You Are Not Alone in Your Cleaning Strife

Do you ever feel frustrated because you just have that one room in your house that you just can’t get cleaned and organized? Maybe it’s more than one room? Do not fear! You are not alone! I like to believe that most of us out there have the same problem.

I often feel myself comparing myself to others. It’s definitely not something I do on purpose. I know it’s no good for me but sometimes it happens. This was actually part of the reason why I wanted to start a blog. I wanted to show other woman like myself that there are others out there that don’t have it all together. There are others out there who go to bed thinking “How in the world did I make it through another day?” Well here is a post just for us not so perfect woman.

             My school room. Its honestly one of those rooms that I wish I could just close the door to and never have to open it again. Problem with that is there is no door on my school room. In fact, it is wide open to the rest of the house.  Unless you are in the dining room you see it no matter where you go. I can even see it from my bedroom. My school room is in what our floor plan called the “breakfast nook.” Originally when I converted this space from where the toys lived to the school room it was a breath of fresh air. It was beautiful. Everything had a place. Everything was organized.

 

I mean look at that! I can almost hear the angels singing looking at that.

             …You know, it’s amazing what can happen in a year.

How? How does this even happen? But this is my reality. And no matter how often I clean it within a day or two it is back to this. The problem is I have too much stuff and not enough space. This last time I cleaned, this is how it turned out.

 

Not too bad except I have officially run out of homes for things. I cannot clear the desk. I have no place for that stuff. And I even purged this time too. UGH!!  

So back to my point. Why did I show you my disastrous school room? (Which is now a school storage area because I can no longer fit both kids and myself around that desk at the same time.) My house is not perfect. I have so many parts of my house that are like this. The real problem is just to much stuff and I know that. We are working on purging but it takes time. Purging is not something that happens overnight. At least not with all the stuff we have. I have a perfectly imperfect house and that’s just the way it is. So to all those out there who have maybe just that one room they can’t keep clean no matter what they do. Or to those, like me, whose entire house is in complete disarray almost all the time, know that you are not alone. It’s just how it is. I honestly don’t see that changing in my home till my kids have moved out and I’m actually okay with that. I’ll enjoy the time I have with my kids and all of our stuff for as long as I can. Cause there may come a day that my house will be totally clean and I won’t know what to do with myself. I might actually have time to read a book or possibly finally be able to enjoy Gilmore Girls on Netflix and who would really like to do that? I mean that just sounds awful? ; )   

Year One Homeschool Review

 

We officially starting homeschooling in August 2015. We sent our son to preschool so he could have a bit more socialization but going in I had pretty much made the decision that I wanted to homeschool my kids. When preschool was over with in the spring of 2015 I was ready and excited to homeschool. We took the summer off and started the official homeschooling in August. I think we changed 20 things in the first two weeks. By the end of the year I was still changing things but thankfully not nearly as often. Here are just a few things we learned in our first year homeschooling.

1. Get those knees dirty!  Pray, Pray and Pray some more! Being with our kids all the time is not always easy. I’ll be the first to admit I lose my temper with my kids. Am I proud of it? Absolutely not! But it’s something I am working on. Actually, I should say it’s something God is helping me to work on. God Is always there for anything for us. He loves us! He loves us so much he gave us is son to die for us. That’s true love y’all! Never be afraid to have a chit chat with Him. Are you having a bad day? No one is listening to you? Your child has no interst at all in doing school work? Talk to him. Ask Him for help. He’ll be there. Did your child finally get a math concept that he has been confused on for what seems like weeks? Are just totally over joyed that you do have the opportunity to homeschool? Are you just having a fantastically wonderful day? Stop and thank Him! He loves to hear some good ole praise… I mean who doesn’t?
2. Bad Day? Put it away! We have great days. We have mediocre days. We even have days that we somehow manage to squeeze by. And then there are those days that you have no idea how you still have hair on your head and it’s not even lunch time yet. Those are definitely the days I put the school work away. Once it’s a way we do something fun. Sometimes the kids just go off and play, other times we watch movies for the rest of the day and other times we just need to get out of the house. We have the fantastic option of being able to go to Walt Disney World on those days. You know what is one of the many awesome things about living so close to Disney? When we go there we can still learn. So technically we are still doing school and the kids don’t even know it. It’s Fantastic!!! That’s what you call sneaky school and I love it. However, you don’t need to go to the happiest place on earth to fit in some sneaky school outside of the house. You can do it anywhere; the playground, in the woods or the grocery store. I mean the places are endless.
3. Plan! My first couple of weeks of homeschool I planned day by day but didn’t write anything down. I discovered that for us this did not work. So I grabbed a Spiral notebook and wrote down a daily plan. I would love to say that it worked but once again I quickly found out this just did not work for us. So then I decided to plan weekly. I wrote each subject down and underneath I wrote down everything I wanted to get finished that week in each subject. I LOVE this approach. I still use it every week.

