Let it Snow

We had our first significant snow fall of the season yesterday with a full 25-30cm. Public schools were canceled because the roads weren't yet plowed.
Well, we still did our school work this morning, but spent the afternoon playing in the snow. My daughter is definitely a winter baby, she goes nuts when it snows until she gets to go out and play. So of course we spent the afternoon outside.

Well, I guess we better get the cross country skies out. Guess I will have to put off teaching her downhill skiing until next winter :-) (see here for an explanation)


Beth

Miracles

I have always believed in miracles, but until a couple of weeks ago had never experienced anything like this in my own life.
You see, I had always wanted a large family with at least 4 kids, but unfortunately life wasn't going to work out that way. After 5 years of trying for children, I finally became pregnant and gave birth to my beautiful little Monkey only after the use of fertility medication. We then continued trying for more children but were never able to get pregnant, and I wasn't willing to do the medication again as I didn't like the side effects the first time around and couldn't go through that while caring for a toddler. Also, I am considered high risk as my first pregnancy came with  many complications and the delivery of my Monkey a full 6 weeks early.
After a couple of years of trying we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would only ever have one child and realized that there were a lot of benefits to having only one child.
At least until a couple of weeks ago. For the last couple of months I haven't been feeling like myself and was believing I may need to go back on anti-depressant medication. My husband apparently had other thoughts and instead of me going to the doctor for a prescription, he went out and bought a pregnancy test. Apparently this time Hubby knew best as the test came back positive.
WOW! was the first thing that went through my head. I am still finding it hard to believe that I could be pregnant. I am still in a daze that this could be real, but the little beating heart in the ultrasound definitely confirmed it.
So over the last couple of weeks of doctor appointments, full blown pregnancy symptoms and mindblowing disbelief, we haven't been doing much school work. We are just starting to get back into doing school some the last couple of days, and should be up and running full force next week when I will start more regular posting about our activities.

Thanks
Beth

Organizing

It is amazing how much stuff is used on a daily basis when homeschooling. And in a small house without room for a separate school room, it is challenging finding space for everything. I have really enjoyed seeing some of the posts over the last few months of peoples school rooms. I like looking closely at any pictures people post to try to see what ideas they have used in their rooms to organize things, and what I might be able to incorporate here.

Most of our school work is done at the kitchen table, but everything can't stay there since it is our only table to eat at. I have been trying to come up with some ways to store things so that it is super easy to get out and put back away.

Enter: the shower caddy!

I was strolling through our local wal-mart shortly after starting our homeschool journey and happened upon this shower caddy that was on sale for $3. I realized instantly the potential. This holds our glue, scissors, pens, pencils, crayons, notebooks, stapler, etc. Now when we start our school work, I just grab the handle and carry it to the table. Then, when we finish, I can set it back on its shelf.

First Linky Party with Living Life Intentionally

Super Teacher Worksheets

During one of my many searches of the internet for free things to help with homeschooling my Monkey, I came across the super teacher worksheets site. So far all of the sheets I have looked at are quite good. It has become my go to site if I need extra sheets to reinforce a topic.

Monkey is definitely a child who loves doing worksheets. When she was three I printed off some pre-printing worksheets that I had found on the internet for free and she became obsessed with worksheets. I had put them in page protectors so she could use a dry erase marker with them and do them over and over and over again. She would beg me to do her "special binder" every day when I would get home from work.

Anyway, back to the super teacher worksheets site. Mainly I have been using them for their phonics sheets. They have quite a few to choose from for each letter, so it is easy to find ones she enjoys doing. With a DD who is very reluctant to practice her printing, I can disguise her printing as phonics worksheets. She is doing so well with these sheets that I will be using them for each letter.

One of the worksheets for each letter sound is this one. She cuts out the provided letter tiles that will make the two words that are pictured. Then she sounds out the letters to figure out how to spell the words and gets to glue the letters in place. This is the letter "m" sheet. She truly amazes me at how she can figure out the words from the letter sounds since only 8 weeks ago she wanted nothing to do with learning how to read. I am so proud of her!

Have a peek at their site. There are lots of worksheets for language arts, math, science and social studies for different grade levels. I know I will be using their worksheets many times in the weeks, months and probably years to come.

Happy Homeschooling All
Beth

Reading Can Be Fun

One concern I had when beginning to homeschool was how to go about teaching my Monkey to read. Even though she has always seemed to somehow learn so much just by living life; she had showed no interest what so ever in learning to read. Thankfully the right tools have come along at the right time and my DH is doing great with her reading.
First of all, thanks to Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for her You Can Read program that she offers for free. My Monkey loves the sheets that go with each unit. I have then taken paint chips and wrote the sight words on the chips that she uses for review and for spelling practice.

Here is Monkey using the word tiles in the unit to spell her words for her Giant Word Book that we are working on since we are in a tiny house and don't have the space for a Word Wall. I then laminate each page once it is full of sight words that she knows, and she loves referring back to it to show Daddy what she knows.

Of course sight words alone aren't enough to teach her to read. Luckily, the Time 4 Learning program she has been using has a phonics course in the language arts curriculum. Now, there are definitely some negatives to using a computer based education, one of which is what I like to call the "fun factor". So along with the phonics on the computer, we then do a craft for the letters covered that week.

I always try to make things as hands on and fun as possible. I don't always get to do as much of this type of thing as I would like because I also work 30-40 hours each week. But we always do our best and as long as she is learning, having lots of fun, and is loving learning, then I must be doing something right. Right?

Thanks
Beth

Wordless Wednesday

The One Box Wonder

In a matter of 3 days, this box went from hideaway, to house, to boat, and to airplane. I love how their imaginations work!