Good Morning!!!!

Just wanted to say "Good Morning" to all of our fellow bloggers and any fellow readers, who drop by our blog to read my posts. It's been quite busy lately, and since we have been homeschooling.. things have been even busier around here. So far my son loves doing his schoolwork and really takes to doing is homework. I was not able to gain my 3 year-old son's interest in schoolwork.... I think with more time, he will come around and begin to want to do some learning as well.

We have spent a lot of time learning numbers, months, days of the week, alphabet, shapes, and phonics. We do lots of reading and I even found some things around the house that I could use to help make learning math and counting even funner. When I get time, I will post a picture of our math rocks, and a board game that I made. I wasn't sure if it was going to be a hit, but everyone loves to play it. It can be played using either 2 dice or a deck of playing cards, but is funner when played using the playing cards. The playing cards make it a bit funner for the children to recognize the numbers, and also to count the number of hearts, diamonds, clubs, or spades that are shown on the number cards.

We have done a lot of copy work and my son enjoys it very much, but... still trying to work on getting him used to writing his letters and words on the lined tablet paper. I had originally started each day's lessons with both the tracer letter pages and the traced letter on the tablet paper, but since I was seeing how frustrated it was making him I decided to only use the tracer pages for his letters and numbers for right now. In a few weeks, when he feels more comfortable, I will reintroduce the tablet pages again. I have also begun working on some homemade phonics pages that I have made. It's always a fun thing to be able to make custom worksheet and lessons.

We also use several different websites for practicing phonics and a few learning games. There are literally thousands of wonderful websites that offer lots of information that are sure to interest your child. I will also add some of those on here, when I get time to get caught back up. My plan to use the teacher book, is working although I'm still trying to better figure out a way to add in the grades. So far I have added my son's name on one line... then immediately under his name, I have written the word "homework". I write his classwork (daily) grades by his name, and then write the homework grades by the homework line. So far this has worked out fine, but my problem is having to sort each subject in the same way. The grade book is sort of confusing, but I feel in time I will find a solution that will work out well for us.

My system that I have decided to use for our binders works out well. I think towards the end of the school year, I may take the time to scan off all of my sons' work so that I won't have so much to have to worry about storing, as space is a main concern. Since we also have the possibility of moving to a smaller home in the next few months... space is really going to be tight, so I have to make really good use of all the space. I would not advise anyone to have a metal filing cabinet, unless they had it in a very safe area, because of the high risk of losing everything in it. We used to have one prior to an EF-5 tornado hitting our town in 2011..... let's just say that when were able to find it amongst the rubble of our home.... there wasn't very much in it. We had lost most of our valuable documents and personal papers. So this is why I have decided to just scan our work and just save it on a USB card or memory stick.

Since I keep my camera with my purse nearly all of the time, I don't really have to worry too much about anything happening with it. We keep a disaster preparedness bag, a.k.a "The Storm Bag" on stand-by should we ever have to seek shelter in a storm cellar. I just don't want to risk having to go through losing all documents like before. You will be very surprised at how it makes you feel, knowing that if something happened right at now, that the important things that you needed are all inside a tote bag or rolling suitcase... I always grab up our binders and stick inside the bag as well, so that way, we would atleast have most of our school stuff should something ever happen.

I was in Wal-mart a few days ago, and as I was walking down an aisle, I saw 2 boxes of sidewalk chalk on clearance for $0.50, so I got 2 of those. Then we ventured over to the double clearance aisle, and I came across some 4-pack pens for only $0.10 each.... since I use a lot of pens and there were red pens in the packs.. I couldn't resist. This was too good of a deal to pass by. We use the chalk for our double side chalk board and since I use red pens or red grading pencils for grading school work... the pens came in really handy. I do a lot of writing using pens, especially when I am doing genealogy work or writing up the rough drafts of our online auction listings.

I also plan to check back into the online gradebook.... That would also be another back up plan should something happen to anything files, papers, or gradebook. I'm always trying to think outside the box and be thrifty as possible when need be. If anyone happens to read my blog has any advice on anything concerned with homeschooling, organization of spaces.... well... pretty much anything, just always leave a comment. I will get back to you, just be patient.... our house is a 3-ring circus sometimes..... lol I always want to put up a bill-board in the yard that warns people on the way in... "EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED" Because around our home, nothing seems to go as planned and you never know what each day is going to bring.

I plan to share some of those as well once my time allows it. With so much to do each day, it's often hard for me to find enough quiet time to sit down for a few minutes and work on my blog.... it's a work-in-progress, but I have always loved to write. I know that I would never be able to write a book about my life, because it's not interesting.... I would however love to one day write a book about things that I have learned along the way..... so maybe one day... who knows...lol If there are any things in particular you would like to hear about or me to write about... just comment. I love to write... and it's always a great thing to write about a particular topic.... I know that I often write off-topic, but hey... when you have children and multi-task all the time.... that's just life's way of keeping you on your toes.... so I never know what I will be writing about.... lol

I appreciate very much any readers that we have and anyone who happens to venture by our blog. You're always welcome to comment or anything.... just make sure to keep it PG. :) If there are any other homeschool families out there that drop by, please feel free to leave a comment or any advice that you may have on your homeshcool experience. I look forward to hearing from our readers and viewers of our blog. If you ever have any questions, please feel free to ask....

Well... I'm going to cut this blog post for today off right here.... it's time to get busy with our school day. I've got a lot to get accomplished today.... so I'm praying that I get a lot of auction listings posted online today. Since our desktop is now back up and running, I've run behind on working on our auction listings. I work between 2 computers to get that task accomplished... lol With lots of coffee and motivation, I think that with God's help, I can get caught back up. I will work hard to make sure that it's not such a long time between blog posts on here. Don't worry is I don't post anything for a few days... I've not fallen off of the map... just been busy with life... lol I hope everyone has a great day and enjoys the rest of their morning. Take care and until next post...... May God bless!!