So on top of our new homeschool adventures, which have kept me very busy, I have other new projects that have been keeping me busy too!
I seem to spend my saturdays lesson planning, grading, copying and getting everything ready for the upcoming week, and it really seems to take me 6-8 hours to do all of this each saturday, which is pretty much my entire day!! Maybe as I get the hang of it, I can get it down a few hours.....
Then with our new Life Church campus opening, we have jumped right in and started serving and getting involved. Alan, Bourbon & I serve every sunday at the 10am service and then we go to the 11:30am service. Then on Wednesdays I serve in Konnect, the youth group, with a group of 4th grade girls. Starla gets to go to her age class during that time, and the boys are in their own groups. So on Wednesdays we eat dinner there (pizza!) each week at 5:45pm, and then we are there until about 9pm.
Then we started our own Life group in our home. Which has only been meeting for 3 weeks so far, and we have had some people come one week and not the other 2, or 2 weeks and not the third, or come the last week, but in all, if all of the people who have come decide to stick with it, there are 35 of them! In my livingroom! A large number of those are kids, but that makes it even more chaotic. Lol. We had a large addition this week, with this couple who had 9 foster kids (6 of them from the same family, another set of brothers, and then a single boy. 8 boys, 1 girl, ranging in age from 12 to 9 months old (the girl is the baby!)) but a few months ago they went ahead and adopted them all!!! And we have actually "known" this couple for years, they lived across the street from us in our last house, and have been attending south side campus with us for a long time, but we didn't "really" know them, just in face and would wave and say hello. But a few weeks ago I asked her if she wanted to join our life group, and she said that with 9 kids they had never had luck finding a life group, and had been turned away a few times because people just couldn't accomodate them. And I think how sad is it that these wonderful people, who have a heart to not only take in 9 kids, but to then adopt them, can't have a life group because they have so many kids. So I convinced her to come. And this week they did. And it was loud, and crazy and chaotic, but the entire time I thought it was wonderful. :) Right now, the series we are doing at church is called "two gather" and it is all about getting plugged into life groups, and how we need to have a group of like-minded people to encourage, support and hold us accountable. Craig had stories about people who are hurt and the life group comes in with meals and helps, to someone getting really sick and not being able to work for a year and their life group all piched in and supported this family of 4 for an entire year, because that's what we are supposed to do, and I love that, and I want my life group to be like that, so if that means we have a house full of screaming crazy kids so that we can provide support and encouragement and love to this wonderful family, and every other family in our group, than so be it. :) we meet every sunday evening, so sundays stay pretty packed too.
Then also in addition to that I started the Hospitality ministry at the church, where we provide food for families who have had a death in the family, are sick, laid off, new baby, whatever. I now have a crew of about 6 people, and we have had about 6 families that have been referred to us for meals in the last 3 weeks, so I have been busy coordinating all those meals and making sure we get them all covered. Usually each family gets about 3 meals from 3 different people. I'm hoping to get more volunteers so my current ones don't get burned out and feel overburdened, so I have to work on that too. :)
Last week we had something going on every single night. Monday was Bourbon's counseling, tuesday was Starla's open house, Wed was Konnect, Thursday was a ladies event at church, friday Alan & the kids got me 2 tickets to see Gretchen Wilson in Clinton and I took Roman with me, Saturday we had a birthday party, and sunday we had church and life group. It was crazy. This week I've had lunch meetings about my hospitality ministry and then thursday we have a life group leaders dinner, where I will not only be attending as a life group leader, but as a community leader in charge of the hospitality group. :)
I am also trying to get together a project where a group of people go into the local rescue shelter once a month to host a "birthday" party of sorts for the kids in the shelter at that time. I want to come in with cupcakes, balloons, backpacks full of supplies for the kids, etc. I have found several businesses and lots of people who want to be involved with it, but am having a hard time getting a hold of the actual rescue mission to figure out if it is something we can even do! So it has been slow going.
Then of course I have Starla's & Bourbon's birthday parties in the next few weeks, which involves lots of party planning and decorating. :)
Life is busy. And I know I am awful at taking on way too much at a time and getting stretched thin, but I can't even help it.
I feel so blessed to be able to use my gifts and talents to give back and serve others. So I think I am right where I need to be.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
School days...school days...
We are into our third week of homeschool and so far we have all survived. :)
Although there have been days that I wasn't sure we would. :)
I think last week the novelty of homeschool wore off for Roman, and he was no longer excited, or cooperative, with the whole process. He is already very distractable anyways, and loves to make noises and hit his pencil or tap his foot on things, which drives Bourbon nuts, but there were a couple of days that he did it just to annoy us I think. And he refused to answer anything, I would ask him something and he would just say "I don't know" and not even try, and then get so frustrated and upset when I pushed and prodded for an answer. There were 2 days of this; thursday & friday. I was so happy the weekend finally came. :)
But so far this week he has been fine, so maybe he just needed a break.
