Plan With Me- Erin Condren Horizontal

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Blog: awifenmother.blogspot.com



Planner: Erin Condren horizontal, please use this referral code if you would like to purchase one of your own: http://www.erincondren.com/referral/invite/anniesmith0205



On the Go Folio: light pink Color Crush folio www.websterspages.com



Monthly Sticker Kits: https://www.etsy.com/shop/planningmadeperfect



Envelope, Grocery Cart, and Coffee Stickers: https://www.etsy.com/shop/sweetkawaiidesign



Hexagon, Arrow, Birthday, and Exercise Stickers: https://www.etsy.com/shop/libbieandco



Pens: Frixion (off Amazon) and Staedtlers & Sharpie Pens (from Target)



Assorted washi tapes from www.vssweetideas.com, Target, Walmart, and Meijer



Masking stickers: Amazon

Erin Condren Horizontal as Homeschool Planner

Are you a vertical or horizontal Erin Condren user? I started with vertical for my homeschool planner and quickly realized I was not suited to that style. I'm team horizontal now, and it has boosted my motivation and helped me keep the tidy and perfect records I needed for our family homeschool. Even if you are just a planner user (and not a homeschooler) check out this video for tips on how to use the yearly, monthly, weekly, and note sections. Enjoy!



Annie





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My Systems: Homeschool and Personal

Take a peek into my homeschool planning system and my personal planning system. Miss Trenchcoat's instagram phtoto a day challenge (follow hashtag #charmedGTD) was the inspiration for this post. And yes, I realize I pronounce her name wrong a few times throughout- a humble apology was already sent to her :)



Follow Me on...
Instagram and Twitter: @awifenmother
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annie.awifenmother
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/awifenmother/

Supplies Used...
Homeschool Planner: Walmart
Personal Planner: light pink Color Crush
Monthly Inserts: Webster's Pages (they came with the Color Crush)
Daily Inserts: brittaswiderski.com
Preschool Curriculum: https://www.aophomeschooling.com/prc200

Alexis (Miss Trenchcoat): http://www.strangecharmed.com/



Happy Planning!

awifenmother

Why We Homeschool

My husband and I get asked questions about our decision to homeschool even though our oldest is only in preschool right now. Choosing to homeschool is becoming more popular, but it is still unusual enough in many circles that we get all types of questions about it. I thought I would just take a few moments to list the reasons we have come up with so far about why we are choosing to homeschool.

Our cutie, our oldest, about a year ago, see how much fun he's having?

In no particular order...

