It's been a while I know...here's an explanation

Wow! It has been a while since I have been on here. Life has been such a roller coaster as far as our homeschool journey is concerned. Oh my! If I would only have listened to the advice I got almost 2 years ago! Almost two years ago (when Seth turned 3 and Aaron was not even 1 yet) I made the decision to homeschool. I know without a doubt it was what God wanted. It was a decision bathed in prayer and I knew there was no doubt this is what God wanted for our family!

But I got over zealous! I was so excited that I couldn't wait to get started and wanted to get started right then!!! I found the The Homeschool Lounge (awesome homeschool social network) pretty much at the same time I made the decision and so I got on there and started asking for advice. I got so much advice of moms telling me to wait, my babies are so young, don't push it, you have plenty of time. I chose to ignore this advice. I didn't want to wait. I even kind of stopped prayerfully considering my options (probably because I knew deep down that is what God was wanting as well) and I dove in. I thought I needed to do organized preschool and I dove in.

I became obsessed with homeschool blogs and seeing what other moms were doing and blogging about and I wanted to be one of those moms, blogging all these wonderful ideas for other moms to gleam from me. I wanted to completely move "past" the phase of being a new homeschool mom to being one that other moms admired...just like I was admiring these other moms.  (and I did find some AWESOME ideas and we did have fun with these ideas!)

It took a while to realize that there were so many times that I would do activities for the sake of having something to blog about...but not necessarily putting my kids needs number one.  I would make sure I had the camera in hand when I started an activity to make sure I got pictures of it and then I couldn't wait to run and put them online and say "hey look what we did".

(man I am being brutally honest here!! Hopefully you don't see me as a complete loon and run far away! I won't blame you if you do though)

I have struggled and struggled and yes there have been amazing highlights and yes the kids have had fun and they have learned!! And those are memories from this experience that I will CHERISH forever!  I am thankful that there were good highlights during this chaos!

For Christmas I got the Maxwell's Managers of Our Homes and was so excited!! I just knew this was going to be the answer to the scheduling problems that we were having and the consistency problems we were having...I did not realize at the time that it was an answer to prayer...but a totally different answer than I was looking for.

I started going through the book (which I LOVE by the way and will continue to use it in our homeschooling journey!!) and started trying to piece the schedule together and it kept hitting me that I did not have a quiet time with the Lord and started wondering if that was where my problem was. So I decided to schedule it in...I knew I was going to have to do it first thing in the morning because that was the only time it was going to work without the kids being around...I knew I was going to have to wake up way earlier than I have been to get it done. I am so NOT a morning person but I thought I would give it a shot!!

OMG!! That was what I needed. I needed that time to spend in the Word and in prayer and submitting my will to God and accepting His will. (It has become my favorite time of the day!)  I slowly started recognizing his voice telling me to "wait, they are so young, they need learning through living, they need play time, there is plenty of time for school" and I started backing off.

Let me tell you I have been happier and the kids have been happier. And I have found so many different opportunities for learning through living and my kids are learning so much about character and how to behave and how to act and our learning basic life skills that I now believe more than ever is what they are suppose to be learning at this age. There is plenty of time later for academics! I have put my camera down and have not even worried about my blogs and have just enjoyed my kids!

And since I have been seeking God every morning for His will I have been guided to the correct curriculum to start this fall (Seth just turned 5 in March) and things are falling neatly into place.  (btw - we are doing My Father's World)

I am truly looking forward to starting kindergarten with Seth this fall! I am so looking forward to God leading our schedule and can't wait to see what He has planned for us!  

What does this mean for this blog?  At this point I just don't know.  I do know that it will not be a priority.  I'm sorry if that upsets some but hopefully you understand that my kids have to be my priority.  I am hoping that it can be away where I can record some fun things we do and share some things!  I am still wrestling with whether or not our lives needs to be so publicly displayed and whether or not this would be better if it was private.   Time will tell on that.

Please be aware that I probably won't be on here much still in the next few months.  Once we get started with kindergarten in the fall who knows...we will just see.

