First Week of Homeschool

I cannot believe I am already moving into our second week of school! We are honestly excited to be getting back to the swing of things.

This year my main goal is to STAY organized and to fully integrate our faith in all of our homeschool. We live our faith as best as we can remembering always, that we are meant to live our lives as a reflection of Christ. We love Him and strive to this end, but in all honesty many times we fail. This year I wanted to pay special attention to the character traits that we are developing.  I feel like sometimes we lack gratefulness. So each day before we begin our day we say the Daily Offering and name several people and things we are thankful for, including our trials and suffering because they too help us grow in Christ.

This year I wanted to do something special for their first day of school and so my husband dropped me of at the Dollar Tree and for $15 I was able to make them goodie bags for their first day of school. Nothing fancy just little things they like. Bubbles, a special toy, unique for each child, and a special book likewise and many little small things like a Lego pencil sharpener, fancy colored pencils, playing cards (Bible themed, no less!) and little things to sweeten their day, we put them in little yellow bags. The look of joy they had was priceless!

 

 

 

 It has overall been a good first week. They were a little restless trying to get back to the swing of doing some sitting down work and not playing freely all the time, there were no squabbles, they were excited for our new curriculum and I was honestly glad to be back to homeschooling. I know by the end of the homeschool year we are all ready for a break, especially me but at the same time we look forward with excitement to what the new school year will bring.

I look forward to doing this many more years! Through the tough, rough, crazy and at the same time love filled, joy infused and  heartwarming, sanctifying days of homeschool.

How about you homeschool moms? How's the beginning of your year looking?

Organizing My Homeschool Life.

I am an organizational freak by nature, I have labels on my labels. Well ok, not quite but my normal self likes to be organized and before our recent move my house was in chaos. Hard to operate very well when surrounded by mess!

I am a big believer that everything belongs on its place, but lets be honest there are plenty of times when I derailed from this belief. One of my bigger weaknesses? Follow through. The old " I can do that tomorrow" gets me a lot more often than I care to admit :(

So this year I am TRYING to implement a little more organization. I have my planner ready to go. It serves a dual purpose: homeschool planning and regular everyday stuff. I got mine from http://www.michelequigley.com/store/ and added the homeschool planning pages. It is the small one I can carry with me everywhere I go. I am so happy with this planner.

If you need a planner you can check out the above link or get plenty of free printables here

I am also trying to assemble my homeschool room, not quite there but I'm working on it :)

I decided that instead of having every.single.book.out I would only get out the books I would need for the entire school year. The rest of the books will go into clear totes in the utility book. I am organizing bookshelves and bins by subject and labeling said bins.

I am also organizing my favorite homeschool curriculum websites and not keeping anymore than the ones I ACTUALLY USE. I have gotten my computer to run faster by deleting some bookmarks. About 343 or so, not many you know?

In case you are curious here are some of my favorite websites :

Charlotte Mason Style Curriculum
https://www.chcweb.com/catalog/

Solid Catholic Curriculum
http://www.setonbooks.com/
http://olrs.com/
http://olvs.org/

Classical Education Emphasis
http://www.kolbe.org/
http://www.memoriapress.com/

Resources
http://www.rainbowresource.com/
http://www.adoremusbooks.com/
http://www.catholicicing.com/

Helpful Sites for Mommy (because we cannot afford to be crazy)
http://www.catholicsistas.com/
http://thekennedyadventures.com/free-printables/
http://raisinglittlesaints.blogspot.com/
http://catholicmom.com/
http://www.mybrokenfiat.com/blog
http://catholicmomconfessions.blogspot.com/

My homeschool this year will keep all core subjects (religion, Math, Science, Language Arts and History) and will rotate at 9 weeks intervals between Physical Education, Music and Art.

After all is done, I am hoping to keep a system in place so that we can run smoothly. I know I want to be organized but I still want to be flexible for the occasional monkey wrench life throws our way ;)