Tots and Me... Growing Up Together

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Workbox Wednesday- April 8, 2015

Welcome to Workbox Wednesday!

We haven 't had anything new in our workboxes this week. What about you?

If you use workboxes, tot trays, or anything similar, feel free to post a link to your blog post or a picture (pictures can be from facebook, but please make sure they are PUBLIC so we can see them, or use a host like photobucket.com to get a URL for your photo) that shows WHAT IS IN YOUR BOXES!

Please don't forget to visit my co-hosts at Chestnut Grove Academy and Line Upon Line Learning.

Visit others that link up, leave comments, follow, etc. The favors will be returned! Feel free to grab a button too, so others can find the link up and join in the fun!

What is in your workboxes?

Wordless Wednesday: April 8th, 2015 (w/linky)- My New Camera!!!

I have been using my phone for quite a while to take pictures because my old camera had been dropped so many times that it had little blur spots in the picture. I had continued taking pictures with it, but one day there was suddenly a very dark black spot right in the center of the frame. This one appears to be a step up from what I had. It also had Wi-fi capabilities so I can use it to take pictures for my Instagram challenges.

I am so excited!! Can you tell?

Looking forward to seeing your Wordless (or not so wordless) Wednesday posts this week.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Real Life Homeschool: Changing Up the Schedule

Welcome to Day 2 of the Real Life Homeschool Blog Hop with the Schoolhouse Review Crew! Yesterday we took a look at our current, normalish schedule. You may have noticed there were a lot of "IFs" in there. Unfortunately there are still things that will sneak in and get in the way of that schedule working perfectly. For example:

Sleeping in late
Getting sucked into Facebook (when I really was just over there to do one simple thing for my blog)
Being behind on a blog post and working on getting it finished in the morning
Sick children
Sick mommy
Appointments or other need to do errands outside the home
No motivation on mommy's part

Now, with some of these situations, we may not have school that day. I have to say, I am glad none of the children are old enough for us to have to report to the school district yet. If we miss a day, no big deal.

There have been times, when I have been sick, that I have been ever so grateful for computer programs and online learning sites, because I can have the children keep busy with their work. Some of their favorite sites are Starfall, ABCMouse, and Red Apple Reading. We are currently reviewing A+ Tutorsoft's Adaptive Placement Test and Individualized Lesson Plans, so they are able to get on that to do math. In the past they have also enjoyed Mathletics. There was one time, over a year ago, I just could NOT get up off the couch. I remember the older girls helping Hannah with her computer time. It was just so sweet. They also get to watch educational shows on "mommy sick days."

The more common reason for straying from our schedule is being late for one of those various reasons listed above. Most of the time, we just start the work later. Which, as I said yesterday, makes for a stressed mommy. But sometimes the children decide to take matters into their own hands.

The older children take charge of one of their siblings and teach them. Sometimes I even find them having their own little lesson time on a Saturday, or on a day during a week we aren't having school. There was a day last week when I was, not-surprisingly, running late. I came downstairs after taking care of the laundry, to find Tabitha paired up with Hannah and Amelia working with Harold. They work with them separately and are their teachers. On this occasion, they were going through our daily schedule, but they were flipping it around so that both groups weren't doing the same thing at once. However, by the time they were done, I believe they had a both taught their charge everything on the morning schedule.

Here let's take a look:

Let's start with Tabitha teaching Hannah.

They decided to make their own crosses to take to the Cross Walk the next day.

Then it was play time.

Bible Time

They moved into the dining room for "Lesson Time."

After the Pledge of Allegiance, they did the calendar. You can see Amelia and Harold in the background working at the computer.

Recording the weather

Memory verse time

Tabitha then led Hannah in her preschool time.

While Tabitha and Hannah were engaged in the above activities, Amelia and Harold were working their way through the daily routine.

They began with Bible Time.

They had to do calendar at the easel because mommy hadn't printed out an April schedule yet.

Amelia singing our weather song, "What is the weather today?"

Harold over at the window checking it out.

