A Day in our Homeschooling Life!

Lots of friends have expressed a desire to know what our day looks like or how we structure our homeschool day around here, so I decided to document a day! :) It was much more fun than I expected it to be, I'm happy to report. ha! :) The only thing that wasn't fun about it was that I DROPPED my camera on the floor and broke the door off the slot that holds the memory card. Not a good thing being that it's my main camera. :/ The good news is that it's probably time for it to be serviced anyway so now I have a really great reason to take it in.

Back to business... Every day starts the same around here. Emma gets her charts off the hook and immediately she looks to see what today holds for her. She loves this part. :) We do our subjects in order and as she completes each one, she turns it over. Very tangible. I mentioned this in my last blog and also linked to where I got the idea and the template for making our daily activities. So please refer to that blog if you'd like these charts! :)

She then goes into her drawer where I've stored all her work for the day. She also loves this part... especially when it includes a craft! :)

The first thing we always do is calendar. We talk about the day, the month, year... all that and she writes it on the board in long and short form. Being that we do this everyday she just goes right to the board after she's reviewed her work for the day and does this part automatically. It's great.

Then she has "warm-up" work she does everyday. This is always a short language lesson and a short math lesson. Then on alternating days it's either also a critical thinking activity or a short science lesson. This is another thing we do every day.

This is just how I organize our lessons, in case anyone would like to know. :) I made these charts in Pages, so they're super basic, but it really helps to outline our day each day. We don't do every single subject everyday so the chart on the right just helps me to keep track of what subjects are covered on which days. If any homeschool moms out there would like a copy of my charts, please just email me @ graciejamesphotography@gmail.com and I will gladly email you my planning charts.

The abacus has truly been one of my best purchases yet. We use it every. single. day. in math. Emma loves to use it and I love seeing her use it! :)

While Emma is working on her independent warm-up work, I get Noah started on activities that are very age appropriate for a 3 year old. He mostly does puzzles and fine motor skill activities. He loves them and they are quick so he can move from activity to activity pretty quickly. Because of this, I have a lot of different manipulatives for him so he doesn't get bored and he always has something else to move on to as soon as he's finished with the current thing.

One of the many, many things I love about homeschooling is that Emma gets immediate feedback. She doesn't have to have her paper collected and then wait a few hours or until the next day to get feedback on the work she just did. We discuss every single assignment she does in depth during and immediately following her working time. It's great.

Emma's journal is truly my favorite thing that we do. I found this journal at a really great bookstore at the beach this past summer. I had no idea homeschooling was in our very near future when I bought it, I just knew it was something I really wanted Emma to do. Now I intend to buy them for all my children and I hope so much I can find new ones for them to fill out each year. Stuff like this is so special to me and I know that as she grows, I will love so much looking back over the years and reading her journal writings.

And each time I get Emma busy on her current assignment, I turn to Noah who is always on the floor near me. He prefers that to sitting at his desk. :) And I get him going on something new and different.

Today Emma's journal entry was for her to write about her mom and her dad. She is such a sweet girl and it made tears well up in my eyes to read what she wrote. The second thing she wrote about her dad was how much she misses him when he's at work. :( Thank goodness he's coming home to us next week, because these babies are really missing him!! :)

After journaling, it was time for Emma to have some hands on learning time too. Today she chose to work with her connecting beads, which aren't really a "learning" toy, but I let it slide. She has to watch her brother playing as he learns all day, so I try to let her work with a manipulative of her choice when it's that time of day for her. Today she chose her snap beads.

And she made me some very beautiful jewelry. ;)

Noah working with his pipe connectors...

Math time!! Today's lesson focus was Equal To and Not Equal To...

We do use the Horizons Math Curriculum by Alpha Omega, which I really love and it works well for her. It is a spiraling curriculum, which I was hesitant about, but so far it's working out for us. I'm going to do a post on our curriculum on a different day, so I'll move on... :)

Then it was craft time. Today was just a wood coloring project of a pilgrim. I love AC Moore and their holiday themed dollar crafts for kids. They're great and my kids love them!

I've posted a few pictures of Emma doing this, but we do practice our Spelling words like this daily...

