Homeschooling 1st and K4

I feel like writing a quick little homeschooling update, mostly for myself because writing helps me organize my thoughts, but also for other people because I know I really gain a lot by hearing about what other people do.

I have been thinking about the relatively modern tradition of mothers schooling their children at home and thinking about why mothers have not done this throughout history.  Mothers of course have always taught their children life skills, but I am referring specifically to academic education.  It's a relatively recent occurrence that mothers possess both the time and the education to provide schooling at home to their children.  I'm not tied up milking cows, you know.  I also have the privilege of being a literate college educated person, with access to this amazing resource called the Internet.  Private tutoring has always been a form of education used by those who have the resources for it.

Anyway, we had a great year with K and PK3.  Gabe likes to know what grade he is in, I guess from going to homeschool school one day per week.  In his mind grade level is  tied exactly to age so he thinks he will be in 1st grade next month.  Whatever, we don't follow the traditional school year anyway.

We are continuing with Miquon Math and Explode the Code.  He's over half way finished with those workbook sets.  We will be adding in Life of Fred and then Hands on Equations.  He will take a Story of the World I class this fall, as well as a grammar class.  I don't remember the name of the grammar text they will be using right now.   I'm excited about Life of Fred since he can read well now, I think he will love it.  The math part will be easy, I got him the whole elementary set, but the reading and math combined will be fun I think.  They do workbooks independently whenever they want.

I am waiting to officially start Latin until 2nd grade so Susanna can join in more.  We are starting memory work, which Susanna will probably participate in, too.  She isn't really doing much workbook work yet.  She tries, but she can't really write.  She wants to.  We will use Classically Catholic Memory.  There are some things I need an outlined program for and this is one of them!  Like meal planning, I benefit greatly from buying a meal planning system, 5dinnrs1hour.

I am also making a commitment to read one chapter per day of a classic children's book out loud in the morning.  We read a lot, this is not the only reading we do, but I wanted to have a set routine that is easy to accomplish for reading classics.

We are still working on life science with REAL Science Odyssey and that works well.  Another easy to fit in thing that we actually learn a lot from.

I'm avoiding driving as much as possible.  That is one time suck I don't want in my life.  We can walk to the beach and to church now so that helps.

As far as motor skills, Susanna can ride a bike but isn't big enough for the 16" so we are waiting to pass down Gabe's bike to her.  He'll get a new one when she gets big enough for his current one.  I will teach Susanna to swim this summer and Gabe will take stroke lessons.  Swimming by 4 years is what I do, for safety.

So that's where we are and where we are going.

Bye bye blog

Blogging doesn't fit into my life anymore so I probably won't be back writing here, at least for a long time.  Maybe I'll do a yearly Christmas update or something.

I'm buying a house.  I say I because Ryan is deployed and he hasn't seen it in person.  By the time he returns home, I will be all moved in, with the help of generous family and friends.  He got POA for real estate for me before he left.  Like the day he left.  Then this house went on the market a couple days later.  We actually had another house under contract, but I walked away after the inspection.

The house we have under contract now is in great condition.  It's old, 1938, but has been kept up well.  It's 2.5 miles from base, walking distance to our church, and is in our first choice neighborhood.  It's the perfect size for us 1900 square feet.  The whole upstairs is one room (+ a bathroom) and is perfect because we all sleep in the same room and need a large master bedroom with space for all our beds.  The two downstairs bedrooms will be a playroom and an office/guest bed.  I bought a gorgeous top quality leather sofa set for our living room.  I got a nice coffee table/end tables set from a sketchy discount store.  I am giving away some of our old furniture and our TV.  I have to make the best use of space and a TV takes up too much space for the little that we use it.  We've never had cable.  The house comes with a hot tub and has a nice yard for our play sets.  It has original wood floors and original unpainted wooden doors.

We don't actually know for sure that we are staying here.  We will get orders in late summer.  Shortly before Ryan left, a great opportunity at work presented itself that would be perfect for his career and our family life. Then this house in this neighborhood that I've been watching for many months went on the market.  So we took the opportunity.  If it falls through and we have to move in less than a year, we will keep the house and rent it out.  It will rent well, I am sure, and it was enough under our budget that we can afford two houses for a little while if we have to.  We might be paying rent in our current house after we move because I am breaking the lease.  As long as it rents right away, we won't pay extra rent.  I think it will rent pretty quick.

