Our First Week of "Summer School"

Well we are at the end of the official "School Year". We missed quite a few days due to illnesses, hospitalizations, surgeries, among many other things (which is why we have not posted in SO long) so our family decided it would be best if we continued with school through summertime. We want to make sure that the kids are where they need to be before the beginning of 3rd grade. We just finished up week one of Summer School. We like that we are not required to put a full 6 hours in each day (although most days we do anyway), and we like that we can work less days a week if that is what we want to do . This week we took 3 days off instead of two because we had a LOT to do. We did get a lot done this week however, and we are looking forward to the rest of the summer. We are adding in some extra writing practice once a week by adding a summer journal to our curriculum. The twins both struggle with handwriting and I am *HOPING* to be able to introduce cursive next school year. If the boys are not ready though, we are NOT going to rush it. We have plenty of time to get to that. As long as they learn by the end of 5th grade, I am OK with that.

Here is some of what we did this week: 

Map Planning:

Rainy Day Art Project:
Umbrella with Raindrops

Inspired by this:  Pintrest Project

That is all the pictures I have for our first week in summer school. It was quite a hectic week. Hopefully life will be slowing down for us now that the medical issues have been addressed with both me and my son. I look forward to keeping this blog much more active! 

We had a great first year of homeschooling, and although the Connection Academy did not work out for us, I still think it is a GREAT online public school with a lot of flexibility. If you want to try homeschooling, but are not yet ready to do it alone, this is a great option to transition into homeschooling. If you end up not liking it, the process to withdraw your student is very easy. We chose to leave Mid School year and transition into full homeschooling. We do use an online curriculum called Time4Learning and my kids love it! We do supplement the curriculum they offer with lessons that I come up with on my own as the curriculum seems to leave a little to be desired, but it is well worth the small monthly fee to have the lesson plans done for you! We love this website and will be using it again next year. 

I am exhausted.....I need to get some sleep. I promise to be more active on here....this first year of homeschool might have kept me on my toes, but it was well worth it and I am looking forward to every year we have ahead of us! 

Its been a LONG four weeks!

Wow, I have not had time to post in FOUR weeks! The time has been flying by! We are in week EIGHT! Holy Moly!

Let me tell you, we have gone through a lot in the past four weeks and we are still loving homeschooling A LOT, actually, now more than ever.

We have had a lot of medical issues come up with the kids, especially with our son Jacob who has Autism. Some days we have struggled to keep going, especially during times when the kids are sick. It is hard to meet the attendance requirements when you have a special needs child who has so many appointments that cannot be scheduled solely outside of school hours (which was only ONE of the many reasons we left traditional schooling behind), but we have pulled through and worked while sick, worked on weekends to make up missed weekdays, and we are currently working through spring break so that we can take a week off next week for one of Jacob's hospitalizations. It has just been tough. BUT, it would have been a lot harder had we still been enrolled in traditional schools.

*Jacob would have to try to keep up with a class that keeps going ahead even when he is not in attendance, putting him further behind his peers than he already is.

* We would not be able to "make up" days on weekends/holidays to make sure we are staying within the attendance requirements made by the state.

*The boys would not get the individualized education that they get at home.

*The boys would not have the freedom to learn and explore subjects that interest them in addition to what is in their curriculum.

I just can't say enough how life changing it has been to switch to home schooling!

Moving on.....

Here is some of what we have done the last four weeks!

We have had some Science Days: 

Some Sports Days:

We have had some sick days: 

Unfortunately we sometimes have Sad days:

Followed by some Snuggle days:

Some Silly Days: 

Lots of Smiley days.....

And even some Art days:

Some Rainy Day, Sand in the house days......

Oh yea, and did we mention that we throw a bit of math into all of these days?......

So as you can see we have been quite busy! 

See you next time I have time to update!
If you have a blog to share with us, we would love to see it! Just post the link in a comment below! 

