thehomeschoolhouse

[thehomeschoolhouse]

31.08.17 / 2:25pm

Got some new pens yesterday and im no excited to try them out !  Sorry this isnt too interesting

[thehomeschoolhouse]

The Milky Way

The Milky Way galaxy is home to 400 billion stars and our own sun and solar system. It is nearly 120,000 light-years across and a shining example of a spiral galaxy. The above are some pictures of the Milky Way, at least the visible portion that can be seen from Earth, captured by amateur and professional photographers. 

Fun Fact: Every picture you’ve seen of the Milky Way from above is either another galaxy or an artist’s interpretation.

Why?

Keep reading

[thehomeschoolhouse]

Life.

ITS ALMOST AUGUST ITS TIME TO GET READY FOR HALLOWEEN!!!!!!

[thehomeschoolhouse]

❤️❤️❤️

Bob Ross after his wife was diagnosed with cancer.

[thehomeschoolhouse]

<p>Most of our first grade back to school haul! We are going to start story of the world as a guide for history. The mine craft notebook is just because he wanted it, and he’s already using that. New hiking tees for me, and water colors for both of the boys. Sight words and brain quest, because that is just fun! Days of the week and months of the year magnets for our class ‘room’ area. A bag for library books, and a work book for first grade. The work book seems like it will be a good supplemental addition for reading and math. We’re learning about money this year, so what better than play money!? I always had a set of these growing up and it was fun to play store with these. A pencil case, chalk and new box of crayons. We still need post it notes, and maybe some pencils (Tasha steals a lot of mine and she always loses her mechanical pencils), and file folders for organizing everything. And along with all of this we will also be using Life of Fred for math and other math toys and pages for supplement. <br /> Jr says he is so excited to start first grade work! We have already started going through the flash cards and making more in depth plans for our school year!

[thehomeschoolhouse]

<p>Preschool homeschool haul! Grayson will be three in September, so he doesn’t need much yet. But he is getting interested in letters and shapes and colors, so this is what we got to help him along- along with all the stuff his brother used at that age!

[thehomeschoolhouse]

Planning out the best month ever!!! (It’s my birthday month hahaha)

[thehomeschoolhouse]

Checking in...

How have I not had a post in two months!? I'm still here. I'm working on organizing the next school year (we're starting summer break next Wednesday) and I'll be taking pictures and explaining my process along the way to get a post out soon. Last month was crazy. Seriously. And we're not out of the water yet. There has been some bad, some random, and hopefully some good! We're still working on the good part and when we find out for sure I'll be sharing that with you. And I'm sure I'll need some tips on how to homeschool through it! Jr finished Teach Your child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons- he basically reads at a second grade reading level, according to the book. There is more work to do (which we continue daily) some extra sound combinations (like ph gn ce...) but we going to get to those as we find them in the books he is reading. He's become a little addition whiz in the last few months. The only thing we've had to work more is that he confuses number signs (for ASL) with counting. So like the hand shap for the number 6 is like holding up theee fingers to the rest of us- so he then says that 5+6=8. So he's counting his fingers and doing so correctly but instead of say three he says it's six... so we got out the base ten blocks and have been using the ones to add and subtract now. We have MAJOR cabin fever. We're ready to sleep in and have MORE calm to our days... hopefully! Since Tasha is in public school and I drive her to school the boys can't really sleep in. We have pretty relaxing mornings to make up for that- but cutting out the morning rush for a while will be nice.

[thehomeschoolhouse]

Spring Break...

And my son is mad that we didn’t do any school yesterday. I had him read and that was it. So I guess I’ll put something together for the rest of the week so he’s doing something.... Good thing I wasn’t planning on too long of a summer break! 

[thehomeschoolhouse]

I know it’s barely even spring.

As I type this, it’s around 30 degrees Fahrenheit....

But, I’m thinking about summer.

I’m thinking about how much I miss nice weather, I’ve been planning what clothes we all need during the summer, and how nice it will be to just slip on flip flops and head out the door when we want to leave instead of coats, hats, boots, gloves etc. I’m thinking about the smell of bonfires, the taste of a perfectly roasted (burnt) marshmallow, of grilled food on a regular basis...