We love this area and it's really become our home.  I don't want to move away.  But we'll see.

We've had a baby in every house we have ever lived in, including our very first 900 sq ft apartment!  So I don't think we will move away at least until I have a baby in our new house.  I don't really have any intention to space my babies any further than nature spaces them anymore, unless my fertility returns before 12 months postpartum, in which case I will avoid pregnancy to protect Lucy's milk supply until she is 12 months.  But after that, I see it as wasting time to wait at this point.  I only have this one life.  After Ryan retires from the Navy (ummm, many years from now), I do want to go to medical school to become a pediatrician or OB/GYN or something like that.  I will not ever leave my babies to go to work, so we'd have to stop having kids at 40-ish.  I don't know if I could make the choice to do that, so we'll just see what happens.  Maybe I will be a midwife instead, but he'd have to work, too to support our family, and I don't know if that will work.  Or maybe I will just forever just do what I do now working as a volunteer with families.

Gabe thinks in numbers, which exasperates and amazes me at the same time.  Gifted is what they call that I guess.  It's pretty cool.  He can beat me at chess, too.  He loves chess.  He's excited about getting shin guards and cleats when he is 6.  He'll play more real soccer than what he does now in Soccer Shots since he will be too old to do Soccer Shots anymore.

Susanna is excited to start dance class when she turns 4.  She asks often to watch dance class on youtube.  Gabe's teaching her to play chess.  She is my shopping buddy.  When I can, I leave Lucy and Gabe and take her shopping with me.

Lucy is the most happy, content, sweet person I've ever met in my life.  She's just not ever upset without a clear reason.

Life is good.  We are blessed.  And I have a lot of work to do!

Lent

This is my last blog post until after Easter.  I do not regularly have any time during the day when all my children are sleeping at the same time that I am not also sleeping.  So as much as I enjoy letting my thoughts come out through my fingers and onto this screen, it doesn't fit into my life right now.  I do have a lot I'd like to say because well, I like to talk.  But I'll be doing less talking and more thinking and listening until after Easter.  Tonight, I will be thinking about how I can possibly manage to get to Mass tomorrow, because I want to go.  But if I ask myself "Will saying yes to this activity cause me to live in a frantic way?" the answer is yes, as far as I can tell.  But we'll see.

Peace out.

Houses, Homeschooling, NFP, oh my

I don't get a lot of time to talk to other grown ups right now, and what I do get is mostly on Facebook or via e-mail!  I am grateful for the ability to communicate with my friends and family easily via the internet, especially as a military wife.  I imagine the day to day existence of being married to someone who is gone for long periods of time across the world would be much harder without the internet.  It still sucks when there is a minor emergency that would just be much easier to handle with the husband around, though.

We move in a year and will probably know where by early fall.  It's most likely we will stay here or go back to Milton.  I think anyway, "needs of the Navy" can never really be predicted.  If we stay here, it will be likely that we will be stationed here long term, so the plan is to buy a house that we plan to keep long term.  I have moved a lot in my life and I don't want to move if we don't have to.  We rent our house now, and our growing family will outgrow the space within a few years anyway.  The idea of buying a house that we'd live in for 10+ years is a bit daunting.  We want to be close to base because the one constant about our schedule is that Ryan will have to drive to work every day!  But at the same time, the kids and I spend a lot of time at home and they really don't even like to leave very often.  As Gabe says, we have so many things to do at home.  I like that, I want my kids to always want to be home a lot, and with having little ones all the time, it's easier anyway.  I do love our few activities that we do, and I have all our activities planned for the next year!  But the majority of our time is still spent at home.  So if we stay, I want a larger house and a larger yard.  It is hard to find that and be close to base (umm, unless I get a job to pay for it!).  I also think about being close to our church and the activities that we do, but I can't predict what places, other than Ryan going to work, we will be going for the next 10+ years, so I'm not factoring those in too much.  If we move to Milton, we will most likely rent and we don't need a bigger house since it would be short term, just a bigger yard.  The nice thing about Milton is that we can get a nice rural house 10 minutes from base.  That really appeals to me right now.  My only real concern is that we won't have a homeschooling community and activities for the kids.  Oh and the library - we have an amazing library here and the drive through library is 1 mile from my house!  I stop by at least once a week, often more.  But, good chance we'll end up back here anyway and that gives me more time to think about where we want to live long term.

