We're at it again, but dancing to a little different tune.

So seems that I have taken a very EXTENDED hiatus...but with that being said only here on this site. This year we are 4 weeks into our new school year and it has been the best school year yet, hands down! After much contemplation and fighting the "idea of not "really" doing school" if you use a box set or online program, we choose at the end of last year to try Alpha Omega Publications this year. For my three big kids ( grade 7, 9 & 11) we are using Monarch, and we love it! I managed to score a great deal on ASUS Chromebooks this summer in anticipation of our new avenue, and they kids are really enjoying this type of school. Monarch is a online program, that covers 5 subjects to include Math, History, Language Arts, Science, and a Bible Class. We choose to add on a few elective for them, with Family Consumer Science (aka Home Ec), American Lit,  Spanish 1, Introduction to Coding, College Prep, and Art.  This is has been such great gift to our school, the program self grades, except for written problems. Those are the responsibility of the teacher, however they give great teacher keys to aid the grading process. The kids like that they can see what their weighted grade is, and it helps to motivate them to see how their daily works really influences their overall grade. The content is vast, and it is a common occurance for someone to come share with me something that they have learned that blows their mind! So overall so far, we are really happy with Monarch as a curriculum for content, as well as the portablity that is provides with all the material being online. We move often, and this coming year will be yet another move for the Gears, this affords us the ability to move school with us with the utmost ease!

Keep posted, soon I will share what I am doing for my 4th and preschooler this year!!

When Chaos Breeds Wisdom...

Our homeschool year is done, thank goodness. Imagine walking through mud...that is how much of the year felt. Just couldn't seem to get a groove, and unlike any other homeschool mother out there with their well planned year and zero scheduling hiccups to contend with  I was just trying to finish the year the best I could.

So our last big PUSH to just finish it all, ended up being the breeding ground for some awesome homeschool wisdom. History was one subject my oldest just couldn't get whittled down,  which led to her doing two and three chapters in one setting, and the craziest thing happened...she started to learn! She began to see how each event was an effect of some previous occurrence. Having concentrated learning on one subject at a time created a perfect environment for her to not just learn facts but for it to soak in.  So next year we are going to try and break up her curriculum in order to allow for some bulk learning of each subject.
Now this wouldn't work for my son, as he like to have the variety of different subjects. I love how we have the freedom to tweak different aspects in order to accommodate each individual child, but even more I love that if it doesn't work then we can simply change it again!
What started as  a mad dash chaos to the finish line, ended with some great insight that will enrich our homeschool experience!

2015, and were off and running....

RECAP of 2014,
This school year has been a bit of on and off again love affair! We started school really strong...they had company ( that we LOVED having here) so of course we took a SCHEDULED break, which sound wonderful in the time management arena, however it is MUCH harder to get back in the saddle once you have a fun break, but we managed it and took off again....and was doing phenomenal, every test was taken, homework was getting graded, books where getting read,...(you get the point) and then Thanksgiving hit, and although we didn't do anything special or that took great planning, it was a bit of a hiccup in our awesome rhythm, but we hit it again for 2 weeks..which I'm sure it would have been as painful to watch as watching some one stumbling during a marathon...you think they'll pull out of it and make it but...they don't.
Christmas break was great, we did get just enough done prior to break to have a 2 week break so as to have a "guilt" free break. We got to visit some Christmas Markets, and you haven't seen Christmas till you have seen German Christmas, it is awesome there is the Christmas spirit everywhere! We set a steep to do list in order to be able to meet our goal and got it done ( however I wont mention it was because we worked all day the last three days of school till dinner). It was important for all of us ( the gears all voted) to have a clear and concise stopping point!
2015: ( Where we are)
We are back in school and we are still trying to forever "catch up" but it has given us a bit of breathing room to know we are schooling year round. Therefor we don't feel the intense pressure of cutting into summer. My plan is to try and combat the intense subjects ( MATH, Grammar) and get them out of the way so that even it we are schooling during the wonderful summer months, it is the stuff that we can make fun!
I think that one of our biggest obstacles is the lack of sunshine here in Germany, as well as the Darkness. Coming from South Carolina where even if it was winter and cold it was sunny, it is a big change. Waking up at what you think is 6:00am, and rolling over to be 8:00..we do alarms and have morning routines, but I think for now we are just accepting of how it works here, so that we can release some of the angst that comes with getting a "late" start on the day!
The bottom line is we are doing well, and this year has just been a big learning curve;)

Moving On after MOVING..getting school moving again

So our school year this year has been odd to state it mildly, we made an international move for the family, and are now living in Germany. It has been a wonderful experience so far, but getting here chewed up our school year and spit it out, as you can imagine. So now that we are settled into our little house in our little German village, we are getting back into the swing of school. On the down side we will be going to school until the 31st of July, however upshot is that it is HOMESCHOOL so we have the flexibility to start next year a little later. I am considering doing a year round school schedule next year, I think that with family visits, field trips, family time, it will allow us a little more breathing room to stay on track. SO with that being said I am very happy to have my school room back and a routine!!!

Rounding the first bend...

We have been busy with school and are 2 days away from completing the first quarter, 9 weeks down and we are finding our stride, but let me start at the beginning. ( mainly because I have some good pictures to share, and who doesn't love a good picture)

So we started school in the end of August and of course I had to start their first day of school with a little bit "Griswald Love" (I have been accused from time to time of becoming one with my inner Clark W.Griswald from National Lampoons Vacation). So I had breakfast ready and waiting and then at each of their desks I had this waiting for them with their appropriate grades. 