1. God desires us as parents to teach our children the things of God.
   Deuteronomy 4:9 is only one verse out of several in the Bible that illustrates this thought, and it says, "Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them." 
2. As their teacher, I can give my children tailored, personal, one-on-one teaching.
   Think, personal tutor.
3. I have the opportunity to make learning more fun!
   The crafts, hands-on activities, learning games, learning tools, and chances to experience learning are much greater in the homeschool environment.
4. We have flexibility with holidays and family events.
   Homeschoolers can learn all year round, taking breaks as desired. We can take off an entire month in December, or allow our children a free day on their birthday, the options are really endless!
5. Less (or no) danger from bullies, peer pressure, bus crashes, or school shootings.
6. We have better timing/control when introducing our children to sensitive topics, like sex or drugs, etc. 
   Between friends and many curricula in schools, our children may learn more details about these types of topics too soon. Of course we will speak to them about these vital topics, but hearing something on the bus as a second grader is not the preferred timing.
7. Our children can be trained in their character as well as book learning.
   Patience, kindness, goodness, and self-control are just as important to us as learning reading, writing, and arithmetic.
8. We get more free time- less time spent doing school, but with the same or higher academic achievement.
   How cool is it that homeschool kids finish school in a few hours then get to spend the day pursuing other hobbies and interests?
9. We get to spend more time together as a family.
10. Homeschool kids are not limited by grade. We can advance or slow down as needed by each individual child with no social/emotional negatives that could arise from jumping or holding back in a grade. This is one of my favorites perks!
    We will be blessed to tailor each child's education to their abilities. If I have a math whiz (which I doubt since I stink at math! Then again, my husband was an accountant before he became a pastor... but I digress) we can use a math curriculum any grade above his/her "age grade" easily. We can also stop and stay on the same lesson for a month if necessary, to ensure that our kid truly learns the lesson before having to move on. 
11. We are allowed to make Bible learning/teaching/reading/applying central
    Public schools ban this. Not all private schools share our beliefs, and those that do may have this as a separate class, but they do not always make it as central as we would have the opportunity to do. (Please read this as our personal beliefs, we are not criticizing any type of school!)
12. We won't have to undo as much learning that our kids come home from school with.
    Let's face it, we are a sinful, fallen people and this has to be dealt with everywhere, not just from the school setting! So again, I am not picking on the school system. I am just pointing out that as homeschoolers, we have less to address in our kids whether it's from evolution taught in the classroom, or learning disrespect towards adults from other students.
13. Better socializing skills, able to converse politely with all age groups, not just their own age friends.
    This one makes me chuckle a little because people wonder how our children can socialize if they are home with their families all the time. In a week, on average, my kids are in church, at  their grandparents, at the grocery store, play at the mall playground, stay 4-5 times a week at the YMCA daycare while I exercise, and have a regular play date with their friends. That is ample time to "socialize" with others of all ages. School children only socialize with their 20-30 same age classmates most of the day.
14. There is more time for learning fun things because less time is needed to finish book work.
    We can do more with music, art, or science than in a typical classroom education because we have more time in the day available to us.
15. We can focus on what my husband and I affectionately call Survival Skills (things like cooking, laundry, etc) which are hardly in schools anymore.
    Someday our kids will graduate and move out for college or career. We want our kids to already have practice balancing a budget, grocery shopping, cleaning house, being responsible enough to hold a job, or whatever. These things, that we may have had to learn by experience on our own, we can teach our children ahead of time to hopefully give them an advantage in life after living with Mom & Dad.
16. Learning does not need to be test based. We are able to truly assess if our kids are learning without rigorous testing.
    Proof of learning is not always on paper with an A+, it's finding application in life, or in the joy of teaching someone else a skill or lesson.
17. Similar to number 16, we can teach our kids to think and process, not simply regurgitate.
18. More time to gain life experiences or develop hobbies.
    Again, with less time in the classroom, our kids will have the opportunity to travel on missionary trips, raise a goat, train for a marathon, join sport or academic teams, try various jobs, create an invention, start a business, and so on- the list is really endless.

These are just some of the thoughts that have come out of the hours of discussion between my husband and I regarding the benefits of homeschooling. This choice is right for us- so I hope you don't feel as if I'm suggesting that everyone should take this academic view, because I am not. We just get excited about the possibilities ahead of us if we get to continue homeschooling our children. And I'm open to any homeschooling questions you have if I didn't touch on them in the list above, please feel free to ask!

You can see much of our homeschooling lifestyle via Instagram (@awifenmother). 

The Big Reveal! Our Homeschool Curriculum

I kept promising to post about our current preschool curriculum. Little did I know how hard it would be to write this post! I struggle between giving too much information or too little. I do not want to sound like a salesman, but I want to include the highlights of the book we are using. So here is my weak best attempt at describing WHAT we are using and HOW we are using it.

Answers for Preschoolers

Evan, our oldest, is 3 years old, and Reese is turning 2 this week. So, obviously our kids are very young. Our personal philosophy regarding our kids and preschool age learning is that they don't NEED any formal education yet. They are kids, we mainly let them play and learn by experience. I involve them in cleaning house, cooking and baking  [sometimes] , taking walks & wagon rides, playing with educational toys, and reading aloud to them. Life stuff. But (could you feel that "but" coming?) we do believe there is no time like the present to teach them. Their little minds are like sponges, so why not gently teach basic things? That is why this we picked this curriculum, because it fit our ideas so well. (By the way, we focus on the 3 year old; our younger child is just so close in age that she gleans a lot from what we do and whenever she wants to I let her participate).

The introduction (pg. 7) to the curriculum describes it's format this way:

"Answers for Preschoolers is based upon the most perfect source available, the Bible. You and your students will be studying the world around you from the viewpoint of the Creator. Lessons begin with a Bible concept and flow into activities and academic subjects..."

What we want most for our children is a Biblical foundation. We desire the Bible to be central to our children's life, not simply a subject to study. In our kids' early years we see the Bible as being the main source of learning, with other subjects flowing naturally from there. Answers for Preschoolers has that same viewpoint and designed their method in this way.

