Audrey can read!

I think now I can say she’s officially reading! She basically taught herself, too. I checked out some easy readers from the library and she reads them like its nothing! I’m so proud!

working on stuff!

not much of anything different going on here. probably the one thing I’ve changed is that I’ve beefed up the amount of “academics” we’ve been doing. we mostly focus on reading, writing, and math, with a little history and science thrown in there. I’ve mostly been building up handwriting and math, since she seems to be teaching herself how to read well enough for now. once we get into the habit of doing those things more regularly I’ll work up the science and history some more. she seems to really like history. she’s really into doing thing by herself, so I’d like to get her some materials she can work on independently. she’s not ready to do things like worksheets or assignments- they need to be things that feel like play. I’m  thinking of getting some good science supplies for her to explore and work with, and maybe some language computer games or…? hmm.

this is audrey during one of our snow days- she loved sledding! that’s it for now.

to do list

dang, my house is a wreck. this is  a list of crap i need to get done, not just to get ready for schooling, but to have a place we can function in on a day to day  basis-

1) we have so many great books. books are so great and open a world of imagination and joy.. and they are taking over my motha f*ckin house! i swear half of the kids’ room is a giant freaking pile of books. next to the huge pile is a neat little box of library books, which looks pretty dumb, but if it wasn’t for their box they would be swallowed by the cannibalistic mountain of literature on the floor. yikes. so yeah, that needs to be organized or something.

2) ditto the above, only sub books for laundry. at least i can fold the laundry and put it away once i’m caught up on it.

3) the school area. everything in the school area has a place, it just doesn’t stay there. i guess we just  need to get in the habit of cleaning it once or twice a day. i call audrey the crazy artist because her papers and crayons are sprawled out all over the place like she’s been up for days drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and working on her drawings. she gets really upset if i stack them out of order. or if gwyneth eats one of them.

4) stuffed animals. i just need to set them all free in the woods behind our apartment complex. or maybe buy another 17 animal nets?

5) the diapers are everywhere. i’m starting to see a theme here of stuff being everywhere. hrmm.

6) school journals, curriculum, and projects will need to be planned out. we’ve just been doing the bare minimum- following the handwriting without tears books, the singapore math books, and practicing reading a little at night. thinking of enrolling audrey in a part- time program through the school district here, but not sure about that. she would have to go 7 hrs a week (spread over a couple of days). i’d have to be on campus with her the entire time, and i’m not sure how thrilled i am about chasing gwyneth around the school two days a week for three hours a day.

7) stocking up on food and toiletry staples. not really sure why i feel the need to do this- we’ll have grocery money every week. it’s not like we’re getting ready for an alien invasion, yet i feel compelled to stock up on oatmeal and canned veggies. hmm.

8) pick up some clothes for the girls in a size up. i guess just incase one of them wakes up 4 inches taller and won’t fit into any of their clothing. see above for further reasoning.

9) am i running out of preparedness ideas? hmm. ok, well i guess that’s it. there is no #9. goodbye.

Plugging along…

Yeah, so I haven’t written much in here. I’m busy like ALL the time. I’m tired like ALL the time, too. We do Audrey’s homeschooling at night before she goes to bed, and she’s doing fine with that. Right now we are focusing on reading, writing, and math. I throw science and history in there when I have time. She likes history ( we’re working on ancient Egypt right now). One thing is for sure, working and having two kids is er, interesting. I have been trying to decide whether I want to keep sending the girls to daycare while I work my butt off and come home cranky and unavailable to anything except the TV, or quit my job and learn to live without money. Hmmm. So, beginning in February I will try staying home for a while. I’m feeling sort of panicked, excited, and disappointed at the same time. Doing this will make some things easier, and some harder. If we can make it work and get ends to meet without tons of stress I will be happy. Right now our house is a mess, I feel like I don’t know the kids, and I just feel like there is something else I should be doing.

Anyway, as far as the homeschooling goes I’m planning to look into a program here in Kirkland that let’s you pick and choose public school classes and do the rest of the schooling at home. I’ve only read about it online, so I could change my mind all together after talking with someone about it on the phone. It’s a small learning center, the classes are not held at a big public school ( but the children are considered public school students). Audrey is interested in trying school, but I don’t want her in school all day long so I figure this is a good trade off. If we don’t like it we can skip it next year, and if she does like it we can add another class. I need to be able to school her at least part time so I have something to do- plus I feel like she picks things up much more easily when she is learning them from me at home. I just know how she learns- she’s a really straight forward auditory learner. Her memory is scary good, too. She just needs things repeated to her a couple times, and I feel like a teacher trying to deal with other kids is probably going to get annoyed and move on before Audrey really “gets” a concept.

