Here are my angels on their first day.
Dakota on the first day of Preschool. This was our 3rd attempt at a picture.
Brianna on her first day of 6th grade.
Cailin on her first day of her 8th grade gap year. She has a goofy smile because of her uncle standing behind me.
Here they are my 2013-2014 class!
You know I still can’t believe how fast time flies. When we started our homeschool journey Cailin was going into 3rd and Brianna was in 1st and little man was just a hope and dream!
Well I hate to say this but the last two weeks of summer for my homeschool kids have sucked!
The weekend before my oldest was to head back to school, my homeschool kids got a really bad cold. So the first week of what was supposed to be fun and HAHA we don’t have school consist of sneezing, coughing, dirty tissues and Mucinex. My poor babies were hit hard. But they were due. Other than a few sniffles here and there, they have been extremely healthy for at least 2 years.
Once they finally got back on their feet which took about a week, it was time for our back to school shopping. No we aren’t shopping for school supplies! We are shopping to stock up the house. I do this at the beginning and end of summer. It was time for a BJ run! At the beginning of summer I took Hubby and 2 kids with me. BIG MISTAKE!! Hubby threw everything in the cart and boom $1000 before coupons! Never again, I tell ya!
This time I had 3 kids and well……….I wasn’t much better……take a look……….
That is my receipt next to my brand new table which is a 108 inches long. My receipt well over half! OOPS! But that’s what happens when you got to stock up the house after going 3 months of non-heavy duty shopping. Plus my table is now full. Yup that’s right there is a total of 8 with 4 being teenagers. Another post coming about that later.
So that being said our not back to school week wasn’t very fun. Hopefully that’s not an omen for the school year.
I know just last week or so I posted that I would have a Pre-k, a middle schooler and a high schooler. After much stress and anxiety (about 5 months worth) on my part, my daughter decided she wasn’t ready. She said there were things she wanted to go over and grasp before she jumped into high school. And I was very relieve! But then stressed again because we start school in 2 weeks.
Are we saying she failed 8th grade? No! My daughter struggled in some minor areas but the majority she passed with flying colors. We are calling it a gap year. Yes all the formal paperwork says 8th grade but to us it is a catch up year. Which we knew she would have an extra year option.
Here in Florida if you turn 5 before September 1, then you start Kindergarten that year. Teachers here hate it! At least all the ones I have come across. If your birthday is after September 1, you don’t start until the following August. Even though my oldest and middle daughter are 2 years apart, school age they are only one grade apart. My middle daughter would be graduating before she is even 18. This will also happen for my son who is born in July.
My hubby and I always knew we would have a year if she felt she needed it. And I am really proud of her making the decision to take it now to prepare more knowing that high school is when it counts. Even though she feels terrible for all the money spent (that’s my frugal girl) on the curriculum for 9th grade. It’s not like it won’t get used next year. Plus my hubby was over the moon. He has had a hard time accepting it. I mean just 2 weeks ago we were talking about it and he said well she doesn’t start high school for another year. He has been in denial over the last few months. So when she asked if she could take her gap year he was quick to answer yes! Poor guy couldn’t handle his little girl growing up.
All in all my daughter may not be going into high school yet, but she showed her maturity level by making a very good decision.
This is my life and the cause of my anxiety. The question of the last 3 months has been how in the heck am I going to homeschool 3 kids at 3 different levels without someone getting left behind or forgotten.
I have a preschooler who needs my attention to learn the basis of learning for the rest of his life. No pressure there!
I have a middle schooler who is severe special needs and is actually on a 3rd grade level.
I have a high schooler who doesn’t need as much guidance but still needs something to make it fun and engaging. Working out of a textbook day in and day out is not going to fly around here.
We are a hands on learning family. So needless to say this next year is going to be a major success or the death of me. Regardless it should make some great blog post.
10 years ago I would have never thought I would be a homeschooling mom.
But now 6 years into this journey, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Let me paint you a picture of my former life.
I was a normal suburban mom. I got the kids up in the morning, fed them breakfast and off to school we went. Some days I would stay and volunteer all morning. Other days I did grocery shopping or leisurely shopping. I made lunch dates. Then I would go back and pick my kids up and go home to homework, dinner and bath time. And always couldn’t wait until bedtime. OH MY bedtime couldn’t come fast enough. One year I was even a PTA board member. Voted as volunteer of the year in our school! Homeschooling never even crossed my mind. I loved being away from my kids.
So how in the world did I become a homeschooling mom?