Raising Rockstars – Love Week

 

If you saw my previous post today then you know that I am struggling to know what to do with the future of this blog.  I am really considering to go private with this blog so that this blog can stay as the way I have always intended it to be…a chronicle of our homeschooling memories…not us doing cool stuff so we can show off with a cool blog post. 

So that is why I haven’t been doing my posts like before…I am really seeking God’s guidance.

I did want to post though about our fun week last week with Raising Rockstars.  We focused on love last week…being that it was the week before Valentine’s Day.  We have joined Blockbuster’s service of dvds through the mail and we got the Veggie Tales A Silly Little Thing Called Love last week.  It focused on loving our friends, loving our family and loving God.  So we used that as our focus and talked a lot last week about how to love our friends, family and God.

The highlight of last week was our family Valentine’s Day meal.  A new tradition was started in our home!  On Thursday night we designated it as our family Valentine’s meal.  I even pulled out the fine china!  We decorated the table up all pretty and even had candles lit. Seth said a special prayer for everyone in his family and we focused on how much we loved each other.  We even had individual chocolate cakes for dessert. I think the boys felt really special!

Here are few pictures that I got last week.

I taught Seth how to draw stick figures so that he could draw a picture of his family.  Here is the family picture that I drew on the white board.

Here’s Seth’s first family picture ever to draw!! 

Here’s Aaron’s.

My picture of the whole table came out blurry!!  I didn’t even realize it until today when I took the pics off the camera :-(

Here is what our place cards looked like…little cupcakes!  I thought they turned out really cute!

 

We put Hershey’s kisses around the table (the yummy yummy cherry cordial kind) and we put ribbon curls and snowflakes (because this was the day that it snowed 12 inches!!!)

I put Seth’s family picture on display in the middle.

About the blog – I will keep you updated but I really think I am going to go private with it.  Send me an email or leave a comment if you want to continue seeing the blog and I will make sure you get an invite!

Where Will We Go From Here

Hey guys!  I know I have not done a good job of posting on here.  I just haven’t found the time.  It’s kind of funny…I have been sincerely asking God to help guide my daily schedule and I have not found the time to do this…hmmm…I am wondering if He is trying to tell me something.

I have been feeling convicted to make sure that I do things with my kids FOR my kids and not just so I can have a cool blog post!  The blog is suppose to be chronicling the fun and educational stuff we do…not do things so that we can write a blog post!

I really do love this avenue for recording our memories and our accomplishments and I am still planning on giving my kids a book from the blog posts every year for their birthday (speaking of I need to get busy on getting Seth’s created…his birthday is a little less than a month away) so I don’t want to give up the blog.

I am seriously thinking though about making it a private blog…don’t worry…if you want an invitation you will have one.  I think though if I make it private I will be less apt to try to do something so I can have a cool post…and the blog will actually really be what I have intended it to be!

Hopefully you all understand this.  I really want to be the best homeschooling mom I can be…and I am learning that I need to lean more on God for guidance than others.  There are great ideas out there but I have found myself sometimes comparing myself to other homeschool moms and trying to mimic what they are doing…instead of taking their ideas and working into works best for us.  I think this is unhealthy because every family is different and every family is going to do things differently.  I need to focus more on how God wants me to conduct my homeschool.  Besides, everyone only chronicles the good things most of the time.  People aren’t so open to chronicle the mishaps and the bad days…so therefore people’s lives look a lot more put together than what they may really be.

Well I have really opened up here…no I am definitely not perfect!

I will keep you up to date on what I decide.  I am praying about it and hope to have a decision quickly.  If I decide to go private I will for sure let you know to give you a chance to request an invite.

And if you have any advice please share.

Raising Rock Stars

This week we worked on the letter C lesson from Danielle’s Place.  We focused on the story of Daniel and the Lion’s Den and talked about courage…and how not to be a scaredy cat!

Our Memory Verse was Isaiah 41:10a Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God

Of course – we had to watch our favorite Veggietales DVD, Where Is God When I am Scared, because it fit so perfectly.