Reading time.... During reading, we do a phonics lesson, then I read a book of her choosing to her, followed by her reading a book of her choosing to me. While she's reading to me, I make flash cards of the words she struggles with and I use those for drilling purposes each day. She also fills out a reading log each day with the books that she reads to me.

Then it was time for a learning game! This is a new learning game for Emma called SepToys. Very, very cool and very, very HARD game! I was disturbed to find that I could not for the life of me figure it out, yet my first grader totally loved it and was engrossed in it within minutes! I was horrible at Geometry in school, though, so I can understand why it was difficult for me, I just was blown away by how taken Emma was with it. Smart girl!! :)

If you look at the picture to the far left closely, you'll notice big fat crocodile tears on Noah's cheeks. I broke his heart by not letting him destroy Emma's geometric creations (above) and instead making him play an age appropriate learning game for him. He was only sad for about 30 seconds though and then he discovered he loved finding the letters to make these words!! :)

So, there ya go, folks! A day in our homeschool life. Everyday looks completely different for us, though, as the only things we do every single day are calendar, warm-ups, math, and reading. Everything else is done sporadically spaced throughout the week. We love it this way and it is the best thing that's happened to us! I'd love any questions or comments. I hope I didn't ramble too much, but I figured it'd be easier to blog it out this way rather than to try and lay out what we do for a lot of different friends in emails. :)

Homeschool is in Full Swing!

I can't put into words the joy that I feel at the new direction our lives are headed in. Homeschooling is something that has always been in my heart. I NEVER wanted my kids in a "formal" school setting. I'm just a weird mom like that, I guess. I just want them with me as much as possible and I feel like it's my responsibility as their mother to be the one who teaches them... and also this ensures that they are taught the things I want them to know. Ha! Who knows how that sounds to a more mainstream personality, but I can't be concerned with that. Now that we are head first, up to our shoulders deep in this homeschooling adventure, I find myself becoming more and more obsessed with all the wonderful things I want my children to learn and experience. So much more than I know is possible in the typical school setting. And I'm just lucky enough to have children who have taken right to this change and actually love it just as much as I do.

I think the main hold back for Tony and I on going ahead with homeschooling when Emma was first ready to start school was the socialization angle. It was such a silly thing to worry about though I have found. My kids have almost daily play dates now and I'm finding everything I can to involve them in. We've been to church more in the past two weeks than we have been in their entire lives all together. Yes, I am ashamed to admit that and the only explanation I have for that is.... when I'm spending all week involved in something that I don't want and something that frustrates me daily ( public / outside schooling) I AM NOT doing anything on the weekend except exactly what I want to with my children. This is just my stubborn personality at work. I am also extremely lucky that our area has an AMAZING homeschool network. HOME stands for Homes Offering Meaningful Education and they offer our kids everything that they would benefit from in a normal school setting. I can't wait to meet the families and get involved with them as much as possible!

I am now so happy to report that all that stress and frustration is completely gone from my life and things are exactly they way I've wanted them from the beginning! :) Not to say that I am stress-free. Ha! That's a joke. :) I am very tired and extremely ready for bed at the end of the day, but it's a good kind of tired. I know once the baby's born this will improve greatly, as a huge part of my exhaustion comes from my huge, aching body and all that growing a baby involves.

Here are some pictures from our homeschooling days so far... the first few a lot of you have probably seen (on Facebook) but the rest are brand new!! :)

This is a ring of charts. Each day Emma has on her chart the activities and subjects that she can expect that day. They are different everyday with the exception of Math and Reading. Those are an everyday occurance. :) When she's done with a subject, she turns it over so she can kind of control how quickly she gets things done. Also this helps, because some things are independent activities for her, so she can do those while I'm working with Noah. It's great! :) And I found this idea at this awesome homeschool mom's website.

These are some of my favorite new things to use with Emma! They're called Wrap-Ups if you haven't seen them before and they are just excellent for helping kids learn their addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts! Awesome!

We had left over pumpkins after Halloween, so today the kids painted them. They loved it. Kids and paint. I don't know what it is, but nothing makes mine happier than painting something. Ha! ;)

Can't you just feel how much Noah loves his big sister in this picture? He's so happy she's home with him every day now! :)

Hope you enjoyed! Have a great day!! :)

Homeschooling :: Day 1

Okay, so...

