my blessed life

As our homeschool takes some time off this summer, my mind almost never stops thinking of and planning ahead for the upcoming school year.  This is probably because I'm Type A and an obsessive planner...lol Whatever the reason, I do enjoy this season of planning.   But I also need to be refreshed as a homeschool mom.  Homeschooling can be incredibly exhausting and all-consuming.  It's not easy and it's a lot of responsibility.  And I take that very seriously when I am researching curriculum and planning toward the next school year.  So also taking some time to rejuvenate and refocus myself is very important.   How do I do this?   Each summer I take some time to read something inspiring and motivating that speaks to me as a homeschool mom.  Some of my fave reads from past years--that I have nearby on my shelf and refer to often--are Educating the Wholehearted Child, The Well-Trained Mind, The Charlotte Mason Companion, A T...

It's summertime!  And for our family that means a break from schooling for the kids and lots of planning for the next year for me. Of course, for me, that is something of a domino effect.  Planning means sorting curriculum and books that I already have.  Then I have to purge books we no longer need or want to keep.  And finally comes the organizing of what's being kept ( which is always too much ).   So that's what I've been working on for the past few days.  Cleaning off shelves, making piles of books to sell, piles of books and resources to give away, and since I've put this off for so long ...a piles of my kiddos' used-up books that I need to take samples from for their portfolios then dispose of the rest.   So a lot of piles.   I am trying to be a bit more ruthless this year with the purging.  I have such a tendency to collect lots of great resources, only to put them on a shelf and forget about them all toge...

I love this time of year!  Having our curriculum plan for the coming school year ...and reading about others' plans is always exciting to me.  I've gotten some great educational leads by checking out what others are using.  Today I'm sharing our choices for the '15/'16 school year. For The Princess... ...who is now....gasp!...a 7th grader !  That means we've been truly homeschooling now for at least 8 years.  Wow.  That sounds like I'm a veteran, but really I learn new things every year.  And now that we're moving into secondary education I've got a lot more to learn about. Bible Study & Christian Character: ~ The Pilgrim's Progress curriculum ~ Our 24 Family Ways ~ Child Training Bible Math: ~ Teaching Textbooks 7 (primary) ~ Life of Fred (supplemental) ~ Khan Academy (supplemental) Language Arts: ~ Learning Language Arts Through Literature Green (grammar) ~ SchoolhouseTeachers.com (spelling/vocabulary) ~ Total Lang...

  Here I go again with my summer school scrapboooking goals!  Last year I failed miserably and got nothing accomplished other than ordering a few photos.  This year I am much more determined ...and I have a plan ! :)  Anyone who knows me knows that I love to have a plan!   My plan is to get one grade for one kiddo done each week this summer.  For instance, the first week of June I was scheduled to do The Princess' K5 pages.  This past I was scheduled to do Mr. B's K5 pages.  This week will be The Princess' 1st grade pages ...and so on, back and forth, until I'm current.   OK.  I admit, I'm a week behind already.   BUT I did get The Princess' K5 pages completed!!  Whoo hoo!!  And I'm planning to make up some time this week and maybe get back on my schedule :)   I think once I get into a good rhythm I'll start moving more quickly.  Can't wait to be totally caught up!!   ...

This week has been full and fun!!  We began Mr. B's 10th birthday celebration on Sunday (a day early) with our special meal out with my parents and sister (my parents are so awesome to take us all out on each birthday!).  Mr. B picked Chili's this year.     On his actual birthday, Monday, he opened his gifts here at home.  Then we went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch (his total fave!) where we also enjoyed a birthday cookie cake.  Yes, celebrations around here involve LOTS of good food! :) Then Monday evening we drove to Union City, TN to spend the night and visit the Discovery Park of America on Tuesday.  The whole family went and we had SO much fun!!   If you have never heard of the Discovery Park of America it could be because it's practically brand new!  It's been open only about a year and a half.  It's located in a small town about 3 hours west of Nashville but it is well worth the drive!  And the ticket prices...

Summer break is in full swing around here and we are at it again with our Summer Reading Program !   Last summer I decided to develop a little system all of our own and it was a big hit--so much so they couldn't wait to begin again this summer.   It's really simple:  They get to fill in a spot on their reading bingo charts each time they read for 25 minutes (yes, I upped the time by 5 minutes this year). Every time they bingo they earn a coupon (things like: choose your fave dinner, buy one thing at the dollar store, go bowling, a family bike ride...  primarily these are free experiences or very cheap treats). When they black-out their bingo chart they get to pick a golden ticket (these are things like: $10 at Books-A-Million, something from 5Below, a trip to our local froyo place...  things that cost a bit more but not too much either) Every week they get paid .01 per page of every book that they've finished during that week and recorded in th...