We moved out to the country. And people weren’t as nice as they were in our old neighborhood. I wasn’t embraced by the school, teachers or PTA and neither were my kids. We came in the middle of the year and that made us different. Why I am not sure? Tons of people move schools in the middle of a school year. Out here it made us outcast. I had a daughter who was brilliant and they couldn’t see it. And a daughter that would freeze and have a panic attack at the mention of a test and they didn’t care.
Down here in Florida we have an annual test called the FCAT. Like a standardize test, but Florida thought it would be fun to say if you don’t pass this test in 3rd or 12th grade, you don’t pass or get a diploma. So the teachers were under pressure and they put their students under pressure. This wasn’t a good situation for someone with a test anxiety. So I talked to the teachers. The results were deal with it because the State of Florida says this is the way it is. Let me tell you, I tried to walk away from this teacher without an argument. But she followed me out into the hallway and confronted me. After a huge argument which got me labeled as the Bitch mom. I walked away and decided no one was going to tell me to deal with it. This was the day we decided to homeschool.
At first it started with just my oldest two children. But half-way through the year, my youngest joined. Over the years, my kids have chosen home or school. I think we finally got it right with my oldest in a regular public school and my 3 youngest homeschooling. It fits everyone’s personalities and makes everyone happy.
It isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. And there are days when I am like what was I thinking!?! But to see my test anxiety child, who hated reading and took 3 hours to write spelling sentences, pick up a book on her own and fall in love with the characters and stories was amazing. To see her read a 700 page book with joy, unbelievable. And now I am experiencing it with my special needs child. Who always felt safer to stick with the easy reader books, branch out and found, not 1 but 2 series that has her excited for our library trips. There were tears, fights, judgement and criticism. Still is.
But I have seen so much and learned so much through homeschooling and my kids.
I realized I love them more everyday! And being with them to watch them grow is a blessing.
Our yard has finally dried up and is somewhat back to normal. And it happened just in time. We have had some BEAUTIFUL weather lately. The kids and I had to take advantage of it. With all the rain and mud, cabin fever was beginning to set in. Not a pretty site with 4 kids and 3 dogs.
So as soon as we could we took our learning outside.
And then the wind started blowing and what does a kid always want to do on a windy day……
Fly kites!
I was lucky to have found some clearance kites at the end of summer at Walmart. And the kids were itching to get them out and in the sky.
Lil man did fantastic!
One fun thing did come from all that rain and standing water in our yard. TADPOLES!!
I have never seen tadpoles before. Yes I know I am deprived. But ya know I was a city girl!
So when the kids told me they saw a ton of tadpoles, I had to see for myself.
And then we had to catch some.
Luckily,I had a tank leftover from our pet turtle that we released in our pond last summer.
We kept them for a week or so and then released them.
Our second week of school was a lot more productive. We learned the letter B and color green. We mostly did coloring pages which Lil man is happy doing but he especially loves hands on stuff. His 3 favorite activities were the letter B has a Boo-Boo, Stamp the B’s and Big Brown Bear.
Letter B has a Boo-Boo~ We took the letter B and then Dakota covered it in band-aids. He loved digging threw the container and finding the different kinds of band-aids.
Stamp the B’s~ I got the printable from the blog 1plus1plusequals1 and we used a bingo marker from the Dollar store to stamp the B’s.
Big Brown Bear~ I found an adorable bear picture for him to color while reading Brown, Brown Bear What Do You See. And then we glued googly eyes.
I have learned that anything involving paint, glue, a glue stick or stamper is right up my son’s alley.
I wanted to finish this post a month ago but life got in the way. Anyways better late than never, Huh?
My kids have busted their butts these last two months. And they have hit almost every goal I have set for them and I couldn’t be more proud of them. (Beaming Momma moment) Technically they have about 3 weeks left of school and I am trying my hardest to stretch their lessons to last. But I have to say I am having a hard time. So what do you do if you start going a little crazy coming up with ideas. You go crazy and plan a party and a field trip. WHY NOT? The kids have earned it! So that is what we did.
We finished up our project of comparing our Egyptians scrolls and clay tablets. Unfortunately our experiment had opposite results. Our scroll last and our clay tablet just fell apart. Apparently it was the wrong clay and some darn good paper we used. So this was our end result.
Terrible picture, I know.
Next we wrapped up our chicken mummy ( HAHA~get it). It has been 6 weeks and we were ready to wrap it up to gross out show everyone.
We also went on a field trip to our local Science Museum where they had a special exhibit about Mummies around the world.
We really liked this exhibit. It is not for the faint of heart I might add. There were a few moments that I had vision of mummies attacking. But I kept a cool head and the kids never knew.
In the end we manage to “wrap up” our mummies unit and the rest of our lessons early so we took two weeks off instead of just one!
Growing a Large Family 