Bless the lady who came up with the "Work Box" system for homeschooling!!

Searching for some homeschooling inspiration a few months ago, I came across a few homeschooling blogs that raved about a work box system. After doing some google searches and reading more about it, I felt like I had finally found exactly what I needed to implement for our home school!

You can check out the website of the lady, Sue Patrick, who actually made this system popular (www.workboxsystem.com) and do a google search to see the different ways people have modified her idea to work for them and their home schools. Sue's original plan is to have 12 clear plastic bins for each child you home school. I knew right away that would not work for us...that is just WAAAY too many bins and WAAAY to hard to try and find a place out of the baby's reach to keep all the bins! It took me a few months to figure out how I could modify the idea to work for us. Some families were just using 12 folders per child all kept in a milk crate, and I thought that might be the only way we could do it. Then the other night I got a brilliant inspiration to set up our foldable table and see what I could fit on top of it.

Miraculously, things fit PERFECTLY. Each of the 3 older kids all of 4 bins which I fill with between 2-4 assignments depending. The two little girls each have 2 bins. And there is even room on the table for my crate full of file folder activities (another "new" addition to our home school and another life saver!!) and my little clipboard to keep track of the assignments I have the kids complete each day (very general.)

We have only used this new system now for two days, but it has literally revolutionized our home school and I can't imagine life without it! I have been amassing home school materials and books for years and have not really known a good way to implement them all into my children's education. The workbox system is the perfect solution! There are some things that go in bins each and every day of school (we school Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday then the kids go to the Home school Academy on Thursdays and Fridays are reserved for special projects and field trips.) I have a few great books like daily prompts for writing and daily math practice prompts and things of that nature. Each kid gets a few file folder activities that cover a range of subjects from reading to geography to writing to math. I LOVE file folder activities (my favorite are the Take It To Your Seat learning centers) and my laminator and I have had many nights of bonding (ha, literally!) as I have put the folders together. I still have TONS to assemble, but am so happy to have found this great resource! I try and put a few "fun" things in people's bins every day like puzzles, tanagrams or other fun activities. It has taken me about 30-45 minutes to fill the bins every night. I have had to make copy's out of books so that takes some time (even consumable books I generally make copies of so other kids can use them later on.) I really enjoy filling the bins, though, and finding things to put in that we have never had the chance to use! I also try and think of things the kids will enjoy finding in them. :) In general, this is the EASIEST homeschooling system we have ever had!

I have been literally amazed at the children's response and enthusiasm for this new system! Sebastian was actually up early and wanting to start on his school work first thing in the morning! He is usually *less* than enthusiastic about doing any school work. They all get their bins out and work through their assignments with basically NO complaining! It is lovely, wonderful and heartwarming to see them all busy at work for a few hours every morning!

The best way to enjoy "black friday"...

...is to go to the zoo and museum! That's what we though, anyway! The forecast for the day was near 70 degrees and the Denver Zoo was calling to me! We had planned to go to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on Monday, but the weather was just so awesome on Friday that I decided we should go to the zoo and then the museum (they are right next door to each other) and pick up the extra boxes of bamboo flooring we needed that happened to be at a Sam's store only about 10 minutes from our desired destination! It all seemed so perfect! We drove to the Sam's and bought the flooring along with way too many snacks. We filled our tummy's with Sam's Club pizza and then loaded up. The zoo was PACKED! I had naively thought it would be relatively deserted with the holiday weekend. I was sorely wrong! There were TONS of people there!! We still had fun doing a quick 2-hour round of the zoo, though. We haven't been to that zoo in about 4 years since we moved away from Boulder. We have such fond memories there; I pictured little toddler Elijah running around, little pre-schooler Sebastian speaking with an Australian accent about the "beauties" in the reptile house, and little chubby baby Fiona in a sun hat hanging out in the sling and later in the wagon caboose. :)

After the zoo, the kids and I high tailed it over to the museum while Dave went to the parking garage to move the car over to the museum parking lot. We had about an hour and a half before the museum closed. We only got to go to two exhibits, but we had lots of fun anyway. The museum was also pretty darn busy! I wish they stayed open later than 5pm!

