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Homeschooling through Public School k12 - First year review

We started our journey with K12.com at the beginning of September 2014. While it took many hurdles with immunizations as my daughter has a legit fear of shots and the doctor lost her records, we got approved and started on September 2nd; over a week behind everyone else.

As a public school, K12 sends you everything you need. If you qualify for reduced lunches they even send you a computer and printer (I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to use the printer, so I used my own). We received books, paints, musical instruments, science tools (like a beaker and magnifying glass) as well as teachers books and student activity books for each course.

The courses she was required to do for kindergarten were:

Math
Common Core Math
Phonics
Handwriting
Language Skills
Lit and Comp
Music
Art
Science
History
Social Studies

Seems like a lot. But when you break it down it's not.

At the beginning of the year we did the recommended schedule, each day doing 1 core, (1 math, 1 phonics, 1 hw, 1 language skills, etc) and didn't test out of any lessons but we soon learned that by doing that we were hurting ourselves because of our struggle with phonics. we eventually switched to block classes and choice. This stopped many arguments and we got things done faster and at our own pace. Our schedule at this point looked like "Monday- 5 math. Tuesday 5 Phonics Wednesday- 2 music, 2 art, 1 social studies. Thursday- 2 history 2 science, 1 common core math. Friday- 5 language skills. Handwriting and Reading were done almost daily.
It was easier focusing that way than one of each subject.

In addition we also had class connects on Monday and Tuesday. Class connects are like Skype sessions where they connect to the teacher and other students. The teacher would put them in groups, they'd read to the class, answer questions. Very social (for those worried about socialization)

There were MANY days we fought, many days we breezed through. Some days yes were 5-7 hours, some days we were done in 2. Depending on the subject, the activities and how cooperative she was.

We also had her set up in the living room. Something I'm hoping to change this year if she receives a wireless computer from her school. It was a huge distraction. We had all her school supplies and books in one place and my books in a basket put away with some of her supplies (like the art supplies and science supplies)

Socialization: Other than her class connects, me and her brother, socialization depends on the parent and what they're willing to do. Children do not need school to be social. They can get socialization in many other ways. There are activities just for students that are home schooled at discount prices, girl scouts, YMCA, community center, town sports, going to the park and getting together with other homeschooling families. All of these circumstances still enable your child to get socialization. Just because they're home schooled doesn't mean they're hermits.

"I don't have the patience for that". It's actually not about patience, you know your child. You know how they learn, what they like and it's one on one. Different methods help with the patience. There are days we have our struggles at which point we walk away, do a different subject and come back later.

After our first year our verdict is: We still LOVE it. I love being a part of her learning and what she's learning. If I don't want her to know something or I want to put our beliefs into it, I can. It also helps with me being able to teach her. My daughter loves it still as well. She likes her short days, the limited structure and being able to go anywhere we want, whenever we want.

We look forward to starting 1st grade in August.

Getting back to blogging.... First post.. CLEANING

Homeschooling through a public school all year our house has taken a back burner to the cleaning and now that school is over for a few weeks... It's been nice to get it clean!

Right now is tag sale season, so it's a perfect time for decluttering!

So we started in the attic. We didn't do a ton up here because it was for the most part done, but we still got rid of 3 trash bags full of just JUNK. Papers that were kept...for no reason. Broken toys that never made it downstairs... and random CRAP. What a nice feeling.

Next up was my sons room...which was pretty much our storage room/place we hide the christmas presents.

This room was SO overwhelming. Where do I begin?! Here are the before pics:

Crazy mess right?

Well... first place I started was the closet since that was the least overwhelming. After that I tackled baby clothes from my 6 year old... TIME TO DONATE! So 5 boxes full of clothes 0-2T got taken out. I kept the 3 and 4T to consign for the fall. I took the jumperoo out and put it in the attic with the baby swing and bouncer as these can also be consigned.

WOW, the room looks loads better already.

