New Year New Goals

After being inspired by ladies from my yoga class, I decided to set New Year goals.  Categories include: personal, family, home-school, work, and  financial.  I figure this should cover most areas of my life that I need to focus on in 2018.

In effort for some accountability, I wanted to post goals.

Personal:

• Read 60 books
• Eat Whole30 for January
• Daily 1 hour exercise
• Loose holiday weight

Family:  

• Ski/snowboard
• Baseball season
• Crafting 
• Texas trip
• Bear hunts
• Camp/scout
• Archery shoots
• Elk hunts

Homeschool:

• Morning basket daily
• Arrow units most months
• Weekly play games
• Poetry teas each month

Work:

• Lead 5 classes per week at local studio
• Set up Etsy shop
• Launch 10%Outdoors blog
• Blog weekly on home-school life

Financial:

• Pay off truck
• Save enough cash to cover Christmas next year

Fablehaven Series

FableHaven, by Brandon Mull, is the series we are just over half-way through reading and can NOT get enough.  While our read aloud time happens in our Morning Basket time, I wanted to give it a flair of its own, so I chose to use the audible version.  The character voices and performance of the reading draws us in each time.  We simply can't listen to only one chapter at a time.  Truth be told each day we listen to 2 or 3 chapters still wanting more.  The chapters average about 30 minutes each so this is a lot of read aloud time.  

Shared stories like these have been the heart of our home-school from the beginning and remain so to this day and hopefully in the future.  Embarking on the Bravewriter lifestyle, my desire was to incorporate copy-work, grammar, and reverse dictation center on our current read aloud.  This is much like the Arrow Guides found on the Bravewriter website.  With a little bit of help from the from the free Arrow Guide (James and the Giant Peach) for layout ideas and Pinterest for short grammar definitions and anchor charts, I was able to create a 4 week guide with an ending writing project.  

Lesson learned: 
Don't be afraid to love what you love and create what you need around it.  

Bravewriter Lifestyle

After sharing our Morning Basket, I felt compelled to share how we include rich, meaningful activities into our weekly routine.  I try to be flexible when inspiration hits us, so she keeps visiting, but this is how I frame our week.

Monday:  At the request of my kids, I added an additional free write first thing Monday mornings.  Math games are slotted for Mondays because I love alliteration.  This currently includes Munchkin, Sorry, Trouble, and Animal Card-line.  The list goes on and on.

Tuesday:  Poetry Teatime complete with snacks, hot tea, and lots of poetry books.  Currently, I added May B. by Caroline Starr Rose.  This is a novel written in prose.  I read from this book while they eat the yummy treat.  Then each chooses poems to share aloud.  

Wednesday:  Again with the alliteration, we do word games on Wednesday.  This includes Scrabble, Banana-grams, Hangman, Charades, and Express Yourself.  These are the most fun and get the most loud.  This is also the day we include work on writing projects.

Thursday:  Because I have budding entrepreneurs, we listen to the Jr. Money Maker's podcast on Thursdays.  This works nicely since our home-school group meets at the park in the afternoon so we listen on our drive.  I also like to include nature studies on Thursdays but sometimes it happens on Friday or even the weekend.

Friday: Friday free writes happen each Friday with donuts and a favorite drink.  It is amazing how sugar gets the words flowing.  It is also the day we conduct messy experiments from our Big Book of Massive Epic Engineering Disasters.  

November's Morning Basket

How about a quick list of what is currently in our Morning Basket and how we rotate the items.  

Devotional:  Case for Christ for Kids by Lee Stobel

Science: Tales from the Story Teller's House by Thornton W. Burgess  (This is an older book, but we love everything by Burgess.)
True or False by Discovery Kids
The Book of Massively Epic Engineering Disasters by Sean  Connolly 

History: The Story of the World by Susan Wis Bauer

Math: Life of Fred Fractions by Stanley F Schmidt, Ph.D.

Grammar: Nitty-Gritty Grammar by Edith H. Fine and Judith P. Josephson  (We also use Mad Libs weekly.)

Art: The Treasury of Art Master-Pieces by Thomas Craven (This was a $1 find at our library sale.)

Read Aloud: FableHaven series by Brandon Mull (I also have a FableHaven Book of Imagination for each of my kids to work through as they desire.)

Wow!  Looking at the list that seems like a large amount of material.  It is a good thing there is a sort of rotating system.