Having babies sure does get easier.  I haven't been tired at all.  Making those 30+ meals ahead of time and freezing them was absolutely worth it.  It was also worth it to put my foot down and be very limited about who can come over to see the baby and when (and I do mean see, nobody is entitled to hold the baby).  Not a popular choice, but the healthiest choice for my family.  This is the first time Ryan hasn't fought me on it.  We don't fight about a lot of things, but that is one thing we have fought about.  Maybe he realized that it just sucks to be entertaining with a newborn (and germs!!!  Guess who cares for the sick children after the germy relatives are gone???  And why the h*ll would I expose my newborn to people she doesn't need to be exposed to???  And why do people think differently???  I digress.).  And babies aren't toys.  Or maybe he conceded because I'm the one home with the children and doing 100% of the baby care, so it's my decision anyway.  There are always going to be times I'm tired - because somebody is sick or teething or whatever - but that is the exception not the rule.

I bought running shoes and am excited to start running again in a couple weeks.  Gabe will ride his bike and the two littles will go in the stroller.  Susanna will be graduating to Gabe's bike later this year and he'll be getting his first bike with gears, which he is excited about.  I often sell or give away stuff that we no longer need and I usually don't regret it, but the one item I regret selling is my single BOB!  Susanna will soon be riding a bike next to me as well, and it would be nice to push the single rather than the double.  Oh well.

I love homeschooling.  I also love Gabe's reading class that he takes once a week.  It pretty much provides all the reading work that we do.  And it's small, only 3 students, so plenty of teaching is going on.  He could read before he started the class last semester, but his reading skills have improved so much since starting.  He has finally gotten to a point in his math work where he can't really move forward because developmentally, he just can't do the harder work.  He is very, very, very much like me.  I like to focus on one thing at a time and go full force until my brain is saturated, and he does, too.  So after months of math, math, math, now he is reading.  Oh, and geography because we have a cool talking globe.  His geography is better than mine, I am slightly embarrassed to say.  Another reason I love having just a few classes/activities is because my kids really thrive in what they do.  They are always ready, always prepared, and always excited (so say their report cards, ha).  There has never been a time that they did not want to go to something.  They do sometimes complain about going for walks with me, but well, they get over it.  And besides, it's cheaper to have fewer things going on!

I'm excited to start practicing natural family planning again.  I made my spread sheet a couple days ago.  I like to make my own charts, because I use my own special method, which changes periodically.  Like everything else, I take what I like from different sources and find what works for me.  (But if you take my class, I promise to teach you a real method!)  For the first time, I'm not worried at all about getting pregnant too soon.  Part of not worrying has to do with knowing that my fertility is unlikely to return before 8 months.  Part of it has to do with being more confident that I will know when I do ovulate again.  Part of it is just knowing that everything will work out, whatever happens.  My milk dries up when I'm pregnant so I am guarding the milk supply carefully for 1 year!  After that, we'll see.  Babies are just so much easier with more experience and older children around who can do some level of helping.
      

Snowed in!

Yes, we southern folk are snowed in!

Lucy and I watched from inside

Budgeting for the New Year

I always review our financial situation in January and make concrete financial plans for the whole year.  I do it at this time because it's right before I do our taxes.  I budget differently every year.  At this point, I do not find it helpful to budget for everything.  I only budgeted for savings last year (I figured if I have that down, who cares about the rest).  I have budgeted for everything before.  I used to need to!  This year, I am budgeting in a new category: GIVING.  The amount of money we give to charity has always been sort of random and not really calculated before.  This is mostly because I have always done a huge amount of volunteer work, which I did instead of giving money.  But now I can do both.

