School work is all planned... The books are all order... School work starts in 5 weeks

Yeah I know, just 5 weeks. I'm wondering where the summer went, which is really saying something since our summer started in May. Oh and we do start our school work in August in case anyone is wondering.

I am doing things a bit different this year. I have written up the week to week plans a bit different. If you have been following this blog for a while, you may remember this...

And there was nothing wrong with this plan, but I just wanted to go more in depth, and also make time for homework (yes I know, it's all homework, because it's all from home), and study time. So now it's this...

with this schedule...

You may have noticed that every ones week plan is tailored to what they are able to complete, and that each subject (math, history, ....) is done on certain days of the week. We do it like that because it flows better that way (for us it does). My kids do a lot better when we start the week off with the subjects that we are going to need to study the most in, and take the most notes in. 

You may have also noticed that on the schedule I have over time work and a Saturday penalty. That's because there are two boys who live in this house that sometimes have a hard time keeping their mind on their work. I also have a boy who always gets done early no matter how much work I throw at him.

For anyone who is curious we do 36 weeks of school (if I tell myself 36 weeks, then it makes it really easy to schedule breaks for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter), We usually start the 3rd week in August and finish the 3rd week in May (or that's the plan, it's not unusual for us to finish earlier).

I'm happy to announce that all of the homeschool books for this year are either here already or on their way, and should be arriving tomorrow.

The school books can get a little expensive, but I'm so happy that my 3 big money savers exist and really came through for me this year, Ebay, Amazon, and the legendary Curriculum Sale (where local HS moms sell the books they don't need anymore). 

After making up the list of books we needed this year (not counting the ones we already owned) it was going to be about $500 brand new from ABEKA (which is our choice curriculum). Well we only ended up spending half of that, when it was all said and done. :) This is something I really look forward to every year, the making of the list, hunting for the books at discount, and having them arrive. I'm not sure if other HS moms feel that way as well, but if I were to guess I would say that yeah they do.

Oh and I also have the reading / book report list for anyone who wanted to see...

Reading List 2015-2016 Homeschool Year

Darien

Walt Disney - Saving America’s Lost Generation

Animal Farm

The Princess Bride

The Time Machine

Bloody Jack

Earthrise: My Adventures as an Apollo 14 Astronaut

The Paper Magician

The Glass Magician

Zachary

Lily Renee, Escape Artist: From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer

Leonardo da Vinci: The Amazing Genius Inventor and Artist

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Six Napoleons

Abraham Lincoln For Kids

The Jungle Book

Mary Poppins

Half Magic

The 13th Warning

Nathaniel

Star Wars The Clone Wars: Operation Huttlet

A True Book: Volcanoes

Detective Dinosaur

Grasshopper on the Road

Star Wars The Clone Wars: Yoda in Action

Penguins

Scooby-Doo: The Haunted Hallowen Party

Super Twins Meet the Bad Dogs From Space

Darien is going to be an 8th grader this year, Zach is 6th, and Nathaniel is 3rd.

Olivia is going to be in Kindergarten, so yeah no reading / book report list for her, even though I'm sure we will be doing a lot of reading.

With my list I tried to do (well with the older two anyways) some non-fictions, and some classics. I also included things that I knew they would enjoy, and my husband helped with the list.

The book reports are just a part of all of the writing they are going to be doing this year. They will have one writing assignment every week, and it will either be a game review, where they pick a board game or video game and write a review on it (I will be posting all reviews on this new blog I made for them), an Essay like a personal narrative, fan fiction, or research report, and of course the books reports are thrown in there on certain weeks. This is my attempt to improve their handwriting, spelling and grammar. 

Lets hope it works :)

Oh and filing my Intent To Homeschool here in Utah was super easy. I had already found the paper work I needed to fill out for filing online (it was one page), and I got the address for the school district building. Before I left I pulled a folder with the kids' birth certificates, shot records, and prof of homeschooling for the previous years, and I didn't need to bring any of it. The school district building was the nicest one I have ever seen. Most of the time, they are in an old school building that are pasted their expiration date, and they smell funny. No not this one. It looked like an historic town building from the outside, and a fancy office building from the inside. Yeah WOW! Maybe the Mormon church is funding the school district or something. :)

So yes 5 weeks... Well here's to trying to enjoy the rest of the summer. Thanks for reading everyone.

Books all ordered!

Yay, all of my home schooling books are ordered, and the last 12 should be here any day. Okay so I told you before that I had about 51 books to get for this school year. Yes that is a big number! Its big because I need to get the teacher's editions along with the test and answer books, and of course student work books. The number was also high because the reading curriculums were comprised of 5 books (for each kid), that have short stories in them, and questions following each story. So yes 51 books. I'm going with the Abeka curriculum (not sure if I mentioned that before), and if I ordered all of those off of their website it would have cost $673.50 (yeah WOW), but I didn't ordered all of them from there, in fact only 12 came directly from their website. The other I obtained in different ways. I got 25 from ebay (most of the time you can find them for half the price on there). I got 14 from curriculum fairs and other people (each book only costing a few dollars). I got 12 from the actual Abeka site, (yes I already said that a few lines up) these last 12 I couldn't find any other way. All in all I only spent $314.74. Yup less than half (I'm very proud of myself).

