Happy Homeschool Anniversary! One Year At a Time...

One year later..

Tonight. I am sitting here, like most nights, completely exhausted. I should be celebrating. I've made it ONE YEAR!! Today was officially our one year anniversary of Homeschooling.

So what have I learned in my first year? That everything changes, all the time. And that's ok. Schedules changed, curriculum changed, attitudes have changed, life has changed. But we are still moving forward.

It's seriously been a year. There have been some definite wins. One of the things that was MOST important to me was that my children had a good understanding of the American Revolution. I am completely fascinated by it. But I didn't feel like I was getting through to them at all. One night while listening to a song about South Dakota my four year old saw the picture of Mount Rushmore, and was incredibly excited. He ran over screaming "MOM!! That was the guy!"

"What guy?" I asked

"You know, when the Red Guys were fighting the Blue Guys, and the Blue Guys won and they were led by ... " (with his little arms thrown in the air, head back and the biggest grin on his face he sang "GEORGE WASHINGTON!!!" 

Definite mom win. My four year old just described the revolutionary war (the best way a four year old can) and recalled the name of their "leader"... I am SO down with that!!!

We've had some losses too. Like all of my daughter's friends. :-/ For a girl that was a social butterfly this has been the hardest hit. Co-op groups haven't worked out and due to extremely tight finances we haven't been able to have her participate in much. It breaks my heart every day. But, I also got my daughter back. See, my social butterfly had turned into a depressed, self-conscious, sad little girl who cried every night after school and told me she KNEW she was dumb because she just couldn't learn. Now, my strong 11 year old has confidence again, doesn't struggle nearly as much, in fact has overcome SO much this last year. She has goals and dreams again; and a strong desire to attend college. She fights through lessons and doesn't give up even when she really struggles. She smiles more and I love it. I get to hear her sing throughout our home every day. She is now learning to play the guitar and picking it up really quickly. She's discovered the amazing world of Marine Biology. She is also turning into quite the artist. I am hoping this next year we can find some opportunities for her to grow her artistic talents.

With the ups and downs and various curriculum changes I've decided that I LOVE unschooling the best. I find it's a much more organic way for the kids to learn. Letting their interests take the lead is amazing. My boys are SO curious about the world. They stop and look at everything. They notice EVERYTHING. We started a silly thing every time we walk to the library. On our path we have to cross a small bridge over a little creek (it's about the size of your average irrigation ditch) but one day I stopped and asked the kids to tell me what they saw. I made them really look for some small thing, a tiny fish, or a bird, or a flower that caught their eye. Now the kids race to the bridge to see what there is to see this time. Because of that, my boys love to explore the world around them. They are always looking at bugs or plants or the weather. Their passion for learning and exploring amazes me. And makes me feel so proud that I am instilling that love and passion in them.

A couple months ago we thought we should change things up. So we are currently we are using K12 through a local charter school. It's not bad. I love that my lesson plans are laid out for me. However, I feel trapped and feel like we are constantly running behind in our lessons. Since starting K12, we never make it to our weekly library day anymore and don't have as much time for exploring as we did before. I do LOVE the amount of curriculum that is provided.  But I am always feeling like we can't keep up, and there's no wriggle room for the kids interests.

For my daughter, K12 has not been great. The benefit is that is allows her to take guitar lessons through the charter school, but she is having a hard time with the overwhelming pace of the curriculum. I think part of the issue is I believe she has (undiagnosed) dyslexia. When I pulled her out of school a year ago her reading level was several grades levels below where it should have been. No one from the school had ever contacted me, and to my knowledge nothing had been done to help her. I only know what her reading level was because a small slip of paper was tucked into her binder with her reading level written on it hidden with all of her stuff that was sent home on her last day of school. So with K12, everything for her is on the computer, which makes her life a bit more of a challenge because the amount of reading is a struggle for her.

