Not Back to School Blog Hop - Student Picture Week

Jackson Speed

1st Grade

8/27/2012

 Allison Speed

8th Grade

8/27/2012

And now a couple of silly pictures for the first day of school!

Jac

Not Back to School Blog Hop - School Room Week

The place we usually do school is the dining room table.  We had bookcases in there and lots of other containers for supplies and such, but this year we will be selling our house Lord willing.  So we have moved downstairs to the family room.  So our room has more of a school at home feel this year.  We may still wind up taking things up stairs because our dinning room seems to be the center of everything and just the best place for school, but time will tell!


This is a view of our white board and my DD 13 desk.

This view shows dd13 desk left and ds 6 and my desk right.

In this view you can see a couple of bookcases, our number chart, and weather chart.

This is our beautiful world map that my kids love to look at.  Above are some maps dd13 colored last year.

That is the dime tour.  We will begin school on August 27, 2012 and all of us are really excited.  It has been a wonderful summer, but we are getting ready to hit the books again!

Blessings,
Lisa Marie

Not Back to School Blog Hop - Curriculum Week

Gosh it is that time of year again already.  Time for the 4th Annual Not Back to School Blog Hop!!  I am so excited to be participating Lord willing in all 4 weeks!

• Week of 8/6/12 Curriculum Week
• Week of 8/13/12 School Room Week
• Week of 8/20/12 Student Photo Week
• Week of 8/27/12 Day in the Life Week

We will not officially begin school until after our vacation the week of 8/20/12!  I, like many of you have had most of our curriculum for a while since I seem to be a curriculum junkie.  The planning did not start until a couple of weeks ago.  I do have the first 3 weeks of 8th grade planned for my daughter, and the first 5 weeks of 1st grade for my son.

So here is the just of what we are using:

8th Grade:

Science: Apologia Exploring Creation with Physical Science
Foreign Language: Rosetta Stone Spanish
Typing: Mavis Beacon
Writing: Writing Strands, Applications of Grammar, Blog Entries
Reading: My Father's World, Free Kindle Books, Progeny Press Study Guides
Geography/History: My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures w/ the 8th grade expansion pack
Math: Teaching Textbooks Algebra 1
Art: My Father's World and weekly activities in drawing and Arts and Crafts
Home Ec: Training our Daughters to be Keepers at Home


1st Grade:

Handwriting: My Father's World, Draw Write Now book 2, Memoria Press Copybook 1

Math: My Father's World, and Math U See Alpha - moving into Beta by Christmas

Bible, Science, History, Reading: My Father's World as you can tell is our primary bones for this year. 

Typing: Typing Instructor for Kids Typer Island

Foreign Language: Rosetta Stone Spanish

Reading:  We will spend at least 20 minutes a day with me reading to him.  We make weekly visits to our local library for Jack to pick out books and usually read about 25-30 books a week from the library.

Bible:  My Father's World is Christ centered and we use that as well as other books.  In the morning the kids and I sing 3-4 Hymns in addition to reading the Proverb of the day.  In the evening after supper we as a family use Balancing the Sword.  This is new to us and we are working through this as a family.

I am really excited to begin school and normally we would have already started, except that we are planning a trip to Florida after most of the schools here have gone back.  The kids can't stay out of our classroom and books are always disappearing around here.  I just hope they save some to read for school!  To join the Hop or visit other click on the link at the top!!

Blessings,
Lisa Marie 

Not Back to School Blog Hop - A Day in the Life

Mom:

7:00 am - shower, eat breakfast, unload dishwasher, make tea, start laundry

8:00 am - wake Jack & Allison up for breakfast - while the kids eat I read from our Bible study for the week.

8:30 am - put away breakfast dishes, and get dressed

9:00 am - Start School - Pledge of Allegiance and prayer time. Allison will begin on her work. Since she is in 7th grade and fairly independent I giver her my lesson book and she begins work where she likes. Jackson and I sit down and begin by going over his memory verse and listening to it on the CD.

9:30 am - Jackson and I work on his history section, math, and science or art.

10:00 am - Jackson and Allison take about a 10 min break to get up and move around. I change over the laundry and start the dishwasher if it is ready.

10:15 am - Allison resumes working independently, and Jackson and I work on his Reading made easy daily lesson, Copy work, and reading from the assigned book. After we are done with this Jackson usually picks out 5+ books for us to snuggle on the couch and read.

11:00 am Jack is usually free and will clean his room then play outside or in his room. I will start lunch or at least get things ready and lay out what is needed for supper.

11:15 am - Allison and I go over everything that she has accomplished that can be checked.

11:30 am - Allison takes Dolly (our Dog) on a good half our walk.

12:10 pm Lunch

12:45 pm lunch clean up. Change over laundry.

1:00 pm sometimes we head to the pool for a couple hours and Allison will resume school later in the day. If not we save all science experiments for both Allison and Jackson until after lunch.

1:30 pm if not swimming still Allison will do her daily reading.

3:00 pm Allison is usually done no later than 3 most of the time unless we go swimming she will be done before 2

4:00 we clean up our rooms and do a general tidy up.

5:30 pm I will begin cooking supper.

We eat whenever Daddy gets home which is somewhere between 6:00 and 7:00 pm

Then it is baths and bedtime.

8:00 pm Jackson's bedtime

9:00 pm Allison's had to be in her room, but is allowed free reading until 9:30 pm then lights out!

