Lifestyle

Our 2016/2017 Homeschool Plan

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our first official day of homeschool

Ahhhhhh I feel like I can finally take a small deep breath and relax just a tiny bit over this whole homeschool thing (maybe that’s because I am about half way through a pretty strong but totally delicious margarita at the moment, but who’s to say??). It’s been such a major stress for the past few months. All in a good way if that makes sense, but it’s just been a lot to process, plan, figure out, order, set up and get started. THERE.IS.JUST.SO.MUCH.OUT.THERE.TO.CHOOSE.FROM! That was my biggest stress. How did I know what exactly to choose?? I knew from the beginning we did not fit into an all-in-one packaged curriculum sort of deal. First thing first, I did lots (LOTS!) of reading and researching on what kind of teaching philosophy I thought felt right. That was a good starting point. It helped me focus on where I wanted us to head and what my school goals were for our family. This book will be super helpful if you are just starting out! We’ve been following classical education for the past 2 years and have really loved it but as I started reading more and more, I became drawn to the philosophies of Charlotte Mason. I listened to every podcast from A Delectable Education and felt so pumped by everything they were saying. I just LOVE what Charlotte Mason has to say about education, it felt so right! Another good resource and one that I’ve really loved is the At Home podcast. Those ladies have A LOT of wisdom to share on where to start and the up’s and down’s of homeschooling.

Once I decided that Charlotte Mason was the path we were going to head down, I spent countless hours on the Ambleside Online and Simply Charlotte Mason websites. I printed out the Year 1 schedule from Ambleside as the starting point for our year. I read so many reviews raving about the booklists that I knew we couldn’t go wrong. I did switch out a few things that I think work better but still have stuck to a Charlotte Mason type curriculum.

You can find the Year 1 Schedule here.

We follow it exactly for our natural history/geography, read-a-louds/extra reading and then parts of it for our literature (I’ll explain below).

Where I made some changes are:
Math: We use Mammoth Math and Life of Fred

Science: We’re doing nature studies. The topics sort of come up naturally as we spend a lot of time outside. We collect items and bring them back to journal our findings. For example, last week we went to a farm and learned about bees. When we got home we did a journal page diagramming a bee and common nectar sources. However, we do have this guidebook from Simple Charlotte Mason that’s helpful if you wanted a little guidance. The point of our science time is to spent a lot of time outside just exploring and being surrounded by nature.

English/reading/grammar: We are using English Lessons Through Literature and Reading Lessons Through Literature. We love them so far. This is the only reason why we aren’t following the Ambleside schedule exactly in these subjects. A lot of it overlaps with what we need to read daily for our English Lessons Through Literature work. We do lots of narration and copywork based on what we are reading. We also work on memorizing a poem. 1 or 2 per month- right now our favorites are from Robert Louis Stevenson. I really highly recommend the Ambleside booklists- such wonderful books to read to your kids.

History: Beautiful Feet: History Through Literature. For 1st and 2nd grade you use the Early American History Primary and Teaching Character Primary. I am in love with this curriculum so far! LOVE IT!

Bible Study: We read a chapter from The Bible Story by Arthur Maxwell and then we read Training Hearts, Teaching Minds everyday. Each week we memorize a new bible verse, as well as work on a hymn study(probably one per quarter). I am not following a specific hymn study, I am just working through old hymns that mean something to our family. The bible verses are either from Finley’s preschool curriculum or a bible verse from The Rizers because we love that cd.

Each quarter we will choose an artist and composer to study. Right now we’re learning about Degas and Bach. I take out all the books I can find and we read about them and then study the work as much as we can. We listen to Bach during the day, we paint pictures like Degas, we visit museums, etc…

We also have a monthly handicraft we’ll work on. This month and maybe next we are working on sewing. Rowan has been begging me to teach her how to sew, so that’s where we started. I like picking things based on what is sparking her interest at the time.

Miss Finley: she goes along for the ride with most of what Rowan is doing. She listens to all the stories and has the same memory work for bible verses and poems. I just don’t force any of it on her, we take it slow and if she wants to participate she is more than welcome. She of course wants to be a part of it all though! I do follow The Peaceful Preschool Program with her. It’s such a wonderful curriculum! I can’t say enough good stuff about it. I didn’t want some crazy, complex curriculum to do with her. She’s still so small! This is the perfect balance of good literature, gentle learning and fun activities.

Another lovely resource I highly recommend is the Wild and Free community. I love everything they share!!

