Monday, August 20, 2012

How to Get Your Kids to Clean Up After Themselves..and Like It! book review.

I am later than I wanted to be in writing this post.  Sometimes things just get away from me as I am sure it does all of you at times.

Today I am going to tell you about an amazing book that I reviewed recently.  Now my husband and I are raising 5 amazing daughters.  They each have a heart for God, are caring sweet young ladies.  People are always commenting on how well behaved they are and for the most part when around others they do behave very well.  I have raised them to know what is expected of them with their manners when out in public.  Now that is not to say that at times correction is not needed for some mis-doing!  As they are just kids and will behave like kids and follow their flesh at times.

So what is the problem you may ask.  Well it is all my fault really and I am on a mission to correct it.  I have failed in an area of my child training and that is teaching them to clean up after themselves.  I have never been a very organized person and hate to clean up as well.  So as I said I am the one to blame when I see that they are being disobedient  in cleaning up. 

I was lost in what to do as I had tried so many things.  Until now.  I feel like I finally found a resource that will help me in training my girls in this area of our lives.  How to Get Your Kids to Clean Up After Themselves... and Like It!  by Kim Crandall. This is written in such a great style.  As letters from Aunt June to her niece Emily.  Oh, Aunt June is so wise and patient in her letters to Emily in how to train her children in cleaning up.  It has so much advice and you can start even with older kids if you have missed this as I have.  I feel like I can take these letters one by one and use them as steps in working with my girls.

She says that "Cleaning up should not drive a wedge between you and your children"  I feel that so far this is what it has been doing to me and my girls. 

Here I think is the main point of this book

"  When we discuss kids and cleaning we are really talking about three separate but overlapping ideas:  training them in the habit of picking up their own messes, teaching life skills that will be necessary in the future (like how to mop a floor or how to prepare a meal, and ensure responsible performance of assigned tasks that benefit the family, those things we usually label "chores".  Since they haven't mastered picking up after themselves yet, it seems that would be a good place to start.''  And so begins the journey through this book.  There is so much help and advice here that you just have to purchase it and see for yourself.

If you are struggling in this area of your household as I am then I highly recommend this book.  If you purchase it please let me know and let me know how it is working for you and your family.  I will be posting about how it is working for us so I hope you follow along with me.

http://www.wholesomechildhood.com/LettersFromAuntJune/

Until August 31st the price for this is $7.  This is an instant download E-book and you get several extras along with it.  These include a cleanup rules reference sheet, motivators to make cleanup fun, favorite kid safe cleaning recipes, and favorite resources and freebies.   This is a wonderful price for all the great help you will receive.

You will learn the following and much more

Why Picking Up is Good for Everyone - and how to get that point across to your kids
How Not to Drive a Wedge between You and Your Children
The Two Most Important Ground Rules
How to Establish Your Routines
Preparing to Hand Off Responsibility
The 5 Step, No-Fail Teaching Method
How to Wisely Handle Chores, Rewards & Consequences
The Value of Preparing Your Children when the Unexpected Happens

You can even download a free preview.  My initial review is in this add as well.

One final note this book is being sold by the wonderful people at Homeschool Freebie of the Day, great free resources for homeschoolers everyday.  I have been signed up with the for many years and it is a great resource to have.  Thanks Erkstine family for all you do.
http://www.homeschoolfreebie.wholesomechildhood.com/

Dawn,
Mother in Training


Thursday, August 9, 2012

A Great Gem

I just got done writing my first book review.  OH my I have a treasure to pass on.  But I will not be able to until the first part of next week.  It is about how to get your kids to clean up after themselves.  I loved it and can't wait to tell of you more about it!

Hope you are waiting in anticipation because this is going to be good.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Planning The School Year Ahead

Today's project:  I will begin printing out schedule sheets and try to start planning our year. 

What planner do I use?


Well glad you asked.  I have a subscription to The Old Schoolhouse Magazine and with the subscription I get this wonderful thing called schoolhouse teacher.  This is a great addition to my subscription.  There is so much on there that I can't believe it. (talk more about that in a later post)  Included are great planners.  There are several levels that you can download moms, special learners, primary, intermediate, high school.  I will be using one for me and one for my oldest daughter so she can be more responsible for her own education and day to day work.

If you are new to homeschooling or don't have a subscription yet to Old Schoolhouse I highly recommend it (it is now an online only subscription with one mailed issue a year)  I read it on my Kindle Fire.

http://thehomeschoolmagazine.com/
http://schoolhouseteachers.com/

What is your yearly schedule?

Wow, you ask some great questions.  While in previous years we followed the same schedule as public school we are trying something new this year.  We will be doing a year round schedule this year.  Why would I do this?  Well everyone, including me, gets burned out throughout the year.  This is a great thing about homeschooling, FLEXIBILITY.  We can take a break when we want, not when someone else tells us we can.  We get to vacation and visit places when it is not so crowded with other vacationers.