Each day begins with reading directly from the Bible. Then, the Teacher's Guide gives direction for discussing the passage through visual aids or object lessons, which flows into the rest of the day's subjects. For example: Lesson 1 begins with Genesis 1:1 and the topic that God was alive before all things, even time. This turns into talking about God as our father (a relational being that created/provided for us), leading into Social Studies and how we all have earthly fathers. Next you can do Language Arts and look through magazines finding pictures of families with a father, which turns into Arts & Crafts because you can cut out and paste the father pictures onto a poster, and so on.

Here are some of my favorite things about this curriculum (in no particular order):

• Includes all subjects: social studies, science, language arts, phonics, reading, writing, memory verse, math, shapes, colors, story time, music, arts & crafts, physical education, outdoor activities, creative cooking, health & safety, and even field trip suggestions
• includes resource packet (visual aids, flashcards, puzzle templates)
• includes music CD
• designed by educators with 3's & 4's in mind
• adaptable for daycare, preschool classroom, or homeschool (so it's easy to adjust for including both of my children)
• the content is arranged so we can have 3 days or 5 days a week lesson plans (they only introduce new concepts on 3 of the days)
• there are enough activities to do an all-day schedule! (although, right now we only see a need for a few subjects and probably "do school" for about an hour)
• there are 45 pages of introduction, suggestions on how to use the book, a resource list, a book list, the memory verse list, song lyrics, and several supplemental material lists to help prepare to teach

When I Lesson Plan, I simply use a highlighter in the Teacher's Guide to mark which activities I choose to do each day. I detailed how I lesson plan here and have a free printable (select the tab at the top). My son is more of an activity learner versus a craft learner. So I often select subjects related to movement or visual aids instead of cutting, pasting, and coloring. We use the Student Workbook pages that go with the activities I select. Rarely do we spend more that 45-60 minutes doing homeschool each day. Only when my son is really enjoying an activity or craft do I just let him linger on, I never plan to fill more time than that at this early stage in his life.

So that's it! There, in a nut shell, is our homeschool curriculum. We are really happy with it; my kids enjoy the material and activities, and it's easy to use from an administrative angle. If you're on the hunt for a preschool curriculum, I highly recommend Answers for Preschoolers!

And I will never again post about homeschool curriculum because it is way too hard!

OK, that's probably  not true, but it felt good to say.

Creation, Day 4

Despite my husband being on vacation this week, I really wanted to have a couple school days with Evan. Today we continued with our creation series.

Scripture: Review of themes of Days 1-3 and Genesis 1: 14-19
Memory: "In the beginning, God created"
Song: "The B-I-B-L-E"
Prayer: "Open our eyes, that we may see the truth in your word"
Craft: Sun, Moon, and Star Mobile. Stamped sun, moon, and stars.
Activity: Special Time with Dad
Number: 4 (creation day 4)

Oh the joys of "Plan B". I'm beginning to think I should skip "Plan A" and always just go to "Plan B" since it seems to end up that way. I was hunting around for toddler friendly crafts for Day 4 of Creation when I got sucked into Pinterest (again) and I saw this star mobile:

*I want to give credit to the original link: http://robot-heart.tumblr.com/post/1407743851/raining-stars-mobile-by-shopsimplethings-on-etsyhttp://robot-heart.tumblr.com/post/1407743851/raining-stars-mobile-by-shopsimplethings-on-etsy

Of course I had a toddler-friendly version planned: I was going to use yarn, a hanger, and cut-out stars with bits of foil glued on. That plan had to go when I realized that without a proper stencil, there was no way I could make a star. See what I mean:

This was not my first attempt at a star, but it was the "best" I had. Goodbye mobile plan. While standing in the toy heap in the play room with my 10 month old, an idea came to me. I saw the above star and moon shapes (they come with those cubes where you find the correct shaped hole and insert the block) and I thought they would make the perfect stamps.

Supplies: I grabbed an old t-shirt for a cover to protect Evan from the paint. I had the moon and star blocks and grabbed that blue cup to use for the sun (you can do this with any project, grab anything paint-proof to use as a stamp). I figure the yellow paint would show up best on black paper, so I used that and had an old magazine to dip the paint from.

Evan had a lot of fun stamping! Know that your toddler will not perfectly press down and pull up on a stamp. So be prepared for the finished work to look like their crayon drawings (confusing). This is a good motor skill regardless of how it looks, and they love to dip and press.

Evan enjoyed stamping so much, that when the first page was full, I got another piece of paper and let him stamp that one as well.

