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Our Homeschooling Year 2011-2012, Kicks Off!

October 6, 2011 By Laura 9 Comments

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Well, forgive me for the delay with any updates about our new homeschool year we’re in the midst of here!  Once we kicked it off at the beginning of September, we’ve been very occupied finding our groove, with our new schedules.  Things are quite different for us this year! With the kid’s respective ages and levels, life has opened up new and exciting opportunities, of experiences and learning, for all of them.  Not to mention new territories for us parents!  We have a high schooler now, for example, and with it comes all kinds of things.  But the younger ones are also following their passions and gifts, more so than ever.

Some of you may know this, but for those of you who do not, we are year round homeschoolers.  We keep a lighter (academic) schedule in the summer, and begin a whole new school year/grade levels, in September.  It’s always a very, very exciting time, as we love to plan out and begin a new school year!  We’re really blessed that our kids are enthusiastic students, who love school and learning.  This coming school year, was filled with more anticipation than ever, and it’s been as CrAzY and exciting of a ride, as we expected.

I always take the kids’ new school photos on the first day of school.  This year, it was almost a week later, but we got it done.  We have also ‘always’ taken their portraits in the school room, at the side of the cabinets.  But if you follow our blog, you may be aware that we drastically changed our school room set-up, and those cabinets are gone!  You can see the  old and new set up of our school room, as well as the style of school photos we were taking in all previous years, in this recent post.

So this year, I did all of the kids’ school photos outside.  These photos will be in the sidebar quite soon, so that new comers can see the kiddos who make up our homeschooling world.  In this post, we wanted to share with you a little about their (book) subjects they are studying this year, as well as some other little interesting tidbits of information.  In coming posts, we’ll be sharing a lot more, including activities/learning experiences outside of their academics, some deeper thoughts and observations I have had as a homeschooling parent, and lots of other fun and interesting homeschooling related posts. We hope you’ll join us for it all, with discussion and sharing of your own!

 

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This is our oldest daughter/student, Alexis Grace (14). Also known as {A} around the blog here.   She has been homeschooled (not necessarily at home…right? lol),  since 3rd grade, and just started 9th grade this year. We can’t believe we have a high schooler now!  That means I worked hard over the summer, researching, and piecing together a serious 4 year college prep plan for her. And maybe panicking, just a little. The girl scares me, and excites me, and makes us all proud, all at the same time!  She has huge aspirations, and her heart set on really great colleges.  We cannot let her down, and we believe in her, because she is so unique in her focus of her life at her age.   She is so faith-filled, determined, intelligent, tough, independent, and firm on the path she is laying out for herself.  What fascinates me, is it’s all a far cry from anything her father or I ever dreamed for ourselves, or were interested in.  But that’s why each one of us has our own calling, and why it’s important as homeschooling parents, to help shape our children’s character, and foster the calling they feel God has put in their heart, as the work He has meant for them to do, in their life.   It’s all about guiding and supporting them, to be the people they are meant to be.

Throughout this past summer, Alexis taught the 4th Grade Religious Education at our parish (2 weeks), and ran the games activity for the kids of Vacation Bible School (1 week.)  She also earned herself a Catholic High School scholarship, that has covered all of the expenses of her academic and extra-curricular school year. We’re proud of her, and grateful as well!

This school year, as a high school Freshman, Alexis’ courses are:  Language Arts (Alpha Omega /LifePac),  Algebra (Math-U-See), Biology (Apologia), History/Social Studies (Streams of Civilization-Volume 2 Cultures in Conflict Since the Reformation), Latin (Latina Christiana), Spanish (All Bilingual) , Art and Music (Piano – private lessons, and the Recorder – all kids at home.).

Alexis is also playing sports now, for our town’s public South High School! She is really involved there. That is a whole other exciting post. I could easily ramble, so I’ll save it, but suffice it to say it’s been really wonderful for her so far, and exciting for us.  It is extremely time-consuming on a daily weekday basis.  But I’d say we best get used to it and keep making it work.

In the light of sharing all of their subjects in this post, I feel it’s important to mention, that we live our personal faith, which is Roman Catholic. So it’s not a subject the kids study for school, but more something we are always teaching them, and they are always living and learning it as they grow. Just as we still are as adults, actually. That said, they do begin each day all together, with a Scripture, discussion, and prayer.  As a tool, we still really love Living Faith-Kids!!