I'm homeschooling now. This is something I've always wanted to do... since before I had kids and this past Monday we had an event in our community that pretty much made my decision for me. There are a lot of things in life I can't control, but one thing I can control is how my children are schooled and at least for the rest of this school year, Emma will be schooled at home.

I feel so great about this decision. Yesterday when I was really needing to decide one way or another to prevent Emma from missing any more school than necessary, God put two wonderful women in my life whom I had never met before and whom BOTH told me... THIS is what is right for YOUR family. And I know it is. I know it in my heart. So thank you Kathy and Andrea. I know you probably don't read my blog, but if you do, please know that you made my tough decision a really easy one and you put my heart at ease. You rock.

SO! The past 24 hours have been outrageously busy with me getting everything ready. After my session yesterday afternoon, the kids and I went to Barnes and Noble then Wal-Mart. Then last night I cleaned, rearranged, purged, and researched.

I slept 5 hours and woke up with my mind going 500 miles per hour.

The kids and I got up, got breakfast, and went to School Tools, the most awesome teacher supply store ever opened. It's nearly the size of a small Wal-Mart and it has all you could possibly ever want and more for teaching. Amazing.

Then we came home and I went and raided my Granny's attic, which is where I stored all of my teaching supplies after I stopped teaching in the public school system before Emma was born.

Below is the result of the last 24 hours of blood, sweat, and... not tears... SMILES. ;)

This is the view from one corner of the room. Our school's official name is the Arnold Academy. You have to have a name for your school when you homeschool in NC. Underneath are ribbons with clips to display my Emma and Noah's great work they do! :) Then there are learning posters, number lines, colors, shapes, calendars, all that good stuff, and the stash of learning manipulatives by the window...

Oh! And those are Emma's and Noah's little desks. Aren't they precious??? I hope to eventually find a table for cheap that we can all sit at together, but for now this will do. And you can see what is what here...

The kids and I are all so flipping excited about this! Emma kept asking all day... Mom, when are we going to start our homeschool? When are we going to start? When are we going to start. Unfortunately, I feel the need for everything to be "perfect" before I officially start anything, so at 4:30 this afternoon, we finally did our first activity. It wasn't anything academic. It was a little art project. You can see it displayed above on the work wall. Emma's fall tree is on the left and Noah's is on the right. I should add that Noah had lots and lots and lots and lots of help. But he still did a good job. ;)

Oh, and yes, he is being schooled as well. Pre-school materials and at a very relaxed pace, but he wants to do school too just like his big sister, so who am I to deny him that?? :)

This is a great adventure, friends and I've never felt more at peace about a decision before. This is PERFECT for our family. :)

14 Weeks

Here I am in all my baby belly splendor at 14 weeks. I definitely get bigger quicker with each pregnancy. It's like my body remembers and just says okay, we know what to do... POP... huge belly. ;)

I love it, though, so really... I'm not complaining. :)

Intelligender Results

Okay, I'm pretty sure the results of the Intelligender test were.... GIRL. However, it was a little confusing. It's pretty simple, a cup has crystals in it, you put some pee in the cup, swirl it around and it turns dark green if it's a boy and it stays yellow/orangish if it's a girl. Well, after I swirled and let it sit for 10 minutes as the directions said to do, the crystal area was dark, but the liquid was orange. So I was and still am... confused. I definitely don't feel good enough about it to start decorating and painting. I'm going to wait for the sonogram to do all that. But, it was fun nonetheless and I still think it's a girl, so we shall see! ;)

13 Weeks, 5 Days

I think it's quite ironic that the last time I posted on this blog, I was super sad because I had just experienced my third miscarriage. Now, though, I am very happy to report that we are over the moon and expecting baby #3 on February 15th.

Most of you guys already know this, of course, because I am completely incapable of keeping any baby secrets. And on that note, I don't know about the rest of my friends who either are expecting or have expected in the past, but I personally am anxious for the day when the pregnancy test just goes ahead and gives either two pink lines ( for YES! You are pregnant with a GIRL!) OR two blue lines.... for boy. I am so anxious to know the sex of my baby the instant I know I'm pregant. So, so, so anxious! I hate having to wait until that 20 week ultrasound. The suspense drives me crazy. I just want to be buying stuff! I have no idea how those parents who wait until the birth to find out the sex do it. God just did not give me that kind of patience.