Now it was a case of just sweeping the floor, going through some old baby items from my 2 year old and making the four piles:

Keep.

Trash.

Sell.
Donate.

Only 1 bag came out for trash, and 7 boxes, a seat and a bag of stuffies got donated. It felt WONDERFUL.

Here's the after: 

What are you doing to declutter?

Starting a new life... sort of. Day 1.

Disorganization. Clutter. Mess.

That's become my life lately.

The problem?

WHERE TO START?!

So today we're going to start.

Day 1. Figure out what I NEED to do. Lets start with 2 things.

A. Make lists. 

     1. Schedule

     2. Chores

     3. Daily Room to clean out.

B. Thoroughly Clean one room a day. Make 4 piles.

     1. Keep - Find a PLACE

     2. Toss - Trash Items

     3. Sell - City wide tag sale coming up ;)
     4. Donate - After all is said and done... don't bring it BACK into the house.

C. Look up ways to get organized better.

It's a start. I'll add to it as I think of things to help get organized. Any suggestions? Comment below!

Restarting the 21 day fix

I started the 21 day fix again! I did it for both November and December (yes during the holidays) and had great results.
But when you don't do it for 6 weeks and eat rather unhealthy and eat a few bags of mini eggs, the weight tends to pile on.

So here's what we don't do.

We don't say I'll start it tomorrow; or Sunday; or March 1st.

You say I'll start TODAY!

That's exactly what I did! I ate horrible today. That doesn't mean I'm going to tomorrow, but I did exercise and that's how I started TODAY!

You can too! Tell me what motivates you:

Throwing a Frozen Birthday Party.

My daughter turned 6 in November and wanted to a Frozen birthday party (because no ones done with Frozen yet right?)

Being so close to Christmas I had snowflakes at my disposal as well as Christmas lights.

My plan for decor: Use Tulle and lights on the windows. Hanging snowflakes, snowflakes on the walls, birthday banner, tulle on the ceiling and a photo area for kids.

For the snowflakes on the walls I used my cricut machine and used the new snowflake cartridge (perfect timing since it only came out in the couple months). Originally we were going to cut snowflakes out of coffee filters but I'm glad we went this route. They were cleaner cut and looked much nicer o the wall. They also took a lot less time and I was able to get 72 snowflakes done in about an hour. Works for me!

The snowflake lights and Christmas lights were up with the the white tulle on the windows and looked great. My sister helped out and put up the twinkling lights to make it look cooler. It definitely made a difference.

Then we put the tulle up and I only had enough to do the one room, which still looked great.
My sister and I also made a Wandering Oakens trading post. 

Finally we hung the birthday banner and snowflakes. For the birthday banner I used my cricut again and cut out snowflakes, letters and the back part of the banner. It looked great! We also bought snowflake ornaments to hang everywhere.

We did end up sticking up a blanket as a back drop but my son kept tangling himself up in it and coffee was spilled on the pieces for the picture, so we never did that activity.

Next we had food. We did troll rocks, Elsa's icicles (cheese sticks), Elsas snow storm, Eternal Winter mix (My recipe for "muddy buddys"), Svens antlers (long pretzal sticks), Olafs arms (small pretzel sticks), true loves kiss (cookies and cream hershey kisses), Hans frozen heart (frozen strawberries), Svens Carrots (long carrots), Annas snowballs (white chedder cheese balls), Kristoffs Iceblocks (blue jello), Marshmellows Snowballs (big marshmellows), Olafs Popcorn.




Do you want to build a snowman?: We had 3 marshmallows, small pretzel sticks for arms, 2 chocolate chips for eyes, 3 for the buttons, candy corn for the nose (.23 on clearance!) and we cut up pretzel sticks for the hair.

For Games we just let the kids play, did a scavenger hunt using quotes from the movie and pin the nose on Olaf. (My husband hand drew Olaf...so the noses were WAYYYY to big.)