Well that’s about it for now. We’re only a month in, but we are really loving it so far. It’s been such a blessing. I’ll write another post soon with more specifics of our daily schedule and how it all works out with Orion in the mix.

getting our hands dirty (and the carpet too!)…

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We started our new homeschool journey last week. What a whirlwind! It’s something that’s so very near and dear to my heart though. We homeschool for a lot of reasons, but one of the main reasons is that I want the girls to take charge of their education. I want to raise passionate, life long learners. For us though, that requires them to help out. A lot. From the time they wake up, to the time they go to bed, they are a part of our day and our daily tasks. Helping making meals, cleaning, laundry, and well, anything that sparks their interest. We also do a lot of art projects and handicrafts where I try not to step in to help. I have a tendency to help and do the next step because it might “make a mess”. We quite literally get our hands dirty with education these days. It means saying yes a lot more than maybe I would like, in an effort to help them learn and experience more. If they are interested in something, then we are going to explore it!

For someone who likes an orderly, clean house, it’s been a lesson in letting go. To see the greater purpose in all the little spills and messes. It will pay off in the long run right? hahaah. That’s what I keep telling myself. Do the work now and soon you will have kids who know how to care and clean up after themselves. Who love to try new things, and know the mess is worth it, but also know how to tidy it up. You know what makes it easier though? Having a good rug and carpet cleaner! Our school room rugs are two of my most favorite rugs in the house. They’re what I call my “thrifting prize possessions”. I found both at the Habitat Restore for a steal and well, I love them a little more than I should. I may have shed a tear (I kid, I kid) when Finley spilt yellow curry powder all over the rug this morning as she was counting spices and learning to screw each of the caps on (working on our fine motor skills over here for PreK). She then worked hard at “cleaning” it up. Which of course was great and I am glad she took ownership over her spill. However, we all know what a spill looks like after a 3.5 yrs old cleans it up. It was a big yellow circle smeared all over the carpet. doh!

Enter STAINMASTER Carpet Care. We teamed up with the brand to try their line of carpet care products, which are specifically designed to treat stain-resistant, nylon, and polyester carpets and rugs. My favorite part is that they are also designed to remove tough stains with out leaving a sticky residue. That sticky residue is the worst! Stainmaster Carpet Care leaves behind an invisible shield of protection to protect against future messes. It’s made it so much easier for this homeschooling Mama be open to allllllllll the new learning experiences in our day to day. Now when Finley wants to help make her own lunch with fresh berries and a smoothie, am all like “Sure! You can do it! You can even have a picnic out in the school room on my favorite rug!”.

Cheers to the freedom of not caring about the messes!

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This post was sponsored by STAINMASTER Carpet Care. Be sure to check out their wide variety of products. Thanks!

Visiting Vancouver

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Wow! I just came on to post some pictures and realized, whoops! it’s been a whole month since i’ve been on here. How does that happen. I know we’re all like “time goes by so fast” but man! time goes by so fast. Hahahaha doh!

Anyway, the last week of August Orion and I hopped a plane and headed out to Vancouver to visit my sister. She’s lived out there for awhile now, but I’ve never had the chance to visit. What a beautiful place! Like, it blew me away!! My sister lives about an hour north of the city, surrounded by beautiful mountains. It’s not called Sea to Sky Country for nothing. I was there a week but I know I only barely scratched the surface of the area. We drove up to Joffre Lakes Provincial park one day to hike, spent time in Vancouver and Whistler, hiked around Garibaldi Provincial Park, enjoyed an evening at the top of the Sea to Sky Gondola and just spent time catching up. Miss being near to my sister!

It was such a fun trip. I wish everyone was there with me to experience it. I know Kev and the kids would have loved it. I sure could have used the help carrying the babe up all the those mountains. Ha!

Thanks for being such a good host and tour guide Carrie. Love ya!

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Untitled^^best little welcome home committee I ever did see!

Birth Order, New Shoes and An End of Summer Track Meet.

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This post is sponsored by our friends at Zappos. 