 

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JackMichael (9), the first-born of the triplets.  Also known as {JM} around here.  He and the other 2 have the same academic subjects of course, being in the same grade level and age.   As I said, I’ll be posting more about what they love to do outside of their academic studies, and I’m excited to do so, because they are all so unique, with their interests and personalities. And yet, the differences from within their unique selves, meld together so well with each other.  It’s fascinating to me, to observe, frankly.  But anyway, for today, here are the subjects all 3 of them have this year:

Language Arts (Alpha Omega / LifePac),  Math (Delta / Math-U-See),  Science (Exploring Creation with Astronomy-Apologia), History/Social Studies (Christian Liberty Press / Our Nation Under God, and, History Stories for Children), Writing Strands, Spanish (All Bilingual), Latin (Prima Latina), Art and Music ( Recorder – all kids at home).

 

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Olivia Faith (9), the second triplet born. {O}, which we tend to call her 1/2 the time, ourselves. The boys especially, refer to her as “O”, a lot. And you know what she calls them, when she’s talking to the both of them? “Boys”. It always cracks me up, because there is such a motherly air about the way she says it. So….our own little baby boom is “O and the Boys”, I guess. It has a cool little ring to it, now that I think about it. : )   Oh, speaking of their names, and {name initials in brackets}, I know we’ve been a little all over the place with it.  The thing is, using initials for any sake of privacy or protection, is pretty irrelevant by now, considering they’ve been on TV a few times now, (related to our Catholic faith) as well as the newspaper, for different things. All times with full names.  On the flip side, I have found myself continuing to use their initials in brackets sometimes, for the sake of brevity.  As you can see, my posts tend to be perhaps a little lengthy, so I need to use all the brevity tricks I can.  : )   The kids are all well aware, lots of people know who we are by name, but the reverse isn’t necessarily true. (Especially around our town, and the people we meet and run into in person.)


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Shane Jacob (9), the last born of the trio.

(Reaching for ‘brevity’ now………..).  Shoot. I forgot what I was going to say. Ummmm. Oh yeah.  You see that beautiful little school desk in the background?  That is Michael’s, from when he was a little boy!!  What a treasure, huh?  That sweet and sentimental little antique is going to be another blog post coming up, that I am planning, as well. There’s some story to tell, and some specific things that are part of the desk, that you will not believe!!  Michael’s antique school desk, is not the only one we have to show you, either. So if you’re interested, be on the look out for that post too!

homeschooling-new-year-5 I am glad I thought of doing a quick ‘class picture’ of sorts, while we were at it.  I sure love my class!!

Honestly, I’ve struggled a little with this homeschooling section of the blog, right along. It’s a lifestyle to us for sure,  but one that is just so normal to us, I think…”What is there to blog about?”.  But I know there is LOTS.  Lately, my realization of that has really broadened, and in the process, I have realized why I am not as active in this section. Which is crazy, because I so passionately love homeschooling my kids, and living this life I do with my family, that it hardly makes sense.  But I see now where it comes from, and I think I’ll be sharing those thoughts very soon too.

So stay tuned!!  This homeschooling section should be picking up steam, real soon!   You should know, we love comments and hearing from all of you! But if you are a homeschooling blogger as well, we especially encourage comments with your blog-linked names, so that we can visit your stories and shared, comment, and connect with you all as well. Our hope and goal is that we are all an inspiration and encouragement for each other, in raising and educating our children, as homeschoolers or not. homeschooling happens to be the route we have happily taken, with a deep love and passion for it. So our posts will derive from that life we live, as a homeschooling family.  But proving a great education, however any of us do, is the more common thread.  So thanks so much for stopping by, and please DO again!  God bless you all!

Gosh, I promise I’ll work harder on that brevity thing, too.

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Filed Under: Foreign Language, History / Social Studies, Homeschooling, Math, Middle School Homeschooling, Reading / Writing, Science, The Big Picture Tagged With: Catholic-blogs, Catholic-families, Catholic-homeschooling-family, Home Schooling, homeschooling, homeschooling-blog, Living-Faith-Kids, triplets

At Long Last, Our First Day of Homeschooling – School Year 2009-2010

September 19, 2009 By Laura 8 Comments

If you’ve been following along with us, you’ll know that this first day of our homeschooling year is one we waited for. (And waited, and waited..).   If you have no idea what I’m talking about, let me put it in a nutshell for you: We ordered all of our curriculum, and the bulk of it never arrived. We waited for weeks. Many calls between shipper and post offices were made. Then a big box finally arrived. a completely EMPTY box. More calls were made. New orders were placed. And we finally received all of the curriculum we needed, weeks after we wanted to begin our homeschooling year. Doesn’t that sound like it was fun? Anyway.

Needless to say, there was a LOT of excitement about beginning our new official school year! Getting this new morning routine going was a bit if a challenge for Michael and I, but the kids were ready long before we were! All we kept hearing from them  was,  “Are you guys ready for school YET?” lol.  (Isn’t that supposed to be OUR line?)

