Backpacking - My New Organizational System

Random image of backpacks to keep Anna happy and to introduce my post.
(of which Jessica forgot to give credit so I will have to chastise her anyways :P-Anna)

Many of us have already started our new school year.  Some of you took pictures to commemorate the
moment. Some of you bought your kids school supplies, clothes, and new backpacks. 

I went to Target.  I bought some school supplies and a backpack for each of my children.  In that backpack I put the following: Crayons, scissors, glue, colored pencils, number 2 pencils, a big eraser, a red pen, a box of washable markers, a notebook, a journal, and a folder.

I have it broken down like this:

My oldest is 12 and in 6/7th grade (I am combining the years).
In her backpack is the aforementioned supplies, plus her books - Math U See, Easy Grammar, Real Science 4 Kids textbook and lab book, and whatever reading assignment she has (currently an Encyclopedia Brown book).
Every week I make the copies of her work from her Easy Grammar Book and mark the day I want her to work it, and put that in her folder.

She works the MUS at her own pace, doing at least one worksheet a day.  She has been flying through this book and in 4 weeks of school has completed 10 units. WOOP!
Anyway, she also has her list of prepositions and her list of helping verbs in her notebook, where she keeps her notes. She has also written out her times tables, measurement conversions (inches to feet, pints to quarts, etc), and notes about other math things that may sometimes give her trouble.

She has to journal a few sentences everyday.  Nothing major, I just check for completion.

Quin's Backpack and the Contents

My two 2nd graders have the supplies I got for them and their Math U See workbooks, their Real Science 4 Kids lab books and their current Explode the Code workbook. They also have their journal, their spiral bound notebook, and a folder.
The folder has not been used for anything yet, but it is there if I need it.  They draw pictures in their journal. The notebook is where they practice their names and any letters or numbers that I want them to work on.

My K-4 baby has her Math U See workbook and her ETC workbook, plus all the supplies the others have.  She has a folder but nothing is in it yet.  She also has a journal and a spiral notebook.  The spiral notebook is where she practices writing her name. She draws pictures in her journal.

Our Complete Setup - All Four Kids' Backpacks and my Teacher Box

I have a small box that contains my planner, the teacher's manuals and DVD's for the MUS, Beks' Explode the Code, Mystery of History book, the RS4K's teacher's manuals, folder for each child that holds a page of ideas for each of them & completed work I want to hold on to, the box of Bob Books we are currently working on, the book I am working on reading with all of them, the MUS blocks, and a pack of construction paper. I am considering getting a rolling bag of some kind so I can make this system ultra portable.

In the mornings, I tell all the kids to grab their backpacks and I grab my box.  They have all their supplies they need. Pencils, paper, workbooks, crayons, etc.  No more hunting down glue sticks or markers.  No more hunting down the MUS DVD's.  They are not allowed to open their backpacks out side of the kitchen, where we do school, ever.  Never, never, never.  When they get done with their work, they put all their stuff back and put the backpack in the designated spot in the schoolroom.

The benefits have been numerous.  If we want to do school elsewhere, we just grab the backpacks and I get the box and we are off!
No more looking for misplaced books or supplies.
It has been particularly good for my ADHD child, to have all her stuff in one spot.
The kids had a grand time picking out their backpacks!

I love this method!  I have been really surprised at how well this works for us. :)

On the Go Planner Review and Well Planned Day Sweepstakes!

Every year about this time I start my search for a new purse sized planner. I know, I know, my fancy pants i-phone has all sorts of planner options and aps, but I remember by writing. Besides, there is just something more fun about crossing off days until an event.

I have reviewed The Well Planned Day before and it definitely ranks among my favorite homeschool planners, so this year I was very excited to get my hands on one of the Well Planned Day On the Go personal planners!

I suppose you could go up to Wal-mart and find any number of boring functional planners for a bit less than the On the Go that retails for right around $15, but who wants boring? This planner is more than functional. The first thing you notice is the eye catching cover which is just beautiful. It is something that I have come to expect from the Well Planned Day designers. In the front of the planner are several home management pages that cover everything from budgeting to your grocery list and house work. These are also throughout the planner. Of course, there are also monthly planner pages with plenty of space to take notes on activities and other important what-nots, but what I really like is that the planner doesn't just offer you a place to keep up with co-op classes and play dates. It offers encouragement, biblical encouragement. Each new month features and encouraging quote and at the beginning is a great encouraging piece written by Johnathan Edwards.

Besides offering The Well Planned Day teacher planner and the On the Go Planner, Well planned day also offers student planners for both younger and high school students. They have recently started offering downloadable planners as well!

Be sure to go take a look at the sneak peek of all of the Well Planned Day planners. I promise you will not be disappointed!

Now for the fun part! The Home Educating Family Publishing Company has offered me ONE (1) Well Planned Day Planner valued at $24.95 to give to one of my readers.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Why You SHOULD Compare Yourself to Others

I was browsing around on my personal Facebook page when I asked a question on a fellow bloggers site. She had mentioned that their schedule was more rigorous this year than in previous years. Having been interested in what constitutes a "rigorous" school year for a few months now I asked her what she thought made it rigorous because I was curious to see if our schedule would be what she considered rigorous. My mistake was that I used the dreaded "c word"...compare.

