30 families are part of a group called Growing Palms.  You can check us out at this Yahoo Group. We meet at the park on Fridays, do field trips, holiday parties, etc. I’m also hoping to start up a Mom’s Night Out next month.

Not homeschooling but are interested?? Let me know! I’d love to give you more information. Homeschooling is most definitely legal in CA and it’s very simple. To get you started check out Just the Facts from the California Homeschool Network.

I love child-sized items! I starting reading Mommy Life several years ago and I enjoy her posts on children. When I saw this set of cleaning supplies, I knew Alex and Hannah would love them!

Here’s Hannah spraying the floor with water.

And then mop, mop, mop!

She stuck to this job for about 45 minutes.

They also love to dust and I let them use my Swiffer duster with the handle down to dust baseboards, bookshelves, and anything else that doesn’t have knick knacks.

http://www.montessoriservices.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=109_256_1657&zenid=a49cc641bdc261bc5e5f2d0b2ad560fc

I’ve been wanting a “little kid” table for awhile.  I just couldn’t decide what kind.

Do I get a small square table that doesn’t take up as much space, and I can get in wood that would match my decor better?

Do I get a table I can just paint to keep covering up kid stuff?

Do I get a “school” table that has the legs that adjust for size?  And then what color?

Or do I want a round table..the kind with the spot for the teacher to sit on one side?

Decisions Decisions!

I had left a spot in my dining/office just for this table that I hoped to get one day.

Yesterday a neighbor was having a moving sale.  This woman has had an in-home day care for 20 years and is retiring.  They are moving to Okinawa and she isn’t going to do it anymore.  I wish I had gotten to her house sooner!  She was selling a lot of great stuff!!!

Anyway, I get there just before they start to pack it up, and there are some little chairs and I start thinking..well, I could get these chairs and then just find a table later..the chairs are great…I ask her how much and she tells me $3 each and oh by the way, I still have the table inside the house!

She shows me the table and I snatch it up.  God’s provision.  No more decision to make.

Hannah and Alex love it and are so thrilled to have their very own table!

Mary asked me what Peacemakers was. I would have gotten around to it eventually but I’ll just do it now. I have to insert here that I have all these pictures to share with you and they’re trapped on my camera!!! My new camera does not like my old computer. I’ve been loading them onto Roy’s laptop and then transferring them via a thumb drive. What a pain. Then he had an out-of-town conference this week and he had the gall to take the laptop with him!

I will share that I have not complained once about my computer. We won’t talk about how it won’t burn anymore. And the disc drive isn’t working well. And my new camera doesn’t like it. And it’s very loud. And it’s very slow. I can tell you about these problems, but I have not complained to my husband. He buys me so many wonderful things already. And he knows all these things about the old computer. He’s bringing me home a new computer tomorrow! I can’t stop grinning.

Back to the Peace Makers!

I bought these activity books several years ago intending to use them with Kayla. Instead we read through some other books and never did use these. They are recommended for 3rd to 7th graders. Samantha is 5th and Matthew is 2nd. We’re doing them this year. I did not buy books for each of them. We’re going to do them together and just do a lot of role playing. Practice makes perfect! Practice lays a habit. A good one!

The website explains much better what these books are about. The second link shows you the covers of all the books. The third link is a sample of the first book. There are manuals as well, but I decided to not use it to that extent. Plus I don’t have a classroom full of children. Just my two.

We’re doing about one page a day, discussing what is happening, role playing anything GOOD from that page, and praying about what we’ve learned. It doesn’t take much time and I believe that the lessons we learn from these will go a long way.

The Young Peace Makers

Peace Maker Titles

Sample Book

Tawna recently asked me what BFIAR was. Here’s your answer, Tawna.

BFIAR stands for Before Five in a Row. It’s a book that is part of a company called Five in a Row. The premise is that you take one book and read it each day for a week. And in the FIAR book, it gives you all kinds of ideas of things to do in relationship to the book.

For example, last week we read If Jesus Came to My House. In the book the main character is fearful of the shadows he sees while walking down the hallway.

One of the options (and it is titled for science) is to talk about shadows, and how shadows are made, and we played “catch my shadow.” We also (for Bible) talked about fears and how God does not want us to fearful. Another day, as we read the book, we kept track of what animals we saw on the pages, and discussed what those animals were doing.

BFIAR has an emphasis on manners and daily life whereas the older books involve more actual “schooling.” Some of the things we have been practicing with our first two books (Corduroy was the second) is how to greet guests when they come over. What to say when they leave. How to talk to them while they are in our home. How to handle it when mommy says no to buying something. We’ve been doing a lot of role playing and Alex and Hannah love this!

Here is one scenario that has been being played out in my home a lot since last Monday. Hannah and Alex stand on the edge of the living room.

Them: “Knock Knock”
Me: Please come in. Hi Hannah and Alex! Welcome to my home!
Them: Hello. Hello.
Me: Won’t you come and sit in my favorite chair.
Them: Yes, thank you.

Them: Okay, we must go now.
Me: Okay. Thank you for coming. Please come again!
Them: Okay. We will.

