I also love to organize, and love finding new ways to become better organized.

With 6 kids in a house full of stuff our homeschool things can get lost in the shuffle. If we don’t stay organized we can spend a lot of our time looking for misplaced textbooks, pencils, assignments, etc. We have had days where it seemed like we spent more time looking for materials than actually learning. Keeping organized is especially important when, like us, you might not have a specific homeschool room. We keep the majority of our materials in our formal dining room. We also do the bulk of our learning in that area. The kids do their school work in different areas of the house other than the dining room. They just find a place that is quiet and comfortable, it could be their bedrooms, living room, kitchen or even the back porch. If they leave their things in all the places they work, things can get lost in a hurry.

I thought I would share with you some of the ways we keep things in order and how I hold on to a little of my sanity. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to find something you are looking for!

First of all we try to have a “place for everything so everything can have it’s place”. We try to remind the children to put their thing in their place as soon as they are finished with it. Especially if we “catch them”! We also have scheduled ( 5-10 minute) quick clean up times through the day.

For each child’s textbooks we have “cubbies”. Which is basically our fancy word for shelf. Each child has their own shelf for things that are specifically theirs. I even have one for myself.

We have hundreds of books. To keep them easily accessible, I try to shelf them in order of topic. For instance, all the reference books go on a shelf, science takes up a couple, first readers take up one. It makes it much easier for the kids to find what they are looking for that way. To train them to re-shelf the books, I gave each child a fun, decorated paint stirrer with their name written on. When they took a book out to read they would put the stick in the mark where it went. When they were done they could replace the book easily.

To keep up with history materials: I have a shelf on the bookshelf that is just for the books we use for history. For the books that we are currently reading, I have a little stack of books on the end of the dining table. That way the kids don’t have to search all over the shelf for the assigned reading.

We also keep our bibles handy in the same spot. That way they are at arms reach all throughout the day.

We check out at least 50 books a week from our local library. With the amount of books we have, library books can get mixed in quite easily. And with the amount of books we borrow, the fines could add up if we are not diligent about keeping them separate. When we go to the library, each child has a backpack for the books they choose. This backpack hangs on the back of their chair. Once we get home, we have a special box that they put the library’s books in when they are done reading them. That way, the books are either in their backpack if they haven’t been read or if they want to read them again to renew or in the box to return.

I keep fun preschool things in the nearby living room. That way my preschooler can play and learn close by without distracting the big kids learning…too much.

I would love to hear some of your tips/tricks!

We are so excited about adding a new baby to our family this summer. It seems like perfect timing as far as staying on track with our lessons without it all being too stressful. It also made me wonder how other homeschool moms do it all during the summer. Do you school year round? Do you choose just a few things to keep the kids fresh? Or do you use your summer to just have fun? What do you do when you are expecting a new baby?

Generally we homeschool year round. Instead of taking a long summer break we usually take frequent breaks during the year, it helps us prevent burn out. But since this summer we are expecting a new baby , I have been thinking that it would be good to take a little more of a break. We aren’t going to completely stop doing lessons. Every summer we do a math facts memorization and refresher course and I feel like the kids math skills would slip without it. We don’t do any other math. We just focus on facts. We do flashcards and math minutes and online games to help reinforce it all. The other thing we would like to do this summer is an intensive geography course. We use The Story of the World as our main history/ geography curriculum but the kids have shown a huge interest in learning the geography of the world. We figured summer would be a good time to pause from our regular curriculum and do this. I haven’t found anything that fits what I am looking for so I am going to develop my own (which I will be sharing on here) using books that I like and blank maps. The kids are begging to continue doing science so we are thinking about letting them do the Switched on Schoolhouse program for that. We will stop lessons a couple weeks before the baby is born and then continue them once everything has settled down. Our regular school schedule will start in early August.

I have been encouraging the kids to work extra hard to complete this year’s curriculum before the summer begins. I also needed enough time before the baby gets here to plan for next year. We have planned our spring break as an 8 day trip to Disneyland as our last “family of 7″ trip. Talk about motivation!

