Veteran's Day

We have been having a lot of fun adventures and are loving home-schooling! We have actually been hotel-schooling a lot lately, to be honest. My husband had business trips to Las Vegas, Phoenix and Albuquerque the last couple of months, so we tagged along with him and had so much fun! I have tons of pictures and stories to tell about our trips, but right now I wanted to share our Veteran's Day celebration with you.

We received our flag that had flown over the capitol a while ago. My eight year old was SO excited when it came, and so was I. :~) We haven't had time to do anything with it yet, so I decided Veteran's Day would be the perfect time to finally pull it out of the box again and give it a home.

Here is the box with Senator Orin Hatch as the sender. It actually came quite a bit faster than I had expected.

Inside was another box containing the flag and a certificate with the information about the flag.

The certificate states that it was flown on September 1, 2010. I love that it shows it was flown for my kiddos. I am so glad we found out about this and did it. I think it ended up being less expensive than going to the store and buying a flag. Nice bonus.

The older kids holding up the flag.

We hung it on the wall in our kitchen and said our morning Pledge of Allegience. We will get to do this every morning now.

After I worked on the core subjects, we did an art project. This is a big deal for me, because I am kind of phobic about kids and paint. In fact, this may be the first time I have let my kids use anything besides watercolors. (even the watercolors are rare additions) We made a flag using the kids handprints. They had a lot of fun and so did I when I wasn't stressing about the paint getting everywhere. Luckily, I only let the kids see my panic a couple of times.

The final result.

I survived paint and the kids had fun. We are all so happy with the results and the kids are excited to show it to Daddy. The paint washed right up with no problems, to my great relief.

I also wanted to have my oldest right thank you letters to some of our family who are serving in the military. We didn't have time for that today, but I am going to make sure it happens tomorrow or Monday.

Happy Veteran's Day and thank you to all those service men, past and present, who have helped to secure our freedom.

Tomorrow's the big day! We're ready to roll...I think. :~\ ;~)

I found these maps of the US and the world at Costco for cheap and we put them up in the office. The kids were having fun looking at them tonight.

We found this kid's desk at IKEA for $20 and the kid's desk chair to go with it for $14.99.

I had been looking on KSL classifieds for a desk for a while, but never could find anything that wasn't 60+ miles away. I am really happy with this one that we found. Most of the teaching will probably be done at the kitchen counter, but I felt like Mason would need a quiet place to do his worksheets sometimes. It can be hard to concentrate with all the other kids doing different things. We put it together last night, and he has sat at it every chance he gets. :~) I will let him decorate his pencil holder (formula can) tomorrow if we have time. I got the flag for around $1 and will suffice for our Pledge of Allegiance in the mornings until the one we ordered that has flown over the Capitol Building gets here. I cut a Crystal Light container down, added some beans for weights and poked a hole in the center of the lid for the "flag stand".

Hello world! Welcome to my newest blog about our adventures in homeschooling. I recently decided to homeschool my children and thought maybe a blog would be fun to include as well as help keep me on track and informative to others.

In March of this year our family grew from three kids to five kids overnight when we got a sibling placement from the state. Due to this development, I had to stop doing daycare for three children, which was paying my son's tuition (in addition to other bills). I began to realize that we would not be able to send my oldest child back to the private school he attended for Kindergarten and 1st grade. I really want to give my kids the best education possible while trying to shelter them, for as long as possible, from the scary things that are becoming more and more prevalent in our society. I don't remember a lot of drugs and alcohol when I was in school, but I did wear my values on my sleeve and so probably wasn't really approached with any of that stuff because of that and certainly didn't seek it out. I guess my school years were probably much more sheltered than a lot of peoples. I now am seeing my teenage nieces and nephews struggling so much with these problems, as well as promiscuity, and it scares me to death. I have to wonder what it will be like in another 8-10 years from now when my oldest gets to high school. It seems as though it just continues to get worse. If I could afford to send all my kids to the faith based private school for the duration of their school years, then I probably would, but I can't, so I had to begin looking at my other options. I know that I cannot shelter them from every bad and negative thing in the world, and will not try, but I will be able to keep some of it from them hopefully until they are old enough to make wise decisions and have a solid foundation under them to keep them steady when the storms roll in.

Homeschooling felt right for us from the first time I started considering it, but I really didn't know where to start and doubted my own ability and education to be able to give them a proper education. I started talking to people who have been homeschooling and asking questions. I was quite amazed at how many people I knew that were homeschooling. They gave me wonderful books to help me and encouragement that I could do it. Just the things I needed.

I really wanted to stick with the classical education curriculum that my oldest had been getting, and found just what I was looking for in the books, "The Well Trained Mind" and "A Thomas Jefferson Education". I did a lot of reading and studying and am feeling confident that I can do this and be successful at it. Right now I tend to fluctuate between being extrememly excited and terrifically terrified. My biggest worry is having the self-discipline to stick with my schedule on weeks when I am not feeling the best. I realize that I feel much better and get much more accomplished when I take care of myself and don't eat a lot of junk food and soda and that will be critical to our success. I also have to be flexible with myself and realize that one of the advantages to homeschooling is the flexibility it offers to us.

So....here we go! I am jumping in with both feet, holding my breath and saying a prayer! I know that most people think I'm crazy. Some say it outright and others just hint at it, but no matter what anyone thinks I have to do what I feel in my heart is right, and this feels right. YEEHAW!!!