Our first day of school, 2012

Yesterday was our first "official" day back in school for 2012.  It was a FULL day, to say the least...but felt really productive.  Maybe because I'm getting out of bed a little earlier?  Or actually have a plan this week?  Maybe that's it.

So we start our morning with Ny helping with breakfast.  Here she is scrambling eggs.

Right after breakfast we had "chapel".  We are learning one old hymnal per week, plus doing a bit of worship with "Shout Praises Kids".  Our hymnal for the week is "Just As I Am".  We do this right after breakfast- me on piano, the girls singing with me.  Ny likes to harmonize, which makes it all the better.

And for our modern worship session, here is the DVD we use:

Next we head upstairs for our remaining school time.  We start with reviewing our Classical Conversations work from our Monday meeting days.

I've learned that putting everything on the board for the entire week helps her memorize the material better.

Next: card memory... 

Z learns her numbers using Dollar Store cards.  Ny learns her CC material.

Geography is next.  We are working on states and capitals.

I do a bit of Abeka Health with Ny, and then send her off to do her Saxon math lesson.  Meanwhile, I work with Z.
Z is officially a "Preschooler", and now at 4 years old I am reminded of how much more she could do if I will just work with her on certain skills a bit.   So I decided this year to set up a preschool type area in our office/classroom with centers and lots of manipulatives, story nook, things of that nature.  We just needed the change and I felt she would embrace the hour(s) of learning with a more organized and attractive room, geared just for her interests.

Our block center

During centers (free) time, she chooses a rhyming game.

I made these little sorting cubes.  It teaches arrangement in color gradient order - high to low/low to high.

One to one number correspondence.  She finds the number  "2" card and adds two paperclips.

Labeling her "Centers" bins helps her with word recognition.  I just made these in MS Word and cut them out with cute scissors.

More labels.

I made this pattern game in Word.  Z enjoyed this one a lot so I'll probably be making more.

Z loves to cut.  We like to use Kumon workbooks for this.  Here is a cheeseburger.

Ny concentrates on math.

Then we got a surprise visit from a neighborhood friend- an awesome homeschooling family whom we've spending a lot of time with over the holidays.  They were heading over to a ranch and invited us to come with them.  

So we spent the afternoon on a farm!  

That was our surprise science and some P.E too...

Overall, I'd say we had a pretty good first day of school!  

I look forward to 2012...

Happy homeschooling!

Gardening, Menu Planning, and Grocery Lists

This post will mostly be about how I do my meal planning- something that has taken me years to figure out what works for us.  Finally I think I have it down to a semi-science, at least until or until something throws me off routine.  For now I am just really excited that with a new year beginning I can finally clear up the clutter, the dust of moving is settling, and I can begin again in our new home.

A lot of my posts from here on out will focus on my home routines- what I'm doing with my kids, homeschooling, household management, cooking...that kind of stuff.  As I grow up into my role as a wife and mama I am learning each day how to better serve my family. 

So, welcome to my home...2012.

This morning the kids ate breakfast and asked to go out and check on their garden.

We planted these way back in September...I don't remember if they are radishes or grean beans.

pulling up weeds

 I go back inside and look up some recipes from the San Francisco Chronicle cookbook.  I promised myself that in 2012 I would try new recipes- more soups and salads- and try my hands at more upscale cooking and cuisine.  I will try- the operative word.  Beyond that, I'm happy just finding fun and simple recipes the kids will enjoy.

I did find a recipe I liked. So it's time to do my grocery shopping today.

I don't know why it took me so long to figure out how to do menu-planning for my family, but I think I'm about 4 years down the road of the lightbulb going off in my head and finally realizing I needed a system that worked before I drove myself up the wall. 
So- here's my little system.
I buy these little blank calendar pads and grocery/to-do list pads from Wal-Mart.  I create a menu by the week, usually based on a bit of the prior week's menu- just juggle up the days.  I only focus on dinner and lunch.  Breakfast in our home is a cinch.

 Now with my week's menu all done, I need to fill in the gaps, make sure I have all the ingredients for each meal.
 I check in my freezer to be sure I'm well stocked on the meats and veggies I need this week.  And I am except for another bag of peas.