I cannot even begin to count the number of blogs I have read telling me not to compare myself with other homeschool moms. But I am going to take this in the opposite direction. Follow me for a moment. What if there is nothing wrong with a little comparison? What if in fact it is even healthy to do this?

Let me do the ever popular blog list thing for you on why I think some comparing can be healthy:

1. It may help us to identify gaps that we didn't realize we had. I planned our school year down to the letter. I purchased the curriculum, put it in my planner and was very happy with what I had done. Then I went to read what others were doing. It all looked great! Except for one thing, I had completely forgotten to choose a handwriting program! It wasn't that I hadn't planned on doing it and reading someone elses choices made me think I had to. It was that I had planned on it and completely forgotten! I probably would have noticed it later on down the line but it sure was nice to catch it early on!

2. It may help us realize that we are over doing it. I know sometimes in my desire not to have the above mentioned "gaps" that I every now and then over do it. It is sometimes helpful to go read and compare what I am doing to what others are doing so that I can see when maybe I am doing just a tad too much.

3. It may introduce us to new products that we otherwise might have missed. I regularly compare our curriculum choices to others and I am so glad I do! I was recently introduced to Mystery of History through a friend. I had never heard of it before then and now it is one of my favorite curriculums!

4. I may help us see where we have strengths and weaknesses. I am going to admit it. I am lazy. I know, you look at my blog or my Facebook and you think, WHAT?! (at least I hope so haha!), but the truth is I struggle to maintain momentum sometimes and comparing myself to others helps me know when I am dropping the ball. You know how you tend to do better when you know you are being graded or when you see someone else doing better than you? Call it a little healthy one-sided competition. On the flip-side, I have compared myself to find out that I am just fine and that I need to stop panicking about things that really do not matter or that I have actually gotten right. I certainly don't go tell those people that I am "competing" with them, but I do find that doing a bit of comparison is encouraging to me.

Recently a few friends and I got together and started lamenting about our homes and the housework we hadn't been getting done. I am sitting in a clean house right now. Want to know why? Because we have been sending photos to each other comparing our homes. By seeing what my friends were able to do it let me know that I was hanging on to excuses about why I couldn't have a clean house and homeschool at the same time. I now know that I can get it done because they are. I am out of excuses.

You can compare without changing what you are doing or who you are, and there are definitely times when you should not compare yourself to others. If you find you are easily persuaded to change things simply based on what others are doing or if they go against your conscience for example. There are times when life changes your circumstances and things like this have to be taken into account of course. I would never suggest that you compare and change your convictions, curricula or character based on what others are doing, but I do think there can be a healthy side to comparison that is regularly over looked in the "Be Yourself" mantra.

So what are your thoughts? Is it ever a good thing to compare what you are doing to what others are doing?

Starting to Say Goodbye

I sold the formal dining room table today. We won't have space for it in the new house and needed the cash to pay for some of the small expenses that pop up when you build. As I sat in my empty formal dining room I had my first real emotional response to our big move, I cried.

You need to know that I am not a "things" person. That is, I don't get emotionally attached to things. I can easily purge and I don't feel the need to keep every thing my children have touched. Things are easily replaced and other than a few extra special items such as a few baby clothes (and by few I mean 2 maybe 3 items) and pictures, I am not truly attached to things. This is why my reaction surprises me so much. But as I sat there on a chair, which is also being sold, staring into the empty space that used to be filled with the dining table, I was suddenly overwhelmed with memories. We have only been in this house for 3 years, yet I was shocked at how many wonderful memories we had already made. While none of my children were born here, and in fact Brianna has moved 3 times in her 8 years, they did so some "growing up" here. Maybe the fact that I spend such an unusually large amount of time with my children has made the memories collect faster, maybe this move is different because instead of moving two streets over we are moving clear out of the city, maybe I have associated this house with being where my last baby learned to crawl, walk, talk, and is now a nearly 4 year old little boy, maybe I am having a fight with my vanity and am wondering if maybe I do really want a big fancy house. I don't know at the moment.

I remember hosting a House Party for Wii Just Dance. I will spare you the photos. I am sure my friends appreciate that too. Even as I type this the scene playing in my head makes me laugh out loud. I remember family holidays with my house packed with people, countdowns to Disney, fish frys, Grandma Shirley visiting from England,  summer days spent on the water slide outside, the two freak winters where we got a foot of snow and we spent hours outside building a snowman that a teen decided to decapitate.  I remember how excited I was when my husband painted our school room and when Brianna and Keira learned to ride their bikes on our street. I remember making fairy houses along the walking trail and surprise trips to the community park. I remember...

 Right now it is all becoming real and during random moments it seems to all catch up with me. But that is ok because I know this is right. I know this is where we are being led and I know that the new house will offer us memories and experiences and that one day I will be able to call it home.