 Here are their school pictures.

So this was our beginning. 

We got lucky and had a good reminder of why we homeschool when 2 weeks into our school year Daddy got to take two weeks off and we were able to have some fun with being able to be flexible with our schedule.  We got to go to the beach one day, and go on walks, get haircuts, go to the drive in and run cross country.... it is always fun to hang with Dad.

So our first 9 weeks has been a good start, we'll take a week off for planning and to finish making our Halloween Costumes (future post to come I'm sure), and jump back in for another 9 weeks in November. I am still more thankful than ever than  I choose to homeschool the gears.

Just move the tapes....

When my oldest was my littlest child, about 12-18 months old and into everything as they do at that age I had some VCR tapes....do you remember what those were, did I just date you...or myself?  Well I would keep them on the floor in a nice line on a little shelf and she would always want to play with them. She'd pick them up, the tape would fall out of it's case, and it would make such a mess... and I would get so frustrated and I would no sooner get them all put back and guess where she'd go.... well one day I had a light bulb moment....."MOVE THE TAPES"! I think to date this was my most profound mothering moment!! So I moved the tapes and she stopped playing with them, and I stopped being frustrated.
This story came to mind a few weeks ago as I was asking for the 34, 953,434th time for the shoes to get picked up, and could you help me find the remote, and did you bring down your laundry, does the dog have water, can you unload the dishwasher, ..... Now mind you my children have daily chores, each has one that they are responsible for and of course they work together with me to keep it picked up throughout the day, but on this particular day I knew I was gonna go to be praying my motherhood prayer at bedtime, and if goes like this " Dear Lord, please help me to be a better mother tomorrow than I was today...because today I stunk! Amen"
I'm sure I can safely say that most Mother's don't like to be "that" mom, we want to be the fun mom, the snuggle, cuddle, crafty, good cookin..mom. I do too...but I want to do it in a clean house:)
Ok so in my moments of the Esterline "ask-o-thon" I was visited by the light bulb of years past! So I put my kids on vacation! VACATION???!!!???
That 's right I told my kids that they were on vacation for 2 weeks! This meant no chores, wear what you want, heck don't get dressed at all if you want. Do what you want, read what you want, watch what you want! (All within the boundaries that we have already established of course) The idea was for them to have control for 2 weeks. The only thing was bedtime was still in place and our household/family rules. So of course my sweet husband thought I had gone off my rocker...and I wasn't sure that he wasn't' right, but my thought was we all needed to hit the reset button and this was it!
We are a military family and my husband has been deployed more times that I need to recount however one humanistic thing I realized is that when you are the only one that has to do all of it, it is so much easier than when you do it all and there is someone there to help and doesn't'. So I took on all the chores, and cleaning the house, and folding the laundry and putting it away, and emptying the dishwasher, and taking care of the dog, and finding remotes, and putting away shoes, and...and...and...
AND...
2 things happened. The first is I found my Joy again. I didn't mind doing all the things that I had done before because I wasn't' doing them in frustration. Secondly my kids started to do their chores without being asked...even when I would say "You don't have to do that, you're on vacation" they would reply "Its ok mom, I want to".
Sometimes we just need to hit the reset button, it opened my kids eyes to how they could bless me and be part of our team, and it gave me back my joy!



Planning for school.

We are in the throes of the rainiest summer I can remember, which has severely limited our outside time. So when we don't have days like this.....

then we do alot of this.....

and I do a lot

of this.....

Check out www.sandlappersewing.blogspot.com to see the spoils of this rainy summer!

So I have been busy getting busy to get ready to plan our next school year. :) I have 90% of our year planned, or at least curriculum picked out. The only one that is still up in the air is Willow for first grade. We used My Father's World last year for Kindergarten and although it was a good curriculum I felt like it was missing something for us. So I'm currently researching piecing together her 1st grade. The rest of the kids are set. Hannahlee is doing a literature curriculum from BJU that I think will be challenging, 

and she is also going to be attacking General Science along with Pre Algebra. It will prove to be a challenging year for her mainly due to the fact that a lot of her subjects will require her to do a lot of independent study work, but I know that she will secretly love it!

 Megan and Briar will be doing Astronomy together for science. Megan has progressed to Math 5 which is AWESOME since it proves to me that letting her redo the fundamentals with Briar this year in Math 3 was a good choice. Briar is gonna go on the Math 4. 

I am also choosing to do Shurley  English with Hannahlee, Megan,and Briar together, as well as our American History which I love, I will have to see if we want to switch gears the next year as we will be in Germany then and we may want to do some world history, so we can have some really phenomenal field trips! 

Now for the 3 older kids, I also have them do daily spelling with Christian Liberty Press, vocabulary with Vocabu-Lit ( which is wonderful because it pulls the weekly vocabulary words from excerpts of literature), and this year we are going to add a Word Study curriculum with MCP, and IWE (Institute for Excellence in Writing) for our writing course.  

I have two extracurricular activities I want to try and work into our routined schedule is German asa foreign   language, which should be fun since my goal is for it to be a family class not to mention in about 9 months very necessary :) the other one I would like to add is a Typing curriculum, and even though my kids are pretty good at typing  from practice, I think it would be a good skill to hone. 

I am excited about this school year and all the fun things we will learn. The next step is to try and write up lessons plans. I would love to ideally have all year rough drafted, but I will measure it successful to do the first 9 weeks. 

Stay tuned and I will share what I have decided for Willow for 1st grade.