But I’m also thinking about the parts I HATE. How on the 100% humidity and awful days we’re cooped up in the living room where the air conditioner is. And I’ve really been thinking about how much I hate cooking on days like that. Last summer we had more days where it was agony to cook in my own kitchen than any other summer I remember. Maybe it just really was that humid and miserable, maybe I’m just old. But I thought I would share the start of my brainstorming on how I can deal with this issue of the kitchen in the summer time, so here are some meal ideas and thoughts to get us started on preparing for the dreaded heat:

The first thing that came to mind was of course, grill outside. Almost any day possible I would have my husband grill something. He’s even done pizza on the grill before, but he used a frozen pizza and that didn’t turn out too well... Maybe we will learn how to do that this year... But grilled food is amazing. And basically no matter what you grill, it will go perfect with a salad and some raw veggies straight from the fridge. 

If we don’t/can’t grill for some reason (the first reason being that I personally cannot grill... lol) the Crock pot is my next go to. Its an amazingly easy way to get a hot meal without heating up the whole kitchen. With the lid on it doesn’t emit too much heat and all I have to do is throw food in there in the morning and not touch it for 6-8 hours for most recipes. I will probably never actually complain about crock pot cooking!

Cook the hottest part of the meal before hand and make enough to spread out on a few different meals. The first thing that came to mind for us was ground beef. Very versatile and can be cooked all at once and stored until you are ready to use it. Some of the meals I have listed below do call for pasta or rice, but those are pretty easy to cook and having to turn on the stove to boil water is not so bad because you don’t have to sit in the kitchen and watch it, and the pasta cooks pretty quickly once it’s in the pot...

You can make:

Tacos

Sloppy Joes

Grilled cheese with meat (I’ve used sloppy joe meat AND taco meat and they were yummy!)

Walking Tacos (remember those from school?! My kids LOVE these! Just microwave the meat and add seasoning)

Stroganoff

Spaghetti

As a pizza topping (Tortilla pizzas cook so quickly, they can even be made in the microwave)

Assorted rice dishes- we like having rice, ground beef, peas and corn and cheese altogether. And the corn and peas can cook in the water for the rice and then just stir the rice in when the water boils.

Simple Nachos- just ground beef and seasoning, tortilla chips and cheese. You can melt the cheese on the nachos in the oven, but if it’s simply too hot queso or some other kind of cheese dip would work fine too.

Then of course there’s salads and pasta salads. Sometimes I will make a bunch of pasta salad on Sunday and eat it for lunch through the week. I’m pretty much the only person in the house that likes any kind of pasta salad, but my husband and I have no problem with a plain old regular salad for dinner on a hot day. And of course it makes a really quick and easy and HEALTHY side dish.

And the easiest cheater no cook dinner ever (next to going out to eat) Sandwiches chips and veggies! Just set out everything needed and we go through and make out own plates, bonus points if I stop at a deli and pick up different salads or beans or (the kids favorite) desserts.

[thehomeschoolhouse]

Lent

I thought I would take a moment and talk about what our family is doing for Lent. 

We’re still drinking coffee, we’re still eating chocolate. What we’re giving up is excessive living.

Every day for 40 days we are going through the house and finding something to donate to the Salvation army. We do at least one thing each day, but most days so far I’ve also been finding a toy to donate also. Dedicating 40 whole days where we consciously look at what would be useful to another family has been so amazing. I have been trying to get Junior to help in choosing which toy each day he will donate, with the rules being that it can’t be broken, it has to have at least MOST of the pieces and it cannot be something that Grayson still plays with (no giving away all his brother’s toys). He’s been on board with giving to other kids, but he does have a hard time picking a toy most days. I thought Grayson would have no idea what was going on and wouldn’t care less what we get rid of, but he seems to be pretty attached to every single toy in their room... Even toys he has seriously outgrown like baby rattles. He clings to them and cries if he catches me taking them outside. Once they are out though he has no idea.

We had one bag of clothes in the car from the beginning of February, waiting to be donated and along with that we had 3 bags of things get dropped off the other day. I just wait until the hatchback area of the car is full and to a mass drop off. 

My basement is starting to feel more spacious. We had things that were covered in 3 years worth of dust! No worries, I cleaned everything up and made sure it still worked before donating!

I’m really happy we went with this this year. Usually I’m the only one in the house to participate in Lent, but picking out things to donate has really helped get us all more involved in leading the life Jesus wants for everyone. A life of love.