Have you guys ever read books about birth order? It’s something that totally fascinates me. I believe there is real truth there. I am the first born in my family and obviously so is Rowan. I can tell already with her that she is sooooooooooo a first born. Rowan looooves to follow rules, is super bright, hardworking, and very motherly to her siblings. It’s fun to read about each child and what characteristics they might have based on the order they were born. One thing I’ve paid close attention to is what they say about middle children. Dear, sweet, sensitive Finley. I really try hard to not, what we like to call “middle child” her. We try to give her as much individual time and attention as we can and make sure she always gets her very own special things. I try to keep the hand-me-downs to a minimum. That’s why I was so excited to team up with Zappos and let her pick out these new Leepz sneakers by Stride Rite. I knew she would feel so special since these were our very first venture into light up shoes in our family. She has been walking, jumping and skipping around the house making them light up. It’s been so, so cute. I think (I mean I know) a part of her really likes hearing Rowan say she wishes she had a pair as well. I love being able to give her special moments that are all her own. Finley is also super excited because, as the middle child she’s so in looooooove with her older sister, and she can’t wait to take her new shoes to the track and be like Rowan. She told me she thinks she will be able to run just as fast as Rowan does. We found a high school in the area that has weekly family track meets. Everyone is invited to come race, no matter what age you are. Finley races, Rowan races, Kev races, it’s awesome!! The kids have been having such a great time going every week and with Finley’s new shoes you can bet she is going to run like the wind.

These are the perfect shoes to take her from the end of summer and keep her running straight into the back to school season. We don’t need tons of back to school gear this year because we are homeschooling the kids (I can imagine there will be lots of pajama days) but new shoes were definitely on the list. I am glad that we could easily (Zappos makes everything easy!) check that off the list. Whooohooo!

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A few from the past track meet…
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P7269898^^go FinFin go!!

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Through the Eyes of Rowan | Part 1

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Last year for Rowan’s birthday we decided to get her, her very own camera. She has carried that thing around with her everywhere ever since. I’ve been meaning to post the pictures she takes, but I’ve just never gotten around to it. We had a mess up with a memory card at one point, and lost a ton of her photos. Total bummer!!! However, here are some of her pictures from the last few months. I love looking through them! It’s like a little inside glimpse into what she thinks is interesting or beautiful. The camera we got her isn’t marketed as a kids camera but honesty, I can’t imagine an adult buying that camera for themselves (Sorry if anyone has it for themselves- hahaha!) I mean, there is a slideshow function with dancing bears?? And all the borders?? Anyway, what sold us on the camera for her, was that it was waterproof and shockproof. It’s had its fair share of drops, etc… and it’s still working perfect. It’s a great little digital camera for any kid (it also takes videos).

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24 Hours in Philadelphia

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My Shirt | Jeans | Bandana | Sandals | Finley’s Sandals | Finley’s crop top | Rowan’s Sandals | Rowan’s camera | Orion’s romper (on sale).

Tuesday we headed down to Philly for a quick overnight trip with some friends. Kev is in love with all things hip hop and was super pumped to go see Propaganda finally. We meet our friends down there and all rented an airbnb for the night. It worked out so great, especially with all the kids! A small shared apartment with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen and a nice living room was perfect for 5 kids and 4 adults. When traveling, airbnb is such an awesome option! We didn’t have tons of time in Philly (such a bummer!). We got there around 5pm on Tuesday night and left the next day around 10pm. On Tuesday night we got to meet up with Julie and Chris (yay!!!) for dinner. Love getting to catch up with my dear friend. Still so thankful that blogging brought us together so many years ago. The guys headed out from dinner to the show and we finished the night with ice cream and just hanging out at the apartment.

Untitled^^are we officially coffee drinkers? eeeeek!

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The next day we tried to pack as much as we could into one day. Whenever we travel to a new city, we love just walking all around and taking everything in. We started the day with breakfast at the Hungry Pigeon (thanks for the recommendation Julie). We headed over to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell after that. I love how old the city feels- it’s so cool to think of who else was once walking those streets. I love history! From there we walked over to Franklin Square and let the kids play on the playground and ride the carousel. Feeling hungry, we walked over to Reading Terminal for lunch and to stroll up and down all the aisles looking at all the food. Rowan thought it was pretty neat in there. Next up was city hall, the fountains at Dilworth Park and then we headed to the Magic Gardens. That was top on my list of what I wanted to check out while we were there. I love all the mosaics you come across as you walk around the city. So beautiful! The Magic Gardens were so cool!! We had so much fun exploring and playing a great scavenger hunt game. Totally recommend it. Right across the street is a playground called Seger Park. We let the kids play there a little while before we took the walk back to where the car was. We ended up just walking a big ol’ circle around the city. We stopped at a Whole Foods on the way and grabbed some dinner because it was really the easiest option at that point with the kids. They love eating at Whole Foods and were starting to get pretty tired and whiney. We were trying to just push through and get to the car. They were overall good sports but of course a full day of walking around the city is a lot of little ones.