Chances are that if you are raising a large family you might be feeling like there is no way you can “get it all done”, especially if your children are still very young. In the days when we had four kids five and under the age of five we had not yet learned the importance of time management. Life was somewhat chaotic and felt very hectic and rushed. I somehow managed to keep my home somewhat in order, thanks mostly to my need for some kind of control. I didn’t feel like I had much control over many things in my life, but I could have control over how clean and tidy my home was. But I was always causing us to be late, for doctors and dentist appointments that I would later have to pay a fee for missing, parties that if we actually made it on time for that we would be without a gift, and thanks to my poor organization we were always late for church, missing homeschool field trips and activities, sports and music lessons….its exhausting just to think about.  There were so many times that I would accept invitations to events that I would later forget about and miss entirely or just be too worn out to attend because I was so tired and frustrated from trying to keep it all together. I realized that I was just chronically disorganized. I finally decided that I was going to have to pull myself together or I was going to lose my sanity. I was tired of losing money for missing appointments and having to apologize for being late or without a gift, or worst of all disappointing my kids and my husband and making excuses for myself. I was tired of being that mom. It was time to sink or swim.

I tried a lot of different organizational tools for trying to keep my family in smooth running order. Some of them worked and some of them didn’t. Here are a few of the things that help me to keep our family on track. Hang on to your seats, this just may change your life.

Tip # 1.  Use the calendar program on your phone to set appointments. Set it for weekly events like sports practices and music lessons. Set alarms to remind yourself about the event. I usually set two or three of them, actually. The first alarm is set if there is something that needs to be done to prepare in advance like getting a gift or wrapping or preparing a dish to take. I usually try to get that done at least one day in advance. I set a second alarm that will give me enough advance warning time before the event to get the entire family ready to get out the door. The third alarm tells me that we need to be heading out of the door. It is always a good idea to use a mapping program ahead of time if you are not sure of where or how long it will take to get to your destination.  The program I use also has a section for notes where I put an address of the destination and a phone number, that way I can program my car’s GPS without having to search for the address and have a number to call if I get lost.  *Just a note- I am a Mac user and use the ICal program that syncs perfectly with my IPhone. Apple even has this thing called mobile me. I can make changes to my calendar on my phone or my computer and they update each other instantly and automatically without having to hook up any cables to sync or anything. Its like magic. It IS magic.

Also, always refer to your calendar before you make any commitments, even if you don’t think you have anything going on that day. You may find you have forgotten something or just see that you have a lot of things on the schedule that week and need to have family time.

Tip # 2. It is a good idea to choose the times of day you will homeschool that works for your family. Some families work better in the morning and some like to have their days free and to work in the evening. We work better and tend to stay on track when we start in the mornings. I got to a point to where even though we were getting all of our school work done, I felt like we weren’t getting all the other things we needed to get done around the house. We needed to create a more detailed schedule but I didn’t really know where to start. The one tool that has helped me to create a realistic schedule is a book called Managers of their homes: A practical guide to daily scheduling for Christian home-school families. Right away after implementing my new MOTH schedule we felt like we were getting more done. We each have goals for the day. The kids love that they can look and see what they should be doing and what time they can expect to not have something expected of them. Even if we don’t stay perfectly on time with our schedule, we still follow the schedule.

Time management is such an important lesson for us as parents to learn and for us to teach our children. Managing our time wisely makes it easy to set and reach goals giving us a sense of accomplishment and pride in our ability to keep our word. We are able to make it on time to where we need to be when we need to be there with what we need to be prepared. And we have more time to play and relax.

One of the things that I love the most about homeschooling is that I get to choose when we take a break. I wish I could do the same for housework and chores…When I am planning for the school year I usually have set times for us to take breaks from homeschooling. Usually holidays and annual trips we like to take. But I also allow for times when we just need to chill. Now is one of those times.

