Our Daily Schedule-At least this is what we are shooting for..

This is our goal for a week day at home:

5:00-I get up have my quiet time and go to the gym, or if it is a Monday I go grocery shopping. Thanks to my years as an Army Brat, I like to get up early.

6:15-Shower and get breakfast started.

7:00-Everyone up, get dressed, make beds, have breakfast

7:30-Family devotional time

7:45-Clean up breakfast, say good-bye to daddy and go on a walk, weather permitting.

8:30-Morning Chores, We will be starting our new chore-pack system, as seen on the Duggars, this Monday, so if we all survive the week, I will blog about that at the end of the week.

9:00-Morning Circle Time with all kids

9:15-Bible with all kids

9:30-Snack and free time to play

10:00-Craft, cooking, library, ladies bible class, playgroup or free time depending on what day it is.

11:00-Start getting lunch ready

11:30-Lunch

12:00-Recess

12:30-Emma and Charlie go down for Nap

12:30-Macy and I do the sitting down part of school, Math, phonics, handwriting, geography and whatever else we need to do. I am hoping to do a workbox system (I'll blog more about that at another date.)

1:30-Macy has quiet room time, I will take an hour to rest as well. I read something from an experienced homeschooling mom and she said one of the best things to do is an hour rest time every day, even for the older students, so the mom gets a break and everyone gets a break from each other.

2:30-Macy, Charlie, and I up. Snack time followed by TV time. This is contingent on if they were quiet during rest time.

3:00-Emma up and has her snack,

3:05-Read aloud time together

3:30-Macy and Charlie do afternoon chores.

4:00 (or when finished with chores, I don't think they will take very long)- Free play time

5:15ish-Dinner Time when Seth gets home and Family Time

6:30-Baths

7:30-Bedtime

7:30-? Seth and I have kid-free time.

We will have to fit in Ladies Class on Tuesday, Library on Wednesdays, Playgroup two Fridays a month, lots of field-trips, and one morning a week I would like to go to the gym at 8:30 am, so I can attend a class instead of going at 5am that day. I am not sure how that is all going to work, but I am hoping we will figure out something as we get going. I am sure I will have do lots of tweaking as time goes on and I know that it will be a rarity if we actually complete the schedule as typed out, but at least we have something to shoot for.

On Saturday, there will be no school, but we will still have chores and naps.

Whew! That seems like a lot, but getting it typed out makes it seem like it isn't that bad and maybe even do-able.

As for a yearly schedule, I am not setting one right now, we will take off when needed and probably go into the summer. Seth's day off is Thursday, so on some Thursdays will do things as a family and will not worry about school on those days. I love that we can be flexible with homeschooling!

For scheduling help, a great book that I recommend is:
Tomorrow's post... What are the state's requirement for homeschooling in Texas, and how do you plan to follow those?

Our Homeschool Curriculum

We will start officially in September homeschooling, but I thought I would go ahead and share with you the curriculum that I will be using.

Bible:

Family-Time Bible In Pictures by Kenneth N. Taylor. We will read a story daily out of it. I took this from Sonlight's curriculum.

Phonics, Reading and Handwriting:

Abeka
It took me awhile to decide on this. First, I wanted to look at a variety of curriculums since there are so many great ones, but ultimately decided on Abeka, since I have taught it in the past and I liked it then. Then, I couldn't decide on bumping Macy up to 1st grade in language arts or not since she is reading fluently already. However, after talking to some more experienced homeschoolers, they recommended keeping her in Kindergarten for the moment, but if we finish all (not just the language arts) of Kindergarten quickly, then going ahead to first grade. But they also reminded me that our goal in homeschooling is not to graduate the kids by they are 13, but to take time to build a strong foundation. So that is what we are doing! I imagine we will pick and choose out of the phonics part since she we already did "Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons".
For handwriting, I have decided to do cursive first with her, so wish us luck in that. I am hoping she will have beautiful handwriting (unlike me) since we are starting with it first rather than printing.

Also for reading, I have typed up a reading list from recommend books from Honey from a Child's Heart, Sonlight, Five in a Row, Beautiful Feet and a couple other places. We will continue our weekly trip to the library, and will have this list as a guide of books that I want to read to the kids or have Macy read aloud.

Math:
We are using Horizons Math. It is an award winning curriculum, so I am hoping that we will enjoy it. To save money and as recommended by some other homeschooling moms at the big home school convention, I didn't buy the teachers edition, but I flipped through it and it doesn't look to hard. :)

In the mornings, we will do a circle time, where we will do a calendar, days of the week, memory verse, counting, weather and a few other things. When we get going officially, I will blog more about it.