As always you can visit us on FB here:
Our Homeschool Journey

Week 4:
We are still going strong. We ALL have a major case of cabin fever and we are ALL irritable. I am trying to get the kids to the park as often as I can, even if we can only stand to be outside for 15-30 minutes at a time. The kids always seem to be in a better mood after we have been outdoors for awhile. I cannot wait for spring when we can do PE activities outside, spend our lunch breaks at the park, and take walks around the neighborhood.
The kids had an amazing week! I noticed while doing some math lessons that the boys were having trouble with odd/even. I decided we needed to backstep a little bit and revisit this concept. I don't know if they were absent from school when this was taught last year, or if they just didn't grasp the lesson at that time but they just didn't "get it". We did some fun Odd/Even activities, did a couple work sheets, and did a few lessons from our Time4Learning website. It was so amazing to see it click with them, and when they did their tests at the end of the unit, they BOTH answered 15 questions and got them ALL right! 100% My favorite part about homeschooling so far is watching the boys learn something that they have struggled with in the past. You can actually see the pride in their faces, and just for a few fleeting moments you can see them ENJOYING schooling!
As much as I LOOOOOVE homeschooling, with LOVE being said SO loudly, I am going to touch on the not-so-lovely moments as well. When I first started reading about homeschooling, I would read about kids who were brilliant. They could name off every state capital, they could do complicated math problems in their heads, and they belonged to music clubs, book clubs, arts and crafts clubs. These kids could speak 5 languages, and they were eager learners. This is SO not the way things are going for us! LOL My kids are just learning to read a map, we are having to reteach the boys math in a way that they can understand (instead of the common core way), and the last thing my kids want to do is join any kind of club! Most days we roll out of bed at 10 a.m and get started with school by 11:00. We do school until well after dinner time. We barely have time to cover our main subjects let alone tackle another language. My house gets cleaned after the boys get to bed which means I do not get to bed until well after 2:00 am. The laundry piles up and gets done in short bursts when my husband is home from the road to help. I'm not complaining........NOT AT ALL......I LOVE the way things are going.....I just wonder, are we the ONLY homeschooling family that works like this? I see all of these homeschool blogs and these women have their crap together! BIG beautiful school rooms, perfectly organized, well dressed kids, pictures of every activity they do, homemade meals. Here I am with my house that looks like half daycare/half school, my kids wear their pajamas all day, and the grandbaby I babysit during the day is crawling around in the background throwing toys all over my house, and I dare not take pictures of our activities unless I crop out the toys, arts and craft supplies, and dirty dishes in the background! HOW DO THESE WOMEN DO IT?
One of these days, when I actually have a minute to spare, I might actually go through Facebook and find a few Homeschool pages to follow, just to see if there are ANY families like ours out there!
To be continued................

Sick Day :( 

What we do during breaks on cold days! 

Tot Time. I, of course, spend all day playing with the baby while doing schoolwork with the boys. But for about 5-10 minutes a day we try to do Tot Time. This is one on one time with just Ricky and I when we do an activity that is geared toward learning. Today we read about animals and the sounds they make. :) 

We do most of our work either at our computer station in the living room or at the kitchen table. 

Art is very important in our house. Our kids are hands on learners and they really enjoy creating art projects while listening to Mom teach. We do a LOT of Art during our homeschool year! 

We go to the park as much as we can. We don't have very many days that are warm enough to get outside, but we take every chance we get. Running laps around the park is a perfect way to get our P.E hours in! 

Jacob is beginning to read for pleasure! Just last year getting him to read was like pulling teeth. Look at this smile as he gets ready to read a book to me, without being asked to! AFTER SCHOOL HOURS! 

No School day would be complete without our youngest learner, my grandson Ricky. 

We do not take snow days, in fact, those are the best days to stay at home in our pajamas learning! We save our skip days for nice days when we can go to the beach or public pool! 

Needless to say, we are enjoying ourselves! 

Wow......Its been a long time!

It has been quite some time since I updated on how we are doing on our homeschooling adventure. We have a Sunday coming up and it just happens to be our 4th week of homeschooling. How about a post about our first month!

Stay tuned on Sunday.......................

Sunday is here and I am exhausted.....I pinky promise to get our week 4 wrap up finished up tomorrow! We had a very busy, and very productive week! :)

Our first week of homeschooling went SO smoothly. It wasn't perfect of course. Jacob's autism is always sure to throw a wrench in the best planned out day, and add in a 10 month old baby who's routine is always changing, and you have a recipe for a day gone bad! I am going to say though that we had more good days than bad!

We did accomplish a LOT this week, and we are already off to a GREAT start. First of all, I have quickly learned to navigate the Time4Learning website. I am able to prepare lessons for the next school day pretty easily, and I know it will get even easier as I get acquainted to the website's features.

I am going to say that I absolutely LOVE Time4Learning so far.  I love the Students Activity Scheduler.  From here I am able to create an activity plan for a week, a month, or a year! I am doing it by the week for now since we are coming into the curriculum mid year. I also love the Parents Tools feature where I am able to go for information on how to navigate through the website. My favorite feature though is the Student Reports and Information where I am able to see what lessons my kiddos are working on, and what lessons are complete. I am also able to print off reports, such as a weekly attendance report, for our portfolio!

