Home for the Holidays

We're having a nice relaxing time in Austin with my family this week. The kids were great on both airplanes. It's always a good trip when there are no huge tantrums. Brooke did wind up soaking her pants on the last leg from drinking too much milk, but that was our only crisis. The day after we arrived, my brother's family had a children's party with a visit from Santa. Joshua asked Santa for a white Steelers Polamalu jersey. Let's hope Santa's a Steelers fan too...

Homeschooling & Scheduling

Here are some pictures of things we use daily in our homeschooling. I've put together a daily schedule using the book Managers of Their Homes by the Maxwells http://www.titus2.com/. We haven't actually followed it perfectly yet, but it gives me something to strive toward and teaches me self-discipline and to be a good steward of my time.

This is the Calendar Math bulletin board we use every day. I use it to teach patterns, odd/even, money, tally marks, place value, addition/subtraction, etc. The kids really enjoy it.

This is our white board. We memorize (short) Scripture verses once a week and do Build-a-word activities using a group of letters. Joshua builds the words himself on a table using some foam letters we have from a puzzle.

This is the schedule I have created using Managers of Their Homes. Each person has a color and activities are divided into half hour increments. Like I said, we haven't gotten there yet :)

Our First Blog- Holidays and Homeschooling

So here it is...my first post. Andy was a little unsure about this whole blogging thing, but I was sure that, being an Air Force family, this would be a great way to share our lives with family and friends. I was also inspired by all my Beale buddies' beautiful blogs out there. You can see them in My Favorite Blogs below.
Just to let you know what's going on with us...Andy is finishing up instructing in another 6-month Weapons School class. We haven't gotten to see him much over the past two weeks, so we're really looking forward to having lots of family time on our Christmas vacation. We'll be travelling to see my family in Texas and his family in PA during that time, which we're all excited about (except for the plane rides of course). If any of you have ideas on how to keep 3 young children happy (and quiet) on airplanes, please do share.
The kids have been doing great. They love to play at the park and visit with friends in our playgroups and church. I've started homeschooling Joshua for Kindergarten this year, which is a real learning experience for the both of us. It's mostly taught me that I need to be self-disciplined to set aside some time each day for "school." I'm using a great book called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann. He's been doing really well and he's already completed 50 lessons. We also do Calendar math every day and some other fun activities on our white board. I'm not doing as much as I'd like to, but I just kind of add things as I find them. A great place to find the Typical Course of Study for each grade level is http://www.worldbook.com/wb/Students?curriculum. You can just check it off as you go when you know the child has mastered it. I'll post more tips as I learn them for those who are interested. I'm going to try to do some "school" with Joshua over our vacation, but we'll see how that goes.