Alright, bed time.

Super awesome science supply site!

I have all sorts of weird Christmas present ideas in the works thanks to this website!  Home Science Tools . The stuff is fairly priced, too. No more overpaying for science stuff from Lakeshore.

Not sure what’s going on with the Fall and whether I’ll be staying home. I’m really nervous about quitting my job right now. I’m taking a kind of wait and see approach for now. Either way Audrey will be schooled at home, so this blog will continue! We managed to school around full time work this last year, and (hopefully) we can do it again next year if we need to (we school over the summer which gives us  a lot of slack). More to come later, I have the entire week off. Yipee!

Changing the way we think?

I just realized today that if I’m going to stay home and be broke with the kids so we can homeschool, I need to change the way we think about material things. We will have the things we need, but not the extra money we have gotten used to having. We were planning to get a new car, and those plans will be out the window. I think we’re just going to have to focus on our family, and try to make our experiences and time worth while. Those are the things I should want my kids to value anyway, right? I mean, when I think about all the materialistic parents where I work (and there are a LOT of them in this area), I get an icky feeling. Anyway, that’s it. My brain is officially mush now! Aaah… how about some random pictures??

Getting ready!

It took me a while to finally decide that quitting work was the best thing to do, so I haven’t written much in here. We won’t have the extra money we have now, but it makes sense for a lot of different reasons (homeschooling being just one of them). So anyway, now I’m faced with the challenge of trying to get supplies together for the Fall, when Audrey will start 1st grade. I’m thinking our “extra” money is going to have to come out of our budgeted grocery money. I’m pretty good at stretching grocery bucks, so I can pick up a thing here and there. I also have some success with swagbucks , and I’ll be able to get some stuff off of amazon with giftcards I earn from that. I’m going to pick up using lessonpathways again too, which is a free curriculum for homeschoolers. I won’t use everything from there, but its a good guide and there are some good craft ideas. We are going to be using Singapore for math, and everything else I think I can kind of just wing. We are going to do early American history during Fall and Winter, and then pick up Story of the World to (which A will get for Christmas) to use from January on. I’m taking Early American History right now, so I’ll just use information from my text books and stuff from the LessonPathways site for history the first couple of months. We have a timeline up on the wall all ready and waiting!

Sooo anyway, I’m going to be giving everyone notice the week after my vacation I think. We love our daycare provider, so letting her know will be really hard. We are off to the library now!

Our sad little homeschooling area…

Ok. So far, this is what we have. It isn’t great, because I haven’t had much time to devote to making it mo’ betta. And yeah, the cat has totally shredded the side of that weird little green shelf. I refuse to throw it out. Don’t judge me.

… I plan to take out the kitchen set and move in our beloved tarantula Itsy Bitsy. The stand Itsy is on is a little smaller, and I think it will make the area look a little less crowded.

and just because….

That’s it, bedtime! Night people!

Homeschooling on a budget

Yeah, this is going to be us. I had a bunch of expensive curriculum picked out, and I dumped all of it. I’m going to have to do homeschooling on the SUPER cheap. I keep thinking about how maybe I should give it up and just keep working at the daycare, but I know I need to move on to something else now. I would love to some day have a little daycare or preschool program of my own, but if there’s any way I can get away from working in someone else’s, I need to try. I need to be able to do things my own way. I hate not feeling challenged, and I feel bored and frustrated all day at work. So I need to pick either the money, or my emotional health and general well being. And of course what I think is best for the girls- especially Audrey, who has improved socially and academically over the last year we have been homeschooling.

Ok, getting off topic here. Anyway, this blog will hopefully be a place where I can post ideas for other homeschoolers who are working with a tight budget. Or just blabber them to myself (I do like hearing myself talk). I’m actually sitting in a hotel in Yakima now (Fawna is getting married- congrats Fawna!), or I would post some pictures of our homeschool area. Some day I’ll get to that. What we did was basically set up the little dining area of our apartment with a table, and then we have a shelf (for art supplies) and a random cabinet type thing (for school supplies) set up to hold stuff ( I like parenthesis). Its usually a huge mess. Anyway, that’s everything for now. I’m off to go spend my night fighting for my little chunk of bed. Ah, the joys of sharing a queen size bed with a 6 year old who sleeps sideways and a baby who sweats like a full grown man!

Testing, testing…

Just checking to see that my weird blogging Windows program will publish this thing to the web!

Under Construction

I'll be posting here, but this will be under construction as I wrap up my last couple of months at work and have more time to work on it!