We made lion face bean bags.

We ate our lunch on lion zoo pal plates.

I took some more lion zoo pal plates and punched holes all around the edges and cut a piece of yarn for the boys to lace around their plates.

We made scaredy cat books!  I had Seth draw pictures of what he was scared of.  He drew a picture of a snake and a picture of his basketball goal falling over (this happened in the middle of the night one night…and it scared him real bad and apparently still scares him even today).

 

Seth is really starting to ask questions about salvation and we are having some really good conversations about Jesus and what he came to earth to do for us.  I have a feeling he will be one of the ones that will accept Jesus at a pretty young age!  I am just daily praying that God will give me the right words to tell him and that it will penetrate his heart and that he will understand.

Tot School

Aaron is currently 30 months old.

Aaron had a pretty good week…except for getting sick at the end of the week with this upper respiratory junk that has been going around :-(.

Here are some picture highlights from the week.

The boys are still  loving the Wii (well as long as Aaron has a remote that is…we are really having to work on our fits and learning how to take turns!)  In this picture they were going on a long run (to release some bottled up energy!)

The kids loved playing with Daddy this week.  They helped Daddy with his exercises one night.

This was actually an activity we did as part of our Raising Rockstar lessons but Aaron really enjoyed this activity of lacing yarn around this lion.  I just took a zoo pal plate and punched holes around the edges and then cut a piece of yarn.  I taped one end of the yarn to the back of the plate.  Aaron tried real hard to get the yarn in those holes!

Aaron doesn’t always like me taking his picture.  (in fact I haven’t been getting as many pictures because I don’t want the kids to think I am doing something with them just so I can get a picture and put it on the blog.  I am trying to make sure my focus stays where it needs to be…on them!)

Aaron is really enjoying coloring right now.  He likes it when him and I color a picture together.  I am trying to teach him his colors as we work on a page together…I know one day he will finally get it!  :-)

We are also working on our left and right every time we get dressed or put our shoes and socks on.  I think he is starting to grasp it!

And we are starting to talk about the potty and what we are suppose to do in the potty!  I am hoping that I will maybe, hopefully, have him potty trained by the time we go on our cruise at the end of June.  He turns 3 on July 6th so it is very possible :-)  I just have a feeling he is going to be a stubborn one!

Seth’s Week In Review

Seth had a good week in school this week.  He has been begging me to teach him how to tell time so we worked on that this week.  We learned about the hour hand and the minute hand and how to tell time when the minute hand is on the 12 or the 6.

Seth also counted to 100 this week and we learned to count by 10.  We also learned about counting pennies and dimes this week.

We also worked on our sight words this week.  We worked on the words the and is.

Here are some picture highlights from the week.

The boys are loving PE on the Wii.  I sent them on a long run one day…they had some bottled up energy they needed to release :-)

Daddy put them all in the big dump truck to go for a ride.  They had a lot of fun with that!

Seth is a true goof ball!!

Here’s a picture of Seth working on his Sight Words workbook.  (his poor hair…he has a major cow lick…but we got his hair cut on Friday so that solved that problem!)

The boys are still loving their desks and doing school in the kitchen :-)

Tot School

Not only am I late in getting this post up…I also did not get any pictures last week of our activities.  But this does not mean that we didn’t have any activities.  We had a very good week last week. 

Aaron enjoyed putting puzzles together with his brother.  They put together the alphabet train puzzle several times.  Seth enjoyed teaching Aaron his ABC’s while they were putting it together.  There were some really sweet moments.

Aaron also loved coloring his sharks coloring book.  He has always been more interested in coloring than Seth ever was.

Aaron really seems to be going through a difficult phase right now.  I don’t know if it is typical middle child conflict or not but he seems to be showing some jealousy of both Seth and Alyssa.  I am thinking he is just trying to figure out where he fits in.  I am trying to make a conscious effort of making sure I spend some special time with Aaron to make him feel special.  Hopefully this phase will pass quickly :-)

Well I better get off here so I can get started on our busy and fun week this week!  Have a great week everyone!