[thehomeschoolhouse]

What is the deal with March?! February was warm and sunny and now we have two inches of snow on the ground and well below freezing temps out there. It’s really given us cabin fever. I think at this point we’re all just sick of it, even my ice fisherman husband is ready for some nice warm weather. The only living things in the house enjoying this are the two huskies. LOL

It’s really got me contemplating spring break. Tasha goes on spring break the first week of April, and I’ve been toying with the idea of having jr take that week off too. So I’ve been busy in my down time lately outlining the rest of the school year. Even with taking a spring break we will be scraping the bottom of the barrel to school into June. That’s amazing. We didn’t even get into the Kindergarten curriculum until October last year and yet here we are, checking everything off the list and still feeling REALLY relaxed! We also are down to only 25 or so more lessons in our reading curriculum. 

I’m still kind of on the fence, though. I mean, we only school about an hour a day... I think I’ll just wait and see how the weather is, I’ve left that week blank and open for now.

I just can’t believe everything we have accomplished this year!

[thehomeschoolhouse]

Morning planning session. Sorry for potato quality!

[thehomeschoolhouse]

A day in the life.

There’s a lot of day in the life blog posts and videos going out right now. So I thought it would be cool to try one out...

5:40 am. The alarm goes off. No matter if I’m actually awake or not I hit the snooze. I just can’t get out of bed quite yet, most of the night was spent being kicked by my two year old...

Somewhere between 5:40 and 6 am: I get out of bed and start my coffee, wake my sister (who is 14 and lives with us) for school. Usually the boys are still sleeping. I drink my coffee, catch up on facebook and emails. This morning I printed out some handwriting worksheets because I’ve been obsessed with everything Bullet Journal (I’m sure you’ve noticed) so I’m re learning cursive and trying to make it look pretty. I also contemplate how to teach the boys to write and read cursive in the years to come. 

6:30. Usually by now the toddler has realized I abandoned him in bed and he comes out to the couch to cuddle and get some milk to drink. By now I’m going through my to do list and thinking about what I need to do first in my day.

6:50 If Junior isn’t awake by now I go and wake him up. He’s difficult to awake every morning. It makes me really thankful that we homeschool because it’s difficult enough to get him out of bed in the morning, let alone dressed and fed and out the door for the day. I remind him that if he gets out of bed now he can cuddle on the couch with me and wake up. I’m lucky this morning because that worked.

7:05 We pile in the car and take my sister to school. City traffic is busy in the morning and now that she’s in high school this school is on the other side of town. 

7:30 Some days we stop at the store if there’s anything we need to buy, but today we head back home. The boys usually eat around 8:30 or 9 but this morning they were hungry early. I get them cereal, let the dogs out and start laundry. 

8:00 The boys are busy eating slowly and playing. We usually have the TV channel Sprout on the tv, I’m trying to remember to use this time to do Youtube play lists I put together every month based on what we’re working on. I usually take this time to work on some computer work. This usually consists of checking email if I didn’t get to first thing in the morning, paying bills and blogging. 

9:00 I usually don’t really want to manage much around the house other than the laundry before 9 am. If we were lazy the night before this can cause some stress for me. I’m trying hard to make sure we have the dishes done and the floor vacuumed the night before, so that I’m not waking up with the odds stacked against me. If these two things are done the house is in pretty good shape. 

9:30 If there’s not too much house work I need to start, and it’s alright outside, we try to get outside for a little bit. Fresh air, getting out energy... Now that Grayson is bigger and better able to handle colder weather this has really been an improvement in out days compared to the last few winters. We’ve even been sick less and I really feel it’s because we’re getting more fresh air and not sitting inside with the recycled air all day every day.

10:00 We tend to start out school day around this time. We start with a reading lesson and some handwriting practice, then math. We’ve been working on maps and learning about how our city and state fit into the world. Google maps has been a really fun way to do this, so we spend a little time at the computer. Then sometimes we work on some practice work or crafts. We spend between an hour and a hour and a half on this more formal learning. 

11:30 I head back down to the basement and put laundry into the dryer. Then start laundry. Today we’re having some mini pizzas and baby carrots. Raw carrots are Junior’s favorite vegetable! I’ll take what I can get when it comes to them eating veggies!

12:00 Lunch is usually ready by now, we eat and then have some down time. Jr can play on the computer or some video games, I try to Grayson to cuddle with me- it’s hardly ever a problem. I take this time to go through my bullet journal, check email, draft blog posts, work in my Etsy shop, or read from my Daily Bible. After an hour or so of screen time I have the boys play legos or find some other toy or activity to occupy themselves with as long as its sort of quiet. 

