School Room Tour

Welcome to our School Room!  I promised you a tour and I decided today that it was clean enough to go ahead and take some pictures to share with you all.  I also took a video which I personally think gives a better view of the room but I am having trouble uploading it so for now this will have to do.  

The first thing we did was paint the room this very beautiful blue color. I think the actual name was Surfer Blue which is why I love it, it reminds me of the ocean.

The brightly colored alphabet rug is a new find that I really love. I found it at Costco and it adds so much color and fun to the room. The large map is also great and I'm sure we will get a lot of use out of it this year as we study world History.

This 9 cubed cabinet was a very exciting find at Home Goods. It is home to all of our Curriculum and books on the top two rows. The bottom row is full of toys and activities I can have Fish do while I am teaching Peanut.  

This colorful cabinet will be for storing all of Peanut's work throughout the week until I can get it graded and filed away.  

I will put our weekly memory verse on the chalkboard. The large whiteboard will be for teaching lessons and the lower whiteboard will be for Peanut to use to do practice problems and work.  

This is our amazing closet of supplies! It is amazing how much I have been able to store here.  The pink and black bins are full of all of our art supplies from pencils to markers to glue to paint to construction paper. Everything has its own place and I really hope it will stay organized all year.  

This side of the closet is full of games, educational activities, and books! Lots of books!!

I love this quote from Dr. Seuss and I hope it will encourage my new reader!

A LOT of books here! The top shelves are for Peanut, middles shelves for Sport, and bottom shelves for Fish.  Fish has some toys as well to help keep him occupied while I'm teaching Peanut.

Well if you are still reading, I hope that you enjoyed this post!  I am very thankful to have a school room and a place to organize all of our school supplies.  Coming from a teacher background it is hard for me not to just put a huge whiteboard on one wall and desks facing it. I am trying to embrace homeschooling and the freedom that it allows me to teach a new way.  I am sure even my school room will change throughout the year as I get my feet wet and discover what works best for my kids.

One Month Away!

Oh my goodness, ONE month from today we will be starting our homeschool year and journey!  I have remained convinced that this is what God wants me to do with Peanut this year but that doesn't mean I haven't had my moments of doubt.  Oh, how much easier it would be to just enroll her in school, but I know my daughter and I really believe that this is what is best for her at this time.

There are a lot of very very passionate homeschool families out there where it is homeschool or nothing.  I am definitely not that person, at least not yet.  I see a LOT of value in it but I also have taught public and private school and have seen a lot of value in those educational resources as well.  So we are going to take it a year at a time, and kid by kid, to see if this is something we want to continue.  My middle son, Sport, went to a Special Education preschool this past year and it has done AMAZING things for his development.  Honestly, I do not believe he would be the kid he is now without his excellent teachers and the support they gave him.  I am very excited for him to return to this preschool for one year before Kindergarten.  I love him to pieces but I am pretty certain I will never homeschool him, and that is okay.  It is important to do what is best for each kid individually because God made us all sooo different with so many different needs and skills. My youngest, Fish, is 2 right now so time will only tell what schooling option will be best for him.  Because he is my baby I secretly hope homeschooling will be a good fit for him!

For this coming year I have signed up with a school called Calvary Academy to homeschool through.  It is associated with the school I used to teach at so I know it has a great foundation and belief system.  There will be monthly meetings, help with filing legal paperwork, field trip opportunities, meetings with other homeschool mom (yeah, support!!), holiday programs, and ACSI participation which I love!  In the older grades you can also be involved in the sports and arts programs at the main school.  I am very hopeful to make some friendships with other homeschool moms with kids my kids' ages.

We will be blessed to have a school room in our house to organize all of our school supplies and art supplies. I  have been working on cleaning it out the last few weeks.  My daughter is a bit of a hoarder when it comes to art supplies and plastic junk so it has been a process.  She places sentimental value on everything so I have to clean when she is not around.  Hopefully in the next few weeks it will be done and ready for our year and then I will do a post on our school room.  I know I LOVE looking at other people's rooms so I hope people will enjoy looking at ours too :)

As for planning, I have my first two weeks planned out and all the holidays marked off. That is as far as I want to do for now because I want to wait and see how quickly or slowly she works and get a better feel for how it goes in real life. This is all new so there is much to be discovered.  One more month!

Until then, enjoy summer!!!

Box Day!!

