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New Year, New Design, New Focus

December 28, 2010 By 6 Comments

Happy {almost} New Year!  I know I am a couple days early, but that’s okay.  I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas with their families.  Christmas here was awesome, as always.  I have a very generous Santa (Thanks Mom!) and my house is still in complete chaos from the festivities.

Here are some of our highlights:

You should have seen the little boys come staggering out after Anthony went yelling down the hallway “WAKE UP! SANTA’S BEEN HERE!”  They were completely confused and 90% asleep.

The little brothers got a very cool Kidcraft Every Day Hero’s Fire/Police Station house.  It’s a total doll house…but for boys.  Complete with furniture and hero’s.

A LeapFrog® Tag Reading System that the boys are loving.  So happy we got these.

Anthony, the future BMX King!

Oy.  Mommy needs some more sleep…

Good times!

I guess now it’s time to pack it all up again for next year.  I’m really not looking forward to that!

Changes

You may have noticed that I have yet another new website design.  I have been feeling really out of focus lately.  I love blogging and I love the people I meet in this vast internet world.  I don’t want to just walk away from that.  But I don’t feel as if I’m growing.  My website is very random and unorganized.  I don’t want to be a “review” blog (not that there is anything wrong with that).  I also don’t feel that I’m particularly witty or clever to draw in traffic with my charm alone.

So.  I’m at a crossroads.  Whatever shall I do?  I spent the week thinking (a very scary thought) about what makes my family tick.  What makes me happy?  What do I want to accomplish in the new year?  What the heck do I actually do every day?  And I came up with a plan.

Family Adventure

With a house full of boys, we do a lot of outdoor adventures.  We like to camp.  I’m always surprised by the questions I get from non-campers about how it’s done with the kids.  All of my children have been camping since they were infants.  I decided I would try to focus more on family adventures.

I want to learn how to geocache, and I want to spend more time hiking and enjoying the outdoors with my boys.  I want to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon (remember, I’ve talked about that already).  So why not DO IT?  I will be adding some camping recipes and ideas to encourage you to get out and enjoy this beautiful world we live in.  Hopefully I’ll be able to share outdoor gear and camping locations with you here as well.

Voluntary Simplicity

Have you heard this term before?

Voluntary simplicity is a philosophy. Often called compassionate living, it is a conscious choice to simplify your life and a deliberate downshifting to create the life and home environment that fit you and your family. ~ Choosing Voluntary Simplicity (my new favorite blog of the moment!)

Basically, to me, Voluntary Simplicity is learning to live richly with less.  Trying to reduce the amount of chemicals that my ADHD child consumes has already got me cooking a lot from scratch.  I’m going to expand on that.  I tried a garden last year but I killed it.  So I’m going to document myself learning to garden productively.  I want to downsize (or downshift) our possession and start purging all the clutter in our lives.  Want less, need less.  I will share what I learn.

This week, I was looking at property where we could go move and live in a little trailer and be like hippies (I’ve always been a hippy at heart anyways), but my family shot me down.  Anthony proclaimed, “I don’t want to be a hippy!  I want to play the Wii!”  Don’t worry, I’ll keep working on them…

Homeschool

If you read, then you know I am trying to home school my boys.  We’ve been very lazy lately with the holidays and such.  I need to get back into the swing of things and I think by committing to blogging about what we learn together, then we can both stay on track.  Heading off into a non-curriculum based world is a little exciting and scary and I want to document what works and what doesn’t.

So basically, I am going to be focusing on these three things the most.  I really think they go together nicely, adventure, living an outdoor life, home school.  Of course, I won’t be able to leave my usual mommy ramblings behind so that will be thrown in, too.  But I will try to stay focused and create a blog that is useful to people rather than just being completely random and willy nilly.  I hope people like the changes.  I hope I like the changes.

 

Filed Under: ADHD, Adventure, Family Life, Holidays Tagged With: , , , ,
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School is Starting

August 25, 2010 By 7 Comments

…and I am more confused than ever.

