Showing posts with label Homeschool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homeschool. Show all posts

Friday, September 20, 2013

15 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Mess With A Homeschool Mom

As most of you know, we are homeschooling our granddaughter.  Haylee is now doing 1st grade.

I keep reading it's pretty typical of most homeschool parents that some days are hair pulling, nerves crunching, fingernail nibbling, neck tightening, wondering what the heck you are doing, kind of days.

Others, you wouldn't trade the world for the moment you are going through right at that instant. 

Those are the moments you sooo look forward to and that make it all worthwhile.  

The moment you show her a shortcut of stacking two double digit numbers and adding the columns together and she thinks I'm magic and amazing.  :D

And at the same time that little light bulb glows very brightly as she totally got what you just did.  Woo Hoo!

Other great moments are when she completely amazes Gramps when she explains something new and totally unexpected, and he is completely amazed that she knows and understands and is also able to explain.  

Also for the moments that my very patient hubby comes in and yet again, I haven't gotten much of anything accomplished for the day except staying in one room all day long working with lessons, and hair not even finished and not even sure if I have totally dressed for the day.

When I, myself feeling a bit overwhelmed that not much of anything has been accomplished in the household maintenance/care all week, except maybe the minute or two that half of the dishwasher has been unloaded and now can't decide if it's clean or dirty.  :P)
Ya know, the kind of days when I have to stop and think if I did or didn't have a shower today. 

But on those days I bet I could tell you our layout and order we worked our lesson plan for the day and probably which pages we even read, along with percentages of plans finished and how many to go before the end of the week since I have turned OCD on homeschool routine from household things. :/

Yesterday was one of the wonderful, I was told I was amazing days with DGD, (darlin' granddaughter) and then a change of attitudes that leads to today's hair pulling & graying, neck wrenching, counting to who knows what number while mumbling a quick "more patience please, Lord, kind of day.

Which it was all I could do to keep trying to be as patient as possible just to make it through a few of the lessons and try to re-vamp for the afternoon.  
That was during a run to the library for a required book needed yesterday, and run a couple of quick errands including refueling the cow juice.  (I swear it would be easier to milk a cow on a daily basis to keep up with the milk usage around here.  lol!)

So after reading all of this rambling - my point is, when I ran across this article on Facebook, 
after a "challenging" kind of day (my fav word - challenging!), I got a huge kick 
out of this.  

Although, we only have one to homeschool when others have more than one in more than one grade, I would have even more of the less hair turning gray.  (make sense? not sure of that one.  lol!  it's that kind of day.)  And I'm teaching. Bahaha!


Thanks to homeschooldiaries.com for a great and entertaining article.  
Definitely the highlight of this 
wild 
and 
crazy kind of day.  :)


Here is the article I was originally writing about. 


Here are 15 reasons why you should never mess with a homeschool mom:

1.  She has a laminator and knows how to use it.
2.  She often mumbles to herself, and claims she’s having a parent-teacher conference. Some may perceive this as craziness, to the homeschool mom, it’s normal.
3.  She can juggle a meal, fold clothes, and teach a spelling lesson, all while holding a baby on her hip. You may even call her a multi-tasker. {Gasp}
4.  She’s protective of her kids, to the point of psychotic. Urban legend claims the termmama-bear originated from the homeschool mom. Research is pending.
5.  She’s got moves like Jagger. Runs from room to room, putting out fires, or even starting a few of her own.
6.  She’s wise beyond years, constantly studying, researching and growing, to keep ahead of her brood of youngins.
7.  She’s not afraid to wear PJs after 10 a.m. or yoga pants ALL. DAY. LONG.
8.  She almost never calls in sick.
9.  She makes a list and checks it twice, or three and four times depending on how Type Ashe is.
10. She’ll go toe-to-toe with any stranger who questions in the wrong tone or before she’s had a second cup of coffee – “What about socialization?”
11. She stares algebra in the eye and makes y run from x. She will later tell a bad math joke –Dear Algebra, stop asking us to locate your X, she’s never coming back. {Insert evil laugh}
12. She’s been known to cancel school and declare a sun day, instead of a snow day, just because she can.
13. She handles dead animals and bugs with ease, all in the name of science.
14. She’s not afraid to face the Warden of Words (the librarian) to square up on late fees.
15. She won’t claim harassment when the ‘principal‘ pats her on the booty.
Why do you think a homeschool mom is a force to be reckoned with?

Link for this is:

15 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Mess With A Homeschool Mom

Friday, August 23, 2013


Ran across another great list of "Brain Break" ideas for kids.  

(Still looking for some for hubbies out there.  hehehe!)


Thanks to minds in bloom for another great article.  :)

Link is:

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Helping young ones grasp 24 hr time

I have been working with Haylee lately with telling time.
She is doing a super job with figuring it out, but it's so tough for 
young ones to truly grasp what 24 hrs of time really is.

I just happen to be surfing on Pinterest (which is my normal past time :)  
I saw a post on a time lapse ruler.  WOW!

The link lead to a pay for website, which I try to avoid so did a little googling 
- and boom - there it is - a type of ruler that has a 24 hr period 
on it with noon and midnight as reference points.  

LOVE IT!!!

photo.JPG

So instantly printed it out and highlited here and there and drew on a sun at noon 
and a moon for midnight, cut it out - laminated it with clear contact paper 
(which is awesome - I use it on everything.)
Can't wait for the next "time" lesson and I think this is going t help so very much!