I am beginning to miss our unschooling days where we focused and learned about what the kids were interested in, and read books all the time. We made it a point to get out of the house about once a week and go for a hike or hit the park at least. Now days, I feel like if we take the break we'll be even further behind. But the joy of homeschooling is you can always change things up. So that may be in our future.

I think the second most important thing I've learned this year is to remember myself. Last month I found myself seriously depressed, frustrated, overwhelmed and give out. I have a suspicion part of that has to do with hormones and changes my body is going through but a big part of the problem was I forgot to do something for me. I give everything I have to my family 24 hours a day. Ok, ok, that's an exaggeration. It's like 18 hours a day, then I collapse into an exhausted sleep for a few hours and get up to do it all over again, with only a sporadic day off here or there. I remember one day last spring my husband literally kicked me out of the house for the day, gave me the keys, the bank cards and told me to just go do whatever I wanted for a few hours. To be honest, it was terrifying and can be likened to torture. After I hit Starbucks, I literally just drove around for an hour with no idea what to do. I still can't remember what I ended up doing. But that should have been a warning sign... "I needed a life outside of my house." So this year  I am making it a goal to do something for me. Take time to take a bubble bath and read a book, or invite a friend (I think I still have one or two) to a movie, or something. But just be "Nici" for a couple hours and not "Mom" all the time.

We will see what else this world has in store for us this next year, whatever it is I'll take it ... one year at a time.

Happy Anniversary kids!!

Miss Thing reading to the boys

Art projects, older ones drawing, littles painting wooden airplanes

Older two learning to draw various animals

Out at the shooting range, he decided he needed a rifle too!

Me and Child #1 at the coast. 

Miss thing rocked an indoor garage sale. Almost nothing left on her table. 

Scouting out possible art projects Bo & Luke discovered giant eye balls. 

I just had Miss Thing and Bo one afternoon, and since there aren't anymore annual "School Picture days"   we did our own school pics... Never caught #1 and Luke to get pics done for them... maybe this spring. 

My little Bo Duke watering Grandma's plants, it's serious business because he promised Grandma he would take care of it for her. 

Me and Luke Duke at the 4th of July celebration. 

Luke gettin' some sun. Gotta love park days. 

Bo and Luke, #1 and Miss Thing (and Mama) sitting on my car watching the lighting storm. Don't worry we weren't close enough to be in any danger but this is one of our favorite pastimes. We hear the Thunder and run.. outside... because we are nuts. But we LOVE a good lighting storm. 

#1 and Miss Thing and me out hiking/geocaching. Geocaching is one of the awesome new discoveries we've made this year. 

Miss Thing, Bo and #1 with Harry Potter wands we made (for our Harry Potter Unit Study, that lasted a whole week and half)

First day of School for the rest of the world. We're sleeping in at Grandma's house. 

Because.. some mornings, mid week, I just can. :)

Bo & Luke Duke and one of our favorite pastimes.. Duck watching 

Miss Thing, Bo, Luke & #1 chillin' ... somewhere.. 

Luke Duke, later the same day, shopping with Mama. 

Getting to lick the beater might be the best thing ever. 

Bo dressing up. A FAVORITE of my wild boys

Bo and Luke receive a postcard in our postcard exchange. 

Bo LOVES Dinosaurs so anytime I can incorporate them into his schoolwork it's a win. 

Miss Thing baking cupcakes for the first time. 

And movie day. The kids had finished a unit on the solar system so they were camped out watching a documentary on the planets. Documentaries are always a hit with Me, #1 and Bo. Miss and Luke... not so much. 

One Challenge At a Time - Giving up and Getting Up

So today... Not my day.

It has honestly been one of those days where I want nothing more than to climb into my bed, pull the blankets up and drown myself in Netflix movies until the end of time. One of those days where absolutely nothing will go right, and the few things that had gone beautifully yesterday were now falling apart. I just wanted to throw my hands in the air and give up.

And I did, for a moment. But then an overwhelming feeling came over me "just deal with it." So I got myself up to deal with one of the issues I didn't want to face. And slowly but surely, I was able to work some of the kinks out. Then a few more things slowly started to come together. 

