A Some-What Productive Summer

 Well, I actually did schooly things this summer!

First I didn't stop teaching Abraham and William "All About Reading," and half way through the summer, we got half way through the book!.....and then I got very comfortable with what we had accomplished and didn't really progress that much after that.

Here's William doing one of their cute activities:

Abraham is not at the same level, but I hope to teach him using "Logic of English." I'm really excited about using yet another dyslexic-focused program to see how effective it is.

I also taught Daniel and Hyrum cursive. I'm sure they don't know their upper case as well as they should, so maybe I'll have them practice this more during the year.

And I continued to do work with Maxwell.

NEWS! I decided to put Maxwell into a virtual high school! It's School of Hope, a private online Catholic school in Alberta. I'm really excited about it. He really needs to be accountable to someone other than me. I specifically did this for English. I hope this goes well!

When Maxwell turns 16, I plan on him taking the GED. We'll see how that goes and then perhaps he can transition to college classes.

Also I did some awesome things (If I do say so myself)

I helped Abraham make a book about "Front Flipping Dinosaurs" that he illustrated and wrote. He wants to inform the world that this book is NOT fiction. It's totally nonfiction.

This was quite the accomplishment. It ended up being 32 pages long! He's so excited for everyone to buy his book...I didn't really explain how this works. We made it using Blurb, but hey, maybe I could figure out how to put it on Amazon.

Also, I started making a movie of Maxwell doing "The Great Canadian Baking Show" but the McKay edition. With only one contestant: him.

He's pretty excited to finish the episode.

Also, my olders have started doing Dungeons and Dragons pretty regularly.

Also, I STARTED SCHOOL! I'm going to Athabasca University to get 30 credits of educational psychology so that I can combine that with my BA of Arts as prerequisites to apply to get into the Master of Education- School and Applied Psychology program at the University of Calgary. All this to get to be an Educational Psychologist. Whoo Hoo!

ALSO I've recovered the furniture in my school room. The before and after:

ALSO I've made two and a half videos summarizing the book "Leadership and Self Deception." This book holds some of the most important lessons I could ever teach my children, so this was really important to me.

ALSO I wrote the FIRST CHAPTER IN MY MOM"S BIOGRAPHY!!! I'm making a novel-type biography about my mother. It will sound a lot more like "Little House on the Prairie" than a normal biography.

ALSO I did two science clubs. The first one we learned about emulsions and colloids. We did this in my back yard and lots of kids came. It was pretty fun making mayonnaise, looking at oil in water and other fun things.  This is milk being effected by soap:

We also had a class about the PH scale. We made cabbage indicators that worked and Turmeric indicators that didn't work and tasted lots of acids and bases. It was a pretty fun class.

ALSO Daniel, William and Abraham did swimming lessons. I was especially proud of Abraham who really swam for the first time on his first day of lessons! (Yeah, living in a house with a swimming pool with the ocean in the front yard wasn't what did it--a stranger saying "okay it's time to swim now!" was all it took.....yep)

ALSO Hyrum, Daniel and William did Acting Summer Day Camp! They LOVED it and they preformed cute little COVID-friendly skits and dances at the end (they weren't allowed to sing because of COVID....weird.)

Notice William NOT touching Rosie? They weren't allowed to touch each other the whole time LOL.

ALSO I read "God's Design for Sex" with my kids. They are awesome very-Christian books that are for each age group. They talk about practically EVERYTHING about sex, which was perfect. My kids weren't that impressed LOL, but I highly suggest these books.

ALSO I organized and cleaned my school closet!!!! Be impressed. Be very impressed. Behold the before and after:

ALSO We went camping:

And Camping (this is our camper)

And Camping (Rory really got into it)

And Camping

And Camping

And Camping:

But then Dustin got sick of our Camper and wanted to make his own....which he spent the last of the summer making and making and making.

Cardston tried to make things fun during COVID this summer with things like a new spray park:

A new group called "Cardston Rocks" that encouraged the painting and hiding of rocks across town:

And "Parking Lot" Pow Wows:

And we had friends who went around making chalk art on everyone's sidewalks. We felt very loved to be included on their hit list.

ALSO there were three birthdays in our house:

And since it was William's 8th birthday that meant BAPTISM!!! He had to meet with the missionaries outside, and he got baptized outside too! How special.