I think I need a t-shirt that says " I Survived This School Year ".  :) Don't get me wrong, I love homeschooling.  It's not that.  It's just that this year has presented challenges in other ways and we've had to meet them head on.  But those challenges meant that we had some tough days, so this summer break is much needed.   So ...yea!!!  It's summer break!!! The kids hit the pool just as soon as they wrapped up their school work yesterday.  They're braver than I am.  The water is still too cold for me.  I'm a wimp like that ;)   This morning we had our big end of the year finale with our homeschool group: Field Day!!  It's always so much fun, filled with teams and relays, medals and encouraging each other in being good sports.  I love our homeschool group!! And that's a wrap!  Happy Summer, y'all! This post is linked to the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers .  ...

Whoo hoo!!  We are down to just one week left in our '14-'15 school year!!  I.am.so.ready!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It has been so very hard these past few weeks to stay focused until the end of the year.  We are all ready for that summer break.  I have to say the kids have done a great job this week of hunkering down and just getting the job done though.  Proud of them! Last week we had a friend in town for a couple of days so we took Monday off from book work and headed to the Land Between the Lakes to hang out for a while.  It's always fun there!  We walked around Hematite Lake and then visited The Homeplace for a while--where my son nearly wore out the ducks and chickens chasing them around:)  LBL is one of our fave recreation areas! We are still in the middle of our human anatomy study for this year.  It's taken longer than I planned but that's okay.  We'll just pick back up in the fall.  We are currently studying a...

So a few weeks ago we were able to take our family to a Lego Kids Fest in Nashville.  These are happening in various cities around the country and if you're able to go to one I highly recommend doing that!  It was SO MUCH FUN !!  The tickets were for a four hour time slot and I have to say that I really didn't think we'd need to stay that long ...but we could have stayed longer !  There was an incredible amount of things to do and see.  I took, like, a thousand pictures ...which I have so graciously pared down to some faves here for you ;) This event included activities like: the brick battle zone, a Lego pizza relay race, Lego car racing, Creation Nation, thebiggestLegobrickpileyou'veeverseen, the art gallery, and tons more.  There were special build areas for everybody's favorite lines: Star Wars, Bionicle, Lego Friends, Lego Disney, Mixels ....and a special family build area with a monochromatic theme (ours was purple).   ...

We are quickly counting down the days till the end of our school year.  I.am.so.ready.  This mama needs a summer break. Not that I don't have some "summer schoolin' " planned, but it's not the same as the rest of the year.  More on that soon! We have had a busy past few weeks though and our school year is quickly winding down.  Besides our regular "book" work, here's some of what we've been up to lately. We attended the Lego Kid Fest in Nashville.  I can't believe I haven't had a chance to sit down and tell you all about it yet!  I promise to do that this week and share TONS of pics.  This was an amazing event!  If this show is coming anywhere near you I highly recommend going! We took a (very) short spring break trip to Myrtle Beach.  To be honest, it wasn't even close to one of our better trips.  The weather was cooler than we would have liked and ...Mr. B was not having a good travel week (travel isn...

I don't know about you, but I think spring fever has hit our house.  It has been a struggle to focus around here!  I can remember when I was in school and the weather began to warm up, it was SO hard to think about my lessons.  And when you're at home I can only imagine how much harder it is for my kids to focus on these warm and sunny spring days when they're just dying to get out and play.  So I'm trying to be much more flexible these days and remind myself that it just as important as their studies some days. In fact, I feel as though I am in a process of relearning how to teach my children.  Their learning styles are growing and developing and I am learning so much more about how they learn--especially my son.  Since discovering some of his learning struggles I am having to rethink how I do things with him.  Even small changes can make big differences and get much better results!  I have to say that this past week and a half have been SO...

So I just realized how badly I have slacked this year on the weekly wrap-ups :/  Kind of feel bad about that.  Okay.  I'm over it.   This just hasn't been the year of the weekly wrap-up, I guess. But there's always now and I thought I'd jump back in there. Part of the reason I haven't been motivated to post our weekly wraps has been that so many of our weeks have been really hard this year.  You may remember my post last fall about how our 9-yr-old son, Mr. B, has been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.  We are still learning how that is effecting us as a family, how we can better help him succeed, and how to handle the daily challenges.  And there are many daily challenges.  Often in the evenings I am just emotionally wrung out (this explains my lack of blogging in recent months).   I am very hopeful that we are learning new and better ways to help our son learn and grow in areas where he really struggles...