This is a regular part of our lesson time. As I sing the song, they head for the window to check the weather.

Memory verse time

Books of the Bible

Snack Time

Harold's Preschool Time

The letter was O.

She also tried to help him with his LaLaLogic worksheet. Mommy did step in to help a bit with this one as she wasn't quite sure how to explain to him what to do.

Story Time

Poor guy still wasn't feeling the best.

They all gathered together for lunch:

Then the girls spent some time on their own work.

I have to say, I really love the way they will decide to have school time. They love to teach and learn. It brings to mind memories of me trying to teach my stuffed animals and dolls when I was a young child, but they have real people to teach.

Stop back tomorrow to see what the girls have to say about homeschool.

Discover real life in other homeschools with the Schoolhouse Review Crew bloggers! Join the blog hop to read more!

Here are a some of my fellow Crew Mates to get you started.

You can click on the banner above to check out a list of all the blogs participating.

For This Season
Unexpected Homeschool
For Him and My Family
As We Walk Along the Road
Growing in His Glory
Homeschool Coffee Break
Daily Life
There Will Be A $5 Charge For Whining
Proverbial Homemaker
ElCloud Homeschool

Monday, April 6, 2015

Tuesday's Giveaway Link Up- April 7, 2015

Welcome to Tuesday's Giveaway Link Up with your hosts Karen @ Tots and Me, Emily @ Emily Reviews, and Shelly @ The Attic Girl.

So glad you could join us as we share our giveaways on Tuesday's Giveaway Link Ups.

Our co-host this week is Sue from My Photopage.

This link up will be posted Monday at 7 PM est. and run all week long! Make sure you stop in as often as you can to list your latest giveaways.

Here is how to use the Giveaway Link Up

1. Post your reviews and/or giveaways, as many as you have, be sure to add the end date (family friendly please)

2. Help spread the word about the giveaway link up by grabbing our button, Tweeting or posting on Facebook. (Not mandatory- but it helps get more exposure to your giveaways as well!)

3. Take a moment to enter any giveaway that strikes an interest to you!

If you would like to follow the hostesses, we will gladly follow you back! Simply leave us a message to do so.

Featured Giveaways

Kid's Meteorologist in the Making Bundle Ends 4/19

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Blu-ray US only Ends 4/13

Thank you for linking up with Karen @ Tots and Me, Emily @ Emily Reviews and Shelly @ The Attic Girl along with Sue @ My Photopage.

Real Life Homeschool: Looking at the Schedule

Welcome to the first Blog Hop for 2015 from the TOS Review Crew. Over the past couple of years, I have participated in several of these fun endeavors, where my fellow Crew Mates and I spend a week sharing our own perspective of a fun central theme. In the past I have shared 5 Days of...Teaching Toddlers, 5 Days of Homeschooling Essentials, 5 Days of...Making Geography Fun, and taken part in the Back to Homeschool Blog Hop. As you can see in the graphic above, this time around we are going to be taking a look at "Real Life Homeschool." Well, what exactly does that mean? It means we are going to let you take a look at what homeschooling is really like. We are all coming at this from our own perspective and interpretation of course. Personally, I would love to share a look at our schedule plus a look at what happens when we stray from the schedule. We will also take a look at what the children think of this whole homeschooling thing. I invite you to join me on this week-long adventure. Schedules. They are important. Important for helping you see what needs to get done and to stay on task. However, finding a schedule that works can be a difficult task. To make this even trickier, a schedule that worked a couple of months ago, may no longer work. We tried many different routines before finding one that actually worked. I have learned that flexibility is majorly important, not allowing myself to get stuck in a rut when that rut is just not working. Granted, I would love to find one that works and stick to it for some consistency. So, what does our current schedule look like? Here let's take a look. 5:00 am- My alarm goes off. Well, it does if I remember to set it. Let me tell you, when I don't get up on time, it makes for a stressed mommy. I am trying to do better in remembering to set the alarm and actually get up when it goes off, because no one likes stressed mommy, not even the mommy. 5:00 -7:30 am- This is my alone time. I start by getting dressed and making the bed. Before I head downstairs I start a load of laundry (that may or not be thrown in the dryer in a timely manner; I'm working on that). I then have my personal devotion time. If dinner dishes didn't get done the night before (which happens more nights than I care to admit) I take some time to do up the dishes and tidy up a bit. I also check the children's workboxes and get them ready for the day. After setting the table for breakfast, I get my exercise started. If I am on time starting my exercise, I am done before the children are supposed to be up. Unfortunately, most of the time I am still exercising when their alarms go off. 7:30 am- Children's alarms go off. They are to get up, make their beds, and get dressed before coming downstairs. Do they remember this? Well . . . sometimes. This is a fairly new schedule, so we are still working on getting the details to work. The main problem is when they don't get up and I am in the middle of my WiiFit U routine and can't get to them right away. In those instances, they may not get up until 8, which does throw us off schedule. Most mornings they have cereal for breakfast, so they are quite capable of serving themselves. 8:00 am- The children are to eat breakfast. I will do their hair while they are eating. Sometimes I am doing this between bites of my own breakfast, other times I have not yet made my breakfast.