And with all my things I did, I didn't take my littles to the creek or to Wally's beach enough, but I have a downstairs neighbour who took them for me. THANK YOU!!!

This year has been so crazy, but it's been VERY crazy for the homeschool community in the past month. EVERYONE realizes that homeschool is actually an option, which I don't think everyone considered before.

Now the most popular homeschool curriculums are all sold out, and virtual schools are full. It's weird. 

Westwind had to hire a new teacher and there are new faces at our mom's nights and at our homeschool get-togethers. When we had our Cardston and Area coordination meeting, there were many people I had never met there.

This is us in a big back yard all being far apart from each other. I'm so ready for this COVID stuff to be over.

This is what I feel like sums up our summer:

My Homeschool Area!!!

I posted this photo on some homeschool facebook groups just for fun, (and to celebrate that I had finally cleaned it!) and some people contacted me wanting to know more. So here you go people!

I'm sooo spoiled. When we bought our house, I knew I wanted a homeschool area. AREA--not room. A room makes me feel claustrophobic. I wanted an area right off of the family room, and that is what I got.

Before this, I had always done school at the kitchen table. Nothing wrong with that, and it worked, but there was something in me that remembered looking at bulletin boards and classroom paraphernalia while growing up in public school. It made me wonder if I learned by osmosis from them. If I did, then my kids are missing out if they don't have that too---right?

I know that's silly.

BUT I was still spoiled and got what I wanted. Bwahahaha.

First, I needed a place to organize all my specifically-for-homeschool books. These are just cheap bookshelves from either Walmart or Ikea-can't remember. I even labeled the shelves to make it easy to find the books I want for the different historical time periods or subjects.

I feel EXTREMELY grateful that I live in a place that gives me my taxes back for my school children. (Makes sense, right? I'm saving the government money by homeschooling!!!) The main thing I have Alberta education pay for is BOOKS!

Here's a video going over all my favourite books (by the way, I meant that the Troll books were more like historical fiction than non-fiction which is why they are more interesting.)

The next thing we got was the chalkboard which we bought second hand.

That "b" vs "d" info graphic is the BEST thing since sliced bread.

Here's the link for that: "B" vs "D"

Also, the magnetic letters are from All About Reading. 

The next thing I bought was the calendar that I got from a school supply store. I laminated it and glue gunned magnets and paperclips to it so I could change the dates easily. You can get it from Amazon HERE and here's other things they sell that goes with it, that I didn't know about HERE.

I purposefully put an ANOLOG clock in our school area, so they would have to practice telling time the old-school way. And you can see our pre-COVID schedule. Looking at how crazy busy we were makes me almost happy we had a couple months of calm!

I wanted other billboard-type things that matched the calendar, so with a little bit of photoshop magic, I created this number tree and colour birds:

You can find the TREE LINK HERE.

But if you want to print it on 8 1/2 by 11" paper, you need to print it and put it together like a puzzle. Here are all the "puzzle pieces" you will need TREE LINK HERE. 

You can find the COLOUR BIRDS HERE.

Above this I have my Anxiety poster.

I made this after going to a workshop put on by our local Educational Psychologist (whom I LOVE.)

You can get a COPY HERE.

And then at the top of the room I have my Classical Conversations Timeline History picture cards. HERE'S THE LINK.

(The timeline is the only thing I do from Classical Conversations)

If you'll notice I added my own photo of Jesus. I don't like Classical Conversation's photo of Jesus, and I like highlighting Him as the most important part of the timeline. If you didn't know, the Classical Conversations timeline is heavily Christian influenced, but has as many other important events of history in there too, like "Marx Publishes the Communist Manifesto."

This painting of Jesus was from a calendar done by Simeon Dewey (fun fact: he used to be my neighbour and gave me that calendar!) LINK TO ART

Next to my windows, I have the alphabet posters that came with All About Reading Pre-Reading level. LINK HERE

And then at the top of my chalk board, I have my Homophones. I bought these from Teachers Pay Teachers. LINK HERE

But I also made some of my own to match, and you can find THOSE HERE.

Another thing that makes this space work, is the bins I can put inside the table. One is for math  manipulatives, and the other is for reading lesson supplies.

And last but not least, I have COMFY chairs to learn in. I'm quite proud of these chairs. We bought them at a second hand store for cheap and reupholstered them. I LOVE them now!!

Before and After:

So there you have it! A more detailed account of my school area than anyone actually wanted!