getting organized, slowly but surely

By -
Starting to get organized for the coming school year. I just got an email that the student planners for the kids are now available at franklin covey, so those will be ordered soon. They have 3 different levels for the kids. An elementary, a middle school and a high school planner. the older selections being more detailed while the younger ones are getting them prepared and used to keeping track of their work, etc. We used them last year with the kids (although I did drop the ball later in the year when I got crazy busy), so I need to make sure we keep up on them for the school year. It really helped my ADHD/dyslexic kiddo to see what was on her schedule each day/week/month and keep track of how she was doing on things so she could visibly see an improvement in area's like reading where she struggles. It helps with executive functioning as well, and learning to keep track of what needs to be done, what you'd like to get done and what is just "extra" and learn to prioritize things. Another thing I do is have each kid with their own colored file folders and workbox to keep things that are loose and in progress in so they can just grab what they need, open it and go.

I've pulled everything I already have at home for the coming year and have put them in the shorter shelves so I don't have to comb thru the larger shelves looking for this or that. each subject has it's own shelf (or two, depending on the subject!). The list for school supplies is being drawn up and thankfully there isn't much we absolutely need this year so keeping it under $40 shouldn't be to hard.

We have a new tent for some camping trips coming up. We have a smaller 4-5 person tent but with all the kids and our equipment and a couple of trips where we are sharing a tent we needed a larger one. So..we picked up a 9 person tent again (our old one was 15 years old and starting to look worn).

We've been busy with field trips, learning about geology, geography etc. in Oregon (you can read up on the field trips on the kids blog ( https://lb2dadventures.blogspot.com ). We have 2 more camping trips coming up in just a couple of weeks. This one Daddy gets to stay home while the kids and I are out with some friends, the one after that he gets to join us again. After that it's a fast trip for me and the kids to Utah to pick up their Puppies!

Gryphon:


and Emily (Eme for short):


after that its just a few day trips around Oregon and Southern Washington, then a trip to the Redwoods! So much going on!!

So far the kids have plans for their marine science group, doing 4H with the puppies (as well as archery and one other area..but I've lost count at this point!), enrichment days and lots of interesting studies and projects for the year. I'm switching some things around again this year to see how it goes..even after so many years of homeschooling each year needs to be tweaked a little as things expand and interests change.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Change can be good....

By -
And we are doing a lot of it! We are switching charter schools this summer and it's been an interesting  process to switch from the first that pretty much let us "unschooling" for three years we were there, to the new school which wants a lot more information, and an actual "plan" for each of the kids. All three kids will be in the new school together. There are some big advantages to the new school. $2000 per child per year to help buy curriculum, memberships. outside classes/lessons, field trips, etc. (but again, a lot more reporting). So the older kids got to make a lot of fun decisions on what they wanted to do this year. I started by breaking down the year into 3 sections and filling out what classes they wanted to do after I had their list. I keep having to remind them they don't have to do "all the things" in one year but they are so excited I'm going to have to see how it goes once they actually start the classes. They'll be doing...
Read more

Back to school, sort of.

By -
Image
After we got home from our camping trip, we had Oma and Opa come to visit for a couple of weeks. The kids always love seeing them and not a LOT of school got done..because..well, life happens. We started slowly with a few things here and there but didn't hit our full schedule until the end of September/First full week of October. Most of our new stuff arrived for the year. So it was fun looking thru everything! For our social studies/geography/culture studies the kids picked out a few different books. We are still working on some of our books from last year so this was just rounding out a few areas. Then of course they have the "country club" that meets every other week and we have each "student" and/or their family present a different country (they get to choose) and generally have a small talk about the country, do a project, get to taste some yummy food from each country and then the kids go out and play for 20 minutes or so afterwards. Some of the oth...
Read more

Weekly update

By -
Image
What a week! Monday was the ODFW fieldtrip to feed Elk at Jewell Meadows, then up to discover 2 waterfalls, play at Fort Stevens (since Fort Clatsop was down for the government shutdown), dinner in Tillamook, spent a night in Garibaldi and then headed home on Tuesday. Friday was Seaside Aquarium and SNOW on the way there! Ended up taking home a different route to avoid the snow and it took 4.5 hours! WOW!! With us being home and gone all week today is a clean house, catch up on stuff, and maybe a game for family game night tonight but not a long Dungeon and Dragons game. I started a Women's group for exploring the outdoors in Oregon with weekly walks (no kids!) and mom and me monday hikes for moms/kids or if you don't mind kids and want some nice easy starter hikes. The kids are all excited about the 52 hike challenge and want to make sure they get all 52 hikes in! Next week is a bit quieter thankfully, we are all pretty tired from this week!
Read more