Here are some photos from our first week as homeschoolers! YAY! We are so happy to FINALLY be on this path!

Best of all, because we worked the days and hours we wanted to work, we were able to spend a lovely day at the park that would have been otherwise wasted sitting indoors with our noses to the books! We instead worked in the evening before going to bed! You don't get too many nice days like this in late January! 

We are very much looking forward to week 2! 

BIG changes!

Some very big changes are underway in our house. 

As much as we absolutely LOVE Connections Academy, we have made the tough decision to take our kids out of the school and home school them instead. Connections Academy is a GREAT school, and we have nothing negative to say about it. Our decision is bases solely on what is best for our family. 

I have to say that our first semester at Connections was AMAZING! However, things changed a little....well a LOT when the second semester came rolling around.Connections Academy has a great curriculum, however, there were some things being taught at the second grade level that we just didn't think our kids were ready to take on yet. We as a family have a set of ideas about what we want to teach our children and when, and this just isn't on track with Connections Academy. I won't go into detail to keep this post as short as possible, but we just have different ideas of what should and should not be taught at a second grade level. In addition to that, Connections Academy is a public school....therefore they must abide by the states rules for education which includes Common Core. While Common Core works GREAT for some families, for OUR family it just isn't right. We are also looking for just a little more flexibility than Connections can offer. Yes, there is SOME flexibility within Connections Academy, just not as much as we would have thought.  

That being said, we are going to start second semester as a home schooling family. While it would have been ideal to have been home schooling from the very beginning, I am glad that we have discovered that this is what we want now, instead of the kids spending many years in Elementary school before making a decision. Right now we are kind of clueless on where to even begin as far as curriculum goes. There are SO many choices, it is actually a little overwhelming. However, I am not going to let that keep me from diving right in and doing what we can to get started. The first thing we are going to TRY is a site called Time4Learning. We welcome ANY and ALL reviews about this web based curriculum. We are also open to any websites, blogs, or other resources that you have found helpful. We are NOT looking to spend a million dollars to teach our children things we can find online for free, but we do realize that of course we will have to spend a little bit of money to make things "easier". 

What it all comes down to in the end is we want our children to stress LESS about test scores and grades, and MORE about what comes natural, LEARNING! 

We hope that you will continue to support our journey on the road to learning! I will also be updating the blog with a fresh new look......just as soon as I get a minute to breathe! :) 

WISH US LUCK!!!! 

Honor Roll 2014-2015 School Year

Look Who Made The Honor Roll This Year!!!

Great Job Jacob and Brandon! 

Keep Up The Good Work!

Happy New Year!!!!!!

Not school related, we just wanted to wish everyone a very HAPPY NEW YEAR 2015!!!! 

Art Class- Connections Academy *Puppet Making*

We are technically still on Winter Break at Connections Academy, but my boys took some vacation days last week that we need to make up this week. So to make up some hours we are working on a few assignments that we are behind on, as well as working ahead on some other assignments. Today we worked on the assignment that is assigned for the first day back to school (January 5th). Making Puppets! I wish I could have gotten some pictures of my little guys working hard on their puppets, but the baby wanted to sit in my lap and "help", so my hands were a little tied up ;) BUT I did get some really cute pictures of the finished product, and let me tell you, these boys really put some imagination into their puppets!

Brandon's (blonde hair) puppet is "Toy Freddy" from Five Nights at Freddy's.

Jacob's (brown hair) puppet is his Daddy. 

And its NEVER to early to start baby out! 

We are trying out some Tot School activities with baby Ricky. Ricky is now 9 months old, nearing the big ONE, and we are ready to start having fun teaching while playing with Ricky! Of COURSE Ricky will be doing NO kind of official school work, we are simply playing with a purpose at this point! 5 minutes a day is all we are doing right now! :) 

Today we introduced foam Squares

Ricky thought that they tasted delicious! 

Halfway through the year at Connections Academy

We are just about to finish up our first semester at Connections Academy. I cannot believe we are already halfway through the year! Time has flown by so fast.

