Home Education Week: Profiles

Dana at Principled Discovery is hosting a week's worth of writing prompts and real world activities to celebrate Home Education Week. Today we are sharing profiles of our homeschooling families.

My oldest son is about to graduate from the public high school, after being homeschooled from 4th through 8th grades. (Exactly where does the time go??) He is duel-enrolled in a local trade school where he has been taking graphic design classes, and will take tests soon to earn certificates of completion for those courses. He is going to my alma mater in the fall! I am so excited and can't wait to give him a tour of the campus...I am not sure he knows me as anyone but "mom", kwim? Not as a young college student lol. He enjoys sports, surfing and fishing (and to my dismay, suntanning.)

Ds2 is 12yo (embarks on the teenage years this summer...sigh...) and is in 7th grade. He has been homeschooled from the start. He is our most outgoing boy. He is funny and sweet and quite artistic. He wants to either work as an artist at Disney or produce his own cartoon series. He enjoys swimming, biking, skateboarding and visiting with all his friends and cousins.

Ds3 is 7yo and in 1st grade. He is my "typical boy" lol. He is the first to endure a broken bone (his elbow, from getting his foot trapped on a backpack strap.) He wants to be part of whatever his older brothers are up to. He is a lego fanatic and his dream came true this year when we visited the Legoland shop at Walt Disney World...his two favorite things in one spot lol. While all my kids love Disney World, he is youngest to go on the "big rides" with his dad. He enjoys making home movies with the camcorder and his lego figures and making Christmas lists on the computer all year long.

Ds4 is 3yo and quite attatched to me. He calls me his "bestest friend." I wasn't planning on doing any formal school work with him this early, but when we started this school year he insisted on joining in. We are doing the Letter of the Week and BFIAR programs with him, and he also listens in on ds3's reading lessons. He has a growing collection of "meow meows" (stuffed kitty cats) and books...he loves to be read to!

Let's see, me...well, I am 40yo, enjoy reading, cooking and reading about cooking, and being with my wonderful family. I have a "thing" for cats...right now we have three, my Katy who is black with green eyes and the "queen" of the kitties, Smokey, ds1's cat who is a calico version of his teenage owner, and Winnie, ds3's kitten, a beautiful white/grey kitty with the most gorgeous blue eyes ever. I enjoy reading blogs and meeting fellow homeschool moms via the internet.

The first photo is of me and ds1...we are both soaking wet after riding Kali River Rapids at Animal Kingdom. The second photo is me, dh and the little boys...don't they all look thrilled? lol Yep, they love posing for pics with their parents. I enjoyed sharing about our homeschooling family and look forward to visiting with everyone else. Happy Home Education Week!

Julie

Home Education Week: Looking Back

Dana at Principled Discovery is hosting Home Education Week from March 30-April 5. Everyday there will be a writing prompt and a real world activity to help "bring the deserved appreciation to homeschooling." I think this sounds like lots of fun and am excited about joining in. Today's topic is Looking Back; Share your personal history…before you were a home educator. What was life like? Think about things you miss and things you and your family have gained.

Well, dh and I were newly engaged, he was entering Air Force bootcamp, and I was a junior in college working for my degree in English. We had planned on getting married after I graduated, but his first assignment turned out to be England...we got married while he was on leave between school and going overseas and I followed him over 3 months later. Ds1 was born 2 years later, still in England. After completing dh's tour we came home and I finished my degree with my toddler in tow. Ds2 arrived shortly after I graduated and I dived head-long into blessed Mommyhood. We reluctantly enrolled ds1 in a public kindergarten which happened to be 30 minutes away from our house...the school and our home were on opposite sides of the district, but both still in the same district. The experience was awful! He had a wonderful and experienced teacher, but a class full of children who had little home support and came so unprepared that many could not only not write their own names but not even recognize them on paper. Only one other parent besides me ever showed up to help out in the classroom. Dh and I continued to "teach" ds1 in the evenings at home...just informal reading and writing lessons.

We decided to enroll him in the private school that dh and I had both attended as children. Unfortunately that meant I had to work evenings to pay the tuition. This actually worked out well for two years...I was home during the day to drive ds to and from school, help out in the classroom, and take care of ds2 and we made ends meet with my evening earnings. Then in third grade ds1 began bringing home C's. I know that there is nothing wrong with that, but when we are working so hard to send him to this school, I want him to come away from it with the best education he can. We had meetings with his teacher and she assured us all was well, and still he came home with poor grades. We found out the teacher was using some strange methods in the classroom, such as using only handouts and no textbook for math. We also had some "run-ins" with the administration over some of their policies. We were anguished for most of that year until we began researching the notion of homeschooling. I can't even remember where we got the idea, but I attended a seminar given by the school board about it and we decided to dive in. We haven't looked back since lol.