8:00-9:00 am- The children have this hour to finish breakfast, and get some other tasks finished. If they are finished before 9:00, they will have free time to play. The older girls take turns doing breakfast dishes and having their computer time. This is alternated weekly. The younger children are allowed to play after clearing their dishes from the table. They can also choose to watch their sister do her computer work. 9:00 am- If everything has gone smoothly, we are now sitting in the living room, mommy on the couch and the children on the floor, for our Bible time. (Unfortunately we tend to find ourselves running behind and tend to start anytime between 9 and 10.) We have a song we sing to start our day, then we each take a turn to pray. We stand for the pledge to the Bible and sing the B-I-B-L-E while marching into the dining room and around the table a couple of times. Then it is back into the living room to sing and dance to This is the Day the Lord Has Made. We have used different books for our Bible Time and currently we are reviewing a product from Real Life Press called Firmly Planted: Books of Moses Part 2, so this is what we use for our Bible time. I read the Bible passage and the devotion, then we discuss what needs to be discussed. We sing a couple more songs (the leader of the day plus mommy gets to choose one each), then I close in prayer. It is then time for a couple of stories, one of which is related to something in our weekly science lesson or Poppins Book Nook, or something along those lines. 9:30 am- 12:00 pm- We then take a little time to stretch and use the potty before heading to the dining room table for lesson time. Lesson time still starts with the Pledge of Allegiance. We used to do our Bible time after this, including the pledge to the Bible. There are a couple of reasons I switched our day around. First, I didn't like having the Pledge of Allegiance before the Pledge to the Bible. Perhaps you are thinking that I could have just switched the pledges around. The problem was, it was flowing so well the way we were doing it because we went straight into the songs I mentioned above and our Bible story. Now that I have made our Bible time separate, we are starting our day with our pledge to the Bible. The second reason I changed things around, was because we were spending too much time just sitting at the table. Now we get to spend time gathered around in the living room. I think it breaks it up a bit more, making it less cluttered. Here is a more detailed look at our Lesson Time:

Pledge of Allegiance
Calendar and weather time - The leader helps with calendar. We find the day of the week, what yesterday was and tomorrow will be, the month, the date, and the year. Then we count to the date in English and Spanish. One of the children will tell us "Today is..." and include the season. Then we do the weather. The leader then draws the weather onto our calender and I mark it with a little star which helps in keeping attendance. We don't have to report to the school district this year, but it is helping me get into the habit of doing it for next year.
Bible memory time with My Father's World verse is next - They take turns repeating the verse and I help the little ones along. Each week there is a new verse.
Learning the Books of the Bible - This is mainly for the older two who are doing My Father's World 1st grade, but the younger children enjoy saying them along with us and making a card for each book. Tabitha and Amelia are the ones who are memorizing them.
My Father's World Bible story and snack. Sometimes they have coloring page or a craft to go with the lesson.
The older girls then work on their first 3 workboxes while I work with the younger children.

