Journey to Excellence

We are only one week into our Journey for 2012/2013, but I think we have established a pretty good routine. 6:30 a.m. ~ Dawson and I get up. He jumps in the shower and I grab my coffee, Bible, devotional, and journal and sit down in my favorite chair for some quiet time. 7:00 a.m. ~ I get dressed and get Dawson some breakfast. 7:25 a.m. ~ Dawson and I drive the 4 blocks to my parents' so that he can catch his ride to school. My mom, dad, niece Rylee, Dawson, and I all sit on their front porch and wait for Rylee's friend to come pick them up. After they are gone we talk for a couple more minutes before my dad leaves for work and I head back home. (I am finding this to be precious time.) 8:00 a.m.~ I have to get home quick and get my bike, because my mom and her friend, Brenda, are coming down the street to get me. We ride our bikes to the community park and walk three miles. Then we ride back home. 9:00 a.m. ~ I am home and Brynne is usually just waking up. I get ...

I am FINALLY getting some pictures taken of the kids for our Back-to-School photos. We had our nature day at the park today, so I thought it would be a good backdrop. Little did I know that our little park would have a couple of brand new areas with beautiful foliage and flowers! Eli and Brynne are my homeschooled students this year. They are both in the 3rd grade. However, I have decided to kind of do a 2nd/3rd combination for this year for both of them, and a rigorous 3rd grade for them for next year. Brynne would be a super-young 2nd grader this year, but academically she is ready for all 3rd grade work. I'd like to slow her down a bit, though, so that she doesn't graduate from high school when she is 16. Eli was a slight bit behind last year because of birth-related neurological delays. Although he is very smart, he could certainly use a transition year before we blast forward. The two of them are 19 months apart in age, but are cognitively at about the same...

Where do you DO school? Some homeschools have designated classrooms (that are SO COOL, often times very color-coordinated and such). Some don't. We have done it all. When we started, I just knew we were "school ROOM" people. I like structure, consistency, order. And, I always wanted to be a school teacher when I was little, so I would get to have a teacher's desk. But I was surprised to learn that I hated being confined to that desk and that room. There was no creativity, freedom, fun. It was ... well ... school. Blech! So now we do school wherever we feel like it, with some exceptions. With moving into our new home, I had to put some thought into how we would do things. I just piggy-backed off what we have been doing that has been successful, and this is what I have come up with ... This is our dining room. It has the most light, the most room, and is central in our home. My desk is in the dining room. It is an antique teacher's desk (so I still...

It's time for the 4th Annual Not Back-to-School Blog Hop hosted by iHomeschool Network! This week's topic is Curriculum . Last week I eluded to our 3rd grade curriculum for the 2012/2013 school year. But this week I thought I would go into more detail about what we will be using. Although Eli is 8 1/2 and Brynne will be 7 on Wednesday, we are schooling both of them at the same grade level because of their cognitive skill levels. Bible: We will start each morning "stick figuring" through the Bible with Grapevine Studies "Level 3-4 Old Testament Overview". Each of the kids will keep a notebook to stick figure our Bible lessons. Grammar: We will continue where we left off last year with our Easy Grammar Daily Guided Teaching and Review for 2nd Grade . Spelling: We will use All About Spelling Level 1 , but will likely blast right through to Level 2 quickly. Copywork: We will do weekly copywork based on our current unit study. We ...

I am just absolutely exhausted after another full day of painting our new house, and grouting tile. Only three more days of hard work left to do before I go back to Oklahoma to start packing up for our move. I. am. so. tired. But, I just have to put in my two cents on today's topic on the Schoolhouse Review Crew Back to Homeschool Blog Hop . It's all about Co-op 's today. We joined our Co-op in Oklahoma right as we were starting our homeschooling journey with Brynne. I just knew it would be important for her to have a place to meet new friends. There are three different Co-ops in our town alone: one is an academic co-op, one is a social co-op, and one is a Classical Conversations group. Since I knew we would be doing lots of work at home, I was more interested in a social Co-op. So, we started attending on Friday mornings. The activities were ENDLESS! In fact, if we would have done every activity available, we would have never had time to do actual school work. Our ...

Where does our schooling take place? The Homeschool Classroom is today's topic at Schoolhouse Review Crew's Back to Homeschool Blog Hop . When I first started homeschooling two years ago, I transformed our upstairs playrooom into a schoolroom. Every morning we tromped upstairs for school. And that only lasted a couple of weeks. It was too sterile, boring, and dark. So, we moved one room over to the upstairs living area. It was much better and we spent a good deal of time there. Then slowly we found ourselves downstairs in the living room and kitchen the majority of the time. So, for the next year I closed down the schoolroom and moved all of our supplies to the downstairs hall closet. All of our schooling occurred on the couch, at the kitchen table, or at the breakfast bar. Occasionally Dawson ventured up to his room to do some work. Brynne and I sometimes sat out on the back porch, or she moved into the office to do some writing. Our intention for this year was to k...