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Once we got back to the car, there was no way that we could leave without heading over to the Art museum and reenacting Rocky. Rocky is top on Kev’s list of favorite movies. He actually just watched all of them again when Orion was born. He would take the end of the evening shift with him when he was just born and give me some time to take a shower or whatnot. The girls were totally in to running up the stairs and jumping up and down. Hahah so funny.

Thanks Philly for being so fun! We loved ya! Can’t wait to come back.

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Random Thoughts By Jen

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Hey guys! I’m writing on the blog! Whoa now! What do you guys think? Are blogs on the way out? Do you enjoy reading blogs anymore? Other than a lot of food blogs and blogs of friends I’ve been reading forever, my feed reader is pretty sparse. Are you satisfied with just Instagram/Snapchat posts from people? I am not sure how I feel about it all. I love this blog, but definitely don’t come and sit at the computer to share like I used to. I don’t know why? I mean, I do and I don’t. There isn’t much time nowadays, but honestly that never stopped me in the past. I used to make time no matter what. So many bloggers have stopped blogging lately and I totally understand it. Not sure if I am ready to throw in the towel yet though. I would love to hear your thoughts on it all!

Everyone is sleeping in our house right now and I just sat down here at my laptop to share a few things. Like the old days. I never use my laptop anymore. We have an iMac on our desk that I always use, but it just took it’s final breath so… well, there’s that. Maybe this is good. Maybe having to use my laptop again will make me want to write more. Hahha maybe not, time will tell.

Sooooooo Orion ate a cigarette tonight. Mom of the year award over here. We were eating ice cream outside at the local Stewarts and Orion was playing on the ground. Kev noticed he had something in his mouth and yep, there is was… a dirty old cigarette. ACK! Gross! I kind of wanted to rinse his mouth out with hand sanitizer.

Finley has been sick lately. Not sure what is really going on with her- and it’s killing me that we don’t have a straight answer to make her feel better. It’s such a hard part of parenting. Seeing our kids in pain or discomfort and not being able to fix it right then for them. Praying we have some answers this week and we can move forward with a plan for her.

Rowan has been reading up a storm lately. It is sooooooo awesome to hear her up in her room with a book, sounding out all the words and reading to her self. I LOVE THIS STAGE. It is so fun!!

Can you believe summer is half over already. Ahhhhhh! I don’t want it to end. Everytime it’s summer I think to myself why don’t we live somewhere  where the weather is nicer more months of out the year. Where do you think is the best state for this? mild seasons, mostly warm, never deathly hot. I want to live there.

I came up with a ramen recipe about a month or so ago and I.CAN.NOT.STOP.EATING.IT. It’s pretty much the best thing I’ve ever made (patting myself on the back over here). I had to because I would sit here and day dream about Wagamama all day long and scheme up reason why we had to head back to Boston every week. Have you eaten there before? It’s my favorite.

I almost cut bangs last night. I had the scissors out and everything. Then I stopped to go get the mail. Random maybe but! BUT! There was a J.Crew catalog in there and ooooh thank you J.Crew model with your long, center parted hair to make me realize I do not want bangs again (well, not until next month). What I really want is to grow my hair out longer again.

I laid in bed last night figuring out how I can become a family travel blogger. hahahahahahahhaa But seriously, how can I do that? Like for real????!?!?!? Just putting it out there to the universe. Dear Universe, All I want to do is travel with my family, like to allllllllllll the places. I want to see everything and I want Kev and the kids to come with me. Let’s make this happen. I promise to take lots of pictures and write fun stories about our trips. I will love you forever and ever, XOXOX Jen.

Here are my thoughts on adult coloring books. Why are people just figuring out that coloring is fun now? Coloring has always been fun. The end.

I GOT A NEW CAMERA AND IT IS SO AWESOME IT NEEDS TO BE EXPLAINED IN ALL CAPS. HAVING 3 KIDS AND LUGGING AROUND A GIANT DSLR SUCKS. WE WENT MIRRORLESS AND WE ARE NEVER GOING BACK. TOTALLY GOT THIS CAMERA AND WE LOVE IT! IT’S SO TINY.

Ok. So ends this episode of random thoughts by Jen.
Night. Night.
xoxox

Hi, I'm Jen!

Welcome to my personal lifestyle blog. It features topics such as motherhood, family life, fashion, cooking, and all sorts of adventures. I hope you enjoy what you find!

Jen Loves Kev
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