Those will be our main subjects that we will be focusing on this year. In addition to those we will do a little bit of the following:

Character - I thought about doing a character trait a week and doing an activity for each, but I think I will hold off until next year. Instead, we are going to focus on doing chores, being obedient and also we will have a day a month that is purposed to do some sort of service activity (visiting residents at a retirement home, making cookies for someone, buying groceries for a food pantry, and some other age appropriate things that I can think of or find from other people.)

Geography-we will do a notebook of the 50 states. The objective will be to identify that there are 50 states. We will have a coloring sheet for each state, just mainly identifying that there are 50 and learning where they are located. Also, I plan to ask some of you to send us a postcard from your state.

Science- We have an ant farm, so I plan to order some ants and we will get to watch them in action.

P.E-Lots of playing outside, going on walks, and going to the park. We have decided not to do a formal activity for the first few months of homeschooling, just so we don't have another thing to keep up as we are getting use to homeschooling, but maybe we will enroll Macy in gymnastics in a few months. When Charlie is old enough to attend, the YMCA here has a home school PE class, so we will probably do something like that in the future.

Home EC- I plan to set aside a time each week to do a cooking activity. Also, she will be doing chores. I have also looked at a couple books that are geared towards little girls Macy's age for Home EC, I haven't ordered anything yet though.

Arts and Crafts- We will do a craft/art time each week. Nothing formal, I just plan to get ideas from either other homeschoolers blogs, my old education stuff, or making something to go along with our bible lesson.

Music-Again, nothing formal this year. I just plan to check out a wide variety of CDs each week from the library and play them for everyone to listen. Also, my mom just told me she ordered this book for us
which I think will be really good and I am sure we will work our way through it.

There you have it! That is what we have planned so far.

Tomorrow I will post a schedule of our daily routine.... stay tuned.

Emma's First Haircut

Today Emma got her much-needed first haircut! It seems like it was just yesterday when Macy and Charlie got their first haircuts. Unlike Macy and Charlie. Emma did not cry one bit! She sat there so well and just quietly looked around (there was quite a bit to look at in this kid-oriented salon.)

Before (I should of got a shot of the back, it was especially bad):

During, being so good!:

She would not smile at all, but I still like this picture:

After, enjoying the sucker and saying "Cheese!":

Some Blogs That Are Better Than Mine

Over the past few months I have found some blogs that I really like to read each day, I normally will turn on my phone when I first wake up and look at a few of them while I am waking up and since I like to find great blogs, I thought I would share in case any of you like to do the same (these are not necessarily in order):


1. Women Living Well - This is really one of the best on my list and normally the one I check first. She has a lot of helpful and biblical advice for wives and moms. She has a lot of videos on the left side of her blog, check them out if you have time.


2. Like a Warm Cup of Coffee-This is another one I look forward to reading every day. She talks about many things from being a homemaker to sharing about having an abortion years ago.


3. Confessions of a Homeschooler-A homeschooling blog with lots of good printables and ideas.

4. Raising Homemakers - A blog for mothers of daughters. This is only a couple months old, but already has had some great posts and I look forward to checking it every morning.

5. The M.O.B Society- A great blog about raising boys.

6. Skip to my Lou - A blog with fun crafts for kids. The kids and I made the sidewalk chalk paint this week that she has on there and they loved it! I plan on stealing a number of her ideas.

7. Homeschool Creations-Another great homeschooling blog full of good ideas that I plan to steal.

8. Heart of the Matter Online- This one has a number of contributors focusing on homeschooling and has a number of helpful articles. It is a great resource for new homeschoolers.

9. 1+1+1=1- Another homeschooling blog, this one focusing mainly on the younger kids, preschoolers, etc. Also the author of this blog has a few other great homeschooling blogs that you can find on her site.

10. Along the Way-Another homeschooling blog with great ideas. Even if you aren't homeschooling, the homeschooling blogs still have great ideas on them!

11. Clutch- A blog for wives married to men in ministry. I have only looked at this one for a couple weeks, but enjoy reading the posts from women whom I have a lot in common with.

12. Babywise Mom- I do not check with one daily anymore since we are moving out of the Baby stage, but she still has great advice for raising kids and so I do like to click on it every so often. We used Babywise with all 3 kids and this is one of the best resources I have found to go along with the Babywise books and have recommended it to a number of people.

