FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!

Today was our first day of school! The kids were so excited! They laid out their clothes last night, they went to bed without arguing, and two of the three kids woke up early ready to start the day!
I worked hard to get the room all ready for school. We are moving soon, so I didn't want to do anything too elaborate! We cleaned out this room, and put just a few things up. The kids still love it. They love having a room just for school! The sign above was a surprise for them this morning. It's hanging on the door. They felt there had to be a sign there, dedicating it just to school!

 I have been working really hard at getting things super organized this year. Part of my problem in the past is lack of organization. Before, it wasn't a big deal. The kids learned everyday. They didn't need formal lessons. They did great, and when they went into public school last year they were ahead of the rest of the class!
This year is different! I have more kids, and they are on very different levels, and now they all learn very differently! Alyssa fell pretty far behind in math last year. She really struggles in that subject, and she was forced to move ahead before she was ready, which resulted in her being overwhelmed and upset. She just wasn't getting it, and it made her anxiety go through the roof!
This year, I have a detailed planner. Planned in detail a month in advance. Each child has a crate that has a hanging folder for each month. In each month's folder, there is a folder for each week, with all of the work we will be doing and a list of supplies we will need to finish everything. It worked out wonderfully today! At the end of the week we will put all of the work we finished in the folder, so we can review what we did easily throughout the year! Here is a picture of Maizie's crate!

 This morning, everything was ready, the classroom was set up, and the kids were excited! We were READY for our homeschool year to start!

 We started off with our journals. I wrote a question on the board, What would you like to learn about this year? They weren't very creative. I think they were to excited to think about it! Alyssa's answer was , I would like to learn about Snow Ice Cream. Casten's answer, after being the last one to finish breakfast, I would like to learn how scissors are made. Miss Maizie would like to learn about monkeys!

After that we went on to our work. Maizie worked on a cut and paste work sheet and worked with the color red!

I absolutely love how well she colors. She does such a great job, and it's just so juvenile, it makes it all that more precious!
While Maizie worked on those we went on to math. Figured we should get Aly's least favorite subject out of the way first! We played a game with cards. We each flipped over two cards, whoever had the highest total would win all the cards! It was a lot of fun. It was great getting her to use her math skills. It was a bit of a challenge at first, but it got faster after a bit!

When Aly was done with that, she went to work on worksheets and I played the same game with Casten. He did great until he started struggling to focus! He then got frustrated with himself trying to become focused again!

Next we had a snack, and worked on handwriting. That went well! Aly worked very hard all day to work slowly and neatly! That was something we struggled with last year with her school work! When the kids were done handwriting, we moved on to spelling and grammar. Both went really well, and fairly quickly! Right now a lot of it is review for them! We ended our morning reading Charlotte's Web. The kids loved it and were disappointed we were only reading one chapter today! If they continue to want to read more the rest of the week, I might rearrange our plans and add a second chapter a day!
All morning, our dog, Klesko, was very confused about what was going on, and why we were all in this one room! He insisted on being in there with us! It wasn't a big deal until he decided he needed to move, and would shake the whole table!!!

The afternoon was a bit more of a struggle. Casten and Maizie were fighting to pay attention and feeding off of each other. I think I will start putting Maizie down for a nap after lunch. She needs it, and it will give me time to work with the older kids. We did our Bible time, and introduced our geography program. I gave in to their antsy pants and let them go outside and play, instead of doing science. I really just had a brief intro planned. I can easily just extend our science on Wednesday!
That is how our first day of school went! I can't wait to see what Wednesday will bring! Tomorrow Casten and Alyssa will take work with them to Aunt Beverly's house, because I have to work. We also have a doctor's appointment for the girls after that! Hope our day goes smoothly (and that I find the missing van keys so we CAN do what we need tomorrow!)

Back To School Shopping!

