First week of homeschool update

          Well..... The first week was a success we did everything I planned and I felt it was manageable.  Carly did pretty well, we did have some hiccups in the focus department but I have hope for next week.  I have my vetiver, and tranquil essential oils coming in Monday. We will see if that improves things, crossing my fingers. Our schedule went very smoothly.  I made sure to have everything planned out so if I felt lost or confused I had something to look at to help me out. I want Carly to be able to know what's coming next too.
My schedule included things like each meal of the day, subjects and what to cover in those subjects, and chore lists for me and for Carly. I had everything detailed to the minute. We may have been off by 10-15 minutes sometimes but it really helped us stay on task and not spend to much or too little time on one thing. I will go into detail on how I schedule my homeschool days next week. Do you have any essential oil ideas for my almost 5 year old with possible ADHD or other ways to help emprove her focus or calm her down? Please let me know. Any information would really help. Thank you for reading, and have a blessed day.

Kindergarten Homeschooling Curriculum Choices

In light of officially starting kindergarten homeschool with my 4 soon to be 5 year old I thought I would share with you my subject and curriculum choices for the new school year. I would like to start by saying that I have looked in to many different types of curriculum trying to stick with a faith base especially in science. I would like to add that we are on a budget so this was a factor I had to consider. Many of the homeschooling moms I talk with from my church have chosen My Fathers World. I of course seriously considered using this it would be easy everything is planned out each subject decided and what to teach when and in what order and it is faith based. For Christian homeschooling mom not to mention a new Christian homeschool mom this seemed like a really great option and it's affordable. I did like it and would have chosen it if it wasn't for the fact that I really like more control and I have more of an eclectic homeschooling style. So I kept looking and this is what we decided to use.

Reading-

HOP- Hooked on Phonics 

How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons 

Writing- 

Basic dry erase upper and lower case writing workbook from Walmart

Kindergarten handwriting paper 

Science-

"Exploring Creation with Astronomy" from Apologia 

Social studies-

Home learning year by year- as a resource for units to cover 

Math- 

Home learning year by year- as a resource for grade appropriate mathematics topics 

Arts- 

Activites from science or social studies, and seasonal or holiday related crafts 

Music- online free piano lessons through https://www.hoffmanacademy.com

PE- 

YMCA membership 

Friday play dates at the Y

Swim lessons

Tumbling Class 

For kindergarten I have much confidence these options will teach my daughter everything and more that she needs to learn. When we start 1st grade and beyond I will add to this a more structured math and social studies curriculum. I hope this helps you when looking into curriculum options remember every family is different what works for us may not work for your family.

Sales in January

Each month brings different sales depending in the holiday or what a large group of society has going on. When you are on a budget and shop for sales to stock up these are good items as a rule of thumb to look for. For the month of January you want to look for the following items:

After Christmas, Christmas sale

-Everyone is trying to get ride of their stock from the holiday you can get Christmas items for 50, 70, 75, and sometimes 90, 95 percent off. It's a great time to supply next years decor and activitys for the kiddos. I wouldn't recommend ginger bread house kits to save, but I think candy canes may be a safe option. Watch expiration dates, you don't want to open up Christmas box at the end of the year and see a bunch of holiday themed food or candy items that have gone bad.

New Years resolutions are a big topic right now look for:

-Oatmeal

-weightloss supplements

-work out equipment

-gym memberships 

Spring cleaning

-storage items

End of winter

-Warm season clothes outer wear

-cold and flu meds 

Stock up!!! I'll post February's list toward the end of January so you can plan for the upcoming sales. Do you know anything I missed if so please comment and let me know. As always god bless you all and thanks for reading.

If you liked this post you may also like Couponing 101- Lesson 1

 

A New Year

          Welcome to 2015!!!!! I'm only 7 days late.... For me a new year usually means just another day filled with the same ol' same ol'. While this maybe true this year it is also coming with a host of very big new additions in my life; clean eating, using essential oils, making DIY cleaning and hygiene products, homeschooling kindergarten, dealing with a possibly ADHD child while being undiagnosed ADHD myself, potty training my 2 year old, Having a third child in about 5 weeks, and cloth diapering and breast feeding for the first time.

          Towards the middle of November my family and I decided to switch to a clean eating diet due to several reasons one being, I was gaining weight way faster than I thought I should, two my husband is sympathetic to that weight gain (He is so sweet), three all of those processed foods I was feeding my girls was causing my daughters symptoms to worsen everything else fell in line with the clean eating. I am a bit of an extremist if you haven't notice.
           When my husband and I decided to home school I told him I wanted to do it year round. I feel the long summer time break makes for a lot of unnecessary re-teaching. So the question was when would I officially start my oldest in full fledged kindergarten. I decided that the first Monday of the year when the child turns 5 would be a good time to start kindergarten. This will allowed for a Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years break that will last a little over a month. Giving us year round school taking off 2 weeks every two months. Anyway... my daughter turns 5 in February which means school started on the 5th.
          I am starting to feel the pressure of all the things I have added to my life. I did not intentionally overload my self, things just kind of fell this way. This is my season in life. In the next weeks and months I will share with you how I am coping with the madness and the steps I am taking to make it easier. I will also review and share clean eating recipes and DIY products. Do you have a similar story to tell? What season are you in? I would love to hear from you! I hope this new year will bring you good health, a growing faith, and a sense of joy from serving god though serving your family.