All Boy

The last couple posts have been rather girly, so I thought I would post a video of Charlie to even things out and he is definitely all boy! If he isn't playing baseball or golf, playing with his cars, trains or trucks, he is either chasing imaginary monsters around the house, shooting things or jumping from high places (I am trying to prepare myself for seeing Charlie with a broken bone, I imagine he is going to have a few of them in his childhood.) He prays for the "ballgame" when he says his prayers, every single time. He is especially excited about getting to go to the ballgame with Daddy by himself in a couple of weeks and the other night he prayed "Thank you God that I get to go to the ballgame with daddy....and not Macy." Seth and I tried to correct him afterwards and tell him that wasn't very nice, but we were laughing, so I doubt it had much impact.

Here is a video that I took a few weeks ago:


He is definitely our favorite little boy!

Recital

The big recital was this weekend! I was the stage mom, so I wasn't able to take pictures or videos from the audience since I needed to help get the girls on stage and stay with them in the back, etc. (they only allowed pictures and videos during the dress rehearsal, so Seth couldn't get them either, boo.).

Anyways, here are the ones I did take. Macy and her classmates getting ready backstage to go on stage during the dress rehearsal:

Waiting on the side as the big girls are dancing:On Stage! I was standing right where the teacher was standing doing the motions, so that is why they are all looking at my direction:The day of the recital, Macy and a friends twirling in their dresses backstage in our room:We were back there for 2 1/2 hours, so we kept busy coloring and playing with toys and games. They were all really good:Getting ready to go on stage:Seth's parents were able to come and see Macy performance and we were able to all go out to eat afterwards. Macy was so excited to get to wear her dress to the restaurant!:Family shot. Too bad Emma wasn't looking: I wasn't able to film at the performance, but I did film on picture day a couple weeks ago as they were practicing. Enjoy!

Way to go Macy! You are our favorite tap dancer!

Dance Class Picture Day

Macy has been in dance class this year and has loved it! She had her pictures this week, and I was the cheapo parent and didn't pay for individual expensive pictures, so I just snapped a few before we left. Look at this one and notice Emma on the left. Haha. The whole time I was taking pictures Emma was right up against Macy, wanting to touch her dress and saying "Ohhhhh Pretty, Ohhhhh pretty", She was quiet impressed with the dress and I could hardly keep her away from it. I cropped her out of the top pictures, but I thought this one was pretty funny.

Her recital is this weekend and I will try to post a video of it on the blog. (Don't worry, it will not resemble the "Single Ladies" Dance performed by 6 year olds that was in the news a few ago. ) They are tap dancing to "Rockin' Robin". The studio we have used is a Christan studio and many of the songs that are performed by the older kids are church songs.

It is has been a good first year of Dance for Macy!

Spalsh Park Fun

First Swim of Summer

We have actually been a couple times, but these are pictures from our first swim.

The kids were sooo excited when the neighborhood pool opened a couple weeks ago! We like to go first thing in the morning since 1) it beats the blazing Texas heat and 2) there aren't a bunch of people there to see me in my swimsuit. (Which by the way if you are looking for a modest swimsuit that doesn't look weird, visit www.christa-taylor.com).

Anyways, here are a few I took of our first visit. It is hard to take pictures with one hand while the other one is holding a 19 month splashing, so I didn't take a but a few.

Emma's first real time in the pool:

She was a little leary at first, but now I can hardly hang onto to her! She is either splashing or trying to go around the pool by herself. She doesn't like that I hold onto her. Too Bad Emma.

Charlie in action getting out of the pool: He likes to lay on the ground outside the pool and hang his head upside down in the pool.

Macy:

She kept asking for me to take her pictures like this.. Ha. She has gotten a lot better since last year about going under water and will even swim underwater for a few seconds.

One last one of Macy and Charlie doing what they love best (look at Charlie's tounge!):

Microwave Potato Chips

I came across a recipe to make potato chips in the microwave and gave it a try and they turned out great, so I thought I would share!

Ingredients:
Potatoes, sliced paper thin
pam spray
parchment paper
salt or whatever seasoning you want

All you do is put is a piece of parchment paper directly in the microwave, spray it with a little pam. Lay the potato slices on it, make sure they aren't touching. Spray with some more pam and then cook for about 3-10 minutes, just until they are crisp and not all brown. Take them out and season with salt or whatever you want and there you have it! A cheaper and healthier alternative to bagged potato chips! You can also use veg. oil or olive oil in place of the pam.

I did it today for lunch and sliced one potato for all of us, everyone really liked them. Seth said he liked them better than bagged potato chips. The only bad thing is you can't do a large batch at once. For our 1 potato, I did two batches in the microwave. I have made "chips" by frying them in oil on the oven, but that takes so much oil and also probably isn't that heatly since they are soaked in them.

Enjoy!