I made the decision to home school Anthony.  The twins will start, too, but they are preschool so it’s much less stressful with them.  The home school academy through his school had a waiting list.  So I enrolled him in the California Virtual Academy (CAVA) through K12.com.  Essentially, it’s public school…at home.

I was happy with my decision.  School starts on Monday and I am anxiously awaiting our curriculum and supplies.

Now, of course, with school just days away, there is lots of chatter online about home school and different programs and curriculum’s.

I’m second guessing myself.

Pro’s of CAVA:

  1. It’s free.
  2. There are teachers and support people available when I get stuck
  3. There is a schedule to follow
  4. Everything is laid out so you know when and how to do the lessons.

Con’s of CAVA:

  1. There is a schedule to follow
  2. Everything is laid out so you have to do it like they tell you.
  3. Not a lot of room for improvisation and creativity

So, now I am wondering if I made the right decision to go with CAVA.  It’s still a California Public School.  It’s still the same lessons and same standardized tests.  Will it still be lacking like so many brick and mortar schools?

Should I expect more?

But, am I organized enough to branch out on my own as a more “traditional” home schooler?  There are SO many curriculum out there.  Many of the “private” or religion based lesson books cost money (CAVA is free).  A lot of the programs look really cool and really fun.  So flexible.  Do I want to teach him more Christian based lessons?  I’m not opposed to that at all.  It would be nice to kind of just do what I what, when I want to.

As a “newbie” home school mom, should I just go with the structured, laid out for me plan until I learn the ropes?

I’m just not sure what to do.  The clock is ticking.  Help me decide!

Filed Under: Family Life Tagged With: , ,
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To Home School or Not To Home School – That is the Question!

May 26, 2010 By 18 Comments

Holy crap.  What am I getting myself into?

I had a conversation with Anthony’s kindergarten teacher yesterday.  I hadn’t seen her in a while with having baby’s and all recently.  She asked me about the ADHD questionnaires that she had filled out and was wondering what the doctor had decided/recommended.  She wasn’t surprised at the results and I was happy to hear her say that she was also not an advocate for medicating.  I told her about us working on diet change and asked her what she thought.

Surprisingly, she told me that she thought Anthony would learn better in a “traditional” school setting.  Currently he is in a public Montessori program that I was really happy with, but the problem with Montessori is that everyone is doing something different.  One child can be reading, another one doing math, and yet another one is doing something else.  It’s like a room full of shiny objects.  Anthony and shiny objects don’t mix well!

I was really very worried and saddened that she would recommend taking him out of the Montessori school.  I worry about the effect it would have on him.  I have not ever told him that he has something called ADHD.  I don’t want him burdened with it or to feel “bad” about it.  I know he’s only (almost) completed Kindergarten and the school change probably wouldn’t be a big deal, yet I still worry.  Besides that, his school has very high ratings with test scores and parent satisfaction where the “new” school does not.

Well, it just so happens that his school campus not only has the Montessori program, but also something called the Mountain Valley Academy…home school.

Now, I don’t know a lot about home schooling and the gazillian different curriculum’s out there, but this one actually goes through our school district.  I am assuming then that all the curriculum, testing, reporting, legal type stuff is taken care of by the district.  Now, I could be wrong…I hope I’m not.  So it’s a tiny bit less daunting than heading out to the school of Google to find what to teach.  The fact remains though that I am still the one teaching.  EEK!  With this program he would also have the option of going to school twice a week and I it would be to a campus he’s already familiar with.

Can I do this?

I had entertained the idea of home school back before he ever entered Kindergarten.  I love the idea of it, but I dismissed actually doing it for fear of failure.  Not my childrens failure but mine.  What if I suck?  What if he doesn’t learn anything?  Can I follow a set schedule and enable him to succeed?

*UGH*

I’m scared to death!

This is my child and I would do anything for him.  I don’t want to put him at a sub-par school, but I also don’t want him to get so distracted in class that he can’t learn what he needs to learn.  Could home school be a good alternative?

I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear what you think.  Especially if you are a home-schooler.  Please tell me I can do this!

Filed Under: ADHD, Family Life Tagged With: , , ,