Circling Through This Life

It's Thursday!  Thankful Thursday and day 4 of the Back to School 5 Days of Encouragement Blog hop hosted by the Homeschool Review Crew! Today's post is simple and to the point. I am grateful for the Homeschool Review Crew.  I started as crew member in June 2010  which was the start of Year 3. I've been serving on the crew since then coming back for Year 4, the short transitional 2012 and continuing with 2013, 2014 and 2015.  In 2016 I stepped up into the role of Crew Leader. Through the Crew I have made some fabulous friends.  I've been introduced to vendors I never would have known about and tried products that I never knew i needed until I reviewed them. Money has been tight. Some years more tight than others.  God certainly used the Homeschool Review Crew to provide curriculum that I might not have been able to afford otherwise. Because of the Crew I've had a change to try different reading and math programs with Supergirl and really ge...

Today's theme for the Back to School 5 Days of Homeschool Encouragement  is Work It In Wednesday! Today I want to share about how homeschooling isn't just form of education but a way of life.  One of my big goals for home education was to instill a love of life long learning in my children.  Just because it isn't a school day or we are on vacation doesn't mean that education doesn't happen. We live in a state that requires instructional hours.  Something equivalent to 5.5 "instructional" hours a day for 180 days.  Thankfully my state recognizes that home education can be more efficient than classroom education in a public school. We tended to do 'year round' schooling taking breaks as life thew its punches.  During the summer we did more "fun" school like hands on science but my favorite thing about "homeschool as a lifestyle" is that going on vacation didn't mean a break from learning.  It meant a break from forma...

As I said earlier this week, we have tended towards a year-round/take-as-much-time as-we-need approach to home schooling when the girls were younger. There is just something about taking a least a couple of weeks off at the end of summer before beginning a new school year. We’re odd ducks here because I call it the first day of school and it is the start of a new school calendar but we might not actually be starting new curriculum. We might just be picking up where we left off. (For Turtlegirl, especially, we are not really starting anything new in September.)  But I want there to be something different.  Something special.  Something that marks the changing of one school year to another. One thing that I have always done was, to quote Turtlegirl, “pass out pretty new school supplies like new pencils and notebooks.  That’s always my favorite.”  BooBear remembers that back when we used Sonlight I would often save “Box Day,” the opening of the box with all the ...

**Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support!** For the last three days I’ve talked about planning. When I plan, I start with determining my school calendar and then I begin figuring out my course of study .  Yesterday I talked about types of planners . Since I’m working through our course of study I have lots of curriculum on my mind.  Because we get to review so much great stuff we often set aside a  program and then come back to it. Some of the curriculum listed is “in progress” and we want to finish it. Turtlegirl’s Course of Study Math:   She’ll finish up CTC Math Geometry and then go back to VideoText Algebra. She is nearly 1/2 way through both but might not finish both before the end of the year.  That’s OK. When all is said and done she’ll have 1 Credit Algebra 1 (already has that), 1 Credit Algebra 2 and 1 credit Geometry. English: We’ll start with High School Essay Intensive from Institute for Excellence in Wri...

**Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support!** I love planners.  A couple of weekends ago I was on a date with Honeybear and we stopped in an office supply store. He left me behind in the planner and office supply section.  He wandered over someplace else because he knew I had found a bit of my heaven. When I say planners I don’t just mean lesson planners or homeschool planners. I love home management planners and meal planners and plain calendar collections. I have digital planners, paper planners, planning software and even a planner based in Excel! Just last week I received the 7 Minute Life Daily Planner to review. (Look for the review Mid-September!) On Monday I talked about Planning: The School Calendar .  I use the School Year Calendar tool in Homeschool Tracker Plus (HST + )to create the school calendar. This is a downloadable software. Unfortunately, it is no longer being offered but Homeschool Tracker does offer Homeschool Tr...

**Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support!** Before I can make lesson plans or create assignment sheets I must know what we are actually studying. My two favorite planners for planning our courses is the Course of Study page from the TOS Schoolhouse Digital Planner . Did you know that if you purchase a membership to SchoolhouseTeachers.com you get access to all of the TOS Digital Planners ? I know I digress but tomorrow I’ll be talking more about the different planners available from The Old Schoolhouse . Yes, it’s a digital planner but what does that mean?  It means that it is a PDF. It is not software like Homeschool Tracker Plus or Homeschool Tracker Online. But the TOS Planners can be printed out or you can just type right into the planner. You can use the SAVE AS to create a planner for each of your children. When I first start to plan the courses I print out a copy for each of my students. This is like a scratch copy or rough draft. I ...

I am a planner.  I mean I like to have things planned out. I don’t have to be locked into the plans and the plans frequently change but I need to have structure. I need to have a frame or map to get me started.  As part of the Back to Homeschool Blog Hop I am doing a series of posts about planning.  What do I plan before we head Back to Homeschool: planning the calendar , planning our course of study , and using both paper and digital planners . When the girls were very small I didn’t stress too much about calendars. We have have always leaned more towards a year-round approach taking time off as needed. We would just start the next math book or the next level of whatever subject when we finished the first one. I did take the time to put in specific breaks such as federal holidays that Honeybear is off and scheduled breaks at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.  Our first day of School would be in late August or early September and we would aim to be finished by Me...