We started the day, like we start all school days, which is with family devotion together.  We most always have special intentions and the Lord’s Prayer and a Hail Mary together. We’ve also been through many devotion books already over the years-some better than others. But they all have generally included the day’s Scripture reading, and discussion. We can really get going and chat the time away, with discussion!   Recently, I ordered a new Kid’s Devotion quarterly magazine that has not yet started coming. But when it does, if it’s really good, I’ll be sure to blog about it. In addition to our family devotion together, {A} has her own teen daily devotional book that she loves, and of course, uses daily.

But until our new devotion book arrives, we can come up with plenty to do ourselves!  For this first day of school, we first talked a little about the year ahead, our plans, and each of us said our own special intention for our school year, to pray for together.  Michael/Daddy works for himself, so he was able to join us this first day.

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A friend of ours, (Mr. Bill’s daughter, if you are familiar with the stories of him here on our blog), sent us a very thoughtful package for our family. There were some gifts for the kids, a gift card to a really nice restaurant nearby for Michael and I (that I have been waiting to try some day!), and a Mass card for our family.  Part of the Mass card had this beautiful, Prayer for the Family. We prayed it together, and Michael led it by reading it for us.

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Michael and I had read it before, when we first received it, of course, and we loved it!  It just speaks to us.  So much so, that we are putting it in a lovely frame, and hanging it on our wall by some pretty ribbon.

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In Devotion closing, we then prayed a decade of the rosary together.

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The little ones got started in writing their names on labels, and putting them on their books.

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Then we all got to the school work!

{A} has always tended to kind of do her schooling all over the place.  I guess it depends on where she feels like being, and what noise levels are here or there. But she started off this year in her room (well, one of her rooms. The other is having some work done, before we take this one and re-do it! lol).  When she needs helps, or needs us to correct her work, she lets us know through the school day.  Aside from that, we review and grade all of her work on our own time.

Generally speaking, here’s how {A}’s daily classes will go this year:

1) Math  2) Language Arts  3) Writing (program: Writing Strands)  4) Science  5) History & Geography  6) Latin  7)  Politics & Government

*Another free day of the week:   Art – Drawing & Painting Class

*Fridays-Teaching the little ones a class with me. : )

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The the little ones now do most of our (book) schooling in the sun room.  We have a ‘school room’ where we used to school all of the time, and where we still store all of our schooling books and supplies.   We used to only school in the sun room in warm seasons.  But now that we have a wood stove out here, and it’s a 4 season room……..  .   It’s just that the light is SO plentiful and beautiful.  It’s simply a lovely place to be.

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Generally speaking, here’s how the kid’s school days go, after family devotion:

{J, O & S}

1) Phonics and Reading 2) Math 3) Writing (program: Writing Strands) 4) Spelling and Vocabulary

Tues: Catechism, *Wed: Science, *Thur: Social Studies, *Fri: Introductory Sign Language

*These days classes are like bonus classes. They may get moved around, or bumped off on the occasional week because of a field trip or a big agenda day for their teachers. ; )

Art, music and PE are just things things they naturally cover in their life every day, without a real need for specified time for it, at their age right now.

One tradition we have upheld every year so far, for the first day of school, is that I take the kids school pictures.  (In the school room.) This is one day, I care what they wear.  On other school days, if we’ll be staying home, they can wear what they want. (And they have been known to get creative with that license!)  On the rare day, they may even have school in their pajamas! (It’s a home schooling perk!)

Here’s this year’s ‘chosen’ school photos. I got several good shots of each of them, so Michael made the final choice for each of them.  These school photos are just for us: for them and us to have as milestone photos of each grade’s school year, and for comparison of year to year growth shots.  The teeth situation sure is different from last year!

{A} homeschooling-grade-levels-2-and-7-6

{J} homeschooling-grade-levels-2-and-7-7

{O} homeschooling-grade-levels-2-and-7-8

{S} homeschooling-grade-levels-2-and-7-9

Oh, well this photo below reminds me of one more tradition we seem to have . . . . . .  homeschooling-grade-levels-2-and-7-10

Smelling our new books!  Is there anything that smells better, than a brand new book?  (Well, maybe home made bread! lol)

Let me tell you how happy we are to be back in the swing of our schooling:  We got our books on Thursday. We had our first day of school on Friday, September 18th, and we happily did double lessons in every subject.  Today was our second day of school, and it’s SATURDAY!

Wishing you all a lots of learning and fun, this homeschooling year!

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Filed Under: Elementary Homeschooling, Faith/ Catholic, Homeschooling, Middle School Homeschooling Tagged With: Catholic-homeschooling-family, homeschooling, homeschooling-2nd-grade, homeschooling-7th-grade, homeschooling-curriculum, homeschooling-first-day-of-school, homeschooling-first-day-of-school-photos, homeschooling-grade-2, homeschooling-grade-7, triplets

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