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!