Life in Texas: July 2016

Monday, July 11, 2016

First Week of 2nd Grade!

My smart and funny 2nd grader!!

I'm not going to write weekly posts of what we're doing this year. I honestly, just don't have time to do so anymore. However, I plan on posting highlights here and there.

I'm going to try and post a more detailed version of what we're using this year later this week. The short version is, Adventures in My Father's World for history, Bible, science, art, and music, and Timberdoodle's 2nd Grade for Language Arts, Math, STEM, and Thinking Skills. We're using Abeka for reading and a few of their books to accompany our history, science, and Health, Safety, and Manners.

The first week of 2nd grade went great! Honestly, it went even better than I expected. Last year, I taught Caden M-W-F and he attended a part-time school two days a week full time. It got to be a battle some days for him to do his work with me. Sometimes school work seemed to drag on ALL DAY! Frankly, the curriculum just wasn't working for us. It was a great curriculum but didn't fit our personalities as well. Which got me to thinking, when we have the opportunity to really customize our child's education, why not truly customize it to fit them the best we can? Everyone is created uniquely by God. Caden is gifted in a lot of things and his favorite subject is math. He tested as a 5th grader in math at the end of the year on his tests scores. The cool thing is, he's never been taught 5th grade math. He figured out multiplication and division on his own. Does this mean that this year I'm going to go ahead and move him up to 5th grade math? No. I decided to stick with his age and if he wants to continue on and test out of most of the year, we'll move forward. However, I don't want to over push him. I want him to be confident in his ability to do and understand math. I want his favorite subject to remain a favorite and him not to get bogged down in frustration. Will we do some advanced math as we go along? Absolutely! Some subjects are going to be more challenging for him. For example, he hates handwriting and we did grammar pages last year that were a beating! As someone who has a BA in English, I found it to be pointless for him to do these grammar pages. Does that mean that I believe grammar is pointless? Not at all! But for my first grader, they were. I really LOVE our language arts book this year. So far, Caden loves it too. Also, Caden is someone who picks up on things very quickly. If we spend more than 15-20 minute son a subject, he gets bored and I lose him. He can do short bits quickly and effectively and retains the information well. Also he needs time to move and get some exercise throughout the day. I do too for that matter! The thought of him sitting at a desk all day without being able to play outside makes me sad. So glad it doesn't have to be that way!

Here's an overview of how I set up this year.

Planning. The way I planned this year was I organized the year by weeks. I took apart the workbooks and put assignments into folders by weeks. I put the books we'll be using on one shelf in my office. I have a history binder, completed work binder, and a weekly binder. At the beginning of the week, I pull out the week's assignments and put them in the daily folders. I go over the assignments of what we're going to be doing and make sure I have everything we need. Then the night before, or morning of, I quickly review the day's agenda and we get started. So far this is working well but I'm only 1 week and 1 day in.

This year's assignments, organized neatly in this binder folder

I organized by week in these folders

I have 5 folders in this binder for each day of the week

Rough outline of his weekly assignments

How I Homeschool 3 Children. Several people have asked how can I homeschool with 3 kids? Especially, two of them being the age of 2 and under. This is what we do. First of all, I include all of my kids when possible. We start right after breakfast, sometimes during. When my oldest is done eating, it's time to start an assignment. My younger two take longer to eat so while they are eating, or I'm feeding the baby, I give instructions to my oldest and he gets started. Some things he needs very little instruction, others a little more. We usually start with Bible and that includes reading our daily scripture. When we sit down for lunch or a snack, I read through our Health and Safety book. My 7 and 2 year old are both gaining knowledge when we do this. In fact, my 2 year old loves answering the questions as well. History and science, same thing. Most of the reading takes place before bed. It allows my husband or I to give our son one-on-one time to practice his reading and he's more relaxed to sit still at this time. Mostly because he doesn't want to go to sleep. I also save any other subjects or projects that need my undivided attention for when Jackson is taking a nap. One other thing, my house does not remain spotless during the school week. I try and pick up at the end of the day but if you dropped by, you'd see my kids have a lot of fun. They can play with their toys and create fun things during their free time. We're inside more during the summer because of the heat and it's easy for my house to become a mess. It's hard letting go of this and I get really frustrated at times, but my children's hearts mean more to me than a small mess in the living room. We do try and all pick up at the end of the day. I also have a fun curriculum I do with my 2-year old so she has her own work to do so she doesn't feel left out. She even has hers in her own binder.

Praying that this year goes really well and that my children and I all learn a lot! May God be richly blessed through this. I am so thankful that I can raise and teach my children.

First day of 2nd grade! Spelling You See!