We are still trying to find what works best for us. I've tried strict scheduling, and lax scheduling, and really we have found that some days we need to stay on a strict schedule and some days we need a more lax environment.
I try to stop myself from pushing the "school" day mentality, the one as an educator I have been taught, the one my kids know from being in school, where we follow a strict schedule, and all subjects must be taught in a day, and we must have some sort of paper work to do. But it is an adjustment. There are some days I plan way too much for us the get done, and then there are days I find I haven't planned enough. But my whole point in homeschooling them is to get away from those ideas, so I am trying hard to break free of what "school" needs to be. I really do believe that kids learn by doing and by using their own natural curiosity and trying to find out answers on their own through investigating, and not through reading about something and then being told what the answers are. So I am trying to plan our lessons based on that, but that teacher in me has a hrd time getting away from "But we HAVE to have a math lesson today!" and "Well, they really need to reveiw these language arts skills by doing all of these workbook pages."
So we are learning, all of us. :) But it is fun and so far I love it and feel really blessed that we get to do it.
Right now we are deep into our bird unit, learning all we can about different birds. We are going to my parents house this weekend and my dad is going to help the boys build birdhouses, and we have different birdfeeders we are going to make, and a bird bath. We are going to set up a little bird haven on the side of our house right outside our window so we can watch them. We are going to take pictures of all the different birds that we can and look them up in our oklahoma birds field guide and learn what they are, and what birds like to eat what food.
And we are learning about the different types of rocks and minerals, and will be doing some fun hands on experiments this week with food to help the boys understand how the different types of rocks are formed.
I find that I seem to gravitate to science and social studies themes alot. :)
But they do the online math lesson each day through the Kahn Academy, so they are getting that.
And I make them read, and we do lots of writing and oral reading with our studies together. And then usually they will have a language arts review worksheet each day.
I have discovered that they both are missing major math skills that they should have already learned, which they say they do remember covering the topics, they just don't remember how to do the stuff, which means they didn't really learn it, which is one of my major complaints with schools and education anyways is that the way that they teach requires usually only memorization, which isn't actual learning, and then they forget it. So they are brushing up on last years math skills, but I think they will have plenty of time to catch up and build a better math foundation.
friday we went to Martin Nature Park to go see how many different kinds of birds we could observe and take pictures of to look up in our bird field guide.
We were sad to discover that theyr awesome bird watching area had been destroyed by a large falling tree in one of the recent storms, so there weren't any birds there. They are in the process of building a new bird area, but since they were working on it at the time we were there, there weren't any birds there either. Sigh
We did of course see the occasional bird flying here and there, but they wouldn't be near enough, or stay still enough, to get good observations or pictures of.
They have an awesome little education building though, and we learned lots of new things there.
Starla & Lightning helped make blueberry muffins for breakfast this morning.....
We had better luck with our bird search today at the park. We had the opportunity to observe lots of different birds, ducks and geese. Including this momma duck who had laid a nest outside of a tree!
I love love love the fact that we can go to the park and study birds and not just read about them in books.
Roman has been begging for weeks and weeks to have his own library card, and finally today he got one. He is super excited. :)
I love the library, I always check out way more books than I can possibly read, lol. Which is why I had bourbon get a card years ago, because the limit is 30 books, so with him having a card we could check out 60 books! Hee hee. And now Roman has a card and we can check out 90. Not that I think we ever will, but I do go over 30 at a time quite a bit, especially with homeschooling. We have books checked out on manners, character building, several on birds, several on rocks, etc. It adds up quick, but is a wonderful resource for our lessons!! Plus DVDs on everything as well!
Roman checked out magic books and how to play the fiddle books and DVD's today. :) Kids learn more by persuing their own interests, so I think thats awesome. And I try to give them time during the week, as school time, to learn about their own interests. I think that is important, and helps keep their love of learning, and natuarl curiosity alive. :)
Although there have been days that I wasn't sure we would. :)
I think last week the novelty of homeschool wore off for Roman, and he was no longer excited, or cooperative, with the whole process. He is already very distractable anyways, and loves to make noises and hit his pencil or tap his foot on things, which drives Bourbon nuts, but there were a couple of days that he did it just to annoy us I think. And he refused to answer anything, I would ask him something and he would just say "I don't know" and not even try, and then get so frustrated and upset when I pushed and prodded for an answer. There were 2 days of this; thursday & friday. I was so happy the weekend finally came. :)
But so far this week he has been fine, so maybe he just needed a break.