We are so excited that we got to experience Box Day for the first time!!  I ordered our curriculum from Sonlight and a few days ago a very heavy box was delivered to our house.  Peanut was so excited she was jumping up and down!  Well, these pictures will show the fun we had :)

 Look at all of those beautiful books!!  Now that I have the books I am getting even more excited about this new adventure we are going on in the Fall!!  My next goals are to start reading some of the novels I am going to be reading her and once I get my organizer in the mail I will get my whole year planned!

Curriculum Choices for 2014-2015

Drum roll please...... haha! After a LOT of research, reading blogs, reading reviews, and talking to friends who homeschool I have finally decided on what curriculum we are going to use next year.  I know I am planning WAY earlier than most people but I am hoping to get the curriculum soon so I can start planning my year next year.  I also want to try to read all of the novels ahead of time so I will be better able to teach.  I am really excited about this curriculum!! I think we are going to have such a fun year!

So, for Math we are going to be using Horizon. I chose this curriculum because it had really great reviews and I liked that the worksheets are in pretty colors which I think my daughter will enjoy. I found that picking a Math curriculum was the hardest of all. So we are going to try this one this year and if it's not a good fit we will try something new next year.  I hope it will be a good fit though!

For Science, we are going to use Apologia's Exploring Creation with Botany.  I have heard wonderful things about this curriculum and I love how in depth the lessons are for the year.  There are about 8 subjects for Elementary school so I let Peanut pick which one sounded the most interesting to her. She said she wanted to learn about plants and trees so we are going with Botany :)  I have already planned some field trips to the Botanic Gardens in San Diego and the Huntington Library in Pasadena!  I think she is going to love Science next year!

For Handwriting we are going to use A Reason for Handwriting.  I love that it incorporates scripture into learning to write manuscript and cursive!

For the bulk of our lessons we will be using Sonlight.  This will be for History, Language Arts, Geography, and Bible.  I love that this curriculum uses living books to teach instead of textbooks!!!  I have heard WONDERFUL things about this curriculum and know that I have to try it to see if it is a good fit for our family!  And the great thing is that there is 100% money back guarantee if it is not a good fit for us!!

So that is our curriculum for next year!!  I think we are going to have a lot of fun!

Curriculum Ideas

I have been doing a lot of research this week on different curriculums, trying to figure out what my goals are and what would work best for us.  These are some that I am looking into:

Sonlight Curriculum

Heart of Dakota Curriculum

Abeka curriculum

First Language Lessons

Explode the Code Language

Hooked on Phonics

Wordly Wise

Apologia Science

Math U See

Saxon Math

Singapore Math

Handwriting without Tears

A reason for handwriting

History- Story of the World

Typing Instructor Platinum (amazon)

Obviously I still have some decisions to make.  I see lots of positive things in each of these so I just need to figure out what will fit us best.  I have never been great at making decisions so I think I am just going to go with my gut instinct here.

The Homeschool Decision

Today we made the decision that next year, for Peanut's 2nd grade year, I am going to homeschool her.  I have prayed about homeschooling for years but it never felt like the right time or things happened which made it not right.  But yet I couldn't stop thinking about it.  We have been blessed that she was able to go to Calvary Chapel Christian this year, tuition free, since I worked there last semester.  But next year we won't have that luxury and Andy and I had to sit down and talk about our goals. We both have dreams. One of the biggest is to buy a home. We need to save. We are renting right now and our lease will be up in April of 2015.  I am hopeful that if we make wise decisions between now and then, that we will be able save up for a home.  Homeschooling will help us accomplish this goal.

As I am researching Homeschooling more I am seeing even more reasons that this is a great way to educate your kids.  The freedom to study subjects that you are interested in and read and explore and grow in such unique ways really excited me!  I would have LOVED to have been taught this way as a kid!

I am nervous. I will be honest.  I feel the responsibility, the weight, of providing my daughter with an excellent education. As a credentialed teacher, you would think I would have more confidence.  Well, other people's kids are often easier to handle than your own. 'Nuff said.

We have an extra room downstairs that we are going to turn into our Home school room!  I am excited about that and I think will help us adjust to this new life change.  I am looking forward to being with her all day every day. We have a really awesome relationship and I love being with her.  She is excited about me teaching her.  She will be an 8 year old so I want to make it fun for her.  I want to let her pick things that she wants to study and dig deep into so it stays fresh and exciting.

I think that Sonlight is the curriculum I am most interested in.  It's all laid out for you already which I think will be good for me for my first year doing this with Haylie.  It's very literature based too which is important to me.

So, for the next 5 months I will be scouring blogs, reading books, cleaning and organizing, buying curriculum, and talking to friends who homeschool to get ready for this new adventure.  It should be fun!!!

I will wear my glasses so I feel smarter :)