Now not everything worked out and there are still problems to be dealt with BUT I was left with a feeling of strength. I felt empowered. And I found that there is so much peace in facing challenges and maybe not overcoming them, but just facing them. Things are not always going to turn out the way we want but we grow and become stronger when we simply get up... one challenge at a time.

One cricket at a Time

One cricket at a time – A change of perspective

So for most of my life I've been a city girl. And loved every moment of it. I love my Starbucks and my mall. I loved my faced paced job at an advertising agency. I loved the hustle and bustle.

But about a year and half ago I had an overwhelming feeling it was time to step away from the rat race. I felt pulled to be home with my children. I had homeschooled my oldest son off and on in the past and truly felt with all my heart that was what I was supposed to be doing with the children. So when I was laid off from my job it was a blessing and a challenge. I got my wish to be home but our income was cut in half. Yikes. But we knew it would be better in the long run.

At first I kept the children in school and daycare and just took some time to detox. Then I started an adventure in learning how to cook from scratch. Mostly out of necessity because our income no longer allowed us to buy packaged dinners. With each recipe I felt more pride in what I was doing. Not everything turned out, in fact more often than not the recipe didn't turn out well, but I was learning. Then, again out of necessity, I started making household cleaners. Thank you Pinterest. I was totally surprised how inexpensive it was to make my own cleaners and how much better they worked. One day it hit me, our grandmothers had it right. I used to think it was SO old fashioned to use homemade products. But there was so much pride in making my own cleaners and homemade foods. I felt better about what I was feeding my family and knew, should my wild boys get into my cleaners, they were going to be just fine.

The seed was planted.

I had been dreaming of a beautiful house in the suburbs and my husband always talked about a large piece of property with animals and our own garden. I scoffed at the idea, I’m sorry but no, a city girl like me out in the boonies? No thanks. But there I was making dinners from scratch, making my own cleaners and considering homeschooling all of our children, and constantly feeling like it was time to get back to basics. My husband’s idea was sounding less and less ridiculous.

A year ago I pulled my daughter out of school and began homeschooling my daughter and two boys in January of 2013. I was getting ready to homeschool our oldest again this fall but he got into an amazing program with the local community college so I will just homeschool the youngest three kids.

This last spring I asked for gardening supplies for our kids for Easter and we planted a small pallet garden behind our apartment. We failed epically. We were forever forgetting to water our plants. At first we enjoyed every moment of it, but as lives got busy and the interest waned, we forgot. Though I have to admit, it was a great trial run and I am determined to try again.

This fall I attempted canning for the first time. It was scary. I've always heard how much work it is. Now I am hooked. I want to can everything in sight and though our budget and apartment sized pantry (a small linen closet converted into a pantry) don’t allow us to can a significant amount of goods yet, again this is a total learning experience and a trial run at a more sustainable lifestyle. A life style I would have laughed at two years ago, actually I did.

Homeschooling, canning, homemade cleaners, growing a garden … so what is the next step for us? Well we have decided to prepare to buy a piece of property and build our own home. A home designed with a large kitchen so that I can prepare our food myself. A home with a root cellar to store the foods we grow. A home with a built-in classroom for homeschooling our kids. And a piece of land big enough to raise any animals we choose to in order to provide for our family.

And thus our journey begins. It is going to be a very long road. And we are at the very beginning. We've started looking for properties but will need to address getting loans and building a savings account. I am also starting to work on designing our home, some of it we can do ourselves. My family had a cabinet and countertop business for years, and my husband can do some of the frame work and drywalling, so I know a lot of it can be built with family assistance and hard work on our part.

I am looking forward to getting back to the way my grandparents did things. As I sit out on my back patio and listen to the frogs and crickets I get more and more antsy to get out of the city and on to our future farm, listening to one cricket at a time. 