Older Girls Workboxes contain:

#1 - Copywork of some kind.
#2 - Math
#3 - Hands on manipulatives such as Learning Palette, Learning Wrap-Ups, Pattern Blocks

Younger Children's Preschool time:

We sing the ABC song then we go over each letter we have worked on so far, saying the name of the letter, the sound and at least one word that starts with the sound.
We then head to the computer to introduce or review the letter on abctwiggles.com or starfall.com.
They work on worksheets from abctwiggles that focus on the letter/sound.
We also have LaLaLogic time (another wonderful review product). There are days we work on the computer Brain Challenges. Other days consist of enrichment activities or a worksheet.
If there is time, Harold will have exercise time on the Wii.

After the children finish this work it is time to relax a little before lunch. They are allowed to watch one, maybe two educational shows, such as Leap Frog, Super Why, Sid the Science Kid, Word Girl or Magic School Bus. Sometimes, one of the children will opt to help me make the lunch. They love to surprise their siblings.

1:00 pm- This is approximately when we sit down for lunch. Sometimes I allow them to eat in the living room if their show hasn't quite finished.

1:00 - 2:00 pm- The children finish lunch and are supposed to take their plates to the kitchen. The older girls again have doing dishes time/computer time (the opposite child from the morning time) while the younger children have WiiFit U or Nickelodeon Fit time, if they didn't have a chance to fit it in before lunch. Again, if the older girls are finished with their work before 2:00, they will get some free time to play.

2:00 pm- Harold goes upstairs for a nap as close to 2 as I can possibly get him up there. Sometimes it is closer to 3 if we are behind.

2:00 - 4:00 pm- The children take turns on the WiiFit U. They can also read or use News-O-Matic on my tablet (when I can find the tablet). I work with the girls one-on-one on their language arts. Amelia is doing the phonics included with My Father's World. Tabitha is using Logic of English Essentials (we had put it aside and I was having trouble fitting it in, but with this new schedule it is working out so much better). Hannah is using First Start Reading from Memoria Press. Honestly, there are days I do not get to each of them. I just make sure to work with that child the next time. We are moving forward, not near as fast as the books want us to (all except First Start Reading as it is a review product), but I have decided to not let that worry me. At least I won't let it worry me for now. It would be different if we had to report to the district this year.

We also fit game system time in most days. The children like to play Super Paper Mario the most right now. They each get about 20 minutes of game time. This may fit in right after school time, or it can fit in after dinner.

4:00 - 5:00 pm- It is then time for me to make dinner so daddy can eat by 5:00 so he can leave for work on time. I love days when I have something in the crock pot, because I don't have near as much to do.

5:00 pm- Dinner Time!

5:30 - 9:00 pm- After dinner the older girls are responsible for clearing the table completely. I will wipe it while they clear toys and such off the floor so I can vacuum. We are in the process of trying to get Hannah and Harold to help more. The children then go and get ready for bed. If they are ready by 8 o'clock, we will watch a show. The popular one right now is Once Upon a Time, but we have also watched Little House on the Prairie. Unfortunately, they don't care for that one as much. Much to my disappointment mind you; I grew up watching it, and it remains a favorite to this day.

9:00 pm- Brush teeth and Bible Time

If all has gone well, the children are up to bed by 9:30. Some days it will be closer to 10 before I have them all tucked in. This is a huge improvement to the 10:30/11:00 it used to be.

Looking back on the schedule as I see it written here, I do realize we are not quite as relaxed as we used to be. I want to make sure we find a way to keep on schedule and organized so I don't get in trouble with the school district next year. I am also trying to make sure all 4 children are getting quality time.

Stop back tomorrow to see an example of what happens when things don't go as planned. Later in the week, I will also be sharing the children's thoughts. You won't want to miss that.

Discover real life in other homeschools with the Schoolhouse Review Crew bloggers! Join the blog hop to read more!

Here are a some of my fellow Crew Mates to get you started.

You can click on the banner above to check out a list of all the blogs participating.