How we are doing:
We are absolutely LOVING Connections Academy. We are SO happy with our decision to enroll. In the beginning we were SO unsure of our decision. We were all pretty sure that we would end up not liking it at all, especially after reading so many reviews about how rigorous the curriculum is.
For us, the scheduled lessons work well. They give us something to be accountable to, and even though lessons are due on a certain day, there is always the option of doing the lesson on another day (at least in the lower grades, I have heard different about high school). Our teacher is so helpful, and she has always been available when we have questions or need guidance. The lessons are fun and engaging, and they are set up with instructions on *HOW* to teach the lesson to your child. I could go on forever about all of the things we love about Connections Academy, but then this blog post would be like a million pages long.
I guess the ONLY negative I can think of so far is that the kids are not engaging with other kids their age on a daily basis. HOWEVER, that does NOT mean that they are isolated in ANY way. They have their friends that they get to visit, and of course they see other children when we visit parks, and other out of the house activities. We are looking forward to summer coming back so we can be outdoors more, as we are all feeling a little cooped up in the house right now.
I guess it goes without saying that we will be sticking with Connections Academy not only for the remainder of this year, but for all the years Connections is an available option to us! We hope to be able to stick with Connections all the way through High School!

We decided at the beginning of the year to use half of the living room as a school room since this was the ONLY available space for a school area. In the beginning of the year the school area was pretty bare and empty. That is definitely no longer the case, in fact, our school work/stuff is slowly invading the rest of the house, including the kitchen where we do most of our school work. Our area works for us though, and of course we don't mind our house looking like half house/half school!
Here is what some of our school areas look like (you can go back to the beginning of the year to see how it looked at the beginning of the year). I'm sure by the end of the year the school stuff will have taken up even more room in our house!

New fun added to our day:
I have also taken on the duty of watching my grandson during the day. At first it was a real challenge to school while taking care of a baby, but we quickly learned not to stress about staying on such a strict schedule. Once we learned to work around the demands of the baby, things got easier. Now the baby (his name is Ricky) is such a part of our routine, that on days that he is not here, we find ourselves lost!

Added Shelf to hall. We had to add a shelf to the hall area. We needed a place to store art supplies, busy boxes for the baby, board games, and toys to keep baby busy while we do school. 

 We have added a behavior chart for Jacob. (Jacob is working on impulse control. He has a diagnosis of Autism, and this is something he is struggling with right now). We also added some positive reinforcement papers. We wrote "I am proud of your today because:" on a piece of paper and then laminated the paper. Each night I write something that each boy did during the day to make me proud. Some days it is something HUGE, some days it is just something simple. The point is to show them that the things that they do make me proud of them. :) On the days that the boys are especially naughty, it takes a lot of thinking to come up with something to write, but I ALWAYS write SOMETHING ;) 

 We have added a bulletin board to hang art. (This is in addition to a couple of clotheslines we hung up to hang art from)

 The kitchen table (this is where to do most of our work). We have our paper tray that holds our assignments until the end of the week (Sunday) when I file them away for the year. Also I keep a pencil sharpener here,  also SOME of our dry erase supplies that I use to write on our laminated math aides (Hundreds Chart, Number Line, Part Part Whole Mat, Tens/Ones Chart, etc) are kept here. I keep the laminated math aides, listed above, on the bottom shelf of the paper tray for easy access while working on math assignments.  Each boy also has a pencil box here with the supplies we use every day such as pencils and erasers. We keep a high chair here in the kitchen right next to the kitchen table so that the baby can play with the attached toys while we work on school. 

Oh, and the clothesline, to hang art of course! ;) 

 Our computer area. As you can see the supplies have pretty much exploded since the beginning of school. It is still manageable though, and everything is easily accessible and organized. (You can see yet another clothesline of art here too lol) Each of us has our own computer and amazingly the three computers fit nicely into this area. Under the desk are two three-drawer organizers where we store art and craft supplies and paper. 

A dry erase board for reminders. We keep Jacob's therapy appointments, Special Education appointments, and Respite appointments here. (We have another bulletin board in another area of the house for non-school related appointments)  

Another shelf for our stuff. Boys crafts, and more baby toys. 

 Another shelf, this one holds math manipulatives, Science Supplies, Workbooks, and more Dry Erase Supplies. Also, Time and Money Supplies, and Flash Cards. On the bottom shelf, letter tiles and books for school. 

Close up of one of the desk areas. This part of the desk holds crayons, markers, unifix cubes, and Misc. Supplies. 

 One of our doors serves as a word wall (that we could really use practice on keeping up to date) and a spot to hang school related posters. 

We are pretty sure that the second half of our year will be just as successful as the first half! :)