Once the museum was closed (and they kick you out pretty promptly at 5pm!), we loaded everyone up with snacks in the car and they watched a few Magic School Bus episodes on the way home while Dave and I got to chat with one another. It was one of my favorite Black Fridays ever!

Thanksgiving 2009!!

Brighton REALLY enjoyed all the yummy food and REALLY packed it in! :)

We had an AWESOME Thanksgiving break! Dave had the whole week off and we used that time to work on remodelling projects around the house. Dave and I finished the kids bathroom and the master bathroom! I painted both (the master twice...the first color I choice stank) and he installed the new water-saving toilets we bought last spring, a new vanity/counter/sink/faucet in the kids bathroom (it looks soooooooooo good! pictures to come soon...), new light fixtures in both bathrooms and fixed our sink once and for all so that now it actually drains! We also discovered why our hot water in the master bath did not work properly; the hot water line was not turned on all the way! That was an easy fix! And now we can actually wash our faces in the sink with warm water and it drains!!! :) Dave also got most of the front entry way completed with new bamboo flooring! It looks so amazing! We found the first three boxes on clearance at Sam's Club and then picked up a few more (at regular price, boohoo) at a Sam's in Denver. Way to go, Dave!!

The day of Thanksgiving was one of my favorite of my whole life, I think. We had cleaned the house really nicely the day before. It's always lovely to wake up to such nice cleanliness! I got the stuffing and turkey cooking and then we did a bunch of Thanksgiving school stuff. I had printed off a TON of material for the kids to work on a few week prior and then found even more good stuff that morning. The kids and Dave hung out on the nice clean kitchen floor doing some activity worksheets while I read about the history of Thanksgiving aloud. Wow, I sure learned a LOT! It was really cozy and the information was captivating enough to keep kids listening and we discussed along the way. The kids and Dave each had a Thanksgiving BINGO sheet they were supposed to be working on while listening to me read aloud...they were supposed to listen for the words on their BINGO page to be able to get BINGO. Sebastian is the only one who actually got BINGO, but it was fun anyway. :)

All the food turned out really yummy! The turkey was done more than an hour before I had anticipated it being done, though, so I did a bit of scrambling to get dinner finished. We had the turkey, yummy stuffing (my mom's recipe), cranberry sauce (first year having that), homemade rolls (family recipe), green bean casserole (new family tradition for the last few years), sweet potato casserole with marshmallows (first year for that), mashed potatoes and, of course, gravy! We always buy sparkling juice every Thanksgiving and this year bought some "fancy" glasses to drink it out of! They are plastic, but turned out to be waaaaay taller than I thought and I was very nervous about huge spills, but no one spilled!

We had plenty of left-overs which Elijah especially enjoyed for many days afterward. Last night was the last night the left-overs would be good and we still had a lot of turkey and stuffing left that I did not want to go to waste so I looked up some recipes on the Internet and made 3 freezer meals out of the left-overs and a modified turkey pot pie with stuffing as the crust for dinner last night. Dave and I thought it was SUPER yummy...the kids mostly picked at theirs; Haven ate all of the turkey out of hers, Elijah ate all the peas out of his, Fiona ate most of the carrots and turkey out of hers, Sebastian stared at his. :)

It's A BOY!

We found out last week our precious new baby is a boy! I was pretty surprised, actually. I had been almost positive it was a girl. It's nice of him to be a boy, though; it will make room sharing a whole lot easier and give Brighton an insta-best friend! Sebastian and Elijah are THE BEST of friends and get along so wonderfully, it's nice to know that Brighton and the new baby will have the opportunity at that kind of a relationship too. And the three girls all have each other, so it really works out pretty darn perfectly; a set of boys, a trio of girls, then another set of boys. :)

I also found out why I have not felt as many kicks from this little active guy as early as I did with the other 6 kids...the placenta is anterior (or in the front) where most moms feel a lot of kicks. I do feel kicks there, but only really strong ones and not until about 19-20 weeks. So that was reassuring as I usually start feeling pretty regular kicks around 16 weeks or so.

We are over half way to holding our sweet new baby in our arms! Just about 18 weeks left to go! :)

Wonderful weather!

