Letters Q & R

Last weekend (Friday & Saturday) were my teacher work days. I had planned to post but ran out of time. I was able to get quite a bit accomplished and I believe that I'll be able to purchase the necessary curriculum for well under my budget and that's a huge blessing because even though the budget is reduced this year it was still stretched. As the saying goes "A dollar saved is a dollar earned" and that's about the only way for me to earn any money is by saving it. I watched my Charlotte Mason Seminar and was rejuvenated in my desire to apply a lot of Charlotte's ideas. As usual, I'm excited about the upcoming year and now am back on track for finishing this year well.
My parents are here visiting this week so I didn't get any pictures of our R activities but I got most of my ideas and resources from ConfessionsofaHomeschooler.blogspot.com. We made rainbow crayons, hopped like rabbits, ran, rolled, and just had lots of fun.

Here is Kitten with her pattern blocks forming a quetzel.


She is coloring by number her quilt. (ConfessionsofaHomeschooler.blogspot.com)


For Qq last week I created a counting/number match game for Kitten. I had some crown cut-outs from The Dollar Tree (we called them Queen's crowns), I wrote the numbers 1 - 25 on the crowns and gave her some shiny pompoms to place on them. She counted out the "jewels" to match the number on the crown.


Moo-Man practicing his math with this place value game from filefolderfun.com


Hopefully I'll get back on track for next week, although we do have lots of appointments next week. Oh well, it's all in God's Hands!

Planning Week

No school this week. We do 5 weeks on and 1 week off from the first Monday in August until the first Friday in June (taking the week of Thanksgiving off and 2 weeks for Christmas). The thinking is that I can recharge my juices, reevaluate our school year plans, and make any necessary adjustments. But sometimes (most of the time) it ends up being such a busy week of "other stuff" that I don't get as much done as I intended. So yesterday I did some planning, reevaluating and I will today and tomorrow God willing.
Usually in February I begin planning for the next school year. Yes, I know that it's early but I'm not good under pressure, so I allot myself plenty of time for setting learning goals, perusing catalogs, budgeting, purchasing, and planning our school year. My problem this year is that since we are in the process of moving 10 hours away all of next years school books from years past are already there and I'm here (of course). Our budget is extremely tight this year and I really want to use what I already have so with the exception of a couple of items that I know that we'll be needing it looks like I'll be missing the great spring sales. Also, I really won't be able to plan thoroughly until July. (Yikes!) July is typically a busy month anyway with several birthdays, a family reunion, this year a move, unpacking all of those books, and now school planning. I did package the grade level books in their own boxes and label them Kindergarten for Kitten, 2nd grade for Moo-Man, and 9th grade for the big man. My oldest graduates this June so that's one less person to plan for. I'm stressed just thinking about it, but it's in God's hands and we may just start later in August. That's the great thing about homeschooling; you can adapt and adjust. Praise God, He is good!
I did get a great idea from another blog (Smooth Stones Academy) about planning an in-school work day or a personnal homeschool conference. That's what I'm working on now so hopefully I'll get a jump on all that July planning and will have everything necessary to do the job when the time comes. I will let my oldest dd take control next Friday and my dh can handle it on Saturday. Yah! I'm excited just thinking about it.