I’m participating in the Back to Homeschool Blog Hop next week. Join me each day as I write about planning and planners, sharing some of my favorite products and discussing 1st Day of School Traditions! Check out the products we’re giving away.  I’ve used many of these in my homeschool so feel free to post a question on my Facebook page , leave a question in the comments or just shoot me an email. I’d be happy to share my experience!   Several members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew have joined forces during our August Back to Homeschool Blog Hop to bring you these incredible giveaways, totaling more than $1300 in homeschool curriculum and PayPal cash!    Grand Prize Giveaway In the Grand Prize  Giveaway , someone will win $765 in curriculum , plus $150 in PayPal cash to help you finish up your homeschool shopping! You could win all of the following. Please click on the prize links to learn more about each product.  From Home School Adventure Co . -- ...

Some days the support system may simply be a good cup of tea and a chocolate truffle to help you get through the afternoon but in general I find it is essential for my home school to have multiple support systems . We started investigating home schooling in August of 1996.  Our oldest was a mere 14 months old.  She was, at the time, our only child.  But from that moment on I have had someone from the “real world” who home schooled. OK I wasn’t thinking much about home schooling and I may or may not have known real home schoolers from August 1997 until January 1998 when we were dealing with newborn twins, major open heart surgery, long hospital stay, and living someplace other than our home.  I’d be surprised if home schooling even entered my mind during those months! Those months required their own set of support systems but that’s a topic for another time. The internet with forums, email groups, and now social media has provided an enormous chunk of my support ov...

When teaching and learning are just part of your life like eating and breathing it is easy to incorporate little lessons in creative ways.  We have a running joke in our family that goes something like this “hey wait a minute today isn’t a school day.  STOP. We can’t learn.  STOP this school. “ followed by lots of laughter and more joking and teasing. Today for the 5 Days of Teaching Creatively we’re talking about Toys, Games, and Puzzles .  I don’t want to talk about the games or toys or even puzzles that are designed and intended to be used as part of school.  You know the ones: Alphabet Bingo,  Math Fact Concentration etc.  I want to talk about learning while playing games intended for entertainment.  Okay, some of the intended for entertainment games were purchased at home school conventions but they’re played for fun. My family loves games.  We are very much a board game family. We have certain days of the year that are just GAME DAY a...

I confess that when I think of “school in the kitchen” I have an image of my daughters sitting at the kitchen counter filling out math worksheets or learning how to cook by helping me in the kitchen.  But d oing school in the kitchen doesn’t have to just mean cooking lessons. Today we’re doing talking about School In the Kitchen for the 5 Days of Teaching Creatively Blog Hop.   I confess that I don’t actually use cooking to try to teach math.  I mean it happens.  Cooking is a wonderful real life application when you are working with measurements.  But in my house school in the kitchen usually means science.  I do not claim to be creative at all.  When we do science related school in the kitchen, it’s generally because whatever science program we’re using has suggested an activity that uses kitchen stuff. (You’ll want to watch for my review of Supercharged Math in April.  The e-science program has lots and lots and lots of experiments and so many...

This week, instead of a one day blog cruise, the Schoolhouse Review Crew begins a 5 Day Blog Hop: 5 Days of Teaching Creatively.  Each day the Crew Bloggers will explore a different aspect of Teaching Creatively. Today’s topic is Delight Directed Teaching . “Delight Directed Learning.” is a term that I’ve seen around in home education circles. I don’t know what the official meaning of that phrase is nor do I know what others mean when they use it but I want to share what it means to me and how I use the “delights” of my children to choose curriculum or to teach concepts that I want them to learn. A term that I’ve heard in the past that more accurately describes our homeschool might be “parent-directed; student led” learning.  My husband and I have certain requirements for our homeschool.  One them is literature study.  I want each of my daughters to know how to read literature critically and be able to respond to literature.  How does that look when you apply...

With Thanksgiving just two weeks and 2 days away my family has begun to list suggestions for Thanksgiving Dinner.  Supergirl, my developmentally disabled daughter has a strong opinion of what needs to be served for Thanksgiving: Pickles, carrots (carrots???), cranberries, and stuffing.  “Lots of stuffing,” she tells me, “because it’s my favorite.” Today is Day 2  of the Preparing for the Holidays Blog Hop hosted by the Schoolhouse Review Crew.  Today’s topic:  Cooking, of course! First let’s chat about Thanksgiving.  We have a nearly set menu for Thanksgiving: a combo of traditions from his family, my family, and traditions we’ve started as our family. We start our Thanksgiving morning with some type of breakfast roll: Cinnamon, Carmel, or some variation.  I’d love to brag about how they are homemade and made from freshly ground wheat but they’re not.  They come from a can.  We only make them once a year so I don’t worry too much abou...

Halloween is over, Thanksgiving is  2 1/2  weeks away and Christmas is just around the corner.  Many people are preparing for the holidays or at least thinking about preparing for the holidays.  The Schoolhouse Review Crew is hosting a 5 Day Blog Hop:  Preparing for the Holidays: Day 1 is Decorating.   I don’t just want to talk about Decorating for Christmas because I don’t just celebrate Christmas.  I celebrate Thanksgiving, St Nicholas Day, Christmas,  New Year’s Day, and Theophany.  Grab a cup of hot cocoa, or spiced cider, or hot tea, something that puts you in the mood for fall/winter festivities as we take a stroll through my decorating traditions from late October though January 6. For me the start of the decorating season begins a day or two or three before Halloween.  As I said in a previous post , I don’t really decorate for Halloween.  I do, however, like to decorate for fall.  I love the colors and I love th...