That's our day in a nut shell....we somehow squeeze in lots of outside play, but that is not something I really schedule it just happens. I usually try to go to the library on Wednesday and a hike if possible on Thursday. Friday afternoon we often have errands to run! Homeschooling is such a blessing to me and I would not have it any other way!

Please head on over to the 3rd Annual Not Back-to-School Blog Hop!

Blessings,

Lisa

Not Back to School Blog Hop - Student Photo Week

We are in the 3rd week of the Not Back-to-school Blog Hop and I hope everyone is enjoying this as much as I am.

I always try to get my kiddos pictures taken professionally about twice a year....just have not gotten to it this year so my humble photography skills will have to do:

Allison

7th Grade (12)

Artist, Writer Extraordinaire

This is a picture of Allison at the Tellus Museum, she asked me to let you all know she is the one on the end ;0)

Jackson

Kindergarten (5)

Builder, Super Hero (Flash)

This picture is more recent of Jackson working on his Science experiment!
Please hop over to see the other homeschoolers photos at the 3rd Annual Not Back-to-School Blog Hop! 

Blessings,

Lisa

This picture I just wanted to add in. My husband snapped this one yesterday when we were at Stone Mountain. L to R Me, Allison, Jackson, and our oldest Lindsey.

Not Back to School Blog Hop - School Room

Honestly we have done school in many rooms of our home. We have tried it in the guest bedroom, the downstairs living room - both made really nice classrooms. We have finally however figured out for our family school just works better in the dining room. My husband gracsiously agreed to let me have a large 4ft X 8ft white board hung in the dining room and added a 4ft and a 6 ft bookshelf to the room to store our books. So if anyone comes to the house for a sit down dinner they will most likely guess we are homeschoolers (if they don't know already).**Kids working hard at the dining room table**

Being in the dining room is more convenient it is the central location in the home. Since my husband took part of 2 walls down to half walls in the kitchen I can easily look out and see what both of my kiddos are doing and answer questions they my have without yelling. It just works best for us as a family!
**Below my white board my husband put up for us - ignore the blue walls the paint turned out darker than I wanted so I stopped after the dining room**
Hope you enjoy:**Our calendar**
**Our bookshelf with this years books only - we have 2 other this size with reading books on them but they are in our office downstairs so no photo cuz I was lazy and the kiddos seem too easily distracted today for me to head downstairs and have them keep working**

Also please jump over to the 3rd Annual Not Back-to-school Blog Hop to see where others are learning!!!!

Blessings,
Lisa

**One more shot of Allison working on her Beautiful Feet Early American and World History as well as the half walls my husband built so it is easier to communicate and feed them :O)**

**Sorry I had to retake these and reload them (yes my camera is a day behind) to get the pictures to show up...sometimes blogger makes me so mad urgh!!!!

Not Back to School - Curriculum Week

Allison - 7th Grade
Bible - Lamp and Quill Yr 1

Math-u-see Pre-algebra

Apologia General Science

Beautiful Feet Books - Early American History and World History

Beautiful Feet Books - Geography

Daily Grams 7

Wordly Wise Book 7

Reading - Various Classics - Pride and Prejudice, The Prince and the Pauper etc. *So far all the classics we have chosen we are able to get for free on my Kindle! Score!

Typing - using Typing Instructor


Jackson - Kindergarten

Bible - Lamp and Quill Yr 1

Heat of Dakota Little Hearts for His Glory - complete 1st Grade
Math-u-see Primer

Typing - using Typing Instructor

Several Dot-to Dot Books, Maze Books, etc.

Please Hop on over to the 3rd Annual Not Back-to-School Blog Hop to see what others are using!

That pretty much wraps up our books that we will be using. It was a long prayerful time that my husband and I spent trying to decide both education and financially what would be best for our kiddos.

Blessings,
Lisa

Party's Over ?

Wow!!! Blog sisters! I have so enjoyed the Blog Party....I truly hate to see it come to a close. Special THANKS to Susan & Janice of 5 minutes for Moms for the excellent job they did.

I have enjoyed meeting so many of you guys and visiting so many of your blogs. Who knew that there were so many creative folks out there. I am always amazed at what I learn from a blog. This week I have seen some amazing works of art. Found so great how to, and a wonderful pizza dough recipe (I have tried this and the recipe, credit, and picture will come in a later post).

In closing I have to admit that I was one of the lucky ones out of 1400 + blogers to win a prize. I won prize # 150 from Abundant Living & Gift - http://www.abundantlivingandgift.com/ - please visit Toby here and sample the great items for sale. A BIG Thank You so much Toby I will be watching for the mail truck!! I can not wait!!!

The Ultimate Blog Party

Please join me in The Ultimate Blog Party being hosted by 5 minutes for Moms
I dated this ahead so it would stay at the top this week!

SO let me introduce myself to you all; I am Lisa mother to 2 girls ALI 9, LU 16, & 1 boy JA 2. We have just began our trial and error approach to homeschool. It has be an adventure and honestly we are loving it!! I have been married to the most wonderful husband JON, for 12 years now, and the support and love of this man continue to empower me to be a better wife for him.


This is my blog where I record for friends and family tid bits of our daily life and happenings. I soon home to add an organizing label and a homeschool label. Homeschool for use so far has been trying to mimic school, using Abeka books. We are quickly learing that sitting for hours doing worksheet after worksheet is not working for us...thus the trial and error referenced above :O).


Anywho...I have been enjoying blog reading for about a year and just decided to venture out on my own with a blog. This is a learning experience for me, as I venture to share a little of my Wonderful World!!



God Bless!