Which brings me to my next topic... Intelligender (see picture above if you have no idea what I'm talking about). With Intelligender you can find out the gender of your baby as early as 10 weeks, according to the paper on the inside of the box. Now, I'm almost 14 weeks and I have been meaning... alllll these weeks to stop by the drug store to pick up this test and it never fails.... I always forget! Until today. Today I remembered. And now the suspense is about to kill me. I could've done this a month ago and it hasn't bothered me. But now that the test is in my house, the minutes are ticking by like HOURS. It says to wait for your first morning urine, so that's what I'm doing. I'm pretty sure tomorrow morning will get here sometime around Christmas... or at least that's what it feels like.

I'll for sure blog an update so you know what this baby is probably going to be. And just for the record, I think it's a girl.

My Miracles

I never thought of my children as miracles. They have always been my gifts from God that I treasure more than anything I could have ever imagined. But today they are miracles. Today I had my third miscarriage.

Thankfully it was very early, but I was still so very excited. My babies both love babies and they both want a baby sibling. Possibly almost as much as their mom does. Emma is desperate for a sister and Monday we asked Noah if Mommy were to have a little baby, would he want a girl baby or a boy baby and he said very enthusiastically, "GULL BABY!!". We were very surprised, but then Tony said, "He knows he's got it made as the only boy. He doesn't want any competition!" hahaha!

So, today is a sad day, but I'm trusting that God knows what he's doing and hopefully the next time... I'll get my third miracle.

I'm doing it AGAIN

Yikes, I feel like I'm losing touch with this blog again and it is so very important to me. I do not intend to do that at all. This is the month my wedding season starts, though, and I am crazy busy. And since Tony's home, that also makes my family time really busy! :) Just know that life is fantastic, my business is amazing and I'm such a proud mommy, wife, and business owner at the moment. :)

I booked another wedding today. This one in Jacksonville, NC, which is where I grew up. The bride and her mother drove all the way here to meet with me today and I completely fell in love with both of them. At the end of our meeting when we were wrapping things up, the mother gave me her mailing address and I was like... wait that sounds really familiar... turns out she lives just a few streets over from the house that I grew up in. Tears literally sprung to my eyes. My mom and I moved around kind of a lot when I was little and when we finally moved to Jacksonville when I was in 7th grade and bought that house, I finally had some roots. That house meant so much to me. We went through a lot, I started my "dating" life in that house, grew into a woman in that house. I miss it so much still and I'm pretty sure I'll miss it the rest of my life. So when I found out they live so close to the house thatI love and means so much to me, I just grew that much more in love with them as a mother and daughter. ;)

I can't tell you how blessed I feel at this point in my life. I have the two most incredible children who are funny, happy and love each other. I have a husband who loves us, he's great at what he does and is proud to provide an awesome life for his family. And I have a business that truly completes my heart and makes my soul sing with joy.

I'm a happy, lucky girl.

We are still praying for the perfect new job to come along for Tony, but that is the only thing in our life that isn't perfect at the moment. I know that God will provide and give us the perfect opportunity, I just have to be patient and trust that it will happen exactly when it's supposed to, even if it isn't exactly when we want it to. ;)

I hope you all are doing awesome. I'm so glad I keep in touch with the majority of you on Facebook, because I've been awful at keeping up with and commenting on the blogs I love lately. I will, though, I promise!! :)

Have a great weekend and much love to you all!! :)

The Diaper Deal

I am really into being green and trying to do my part to make the planet a better place to be. I've always disliked disposable diapers and wished to cloth diaper, but I was not down with using the old fashioned ones that require pinning them closed. I'm way too paranoid to do that. Too scared they'll pop open and impale my child.

Then the other day, I was blog browsing and I went to Nicole's blog. She's one of the girl's I met last week at my photography training in Charlotte. She's pregnant right now, so I was reading her recent posts about her pregnancy when I stumbled upon a post she wrote about wishing to cloth diaper her new baby. I knew her feelings, I've had them since I was pregnant with Emma.