We went shopping today for a few supplies, and to compare some costs! We are using a milk crate filing system for all of our school work. Each month will have a file, with folders for each week. In there I will put all of the work we will need for each day. It's going to be great! I already have the stuff sorted and printed, but I need to get the supplies to put it together!
We bought some more small school supplies also. I keep stocking up on crayons, markers, glue, etc everytime we go to walmart or target. It's so cheap this time of year, it makes sense to really create a stockpile! I did go cheap today and bought non-crayola crayons though!
Tomorrow we'll pick up a bunch more supplies. We'll get the items needed to organize our school work, a math workbook for Casten (found a GREAT one from Sylvan today at Sam's! It's very detailed, and has some fun activities for him to do when he wants extra work!), our accordian files for daily work, and I'll also order most of our curriculum! The kids are BEGGING me to start school now!

Back to School!

Summer is coming to an end. Yes, it's only the end of July, and we still have August to look forward to, but for the Queen family it's time to start school again!!!

This will be our last week of summer! We are spending it getting the house a bit more organized, fitting in a few last minute fun things, and collecting all of our curriculum! The kids are excited to start schoolwork again. We are really excited for the curriculum we've chosen. I think it will be perfect for our family!
We have run into an issue for Casten, he's between grade levels. He is at about a mid-first grade level. Some of the first grade stuff is just too easy, and a lot of the second grade stuff is a bit tough. Ultimately this only applies to language arts and math. We've decided to keep him at a first grade level for language, but for math we are doing a quick two month first grade review with workbooks from Sam's and will hop into second grade math in October!  Alyssa will repeat 2nd grade math this year. She really struggles with math, and we are hoping that by repeating the 2nd grade math it will really stick with her. Miss Maizie will be doing preschool. I am putting together her curriculum. It worked wonderfully for the first two kids, why change it? Both Casten and Alyssa went into kindergarten reading, and way ahead of the rest of the class in all subjects!
For Math this year, we are using Math Mammoth. http://www.mathmammoth.com/ I have read some great reviews of the program. I love the fact that it's a download, so I can use it over and over for each kid! It is also very budget friendly. I was afraid to spend too much money on a math program, since I'm not sure what level the kids will be at. Teaching this, Alyssa might really "get it" and we'll be buying a 3rd grade program before the end of the year. I felt the same way about buying the 1st grade program for Casten (which I have since decided against) I have some supplemental workbooks to go along with this if it's needed and some great online resources as well!

For language arts, we will be going with a series that I have read amazing reviews on!We are using the Growing with Grammar books, http://www.growingwithgrammar.com/ . We are really excited to use these! It's a set of 3 workbooks for the kids. They have great information for the kids and the work that goes along with it is simple, yet challenging. This program we'll do by the appropriate grade level (Casten in 1st, Alyssa in 3rd). We'll be doing all 3 books, Growing With Grammar (GWG), Winning With Writing (WWW) and Soaring With Spelling (SWS).

Recently, I've fallen in love with another homeschool blog. I'm amazed at the creativity and organization of some of the homeschool parents out there! How these people have time to teach their multiple children, keep their house clean and running smoothly, AND run these amazing blogs, I don't know! This blog, http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/ is one of these! This woman has come up with some amazing unit studies, some of which she has for free, and others that are a small download fee. While trying to piece together some electives, I stumbled upon her blog. She had exactly what I was looking for! We will be using her Roadtrip: A journey across the United States for geography and history this year. It's an amazing program, that I think the kids will find really fun! We will also use her studies on artists and composers! I think the kids will have a lot of fun with those! I'm using some of her preschool sheets for Maizie also.

For Science, I'm putting that together! Some of my favorite programs out there are ones that are pieced together with books, and experiments. I'm using those as a guide for subjects to study and going from there. Our first study will be on the human body. We are excited about that one! That will last 2 months and cover a whole variety of topics. Jay and I are most excited for the healthy eating part. We are hoping to teach the kids about good nutrition and get them to try some new things! Hey, parents can dream, right?

In addition to all of these fun things, we'll also be doing our Bible and character studies. We'll continue on with learning more about our amazing God and his love. We'll focus on why it is important to know our Creator and to study His word. We'll also learn how to be a family of faith, and to become the kind of people God has created us to be!
All in all, I think this is going to be a great year! With us starting early, we should be able to take some time off when Baby Fire Alarm gets here. The kids are so excited to start this school year and they absolutely cannot wait for our new baby to get here. I hear at least once a day, "Is it time for the baby to come out yet?" or "I wish it was Christmas,so Baby Fire Alarm were here already!" (Fire Alarm is the name Casten has chosen for this child. He thinks it's the perfect name, and we have found it's a funny nickname! Of course if this baby is a boy, he just might end up being named that! No ideas for good boy names this time!!!)