Art curriculum

All Aboard the Animal Train for 2 and 3 year olds

He's took care of our neighbor's dogs last weekend. Did great!

What does the inside of a space heater look like? With Dad.

Egg science experiment

Caden reminded me that we did this in kindergarten

He knew the answer but had fun doing it again anyway. :)

We made a timeline for history this year!

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Caden's 1st Day of 2nd Grade!

Most of the curriculum, minus a few books

I decided Monday night that we'd go ahead and start the school year on Tuesday morning. I had originally wanted to start 2nd grade after the 4th of July but wasn't sure how it would work out.

After Caden telling us that he did not to go to soccer camp this week and just wanted to stick with tennis, we decided to go ahead with my original plans and start school. Since there was no tennis camp this week, we thought it would be a great time to start. I love the idea of taking June off for a summer break and December off for a winter break. Or basically Memorial Day through the 4th of July and Thanksgiving through New Years. Then taking time off here and there throughout the year. Caden has been asking to start school and had a great first day and second day today! He did great jumping in and working hard. It was a difficult decision not to send him back to his part-time private school this coming Fall, but after praying about it and talking with him, we decided we'd rather homeschool full-time. It gives us more flexibility to travel, more money to do things, and I enjoy picking the curriculum that fits him best. Also he really wanted to join his friends in a co-op that meets on Thursdays this coming Fall. I'm also probably going to enroll him in an all day Fine Arts class for homeschoolers that meets one day a week as well. There are plenty of activities to do with friends and this gives us the most flexibility and more valuable family time as well as time with friends. We're praying for a fun year of learning! I'll do another blog post with what we're doing for each subject when I get some time.

New Art program

Finishing up his spelling

Close up of what we're doing

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

4th of July, Trip to Austin, House Update

Happy 4th of July!!

This past week we made an offer on a house and almost put our house up for sale. Then after the counter offers took place and we all agreed on a sale price, we decided to back out and not sign the papers. We have been looking for a home with more land and this house was nice, on one acre, and pretty. However, I REALLY LOVE our current house. I love the layout, I like our neighbors, and I like the price. After realizing the taxes were going to be over 10K a year, we thought they'd be a little over 7K, we decided it wasn't worth moving at this time. We'd rather travel with our kids and have more money to give, save, and help our kids with college later. We would have had to finance with a 30 year note, rather than 15 or 20 year. We still would have put 20% down but our monthly expenses would have been $700-$900 more a month. To us, that wasn't worth the expense and pain to move. Not to mention, our current house fits us great and I love my kitchen and gas stove. This other house did not have a gas stove, it had a double oven, but not as gas stove top, which Collin and I both like. Basically, we'd be spending a lot of money for a house that was a compromise of what we both really want.

We have been looking at houses for the past year off and on. We'd love to live closer to church and have more land. However, we have worked too hard to put ourselves in a financial bind. Also, as our kids continue to get a little older, it will be easier to take them on vacations and we both LOVE to travel. One huge benefit we had when we lived in Germany was being able to travel to lots of places. Since moving back to the States, dealing with pregnancy issues, losses, and adding two more kids to our family, we haven't been able to do as much traveling.

With all of that being said, when we thought we were going to put our house on the market, we decided we'd head to Austin to get out of town. Collin and had also taken a few days off last week. Our realtor was pretty certain we would get at least one offer this past weekend. The kids were disappointed that we decided not to buy the country house and so we decided to go ahead and go to Austin and see our friends there. This was Jackson's first vacation, or time to get away from home that was not visiting family. Although it was kind of like visiting family, except we stayed in a hotel. We spent most of the weekend with our friends, the Lillards. Caden even had his first sleepover and had a great time. He didn't sleep much but enjoyed getting to spend the night with his friends. We went to church with them Sunday, ate lunch, then headed home. Saturday we took the kids to a big indoor playscape. There was also a little area for kids 3 and under that Grace and Jackson loved playing in. Overall we had a great time seeing them and look forward to getting together again. In fact, just getting out of town for a weekend trip, reminded us how much we enjoy doing things like that.

On the way down we stopped in Waco at the Magnolia Market at the Silos. It was a neat little place but too hot to be outside and the kids didn't really enjoy it. I think it's a place to go for adults more than taking kids.

For the 4th of July we went to my brother's and sister-in-law's house. They cooked out and the kids swam and played. We didn't go see any fireworks since it's so late and our kids were tired from the long weekend.

Last week on one of Collin's days off we drove to Lake Granbury and took the kids to a delicious German restaurant for lunch and then to the sandy beach area to swim in the lake. Yesterday, Caden started 2nd grade. We've been very busy but having a wonderful summer! I'm so excited about school starting again and being able to school year-round, so we can take different breaks during the year.