I’ve had a few technical difficulties in uploading pictures and videos. Things are figured out now, so I hope to post more in the next few days.
First, we’ve had a good bit of snow this winter. Last winter we only got about 18 inches of snow the entire snow season. This year, to date, we’ve gotten 51.5 inches. Yep. Fifty-one and half inches of snow so far and we haven’t gotten to the end yet. We are close. As of the end of March, all our snow in the low lands has melted. We’ll still get a few mornings of small dustings. We are due for a few inches next week.
This particular sledding day, the temps were in the 40’s and it felt like summer! The girls weren’t even wearing their snow suits.
Clara and Ruby each got new swings for Christmas. Almost every evening before the sun goes down, they BEG Matt to push them on their swings. Even in the cold temps and snow.
It’s an experience.
At the beginning and even the middle of the season, the girls would get excited when they would see the snow. Not just because it was snow, but it meant that would earn some money….the big change.
Each time they pushed snow off the porch, they would earn 75 cents. We all figured out that its super east to push an inch of snow than 5 or 6 inches of snow. We’ve done it so much that we have an order and a routine that everyone follows.
In February, the big money was no longer appealing and snow on the porch in the mornings produced groans from all.
(I don’t have too many pictures of pushing snow. These are taken from the inside, obviously. The camera will fog up when taking it from a 70 degree house to the negatives outside.)
(She thought she was going to have to wear these green paper shoes the rest of the day.)
For the sixth birthday, we were in Georgia. Ruby had been planning for a while what she would like to do for her sixth birthday. We finally settled on first time manicures/pedicures, seeing a movie in a REAL theater and going to Chuck-E-Cheese’s for the first time. She had a FABLOUS TIME and got to spend some great quality time with friends, cousins and family.
We made our annual trek up the mountain to get our Christmas tree a few weeks ago.
The whole trip takes about four hours total.
(look closely on the horizon. Heart Mountain near Cody about 100 miles away)
Meals, snacks, and snow clothes are packed for the trek up.
Once up, snow clothes are put on while inside the truck and then the hunt begins. We didn’t make it as far as we did last year, but we did make it into the national forest. Our eight dollar permit allows us to select trees in the National Forest.
The snow was pretty deep in areas.
This kid needed lots of encouragement to get through the snow.
Mostly the adults walked around and hunted while the girls played in the snow.
Clara had a better time as she figured out how to maneuver in the deep snow or find tracks to follow.
We finish the day off with Christmas tree cookies, hot chocolate and thoughts of snow on the mountians.
I thought I would give a little insight to what we do as “weird” home schoolers. I’ve included tons of blue links for you to explore certain ideas, opinions, books, workbooks, videos, etc. (I am NOT affiliated with any company and DO NOT receive payments/benefits/store credits from products that are linked.)
Ruby: She’s working in a first grade curriculum that we are on schedule to finish in late February. Because of her age, she would have just started kindergarten in traditional school this fall. We’ve had a little bit of a head start and it’s worked out nicely.
Calendar Book. The front cover is laminated so we can erase and reuse for the next day. The calendar notebook is filled with the monthly pages, 100 chart and number of the day sheets. We use the 100 chart to skip count by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s, counting on, correlation to money, place value, number sense, etc. and other calendar activities.
Reading. For reading instruction, we have a workbook that we work in every day. The lesson is either focused on a new phonics skill or getting ready for a new story. The bible reader is read out of every day during school. At this level, it is also the history or character building lesson for the day. We get two new stories each week and will soon progress to three to four stories a week. After reading a new story, the student has to summarize the story with two to three sentences and draw a picture. We also add in phonics readers or simple leveled guided reading books each day. Ruby also has personal reading goals to achieve each month. We get books from the local (45 minutes away) library each week or two weeks. She is on a Dr. Seuss kick right now. We also use a curriculum guide to get more ideas and sight word lists.
We are using the Big Book of History and Adams Chart of History during our bible/history time for timeline skills. It’s a great resource to have and use. You can fold each book out to 15 or 25 feet and see where each “story” or event is taking place over time. We have had a good time as a family looking and learning about the timeline of the world.
For writing, I get all my resources, units and supplies from different sellers/teachers on Teachers Pay Teachers. These personal offices/word walls have helped tremendously with Ruby’s independent writing. We don’t have the space to put up a traditional word wall or charts that you would see at a traditional school. These personal word walls are just right for us. We strive to have writing instruction with writer’s workshop or guided writing instruction five days a week.