Summertime!

It has been so long since I've posted anything here. In hoping to get back into it!
So much has happened in the last year and a half! I laughed at my last post, because none of it happened! After Jay got back from Arizona, I decided I should try to find a full time job. God laid it on my heart one Monday morning. I woke up, and just felt like it was what I needed to do! I typed up a resume, emailed it out to a dozen different people before the kids were even awake! By ten, I received my first call for an interview the following day. Wednesday we had a huge blizzard On Thursday the lady had called to offer me the job, and I started the following day! I am still so very grateful to my manager for giving me the chance. I had no recent office experience, and certainly no experience working at a car dealership.

Offering me that job saved our family. At first there was a bit of jealousy on Jay's part. He was happy for me, but he had been looking for something full time for years and couldn't find anything! Here, I barely started looking, and I had a job! Having one of us working made things seem possible. It was possible to get out of the hopeless situation we were in. It was possible for our lives to start to creep forward. It helped Jay realize I was willing to step up and help the family when needed!

I started working in February. By June they had offered me a promotion! I hesitantly accepted (more like didn't say no!). The position seemed stressful and overwhelming. I was afraid I couldn't handle it, but in the end I loved it! However, it was quite obvious we were not going to be homeschooling anymore. It was breaking my heart.

In August, we enrolled the kids in the local public school. It was very difficult for me. The kids were excited, and nervous. We met their teachers and it got a little better :) Mrs. Bell was the perfect teacher for Alyssa. Seriously this woman is amazing! The patience she has is awe inspiring! She is always so happy and excited to see Alyssa. She prides herself on being "The Queen" so she was very excited to meet a fellow queen in Alyssa!

Casten's teacher, Mrs. Meehan was equally as wonderful. Casten really enjoyed her class. She was always so pleased with how smart Casten was, and how incredibly well behaved and cooperative he was (yes, our Casten!)

In September, Jay graduated from College. It was very exciting for our family. We were all very proud of him! It took about a month afterwards, but he did get a job offer, and has been working for a company repairing printers/copiers since. In February the position went full time. And it has been wonderful!

The kids did pretty great in school. Alyssa definitely was a social butterfly, which effected her school work some. She struggled to focus on her school work and do her best work. Some if her anxieties got the best of her, and she continues to be a horrible test taker. She had some disappointing standardized test scores, but her teacher reassured us that the scores did not reflect what she saw in the classroom. Casten, on the other hand, excelled in class! He was ahead of the class and continued to learn and stay ahead! He placed in the 96th and 93rd percentiles on his testing. He is able to read at a mid 2nd grade level. He just amazes us. We knew he was smart, but his behavior in class and how much he learned was stunning!

Casten continued to do hockey throughout the year, he moves up to Pre-mites this summer. He loves it and isn't too bad :)

Alyssa participated in Girl Scouts this year. She loved it. It was such a great program for her! She made friends and had a blast! She was also the top cookie seller in her troop! She was honored at a district program for her cookie sales! She sold over 300 boxes! Double her original goal!

I haven't mentioned anything about Maizie! She is still cute as can be! Usually a happy little girl that can wrap just about anyone around her little finger! She is a very determined child though! She must do things her way! She is getting so smart everyday! In general, she is growing up too fast!!!

In April we received some very exciting news!!!
We are expecting Queen baby #4! Jay and I are a little nervous. Four kids is a lot of kids! The kids are very excited. It is so neat to see the difference this time. When I had Maizie, Alyssa was only 4 and Casten 2. When this little one arrives, around Christmas, the kids will be 9, 7, and almost 5.

Now that school is out, and summer has begun, I was able to cut my hors back to part time. It has been wonderful! I love spending the time with the kids. We have such big plans this summer! Lots of places to visit, lots of projects to do at home. We will be moving in August.