My cabinet is stocked with pastas and all the canned goods I need for my chili on Friday.

 The rest of my grocery list consists of checking each room in the home for reminders of things to add like toiletries or cleaning products.  In the future I plan to add a clipboard list for each room- haven't gotten to that yet.

Next step, comparing my grocery list beside my coupon binder, making sure I haven't missed any coupons for what's on my list.

I don't know about you, but I sometimes I have an issue with staying on budget.  It's not that I don't carefully plan to stay under a certain amount- it's just that sometimes you never know from week to week if prices may fluctuate or not.  I mostly do my shopping at the Commissary (for military personnel- where prices can go up and down especially on meats), and I also shop a bit at Wal-Mart and Target.  There is no Publix in this part of California (bummer).

Anyhow, to combat the budgeting issue, my husband and I have worked it out that I will only shop with cash.  It gives me a fixed and concrete way of staying on track.  Once I run out of cash, that's it.  I calculate my groceries to the cent while I'm shopping and we've been able to stay on $120/week for a family of four (including food, toiletries, cleaning products, basic household and personal hygiene needs, etc.).  And of course, couponing helps.

Well, I'm off to do my grocery shopping and pick up some photos from the 1-hour photo center to send to friends.

I'll try to do more posts about household management and how I'm trying to manage around here :-)

I will also attempt to do some fun kiddie activity and recipe posts this year to.

Additionally, I will be rearranging the blog so that it makes more sense about the direction I'm going in.  (Unlike Wordpress it's a little messy and adding categories in a drop down menu doesn't seem to be an option- if you have any ideas on this please let me know).

Until the next post...

Wrapping up the semester

Alas, my posts seem to be getting fewer and further between as I focus more now on building my web consulting company.  Things are beginning to fall into place.  So, while I'm on a bitty break at the coffee shop today, I thought I'd do a catch-up blog post on our homeschooling adventures.

Our life has been so varied these days, it's hard to say what a typical day is like anymore.  Here are some highlights:

Here's BabyZ playing with a duck during our homeschool co-op weekly meeting.

Me teaching a Web 2.0 class during co-op.  Most of the students seemed to enjoy learning the art of blogging.

Sometimes after church we make  a stop by Sam's Club to run a quick errand, and we end up eating a snack on our way.  I couldn't resist these photos of sisterly love.

For Tot School we've been doing a lot of our block building...

(blocks and a bit of play dough throw in there for good measure!)

Bit of silliness...

Big sister helping little sister get ready for church.

My little girl has grown up so much.  Here she is preparing to walk into her science lab class.

The girls love to go places.

While big Sis goes to science lab, BabyZ enjoys a little Dr. Seuss fun at Books A Million.

So we pick up Big Sis from Science lab, and she proudly shows off her woodworking creation.  It sounded pretty fun.  A nice, elderly carpenter came by to teach the kids how to work with wood.

As the semester wears down and we get closer to Thanksgiving, we are starting to REALLY relax a bit.  We enjoyed a fieldtrip morning with some friends at a ceramics studio.

(finally BabyZ is big enough to paint her own ceramic!)

Another habit, we'd gotten into lately was stopping by Panera Bread for a quick bite before our weekly homeschool co-op begins:

Our school mornings are beginning to look more techie these days.

Ny discovered she was really good at Googling for info.  We're still enjoying BJU for History.

Lastly, we finished off our homeschool co-op semester with a fun carnival-themed holiday party:

Well, there's my lengthy update!

Outdoor homeschooling and a surprise

Okay, let me start this post by saying that Ny checked out this book from the library a few days ago.  Black Beauty's Family i's 574 pages long!!! (Six books in one).  You go girl.  Have fun, and take it easy.

Today for American HIstory, we went outside to make our gold nuggets.  (Tomorrow we're going to finish up our lesson by panning for gold like the 49'ers).  First step was to fill out a worksheet on the westward expansion on the U.S. purchase of Mexico.

The girls gathered some rocks to be used for our "gold"

They wash the rocks and clean them up, then paint them gold:

We came back in for a little tot school- puzzles and shapes:

Then my dad called and announced that he had surprised us with:

The girls LOVE their bird house!