Homeschool - One Step at a Time

Homeschooling is my passion! I have long felt called to be a homeschool mommy and am blessed to be married to a man who was homeschooled therefore he is incredibly supportive. I truly believe it is by design that more and more I get asked advice about homeschooling. I feel that others are guided to me that may have questions or are pondering homeschooling themselves. It seems like daily the subject will come up in conversation; the cashier at the store will ask about my kids and when I say, oh we homeschool, she responds "ya know, I've been thinking about doing that but..." and the conversation takes off.

Does that mean I am an expert with years and years of experience, umm NO!! In fact my homeschooling style would be considered eclectic at best and I have only been homeschooling full time for a year now. I homeschooled my oldest son off and on in the past, but I was always working at the time so I didn't feel I was dedicated and invested as much as I wanted to be, the seeds were definitely there though.

But I thought today I would tell you a little bit about our homeschool. We have 5 children. Unfortunately, we do not have contact with my oldest step-son, something I would LOVE to change over the next year. But the children who live with us are Brainiac, 16, Drama Queen, 11, then our wild boys we call Bo and Luke Duke, 5 and 4.

Brainiac has just enrolled in a program with the local community college where he will be finishing high school and simultaneously earning his Associates Degree in Computer Programming. Unlike some high schools where kids go to high school and earn college credits, he will be attending college full time and earning his high school credits. When this program first presented itself I was very hesitant. I felt like I was rushing him, I wasn't ready to have a 16 year old aged child, LET ALONE A COLLEGE STUDENT. But he is incredibly smart, was in gifted programs and is super mature for his age. As much as I may not be ready for this adventure, he is.

Drama Queen is our dreamer, she is SO much like her mother in that respect. She's sweet and generous and has a fondness for animals that leads me to believe that is a career path she's headed for in one form or another. She also has a BIT of an attitude sometimes. Terrible twos were unmentionable and as she approaches her teens I see the same traits coming back to. She is creative and artistic, loves music and art. But, school... not so much (sigh).

Then there is Bo and Luke Duke. What one doesn't think up, the other does. Luke is a dare devil: the higher, the faster the better. Bo, is the most genuinely happy child in the world, he just wants to play and laugh (although also really has an ear for music) and if it looks like fun he's right in the middle of it.

So in order to me to attempt to educate the three youngest children I've found that eclectic unschooling works THE BEST for us. But to be honest, I am NOT the best at remembering that what works for me doesn't always work for everyone, I'm a work in progress. But I digress. At the beginning of the year I do my planning and decide what I want my children to learn, and what my goal is for the year. This year I've felt a major prompting to study American history, specifically the Revolution. And not the dates and names, I don't believe that teaches anything. But learn about the men, and women. Who they were, their backgrounds so we can understand WHY they did what they did and when.

For basics; reading, writing and arithmetic, I also look at benchmarks. Where should the kids be, so I know where to aim. Bo, will be "starting kindergarten" this year and will be learning to read and do basic addition and subtraction. Luke, who can never hold still, will just be along for the ride. If he's interested I will work with him, but forcing him to sit down and study at age 4 I think is ridiculous.

BUT here's the interesting part, and here's why I believe unschooling really works. Bo really WANTS to learn, he will ask me to get out his workbooks and ask "can I please do school work?" Luke, is always watching and learning by osmosis. Here is a perfect example. As I mentioned, Bo is learning basic addition and subtraction. Well, Bo and Luke are responsible for setting the table for dinner. The other night I intentionally gave Luke the wrong number of glasses. Without missing a beat, Luke said to me "Mom, you gave me too many. There are 6 cups, I only need 5 so you need to put 1 back." Mommy win!

I do leave learning tools everywhere around the house. I put some sight word magnets on the freezer awhile ago and never made a huge deal out of them. Today Luke was incredibly fascinated with them and he and I spent a while working with them.

The library is my best friend and we have library day once a week. The kids check out at least one book, ANY BOOK, any topic. Drama Queen typically prefers to just pick up a teen magazine so I am constantly urging her to also choose other reading material, but hey she's reading. :) I'll pick my battles carefully. Bo chooses a wide variety of topics, Luke will look for ANYTHING with a dinosaur or a shark. Although this week he surprised me with a book about spiders. As much as it grossed me out, he was fascinated and that is all that matters.