Our next scheduled break is not until the first week of December. We have been nonstop working since the second week of September. That is 11 weeks straight without a break even for sickness (we have been healthy since the H1N1 in early Sept.) . It doesn’t seem like it has been that long but we hit a brick wall last Monday. In fact, the whole week felt like Monday over and over and over again. By the end of the week I was begging for mercy. This week has been only sightly better signaling to me that it was time be be slackers for a bit.( shall I mention that morning sickness finally struck this morning?) Yes, homeschool and slackers are not something you often see together. But guess what!? You should! At least every now and then. The last two years have been the best for us as a homeschool family. We are finally finding what works for us and what doesn’t. We have finally pieced together a “perfect” curriculum. And we have learned that is OK to take a break. Yes, it is OK to be a slacker when you need to. Otherwise, if you try to power through the rough patches every time, you are going to find yourself frustrated and discouraged. You are going to find yourself envying every other homeschool mom who seems to “have it all together” and you are going to start beating yourself up about it. Believe me. At some point almost every year, I find myself thinking that there is no way I will do this another year. Yep, I just did say that. If you can find one homeschool mom that doesn’t say she has thought the same thing at some point she must be  lying a saint.

But let me share with you how to avoid that trap. Take a break. If you are having a few hard days in a row and the kids don’t want to cooperate, take a break. I am not telling you to do it every time. Sometimes you will just have to power through it. But sometimes you need to take a break for yourself. Maybe it is a day or two or maybe even a week. Take the time to regroup, check your curriculum choices and pray about the situation. Look for sources of encouragement. Maybe you could change things around to make the day go more smoothly. Do you need to be better organized or prepared? Maybe the curriculum you have chosen doesn’t fit your child’s learning style and they are struggling and frustrated. Maybe you could just drop something for now and pick it back up later. You know, you can do that! And sometimes you will figure out that those kids are just rebelling or being disobedient and you have to get a handle on that before you can move forward.

You set the tone for your homeschool. Let me say that again. You set the tone for your homeschool. If you are frustrated, discouraged and unhappy with the way that things are going, guess what. Your kids are going to be too. So if you want a truly productive, peaceful homeschool experience sometimes being a slacker is what it takes.

So next week, while we are still going to be doing a little school for the most part we are just going to take it easy. I have found about this little thing called lapbooking. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you should check it out. I found a little Thanksgiving lapbook template over at A Journey Through Learning. The kids are just going to work on that because it is fun and they don’t really think of it as school. (but it is) And we are going to start our Thanksgiving preparations in the kitchen. Homemade cranberry sauce, rolls…maybe even make some butter.

Our motto is : work first and than play harder.

Congratulations suburbangranola.com You won the blog contest ” “Rose Book of Bible Charts, Maps, and Time Lines”

Please email me your address so I can ship.
I was in shock for a minute. Seriously. I cannot believe that I actually won something.  Take a look at what I won! I just can’t wait to get it and start using it in our lessons. I am sure it will get a lot of use from my 5 kids.

I love the Heart of Wisdom website. Robin is a super smart, homeschool savvy lady with a heart for God. She has some great stuff on there. Robin has all kids of stuff on teaching methods, freebies, homeschool helps and my new favorite, lapbooks. So head on over and check out http://heartofwisdom.com. I am sure you will like it too!

We have used a computer based curriculum by Alpha Omega called Switched on Schoolhouse. I was very excited about getting it and really liked it for the first couple of months we used it. It did everything for me. It teaches the lesson, keeps up with the time the kids are actually working and even keeps the grades. You hear that? It grades for you! It seemed to be so simple and wonderful. I was picturing myself watching t.v and eating bon bons being able to keep a spotless house while the kids dutifully did their school work. Ok, not really.. but you know what I mean. I really thought it would help simplify a large portion of the homeschool process.  Have I mentioned that I really like trying new things?

So we are using the program and I think everything is just dandy. Every once in a while, I would go on to the program and just check to see what the girl’s grades were looking like and I would ask what they had been learning about. Their grades always looked good but they never could tell me what they were learning about. Uh, oh. Red Flag. Then I started to worry.  The kids were always able to tell me or their dad about what they had been learning when I was teaching and doing our hands-on activities. I started to sit next to them while they worked to see why. It was *yawn totally uninteresting!! No wonder they couldn’t remember anything! After 15 minutes I was bored to tears.