We are also considering going back to homeschooling! The kids and I are very excited! The kids did great thus year in school, but it was far from ideal. Casten is very far ahead of his class and we would love for him to work at his own pace. He can be doing second grade work this year, but is only in first.

Alyssa (I should let everyone know, she likes the name Alyssa, but would prefer everyone call her Aly!) kind of fell through the cracks this year. She did well enough. Not poorly enough to justify extra help, but not up to regular standards. She is very behind in math. She is good at reading, but rushed through so much she missed actually learning, and does not work neatly!

We will see what the summer brings us. We are so excited about all of the growth and potential we have come across over the last year or so. The idea of moving forward with our family is exciting! I hope I remember to bring you along!!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

We really hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season! Ours was very rough. On December 13th we lost Jay's mom to cancer. We miss her every day, she was an amazing mother, mother in law and grandma! She had been an amazing blessing to our family.
This year we are determined to get more organized! One of my goals this year is to blog daily. It's such a help to see where we are and were we need to be! We have decided to buy a curriculum for math. Alyssa is still struggling, and we figured that this would help us to make sure we are where we need to be! We'll be starting with Math-U-See Alpha. Though most (all) of it she knows, she's not very strong. (http://www.mathusee.com/ ) The nice part of going with Alpha is that I can do math together with Lyssi and Casten!
We are also going to start a life science unit. I'm really excited for this one! The kids are going to have a blast with it! ( http://www.noeoscience.com/bio1.html )
Finally we'll start the Story of the World ( http://www.welltrainedmind.com/the-story-of-the-world-history-for-the-classical-child/ ) for history. That one should be fun. I've heard great things about this curriculum.
We'll also start a spanish program.
Another goal of mine is to do our own Project 365, where you take one picture a day for a year! We'll see how well it goes :) I'll be posting the pictures here and on my facebook page! My picture for 1/1/11 is

Not a great picture, but super cute! Casten ringing in the new year!

In a nutshell that's what we are doing! I'm excited to get started and to have new curriculum to work with. I'm also very excited to get organized! We are currently working on organizing and purging our downstairs. It's one of the biggest projects we have to tackle! Hopefully it will go smoothly! I really want to get it done by the time Jay leaves tomorrow!
Speaking of Jay leaving, he will be going to Phoenix for a few weeks. His dad is having a stem cell transplant to flush the cancer out of his bone marrow. It's a very serious procedure, and any prayers you can spare for him, his wife, and Jay would be appreciated!

Fun day!

My kids have been amazing this week! We've been working hard to get the house cleaned and organized, stay on top of school work and doing all of this with Jay being gone all week (and the next two!)
I decided to let them pick something fun to do. They decided to go to Ikea. May not sound that exciting, but they have a drop off play area that has a huge ball pit and toys! Maizie is still too short to go (just about an inch too small!) Plus, we are able to have lunch for about $5!
After Ikea, we went to Michael's (for yarn and some supplies for the kids) and then to PetSmart for crickets for Alyssa's frog Alice.
It was a nice day, lots of bonding! The kids behaved so well! Tomorrow some cleaning and I have to work! FUN FUN FUN :)

Syllables and Shaving Cream!

Today I actually felt like I taught Alyssa something in reading :) She is basically teaching herself to read. She figures things out on her own! I usually think I am about to teach her something exciting and new...only to find out she has figured it out already :) Today we learned about syllables! She picked up on it right away, but it was a new concept for her!
To entertain Maizie while we did school work today I made a fun bag filled with shaving cream and red sugar. Underneath it I put a sheet of paper with an A written on it and some stickers. When she squished the shaving cream around she could see the pictures!

Awwww....

Casten asked for his own cat for Christmas...not going to happen, but he did find that he could snuggle with our Josie :) He had only been awake for about 5 minutes when these pictures were taken!

A New Favorite!

I thought I'd share that The Chronicles of Narnia was a BIG hit :) The kids loved it! They actually sat still for most of the movie. Very impressive!

Stringing along!

