Summer Goals - Part 1

SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER!

That's right! Teach Academy has finished our first year of homeschooling! Just in time too! I have the kids signed up for some really fun summer camps! I will do a retrospective post later this summer about our first year. We also have some graduations this year, so I'll post that soon too!

I, myself, have quite a few things I want to get accomplished this summer. Here is the first part of my SUMMER GOALS list. I say first part because I am stealing borrowing an idea from my friend Bethany. She does a Summer Fun List (to see hers click here), of fun summer things their family is going to do. I read her post and I was inspired to do one with our kids. Thanks, Bethany!

So here is what I, personally, want to get accomplished this summer and I will post our one with the kids soon!

1. Finish a yearbook for the kids - I have been working very hard on it this week and am getting close to being done. We have yearbooks from all our years at parochial school and I didn't want the kids not to have one because we are homeschooling.

2. Organize my curriculum - I have to put away all of this year's books keeping it somehow labeled so I can find it again when the next child needs it. I haven't figured out a systems for that yet, and would love to hear what other homeschoolers do! I also have almost all of next year's curriculum. I bought most of it at a huge homeschool conference I attended this spring. I have one subject left to order (add that to my to do list), and I ordered my Catholic religion books this week. Funny side note, I switched companies this year and I had to ship them to my priest! They wouldn't let me ship them to a private home address! I guess the answer keys in teacher manuals of religion/ Theology books for grades Preschool, 2nd and 4th are hot on the black market???

3. Finish unpacking - um, little embarrassed to write that one. Tomorrow is June and later in June will be the one year anniversary of being in our new home. And yes, I still have boxes. Worse, I don't have a single picture hung! If you know me well, you know I am a photo addict! I love getting the kids pictures taken, taking them myself and covering my walls in them. Still, not a one is hung yet! And yes, it is driving me crazy.

4. Purchase Homeschool Tracker ONLINE. I am going to go tech-savvy and get the newest program that Homsechool Tracker offers. HSTOnline. I am intrigued by the idea of it updating itself whenever needed and excited by the fact that if my computer kicks the bucket I will still have all my info out in "the cloud." I am a big fan of organization and I am super excited that once I enter in all the kids subjects and sections that I can just pull from that master list weekly or monthly, whichever I choose, to do lesson plans. I first started researching programs because I used a paper book planner this year (My Well Planned Day), but I don't want to be digging for old lesson plan books when my kids each reach the year in school of an older sibling. I will post later in the summer how it is working for me.

5. Organize my homeschool area of my house - I went to IKEA and bought some of their TROFAST systems. I am excited to get them put together and organize, organize, organize!

H&H Assignment: Music Mondays in May - My Childhood

Week 4 of my blog group H&H friends challenge to one another - Music Mondays in May. I did mine in reverse order, so this last Music Monday in May post will be on my childhood.

When I was very little, I can remember my parents listening to music. A lot. My dad played records all the time. My music love for the 70's music must be from hearing it all the time as a kid (or being brainwashed, lol).

For this post, I have decided to highlight 3 songs, from 3 different artists, for 3 different people.

The first song is for me. This is a song I heard a lot growing up. It is the "Sweet Melissa" by the Allman Brothers:

Per my gals request, I have a photo this time. It's not a great photo as I couldn't get the scan of it loaded to the computer, so I went the lazy way and took a photo of a photo on my iPhone and let the cloud do the work, lol! This is me at age 3.

My second song is for my mom. One of her favorite artists is Carol King. I also love her because of my mom. This is one that I remember her liking and dare I say even signing ;-)

Finally, for my dad, I picked Jim Croce. Again, a great artist that I now love because my parent did. I picked "I've Got a Name:"

You can find my other weeks' posts here:

Week 3

Week 2

Week 1

Also, be sure to check out the posts of my fellow H&Hers here:

Carla

Laura 

Jen

Next month, our posts will be about FOOD! Yum!!

Dollar bin of education!

I am a big fan of Target. I LOVE shopping there! Today, in the dollar bin I found some great items for homeschooling, summer enrichment, or just for fun! Of course, I wanted to share my finds!
You can't beat the price- $1!

Looking at Nature Books

These are really neat. I got these with Zoe's K4 in mind to use as a supplemental. Again, each book was only $1.

There were also quite a few of these My World books. In the top photo, you can see a few social studies ones I picked up. I like this one on the food chain as a science supplemental book too.

This book is called Brilliant Reader, it is basically a log for books read with a little bit of Q/A for the child to fill out:

 I liked this book because it is not as labor intensive as a book report, but gives me the opportunity to see what they have read and what it was about. My kids also like to draw, so I like the draw a scene from the book part too! I think I will assign these weekly next year.

