School Time?!?! Torcher Time?!?!

School has NOT been going great for us Jonathan is amazing when its hands on and then its stall-city in his head. I promise you his eyes light up when its something like an experiment or ANYTHING that he gets to use his hands on but bring out a worksheet and the kids eyes glaze over with a wall of defense. He stubs up and will take [no kidding] an hour to get a math sheet done of simple math problems that I know should only take him 15 minutes on his worst day but bring out the math game we made up where you jump in the answer and have to do something silly when you get there [more on this later] and he is jumping for joy asking for more. So we have been looking at our options on different learning styles and right now we are doing a inbetween [We call it McKinneyStyle] version of traditional and unschooling. That means its things that interest him but hes not just running around all day playing with matchbox cars and we call it school [If you have the ability to do this kudos to you! I just cant get past the part of my brain that sees traditional school as learning] so instead we are doing things that I know he will learn from but no paper work [or every little. we havent done any paper work this week] which means, games [board or ds], computer, tv and reading [the things he doesnt mind to do and will do without being ask twice] and we are going to continue doing our journal. We are still doing "school" for hours each day but things that should last 30 minutes are actually taking 30 minutes or LESS. We are all much happier this way so as long as its working we are gonna stick with it. Any suggestions on what I could do to add more FUN to our learning? He's in second grade if that matters.

Busy busy busy,....

Thats what explains me the last few weeks and honestly its starting to get to me. Im trying so hard to keep the house perfectly clean, keep the kids happy and get our work done and its starting to drag on me. Im gonna have to tweak our schedule some. I plan on trying to clean the house at night right before we hit the bed then when we get up the house will be clean. Aside from my personal stress level going up simply because I dont like dirt everything has been going great. I havent been posting much have I do have pictures and such that I need to write and share with you all and I will. When I get the extra time but right now extra time is not something I have much of and when I do Im in the shower. I am "just" a SAHM but I cant believe how busy I stay!

I am starting to plan out our United States notebook that we will be starting in a few weeks like I needed to add something else to do to my plate but its all for the education of my son so I am not complaining.

This week...

Had been going okay [if you dont count our horrible Monday where we was in school for literally all day because Jonathan didnt want to do his lessons.] then it sbeen great. Possibly its because after Mondays episode me and Jon both had a talk with Jonathan and let him know school is NOT an option one way or another he has to get an education. So he's been doing better. Today was a very good day. It was Wacky Wednesday so we made a tornado in a bottle and he really enjoyed that.

Week One was....

Great. It went perfectly. Though it was a introductory week. Next week will be the real test. It will be the first week of actual school that includes all our subjects and more than 4 hours of school. We shall see. One thing I do need to do is find Lily more things to do during school. Shes not happy with her small amount of work each day so I need to add more. She is really enjoying it even more than I thought. Yesterday she cried because we didnt have "ghoul" =) I hope she keeps her passion for learning.

Heres a picture of my sweet girl from Monday when we was playing with pudding paint :)

Wacky Wednesday

You are probably wondering what the heck that means. lol Its a thing that I made up for Jonathan to do every Wednesday in school [obviously] its something FUN never paperwork or any other "boring" school thing, Wacky Wednesday can be art, experiments, cooking or anything else that we decide to do. Since this is just introductory week I wasnt planning on doing anything but then I thought better of it and we made oven smores and they was really good. We also had a math test to show what he will need more help on. He found out he needs to be polished up a little more on subtraction and fact families but all in good time. Now on to pictures of our smores!

Day One. Smooth as silk :)

Yup. Day one went amazingly I couldnt have ask for a better day. J was attentive the entire time. He even raised his hand when he wanted to ask a question [obviously not something I taught him, its something he's picked up from playing school with his cousins] if everyday goes as good as today I will be an extremely happy momma. Of course Im not expecting that but still day one was great! I cant wait to watch them grow and blossom in their education this year. I have a really good feeling about this year.

Getting our ducks in a row.