Today has been a fun filled day :) We practiced reading during breakfast. Alyssa worked on phonic blends and Casten continued reading short a words!
While we were cleaning up from breakfast, Maizie broke a necklace Lyssi had made, and started stringing the beads back on the string! I was so impressed!!! She wanted to take it apart again after she fixed it! So I went downstairs and brought up a bag of beads and string! The kids sat for an hour stringing together necklaces! They did great! I gave the bigger kids patterns to use, and eventually Lys started making her own!

 Casten was upset his was so short! He had messed up his pattern and had started over!

 Where did Maizie go?

She dropped her necklace!

The rest of the morning we worked on math. Later we started our science unit on the ocean! It's been a fun day! Now we are snuggling in the living room watching The Chronicles of Narnia (the kids haven't seen it before. The theme of the Santa in our mall is Narnia,  so I thought it would be fun! )

Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming.....

Things are plugging along here! We've been busy trying to clean, reorganize and manage our time better. It's been going great so far! The kids are loving their new responsibilities and really embracing their school work. It's been amazing!
Alyssa's favorite new job is the dishes :) She washes the breakfast and lunch dishes. I'm still washing the pots and pans, but she's been doing all the plates, cups and silverware! Casten in his desire to do everything Sissy does, has decided his job is to dry the dishes!

For school, Alyssa is getting much better at math, we've even moved onto subtraction! She's still not crazy about it, but she's getting encouraged that she's finally got it. I've been researching different ways of teaching her to help her figure out the problems without having to draw dots to do her problems. I found in a workbook an idea of having a number scale and having a bunny start at the first number in the problem and hopping up the number trail the number of spaces in the problem. It really helped her be able to visualize the problems better in her head. She's using the scale less and less!
Casten has actually caught up with Alyssa in math, which makes my life much easier! I'm able to teach them math together! I had been working with Casten doing a mix of preschool and kindergarten math books, only to realize last week just flipping through the books with him that he actually knew all the stuff already! LOL! So we started this week teaching him addition and by the end of the month I'm sure they will be working together! He's already doing addition problems as fast as his sister! The boy loves numbers!!!

Reading has been going really well. Alyssa is still reading above where she should be. I think it's mostly curiosity! She loves to know everything! She's been reading more and more of her Magic Tree House books on her own! She's also starting to spelling things correctly on her own! This is what she did this morning! The top one says Twirly Whirly (obviously spelled incorrectly!) and arrow heart. Yo Yo and Math are spelled correctly on her own. Dice is pretty close, she's still making her b and d backwards, and she did spell Ice Cream on her own!

 Casten is reading very well too! It's more of a challenge to teach him to read because he has an attention span of about 2 minutes! LOL! He is still reading at a phonetic level and I'm trying to get him to memorize what Alyssa's teacher last year called "heart words", words like the,and, so, etc. Yesterday we were reading on www.starfall.com and we watched a video called "How the alphabet got their order". Afterward, I gave him letter magnets and he put them in order!

I found some old workbooks that belonged to Lyssi to help Casten with his printing. I think he'll really like it, it's called letter stories. Each letter has a story explaining how to write the letter. I'm hoping he'll be interested in it enough to actually sit still and work on his printing! Alyssa is still working on her cursive! It's been going really well. Her cursive is so much neater than her printing! It is also helping her print her letters correctly!

Alyssa also started a computer Spanish program this week. I think I'll have Casten do it also. I'm excited to start this. I've been debating on what language to start them with. I wanted something more unique than Spanish, but ultimately it's the easiest to teach. There are so many resources out there for me to use. Since neither Jay or I speak a foreign language, I figured this was the best route to go for now!
This week we'll also start our Ocean science theme. I'm excited for this one. The kids love fish and water! It will work out well with all the fish tanks in our house! We'll also be going to the aquarium on Casten's birthday (11/30)
Maizie is busy being a princess :) She comes out to join us when she wants, but mostly she is enjoying the free play time by herself. She really enjoys playing on her own. She loves playing in their play space under the stairs all on her own! She'll sit down there for HOURS and we won't hear a peep from her! It's really neat to spy on her, she's got such an amazing imagination!!!! For fun here is a picture of her with her water balloon she got over the weekend!