Here are 3 options for year round schooling

Option 1:

School     Sept, Oct, Nov
Break       Dec
School      Jan, Feb, March
Break       April
School      May, June, July
Break       August

Option 2:

School for tree weeks and break for one week, year round.

Option 3:

School      September through mid-October
Break       Week off
School      Late October until Thanksgiving
Break       Week Off
School      Early December
Break       Three weeks off for Christmas and New Year's
School      Mid-January until late February or early March
Break       Two weeks (Everyone gets tired of school by late February!)
School      March, April
Break        Two weeks off
School      Late April, May, on through summer
Breaks      Anytime during the summer, whenever you're vacationing, visiting, entertaining, etc.

(taken from The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise, love this book)

Which one are we doing?  Well option 3 more than likely, still praying on this, maybe option 2.

How do you know how much time to schedule?  Well if your math curriculum has 140 days to complete then you need to schedule that many days into your year, plus days for tests.  Our schooling is 4 days Monday to Thursday with Friday as a catch up or field trip day.

What do you do on weeks off?

Another great question.  We will use this time off to take day trips or vacations as a family.  We will also use some of this time to do week long unit studies, so the kids are still learning something great but taking a break from the normal curriculum. 

So this is a look into my planning for this year.  I will talk some other time about our actual daily schedule (or what I try to make into a daily routine)

Quote for the day:  A curriculum that gets done is superior, to a superior curriculum that doesn't get done.  (it took me a few years to learn that this is so true)



 

Monday, August 6, 2012

OK I finally began ordering curriculum to get this year started.  Here is what we will be doing this year.

Sydney:
Math: Saxon Algebra 1/2
English: Rod and Staff
Writing: Writing Strands
Vocab:  Vocabulary from Classical Roots
Science: Chemistry: using Christian Kids Explore (since I already have it)
History:  Mystery of History Vol 3 (we love this history)
Critical Thinking: Art of Argument (still hoping to purchase)

Josie and Mazzy:
Math: Miquon workbooks
Reading: 100 Easy Lessons (already part way through)
Language:  First Language Lessons
Writing: Writing With Ease
(they will sit in on history and do some chemistry experiments with Syd)
Handwriting: I will use online sources for worksheets and copywork.  I will share some pf these sites in a later post.

Addie:
Reading: begin 100 Easy lessons
I have K4 and Letter of The Week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler: http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/
 
She is having a giveaway right now for this curriculum!!!!

Ruby:  Anything to keep her busy!

Art: Using Artist study from Confessions of a Homeschooler (its free and free is good)
Lots of crafts and fun stuff

Music: Composer study from Confessions of a Homeschooler (very low price)
Listen to lots of different music!
Going to teach several of the girls how to play the mountain dulcimer this year. Yipee!

Read LOTS AND LOTS of good Living Books!!!  If you don't know what that means let me know.

Well you get the idea of what books will be laying around my house this year.  Let me know if you are using any of this same material!

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Still Growing Strong

I just got done reading my very first post on here from June 2010.  Had to make a slight change to it on the end!  Wow still feel the same way I did back then and those two trees are still growing good and strong standing next to each other.

Homeshool Planning 2012 The Beginning

OK so here comes another year of homeschooling just around the corner.  I am trying to plan out what curriculum I will use this year.  Looking at what I have and what is still needed.  I have always been a follower of the Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling.  That being said I recently read the book A Well Trained Mind.  I have actually read the parts that apply to my kids twice.  I found it to be very interesting.  Prior to reading it I felt very intimidated by what I saw being sold as Classical Curriculum.  So this year I will be combining the two approached a little bit.

After homeschooling for a while my two favorite things are Mystery of History and Apologia Science. My children love them both and any time we havn't used them during a school year things just didn't go as well. So why mess with a good thing!?

I will post soon my exact curriculum plan for each child and post how thing go through out the year.

Another goal of mine for this year is to read the kids books of the book lists from Honey For A Childs Heart.  I loved this book.  I am hoping to purchase Honey for a Teen Heart and Honey for a Moms Heart soon. 

I will be trying to sell some curriculum and books that I know I wont use so that we can stay on a tight budget for books to be used this year.  OH I wish I owned a money tree.  There are so many great things out there that I would love to have for my kids to read, look at, and play with.  By the way The Old Schoolhouse Magazine had some great articles this month on how to homeschool on a budget.  Great stuff and just what I needed to read!

So what are some of your wants or needs for this homeschool year?  I would love to hear?  What do you use that you absolutely love and would not change?

Happy Planning!