I cant believe school starts on Monday! We are all ready to go, we went today and bought Jonathan his own desk and set it up  in the dining/learning room. I put it together as well all by myself. [and I didnt even have any leftover screws :) ] I've never done the 2 kids schooling thing so Im hoping that goes well we shall see. I have the learning room all ready to go as well. :) Now to start our [pre]preschool and second grade learning journey.

Ignore the "bareness" around the white board. On Monday Jonathan will be completing a collage to add to the left side and the right side will have Lilys information. 

Eeek. The new school year is almost here.

I cant believe it! Im even more excited then I was last year. Last year being the "newb" that I was. We mainly did it all by the book and needless to say Jonathan [whom Ive already introduced as a kinetic learner] was a bit bored and some days [errr make that most days unless we was doing something fun] was a bit sluggish but not this year. No No. NOOOO! This year we are all about fun learning that means tons of games, crafts and hands on. We have a little bit of hands on almost everyday so hopefully that will keep him on track. I also thought i would share a copy of our "schedule" that we will be following this year. It is as follows:
*note*
Will not be putting a “time” on things due to the fact that some things will last longer than I can plan and learning should not be rushed.  Follow things in this order.  School will start at 8 am.

• Pledge of Allegiance

• Start School [Journal time]

• 15 Minutes of  Reading. Individually

• Language Arts

• Spelling

• Breakfast

• Daily Special [Wacky Wednesday, Skills For Life, Art, etc.]

• Reading

• Math

• 20 Minute play break

• 15 minutes of group reading followed by dicuss and picture drawing of what we read today.

• Science

• Social Studies

Sprucing up the classroom.

Last night I decided it would be good to add a bit more color to the classroom. So we went to hobby lobby today and bought a 2 pack of canvases [for a whooping price of 5.99] and let me kids have at it painting what ever they wanted Jonathan paints a space shuttle and Lily just done her 2 year old thing. Both came out beautiful and are now adding color and beauty to our wall :)

On Your Mark.....

Within a mere two weeks we will starting school and since we just bought our house in February we  I, set up the dining room as a make shift classroom [which means I hung stuff on the walls and made it "look" like a classroom] all by myself because Ive been asking and hes always too busy or doing something else so I done it my self. But heres a picture of our classroom "wall".

About Us.

TEACHER/MOM:
That's me. Toni [or better known around here as Mom] I am "too young" to be even worrying about schooling my kids but God rules all and so I have a sweet [but can be obnoxious] 7.5 year old son named Jonathan,  a very independent [but sometimes too lazy to do it herself] almost 3 year old named Lily and a spunky [can throw tantrums like you wouldn't believe] almost 15 month old named Wendy. As you can tell Im a pretty busy person by I wouldn't change it for anything in this world. I know lots of people say that but I honestly mean it. Im married to Jon was was always dead set on homeschooling and he passed on that passion to Jonathan and so here I am. Homeschooling. While I was "planning" on sending them to elementary I had no desires for them to go to Middle school and definitely not High school. I know I cant shelter them from the bad things in life but I dont have to throw them to the sharks either.
STUDENTS/KIDS:
Jonathan.
Jonathan is 7 years old [Birthday in December] and has a passion for science. He loves hands on projects. As soon as he has seen too many worksheets [which is anything over 3] His eyes glaze over and you can tell he's had enough. So this year Im adding as much hands on as possible to try to help him be more interactive with what he needs to do. Im adding in lots of art, cooking, and just anything that he can have fun with while learning. Jonathan is a kinetic learner so he needs that hands on or he simply cant learn as well.

Lily.
Lily is 2 [3 in September] and I am starting her this year. Mainly fun things but also stuff to learn as well. She has a passion for anything chocolate [but thats beside the point] she loves to talk and color. So we will see how it goes. if its too much for her we will move it all to next year but shes a very smart kid so I think she can do it.

Wendy.
Wendy is not even a "student" yet just a kid. :) But I couldn't leave her out. Shes the one that will have me running after her every 5 minutes this year during lessons making it harder for us to get anything done. And doing it while she naps will not be an option because she naps 45 minutes a day if we are lucky and we need hours to get the work done. But we get it done :) She just wants to make sure we still know shes around.