After some serious thought about what I was going to do since I just dropped close to $1200 on this program that was going to essentially be a complete waste of money. I realized that Bible should be just that, sitting down with God’s word a real Bible in your hands talking face to face with your child about God, sharing your experiences and knowledge. There should be no substitutions.  Science is not nearly as fun on a screen as it is in real life. History was just..blah..on the computer when in fact history is fun and exciting and full of interesting stories and characters. The math worried me especially, it seemed to have no orderly sense at all. It was all over the place. My kids love to use the computer, they love learning games and “doing research” and they liked some parts SOS, just not that much. Definitely not enough to get them excited about what they were learning about or to keep their love of learning alive.

So we went back to our hands on approach to learning. The kids became excited about learning again and couldn’t stop talking about what we were doing. I was thrilled my children were thriving again. At the same time, I was quite sad. I have always struggled with keeping up with lesson planning, grading ( and reporting my grades on time) and I loved that SOS did it for me. I had to figure out a better way to keep up with that. I had to stop being so lazy laid back about it.

We do still use the computer for learning.

I have really had my eye on Power Speak French. It looks like a really good program to me. Maybe they will see this and send me one to review. I can hope. Right?

These are some of the programs that we use to enhance learning:

There is an award-winning drawing program called Tux Paint that you can download for free.  My kids also like to use it as a word processing program. They love when I let them write their reports with it.

The time tested Mavis Beacon Typing Tutor.

Math Facts in a Flash a great way to supplement learning of the math facts. It even has progress reports for each child.

We also have quite a few educational websites that we like to visit.

All sites are free unless noted otherwise.

For Teachers:

www.bakersbookstore.com This is my Usborne book store where you can get all those wonderful Usborne books everyone keeps recommending to you. Books on just about every topic for every age. Usborne internet linked books with safe sites for your kids. These are the best resource books you can have.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com The cost is $20 per year subscription. Enchanted learning has TONS of fun stuff for kids in the lower grades. You will want to have a great printer for all the things they have!

http://www.rainbowresource.com/index.php pretty much anything you need for homeschooling

http://www.col-ed.org/cur/math.html basic lesson plans done for you

http://www.abcteach.com/ over 5,000 free printables

Especially for Pre Schoolers:

http://www.youcanteach.com/

For Math:

http://themathworksheetsite.com make your own worksheets or use theirs

http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/math-drills-minute.html minute math drills

For Science:

http://www.weatherwizkids.com/index.htm weather related

http://www.answersincreation.org/geologylessons.htm geology related

http://www.tvakids.com/index.htm conservation

http://kids.discovery.com/ great site with tons of topics

http://www.howstuffworks.com/

For Reading:

http://www.starfall.com/ This is a fantastic site for beginning readers and up. Interesting and easy for even the youngest of children.

http://www.readinga-z.com a guided reading program with downloadable books.

For Geography/ History:

http://www.netstate.com/ U.S

Broad Topics:

http://www.si.edu/ The Smithsonian Institute

http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/ Time Magazine for Kids. Also has lesson plans for grades K-6.

If you own a website dedicated to the education of children and would like to have it on this list let me know.

If  this sounds like you maybe you would be interested in what we use in our homeschool:

Our first subject of every day is Bible. It really helps to set the tone for the rest of the day. Of course the main book we use for that is..the Bible. We use different translations. I think each of us has a different one. Primarily we like the KJV. Sometimes it is a little harder for the little ones to understand and they will read us the verse out of their “easy reader” Bibles.  I came across a topical reference guide  a couple of years ago called For Instruction in Righteousness and it has been indispensable. This has been by far our favorite way to study the bible as a family. We can sit down with the kids and talk about maybe what we see them struggling with or with something the kids may see us struggling with. All the verses we need are just laid out for us. This week for us the topic was shifting blame…I didn’t mean to…Daddy did it….It’s not my fault…He spilled the fish food….she flooded the toilet..I forgot….you didn’t give me enough time…it’s not my fault.. This book gives lots of verses 50 topics of sin such as this. I will write the verses we are going to look at that day on a note card and then they will write them on note cards of their own(just the book, chapter, and verse number). Then we will look up the verses and talk about what God is telling us. The verses For Instruction in Righteousness outlines tell what the Bible says will, or should, happen to a person who sins in this way, what the Bible likens the person who sins in this way to and how God blesses the person who resists indulging in this sin. There are enough verses that you could visit the topic for well over a week if you wished. We usually work on memorizing one or two of our favorite verses from the topic during the week or sometimes just memory verses from Bible classes at church. The kids really look forward to this every morning and so do I. There is no better way than to start out the day in God’s word with my children.