Every day when I see reports about the troubles our local schools are having I thank the Lord that we made that decision and have been blessed enough to follow through with homeschooling for 9 years now. Ds1 is now 18 and will graduate high school this May. Ds2 is 12 and in 7th grade. Ds3 is 7 and in 1st grade and ds4 is 3 and already doing preschool work. I really enjoy the lesson planning and seeing our children every day (although it would be nice to get to go to the bathroom alone every once in a while lol.) Our family is close, our children are thriving and I am still loving every minute of this blessed Mommyhood. My life as wife and mommy didn't start out exactly as planned, but I can't imagine it any other way.

Our real world activity today is to make an e-card to celebrate our Home Education Week. Looks like a lot of fun! Can't wait to visit everyone's post and get to know you all better.

Julie

Looking out the window to the past...

After seeing Chrissy's (a.k.a. Mamasmurf) pictures of the view from her favorite windows, I had a flood of memories from when dh and I were first married. He was in the military and we were living in England. These pics are actually of our second house there, in a little town called Sawtry. We had a sliding glass door in the living room that led outside to the backyard. Behind our house there was a big field in front of the school. The first pic shows the view in the winter, the second shows me sitting in the living room with the window behind me, and the third shows the view in warmer weather. I know the pics are tiny, but they are from 1988 folks, and scanned...that's the best I could do. Oh, I hope someday we can take the kids over to see where we started our little family! Ds1 was born in England (though not at that house.) I think the base dh was stationed at has shut down, or at the very least is not a military institution any more. I am so thankful that we had that opportunity in our lives to live in another country.

Time Flies

We haven't done any schooling this week. I think I will get soooo much done, and yet...I get caught up doing all kinds of little things and before I know it it's lunchtime and then my day is pretty much taken up from there. I have been getting in some reading and really enjoyed the book I just finished...Family Baggage. This book had a little mystery, a little romance, some humor...just an all-around good read. Now I am in reading limbo lol. You know, when you are still savoring your last read and also trying to find something new to read that will, at the least, be as good as the last. I have the house pretty clean right now, laundry all caught up, wings in the crockpot for dinner...all I need is a good book!

I am going to spend some time this week getting this blog set up with all the little things I had on my HSB blog...the little meme buttons and such. And hopefully joining in on all the little memes again...I have missed "seeing" everyone. You know, I use these dots too much (...) and if I hit the "home" key instead of the "backspace" key one more time...(oops, there I go again lol.) How come I compose all these neat posts in my mind, and then when I sit down I just ramble? Hmmm. I blame age and hormones. Yep, that's it. Okay, off to play around on blogger some, figure things out, and wait for dinnertime.

Julie

I've Moved

I kind of disappeared from bloggy land for a while. I spent some time re-evaluating my schedule and how I spend my time. I didn't blog at all for a while, and really missed it. I get so many things from blogging...I learned that it's more than just a "time-killer" for me. I get craft ideas, schooling ideas, book suggestions, helpful links, recipes galore, and support and even friendship. When I tried to do some things to my blog at HSB I found that I was wasting time...loading pics and trying to change the appearance of my blog was frustrating and very time consuming. And to top it all off, I wound up deleting the blog...accidentally, but it's gone, nonetheless. I tried messing around here on Blogger and found that it is much easier for me to blog here. So for now, I am sticking around here. I hope to catch up with all my bloggy friends and post here as time allows. While I also enjoyed the new Homeschool Lounge site, I did decide to not participate over there anymore. Simply a time management thing, nothing against the site at all. So here is to a fresh start!

In Like A Lion

It has been quite windy the past few days. The temps have been moderate, though, even a little hot...the a.c. runs every once in a while. I have exercised every day this week...Monday a walking dvd, Tuesday the weight lifting part of Denise Austin, and today another walking dvd. Last night we had tator tot casserole and broccoli. I made some chocolate chip cookie bars...very good recipe from Allrecipes.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

INGREDIENTS
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon water
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS
In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars. Add eggs, vanilla and water; beat until smooth. Combine flour, baking soda and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well. Fold in chocolate chips and nuts. Pour into 13x9 baking pan and bake at 375 for 20 to 30 minutes.

Day One

Trying out a new place to journal about our adventures with homeschooling and raising our 4 boys. Just want a place to keep track of my life.