2:00 St start getting ready to do the after school pick up. Grayson still falls asleep on the car ride pretty consistently. 

2:45 Usually we head straight home after pick up. I put Grayson in my bed and get him tucked in, he still naps at least an hour or two every day. I suspect that it’s because we stay up kind of late and still have to get up pretty early to do the school drop off. I don’t think I’ll miss having to get around so early every day after my sister is done with school. It’s one of the many reasons we decided to home school. Depending on the day Jr and I head outside while Gray sleeps since my sister is home to listen for him to wake up, sometimes we will play a board game, read books, watch a movie together or just hang out.

3:20 Dad is home right on time as long as he isn’t on call for work. We discuss our days and tell dad about everything we did in school that morning. 

4:00 right now I take my sister to the chiropractor three days a week. We are right at the beginning of an intensive program to try to correct her neck and stop her daily headaches and her migraines. Little by little it tapers off until this summer when she will probably just go monthly. Depending on how well she responds to this. It’s almost always a pretty quick trip and we are usually home before 5.

6:00 we have dinner and family time. Then our evening routine starts.

6:30 the boys pick up their toys. They can always bring back out a few to play with for the evening, but the majority need to be put away. This is a harder task because Grayson LOVES to empty all of the baskets and isn’t quite to the stage of actually realizing that he needs to at least help pick the toys back up. Vince or I usually end up helping because it’s not entirely fair to Junior to make him pick it all up when he tends to be pretty good about not getting everything out.

7:30 Pajamas

8:15 brush teeth and have quiet time. We usually cuddle on the couch.

9:00 Screen time ends for my sister. Her phone is collected and we shut the wifi off for the evening. We are trying to get back in the habit of getting the boys into bed at this time too but other than when were all sleeping this is the most peaceful time of the whole day. We usually are too distracted to say good night just yet... 

9:30-10 Vince and I can barely keep our eyes open. The boys always insist they are still awake, even with their sleepy voices and through their yawns. We get every one in their beds and say goodnight!

[thehomeschoolhouse]

Bullet Journal Do’s and don’ts

Now- don’t read that title the wrong way. There’s no truly wrong way to bullet journal. Bullet Journal is a very broad term. In my home alone there are 4 very different bullet journals. My sister (14) uses her’s as a doodle/sketch book with some trackers and wishlists built in. My husband has a travel inspired wishlist that is broken down by state and contains lists of different fish he wants to catch in each state. He plans on adding doodles of the different fish as he goes. I use two different bullet journals (which I’ve discussed before). One is a little more “traditional,” planner format with monthlies, dailies, trackers and a few collections. My other journal is a home school journal, broken down by month and weeks and is mainly used to keep us on track for our schooling. So trust me, there’s no really WRONG way to do this bullet journal thing! 

What I mean by do’s and don’ts is a list of things I absolutely love about journaling, and things that I tried and hated- things that didn’t really work for me.

1. Don’t do every single collection you see. 

When I first started my bullet journal experience I went on a collection spree. Everything I saw on pinterest and the Facebook Bullet Journal Junkies group I had to do. I couldn’t stop my self. I felt that I must do all the things. I filled my journal and I didn’t even use a single collection I made after having it completed. I honestly don’t need a 4 page list of every movie we own, I can’t even remember half of the other collections I made in that first journal. In the end, that journal only lasted me a month, thankfully it was a really cheap notebook, I would have kicked my self in the butt if I had spent money on a nice  leuchtturm and ended up ruining it with junk.

2. Don’t set up for the whole year!

I thought only jerks said that in the beginning. But now that I’ve done that and regretted it I see that it was kind of a knee jerk reaction to the idea of a planner. When you buy a pre- set up planner of course it comes with all the months and days set out, all you do from there is fill it in! But this isn’t how the bullet journal works. You can have things like a future log and calendex to log important things in the future. My calendex even has a small section for the first half of 2018 incase anything super important comes up (graduations looming or weddings, things to just keep in mind) and that only took an extra 2 inches of a page, not an entire journal. This also helped me fill up that first journal really quickly- and I couldn’t even use it in the end because I had no room to continue in that book.