I will admit, I liked having the Accelerated Reader program when my kids were in traditional school. It was nice to have a pretty little printout that told me they understood the content of the book through the short quiz and kept track of how many words they read. Just FYI, last year Grace read over half-a-million words! It's pretty cool to see that on paper. She devours books even more this year, so I am sure she has easily read a million words this school year. Grace doesn't really like to journal on weird random topics I select, but I think she will really enjoy doing these as she gets to write and draw about the books she is enjoying.

H & H Assignment: Music Mondays in May - Falling in Love

This is post 3 of my blog group H & H: Homesteaders and Homeschoolers. For May, we decided to do Music Mondays in May. For this week, I decided to do the songs from when Brian and I met, dated and were married.

When we met:

We actually met at church! We met on August 15th, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. Since this is a Holy Day, it is an easy anniversary to remember. I don't have one particular song from that Mass, but really any songs about Mary could be selected here. I picked Ave Maria because it so beautiful:

When we were dating: 

Brad Paisley had just released his debut album and "We Danced" was one of the big songs. We actually saw him in concert in a tiny little town and at a fair both! I picked this song because I remember Brian asking me to dance to it DURING the concert. :)

When we were married:

Of course, for when we were married, I have to pick the song we first danced to as Mr. and Mrs.

It is one of my favorite songs for that very reason :-)

"I'll Still Be Loving You" by Restless Heart

You can read my other Music Monday in May posts here:

Week 1

Week 2

Check out my fellow H & H bloggers Music Monday in May posts here:

Laura at Where Love Starts

Jen at Cheshire Farm

Carla at Our Happy Chaos

Cian's trip to Eris

Cian journals daily as part of our homeschooling. Yesterday, his assignment was "IF I WERE AN ASTRONAUT.... "
I am sure he was super excited as he LOVES the planets and space! He loves to read about them and has a goal to make a model of them. (Summer project, perhaps?!)
Well, as you can see below, Cian wants to be the first astronaut to go to Eris. Huh? I thought. Eris?? No planet is called Eris, what is my boy talking about?? Okay, after a quick check of the mnemonic device: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pies (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and [back then] Pluto),  followed by an embarrassing google search by me, I discovered that Eris is a dwarf planet! Of course, I and everyone else heard about Pluto being demoted to a dwarf planet, but I totally missed this one completely! So, I'm glad to be learning alongside my little ones!
And yes, this is not the first time I have been schooled by my 6 year old, lol!

Music Mondays in May - Mother's Day

Okay, starting with a disclaimer, I DO know the days of the week. Last week I ended up with "Wait for It Wednesday" so why get it right now, lol. I am doing my music choice this week about motherhood and since today is Mother's Day, yep, I am posting my Music Mondays in May post on Sunday, Mother's Day. Sorry fellow H & H bloggers: Laura, Jen and Carla. I'll try to get it right (on Monday) next week. ;-)

Motherhood - as you probably guessed from last month's blog assignments of my homesteaders and homeschoolers blog assignments- I believe is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I cherish my children and am so humbled to get to be their mother. I wanted to pick a song for this week about my children. When Grace was born I had this great idea to make a video of her pictures and the "Isn't She Lovely" song by Stevie Wonder. Well, it didn't happen. So this is the perfect opportunity to pick and recognize a song that brought me to tears when holding my little baby Grace, our little "gift from God."
Yes, "We have been heaven blessed."

And to all FOUR of my loves, this other song is for you all. I have been so blessed to not have "my life's one miracle," but my life's FOUR miracles.

Thank you for these beautiful cards today:

From Zoe - age 4

From Cian - age 6

From Grace - age 9

Ellie's gift today was sleeping in until 7:15!

Thank you God for these beautiful children.

If I could hold you forever, I would. Just like a kangaroo can only hold her baby in her pouch while they are young, you are all growing way too fast for this sentimental momma! Always know though, I will hold you in my heart my whole life no matter how old you are.

For my children:

That's "Z" End

Zoe has made it through the entire Confessions of a Homeschooler Letter of the Week Preschool!

Since I use D'Nealian handwriting, I have supplemented the course with handwriting worksheets from other websites and workbooks. I also follow the D'Nealian suggested order of letter presentation which would have "z" as second to last. Well, since Zoe starts with "Z," I switched the last two and we ENDED WITH Z!

In addition to eating zebra cakes and an awesome field trip to the ZOO, here are some cute pics from this week:

Zebra Graphing from confessionsofahomeschooler.com

Zoe did them with a "Z" rubber stamp

Here it is!

Zoe in a Zoe shirt

(Notice the big shiner Zoe has in the picture. She took on the corner of the kitchen counter.... I think it won. It gets even better, she had her dance recital that night! Ugg!, shiner in all the pics!)

Zoe books we read this week

Zoe liked that this one's title was "Zoe's Z Book" for Zoe's "Z" week!

Another fine motor activity

Our finished Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree!

You might notice a couple kiddos spelled their name on the tree. ;-)