         Another thing I learned about planning is that I can only plan one week ahead. Every Saturday night after the kids go to bed I work on planning for the following week. I tried to do a few weeks ahead and I hated when we would get behind or even ahead. Besides the actual activity of planning for school is way too much fun for me. I have to do it at least once a week. I get so giddy over it.

4. Get Dad Involved! For the longest time I did all of our school stuff Tuesday through Saturday when my husband was at work then we had family day on his days off. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, we still do that. However, I realized that my husband was being left out of our school. He and I made the decision together to homeschool the kids but we weren’t involving him. Not really fair if you ask me so I asked him how he felt. Well, no surprise he felt in the dark when it came to school so we decided that when possible we would do something related to school on his days off. The kids love when we do this and its such great family time together.
5. Homeschool Doesn’t have to be done in the home! Oh, I so love this part of homeschooling. I’ve been having a hard time changing my thinking from the traditional school atmosphere of sitting in a desk for 6 hours a day to the homeschool atmosphere of not needing a desk and not even needing to be inside. We’ve done school in the car, on the porch, in bed, on the couch, at the park, at the store, at the playground and even at Disney World. The possibilities are endless! I love it!

 

We started our second year of homeschooling in June 2016. I know we will learn even more things this year and every year we homeschool. God has placed us on this homeschooling journey for a reason and with every journey there are things to learn along the way.

 

Our 2016-2017 Curriculum

 

The 2015-16 school year was our first official homeschool year. Since it was kindergarten I didn’t feel the need to buy a curriculum. Pinterest was my friend for all sorts of recourses. Looking back I am still satisfied with our decision not to buy a curriculum of any kind.

However, this year for first grade I knew I wanted to get a curriculum but I also knew I am too eclectic to buy a boxed curriculum. Actually, I am not sure if it’s that I am too eclectic or just too picky….hmmm. Well either way, I started the research for curriculum at the beginning of last school year. A few subjects I knew right away what I wanted to use for this year but a few others I honestly didn’t find anything until I went to the homeschool convention this past May.

Math- Math I already knew what I was going to use. I had won Math Mammoth Light Blue Series grades 1-7 in a giveaway at the end of 2015. I started using it in January and really enjoyed it. God has been blessing us all throughout this homeschooling journey so far. I figured if he’s going to bless us with an entire math curriculum I should probably try it out and see if we like it. As per usual God knows what he is doing. So far we have had no problems with it and my son is doing great. My plan is to use it all the way through 7^th grade but if at some point it doesn’t work anymore I will definitely be looking into something else.

Language Arts- Before I officially decided to do school during the summer I bought Grammar Galaxy with the intention of using it for our language arts. Then I went to the homeschool convention and found BJU Press. First, I looked at the Level 1 English and Grammar. I realized that I had already taught him most of the information in that book. (I may or may not have been patting myself on the back for that one). So after skimming Level 2 I decided I had found our Curriculum. WooHoo!!!!!

We are currently working on the Grammar Galaxy throughout the summer before we start the BJU Press English and Grammar.

Spelling- This is another one I decided on at the convention. We are using BJU Press Spelling Level 1. I like how quick and easy the lessons are and how each list has 9 words that are easily spelled phonetically and then there is what is called a memory word. Memory words are those tricky words that march to a beat of a different drum and you actually have to memorize how to spell them. I always hated those tricky things.

Science- This is the only subject I knew for sure what we were getting as early as last summer. Apologia Astronomy! Words cannot express my excitement on this one. My son has been interested in the planets since he was 3 thanks to the Cat in the Hat.  I took a look at the Apologia books last year at the homeschool convention and I instantly fell in love. Once I saw that there was an Astronomy book I knew at once that we had to use that for science in first grade. My son seriously cannot get enough about the planets.

Geography- Around the time my son was 3 and getting into the planets he also became interested in knowing the states and their capitals. He would draw the states on his magna-doodle and mark where the capitals were for each and every state. For a while he watched How the States Got Their Shape… a lot!!! Since then he has moved on to the rest of the world. We found a great app on the i-pad for him called Stack the States. He has learned so many countries and their capitals I have an extremely hard time keeping up with him. We decided to indulge his curiosity and learn world geography with Galloping the Globe this year. We haven’t started this yet but it looks great. However, if you don’t want a curriculum that involves a lot of prep work this is not for you. I, however, don’t mind the extra work when it comes to something I know my son will completely eat up.

History- History we have still not pinned down. As of right know though I plan on just letting him watch Liberty Kids and Drive Through History. Liberty Kids we gave to him on his 5^th birthday. He wasn’t to impressed with it at the time but I’m hoping to reintroduce it this year. Drive Through History I have found is on Amazon Prime Video. I haven’t yet seen this but I keep hearing how good it is. Also, I have Where in the world is Carmon Sandiago DVD’s that he loves to watch. Carmon will cover History and Geography.

Piano and Typing-  These two we are hoping to find something soon. If anyone has suggestions I would love to hear them.

And that’s It. I am really looking forward to this year. We learned so many things about homeschooling last year and I am sure this year will be no different.