Math is a hodge-podge of “guided math”, work out of The Complete Book of Math, Singapore math and activities from our curriculum guide. We use many, many manipulatives and learn different strategies for addition and subtraction. Math is a little harder for Ruby. We usually do math six days a week. It doesn’t come as natural as reading, writing, art/drawing and music. She is definitely a “right-brain” gal. J
Science is accomplished out of these three books. There are experiments, information and other things to explore. We add in videos each week during lunch that pertain to the week’s topic that I get from a homeschool teaching forum I’m a member of that matches up to the curriculum that we use. On Fridays, we do an exploration or experiments (that I never get pictures of, because it’s usually messy, we are having fun and learning).
We record our findings or things we learned about science in our notebook. Also on Fridays, we play a reading game, math games, do a little more math skill work on the computer, do some skill pages out of a first grade fun book and also do a small Spanish lesson from The Complete Book of Spanish. Fridays are also our day of exploration, nature walks (where we identify trees, plants, animals, birds, sounds, etc.) library visits, playground, visit friends, etc.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we also have an art lesson and music lesson. We are currently using Enjoying Art Together from our curriculum, Art for Kids Hub on YouTube and Drawing with Children to create our lessons in art. After each art lesson, the girls usually paint/draw/sketch something in relation to what we learned or discussed.
For music we studied Peter and the Wolf and the different instruments that are played. Currently we are studying The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra and the instruments/sections within. We are all enjoying listening for the differences in violins, cellos, clarinets, bassoons, flutes, etc.
Clara….
All of Clara’s instruction is a huge hodge-podge of different things I’ve collected over the years.
I make spiral bound name work (tracing, independent writing, “journaling”) books for her.
We also do some activities with flashcards.
She is very eager to learn, but is very FAST. She and I work together while Ruby is doing independent work in math or writing. The rest of the time that Ruby is working or having one on one time with me, Clara has free play or explores different things I’ve set out for her.
Clara is currently 3.5 years old.
She is currently working on:
Writing her first and last name starting with a capital letter then followed by lower case.
Letter names/letter sounds
Identifying numbers 0-10
Rote counting to 15 (after ten and she loses focus at times)
One-to-one correspondence counting to number 10. (sometimes counts too fast and counts objects multiple times)
Color word sight words and simple sight words a, the, I, see.
Her day is mainly focused on learning through play and exploration.
On Mondays, I sit out letter activities for her to explore. Tuesday activities are numbers. Wednesday activities center on an educational video. Thursdays are geared for fine motor (lacing cards, white boards, drawing, etc.). Fridays are free play activities or she gets to pick from previous activities. She also participates in science experiments, nature walks and watches/listens to the science videos during the week, music and art lessons in some forms.
Each Wednesday, she gets to watch a 30 minute education video on the laptop after she has worked with me and while I work with Ruby. We LOVE Leap Frog educational videos. They are great learning tools.
She is also free to play with the toys and books we have set out for the day. Sometimes it can be a bit messy.
Both girls earn free time in the evenings on the family Kindle. We have many educational apps that the girls enjoy.
As the girls are getting bigger and gaining more knowledge, school work takes more time than it did in July. Ruby is working a solid two or two and half hours (with breaks) while Clara is learning, exploring and doing activities during that time. Our day consists of: breakfast, getting ready for school or the day, school work, free time/outside, lunch, free time/outside, a two hour rest and reading time, free time/outside, dinner, one on one time with Matt in the evenings, bedtime routine, and bed for the night.
All the while, I’m working on breakfast, cleaning up breakfast, schooling, preparing lunch, cleaning up lunch, laundry, more laundry, sweeping/vacuuming, working on lessons for the next day, prepping and cooking dinner, cleaning up from dinner and free time with family in the evening.
All the while…..
Just kidding.
I try to have a laundry system of three loads (whites, girl’s clothes, darks/towels) on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I do one load of either sheets or specialty items. We usually clean up toys, school work and other items every night. We change out toys either every three days in the summer or every day in the winter months.
That is by far the first question that is usually asked when someone finds out that we home school. We are labeled weird, sheltered, overly conservative, and many other labels. We are probably all of those things. But don’t worry. We do get out and see people.
We just have to work a little harder to see other kids, people or groups. The girls are active in church groups on Sundays, see other neighbor kids during the week (who happen to go to traditional school and some that are home schooled), gymnastics, t-ball, swim lessons, and library groups.
This guy has a pretty hilarious take on the whole thing.
This one….
And these too….
While these articles and opinions are more serious and give food for thought.