SAVINGS
I deal with savings first, because it's the most important.  I save 15% of Ryan's total income for retirement.  I sort of have to estimate total income, but it's close enough.  I'm not a precise person with money.  I keep a set amount in an emergency savings account.  This year, I am saving another set amount for either 1) our move next year so we have the flexibility to buy a house if we want, or 2) a new vehicle (not anticipated for quite a while but we do pay cash for cars).  I do not save for the kids, for a few reasons, beyond the scope of this post. =)

GIVING
I have never and probably will never give a full 10% of our income away.  But I did decide that I'd like to give 10% INCLUDING "paying myself" for my volunteer work.  So I conservatively estimated my number of volunteer hours for this year, added in personal money that I spend to volunteer, gave myself an hourly wage, and came up with a number.  I then subtracted that from 10% of Ryan's income.  The rest I have divided evenly between our church and Bright Futures Atlanta, which used to pretty much be my second home and was where I spent all my volunteer time for 4 years.  Bright Futures Atlanta still has a little piece of my heart, especially since I was informed on Lucy's birthday that one of my former students was shot and killed.  There will be other small things that I give to here and there but that takes care of most of it and gives me a good number to work with.

Of Ryan's total income, I've committed 42% of it to savings and giving!  That is more than ever before, so I hope to meet that goal.  I will make sure savings is taken care of before I complete the giving portion.

There is no right or wrong way to save and give, but I do think it's important to have a plan for both.  Giving can easily be entirely service based or entirely monetary, depending on individual circumstances.  The important is to put resources toward bettering the world.  Heck, if I had a full time engineering career and did not have children, I could afford to give 100% of my income and still live very comfortably!  But because I have all these little kids to take care of and homeschool, my financial resources are much different than those of many people I graduated college with.

So, what's your plan? =)

Babymoon coming to a close

Lucy is 10 days old now and our babymoon is officially over tomorrow when Ryan goes back to work.  The rest of my family is out of the house right now and Lucy is asleep in my sling, so I have taken this time to organize my thoughts.

We have very little in our schedule as far as out of the house activities for the rest of January.  Lucy is such an easy baby, literally has not cried at all except a bit when she had the heel prick and another time her diaper leaked and I had to unlatch her to change her before she was ready.  She sleeps all night, about 12 hours, snuggled up next to me, nursing sometimes but I don't really know when because I've not woken up enough to look at the clock.  Anyway, I still don't want to go anywhere for a while.  I do have to drop the kids off and pick them up once a week for their classes.  And she is getting baptized on the 20th.  But other than that, I don't think I will be leaving the house until February.  We might go to some homeschool days at a couple museums later this month if she is a good car baby (my other ones screamed in the car).

It's nice to be well rested and have a freezer full of food.  And we've been spoiled by friends bringing us dinner on top of that!  Best babymoon ever.  Ryan hasn't even changed a diaper.  Not one.  He would if I asked, but he's been hanging with the big kids, and since I haven't needed help with Lucy, he just holds her a little here and there.  With the other babies, I was weak from hemorrhaging and/or uncomfortable from stitches postpartum so he did all the diaper changes for several days.  It's pretty cool not to hemorrhage or need stitches.

The big kids don't seem even the tiniest bit jealous of Lucy.  They just love her.

In February, I will start back up with LLL work.  We also have a Great Wolf Lodge trip planned during the February homeschool week.  I'm excited about the LATCH conference next month, too.  It will be nice to have 3 days of hanging out with Lucy while listening to new and exciting lactation information.

I'm waiting until March to start teaching NFP - easing into things here.

Ryan has 2 short deployments coming up this month and next month.  Short enough that he won't be gone so long that I will have to clean the bathrooms, though!  The big deployment, which is looking smaller than originally anticipated, is not projected to occur until late spring.  I'm sort of in gearing up to move mode, since we will most likely be moving in a year.  I kind of hope we go back to Milton.  I never ever thought I'd say that.  It would just be nice to not go to a new place for once, to go somewhere familiar, where I can use a midwife that I've used before, where I know my way around, where I want to live, and know at least a few people, .

I've organized a "school" schedule for the upcoming weeks.  That will help our days run smoothly since we will be home all day everyday except the one day the kids have classes.  And really, the process of bathing, feeding, schooling, and doing the most basic of chores will take up my entire day.  I'd rather do stuff with the kids than worry about bigger chores, so those will wait for the weekends when Ryan can help.

I'm so happy that Lucy is finally on the outside with us!  And so happy, too, that we are healthy and well rested, and ready to ease back into the world of daily life as our babymoon comes to a close.  She was worth the wait.