I am riding a rollercoaster of important activities….bear with me while I list things here just so I don’t go crazy with them all floating in my head:

Catch up laundry for upcoming beach trip
Put actual laundry away ;)
Prepare maturing daughter for confirmation classes starting this week
buy some clothes and shoes for kids so they don’t look like street urchins
create something new for the shop
plan something to work on during vacation
deactivate old computer photoshop
activate laptop photoshop
work on school year planning, schedules, and organization
read with kids
breathe

I feel there’s more but I can’t remember….I am sure it will come up by surprise later in the week and bop me. :)

Just a pretty I *FINALLY* made with some Basic Grey papers I bought last year. I bought the entire Gypsy collection and then couldnt’ bear to cut it up. But now I have this cool lunch box organizer with which to keep track of all my mini doodles and product concepts. I made some fun little inserts to record my ideas and well of course added a bunch of Prima flowers and bling. Overboard? Maybe. Regretful? NO WAY! Loving my pretty pink glittery little idea box. :)

Well it’s getting to be that time again! Time to start winding summer down to a close and time to start weaning the kids and myself back into some semblance of a routine in preparation for the new school year. Every year since I can remember, I always say I want to do school over the summer, but every year when summer gets here we just need the break. So here we are at the wind down of this year’s break.

I am not sure what I’ll do with Kaitlin or Ian, but mostly it will be the same ol’ same ol’ with a little ramping up of responsibility and independent work, more so with Kaitlin than with Ian, who is just going into 1st grade. We’ll start off mostly level K with him and ramp up to first grade work within a few months, so I am going to call it 1st grade because I think by the time we finish the school year that’s where he’ll be in most subjects. We use a mix of different resources - workbooks for the lower grades like Christian Liberty Press. For Kaitlin, I am thinking of using Teaching Textbooks later in the year for her math, just to change it up since math is a bit of a challenge for her. Not so much that it’s too hard, but that it’s not “her style” - she’s much more arts-oriented. To that end, we are planning a homemade class for her - we have yet to name it, but it will be a run your own business class in which she does marketing, research, and development on a craft related product to sell. She will go into production, investing time and a modest amount of money in her product, which we will track in her books. Then we will set up a shop somewhere such as Etsy.com, where she can learn (carefully alongside Mom) to operate an e-commerce business and enjoy the fruits of her labors. We may also investigate local marketing options that can occur in a safe, low maintenance environment, perhaps within the homeschool community. Sounds exciting, no? Oh and we’ll have to add in a little research on branding too. :) Oops I think this one might top the fun-o-meter for mom!

For Henry, we are leaning heavily on HERC, a local Christian home school co-op, for much of his high school regimen. We are excited to get started on the following classes: Philosophy(The Battle for Truth - Noebel), Chemistry(Apologia), Advanced Math(Saxon), and Shakespeare(Brightest Heaven of Invention - Leithart)! I think I will have to make a point to visit his classes this year, now the the other kids are older. I am especially intrigued by the Philosophy and Shakespeare classes. I think Henry will enjoy them.

Because we can’t really afford to do more with HERC, he will be doing some English, Spanish (Power Glide I think*), and music at home. I think that he and I will do English together - World Literature because it is enjoyable to analyze and review the literature aloud. Also, we are going to coincide music appreciation/theory as well as Spanish in a group setting with the my other kids, adjusting expectations and assignments based on learning level. We may set up a group session time once a week and then let the kids study more independently or in various groupings as applicable during the rest of the week. I think it will be good for them and I can sort of knock a couple of subjects off in less sessions! It’s a win-win-win-win situation! Hehe.

Go mom go!

*NEWSFLASH! I love that home school moms network. I was able to get in contact with another home school mom no longer using her Power Glide and picked it up for a SONG! I saved eighty bucks by electing to use an older edition of the program and it is in pristine condition. YAY! What a blessing.

Support this special cause, if you feel led:

Well we have decided not to go see Wall-E at the movies at this time. Littlest Rigdon isn’t’ really ready for it and we can wait for the dvd. Since the movie previews have quit playing every time we put on the tv, the pressure to go see it has diminished and we have saved fifty dollars, the price of taking the entire family to the movies, for now. However, Ian is still quite interested in Wall-E.

While this is going on, Ian has increased his snack habit. He’s big enough to help himself and that’s just what he does - all. day. long. So we are combining several lessons into one. Learning to tell time. Learning to wait for snack time and meal time, and learning to wait patiently. As well, we packed one more little craft session in. Ian painted this old clock of mine that I had been saving for craft inspiration. It took me a minute to get over not seeing one of my paper designs on it, but once I let go of that, it was all easy peasy. We downloaded a Wall-E desktop wallpaper from the Disney site and adapted it for our use, creating our own Wall-E clockface. We took the clock apart, painted it, glued Wall-E in, and then hung it in an accessible spot in Ian’s bedroom. Now he knows when lunch is….he exclaims sometimes with dismay, “Awwww…we MISSED lunchtime AGAIN!” He hasn’t quite gotten over the fact that lunch doesn’t have to occur right at 12 sharp, but we are working on that. ;)