We are still trying to find what works best for us. I've tried strict scheduling, and lax scheduling, and really we have found that some days we need to stay on a strict schedule and some days we need a more lax environment.
I try to stop myself from pushing the "school" day mentality, the one as an educator I have been taught, the one my kids know from being in school, where we follow a strict schedule, and all subjects must be taught in a day, and we must have some sort of paper work to do. But it is an adjustment. There are some days I plan way too much for us the get done, and then there are days I find I haven't planned enough. But my whole point in homeschooling them is to get away from those ideas, so I am trying hard to break free of what "school" needs to be. I really do believe that kids learn by doing and by using their own natural curiosity and trying to find out answers on their own through investigating, and not through reading about something and then being told what the answers are. So I am trying to plan our lessons based on that, but that teacher in me has a hrd time getting away from "But we HAVE to have a math lesson today!" and "Well, they really need to reveiw these language arts skills by doing all of these workbook pages."
So we are learning, all of us. :) But it is fun and so far I love it and feel really blessed that we get to do it.
Right now we are deep into our bird unit, learning all we can about different birds. We are going to my parents house this weekend and my dad is going to help the boys build birdhouses, and we have different birdfeeders we are going to make, and a bird bath. We are going to set up a little bird haven on the side of our house right outside our window so we can watch them. We are going to take pictures of all the different birds that we can and look them up in our oklahoma birds field guide and learn what they are, and what birds like to eat what food.
And we are learning about the different types of rocks and minerals, and will be doing some fun hands on experiments this week with food to help the boys understand how the different types of rocks are formed.
I find that I seem to gravitate to science and social studies themes alot. :)
But they do the online math lesson each day through the Kahn Academy, so they are getting that.
And I make them read, and we do lots of writing and oral reading with our studies together. And then usually they will have a language arts review worksheet each day.
I have discovered that they both are missing major math skills that they should have already learned, which they say they do remember covering the topics, they just don't remember how to do the stuff, which means they didn't really learn it, which is one of my major complaints with schools and education anyways is that the way that they teach requires usually only memorization, which isn't actual learning, and then they forget it. So they are brushing up on last years math skills, but I think they will have plenty of time to catch up and build a better math foundation.
friday we went to Martin Nature Park to go see how many different kinds of birds we could observe and take pictures of to look up in our bird field guide.
We were sad to discover that theyr awesome bird watching area had been destroyed by a large falling tree in one of the recent storms, so there weren't any birds there. They are in the process of building a new bird area, but since they were working on it at the time we were there, there weren't any birds there either. Sigh
We did of course see the occasional bird flying here and there, but they wouldn't be near enough, or stay still enough, to get good observations or pictures of.
They have an awesome little education building though, and we learned lots of new things there.
Starla & Lightning helped make blueberry muffins for breakfast this morning.....
We had better luck with our bird search today at the park. We had the opportunity to observe lots of different birds, ducks and geese. Including this momma duck who had laid a nest outside of a tree!
I love love love the fact that we can go to the park and study birds and not just read about them in books.
Roman has been begging for weeks and weeks to have his own library card, and finally today he got one. He is super excited. :)
I love the library, I always check out way more books than I can possibly read, lol. Which is why I had bourbon get a card years ago, because the limit is 30 books, so with him having a card we could check out 60 books! Hee hee. And now Roman has a card and we can check out 90. Not that I think we ever will, but I do go over 30 at a time quite a bit, especially with homeschooling. We have books checked out on manners, character building, several on birds, several on rocks, etc. It adds up quick, but is a wonderful resource for our lessons!! Plus DVDs on everything as well!
Roman checked out magic books and how to play the fiddle books and DVD's today. :) Kids learn more by persuing their own interests, so I think thats awesome. And I try to give them time during the week, as school time, to learn about their own interests. I think that is important, and helps keep their love of learning, and natuarl curiosity alive. :)
Welcome to our life........
Here's what has been going on the last several weeks in our life..... (I still don;tknow why my words & pictures don't line up right.....)
My momma's bday lunch............
our last day at white water.........
we love cupcakes!!!
The Greyson Chance concert at frontier city.........
ah, look at my handsome man. I can't believe he's about to be 13. Sniff. Sniff.
Starla the pokemon trainer..... :)
starla is obsessed with Roman's puppet lightning, and there is always a fight between the two on who gets to play with him.....
My luchador taco salad chefs.....
starla's open house at school
My momma's bday lunch............
our last day at white water.........
we love cupcakes!!!
The Greyson Chance concert at frontier city.........
ah, look at my handsome man. I can't believe he's about to be 13. Sniff. Sniff.
Starla the pokemon trainer..... :)
starla is obsessed with Roman's puppet lightning, and there is always a fight between the two on who gets to play with him.....
My luchador taco salad chefs.....
starla's open house at school
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