Monday: Devotion, Burgess Story Book, True or False, Read aloud, Life of Fred

Tuesday:  Devotion, History, True or False, Read aloud, Life of Fred, Mad Libs

Wednesday: Devotion, History, True of False, Read aloud, Nitty-Gritty Grammar, Life of Fred

Thursday:  Devotion, History, The Book of Massively Epic Engineering Disasters, Read aloud, Life of Fred, Art

This routine does not include our rich activities or independent reading.   More on that to come. 

Our Reads for November

So each month, I like to list our current reads for myself and just to give anyone looking for ideas for books a reference.  

Myself:  I am currently struggling to fin a fiction book that holds my interest.  That said, I am working through John Holt's Teach You Own, which is inspiring and thought provoking.  Along side my bible reading each morning is A Gracious Space: Daily Reflections to Sustain Your Homeschool Commitment (winter edition).  I love the short snippets that spur me on during this season of homeschooling.  

Bubba:  The three book series Stormrunners, by Roland Smith, is currently captivating him.   It is full of action and unpredictable events, which he truly enjoys.  

 Sis:  Always reading, this child is obsessed with Sammy Keyes and the ..., by  Wendelin Van Draanen and Tara Sands.  She loves the mischief the main character encounters daily in each mystery.

So there you have the books exciting us this month. 

Journey to Homeschooling

This is our seventh homeschooling our two children.  Our family moved across the country to Idaho from Texas the summer after my oldest turned 5 years old.  
A little history:  I taught first grade for 10 years in the Houston area and a year at our local junior college.  So with many changes that came with our move, I felt God calling me to keep our kids home and be the stability in their lives. 
Most moms say they feel intimidated and unprepared to homeschool.  I had the opposite problem and now consider myself to have been over confident.  Although, I took on homeschooling like many others with too much curriculum and too many planned activities.  All went well for a month or two but slowly the fun drained away and the tears began.  (His and mine.)
At this point in my mind, we were ahead of the local half day kindergarten, so I just scrapped it all.  Everything that wasn’t brining us joy was removed.  Instead we filled our days with pretend play, game, dress up, picture books, hikes, library activities, park days, and bike rides.  Guess what? Both kids, then 6 and 4 years old thrived.  This freedom to play was exactly what they needed.  What we needed.
Basically, that is what we have done for the last 6 years.  Adding longer chapter books for read alouds, unit studies, organized math together, personal private blogs for each child, and independent reading as each year went by.
This year, with my oldest moving into what would be considered middle school, I felt God nudging me to reevaluate and make some changes.  I did so reluctantly because we really loved our unschooling lifestyle.  That said, I could see the three of us craving more structure, more predictability to our days, and more challenging work.  Just throwing money and curriculum at the problem was my first attempt and you guessed it.  Failure the first month of this school year.  With a long visit from my parents we took a break.  During this break the kids each worked on a major furniture project with my mom and dad, while I researched, read, and investigated what changes made sense for us.  
Now, daily we come together for our “morning basket” which encompasses:  devotion, history, science, art, and our read aloud.  Next, we move to what I consider “desk work.”  Here we cover math using Life of Fred and grammar, spelling, as well as writing using Bravewriter.  The biggest shift has been bringing a new level of enchantment to our day.  Usually in the afternoon, we join back up to play a game (most times enhancing math or language skill, but not always), enjoy a snack during poetry teatime, bake a sweet treat, OR (big or not doing all these every day) take a hike/bike ride through nature.  My favorite addition is on Friday nights my husband joins us for movie night complete with pizza and popcorn.  
All of this to say, whether you are new to homeschooling or not, recognize it is flexible, always evolving and changing.  Be a student of your kids, so you can recognize when a change needs to occur.  Don’t allow yourself to be so stuck in a method that it becomes your identity to the detriment of your family.  

FALL

Top 10 Things I love this fall

Enjoying hot tea each day.  My current favorite is Sweet and Spicy.

Running in the crisp morning air with Scout.

Soaking up the sunshine and blue skies.

Baking pumpkin muffins with my daughter.

Watching my son's football team play each Saturday.

Slower mornings

Seeing the beautiful trees as their leaves change colors.

Savory soups and stews for dinner.

Backyard fire-pit with s'mores (of course).

Movie nights indoors with everyone piled on the couch.