For Math we are using Math-U-See. I used Abeka, Saxon, Math Mammoth all without much success. I want math to be fun and not some daunting task that we just have to suffer through. I was looking for a program that was visual, interesting, easy to understand with clear instruction. Not to mention that the material had to be presented in a logical progression. I was looking for something that based on the child’s previous knowledge and builds on it and didn’t skip all over the place. Oh, and actually working on memorizing the math fact families in the program was an absolute must. Math U See was it.

This is our first year using it and we absolutely love it. My kids went from suffering through math to actually looking forward to and enjoying the subject. My oldest daughter who always had a hard time with math is finally breezing through. She is no longer in tears because she is frustrated that she just “can’t get it” because she is getting it! You start out the week by watching an instruction video that shows you how to teach the lesson to your child. Or you could be like me and just watch the video with your kids. Then for the rest of the week they work on the one skill that they learned in the video and test at the end. Its just that easy. The lessons are fairly short so if you have a child that has a short attention span or would be overwhelmed with 50 problems on a page this is great for them. My son is in the Primer level and sometimes there may be only 3 problems on a page and that is all he wants to do that day. On another day he may do a weeks worth of work.

The manipulatives they have are a great visual help without becoming a crutch. It really helps them to see what they are doing in the problems. My older kids might only use them for the first couple of problems and then they put them to the side. If they have trouble they can just pick them back up and figure out where they are going wrong.

Math U See even has an online worksheet generator just in case your child needs a little extra practice and online drills to help solidify the memorization of the fact families.

Compared to many other math programs we have tried, Math U See is also much more affordable affordable. I bought 4 levels this year and 2 sets of the manipulative blocks plus a set of the fraction manipulatives (which are awesome by the way) and it didn’t break the bank. Especially considering I will be able to reuse the teacher’s manuals and videos for the next child.

For Language Arts we are using a couple of different things. I am teaching my 5 year old son how to read with The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise. It is very slow going because he has no interest whatsoever in reading. And that is OK! He loves to be read to and loves to look at books and visit the library so it makes perfect sense that eventually he will want to read. I am almost sure of it. He and I also do a lesson every now and then in First Language Lessons also by Jessie Wise. He likes this a lot because it is ryming/games/ stories. I like them both because they are idiot proof. Seriously. You can’t mess it up. And it is fun. Jessie tells you exactly what you need to do and say and there is little to no prep work required. You just sit and spend time with your kid. And you can use both of these books for all of your children without buying another thing. Inexpensive and cost effective.  There are also no worksheets!! Yeah!

For the girls in 2nd, 4th, and 6th, grades we use Rod and Staff English. We have been using it for 3 years now. In my opinion it is the best English curriculum you can get. *Rod and Staff teaches grammar and mechanics (capitalization and punctuation) in a traditional way. You know like how your grandparents learned and knew more in 5th grade than we did in college. It takes a conservative approach in matters of usage. The lessons carry a Biblical tone and promote Christian virtues. Exercise sentences deal with a broad range of topics—Bible stories and concepts, Christian living, family life, and historical and scientific facts. The lessons are such that they get good practice in handwriting as well. To me it looked a little “dry”. But my girls love it. They love the little drawings of the Mennonite children and the bible characters that they are familiar with being someplace outside of their bible. I think it is wonderful that sometimes it even asks that they use their bible to find the answer. How is that for applying bible knowledge to real life?! My oldest loves the fun facts they throw in. We do not do an additional writing program, there is no need.  Any other writing they may do is in History and Science and book reports, along with journaling and writing letters. Did I mention it is dirt cheap? Don’t let the price fool you. It is a fantastic program.

