First Week of School

So we started school this week. I love love love our curriculum and I love playing teacher. I am so happy to have all my kids back home after sending the oldest ones to public school last year, this year will be one of filling in gaps and smoothing things out especially for the oldest and I am excited for her. I'm glad to have my boys back together so we can work on Greek. And it has actually worked this year. It is nice that the twins are finally old enough to entertain themselves and my wild 1 yr old. I got everyone's cubbies and books together early in the week, I printed off their lists so they know exactly what is expected of them. It feels good to be back in control. I do need to get our chores organized better, but I can see how it is going to be a good year. The biggest downside I see to this year is that we don't have many friends. I didn't want to do the activities our homeschool group chose this year, so we will miss those friends. We have started a homeschool sports day which will start next week, so hopefully there will be friends for the boys there. We just haven't made any good friends in our current church ward, there are some nice people and acquaintances, but no good friends for any of us, my husband, me, or any of the kids even though the 3 older ones went to public school last year, all their friends lived outside our ward boundaries. This makes homeschooling especially hard I've found through sad experience, because we still go to church without any friends and it becomes our main social interaction because we have to spend so much time at home studying, cleaning and cooking. It makes it that much more important to have good positive interactions outside of church. Because if church were to be our only social outlet, life can get depressing quick. That is probably the single most important thing sending our kids to school last year did, was to give them an opportunity to be judged and to compare themselves to others their own ages outside of church. And it was very positive. I am really grateful for that. The school administrators were super helpful and nice, the teachers were great and really cared about my kids. It was really really nice. I am a little worried about homeschooling with our ward the way it is now, just not having any friends and having to deal with very uncaring unfeeling people who really don't care about my kids or me or our family. It is hard. But we are working on moving. We almost signed a lease to rent a house in New Hampshire, but our better judgement took over, we have to wait for my husband's business to make money first. Patience! It took us a year to move an hour away, it will take some time to move further, but my husband already has a couple job options out of state if it doesn't work out, we just have to wait and see! So that was a big tangent, but that's where we're at. The girls are each taking a couple classes at the junior high, so I think they'll have the social interaction they need, the boys are the ones I worry about most right now, but they'll do flag football and our weekly sports day, so hopefully that will be enough til we move! I can't wait to move. I know there is no perfect place, but I'm ready for a new set of problems. I'm tired of Utah problems, give me New Hampshire problems or Texas problems or New Zealand problems or I would love to have some France problems. Not Germany though, forcibly removing the children of a homeschooling family recently, at least I can homeschool in Utah, everybody just looks down on it, but that's better than having the police take my children away. That is really sad. Counting Blessings! http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/police-storm-homeschool-class-take-children-by-force/

Ready or not School Begins!

I am excited and nervous about this year! The girls 7 th and 9th graders are pretty much independent from me this year. They are doing BYU independent study for math and their dad is teaching Latin and Logic. They will do science and history and religion with everyone and I will watch history lectures with them, make sure they are doing their reading and have them do a little writing, and drive them to volleyball and school, so I guess I'm still doing a lot, but it seems manageable. The boys' cubbies are all cleaned out. I wanted to have some new chore charts posted and have all their worksheets printed by tomorrow, I'm a little behind, but I'm pretty excited about it all so I'm sure I'll get some done tonight and the rest done in the morning. We are going to focus on our meal time chores this week, getting the kitchen completely clean after each meal, if we can do that combined with the kids keeping up on their zones, we'll be in much better shape as far as being organized goes. We have a lot of stuff to go through and throw out, we'll get there, this week meal time chores is our focus. Organization and cleanliness is a must if we are going to get anything done! Ready or not, the time has come!! We begin tomorrow!

School starts next week!

We have had a great summer, lots of swimming TV and video games, my kids' dream come true. We have done some school work, but not a lot! My middle school girls will be taking a couple classes at the public school and doing the rest at home. We will take next week to get organized get notebooks ready to be filled and find all our books and lay out all the curriculum for the year. I am really excited, I don't have a newborn, the twins are potty trained, I think we may be able to accomplish a lot this year! Here is a piece from my 14 yr. old, she makes me proud. She is amazing I hope she continues to develop her talent and skill. I knew she makes beautiful music, I get to hear her play all the time, it has taken a while for her to figure out how to share it, we all had to go downstairs so she could record it, she also loves making videos, I didn't know she made the video too. I am proud and relieved, she's not raised yet of course, but wow, she is a great person and a wonderful daughter with a talent to share, and on a good path. Well, here you go: http://youtu.be/DvjVFn4oRj8