Well, in this post, she talked about Fuzzibunz diapers. My heart skipped a beat or two when I went to their site and saw these AMAZING diapers...

It was midnight and we were all four piled into mine and Tony's big bed and everyone but me was sound asleep. I was reading all this and on the Fuzzibunz site on my iPad. I spent about two hours looking at everything they had to offer and making a plan in my head.

You guys know I plan to get pregnant sometime soon and I'm really hoping Noah (who is about to be THREE) will potty train before the summer is out. On the site it says that cloth diapered babies potty train a lot sooner than disposable diapered babies because they can feel the wet and the poop. This made perfect sense to me.

So, at 2 am I placed my order to Fuzzibunz.

I was so anxious waiting all week for these wonderous things to arrive. And when they did, you would've thought it was Christmas around here. Nobody should get that excited over diapers. lol ;)

Noah LOVES them and they are pretty much the most adorable things ever!!!

Here's what I ordered in case you're curious:

Set of 12 One Size Diapers

*These are adjustable and fit babies newborn up to 35 lbs. I will finish Noah out in these and then he'll pass them onto his new baby brother or sister.

2 No Mess Diaper Bags

* I got one free for ordering the set of 12, but I wanted two of these that way when one is in the wash with a load of diapers, the other is in use. And if you look at the picture above with Noah and the cat, you can see one of these bags hanging on the door knob. These are AWESOME! They're really big and they just hang on any door knob you'd like to put it on and the bottom zips open, so at the end of the day, when you're ready to wash, you just unzip the bottom and throw the whole thing (bag and all) into the wash!

1 Simple Zip Tote

* I ordered this for when we're out of the house. When we leave, I put one clean diaper in the tote and when I change Noah, I put the dirty diaper in the bag and the clean diaper on his bottom. The cool thing about this is that it has a patch of fabric on the inside to dab essential oils on it to keep down any odor. And that leads to the next item in my bag...

Tea Tree Essential Oil

Natural Wipes Solution Spray

* I ordered this to spray his bottom with when using the cloth wipes...

Organic Hemp Fleece Wipes

Okay, that's what I ordered and I absolutely LOVE every single item. I WILL use these for my next baby and any babies there after. I really encourage you guys to check them out. They are a little pricy up front, but just keep in mind that you will no longer have to buy diapers EVER if you don't want to!! I do plan to keep a small stash of disposables in the house for times like... if they're sick with diahrrea, if we have a sitter who isn't comfortable with the cloth diapers (this is very unlikely to happen as my mom and my aunts and grandma are the only sitters I've ever used) and for traveling if I think we may be gone an extraordinarily long time and I won't have access to a washer.

Anyway, I can't say enough good things. One amazing thing is that Noah pees like 2 gallons at night. It's crazy ridiculous. Every morning of his toddler life, he has woke up drenched. Diaper full to being close to explosion and his clothes wet and smelling like pee. It's really gross and this morning, he woke up for the first time in a VERY long time DRY! Amazing!

We've been using them since Wednesday, so maybe over time I will come up with some cons to this cloth diapering but at this time, I have zero negative comments or observations.

The Dye Job

So, I've never dyed my hair before. I've had it highlighted in the salon lots of times and I've had it dyed all over a shade of brown one time. That time it had too much red in it, though, and for a while now I have just wanted a dark chestnut brown for my hair color.

So, today I was at Target and looking at hair colors and just decided to go for it and try dying it myself and see how that turned out.

So, here's how it all started... You can see that my roots are a light ash brown with blonde highlights that are SUPER old. Like probably almost a year old? I don't know, but I know it's been a really long time since I've had highlights put in.

This is the brand and color I chose... Loreal Feria... Espresso... Deeply Brown #40

This is when I got it all on. I was scared I was doing something wrong, so I did a fast SOS text to my mom, who came over promptly and made sure I wasn't causing disaster.

This is the finished product. I have to say I am THRILLED! It is EXACTLY what I wanted. Deep, Chestnut brown and it actually has some gold shimmers in the light. I LOVE it!!!! :):):)

I've been a blonde my entire life and suddenly I feel more... sophisticated. ;)

p.s. please excuse the after pictures, I was straight out of the shower, not a stitch of make-up on. ;)