Later to come in part 2 is what we use for:

Latin

Logic

Science

and in part 3:

History

Handwriting

Spelling

Do any of you use these programs? How many of you use the prepackaged curriculum? Do you just piece together different things like I do?

* as descripted on RodandStaffBooks.com

Ah, the dilemma…what to do with all that Halloween candy…besides eat it.

As soon as the kids get all of that candy home they will want to dump it all out into a huge pile and sort out what they like and discard what they don’t. The kids even like to make a game of trading.

Of course I don’t want my kids actually eating all that junk. 5 kids all hopped up on sugar and food coloring, no way!! I have been at a loss of what to do because I don’t want to be “that” mean mom that just takes away all that candy straight away. I used keep it around and dole out a piece or two every once in a while but then I noticed that one or two of the kids may have been sneaking it. It was a better idea just to get it out of the house or put it into storage until next season. If you have been trick-or-treating at my house you have probably gotten last years candy…

Really, I don’t  mind the kids eating a few pieces. To keep their minds off eating all the lovely sweets they have collected but still allow them to have fun with it, I devised this little activity. Ok, so I am sure I am not the first to come up with this idea..anyhow….

After the children have eaten a couple of their favorite pieces, I had them sort the remaining candy. They may sort it however they wish: by size, by color, by type- chocolate, hard, soft. My children all decided to sort by type.

Once the candy had been sorted the kids counted each pile and charted the numbers on a graph. I found this graph that I downloaded for free at abcteach.com.

You could even make your own graph that has a little more room and they could glue candy pieces or wrapper on something like this:

Juliana decided she didn’t have enough room so she stopped.  I may end up making a larger chart for my kindergarten aged son.

The kids got to have fun with all that candy they got and brushed up on some math skills at the same time. What do you do with all that leftover candy?

Much like the unschoolers, I have always encouraged my children to learn about the things that have piqued their interest. I have been trying to find a little more hands- on project type lessons. If they show interest in a specific topic, I do all I can to help them find out as much as we can about it.

For science, we are studying the planet Earth and built models with play-doh just for the fun of it.

My wiggly 5 year old boy who can spell his name but doesn’t want to learn to read was thrilled to make play-doh words.  He even spelled the word “bat” all by himself!

He got bored with building words very quickly and moved on to his own creations. He was especially proud of this:

Here we are sitting at the table working on History. We love History. The girls especially love their history time line notebooks, which is a new thing for us this year. They adore finding, coloring, cutting and pasting those little timeline figures into their own “scrapbook”.  They even drag it out to work on when they have a few spare minutes.

( and yes, this is what our dining room table looks like most of the day! We eat in the kitchen. )

Look at these precious hands working so hard.

My baby even wants in on the fun. Serious fun.

See? Loving it!

I love to learn. I want to make sure my children never lose their love of learning. All children are naturally inquisitive, they are born with the desire to learn. From the moment they are born, children have the natural instinct to learn and parents have the natural instinct to teach. As toddlers we sing them little songs, to walk, to tie their shoes. We introduce them to plah-doh, sand, books, games and all sorts of other types of fun stuff. As they get older we replace their fun stuff with books and worksheets and tests and reports and somehow if we are not careful, we start to squash their love of learning. It happens in schools every day. Children are fighting the system, they want to learn but they hate the way they are made to learn. They are failing miserably because their natural love of learning has been killed.

I refuse to do that to my children. Making sure they never lose their love of learning is more important to me than what or how much or what pace they learn.

When you love to learn you have fun and it is easy!

Because it is natural.

So take that. “school”

When we grew up and went to school
There were certain teachers who would hurt the children any way they could

A boring ready region upon anything we did exposing every weakness how the kid did bye the kid

Out in the middle of nowhere they were home at night with friends, psychopathic wads would flash down with a inches of their lives

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the class room
Teachers leave those kids alone
Hey, teachers! Leave those kids alone!

- Pink Floyd

p.s- I would love to hear from some of you unschoolers, and learn more about how and what you do with your kids!