List of Educational Documentaries

Picture Credit

Being a homeschool "activist" I love watching videos on education. It is incredibly interesting to get a peek into just how the system is run. As with all documentaries none of these are without some bias, but usually there is enough truth to make them well worth watching. Here are a few of my favorites. Be sure to check out Netflix if you  have a subscription. Many of these can be found there.

1. Waiting for Superman. Follows the story of five families trying to get into better schools (usually charters) through a lottery program. I highlights the pressures put on children to perform for standardized testing and entrance exams.

2. Children of Cesar. My personal favorite so far, Dr. Voddie Baucham addresses the topic of education and the Bible. It is basically a recorded sermon with some graphics, but Bro. Baucham is very easy to listen to, even for someone like me who usually doesn't care for audio or video sermons.

3. Indoctrination. Another Christian perspective on the damage the public school system is doing to our youth.

4. Race to Nowhere. This one hits mainly on the homework problem in the public school system. Is homework necessary and if so how much should each child have?

5. Teached. Controversy over teacher tenure and inequality in urban and minority areas is covered in this documentary.

Zumba - The Class that Makes You Want a Clinky Skirt

I was drug by my meanie friend/torturer/exercise-forcer-onner to the local YMCA for Zumba class.  She promised it was going to be fun.  I showed some hesitation, more for her benefit than mine, as she likes to feel like she has influence over people, so she basically told me that I had to have a broken limb to get out of going and told me that she would be picking me up at 5.  (I told you she was mean!)  After briefly toying with the idea of breaking one of my own fingers or something, I said ok.

Ok.

At a little after 5, she arrives and we leave to go Zumba.  Another friend was there for the torture Zumba class as well, and at 5:35 we entered into the chamber room.  There were several people there and I was pleased to see that everyone was not skinny and 5'9", well one lady was, but I will get to her in a minute.

We sat our things down in the corner of the room and stood, waiting for the instructor.  Suddenly, I hear my friend saying, "Girls, we have to move our stuff, because it is in SOMEONE ELSE'S SPOT."  Friend met someone meaner than her that announced our bags and bottles of water were encroaching upon her territory.  So, we moved our things a bit further down the wall.

Speaking of the walls, all the walls have mirrors from ceiling to floor.  Pfft.....  I have not seen that much of myself all at one like that since the last time I tried on clothes and had to stand in front of those three way mirror things.  Hmmm, I was with torturer/friend that time too.  I am seeing a pattern here.

Anyhoo, the instuctor walks in and the class gets started.  It was a cross between wiggling everything on your body that can possibly wiggle - ON PURPOSE I MIGHT ADD AND THE MORE IT WIGGLED, THE BETTER - and aerobics.  The instructor was very difficult to follow and midway through I was doing some sort of twisty butt thing and essentially broke my knee.  How did I manage that, you ask?  You have to do a twisty knee thing to do the twisty butt thing, or at least that is the only think I can figure out.

The tall skinny chick I mentioned earlier knew how to do all the twisty things and made them look easy and fun.  She was wearing this clinky skirt and made it jingle jangle in a way I would never be able to manage.  She was clinking with rythm.  I suspect that if I were to have the clinky skirt, the only reason it would make any cool clinky noises at all is because of all the wiggling the wiggly parts of me do without trying.

So my verdict for now?  It was not fun. But I was told that was because of this particular instructor and that I should not pass judgement without going to another class.

But, I will have one of those clinky skirts no matter what!

My new choice of grocery store wear!

Free Lesson Planning Pages from Around the Web

It is that time of year when the majority of homeschooling moms and some dads are getting busy. We have bought and sold curriculum and now have most of our "stuff" otherwise known as educational opportunities for our kids.  It is now time to clear the fog leftover from homeschool conventions and the heady scent of new curriculum.  We do this by planning.

You gather all your books and papers and laminated things and excitedly sit down.  A bouquet of freshly sharpened number twos grace the table next to your cup of hot whatever and your dominant hand.  You are sitting in a position that says, "I mean business, Y'all."  The only thing missing is a lesson planner.  You can buy one. There are lots of good ones. But, there are also those that are free.

Here are some favored links to free, create your own, lesson planners!

1. The first, and one of my favorite resources: Donna Young
2. This is a new one I have ran across, complicated looking, geared toward public schooling, but I know some homeschool moms will probably love it - Lesson planning in the cloud - LessonPlan.it
3. This one is a KISS (keep it simple stupid) - Super Teacher Worksheets (opens a PDF file)
4. Another KISS one that is all on one page from MeetPenny (opens a PDF file)
5. Here is one geared towards Catholics - But I am willing to bet a protestant could use it too...
6. This is cute for littler ones - Tot School
7. This is one for Five In A Row
8. A free one from Teachers Pay Teachers (A very nifty site, too!)
9. Beautiful pages from Notebooking Nook 
10. A free one from TeachingMy3 at Teachers Notebook

There you go. Ten awesome places to start.... I have to say I was VERY tempted by 9 and 10 and I already have a lesson planner.....

OH and one more thing, Anna says that the posts with more images gets more attention so here is a cute cartoon for you.