My homeschooling style may seemed disorganized, chaotic and unplanned at times but I promise there really is an underlying goal that I am always working towards...

one step at a time.

One Bite at a Time

Welcome to my blog. I am so glad you've found me! As I sit down to write this I realize it is crazy I am just beginning to blog. My love for writing began when I was in about 3^rd or 4^th grade. In 4^th grade I won a writing competition and KNEW I wanted to be a writer. Throughout high school I kept a book of poetry and short stories I’d written, which I still have. I've actually started two books. Yet here I am in my 30’s just now starting my first blog. To continue the irony, I began this blog without telling my husband. We recently had a heart to heart about me feeling lost, he said I want to see you writing. Anything. Start a blog, write a book, anything. Does the man know me or what? So here we go!

I thought it would be appropriate for this initial post to tell you a little about me and my life. First and most important piece of information about me is I have ADHD through osmosis. Yes, you read that correct. Nearly every male born into my family has ADHD. My father, grandfather, nephew, even my youngest little boy is showing mild signs. But let’s talk about the two MOST important people … my two very competitive brothers. No sister’s, no mild mannered brothers that just like to hang out. No, I was blessed with two younger brothers whose minds literally run a million miles an hour, are extremely athletic and always keeping me on my toes. I grew up in a world immersed with people who go Mach 7 with their hair on fire and if you want to play, you better keep up. I do not have ADHD, but I learned very early how to keep pace with them.  In our home do not quit when you are tired, you quit when you are done, even if you are up till 3 a.m. finishing that report, you push through. There is no quit in my brothers (or my dad) so quitting anything for me feels like the world’s biggest sin.

Therefore I’m the girl who goes all in with everything I do. I always take on more and more because I believe I can do it all. But this leaves me standing in the grocery store, with two mis-matched shoes, wondering if I fed the fish and realizing I only shaved one arm pit because I got distracted by the four other things I needed to get accomplished before I left the house. Running late for a meeting, knowing I need to go faster, try harder, leaner, meaner, gotta-eat-cleaner, fasterstrongerTOUGHER AND DON’T FORGET TO

... 

... 

Breathe….

As I was saying, when I take on a project I jump in head first. Recently I decided to clean out our storage unit. In other words … reorganize. I know the word makes my dad shutter with fear to this day. REORGANIZING.. That was for you Dad… Because when it came time to clean my room as I kid, I didn't want to just clean it, I wanted to REORGANIZE it! J Obviously it wasn't organized properly to begin with because it got messy so I needed to rearrange everything. My process for doing this was to take everything I own, put it one giant pile in the center of my room so I could “reorganize” with the intention this would only take a few hours. Usually two weeks later I would finally finish my task. Sorry dad. My husband will tell you I am still the same way. So when I decided, on a whim, it was time to clean out our storage unit, I should have thought back to my childhood days of reorganizing. 8 SUV trips and one giant truck load later it was cleaned out. The dilemma? The stuff was then sitting in my living room in giant piles. We looked like we lived in an episode of Hoarders. A week later I was finally pulling my house back together.

 In the midst of the chaos I began to feel so overwhelmed, wondering how I got in this situation. Then it hit me. I started wondering why did I have to take this entire project on… at once? There was no deadline, no urgency to get everything done immediately. Most normal people would have picked up a box here and there, slowly gone through things and avoided the complete chaos my life was for a week. But in my world of faster, stronger, and never quitting until a project it done, I automatically assume everything needs to be done NOW, at once.

It reminded me of an old saying I never understood “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” I always thought was a ridiculous statement. First, who eats elephants? Gross. And second, no one’s mouth is that big to eat it at once. We all eat one bite at a time. But a few days ago as I was reflecting on my habit of tackling huge projects like a linebacker tackling a rookie it hit me. I just need to take things …

One bite at a time.

Welcome to my blog and my world.