My mission to declutter and organize!

First stop: The side of my bed

Before

After!

Ok, So I have way too many shoes. I just don't know which ones I want to get rid of.

Our K12 stuff came today!

... and yesterday. Most of Quianna's stuff came yesterday and the rest along with Elijah's stuff came today. So both yesterday and today our living room has been consumed with school materials. Finally! Today we did our first history lesson and Quianna did her first literature and language lessons. I have been waiting so long to get going on this. We are now going full scale of home school. Finally! I am going to be saying that a lot. Tomorrow Elijah will start grammar, literature, and we will begin Art... Finally! The picture above is just Elijah's stuff... so imagine this TIMES TWO!

Another big plus to this is I won't be needed to print so many worksheets... Finally! Our printer (and the toner and paper pile) will finally get a rest.



This is a picture of the kids putting together a Food Web of animals for science. Elijah has a piece of yarn and is going to lay it down to connect two pictures of animals. It has been fun doing home school, but today I am feeling exhausted. I can't wait until the kids know the drill and I won't have to be explaining so much to them. Then I might not be so exhausted at the end of the day.

One hundred percent

We read Horton Hatches the Egg for yesterday's read aloud time. As Mayzie left Horton to hatch her egg in order for her to go have some fun, I started thinking about my life. I am here taking care of Elijah - I might not have laid him when he was an egg, but I am sure hatching him! Horton took care of that egg through snow, thunder, lightning, wind, rain, sunshine, even being hunted! All because he is faithful one hundred percent. I had thought about the rain and thunder that I have had to withstand and the lightning that may come in future years; I thought about the sunshine that I am enjoying (with patches of rain clouds) while I am homeschooling. But you know what? No matter how many qualities or obstacles come from the person who laid the egg, when the egg hatches the end result looks a little like Horton.

I like to think that Dr. Seuss wrote this book for the step-parents out there struggling, thinking they won’t make a difference because sometimes it feels like it is all biological; but I know that Elijah will develop some good things from me – It just depends on how faithful I am… I said what I said and I meant what I meat, a Kimberly’s faithful one hundred percent.

Who woulda thunk?

I think homeschooling was the best decision for me at this point of my life. When thinking about the last week and a half I can honestly say - I have achieved so much! I have kept my house clean (except on the weekends when I take a break)... ok so at least one room is cleaned everyday. I have been keeping up with laundry and I have stopped eating so much sweets! You see, when I was home alone during my last quarter of college, it was easy to sneak a half a package of cookies for the day - especially the peanut butter graham cracker cookies covered in chocolate... what can I say? those with a tall glass of milk... one word: addicting! Now, I can't sneak because I am always upstairs with the kids, so I can't hide it from them. Not even a quick cookie from the cupboard. That has definitely helped my blood sugar.

Also if I were home alone, I would start my day with a tv show and then get sucked in - "One more episode and then I'll clean the kitchen (or living room, bedroom, fold laundry, etc)" NOW, I have to be productive because I stay up stairs to help the kids with their work - so what else am I going to do? Also, my time is very limited so I can't get sucked into TV and I have little time to get things done so I have to use it wisely!

I do however feel like I am constantly working - which feels good at the end of the day, but tiring in the middle.

These are all wonderful byproducts from homeschooling; however, I think the best one of all is that I am getting closer to my kids. I spend almost all day with them! I usually have about an hour to myself in the morning and a half hour of "Me-time" in the afternoon. Other than that - I am with them. I am constantly reminding myself of the mom I want to be, and I have more fun and feel closer to them when I try to be that person. I am trying to be more loving and understanding with Elijah. I am also trying to have more fun with them. We have PE together which is some good quality fun time. I get a couple of minutes alone with each of them as we read aloud together. It has been wonderful.

That being said, I am not going to deny how many times during the day I think, "How in the world is this going to work?" It would be extremely helpful to have two computers so they can do math and science at the same time. Science will be better if/when we get a TV that can connect to the computer (Brian and I were dreaming one day at Costco and we were thinking about our tax return next year), because then all three of us won't be crowded next to the computer. On the other hand, I think I would miss them close to me and having Elijah's head on my shoulder.

Having two places for them to work would be nice. Right now we have the desk in the living room with the computer on it, and the dining room table that they do work sheets at. The dining table moves really easily when it is bumped and so it makes it hard for two kids to be working on opposite sides of it. Also, when I am working with one student, the other has a hard time of focusing. Maybe I should ask Christina how she does that.

Also, it would be immensely helpful to have two of me! I am constantly having one of them waiting for help from me. Hopefully it will get better as the year goes on. We really need to work on their direction/instruction reading - that would solve a lot of the problems. Common sense... hmm... how do we develop that? just kidding... kind of...

Anyway, as a whole, it has been pretty good. I hope it will change our family for the better. I think we are on our way.

First Week of School

Second day of School Picture! We have an unusual school around here :-) We were practicing football outside for our P.E. and our neighbor asked us if the kids wanted to run through their sprinklers.

Today during grammar we went over nouns. Elijah didn't understand the word singular so I started talking about being single - only one of them. He said, "Oh, like when you don't have a girlfriend." I said, "Sure."

First on the list was box. I asked him how do you get more than one box. He said, "You get another box and then it's not single anymore and they kiss. Then you get lots of little boxes!"

It was pretty funny. The joys of homeschooling :-)

I got a phone call from the teacher I am working with and she is registering me for K12 and I will be getting my materials soon! Yay!

First Day of School

Well, today was the first day of homeschool and it was a success! When we were having our silent reading time I was thinking, "I have spent the whole day with my kids, and I feel good." Yes, Elijah and I had our moments, but we had fund today.

The kids did spelling and math, then we had Mom's Minute we talked about goals. We watched the first minute and a half of this movie



Then we imagined ourselves of how we want to be in a year. We wrote down our goals, what we want to improve in.
After that, we went over grammar: What makes a sentence? Subjects and predicates.
After lunch we had P.E; we played catch with the football and ran around the yard.

We had some free time, then did our chores in the kitchen and living room. We did our reading and at 3:00 we had snack to end our school.

*later note: sorry it was so short and broken up... I was writing this in a hurry while I was watching West Wing.

Spiders don't take Labor Day off

I just had one crawling up my leg... in my pants! I felt something crawling around my knee, but I thought it might have been my imagination- like it usually is. So I reached down to move my pants and I felt a lump in there... I let out a short gasp/scream and the boys looked at me. I kept my hand around that area of pants, with my pants tightly balled in my hand. I limped my way to the bathroom (since I had to be bent over to keep my hand there) and took off my pants while holding that spot. I then dumped the crushed BIG spider in the toilet. I didn't take any pictures of it, but Brian and Elijah can be my witnesses - even crushed, that sucker was big!

Oh man... my heart is just now slowing down.