3. Don’t be afraid to do the collections and trackers you feel you gravitate towards.

If you really have a need for a spread of every movie you own and will flip to it often (maybe lots of people borrow movies, or maybe you keep buying the same movie because you forget that you already own it- I know people who have done this!) then make one! I like my cleaning trackers, and have three and a half pages of cleaning trackers that I use at least weekly. It’s broken down by week, month, and seasonal cleaning needs for my home.  I also track my husbands call schedule to see how often he takes call and gets called in to work when he does take call. Lastly I track my moods (but now that I’m three months in on that one I’m not sure I’ll stick with it). Do be mindful of what you put in your journal because you can run out of room really fast, but don’t be scared to fill up some pages... It’s a balancing act that you’ll learn as you go! 

4. Know that it won’t stay the same from start to finish. I think back to that first journal and kind of shudder now. My pens would bleed through the paper, I’ve learned brush lettering and my hand writing has improved in general- it kind of makes me glad that that first one didn’t last because my current journal is much prettier! Bullet journals certainly don’t need to be pretty, but, with practice, your handwriting will improve and if it makes you happy- it can look however you need it to.

[thehomeschoolhouse]

Oh boy!

I hardly posted this week! Sorry! I would love to tell you I was too busy, but really, I was just too distracted. Busy work kind of stuff. We got through our schooling by Thursday this week (we have been doing really well with this in the last two months! I thank the bullet journal!). Friday morning the beautiful weather really started to kick in. We (or *I* walked, the boys sat in the stroller...) to the park, played, and then walked back. Almost a three mile journey altogether! It was a little chilly but really nice out! Then, in the afternoon, it really started to warm up so we played outside for almost two hours after doing the after school run. 

Today was also REALLY nice. Almost 60 degrees! Which for Michigan is almost unheard of in February. We were outside most of today also, we even took another walk. I started some of the yard clean up- make the process easier in the spring. And, with the help of my husband, got through my to do list for today too! It was extra long because we didn’t get through much yesterday.

So I’ve just been busy keeping busy over here this week. I’m excited for what this coming week brings!

I hope you’re having a good weekend!

[thehomeschoolhouse]

How to miss a day in homeschool

A questions that comes up often in the bullet journal and homeschool community seems to be how to handle a day missed. But I already have it planned out, but it’s not working out!

So, here’s how I handle missing days:

I keep a separate bullet journal for home school. I keep home school on my personal dailies in my own bullet journal, but the more in depth what we need to cover lists go in the home school bujo. I only do monthlies and weeklies in that bujo. In the monthlies I include a list of what topics we’re covering that month and then I break that down into the weekly list. I also do not date the weeklies, necessairly. I do put the date range at the top for what week it’s meant for, but for each day listed I don’t put the date or even the day of the week that it’s meant for. I list them out by number. We school on a 4 days/ week schedule. This gives us room to miss a day automatically, a fun day, a sick day, a whatever we need it to be day. I try to make those days on Friday, but some weeks it just doesn’t work like that. Especially in the winter. So, by just numbering the days we can skip a monday or wednesday (those are the usual days we’ll skip if we need to at least). And it doesn’t even impact our schedule.

But then there are weeks where that doesn’t work out well either. This happened last week. We started the week out needing a day off. So we took Monday off from the books. We still did educational activities, but we skipped the curriculum part of it and hung out.  Then the cold started to kick in more and more each day. We were troopers and Tuesday through Thursday we stuck it out and even had good days with school, but we were wearing out. Friday both boys slept half the day. No fevers, but they were exhausted. Jr never takes naps and he ended up taking an almost three hour nap Friday morning-afternoon. We didn’t make it to the 4th day of school.

So, we had an untouched day on the weekly that week. And sadly, it was actually a day where we were going to do a few extra things and introduce some new things. So planning for this week was a little tricky. It’s valentine’s week and we knew two things were definatly on our to-do list. A day to make valentine’s cards and a day where we only did reading and math and then watched valentine’s cartoons and made v-day goodies. We tend to keep a pretty basic schedule, but now those two days will be a bit more of a day. I don’t think it will be a problem to add one thing extra into the two days for valentine’s activities, having crafts after school work will be pretty fun still, and they really won’t know the difference I’m sure. It will take some extra effort to make sure we get through it so that we don’t actually fall behind, but it’s okay to rearrange things. Especially with a bullet journal, it’s designed for that purpose. To migrate and to make us take a good look at our to do lists and think about them. It’s always okay to change a plan, especially for things that are fun, or if we’re sick. The purpose is to make sure items on our lists don’t fall through the cracks. If I hadn’t used the bujo method, I probably would have forgotten the two extra things I wanted us to start and I might not have remembered to do them.

For those that keep attendance, I put an S on that day to signify that we had a sick day that week.