Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Life and How Homeschooling Fits

I’m apart of a local Facebook group for homeschooling families and we had a someone ask how do you keep Littles occupied while working with older kids. I was a part of a busy bag swap when we lived in TX and thought I’d see if there was any interest in. There was more interest than I anticipated and I ended up organizing 2 groups. Each group had 15 people. The first group met up last Friday and next Friday the 2nd group will meet and exchange their bags! I’m happy that so many families are benefiting! Here's a small sample of the finger puppets I made! 


This week was also the first week of Awana at our church. Sweetie Girl was in Sparks last year and she is again this year. She was beyond ecstatic to get the second book! She has been waiting for months, literally since she finished her first book in March! The first several verses are ones from the other book, so I'm anticipating her finishing early again this year. The verses do get a bit harder as she goes though, so we'll see. We are planning to add practice for our verses to our school day though! Daddy is volunteering in her class this year. It’s our long day of the week with Homeschool Academy and Awana on the same day, but we’re planning to have a relaxed Thursday to make up for it.

Little Man started Cubbies this year and Mommy is volunteering in his class. Baby Boy is in the nursery and he seemed to have a great time! The whole family is involved this year and the first week went really well! I forgot to take a picture, but I'll be sure to get one in a couple of weeks with Little Man gets his book and vest! 

Sweetie Girl seems to really dislike handwriting and I’m had to really push for her to do anything that involves writing. We have a lot of friend all over the country, so one night I was trying to figure out how to make handwriting a little more enjoyable. A penpal come to mind and I started thinking about who would work for this. We have friends that we use to go to church with in TX, they moved to the East Coast and we moved to Colorado. Marriage, and all 3 of our children all happened within days to months of each other. We married 1 week after them, and each of our kids, same gender each time were all born within a year of each other. They are also homeschooling as well, so I sent my friend a message asking if their daughter would be interested in being penpals with Sweetie Girl and she said yes! Sweetie Girl sent out her first letter last week and was really excited to start writing to a friend she played with as a baby, but hasn’t seen in several years.

This weekend we went camping. The Hubs took Sweetie Girl and Little Man in the fall and we’ve been meaning to all go as a family, but with family visiting most of the summer, this was the first chance we got. We had lots of fun! It got a bit cold and I didn’t get much sleep especially after mini pooch and 2 little boys took over my sleeping bag! We hiked and played near the water! We had hot dogs and s’mores! Daddy even got to do a little fishing, though not as much as he would have liked. The kids had a blast and we’re looking forward to more camping trips in the future!

 

 


 


This past week, the MOPS group that I was involved in started! I love this group, because it’s the only one I’ve ever heard of that meets every week. I was invited 2 years ago, right after we moved here and went that year and last year I was on the ministry team. This year since we are homeschooling, I decided to not attend. This was a difficult decision for me, but I found we struggled to do any other school that day and it’s was more difficult to get in a routine. Sweetie Girl is also getting to old to attend. I’m missing it and have thrown around the idea of going back, but I don’t think I will. It was super fun and I loved it, but now that I’m homeschooling, I feel like I need to find something else that works for our family.


We’ve had a slow start to school this week, but since I can count our camping trip toward our school days, I figured it was ok to spend a day recouping. Sweetie girl did do some painting, cleaning and reading yesterday, so we can still count it as school.