Here is the printable link if you want to try it out too.

Click on it and save to desktop.  Then print and cut.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Big day for our lil Haylee Bug



It's been quite some time since I have written much personal on here.  
I have been spending time working on price matching/couponing.  

Started a new facebook page to be able to communicate with others 
about sales, matchups, etc.  Totally loving that.

That's in addition to the normal typical daily adventures to handle like 
married, house to run, 6 yr old to do homeschooling with.  
Along with my mom who has definite dementia and has to be
tended to pretty consistantly.  Oh and two small dogs that are a 
handful in many ways.  
So some days - altogether, it seems like I have 5+ kids.  :P

Guess I do stay a bit busy and ever since we decided, for many reasons,
to homeschool Haylee, there are many days I wonder if I am 
enough to be able to fulfill all the requirements of taking on this
huge responsibility.  Especially those days that the world is flying 
by at warp speed trying to keep all the little fires of life under control.  
The kind of days that nothing seems to get done - especially anything really notable in the actual school area.

I have made sure not to rush at all with all the little steps of each 
vowel sound, number - etc.  We have strictly followed the  one 
lesson at a time approach no matter how boring it seemed to be 
to myself and to Haylee.  I would liven it up as much as possible, 
(sometimes almost standing on my head, 
but still,  lesson after lesson, review each and every sound - short 
and long vowels, all the letters and finally combinations thereof.  
It can be very challenging to try to stick to one lesson at a time, 
when you could rush them, but I set my mind to not doing that.
Not skipping the little things to rush to the goal of this or that
then having to backtrack to re-learn some little things later.

I do add in lots of little things to mix up a school day as Haylee is
such a bright girl full of way too much energy to set still for very 
long, with the highlights of her day is to give me the toughest time 
possible, and if something doesn't entertain her very well, she is distracted so easily.  

I think writing is her toughest thing so far.  To have to actully set 
in a chair, somewhat still, not on it - under it or hanging off of it, 
and have to focus on writing 
this and that, well, some days - she's as much under the desk as
she is at it.  lol!!  So, what the heck, sometimes I just 
crawl in the floor with her and we change course and try something
else for a bit.  

I have discovered that is another fabulous thing about homeschooling 
from my own ongoing experiences, is to move at your own paces.  
If something is a bit tough, work on that a bit longer, by reviewing 
and trying another approach before heading on to the next
which in, what we call "big school", there are so many children at 
so many levels, all struggling at times to try to keep up where if
it's not working for us, stop to take a break for the day and pick up
where we left off and continue the next day.

Well, the last few days, we have been advancing nicely on the number 
of sight words she can rattle off faster and faster.  Now the lessons
are actually having us put words together a little more and a little more.

Yesterday Haylee was astonished when she read a full sentence I had
written on the dry erase board without hesitation.  Her eyes were like
the biggest diamonds ever.  

I don't think the most awarded poet in the world could have put 
that moment into words for her or for myself.

In that moment I saw her experience that once in a lifetime feeling 
of finally being able to do something effortlessly that she has wanted 
to do so fiercely for as long as her little self can remember.

So, today I had her get out her Leap Frog Tag reader - you know, the
ones with the pen that reads the words for the child.  It's been a while
since she had it out.  We have a set of books that have each vowel 
in short sounds.  I had her set down with it, and said if she gets stuck
and just cannot get that word, then use the pen to tell her the word.

Before she knew it, she had only gotten stuck a couple of times, and breezed
right through the 13 page book.  Totally mezmerized by now that she
had actually read the book all by herself.  She was jumping up and down
repeating  -  "I just read that book ALL by myself.  All by myself.  
All by myself!!" while doing a serious version of a happy dance.

That is one of the small HUGE moments that spending all this time
on all the little things all so very much worth it.  The moment you 
are teaching your child something that others usually do.  
It's so much like the moment that they take their very first step, 
you so much want to NOT miss that moment.  Well, I got to be
a part of it, that I hope to never forget.  That feeling of success for a child. 

This child has asked, seems like daily, for months, maybe a year or two, - when can I read by myself?

I saw for myself that if I had any doubts before - I don't any longer because - Moments like that is truely what it's really all about!!!  


Even if tomorrow we had to end being able to homeschool,  
I was still able to share one of her biggest moments, come to life.


Talk about all the little bits and pieces of ups and downs craziness and 
myself doubting that I should even be doing this on some days- all 
leading to a splendor of a look in a 6 yr old's eyes.  

Even though I have never been considered the "mushy" type very 
often - This was one of those moments that quickly brought on 
goosebumps and tears of excitement right along with our sweet 
lil' Haylee Bug.  

Talk about a feeling so very humbled and honored, to have the ability
to work with a child at home, while needing to be home so much 
of the time for other reasons such as my mom. 

It all can be tough, challenging, stressful, creative, silly acting, mind 
boggeling, laughter along with tears at times, to never know what 
the next minute will hold kind of experience that is a true and precious 
honor, even that much more, when you have the moments of yesterday 
and today to see just how as one is declining in knowledge and 
ability day by day - then on the other hand you see one blossom more and more with each passing day.




** (later on in the evening)  
I think Larry and I have heard that one little book not once but many
dozens of times.  lol!  I think she even took the book to bed with her
along with tooth #5 that the "tooth fairy" will need to collect after 
posting this.  lol!  

I do know that we have one extremely proud little lady probably
dreaming of reading all kinds of books tonight.