One of the most endearing things about the area we live in, to me, is the weather! Never too terribly hot in the summer time, and always plenty of variety year round! I am a gal who likes change. No, I am a gal who NEEDS change. I like different hair styles. I like rearranging furniture often. I like re-organizing closets and cabinets. I like that we have moved a zillion times in the last 12 years. I find change reinvigorating and a motivation to change things in my life or family or home that need changing. Rearranging a room suddenly makes the room 1. cleaner and 2. fresh. Frequent weather changes, for me, are exciting and help catapult me toward the sort of day I need to have; productive, happy and fun.

This fall has been perfect so far; warm, sunny days mixed with cooler sunny days mixed with cold snowy days! So perfect! Today is a cold, snowy day and I have LOVED it! Waking up to a fresh blanket of white feels so good. It makes me want to make our home cozy with clean spaces and good food and a happy, attentive mother. It makes me want to stay in and be with my family. :) It makes me want to cook for them and clean for them. It makes me happy to look out the window and see little snow flakes fluttering around.

I could not survive in a place where the weather was static most of the year. I need all 4 seasons...and within those seasons I need variety still! I am so happy we have found that in Colorado! :)

Wishing for an automatic!

Man o man o man! Sometimes it is just so hard to get kids into gear to get the things done they need to get done! I know (from remembering my own childhood) that this is not an exclusive problem to homeschooling families. Perhaps it feels more intense to me because they are here ALL day long and thus there are more times in the day where I need to ask them to do something. We have gone through periods of time where kids get up, get their stuff done in a timely manner and without too much reminding and then had their free time. Those times were GREAT! Now, however, we are just coming off the last 3 months or so where I was just "blah" and didn't follow through with the kids a whole lot. Now that I am no longer as "blah," some kids are taking issue with the fact that they need to be actual contributing members of the household and get stuff done. Some kids are taking issue with the fact that they need to learn things (like math....) that they don't want to learn. Some kids are taking issue with the fact that the chores have to be done all the way. Change is difficult at times. When you get out of the habit of things, it can be hard to get back in the habit. Cleaning and doing math are not the most exciting, fun things a kid could be doing. I understand the reluctance. I understand the resistance. I remember having those exact feelings as a kid. And I know now, as an adult, how thankful I am that my parents made me do them. I can say I actually like cleaning. I like the process. I LOVE the result and knowing that I transformed a room from filthy and cluttered to clean and organized. I appreciate the things I learned in school. I appreciate the knowledge gained through study as a child. I did not at the time. This is one of those "Circles of Life." It's a glorious challenge for parents to help guide, direct and get their kids in gear to accomplish the tasks and jobs of childhood....but they'll love us for it later! .....right?

Good excuse for my neglect

I have been so neglectful of my poor blog!! But I have had good reason...the first trimester. Ugh. Some women are able (willing?) to just plow through and live life as normal even though they feel like puking at any moment; like a very heavy, wet blanket that makes you just want to lie down 24-7 is draped over your body; like you haven't slept in months and need to sleep NOW desperately; like your emotions are not your own....I just am not one of those "plow through" women! I become a couch potato in the first trimester. My house is a literal pig sty (minus the pigs.) We eat lots of processed junk food and take out. People may wear the same outfit 2 or 3 days in a row. Kids may watch more than their fair share of movies and have a little longer than normal game time. Ugh. It is not me at my finest, by far! :)

I am now 14 1/2 weeks along with lucky number 7! I am so happy to be feeling more "normal" and not so blah. I have more energy and definitely more motivation! I only have nausea in the evenings and not all day long. I don't get grossed out by everything I eat anymore! I have actually deep cleaned some badly neglected areas of our home!!

We are very excited to be welcoming a new baby into our family. New babies are just magic! And we just think our kids are the awesomest kids around and are so excited to have to have another! This will likely be our last little one, which is a weird concept to me. I have been pregnant and/or nursing for the past 12 years pretty much. It will be weird in a few years when this new little one is weaned and I will be done with this phase of my life. It's a hard concept to grasp.

The boys all want the new baby to be a boy, of course, and the girls want it to be a girl. :) Right now we are at 3 boys and 3 girls, so this baby will be the tie breaker. :) What do you think? Boy or Girl?