5 seconds later “knock knock” LOL

Sometimes I get to be the visitor. I like to throw curve balls at them…and ask for cookies.

This is my 8th year homeschooling.  The first 4 years I had no schedule and no checklist.  We just did work throughout the day and I prayed that we’d get it all done!  As we added more children to our lives, this didn’t work so well.

Then I discovered MOTH.  MOTH stands for Managers of Theirs Homes.  It’s a great product and can be found at www.titus2.com.  Steve and Terri Maxwell are a wonderful couple that offer some great resources.  For the next 3 years I would diligently sit down and make a schedule.  Every hour of our days were scheduled out.

One year I had short time periods for the different subjects.  Last year I had longer time periods and the kids were to read if they finished early.

I love the idea of a schedule.  I really do.  I would love to have my days planned out better.  To know that I have time for scrapbooking because I’ve scheduled it in.  To get enough sleep each night.  To have dinner on time.

It just doesn’t work for me.  I don’t even really know why.  I started saying that I was too random.  Life is too random.  The real reason is that I just don’t want to do math at 9am every morning.  Maybe I’m in the mood for history then.  Maybe the baby is crying and I need to nurse her and math would be a pain right then.  But I could read then.  Or…whatever.  Or maybe the meal I want to make for dinner takes more time than the 1 hour I had scheduled at 5pm.  Maybe I decide it’s time to make cinnamon rolls and we all stop school and enjoy that.

I trembled at the thought of not having a schedule.  Then I remembered that I only followed it for 3 weeks anyway and then would give up.  Why torture myself??

But how to make sure we were getting everything done in our day?

First I made a list of everything that we needed to do.  Then I thought about what would work best for mornings and what would be best for the afternoons (when the 3 little ones are napping).

And tada!  Here’s our checklist.  Each day we just make sure to do everything we need to do for that.  I didn’t X off the days we don’t actually do something.  For example, we only do BFIAR on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  But just in case I miss Monday…we can “catch up” on Tuesday.

I looked at my checklist today?  Everything is done for the week!!  Week 1 of school – SUCCESS!

Technically we school year round. But we took off a little time around the birth of Leah.  Then there was the moving.  Then we couldn’t find the school books.  Thankfully we had started last year early and then really pushed right before Leah was born.  So besides math, we really did start a new school year.  It won’t be long though and both Sam and Matt will have finished last year’s books and will be ready to jump into the new year.

I’ll be posting some pictures of our first days, and I’ll start you off with Monday morning.  It was around 8am.  We went outside and they had a great time posing for me.  It was already about 150 degrees outside.

Kayla, 12th Grade, 17 years old

Samantha, 5th Grade, 10 years old

Matthew, 2nd Grade, 7 years old

Alexander, K-4, 4 years old

(Why do some say Pre-K and some say K-4.  I know why I do!  Because I would say Alex is kindergarten as he doing work that might generally be done in kindergarten, but he is only 4, and some of the stuff is for younger grades.  Like he really can’t WRITE yet..but can do all the phonics and math.)

Hannah, 2 years old

Prior to this year, we have not done an official art program.  After a lot of reading on The Well-Trained Mind message board, I decided to go with Artistic Pursuits.  It includes history, appreciation, and application. There are 4 levels of books: K-3, 4-6, Jr. High, and High School.  Each level has several books.  You can read more about them on their website.  (Link on the sidebar.)

I purchased K-3, Book One and 4-6, Book One.  I’m doing K-3 with Samantha and Matthew and then Samantha is working through 4-6 on her own.  Now that I have the program and love it, I’ll be buying the high school books for Kayla.  Here’s a quick run-through of our first lesson from the K-3 book.

The front cover:

There are 32 lessons with projects in this book. The first 10 lessons are “What Artists Do.” The next 7 lessons are about “What Artists See.”  And the final lessons are entitled “Where We Find Art.”   To give you a hint, where we find art is in cave drawings, Greek pottery, Egyptian murals, Medieval tapestry (to name a few).

In this first lesson we learned about how Artists Compose.

The next page includes a painting with some questions.  The questions ask us things about the painting’s coomposition.

The third page of the lesson is a project where the child puts into action that which they just learned.  In this project, my children drew pictures of something they had seen that day in our home. Matthew took liberty with that. LOL

The supplies used are “real” supplies.  A supply list is included on their website and the authors encourage you to get quality supplies for your children to use.

Here’s Matthew composing his picture.  He tells me that it is of him riding his bike down a hill.

He was having a good time.  LOL  He did break his pencil from pushing too hard and he was getting ready to sharpen it here.

And with the final product.  Can you see the likeness?

Leah in her saucer was Samantha’s inspiration.

Here’s Samantha hard at work.  She kept turning and looking at Leah and Leah loved that.

I never did get Samantha with the final product. You can sort of see the saucer in the pictures though.  She said at the end that she didn’t like how Leah was not proportioned correctly.  (We’ll get to that lesson eventually, Samantha!)

What I love about this first book is that it a good introduction to different mediums of art.   If you haven’t found an art program for your children yet, I highly recommend this one!!  Check out their site!