We are going to be starting soon, on the 9th of august in fact (I moved it up a week, because of my trip). I have them starting in august to give us plenty of time to finish everything. Since this is our first year, and I'm not sure how everything is going to go, I thought it best that way. Last week I went through the books and figured out the pace that we need to follow, how many lessons we need to do each week... how many test we need to take each month... (ect...). Lots of figuring, but I'm really confident that we will be able to keep our pace, and work on any problem areas.

Okay so on family news, Olivia is trying to crawl and can almost do it. She has become very talkative and makes a lot of noise (but in a good way)(most of the time). Zachary is now master of the swings and monkey bars. Before he didn't like ether. He couldn't quite get the rhythm for the swings, and he was always scared of falling while hanging on the monkey bars.

A few weeks ago I told him to hang onto the bar, then let yourself drop, and see if it hurts (yup scary). He ended up trying it, and realized it didn't hurt at all. Wow mom knows what she's talking about. Well I don't have anything else to report, so thanks for reading.

Playing catchup!

Hi everyone, well it's been some time (not much mind you) (but some), since I updated you on just the things going on in the life of Randi.

Well lately I have been getting ready to start home schooling next year, and I'm excited. I'm sure the excitement will wear off once the hard work kicks in, and the kids start to misbehave, but for the moment I'm looking forward to it. Last week I went out to get school supplies, and that was fun. I found everything we needed (yay) and a few things I never knew we needed (of course) (*wink*). I now finally have all my home school things organized. I don't, how ever, have all of the books yet, I have a little over a 3rd of them (19 of 51) (I know it's a lot). I have to get teacher's keys, test books, and work books along with the regular ones, so that racks up the number a bit. Tomorrow, how ever, I am going to a Home School Curriculum Fair and Workshops, and I hope I can find some of the books I need there. If not then it's back to ebay! I have been getting them used on ebay, and it's about half the price (most of the time).

We started going to a new church yesterday. We have been looking, and trying out for quite sometime now, and I'm so glad to say that our search is finally over. We thought we would try out the church that runs our home school umbrella, Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Pasadena, MD. It's a very small church! Jeremy counted 29, and that was including us, but we did like it, and we both want to go back. The last church we went to was Faith Baptist Church in Glen Burnie. That church was huge, but no one wanted to talk to us, and Nathaniel's Sunday school teacher was very rude to us. We went twice, and that was enough to know that we didn't want to be a member.

Jeremy is taking a college class online (pre-calculus), he has been doing this after work on week days. I'm glad he's taking it and catching up on college, but this does mean less Jeremy and Randi time. We are use to that though, and it has taught us to make the best of the time we do have. Lately we have been spending that time watching Star Trek Voyager. We just got the whole series on DVD, and we are almost done season 3. We are excited to move on to season 4, because that's when they get rid of the character Kes (Jennifer Lien), and get the character Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). Seven of Nine is much more exciting than Kes, and much hotter (yup I think she's hot).

Olivia is 4 months now, and she is going for her appointment in 2 days. She is getting so big, and she is growing more and more beautiful. She has been laughing up a storm! Her favorite thing to laugh at currently is me singing the Subway Five Dollar Foot Long song. No matter how hard she is crying, that song always brings out a giggle or two.

It has now been a year since we came back to Maryland, and I can't decide weather it went by fast or slow. I guess that means it's in-between. I still feel like I haven't reconnected with some of my family and old friends. It is partly my fault for being busy, but I also feel like some of them still haven't forgiven me for moving away in the first place, and they have acted bitter and mean to me, and I have been avoiding them. Jeremy and I are deciding weather or not to re-enlist, and this is what made me think of how long we had been here. I miss being away, but I also like being home again. Next May would be the best time to re-enlist, so we have a year to Pray and think about it. I'm sure God will lead us to the right place, and take care of us. He has done a great job of that in the past, so I'm not worried.

Well I think I have told all that I can think of. Thanks for reading!

In-home Library!

I wanted a new book self that was specifically for home school books, and this got me looking online at the prices. Boy are things expensive now! Some places wanted close to 100 dollars for just a small book self, and I wanted a big one. So I did the smart thing, and when to Goodwill. That's right I shop there, and there is nothing wrong with that! So anyways Goodwill didn't have any big ones, but it did have two small white ones (as seen in the picture), and I really liked them. I wanted to put them in the dining area off of the kitchen because I plan on teaching in there. This gave me and Jeremy the idea to just move all of the books there. Yup in-home library. I really like it that way, I like having all of the books in one spot, and we also ordered a reading chair to put by the fireplace. Yup soon to be my new favorite room I'm sure. We've also hung up the white board in there, to aid in teaching. Yes very exciting! Okay I know I sound way to excited, and most likely you really don't care that much, but I like telling you anyways, so just deal with it.

I now have a good amount of home school books. My mom saved some of our old school books, and I have gotten some great deals on ebay, but I still have more to buy. I'm still on the waiting list for that one home school umbrella, so I still need prayer on that. I know this is what God wants us to do, so I know he will provide a way for us to do it, and help us along the way, so I'm not to worried. Thank you for reading.