Other questions or statements we get:
Good for you! I could NEVER do that! How do you do it?
I’m not patient enough to teach my own kids. You must have a lot of patience.
I wish my husband was rich so I could stay at home and teach the kids. I would love it.
Homeschooling is too expensive.
I totally understand where the statements and questions are coming from. BBBUUUTT…
I try my hardest to “do it”. I treat it like my job. I work hard to be organized with schoolwork, housework, kids, etc.
Ummm……I’m not very patient either. I have to really, really, really work on it.
HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA! OR LOL, LOL, LOL. We’ve always lived on one income, even when we both were working outside the home.
We try to be really good stewards of the one income we do receive. We have one operable truck and a motorcycle. We have a budget that we follow. Everything that we have and use was budgeted and saved for. I get curriculum on sale, trade with others, make/print free things off the internet, and utilize the internet a ton, workbooks on sale and figure out how to make things work. If I see something for “school”, I use the money that we’ve budgeted, wait until next month or find a way to do something like it with what we have on hand currently.
No, really. It is about 100 miles away.
We’ve got other reasons, but all in all it’s been a great educational journey.
This time around, Clara was not so enthused by the contents of the pumpkin.
She kept saying, “YUCK!” and “GROSS!” over and over.
Ruby thought everything was slimy, but made an effort to help clean the pumpkin out. Clara slowly would put her hands in and bring out one or two seeds.
They loved the end product.
Since our late summer fun with the monarch butterflies, the girls decided to be a caterpillar and a monarch butterfly.
We already had the wing and mask, so we found a caterpillar costume for cheap online.
The only problem was that both girls decided in the days leading up to Halloween that they BOTH wanted to be the caterpillar.
SOOOOOO……
Ten Sleep Trunk or Treat…
One kid went around in the caterpillar suit. Then we swapped outfits and the other kid went around in the caterpillar suit.
They only “trick or treated” and got the candy bag if they were in the caterpillar suit.
On to our favorite house.
This is the most exciting stop! Our ranch buddy gives out candy AND money!!!
The last of the monarchs emerged and the milkweed have died with the first frosts.
We’ve had our first snow of the season down low. Most of the mountain peaks above us and across from us have visible snow on them.
Irrigation season has ended. In each field, all the gated pipe have been pulled apart, trailered to their winter spots and stacked.
We are still coasting along well doing school. Ruby reads to Matt at night, usually after dinner.
Matt’s work is slowing down a little. His fall work days average around 13 hours long, with most of Sunday off.
Bikes without training wheels have been mastered by the oldest.
Stick horses are always good to play with on the porch.
The aspen/birch trees in the yard are the last of the trees around here to change color and drop. All the cottonwoods along the creek have lost all their leaves.
For the last couple of weeks, Ruby has been talking about sewing. She’s been asking me to teach her how to hand sew. She had great confidence in herself that she could do it. We found a little project that we had the materials for, got everything planned out and she got started.
Ta-Dah! After about 1.5 hours of steady working by herself with minimal help from Mama, she had a little monster pillow!
(I had to hot glue the eyes and mouth on for her…you know…because five year olds and hot glue guns is rather unsafe.)
(Also, the headlamp was for her to see the guide lines we made together on the black felt while stitching.)
The end of irrigation season means more time inside, doing projects and enjoying more time with Matt.
In September, fall gymnastics started back in most areas. We found out about a different program in Worland. Both girls are able to participate in this program and there are more rotations, more to learn, more coaches and more children participating.
Also, you have to wear leotards. Sparkly leotards. What’s not to love??
The girls have had a GREAT time. The uneven bars remain the favorite rotation during the evening. We’ve been to five sessions and each time the girls do something different.
Clara was SO excited that she was finally able to participate in SOMETHING.
Ruby’s session is first and lasts for an hour. Clara sits patiently, watches and gets to play educational apps on our family Kindle. After Ruby is finished, Clara’s preschool class starts and Ruby then plays the Kindle. Clara’s class is 30 minutes long.
Ruby’s class started with twenty girls for the first two sessions. The coaches split the class to 11-12 girls. Clara’s class has 9-10 three and four year olds. Both classes start with a warm up time of stretches, a dance, and more stretches. Then the class is split into different rotations. The preschool coaches do a FABULOUS job of keeping them moving and they have NO down time.
Older girls from the traveling competition team are the helpers during the sessions. They help lead the rotations, show examples, and help the little ones in form, etc.
So far, we have been very, very pleased with the program.