Just before we read the Bible and stamped, Justin and Evan had some guy time at the beach (yes I know it is October). They traipsed around and had a grand ole time! I realize this has nothing to do with the theme of Day 4 specifically, but I was out of ideas. Keeping my 2 year old up late enough to see the stars may not be the best option? 

As usual, Evan and I read the verses about Day 4 straight from the Bible. I summarized the first three days as a review, since it has been a week since we did Day 1. On the second rendition of "The B-I-B-L-E", I realized I'm a little tired of this song and I should choose a new one (repetition might be good for a child to learn, but it is not good for a mama's sanity).

I would love to hear your suggestions! Please comment with the name (and artist, if applicable) of your kid's favorite Bible songs.

Creation, Day 2

Today, Reese was down for her morning nap when Evan and I did Bible Time.

Scripture: Genesis 1:1-8
Memory: "In the beginning, God created"
Song: "The B-I-B-L-E" and a made up song "God Made the World"
Prayer: "Thank you God for creating the world"
Craft: Cotton ball cloud
Activity: Bathtub or sink water play
Number: 2 (Day 2 of creation)

I had to read quickly to make it through eight verses with a toddler. Clearly, increasing Evan's attention span is a project for the upcoming days. When he started to get antsy, I used his finger to follow along with the words. Singing has not "clicked" with Evan yet, so mostly I sing and he shouts "Bible!" at the end.

Yesterday, Evan reminded me to pray. Today I forgot completely! So I will be intentionally adding it to my list from now on (as I should have been doing anyway).

For craft time, we made clouds (I know, original).

I had previously cut out the cloud shape (to represent the heavens) so it was all ready to go. Supplies: cloud shape, glue stick, and cotton balls. Very simple to put together.

I intended to let Evan play in the sink for a while; toddlers love water play. But baby sister woke up around then so we had to pause things. My plan B- since a 10 months old baby can't play in the sink very well- was to put both kids in the tub instead. I was about to get them ready for tub play when I saw this...

Do you remember the old saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? When children are entertaining themselves and playing nicely, save the activity for a less peaceful time.

Creation, Day 1

I am finally beginning to home school my 2 year old, Evan. Well... home school might sound too structured or intense for a toddler. What I am really doing is giving both of us a taste of what is to come, while not neglecting my job to:

     "Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it,"  
     Proverbs 22:6

The heart of my husband and I is that we are the primary teachers in our childrens' lives. We realize that we are the greatest mentors, teachers, and caregivers given by God to our kids. And so we begin...

Scripture: Genesis 1:1-5
Memory verse: "In the beginning, God created"
Song: The B-I-B-L-E
Craft: Day/Night paper scraps
Activity: Flashlight to teach Light vs. Dark
Number: 1 (Day 1 of creation)

I figured the best place to begin is the beginning. So we read the passage directly from the NASB bible. I pointed to the words as I went along to keep Evan's attention better. Next, I told him that this is the word of God, and we sang "The B-I-B-L-E". Well, I sang and he hit the final "Bible!" with a strong fist pump (it's a boy thing).

Our craft was quick and easy:

Supplies: Glue Stick.  Previously, I prepared a cream colored paper with "In the beginning, God created" written at the top, with the Bible reference. Next I scribbled half with black marker and labeled it "Night/Dark" (you can just see the lines of my scribble between the black construction paper). The blank half is marked "Day/Light" at the top left. I also had half a page of plain white paper, and half a page of black construction paper ready.

I read the verse aloud from the top of the page, pointing at each word. Evan had a great time tearing the white and black papers into bits. We then glued them onto the appropriate sides of the paper. Toddlers love glue sticks!

Lastly, I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce the concepts of "light" and "dark" to my 2 year old. So we, and the 10 month old, traipsed into the bathroom (the darkest room of the house at the moment) and played with a flashlight.

We clicked it on and said "light". Then clicked it off and said "dark". And repeated, and repeated, and repeated. He never really understood the concept! But at least I laid the foundation. Plus, if your toddler is like mine, then they could be entertained for hours with a flashlight.

Throughout the day (and days to come) I will have him repeat the memory verse to me. I kept throwing in the number one as we did both projects and read the story. Every time "Day 1" came up we said "one" and held up one finger.

We had a lot of fun! The whole lesson took around 20 minutes, a perfectly acceptable time for a busy toddler boy.

I'd love to hear if you have studied Creation with your children? Please include a link to your website or activity details in a comment.